British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV July and October, 1871 (part 3 of 3)
Charles Lamb wrote upon books that are not books, or those that 'no gentleman's library should be without.' In the same way there are letters that are not letters, and of such are the political letters of Junius, Pascal's 'Provincial Letters,' Swift's 'Drapier's Letters,' and all essays, disquisitions, and satires which are merely thrown into the epistolary form. Some historical letters are in the same category; because, although the letters of such men as Cromwell, Marlborough, Nelson, Franklin, Washington, and Wellington must always interest us, we read them more for the matter that is in them than for the form in which they are thrown. The following letter from the Princess Mary (afterwards Queen of England) to the wife of the Protector Somerset, is an exception to the above rule, and exhibits its writer in an amiable light, as interceding for two poor servants who were formerly attached to her mother's household, and who had fallen into poverty:--
'To my Lady of Somerset.
'My good Gossip,--After my very hearty commendations to you, with like desire to hear of the amendment and increase of your good health, these shall be to put you in remembrance of mine old suit concerning Richard Wood, who was my mother's servant when you were one of her Grace's maids; and as you know by his supplication, hath sustained great loss, almost to his utter undoing, without any recompense for the same hitherto; which forced me to trouble you with this suit before this time, whereof (I thank you) I had a very good answer; desiring you now to renew the same matter to my lord your husband, for I consider that it is in manner impossible for him to remember all such matters, having such a heap of business as he hath. Wherefore, I heartily require you to go forward in this suit till you have brought it to an honest end, for the poor man is not able to lye long in the city. And thus my good Nan, I trouble you both with myself and all mine, thanking you with all my heart for your earnest gentleness towards me in all my suits hitherto, reckoning myself out of doubt of the continuance of the same. Wherefore, once again I must trouble you with my poor George Brickhouse, who was an officer of my brother's wardrobe of the beds, from the time of the king my father's coronation; whose only desire it is to be one of the knights of Windsor if all the rooms be not filled, and if they be, to have the next reversion; in the obtaining whereof, in mine opinion you shall do a charitable deed, as knoweth Almighty God, who send you good health, and us shortly to meet, to his pleasure. From St. John's, this Sunday at afternoon, being the 24th of April.
'Your loving friend during my life, 'MARYE.'[62]
The duchess to whom the above letter was written was very haughty, and held her head higher than the Queen-dowager, who had married the Protector's brother, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Lord High Admiral. Lloyd says, 'Very great were the animosities betwixt their wives, the duchess refusing to bear the queen's train, and in effect justled her for precedence, so that between the train of the queen and long gown of the duchess they raised so much dust at court as at last to put out the eyes of both their husbands.'
Men of position and fame must often groan under the affliction of letters and other applications that are constantly besetting them. Sir Walter Scott was frequently victimized in this way, and once he was so unfortunate as to have to pay £5 postage for a large packet from New York, which contained a MS. play, by a young lady, intended for his perusal, and accompanied with a request that he would read and correct it, write a prologue and epilogue for it, procure it a good reception from the manager of Drury Lane, and make Murray or Constable bleed handsomely for the copyright. A fortnight after he received another packet, for which he paid the same amount, which contained a second copy of the 'Cherokee Indians,' with a letter from the authoress stating, that as the winds had been boisterous she feared the first packet had foundered.
The managers of theatres are peculiarly troubled with applications that they are unable to accede to, and authors often think that those who do not rate their productions as highly as they do themselves must be actuated by unworthy motives. The following letter from F. Yates exhibits some of a manager's troubles:--
'MY DEAR SIR,--I this moment have received your letter, which has given me more pain than I can describe to you. I do assure you that, from the little I have known of you, you are the last man in the world whose feelings I would wound. Your note came to me yesterday at rehearsal; I answered it, enclosing two orders, stating that I could not afford more, and explained myself in the following manner about "Love at Home," viz:--That, as there was no chance of our being able to produce such a piece for some time, I thought it better to return it to you, or words to that effect. This note I put in the person's hands who gave me yours; who it was I can't recollect. You know what last rehearsals are to a manager sitting at the prompter's table. This morning, when I was in bed, the servant came with your card, and in answer to your note I could only fancy you wanted your piece, and desired her to wrap it up and give it the messenger. I confess I should have seen to its being properly enveloped, but you can make excuse for a fatigued man, who hears of nothing but manuscripts from morning to night. I am most anxious that you should acquit me, and believe me with truth to be yours, 'With much esteem, 'FRED. YATES.'
Managers are not the only persons who are troubled by the application of authors, and the following letter from Liston (dated 1833) shows us how he refused to perform an unpleasant task:--
'SIR,--The repeated annoyances I have been subjected to, by undertaking to read pieces at the desire of authors and managers, have determined me to avoid for the future so unpleasant a task, and I therefore trust you will not take offence, if, in pursuance of that determination, I feel myself compelled to decline a compliance with your request. Mme. Vestris will, I have no doubt, pay every attention to your production should you feel disposed to entrust it to her, and in the event of my having a character assigned me you may be satisfied that I will do my duty, both to you and to the theatre. I would have answered you earlier, but I have not had five minutes at my own disposal for the last three weeks.'
Besides the trouble of reading new plays, managers have to bear with the offended dignity of the actors. The following irate letter of Elliston (Charles Lamb's Elliston) shows what they have occasionally to put up with:--
'SIR,--Your information respecting the "School for Scandal," which I received last night, is happily imagined to fill up the measure of disrespect which seems to have been studiously offered to me since I have been in the new Drury Lane Theatre. You cannot be ignorant that I have always played the part of "Charles" with the Drury Lane company, and Mr. Arnold, when I met him on Kew Bridge previous to the opening of Drury Lane, and when it was in contemplation to open the new theatre with Mr. Sheridan's brilliant play, distinctly told me in answer to a question I put to him, that I should be expected to play "Charles." Under these circumstances I cannot but conceive the cool mode in which I am asked, without request, to be ready for the eldest brother, to be an insult. To oblige the committee and to serve the interests of the concern, I think I have already sufficiently manifested [my desire] by the acceptance of a very inferior part in the tragedy, and by my suppression of complaint where complaint was almost peremptorily called for; but there are bounds beyond which it would be contemptible for patience to show itself; I enter, therefore, a decided protest against this your last proceeding, and expect that for the future it may constitute a part of yours and Mr. Arnold's management to show me a little more good manners than your natures have hitherto permitted.'
Although a great number of letters have been printed, there must be an immense mass of unprinted ones that ought to see the light, and would add much to our information. We should like to see all the known correspondence of the world overhauled, re-arranged, and extracted under heads. By this means we should gain new views of the characters of men, and the high and dry description of action would be supplemented by vivid touches of feeling that would breathe life into the dry bones of history. Some such scheme as this was hinted at by Dr. Maitland, in his work on the 'Dark Ages.'
We must now, however, bring our subject to a close, ere we have exhausted the patience of our readers; but we do so with reluctance, for the number of letters that we should like to quote are numberless. We think that there is a peculiar pleasure in being taken into the confidence of the great ones of the earth, of those who are great by birth, by genius, and by worth; and we can imagine few greater literary treats than to turn over a well-arranged collection of autograph letters, which have been selected for the interest of their contents as well as for the celebrity of the writers. We feel suddenly taken out of ourselves and transplanted into a brilliant society, and we rise with the feeling that our list of acquaintances and friends has been enlarged by some of the best and greatest that have walked the earth. We have only left ourselves room to say a few words on Mr. Seton's book, but those words must be in its praise. The author has succeeded in putting together some very interesting and amusing essays on 'Letters and Letter-writers;' but as the subject is a large one, and the illustrations for it are peculiarly rich, we have preferred to make a selection of our own instead of using those that Mr. Seton has collected.
In conclusion, we cannot but express the pride we feel in the belief that our countrymen and countrywomen have added so many charming chapters to this branch of the great literature of the world: chapters that will bear comparison with those produced by the writers of any other country.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] 'Mark Boyd's Reminiscences of Fifty Years.'
[59] Disraeli.
[60] Mathias.
[61] Rogers.
[62] Tytler's 'England under Edward VI. and Mary,' 1839, vol. i., p. 48.
ART. VI.--Wesley and Wesleyanism.
(1.) The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., Founder of the Methodists. By the Rev. L. TYERMAN. 3 vols. Hodder and Stoughton.
(2.) The Life and Times of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, M.A., Rector of Epworth, and Father of the Rev. John and Charles Wesley. By the Rev. L. TYERMAN. Simpkin and Marshall.
(3.) John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century. By JULIA WEDGEWOOD. Macmillan and Co.
(4.) The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley. Vols. I.--XI. Methodist Book Room.
(5.) John Wesley's Place in Church History. Bell and Daldy.
(6.) Wesley and Methodism. By ISAAC TAYLOR. Bell and Daldy.
(7.) John Wesley: His Life and His Work. By the Rev. M. LELIÈVRE. Translated from the French by the Rev. A. J. FRENCH, B.A. Wesleyan Conference Office.
(8.) John Wesley; or, the Theology of Conscience, By the author of the 'Philosophy of Evangelicism.' Bell and Daldy.
Protestantism has never shown any especial pride in its hagiology, it does not treasure very highly the lives of its saints; yet it has an illustrious succession of eminent and noble men--great by endurance and self-denial, by the majesty and multiplicity of their labours, by the fervent enthusiasm of their character, and by their exalted intercourse with divine truths and things. Among the most eminent of these lives, great by its endowments and virtues, transcendent by incessant and immeasurable activity, extraordinary by its protracted period of service, stands that of John Wesley, mild and modest, but conspicuous and renowned, alike in the Old World and the New. Shall we be doing a needless thing if we devote some pages to an attempt at an estimate of the man, his ideas, his work, and his influence? First, the man. Pleasant, it has been said, is the task to trace up to their mountain source the streams which, broadening into great rivers, descend to run among the hills and water the valleys; to drink at the fountain-head, where perhaps all seems bleak and drear, compared with the fertility through which the river wanders below; thus, also, it is pleasant to trace some great benevolent flood of influence and thought back to its obscure fountain, its unlikely, perhaps unsuspected, spring. Thus also it is that in the kitchen of a poorly furnished Lincolnshire parsonage, in its atmosphere of poverty and piety, Methodism really had its origin; the early life of its founder was lightened by its special providences, his sense of wonder was excited by its supernatural voices, his frame was nourished by its hard discipline. Such was the cradle and the early aliment of John Wesley; and the first element in Methodism is the quality and character of the man.
Even at this day, Epworth is a quiet old village town, lying on the windy side of a Lincolnshire upland; no railway has, we believe, disturbed its solitary stillness, and the rest of its inhabitants is unbroken by the shrill whistle of the locomotive. We may figure to ourselves its loneliness a hundred and seventy years since, when in its old parsonage John Wesley's eyes first opened to the light. Samuel Wesley, his father, was the rector of the little village; quite a notable man to us, and by no means an obscure man in his day. Epworth, considering those times, was not a poor living, it was worth £200 a year; it is now worth nearly £1,000; but excellent and admirable man as he appears to have been, the old rector was usually in debts and difficulties. Perhaps even Goldsmith's typical clergyman would not have 'passed rich with £40 a year,' if, in addition to that wealth, he had found his quiver filled by nineteen children; although we know wonderful Robert Walker became a rich man, kept out of debt and danger, and accumulated a fortune in his incumbency of Seathwait on an annual income of £10! Few well-authenticated stories are more romantic than that of Epworth parsonage; among old houses it has a distinguished pre-eminence. Both the pastor and his wife were extraordinary people: on both sides their ancestors were remarkable, and they in turn became parents of an offspring, marvellous not merely in number, but in the singular versatility of their genius. The old rector was one of the stupendous scholars, of whom there were so many in the lone and obscure retreats of village life in that age; one of those men who, patiently trimming the midnight lamp, or kindling it before the earliest glow of the summer's sunbeam, thought or wrote with equal facility in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, and published their works in huge quartos or folios. Of him probably we should now know nothing, but for the work of his remarkable children. Yet he was himself a huge folio of a man, a poet, too, in virtue of a considerable power of conception, fertility of illustration, and melody of expression; those queer old volumes, the 'Athenian Oracle,' which are a choice amusement and recreation for the bookworm, received large contributions, and on the most curious subjects, from his pen: he possessed a nimble wit, and his posthumous work on Job is said to contain--for it has never fallen in our way--a vast wealth of scholarship. Susannah Wesley, his wife, was at once a saint and a scholar, far more equal to the discussion of many knotty matters in divinity than some of the bishops of that day; and she also had an intense concern for the souls of the parishioners round about her. The household of that parsonage vividly reflects that old twilight time. Twice the rectory was consumed by fire: it was supposed to be the work of incendiaries, for the rector was very unpopular, and the story has often been told in prose and in painting, how, on one of these occasions, the infant John nearly perished in the flames, how he was rescued, and how the brave rector knelt with his children on the village green, exclaiming, 'Come, neighbours, let us kneel down, let us give thanks to God, He has given me all my eight children--I am rich enough.' But in the fire he lost not only his house, but his furniture and his precious library, all his manuscripts, and his sermons, and moreover a work on Hebrew poetry, which, from what we know of his pen, must have been very valuable. Grim shadows often fell over the rectory. One circumstance gives it a most singular notoriety, and was probably not without influence on the mind of John. We allude to its celebrated ghost. Among ghost stories, this of the apparition or polter-geisterie of Epworth--for the hauntings were noisy racketings rather than appearances--has always been held to be one of the most inexplicable. Dr. Southey quite inclines to a belief in the genuineness of the ghostly visitations, and Mr. Tyerman expresses himself as reluctantly driven to the conclusion that the noises and other circumstances were occasioned by the direct and immediate agency of some unseen spirit; Isaac Taylor also seems forced to a similar admission. Thus it was a singular old house and household; much there was calculated in every way to stir the souls of such children and youths as John and Charles Wesley, not to mention the less famous, but scarcely less ingenious, Samuel and Mehetabel, Amelia and Keziah; it is interesting to think of that family in those old Epworth fields and lanes and hedgerows, and to follow them in all their strange, varied, and parti-coloured existence.
In due time, John left home for college; he studied at Christ-church, Oxford, after he had fulfilled his earlier course at the Charter House. It was long before he found his way into the work which has made his name so eminent; nor can it be said that in earlier life he gave much promise of that especial excellence to which he attained. He was a hard and industrious student, an exemplary and pious youth and young man. It is not uninteresting to notice that at this time he had rather a close and not unaffectionate correspondence with Mary Granville, then a young widow, which suggests suspicious possibilities. Talented, beautiful, and accomplished, we know her principally as the old lady, Mrs. Delany, the cherished friend of George III., to whom he paid such courtly and beautiful deference in her old age at Windsor. Mr. Tyerman seems to think, and we think too, that Wesley had a 'fair escape;' that he was not at all uninteresting to the fair widow is certain. What would have become of Methodism had the intimacy been closer? He was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; but his ideas of Christian truth appear to have been very crude and confused. In his twenty-fifth year he was ordained a priest of the Church of England, and ministered for some time at a wretched little Lincolnshire village called Wroote; the population was under three hundred, 'and the people,' says Mehetabel Wesley, 'were as dull as asses and impervious as stone.' It is true there was at this time a small cluster of Oxford students who had received the denomination of 'Methodists,' and Wesley was one of them; he was called even the 'Curator of the Holy Club,' and a 'crack-brained enthusiast.' His brother Charles regarded him with reverence, and all looked up to him as the worthy leader of the little band. He appears to have led the life of an ascetic, and his charity to the poor was limited only by his very scanty means. An instance shows us something of the character of the man. On one cold winter day, a young girl, whom these earlier Methodists kept at school, called upon him in a state nearly frozen. The young man said to her, 'You seem half-starved; have you nothing to wear but that linen gown?' She said, 'Sir, it is all I have!' Wesley felt in his pocket, but it was almost empty; the walls of his chamber, however, were hung with pictures, and these now seemed to him to become his accusers. 'It struck me,' says he, 'will thy Master say to thee, "Well done, good and faithful steward, thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold." O justice! O mercy! are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?' When he had reached the age of seventy-three, the Commissioners of Excise--in all generations a race of monetary ferrets--addressed to him a circular, expressing that beyond a doubt he had neglected to make a proper entry and return of his silver plate. The letter was very curt and peremptory. Wesley evidently thought the application to him was ridiculous, and he replied in a note still more curt. 'Sir, I have two silver spoons at London and two at Bristol; this is all the plate that I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread. I am, Sir, your most humble servant, John Wesley.' Thus the reflection of the young student realized itself in the active life of the old man.
For some time, however, John Wesley appears before us as a kind of eighteenth century Puseyite, or rather such an one as Hurrell Froude; his notions were cast in a mould of High Church idealism, not unmixed with a certain morbid pietism; and Oxford Methodism almost anticipates that other mighty reaction, the great religious movement of our age; but the Methodism of Oxford, indeed, although it numbered among its adherents such men as the Wesleys, and Whitefield, and Hervey, and Ingram, soon came to an end, and, but for Wesley's after career, would have been buried in oblivion, for Mr. Tyerman truly characterizes it as 'misty, austere, gloomy, and forbidding, while yet intensely earnest, sincere, and self-denying.'
The friends were soon widely scattered to their different vicarages and curacies, and John Wesley himself--now in his thirty-second year--accepted a mission to the little American State of Georgia. We need not describe his experience in America further than to remark how, on his way thither, he fell in with Moravians, who imparted to him some new light in theology on its experimental side. The vigorous hymns of the Moravians and their vivid representations of Christian life, put before him a new set of ideas, which, when he separated himself entirely from the organization of that sect and returned to England, bore abundant fruit. His life in Georgia was of short continuance, but characterized by singular circumstances; first and foremost, he took into his ministry a very strange, morose, and cheerless type of Christianity; also in connection with this, we have to notice a very important item in his history--he fell in love. It is quite remarkable that all Wesley's transactions with womankind--on his own account--were unfortunate, even exceedingly unhappy. The lady who first drew forth his affections appears to have accepted his proposal of marriage; but by a rapid transition we find her a week or two after, married to a Mr. Williamson; this overwhelmed the poor priest, and introduced him to other troubles. He refused to admit her to the Lord's table; then we find him arrested and brought before the recorder for defaming the lady; then followed a stream of indictments against him, and, in brief, sick and sore, and as a prisoner at large, we find him hurrying away from the colony.
For a life which became so remarkable for the prescience and rigidity of its principles, such a commencement was very singular. A strange undeterminateness appears to rule, or rather to leave him unruled and ungoverned, until his thirty-seventh year. It is singular, for instance, to find an undoubtedly pious, earnest, holy, and self-denying man, such as Wesley was, declaring that until he returned from Georgia he was an unconverted man. He was no doubt in search of that deep faith which is eternal life. It appears that a real change came over him when he heard the preaching of Peter Bohler, the Moravian; in all these earlier years of Wesley's activity he seems to have been greatly indebted to the Moravians. The issue of the influence of Bohler upon his mind, was his confession that before this period he was a servant of God, accepted and safe, but now he knew it, and was happy as well as safe, and in after years and until our own time, the conscious happiness of believers has been a considerable point in Methodist teaching. There is no doubt that Wesley himself attained a cheerful, quiet, restful consciousness he had never known before, and his life hereafter, while constant in its course of self-denial, was lifted above the morose asceticism of his earlier years. But as to the principle itself, it is surely as dangerous as a rule of Christian experience, as it is doubtful in all human philosophy. For some time he was materially influenced by Moravian principles and practices, and, indeed, it is easy to see that God who destined for his distinguished servant a very long life, was teaching him in various schools those principles, which upon an eminently large scale he was to apply. He went to Germany to visit the Moravian settlement of Hernhutt, he came to know that eminent and extraordinary man, Christian David, he heard him preach and received from his own lips his singular story. He professed himself to have received remarkable spiritual intelligence from Moravian teachings; and some of the finest hymns in the Wesleyan Hymn Book are translations made at this time by John Wesley from those of Count Zinzendorf. But it is very remarkable that he signalized the period of his conversion by a quarrel with William Law; he charged him most ungraciously with having deceived him in having given to him a mystical, notional, and intellectual faith; and Law replied to him in language, which assuredly in every way leaves that devout and eminent Christian philosopher in possession of the field. It is, however, the last ground of serious exception we can take to the life of Wesley. At this point, his life seems to collect itself into eminent purpose and consistency. He was soon compelled to disentangle himself from the Moravians, whose notions at that time were beset by the most mystical and mischievous fancies, and ridiculous and even indecent allusions. He was forbidden their pulpit on account of his clearly expressed dissent from their doctrines, and almost immediately, and apparently without any distinctly marked design on his own part, he commenced that course which made him so pre-eminent a father and apostle in the modern church. John Wesley's course is very singular. It has this strong mark of eminent honesty: that the whole of the immense system of usefulness he inaugurated, appears to have been without especial intention or plan. From year to year the institution grew; piece by piece, the mighty structure took proportion and shape. Commencing in a simple design to be useful, to awaken men to a knowledge of sin, and to the determination of salvation from sin, Wesley became an evangelist. He had no idea of separating himself from the Established Church; he always regarded himself as one of its ministers, and was sufficiently filled, even to the close of his life, with all the ideas implied in being an ordained priest in its communion. It is impossible to regard him in relation to England at that time, without feeling that he, in an eminent degree, was raised up and set apart for the salvation of his country.
The social condition of England, when Wesley appeared presents no attractive picture to the student; in some measure it relieves and lightens our despondency concerning England at present, to remember what the country was then. It is true the population was small, almost insignificant, as compared with our present overcrowded masses--it was not more than about six millions--but with abundant wealth and means of happiness, the people fell far short of what we should now consider comfort. This was, however, a slight shade in the picture; there were cruelty and injustice in the administration of English law, life and liberty were held very cheap, deism or atheism in religion and a wild licentiousness and rude brutality of manners, pervaded all classes, from the court to the meanest hamlet of the land. For the most part the Church of England had shamefully forgotten and neglected her duty, while the Nonconformists had sunk generally into so cold an indifferentism in devotion, and so hard and sceptical a frame of thought in theology, that almost every interest of the land was given over to profligacy or recklessness, and in thoughtful minds to despair. Those who called themselves Christians were for the most part spiritually dead. The literature of England suffered a temporary eclipse, and such as it was, it was shamefully perverted from all high purposes, and was very generally adverse to all purity and moral dignity. The gaols, indeed, were crammed with culprits, but that did not prevent the heaths from swarming with highwaymen, and the cities with burglars; in the remote regions of England, such as Cornwall in the West, and Yorkshire and Northumberland in the North, and especially Midland Staffordshire, the manners were wild and savage beyond all description or conception. The reader must conceive a state of society divested of all the educational, philanthropic and benevolent activities of modern times. There were no Sunday-schools and few day-schools; here and there a solitary chapel sequestered in some lane, either in the metropolis or the country town, or more probably far away from a town, stood in some confluence of roads a monument of old intolerance; but religion was, as we have said, in fact dead or lying in a trance. To few men has it been given, commencing a career at the age of thirty-seven, to have reserved for them yet, upwards of half-a-century of health, strength, and mental vigour, to carry out and give effect to all their plans. Wesley rose to break up this monotony, and to alarm this depravity of social life; his strong, clear voice sounded over the land; the amount of hatred, hostility and persecution which he roused, evidently showed the living feeling he had created; it is a more favourable circumstance that a man should hate religion than be wholly indifferent to it; on the other hand, the love was more fervid and intense than the hate, hate roared and hissed, and threw about its mischievous display of foolish fireworks in the shape of pamphlets and satires; but there would appear to have been such a degree of genuine sympathy, that men and women, united by certain principles of faith, statedly met together, regardless of peril or cost, and thus there gradually extended over the whole of England a circle of religious societies bearing Wesley's name.
The Church of England very soon set itself against the new movement; Whitefield, much younger than Wesley, an ardent, flaming, seraphic man, had been compelled to betake himself to the fields. Like Wesley he was an ordained minister of the Church, but he had been threatened with suspension and expulsion, and he was the first who could collect thousands--sometimes not less than twenty thousand--to hear the gospel. It was with great fear and trembling that Wesley imitated him, and he says, referring to his first preaching in the open air near Bristol, 'I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields; having been all my life, till very lately, so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I would have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in church.' 'Such,' says Mr. Tyerman, 'were the prejudices and feelings of the man who for between fifty or sixty years proved himself the greatest outdoor preacher that ever lived.'
It does not seem very easy to settle the precise etymology of the term Methodist, whether derived, as some have said, from an allusion in Juvenal to a celebrated quack physician, or whether, as Mr. Tyerman seems to think, first used in a pamphlet attacking Whitefield in the earlier years of his ministry, in which the author fetches up an old sentence from the pages of Chrysostom, who says, 'To be a Methodist is to be beguiled.' We ourselves happened once, in a parish church in Huntingdonshire, to be listening to a clergyman notorious alike by his private character and vehement intolerance, who was entertaining his audience on a week evening by a discourse from the text in Ephesians iv. 14. 'Whereby they lie in wait to deceive.' He said to his people, 'Now you do not know Greek; I know Greek, and I am going to tell you what this text really says; it says, "they lie in wait to make you Methodists;" the word used here is methodeian, that is really the word that is used, and that is really what Paul said, "they lie in wait to make you Methodists." A Methodist means a deceiver, one who deludes, cheats and beguiles.' The Grecian scholar was a little at fault in his next allusion, for he proceeded to quote that other passage of the apostle, 'We are not ignorant of his devices,' and seemed to be under the impression that 'device' was the same word as that on which he had expended his criticism. 'Now,' said he, 'you may be ignorant because you do not know Greek, but "we are not ignorant of his devices," that is, of his methods, his deceivers, that is his Methodists.' It was a piece of the richest criticism we ever remember to have heard in any pulpit. In such empty wit and ignorant punning, it is very likely, however, that the term had its origin; be that as it may, 'Methodist' soon became the designation of a really large body of social and spiritual reformers, and assuredly no term has obtained greater renown and importance since 'the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch;' but in fact the word is to be found in several places in our obsolete English. Wesley was not the greatest outdoor preacher that ever lived, but we can forgive Mr. Tyerman for thinking so in his high feeling of admiration for his illustrious hero. He became a power in the country. Earl Stanhope in his very interesting 'History of England from 1713-1783,' devotes a lengthy chapter to Wesley and the rise of Methodism, and says, 'with less immediate importance than war or political changes, it endures long after, not only the result, but the memory of these has passed away, and thousands who never heard of Fontenoy or Walpole continue to hold the precepts and venerate the name of John Wesley.' Thus this venerable name is a distinguished landmark or milestone in the history of the mind of England. By his labours he gave the noblest freedom to thousands of enslaved minds, and marshalled their wild natures under the principles of order and obedience. Wesley achieved his greatest victories in the open air; he probably inherited from his father a tolerably sharp power of satiric reproof, which often served him well in such encounters as he would be sure to have in the broad streets or the fields, and was well illustrated in his victory over Beau Nash. The accomplished rake and dandy king of Bath, master of the ceremonies in that then famous watering-place, appeared swaggering in his enormous white hat, and asked, 'By what authority he dared to do what he was doing now?' 'By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by him who is now Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands upon me and said, "Take thou authority to preach the Gospel."' Cried the man of Bath, 'Your preaching frightens people out of their wits.' 'Sir,' said Wesley 'did you ever hear me preach?' 'No!' 'How then can you judge of what you have never heard?' 'I judge, he answered, 'from common report.' 'Common report,' replied Wesley, 'is not enough; give me leave to ask, Sir, is not your name Nash?' 'It is,' he said. 'Sir,' replied Wesley, 'I dare not judge of you by common report.' Even the unblushing master of ceremonies was abashed and worsted; he was slinking away, when, to complete his discomfiture, an old woman lifted up her voice, and begged Wesley to allow her to question and to answer him; this made the scene ludicrous, and in the midst of such a singular and disgraceful defeat, the mighty dandy left the preacher to continue and to close his sermon.
The most romantic lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar do not present a more startling succession of incidents than those which meet us in the life and labours of Wesley and his Prætorian band, and these are all the more marvellous and romantic because they lay no tax upon credulity and never appeal to miracle as their foundation. Wesley never, like blessed St. Raymond of Pennafort, spread his cloak upon the sea to transport him across the water, sailing one hundred and sixty miles in six hours, and entering his convent through closed doors; nor do we ever find him, like the dear and judicious Xavier, spending three whole days in two different places at the same time, preaching all the while. We fear it is true that Wesley does not shine in feats like these, but he seems almost ubiquitous, and moves with a rapidity which reminds us of that flying angel who had 'the everlasting gospel to preach;' while his conflicts with the tempests of nature, and those wilder tempests caused by the passions of men, crowd his life with incident. We read of adventurous journeys through regions in the North of England when snowstorms drifted and baulked the way, and made travelling almost impossible, or over roads made like glass by the hard frost, and through pathless wastes of white. Thus we read of his travelling through the long wintry hours, two hundred and eighty miles, on horseback in six days, a wonderful feat, and Wesley himself writes,--'Many a rough journey have I had before, but one like this I never had, between wind and hail and rain and snow and ice, and driving sleet and piercing cold; but it has passed, and those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been. So "the love of Christ constrained him."' Vast concourses met him in singular places: on Blackheath fourteen thousand people, in Kingswood more, in Moorfields and on Kennington Common twenty thousand people. Singular was his visit to Epworth, where he found the church of his childhood, his father's church, and the church of his own first ministrations, closed against him, but for eight days he stayed, and preached every night standing on his father's tomb; truly a singular sight, the living son, the prophet of his age, surely little short of inspired, preaching on the dead father's grave, with such pathos and power as we may well conceive. 'I am well assured,' he says, 'that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's tomb, than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.' Visiting York, he went to the service of St. Saviour's Gate church; the rector, the Rev. Mr. Cordeux, had warned his congregation against hearing that 'vagabond Wesley' preach. Wesley went into the church in his canonicals, it was not unusual for ministers then to wear the cassocks or the gown like the university man in a university town: the rector of course saw he was a clergyman, but not knowing who he was, offered him his pulpit to preach, and Wesley was thoroughly willing and ready. He took for his text a part of the gospel of the day--sermons leaped impromptu from his lips and heart; this sermon was an impressive one, and after the service the rector asked the clerk if he knew who the strange clergyman was. 'Sir,' said the clerk, 'it was the "vagabond Wesley" against whom you warned us.' 'Ay, indeed!' said the astonished rector, 'we have been trapped, but never mind, we have had a good sermon.' The Dean of York heard of the affair, and threatened to lay the matter before the archbishop; but the rector outstripped the dean, and went himself and told the story to the archbishop. 'You did quite right,' he said, and so the matter ended; only when the 'vagabond Wesley' came to York again, the rector offered his church the second time to him, and a second time be preached in St. Saviour's.
A succession of persecutions attended him and his followers on their way, and yet very little could be alleged to their discredit. In Cornwall, Edward Greenfield, a tanner, with a wife and seven children, was arrested under a warrant signed by Dr. Borlase, the eminent antiquarian, who was a bitter foe to Methodism. Wesley appeared to vindicate his friend, and he first inquired what objection there was to the peaceable, inoffensive man. The answer was, 'The man is well enough in other things, but the gentlemen cannot bear his impudence; why, Sir, he says that he knows his sins are forgiven!' When Bernardine of Sienna preached at Bologna, the people brought out their dice-tables and burnt them in the streets; when Antony of Padua preached at Pavia, he saw impure books and pictures committed to immense flames; and even more remarkable, when Savonarola preached in Florence, the woman left off painting their faces, and decorating their hair. The results of Wesley's preaching were scarcely less remarkable. The story is well known how in one place a whole waggon-load of Methodists had been taken before a magistrate, but when he asked what they had done, a deep silence fell over the court, for no one was very well prepared with any charge against them; at length some one exclaimed that 'they pretended to be better than other people, and prayed from morning till night;' and another said, 'They have convarted my wife; till she went among them she had such a tongue, but now she's as quiet as a lamb.' 'Take them back, take them back,' said the sensible magistrate, 'and let them convert all the scolds in the town.' We are amazed when we attempt to realize all the causeless conflicts through which many of these holy enthusiasts passed, certainly the world in all its force was against them; no wild anti-popery riots were more unreasonable and brutal than the turbulent mobs which tore down houses and insolently assaulted women and men for their attachment to the new movement. Attempts were often made on Wesley's life in Cornwall; wild cries rose around him, 'Away with him!' 'Kill him at once!' 'Crucify the dog!' Stones and bricks were frequently hurled at him; often he might have said, 'My soul is among lions.' Staffordshire was scarcely behind Cornwall in the rough assaults. Quiet men were pressed for soldiers, and sent as prisoners to jail, simply because they were Methodists; hot-headed Hanoverians did their best to make the whole Methodist body disloyal, and both John and Charles Wesley were arrested or taken before the magistrates upon suspicion of being favourable to the Pretender. Thus Charles was brought before the magistrates at Wakefield, and five witnesses were ready to swear that he had either prayed or preached about the return of the 'Banished One,' the well-known and tender words of the wise woman of Tekoa, being supposed to convey some sinister allusion to the exiled Stuarts. It was the age of mobs and riots; for a long time the preaching of Wesley appears to have been greeted by turbulencies as wild and vehement as those which give a disgraceful notoriety to the name of John Wilkes or Lord George Gordon.
So astonishing were the results of these very simple and Christ-like ministrations, that there was surely something of the supernatural in the man Wesley. It is part of the very nature of Christianity to believe that from time to time the Church is invigorated by extraordinary impulses of divine life find grace, and singular effusions of the Holy Spirit: and to those who are able to reach at all the idea of supernatural causes in the Christian life, it is not difficult to apprehend the reality of such impulses. There was surely much that was remarkable in Wesley; it is unquestionable that strange influences seemed to attend him. His words, it has been remarked, seemed to possess a mesmeric power; his proximity to the supernatural has often been made the subject of criticism. Extraordinary circumstances which Southey, Richard Watson, Isaac Taylor, and other eminent writers have found to be perfectly inexplicable upon principles of natural reasoning marked his ministry; we read of innumerable instances of individual convulsions, and of multitudes falling prostrate to the ground before his words; cold and imperturbable natures were suddenly overwhelmed. Wesley was quite a believer in the visible and oral manifestation of the 'powers of the world to come;' such instances were especially prominent in the earlier part of his singular course. We have no remarks to make upon these phenomena, nor shall we inquire whether they may or may not be accounted for on merely natural principles; the facts remain unquestioned. One thing is certain, as when Peter preached, so at the preaching of Wesley, innumerable thousands were 'pricked to the heart, and exclaimed, "What shall we do?"'
The power of Wesley's teaching may probably be traced to the fact that it dealt with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; but then the whole doctrine was suffused in the fulness, the sufficiency, and the sweetness of Jesus, and it was a mighty reaction against the indifference and injustice of the age. The party formed against Wesley represented the higher classes, bishops and men whose minds and hearts it would seem were incapable of sympathy for the suffering and the poor, and for those who were out of the way; coarse ribalds like Lavington, the Bishop of Exeter, or dilettanti gentlemen like Horace Walpole, buffoons and time servers like Foote, or even hard theologians like Toplady, their doctrines tinctured with the harsh and morbid severity of the times, when, as we have seen, reckless disregard for life, a claim over it for the most insignificant offences, must have tended to give a rigour and narrowness to many religious ideas. Wesley's audiences were chiefly composed of the poor. The early Methodist was a very simple, perhaps usually an ignorant, man, but he had that light which 'lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' The Methodist was not such an one as the Puritan of other days, who was a sort of Knight of the Iron Hand, a Nonconformist crusader, whose theology had trained him to the battle-field, nerved him to frown defiance upon kings, and to treat as worthy only of contempt the unsanctified nobles of the earth. The Methodist was not such an one; he was as loyal as he was lowly, he had been forgotten or passed by, by priests and Levites, but suddenly he found himself raised to the rank of a living soul--a voice had reached him assuring him that he, too, was in possession of a soul. Over the country the ground, on the whole, was easy to Wesley to win; there was no education, there were no conflicts of opinion, there were no popular books, the people had no objects to claim their attention, the towns were far apart, and connected only by the mail or stagecoach, or that heavy and much more romantic-looking than agreeable conveyance, the market-cart; there was little popular excitement, there were only coarse amusements. It is unquestionable that the people had far fewer religious interests than in the old days of popery, the entire services of the Church were bald and uninteresting, there was no music, unless of such a description as to move the passions by shattering the nerves,--there was no popular psalmody worthy of the name; thus the religious nature was entranced or buried. But the Methodist was one who had heard the call of God, conscience had been stirred within him, and a new life had created new interests; for Christianity really ennobles a man, gives him self-respect, shows to him a new purpose and business in life, and stirs the spirit, moreover, with a pulse of joy and cheerfulness; hence Methodism created the necessity for meetings and for frequent reciprocations. There were no chapels, or but few, and none to open their doors to these strange new pilgrims to the celestial city. The churches, of course, were closed against them;--what could be done, for they must speak together. Reciprocation was the soul of Methodism; almost all the great religious movements have been instituted and marked by some sign--Dominic invented the rosary, Loyola the spiritual contemplations and the retreat, Wesleyanism created Class-meetings; this constituted its essential symbolism. A church can scarcely long maintain a standing without a symbol. This is the countersign of parties and sects. So these people assembled in each other's houses, in rude and homely rooms, by farm ingles, in lone hamlets; thus was created a homely piety, rugged enough, but full of beautiful and pathetic instincts. When the faith became more consciously objective, it was possessed by that singular belief ruling the Church in all such movements--the belief in the power, conjoined to the desire to save souls. This drove them out on great occasions to call the vast multitudes together on heaths and moors. Occasionally, but this was at a later period, some country gentleman threw open his old hall to the preachers; but the more aristocratic phase of the Methodist movement fell into the Calvinistic rather than into the Wesleyan ranks; these last sought the sequestered places of nature, or in cities and towns they took to the streets, outlying fields or broadways; in some neighbourhoods a little room was built containing the germ of what in a few years became a large Wesleyan society. The burden of all their meetings and their intercourse, whether in speech or song, was the sweetness and fullness of Jesus; they had an intense faith in the love of God shed abroad in the heart; their great solicitude was that souls were on the brink of perdition. This was to them more than spiritual difficulties, mere interior trials, or speculative despair; these were mostly a terra incognita to them. Wesley dealt, as it has been expressed, with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; he had little regard to mere proprieties. Wesley and his preachers, 'out of breath pursuing souls,' seemed to many ungraceful, undignified, their faces weary, their hands heavy with toil. Yet these men had found, such as it was, a definite creed, and, as in the case of their great leader, all the inexhaustible variety and world-wide energy of other minds were in them concentrated into a burning instinct; the word of 'the Lord was like fire, or like a hammer.' The early Methodists had also the mighty instincts of prayer--to them there was a meaning in it and a joy. So these men pursued their way. God's ministry goes on by various means, ordinary and extraordinary; it is the difference between rivers and rains, between the dews and the lightnings, the rivers are exhaled by the sun and return to the earth in rains, the Severn and the Wye roll their beautiful forces through the meadow and along the hill-side, but if they did not give their waters to the sun and the cloud, and fall back upon the earth as dew and showers, they would cease from their channels among the hills. So Methodism availed itself of the ordinary and extraordinary.
All truly holy souls, even those the most opposed in their pews or their studies, meet and melt and mingle in song; holy song is the solvent of the most divergent creeds. Perhaps the greater number of the early Methodists were not pressed by physical want; concern for the soul was the grand business, in many instances possibly it was a wild and even diseased feeling. There was no art, no splendid form of worship or ritual; early Methodism was as free from all this as Clairvaux, in the valley of Wormwood, when Bernard ministered there with all his monks around him, or as Cluny, when Bernard de Morlaix chanted his 'Jerusalem the Golden.' Methodism, like all the great religious movements which have shaken men's souls, was purely spiritual, or, if it had a sensuous expression, it was not artificial; loud 'Amens!' resounded as Wesley preached, spoke, or prayed, and then the hearty gushes of, perhaps, not melodious song united all hearts in some Wesleyan Litany or Te Deum. It was so throughout the whole land; such cyclones of spiritual power mysteriously visit our world from age to age, but this surely was one in which there was infinitely more to bless and benefit, and far less to which good taste or good sense could take any exception, than in perhaps any of the great preceding waves of spiritual power which had rolled over Europe. It was the ascetic type set forth by Wesley in an age of animal and sensual indulgence. It was principally by fighting with the sins of the age, at the same time by laying hold upon its characteristics, and especially by remembering that man is more than a machine to fill rich men's pockets, or to digest victuals--a soul, in fact, for whom Christ died--that Methodism 'grew mightily, and prevailed.'
The strength of a great and popular leader is especially shown in his power to infuse his own spirit into the minds of other men, thus constituting an organized band of kindred helpers; never surely was there a man who more remarkably abides this test than Wesley, and he became the general of a remarkable order. Protestantism may well, with Wesley to adduce, challenge Rome to produce any superior illustration of spiritual power. Archbishop Manning has spoken of St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Ignatius, chiefs of the orders they created, as the four rivers of the water of life; it is a singular illustration and not creditable to the archbishop's piety or good taste; but if Wesley be compared with these great fathers of the Romish Church, he shines brilliantly in the comparison. Mr. Tyerman enthusiastically inquires, 'Is it not true that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ?' We may reply we do not think so, and may yet be prepared to render almost equal homage with Mr. Tyerman to this stupendous spiritual organization. John Wesley very soon poured his animating spirit into other men, and the history of Jesuitism--that marvellous story of the conquest of the human mind--does not exhibit anything like so striking an array of heroic and glorious achievements. Rome would make much of such a history, had she to recite it of herself. The names of those who surround Wesley as his fellow-labourers and helpers are, indeed, all of them humble men; no courtly or episcopal favour smiled upon him or them as they passed along. He had absolutely nothing but the pure Gospel, by the proclamation of which he sought to awaken human interest and to command attention; but soon there came a host, of whom it might be said, 'There went with him a band of men whose hearts God had touched.' The mind of England seemed to be waiting for that which Wesley brought to it. Spiritually dead as the Church of England was, many clergymen, responsive to his call, shook off their lethargy, and several, like William Grimshaw, of Haworth, laboured heartily with the apostle of Methodism. The right material was constantly at hand so soon as it was needed, in men who have almost passed away from memory, but whose 'record is on high.' We have no space for the review of that long gallery of interesting portraits of marked and remarkable men; only we notice there seemed to be a hand for every kind of work that had to be accomplished; one to lead on the polemic work of the disputant, and another, or others, to pour forth hymns; some to sway, by rugged but splendid powers of persuasion, immense masses of people; others to minister in localities and gather up the lost sheep into folds; and others to visit in prison, or in those scenes where the tender voice and the ministering hand were needed, while all bowed before the omnific mind of Wesley. Few lives are more startling than that of John Nelson; few types of saintly holiness are higher than Thomas Walsh; Thomas Maxfield has generally been supposed to be the first of the long line of lay preachers to whose exertions Methodism owes so much; while John and Thomas Oliver, John Haine, George Story, and Sampson Staniforth, and a number of other goodly names, represent lives of such intense earnestness, holiness, and activity, as would certainly win them a place in a Catholic calendar of saints, and are so full of glowing adventure, that the story of many of them would keep a boy's eyes from winking even late in the night.
Simultaneously with Wesley came the singular apparition of Whitefield, who fell into no groove of Church routine or life, although undoubtedly standing on the Calvinistic side of Methodist opinion. It is interesting to compare these two men together. Whitefield sprang upon the world ready armed as a youth of twenty, and finished his career in the prime of life; he seems almost to realize, if it can be realized, the idea of an abstract soul. We read his words, and they are nothing; but those words uttered by him broke down, overwhelmed, and dissolved all prejudices. What must he have been to whom such strong men, such courtly, artificial, yet highly cultured men, such sceptical and inaccessible men as Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield, and David Hume, and Garrick, and Benjamin Franklin, 'were as tow,' while he was as 'a spark' to kindle all into consuming flame. Not immediately connected with Wesley's organization, this mysterious and marvellous man, an entire soul of all-embracing love and compassion, greatly aided the movement;--equally at home in preaching in the select saloons of the Countess of Huntingdon, to Dukes and Duchesses and arrays of Peers, or in the wildest and most furious and murderous mobs. Whitefield is a mystery to us; he only seems to burn with an incandescent heat, so that words shrivel, and evaporate in the flame of that pure, ingenuous, generous, and wholly consecrated soul; and this, notwithstanding the melody of that full, clear, all-encompassing voice, varying to every passionate accent, sinking to the most penetrating entreaty, swelling to the most rousing apostrophe. In the full careering heat of his speech, Whitefield became, unconsciously to himself, poet, philosopher, psychologist, thus enabling us to understand something of his stupendous power, even while we are still perplexed as to its cause. No melody or poetry shines through the words of his published discourses; but no pictures we have ever met with of inspired, rapt oratory, are more surprising than those which are presented to us by his contemporaries of Whitefield's preaching, on the slope of some mountain or hill, the trees and hedges full of people hushed to profound silence, the open firmament above him, the green fields around him, the sight of thousands on thousands of people, some in coaches, some on horseback, gathered around him and all affected--melted to tears. When the evening approached, he once said, 'Beneath the twilight it was too much, and quite overcame me!' One night he describes a time never to be forgotten: it lightened exceedingly; he preached the warnings and the consolations of the coming of the Son of Man; the thunder broke over his head, the lightning gleamed upon his path; it ran along the ground, and shone from one part of the heavens to the other. His spirit rose above the storm; he longed for the time when Christ should be revealed in flaming fire. 'Oh,' exclaims he, 'that my soul may live in a like flame, when He shall actually come to call me!'
But Wesley's success! Wesley, as an orator, seems still more inconceivable. By all accounts Whitefield was seraphic. Wesley seldom rose beyond penetrating good sense, and nothing appears to have transported him out of his invariable calm. Yet the effects of his oratory were even still more wonderful; there was something of magnetism in it. Henry Moore, his great friend, says, 'At this moment, I well remember my first thought after hearing him preach nearly fifty years ago; spiritual things are natural things to that man;' In innumerable instances we find audiences shaken as by a mighty wind, hurled down, agonizing, screaming aloud; there was much more of all this in Wesley's preaching than in Whitefield's, yet in Whitefield's we should expect it more. Wesley, in the style of his oratory, seems to have been judicial, and our readers are not unaware of the remarkable power that quiet statement is able to exercise. Who so passionless apparently as Jonathan Edwards, a man who would have disdained every approach to sensationalism, whose entire mode of pulpit delivery was obnoxious to all ideas of pulpit oratory, and whose whole scheme of thought and expression were as calm and clear as logical metaphysics could make them? yet what scenes he witnessed when he preached? Thus it was eminently with Wesley; crowds thronged around him intent to listen wherever he appeared; if the face was beautiful, the height of the body was so far beneath the average standard that it seems almost contemptible for the holding of such powers as he wielded; and then the voice, not less than the manner, appears to have been unfitted to carry tempests of passion--nor did he desire that it should; we suppose that it must have been singularly clear and penetrating, and that every sentence was sharply cut and elaborated, not by preparation and the pen, but by convictions deep and indelible. Such sentences carried upon a clear penetrating voice--and in oratory the voice is all but everything--will achieve more than more plausible means. It is fervour which fires, but fervour often burns more effectually in the still, white, soundless heat, than in what seems to be the most raging flame. There must have been considerable natural dignity in the man. 'Be silent, or begone,' he said on one occasion to some who were molesting him in preaching, and the intruders were silenced. The traditions of Methodism are rich in the recollection of such scenes;--the scenes of Gwennap Pit for instance. This is a natural excavation, three miles from Redruth, an amphitheatre, formed by nature, whose walls are from seven to eight hundred feet in height, and which is capable of holding from twenty-five to thirty thousand persons. This was one of Wesley's most famous churches. Year after year this most spacious and magnificent cathedral amongst the wild moors of Cornwall was crowded by vast and hushed assemblies. Until Wesley's day, all that immense population might have said, 'No man cared for our souls.' Wild, rugged miners and fishermen of whom it was true that they never breathed a prayer except for the special providence of a shipwreck--men whose wicked barbarity in kindling delusive lights along the coast to allure unfortunate ships to the cruel cliffs of those dangerous shores, had won for their region the name of 'West Barbary.' Now, as if some power had passed over them, clothed anew and in their right minds, they assembled to greet and gladden their venerable father in that wild glen, creating a strange and not unbeautiful life in the stillness of that desolate and romantic spot, and worshipping with the birds overhead and the broom and the wild flowers under foot, under the overhanging shadow of the venerable rocks. Truly it must have been a sublime thing to have heard that great multitude peal out in Wesley's own words:--
'Suffice that for the season past, Hell's horrid language filled our tongues, We all thy words behind us cast, And loudly sang the drunkard's songs. But, oh! the power of grace divine, In hymns we now our voices raise, Loudly in strange hosannas join, And blasphemies are turned to praise.'
Twenty-five thousand persons! and it is said he was able to make everyone hear his words; wonderful, whether we think of the acoustical properties of the church itself, the attentiveness the preacher could command, or the marvellous strength, the clearness and fulness of his voice.
Of all the helpers from whom Wesley derived assistance essential to the carrying on his work, his brother Charles was the most providential. He was a narrow ecclesiastic, and often troublesome, but he did good service. Much as Wesley loved the service of the Church of England, it was utterly impossible to employ it in the work he set himself to perform; but it has been felt again and again, whether it has been expressed or not, that a religious service without liturgies is impossible. People may disclaim and disown the word liturgy, and substitute for it psalms and hymns, the fact remains the same; psalms and hymns are liturgies in rhyme--liturgies sung instead of said. Congregations need to be held together; the voice of a solitary soul is not enough for religious purposes, and especially for the pressure of overwrought emotions; multitudes require something more than a mere monologue. Wesley arose at a time when that popular and united form of worship, the hymn, had but just ceased to be regarded as an innovation. There were Churches in London--Maze Pond, for instance--which had divided upon the question of singing, and the unmusical members went off, and formed a community of their own, undistracted by notes of song. Watts had only just published some of his psalms and hymns, when Wesley came down among the people and began to move to and fro amongst his congregations. The want of simple forms of prayer and praise was soon felt. No doubt his recent acquaintance with the Moravians had given him invaluable suggestions, of which he was prepared to avail himself. Amidst much which was worse than foolish, the Moravians had, as he knew, many inspiring psalms, and a far greater variety of metre than English devotional verse had heretofore employed. Some of the most magnificent hymns in the Wesleyan collection are Wesley's translations from Zinzendorf and other German psalmists; but the fulness and splendour of Wesleyan psalmody was developed by Charles Wesley. His hymns have been the liturgies of Methodism, the creeds of that Church have been embodied in them, they have formed its collects, and enshrined its loftiest bursts of devotional ardour. What sentiment of Christian experience is there which does not find an utterance in them? What phase of Methodist faith is there which is not translated into some of these verses? In preparing the hymn-book, indeed, a great number of Watts's hymns were included, and included not only without any acknowledgment, but the preface, from the pen of John, claims for the Wesleys all the hymns in the volume. In this condition the hymn-book remains to this day, and we have often conversed with Methodists who have stoutly maintained that certain hymns in the volume legitimately belong to it, although published by Watts years before its compilation. This, however, in no way interferes with the estimate we have to form of these sacred lyrics; of course, the Methodist estimate of them is that they are the highest achievements of sacred song. That which we are constantly using, and which touches our affections becomes supremely precious and dear to us. They are all eminently experimental; they seem to have been constructed for the class-meeting and band-meeting; they are especially conjubilant, hymns well calculated to excite and stir, and carry aloft the feelings of the people; and they have become--they very soon became--the voices of the Church.
Wesley, in his reformation, soon commenced the work of reforming the singing. Throughout his life and labours he often remarks upon the questionable psalmody by which he was greeted; thus at Warrington, he says:--
'I put a stop to a bad custom which was creeping in here; a few men, who had fine voices, sang a psalm which no one knew, in a tune fit for an opera, wherein three, four, or five persons sung different words at the same time; what an insult to common sense! what a burlesque upon public worship! no custom can excuse such a mixture of profanity and absurdity.'
Elsewhere he says,--
'Beware of formality in singing, or it will creep upon us unawares; is it not creeping in already by those complex tunes which it is scarce possible to sing with devotion? Such is the long quavering "Hallelujah," and next, the morning song tune, which I defy any man living to sing devoutly, the repeating the same words so often, especially while another repeats different words, shocks all common sense, brings in dead formality, and has no more religion in it than a Lancashire hornpipe.'
In harmony with the Hymns, he introduced tunes, which appropriately rendered the words, and were soon used throughout the whole communion; from one end of the country to the other these have echoed and rolled; few are the circumstances in which they have not awakened or sustained some thrilling emotion. They hailed the bridal party as it returned from the church singing,--
'We kindly help each other, Till all shall wear the starry crown.'
they followed the bier to the grave chanting--
'There all the ship's company meet, Who sail'd with their Saviour beneath; With shouting, each other they greet, And triumph o'er sorrow and death.'
And few separations took place without that consolotary song,--
'Blest be that dear uniting love, That will not let us part.'
While some hymns speedily became like national airs to the Methodist heart: amongst the chief,--
'Jesus, the name high over all In hell or earth or sky.'
They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and plaintive mood; they roll and bear it aloft in its most inspired and prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ's swell. Among the mines, and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the chambers of death, in the most joyful assemblages of the household, they have relieved the hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; in other lands, soldiers, and slaves, and prisoners have recited with what joy those words have entered into their life. So early as 1748, when a sad cluster of convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey said he had never seen such people before. When the bellman came, as usual, to say to them, 'Remember, you are to die to-day;' they exclaimed, 'Welcome news! welcome news!' The Methodists had been in their prison, and their visits had produced these marvellous effects; and on their way to Tyburn, the convicts sang that beautiful sacramental hymn of Charles Wesley:--
'Lamb of God, whose bleeding lore We still recall to mind; Send the answer from above, And let us mercy find. Think on us who think on Thee, And every struggling soul release; Oh, remember Calvary, And let us go in peace.'
These hymns supplied battle-cries for all the scenes of open-air aggression and warfare. When Charles Wesley himself was preaching at Bengeworth, he was beset by a mob. He says, 'Their tongues were set on fire by hell!' One in the crowd proposed to take him away and duck him; he broke out into singing with Thomas Maxfield, and allowed them to carry him whither they would. At the bridge end of the street they relented and left him; there, instead of retreating, he took his stand, and, with an immense congregation about him, sang,--
'Angel of God, whate'er betide, Thy summons I obey; Jesus, I take Thee for my guide, And walk in Thee, my way.'
Innumerable anecdotes might be accumulated touching the glories and triumphs of Methodist song. With all our higher love and admiration for Isaac Watts, and our feeling that, as a sacred poet, he had a more lofty and gorgeous wing, even a far more, tender and touching expression, and that in some of his hymns he speaks in a manner of strength altogether far more wonderful, nevertheless it is true that to Charles Wesley must be given the merit of, perhaps, the most perfect of all hymns, as the expression of Christian experience,--
'Jesus, lover of my soul.'
It is necessary to have some apprehension of the Theology of Methodism, for the spirit of Methodism was in its theology, even as the soul of that theology was in its hymns. It met the heart at that point of experience at which it felt its need of God, a living God: consciousness pervaded it everywhere. This was the central teaching of the great evangelical reaction. How well does it compare and contrast with the contemplations and exercises of Loyola in the solitude of the Manreza; and also with the 'De Imitatione' of à Kempis, against which, large as has been the regard for it, a certain instinct of the Church has always testified. The theology of Methodism was, in one word, Christ for the conscience. Those, happily, were not the days of scientific theology; as a scientific statement the theology of Wesley has justly been regarded as defective, but it is possible to be defective in comprehensive knowledge, and yet to have a sufficiently full and clear understanding for practical uses; even as it is possible to work an engine well, and yet in no sense to be an accomplished engineer. The secret of Wesley's success lay in the fact that his was a theology for the multitude; on the one hand it was not a forensic theory, on the other it was not rationalistic. Both are alike unsatisfactory to the heart. There is a forensic theology, but it is for the schools rather than for the factories or the fields. 'Wesley,' says Alexander Knox, 'regarded justification neither merely nor chiefly as a forensic acquittal in the court of heaven, but as implying also a conscious liberation from moral thraldom.' Indeed this was the important point with him; consciousness, everywhere consciousness. It is in the consciousness faith is to be wrought, as he sings--
'Inspire the living faith, Which whosoe'er receives, The witness in himself he hath, And consciously believes.'
The strife ran very high upon matters where the disputants were not substantially divided; the doctrine of personal election and reprobation, Wesley, indeed, denounced in some of his most vehement words; and it seemed that the imputed righteousness of Christ, and in consequence, the doctrine of the substitution of Christ for the sinner, paled and became ineffective in his teaching. This was especially manifested in his controversy with the beloved and amiable rector of Weston Favell, James Hervey, on the publication of his 'Theron and Aspasio.' Hervey says, 'The righteousness wrought out by Jesus Christ is wrought out for all His people,' &c. Wesley replies, with truth and force, but with needless vehemence, 'What becomes of all other people? They must inevitably perish for ever. The die was cast ere ever they were in being. The doctrine to pass them by has consigned their unborn souls to hell, and damned them from their mother's womb. I could sooner be a Turk, a deist, yea, an atheist, than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very being of God, than to make Him an Almighty tyrant.' It was Wesley's great and favourite faith that 'in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.' In some hymns he expresses, however, very unreservedly the doctrine of substitution for instance--
'Join earth and heaven to bless The Lord our righteousness; The mystery of redemption this, This the Saviour's strange design; Man's offence was counted His, Ours His righteousness divine.'
Wesley dealt always with those great truths which, because of the depths of his own moral consciousness, man cannot hear announced without awe. It is possible to receive Christian doctrine as only a science, or a judicial exposition; the Calvinistic theology has too often been merely this, but the core of Wesley's creed was personal perception and appropriation of the work of Christ--in a word, Consciousness. And usually his ideas were presented in a clear and transparent style, the chief of them being salvation by faith; salvation by faith rather than justification by faith. No doubt Wesley clearly and distinctly held and preached the latter, but those who have made this the principal theme of their religious teaching have been usually led into a region of thought higher than was suitable to the practical purposes of the great Methodist apostle. The designation of his doctrine, 'Evangelical Arminianism,' has often been charged with involving a contradiction in terms. The discussion of the principles of the Divine government, and the Divine decrees, the relations of fore-knowledge and predetermination in the Infinite mind, impressions concerning the freedom of the will and the nature of evil--such questions, it must be admitted, are more curious and speculative than useful, or sometimes even pious. Wesley was no metaphysician, he had little taste for such studies; and his life was passed in a round of useful activities unfavourable to their prosecution. Into the department of thought which implies the relation of logic to theology, he never entered. Alike in the frame-work of his popular creed, as we shall see in the frame-work of his Church organization, he struck out a broad basis; breadth rather than depth was the characteristic of his mind and work; he cared little for the nice distinctions of philosophical refinement; his theology turned chiefly on the responsibilities of man; his aim was to make man feel, rather than to make him think. The Calvinistic side of theology produces the exactly opposite effect. Wesley, naturally, insisted strongly on the personal sanctification of the soul, this follows, of course, that other chief and much-belaboured item of Wesleyan faith, the doctrine of perfection. 'This,' says Alexander Knox, 'was the perpetual bone of contention between Wesley and the whole phalanx of Calvinist religionists.' And assuredly, that whole phalanx showed itself to be imperfect enough in the controversy. In the story of the strifes of good men this has a shocking pre-eminence. We cannot blame Mr. Tyerman for presenting the various phases of the struggle, or even for quoting passages from the innumerable abusive volumes and pamphlets which were poured out upon Wesley, but we shall not ourselves dwell upon these scandals. On the whole, we have in Wesley the picture of a fine Christian temper and spirit, seldom condescending to reply at all, and when replying, doing so in a tone worthy even of him who could say, 'Let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
That Wesley should be defamed and denounced by ungodly scoffers or worldly bishops is not surprising, but that he should become the object of the ribaldry and scorn and contumely of men who were undoubtedly the children of God, is amazing. He had for long years been scourged and lampooned in newspapers, magazines, tracts, and pamphlets; Samuel Foote, the buffoon, had ridiculed him; and Lavington, the merry-andrew-bishop of Exeter, had poured out upon him volumes of ribaldry. And well says Mr. Tyerman, 'In turn Mr. Wesley had encountered mobs, and men of letters, drunken, parsons, furious papists, honest infidels, and others; but of all his enemies his last were his bitterest and worst, Calvinistic Christians.' It is a mystery to us now--and that it is so seems to prove that we have made some advances beyond our forefathers in good sense, good taste, and good manners, to say nothing of the higher attainments of Christian moderation and temper--that Christian men could ever have indulged in such envenomed speech, and that the pure air of metaphysical theology should ever have been burdened with such exhalations and such thunders. It is to the honour of Mr. Wesley that he never condescended to stoop from his work to personal recrimination, and scarcely, indeed, to personal explanation. His theology was wanting in those more noble excursions of intelligence and experience which supply strength to the spirit in seasons when a black night of doubt spreads out over the soul. Concerning the ways and means of faith, of revelation, and providence, he never attempted any solution. His mind, in all departments of it, was characterized by a quick apprehension; this was not accompanied by a power of lofty and sustained reflection; the business of his life was to train as many persons as he possibly could to habitual and orderly devotion. He taught the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, and personal assurance of salvation, with a persistency which surely ought to have satisfied Toplady; but then his teaching had this serious difference, he conditioned assurance in the personal consciousness of the believer, while the school of Toplady fell back more securely upon the purposes, character, and promises of God. This makes the technical difference between the salvation by faith, taught by the one school, and justification by faith, taught by the other. To a profoundly experienced nature we suppose the former is included in the latter, and furnishes sources of satisfaction altogether wanting to the more narrow, plausible, and popular scheme.
Hence, so much was made of the happiness arising from states of feeling, and from the witness of the Spirit; this was to be the aim and object of the life and heart, and was the proof of that growth in the life of perfection which seems to reduce--as Coleridge has well shown in a very able note to Southey--the Christian life to a sensation: sensational assurance became the counterpart of the doctrine of sinless perfection in this life; the one is quite absolutely related to the other. It is not too much to say that Wesley quite misconceived the term 'perfect' (τέλειος) as it was used by Paul; hence it was, no doubt, that Wesley entangled himself in contradictions, and founded the religious life very much upon certain ascetic and sumptuary laws: 'Powder was antichristian; a ribbon became the sign of a carnal nature, and snuff-boxes and tobacco were the very emanations of the bottomless pit; and very innocent things became really Babylonish.' The life prescribed by Wesley was as severe as a monastic rule: his disciples were met every hour by something of which they were to deny themselves, which was to be a contradiction to them, and which they were to overcome. He insisted in the spirit of a monastic legislator, that his preachers should always preach at four or five o'clock in the morning. 'I exhort all those who desire me to watch over their souls, to wear no gold, no pearls or precious stones; use no curling of hair, or costly apparel.' 'Be serious,' was one of his favourite injunctions; 'avoid all lightness as you would hell-fire, and trifling as you would cursing and swearing; touch no woman, be as loving as you will, but the custom of the country is nothing to us.' Sometimes Wesley uses wiser words, but generally he appears to teach that deliverance from sin implies deliverance from human infirmities, and that it is almost inconsistent with temptation; and this arises apparently from an unnatural interpretation of the word 'perfect,' as we have it in the language of our Lord and in the writings of the apostles. 'Truly,' says Coleridge, 'there is no point at which you can arrive in this life, in which the command, "Soar upwards still," ceases in validity or occasion.' And yet such seems to be the doctrine of Wesley: and while in a corrupt and dissolute age his rules fostered and trained innumerable holy and saintly lives, they to a very large degree gave occasion for that satire and ridicule, which indeed is not wonderful, from the scoffing world, but which is shameful when indulged in by the pens and lips of believers. The two great controversialists of Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, were Toplady, the vicar of Broad Hembury, and the gentle Swiss, John Fletcher, the vicar of Madely. Both argued within the circle of Scripture. We have outlived all taste for this pamphleteering kind of controversy. Toplady was the more scholarly and logical, his style was the more nervous and terse: he also was not only the more witty but the more wilful, and made his pages sparkle with a lively wickedness which is wonderful in such a writer upon such subjects, and especially in the writer of such transcendent hymns as his. Fletcher was the more sentimental and rhetorical, frequently also more characterized by a plain and earnest common sense; he was more spiritual and devout than Toplady, nor would it be possible, we suppose, to find a sentence in his famous 'Checks' unbecoming the perfect Christian gentleman, and they furnished material and ammunition for all the Wesleyan preachers, not only for that day, but for many years after. The world and the Church, however, now demand something more concise and firmly-textured than the essays of either, Toplady or of Fletcher. It is satisfactory also to feel our way to that higher plain of thought which reconciles the two. If God be infinite consciousness and thought, can the salvation and trials of any child of man be unknown to Him? If He be infinite character and will, can any event happen unpermitted by Him? If He be infinite power, can any circumstance be unordained by Him? Is He not also infinitely amiable? It is singular how combatants fetch their weapons from the same armoury, and tilt Scripture against Scripture; but both are reconciled in consciousness, and the disciples of Wesley and Toplady alike find the same reposing rest and assuring trust in the mercy of God, through faith in the righteousness of Christ.
What shall we say of the Ecclesiastical Polity framed by Wesley? This, first of all, that he never intended that his discipline should be regarded as an ecclesiastical polity. Like so many of the fathers of the Church, he founded an order; he formed a society, not a Church. He cautions his ministers against calling the society either the Church or a Church. He created a broad organization, but not the broadest. He always remembered that he was a minister and an ordained priest of the Church of England; and it was with great reluctance that he permitted himself to yield to those innovations which the polity of the Church of England would have opposed; he always desired to regard his entire fellowship as in communion with the Establishment; his arrangements for his services were, as far as possible, for times and seasons when no services were proceeding in the parish churches of the neighbourhood, and for a long time he attempted to harmonise his method of worship to the liturgic forms and devotions of the Church. Lord King's essay on the Primitive Church made him, theoretically, an Independent; yet, there can be little doubt that had there been a broader, wiser, and more tolerant régime in the Establishment, the whole movement might have been included in the corporation of the National Church; it was surely of God that it was not so. But the Church of Rome would have known how to avail itself of such a sudden burst of energy, as in the cases of St. Francis, of Loyola, and others; the great leader and his disciples would for some time have been kept in a state of ecclesiastical quarantine, but in the course of a few years they would have been received, to pour into the mother Church the fulness of their newly-acquired life. It was a great evangelistic movement that Wesley originated and sustained; he perpetually attempted to limit and curtail the ministerial powers of his preachers; many of them, indeed, became sufficiently restive even beneath his authority, and were quite unable or unwilling to perceive the reason of the ecclesiastical refinements he taught and maintained.
Isaac Taylor has urged against Wesley that he founded an irresponsible hierarchy; he says: 'On the one side stand all Protestant Churches, Episcopal and non-Episcopal, Wesleyanism excepted; on the other side stand the Church of Rome, and the Wesleyan Conference. This position maintained alone by a Protestant body must be regarded as false in principle, and in an extreme degree ominous.' The position is not fairly stated. The polity of Rome is absolutely intolerant; she not merely has laws for conserving her own rights, which she claims as divine, but she treats with perfect contempt and scorn all reference to, or respect for, the rights of others. Even Frederick Faber, in his essay on Philip Neri, in a passage of hearty eulogy on Whitefield, consigns him to hell, notwithstanding all his usefulness, when he says, 'St. Philip would have taught him to preach if he had been an oratorian novice, which, unluckily for his poor soul, George Whitefield never was.' Such is Rome. It was not so with Wesley himself, nor has it been so with his descendants. The rubric--if so we may call it--of Methodist polity has been stringent; too stringently, perhaps, laws have been enacted against those turbulent spirits, certain to emerge in all communities, endowed with a strong desire to take their own way, and to do things merely right in their own eyes; you are free to do so, says Wesley, but not beneath the sanctions of our society, unless we approve the action. There has been a strong desire to gather in and build up, but in a sense in which, perhaps, Wesleyans have not been singular; 'they have dwelt among their own people,' their fellowship, in spite of numerous schisms, has been one of the most perfect, harmonious, and useful in Christendom; but this has existed with entire respect and good-will to other denominations. Wesley himself says, one circumstance is quite peculiar to the Methodists, the terms upon which any person may be admitted into their society, 'they do not impose, in order to their admission, any opinions whatever; one conviction, and one only, is required, a real desire to save their souls; where this is, it is enough, they desire no more, they lay stress upon nothing else, they ask only, "is thy heart herein as my heart? if it be, give me thy hand." Is there any other society in Great Britain and Ireland that is so remote from bigotry? Where is there such another society in Europe--in the habitable world? I know none. Let any man show it me who can; till then, let no one talk of the bigotry of the Methodists.' 'Look to the Lord, and faithfully attend all the means of grace appointed in the society.' Such was, practically, the whole of Methodism. So that famous old lady, whose bright example has so often been held up on Methodists' platforms, when called upon to state the items of her creed, did so very sufficiently when she summed if up in the four particulars of 'Repentance towards God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a penny a week, and a shilling a quarter.' And certainly, beyond any other scheme or system, the organization of Methodism has developed the power of the pence--that is, the power of the people--to provide for and to sustain their religious services. The Rev. Marmaduke Miller, in a letter to the Nonconformist for May 17th, 1871, shows that the various associations in England bearing Wesley's name, and practically working out his ideas, hold and provide sittings for 3,500,000 people; they represent the membership of 624,453 persons; the number of settled ministers is 3,137, and local preachers 41,456, while the Sabbath-schools represent 1,162,423, and the teachers 197,163. What a representation of the amazing numbers of those who call Wesley father! The rules of the Methodist polity, then, were devised in no insolent spirit; wisely, or unwisely, they were framed for the conservation of order. Mr. Wesley's object in them was certainly not ecclesiastical, as he says again, 'I have no more right to object to a man for holding a different opinion from me than I have to differ from a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own hair; but if he takes his wig off, and begins to shake the powder about my eyes, I shall consider it my duty to get quit of him as soon as possible.' One cannot but think what might have been, had Hildebrand been such a man as Wesley; what might the Church of England have been had Whitgift or Laud held views so broad and tolerant as these. In effect, his polity said, 'Come amongst us, and we will seek to do each other good; join some other communion, the Lord be with you; but if you attach yourself voluntarily to our society, you accept the conditions of the society.'
The Wesleyans constitute the largest denomination in the United States, in the form of the Methodist Episcopal Church founded by the venerable Asbury, the friend and early disciple of John Wesley, and a man baptized into a like spirit of indomitable endurance, and ardent, untiring energy. But it may be questioned whether this should be regarded as a development of Wesleyanism, or a departure from Wesley's idea of Church government. Certainly much depends upon what we find implied in the designation of bishop. The Wesleyan bishop in England is called a 'superintendent;' from a Methodist's point of view the terms are almost convertible and synonymous, and we have little doubt that superintendent is the realization of the Scriptural idea of the bishop--a pastor, shepherd, or overseer. More than this Wesley did not desire his ministers to be. Had he great prescience? Was it a far-sighted sagacity which characterized his mind? Acutely he saw the present want, and met it. Probably he never realized the wholly independent attitude his followers would assume in the future; and, like the constitution of England, so the constitution of his society grew beneath his eye; he scarcely, therefore, made provisions to meet the demands of an independent Church, or community. He was perpetually engaged in furnishing expedients; his ideas never seemed to rise beyond, or to sink deeper than the present work of evangelizing the multitude, and keeping them awake, and intent on the desire for salvation. Hence he was utterly opposed to a permanent pastorate; his ministers were to be perpetually moving; to some desires expressed to himself for a longer residence, or more continued ministration of some of his preachers, he gave his most decided negative. It is a matter still of serious dispute between the Wesleyan and other Church polities, whether for the health, growth, and well-being of the individual Church, the permanent pastorate or the itinerant ministry may be regarded as best. There is something to be said on either side. We can have no doubt that the Wesleyan polity, while it may minister something to the life of Churches, and give a pleasant variety, must be a barrier to the accumulation of learning, and what is more precious of pastoral influence; and that it offers a strong inducement to intellectual indolence, to lean upon old resources rather than to go on exploring new and fresh fields. The Wesleyan polity almost denies to the minister the position of the pastor. The true pastor of each separate little cluster in a society is the class leader; he permanently resides in the town or village; he is familiar with the conversions, the experiences, the joys and sorrows of each member of the little flock. Wesley even went so far as to interdict the presence of his ministers in the classes; and the minister is still, we believe, as a rule, only occasionally present for the purpose of distributing the quarterly tickets. But the immediate followers of Wesley have now elaborated what they regard, and even term, an ecclesiastical constitution. Its government is regulated by laws sharply cut and defined for every emergency; they have their Blackstone, and Coke upon Lyttleton, and probably Mr. Wesley himself would be somewhat amazed to find such a framework of polity as the handbook of Methodist ecclesiastical law, in Edmund Grindrod's 'Compendium of the Laws and Regulations of Wesleyan Methodism.' This defines its 'ecclesiastical courts,' 'powers of the Conference,' of 'district meetings,' of 'local courts,' of the 'committee of privileges,' and the nature of all its committees and institutions. Wesleyan Methodism in England, indeed, may be defined as a constitutional republic, but of the oligarchic order of Venice or Florence. Its polity constitutes a civil rather than a spiritual despotism, but it reminds us that men are not much interested in the government of the Church of their adoption, and that Church consciousness is very independent of Ecclesiastical organization.
Yet the entire polity of Wesley was popular, and few religions communities have so successfully cultivated the spirit infused into it; it was intended to meet the religious instincts of the uncared for multitudes. Certain words of Wesley illustrate this;--a new chapel was in the course of erection at Blackburn; Wesley was taken to see it. 'I have a favour to ask,' he said; 'let there be no pews in the body of this chapel, except one for the leading singers; be sure to make accommodation for the poor, they are God's building materials in the erection of His Church; the rich make good scaffolding, but bad materials.' 'Observe,' he said again to his preachers, 'it is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society, but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and, with all your power, to build them up in that holiness, without which they cannot see the Lord.' He knew that preaching needs to be succeeded by personal intercourse; hence he says in visiting Colchester;--'By repeated experiments we learn that though a man preach like an angel, he will neither collect, nor preserve a society which is collected, without visiting them from house to house.' And this is the key to that comprehensive and all-permeating spirit which constitutes the idea of Methodism, at once its danger as well as its defence; to become a Methodist of Wesley's order was to be, and is to be, looked up, and looked after, and overlooked. It must be admitted that the system which is so vigorously and watchfully organized, does not leave much opportunity for the mind and soul to grow: the tutoring and training hearts and minds to walk alone is a profound study. Nothing of this is contemplated in the Wesleyan system; freedom of thought has not usually fared well in the society; minds are too closely interlocked and riveted, frequently not only with other, but with inferior minds. It is therefore a community for the poor and the uneducated, or it is nothing; and if it is not like the Romish system, dangerous by the possession of an audacious hierarchy, it must be admitted that it may become so in virtue of a system of spiritual espionage scarcely less effective than the confessional.
Did John Wesley know human nature? Judging from the effects which have followed his marvellous course, it would seem so; and if severe in discipline, and intolerant to human infirmities by his system, he was most tender and merciful, even to the aberrations and stumblings of believers themselves. He insisted on punctilious obedience to his rules, but it was easy to him to forgive all personal injustice to himself; sometimes it seems almost as if he were even unable to feel injuries, and probably this was greatly the case: his 'place was on high, his defence the munition of rocks,' and no soul ever seems to have been more securely shielded in 'the pavilion,' where spirits are kept 'in secret from the strife of tongues.' The wicked woman who was his wife, stole a number of his letters, interpolated parts, and misrendered certain expressions; and, having been guilty at once of theft and forgery, she, in conjunction with some of his enemies, published them. It led to venomous and embittered language in the newspapers concerning them. His brother, Charles Wesley, was in the utmost consternation: he went off to Wesley, imploring him to postpone a journey he was on the eve of taking, that he might stay in London and defend himself against his enemies. He found his brother as calm as he was excited:
'I shall never forget,' says Miss Wesley, the daughter of Charles, 'the manner in which my father accosted my mother on his return home. "My brother," said he, "is, indeed, an extraordinary man; I placed before him the importance of the character of a minister, and the evil consequences which might result from his indifference to it, and urged him by every relative and public motive to answer for himself and stop the publication. His reply was, Brother, when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my life, did I except my reputation? No, tell Sally (Charles's wife) I will take her to Canterbury to-morrow."'
Glorious John had to live down many worse persecutions than this. Ordinarily, his calm was imperturbable; and yet, divine as this often seems, it often, too, seems related to a side of character which almost indicates a defect in human nature. It has been alleged against him that he was thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children, 'Break their wills betimes,' he says; 'begin this work before they can run alone, before they can speak plain, perhaps before they can speak at all.' The method he adopted at Kingswood school was an illustration of this entire ignorance of the child's nature. It was not so much a school as a monastery, its rules were more stringent and hard than those of a workhouse. It is no wonder that it did not succeed, and that the whole system of the school had to undergo an entire modification. That Wesley's design and idea in founding the Kingswood school was benevolent, wise, and prescient, there can be no doubt, as also that the diet was sufficient and good; nor can exception be taken to the rule that the children should go to bed at eight, and sleep on hard mattresses; but to rise at four in the morning! and spend their time until five in reading, singing, meditation and prayer! no play-day and no play-hour permitted, on the ground that 'he who plays when he is a child, will play when he becomes a man!' When we read of such an arrangement made for children, the question recurs, did Wesley know human nature? Or if such a constitution might be suitable to the human nature of monks and ascetic saints, what knowledge does it exhibit of the child's heart? We like better to read an anecdote told of him when at the age of seventy-three--about the period when the letters alluded to were published. At Midsomer Norton, when preaching in the parish church he was staying at the house of a Mr. Bush, who kept a boarding-school. While he was there, two of the boys quarrelled, cuffed and kicked each other vigorously. Mrs. Bush brought the pugilists to Wesley. He talked to them and repeated the lines--
'Birds in their little nests agree, And 'tis a shameful sight, When children of one family Fall out, and chide, and fight.'
'You must be reconciled,' said he; 'go and shake hands with each other,' and they did so. He continued, 'Put your arms around each other's neck, and kiss each other;' and this was also done. 'Now,' he said, 'come to me,' and taking two pieces of bread and butter he folded them together, and desired each to take a part. 'Now,' he said, 'you have broken bread together.' Then he put his hands upon their heads and blessed them. The two tigers were turned into loving lambs. They never forgot the old man's blessing, and one of them, who became a magistrate in Berkshire, related the beautiful incident in long afterdays. We love to note those pleasant little incidents in the man's life, and there are many such. A thousand anecdotes are told of his benevolence and goodness, and if his life should ever be adequately written, they will form a more entertaining regalia of majesty, than we know in the life of any one of the fathers of the Church.
We are not writing a life of Wesley; we leave unnoticed, therefore, his more secret and sacred history. We have no space to devote to the romance of Grace Murray. She was the light of the prophet's eyes; he proposed to her in marriage, and was gratefully accepted. We read the story from a very different point of view to Mr. Tyerman, and have little doubt that Grace sacrificed her own feelings to the vehement anger and interference of Charles Wesley, to the welfare of her lover, and to the interests of the society. Wesley beautifully, affectionately, and ingenuously said, 'the origin of the object of his affections was no objection to him; he regarded not her birth, but her qualifications. She was remarkably neat, frugal, and not sordid; had a large amount of common sense, was indefatigably patient, and inexpressibly tender; quick, cleanly, and skilful; of an engaging behaviour, and of a mild, sprightly, and yet serious temper; and that her gifts for usefulness were such as he had never seen equalled.' He concluded, 'I have Scriptural reasons to marry, I know no person so proper as this.' But the union was not to be. If we followed implicitly the authority of Mr. Tyerman, we should express an opinion adverse to Grace; but we prefer to ask whether such a woman as she seems to have been was not moved to the step she took by the highest considerations, moved by persuasions, by the tempest she was raising in the societies, and by the not very saintly conduct of Charles Wesley, who is described in this matter--very well it seems to us--by Mr. Tyerman, 'as a sincere, but irritated, impetuous, and officious friend.' Be this as it may, Wesley met her to say farewell. He kissed her and said, 'Grace Murray, you have broken my heart.' A week or two after she was married. The two never met again for thirty-nine years. She long out-lived her husband; and when in London she came to hear her son preach in Moorfields, she met her venerable lover--lover still apparently, for the interview is described as very affecting. Henceforth they saw each other no more, and Wesley never again mentioned her name. In the whole transaction, so far from any shade falling on the memory of Wesley, his admirers will, perhaps, be pleased to find him so related to intense human feelings. No doubt the marriage would have been an unfortunate one for the society, and the possession of such a wife as Grace Murray would most likely have been fatal to, or at least would have greatly interfered with, that stupendous scheme of apostolic usefulness which he was destined to create. Seductions of domestic life sadly derange a prophet's work. Through long years Grace continued a course of Christian usefulness, and lived and died eminently respected. She lies in Chinly churchyard, in Derbyshire.
The lady who became the wife of Wesley was the roughest of termagants, the plague and pest of her husband's existence; and she takes her place in the foremost rank of the bad wives of eminent men, worthy to be classed with the wedded companions of Socrates, of Albert Durer, of George Herbert, or Richard Hooker; she was the most vicious vixen of them all. It may be imagined, without doing any injustice to him, that when his letters were stolen, interpolated, and forged by his wife, for the purpose of injuring his character, the grieving spirit of the old prophet may sometimes have said, 'Grace Murray would not have done this.'
Wesley's mind was eminently administrative. It has often been said that he had in him much that combined the genius of Richelieu and Loyola--the calm, iron will and the acute eye of the one, the inventive genius and habitual devotion of the other. He would compare better with Washington, or the illustrious member of the Wesley family of our own age, Wellington. His mind was eminently healthy, and may be said to have been always awake, ceaseless in activity, sleepless in vigilance. He intermeddled with all knowledge in many languages, and he compiled and published libraries. He appears to have been almost wholly indifferent to food; in sleep he was sparing; his frame was very small, and if this appeared to be a reason against his popular impressiveness as a preacher, it was a means of his amazing agility. Look at the remarkable likeness of the man prefixed to the work of Isaac Taylor; it has been likened to a shrivelled monk of the order of La Trappe, a face in which sharpness and serenity strive for the dominion of the features, the dark hawk-eyed intelligence with the bland smile. The principles which illustrate Wesley's character, and testify, not merely his greatness, but how it happened that he achieved so much, may be well presented in some of those brief axioms which do in fact, as we read the multitudinous events of his long career, exhibit the pivots upon which his life turned. 'I dare no more fret than curse or swear.' 'I reverence the young because they may be useful when I am dead.' 'You have no need to be in a hurry,' said a friend. 'Hurry?' he replied; 'I have no time to be in a hurry.' 'The soul and the body,' he writes, in a characteristic letter insisting on the observance of discipline in his society--'The soul and the body make a man; the spirit and the discipline make a Christian.' 'Let us work now, we shall rest by and by.' Such sentences exhibit the secret of his ubiquitous activity and his power; and such characters are usually cheerful. A glow of quiet, kindly humour often lightened his speech, sometimes sharpening into quiet satire. Many anecdotes illustrate both these attributes.
At eighty he appeared to have the sprightliness of youth, and moved about like a flying evangelist. Although so clear-sighted a man, he was too great by far for the epithet 'shrewd.' If people who make mistakes in judging of character because of their own want of judgment become suspicious, the fault is chiefly theirs. Wesley was seldom mistaken in his judgment of particular persons; Charles was often mistaken. Wesley himself says, 'My brother suspects everybody, and he is continually imposed upon; but I suspect nobody, and I am never imposed upon.' Again and again we are reminded how much he lived in an atmosphere of continual quiet. 'I do not remember,' said the happy old man, when at the age of seventy-seven, 'I do not remember to have felt lowness of spirits for one quarter of an hour since I was born.' Of course it is to be presumed he means that causeless depression which is usually the result of indolence. At the age of eighty-six he writes, 'Saturday, March 21st, I had a day of rest, only preaching morning and evening.' We have seen that in his first days he was not a radiant and cheerful man; but through his long sunset we know not where to find such another instance of active spiritual brightness. He was a serenely happy old man. Sometimes he seems to us as if incapable of the feeling either of blame or praise, contempt or homage. There was great strength, as there ever is, in his clearness and stillness of spirit. Genius is so vague an epithet and quality that we know not how either to apply it to him or to deny it; but so far as it represents soul and imagination, great breadth and depth and height of soul or feeling, it was certainly denied him. On the other hand, he had a judgment most clear, an apprehension most quick and vivid, and an enthusiasm as little tainted by fanaticism as any great Christian leader since the days of the apostle Paul. Reformer as he was, he was essentially conservative.
As is usual in most religious orders, Popish or Protestant, his spirit has survived in his society, and the shadow of Wesley falls wide and far. He lived through amazing changes of opinion with reference to himself, and before he died, from being one of the most abused and execrated of men, he certainly was one of the most revered. No foe had been more rancorous and unjust than Lavington, Bishop of Exeter; Wesley lived to unite with him in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper in his own cathedral. He writes, with no bitterness of the man who had with such bitter ribaldry abused him, 'I was well pleased to partake of the Lord's Supper, with my old opponent, Bishop Lavington. Oh! may we sit together in the kingdom of our Father.' At Lewisham he dined with the eminent Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London. On proceeding to dinner the Bishop refused to sit above Wesley at the table, saying, 'Mr. Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world.' Wesley objected to take the seat of precedence; but the learned prelate obviated the difficulty by requesting as a favour that Wesley would sit above him because his hearing was defective, and he desired not to lose a sentence of Wesley's conversation. It is known that the king had a great respect for him; and it is to this most probably Wesley refers, when writing to one of his preachers, advising him to stand his ground against the vehement opposition of the Bishop of the Isle of Man, he says, 'I know pretty well the mind of Lord Mansfield, and of one that is greater than he.' In his latter days his movements to and fro in the country became ovations; not merely did thousands gather to hear him preach, the streets of towns were lined to look upon him, and the windows were thronged as he passed along. While in Yorkshire, we read of cavalcades of horses and carriages formed to receive and escort him on the way. At Redruth, as he preached in the market place, the congregation not only filled the windows, but sat on the tops of the houses. Assuredly, as often as he had been 'persecuted, he was not forsaken;' he did not die of Crucifixion, but he felt no elation of spirit, and we see him still the same man that he had been in the widely different circumstances of cruel and unjust misrepresentation.
It is wonderful to think that at nearly ninety years of age he could continue to make any effort to preach, but he did so, and he continued as a tower of strength to the companies he had formed and called together. But he outlived most of his early contemporaries, friends and foes. He stood in the pulpit of St. Giles's, in London; he had preached there fifty years before, prior to his departure for America. 'Are they not passed as a watch in the night?' he writes. Old families that used to entertain him had passed away. 'Their houses,' says he, 'know neither me nor them any more.' His later letters show that fervid sentiment for woman known only to loftiest minds and hearts; this again is entwined with beautiful simple regards for children. When he ascended the pulpit of Raithby Church, where he was often allowed to preach, a child sat in his way on the stairs, he took it in his arms and kissed it, and placed it tenderly on the same spot. Crabb Robinson heard him at Colchester, he was then eighty-seven, on each side of him stood a minister supporting him; his feeble voice was barely audible. Robinson, then a boy, destined to enter into his ninety-second year, says, 'It formed a picture never to be forgotten.' He goes on to say, 'It went to the heart, and I never saw anything like it in after life.' Three days after he preached at Lowestoft, and there he had another distinguished hearer, the poet Crabbe. Here, also, he was supported into the pulpit by a minister on either side; but what really touched the poet naturally and deeply, was Wesley's adaptation and appropriation of some lines of Anacreon. The poet speaks of his reverent appearance, his cheerful air, and the beautiful cadence with which he repeated the lines:--
'Oft am I by women told, Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old; See, thine hairs are falling all, Poor Anacreon, how they fall. Whether I grow old or no, By these signs I do not know, By this I need not to be told, "Tis time to live if I grow old."'
In 1790 he gave up keeping his accounts; his last entry--exceedingly difficult to decipher--is characteristic: 'For upwards of eighty-six years (meaning, of course, rather, sixty-eight, i. e., since he came to have money of his own) I have kept my accounts exactly. I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can, and give all I can; that is, all I have. July 16, 1790.' His benevolence indeed was excessive; and Samuel Bradburn says, 'He never relieved poor people in the street but he either took off or removed his hat to them when they thanked him.'
The story of the old man's approach towards the gates of the celestial city is very beautiful, and has often been told. His last sermons are certainly among his best; the last sermon he printed, on 'Faith the evidence of things not seen,' was the last he ever wrote, and was finished only six weeks before his death. It shows how his mind sustained the altitude of highest power when bordering upon ninety years of age; it shows also how the dear old man was preening his wings for a speedy flight. We suppose the last letter he wrote was to William Wilberforce, on the abolition of slavery--short, but full of strength--giving to the apostle of freedom his benediction. 'If God be for you,' he writes, 'who can be against, you? O! be not weary in well doing! Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His might!'
It was in the City-road that exhausted nature gave way, unable to bear any more. And what a death it was! He was, indeed, several days in dying, but there was no pain, only exhaustion; in his wanderings he was preaching or attending classes, and singing snatches from some of his brother's, and from Watts's hymns; but he was half in heaven before he left the earth. His last strain of song was--
'To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Who sweetly all agree;'
but his voice failed, and gasping for breath he said, 'Now we have done, let us go!' Friends crowded round his bed, and amidst their words of comfort and love he was passing away. There was no conflict; only once he rose, and in a tone almost supernatural, exclaimed, 'The best of all is God is with us!' His brother's widow tenderly ministered to him; he tried to kiss her, saying, 'He giveth his servants rest!' Then he repeated his thanksgiving, 'We thank thee, O God, for these and all Thy mercies; bless the Church and King, and grant us truth and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, for ever and ever.' He paused a little; then he cried, 'The clouds drop fatness!' Then another pause, 'The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge!' Eleven persons were standing round his bed as he said 'Farewell,' his last word, at ten o'clock, Wednesday, March 2nd, 1791. 'Children,' said John Wesley's mother, 'as soon as I am dead, sing a song of praise!' As soon as Wesley died, his friends round his dead body raised their voices in a hymn, then knelt down and prayed. He was buried behind the chapel in the City-road, on the 9th of March. So great was the excitement created by his death, that he was buried at five o'clock in the morning; before this he had been laid in a kind of state. Thus Samuel Rogers, the poet, saw him. He says, 'As I was walking home one day from my father's bank, I observed a great crowd of people streaming into a chapel in the City-road. I followed them; and saw laid out upon a table the dead body of a clergyman in full canonicals, his grey hair partly shading his face on both sides, and his flesh resembling wax. It was the corpse of John Wesley, and the crowd moved slowly and silently round and round the table, to take a last look at that most venerable man.'
John Wesley appears to have been one of the most faultless of mortals: some of his followers claim for him a rank little short of perfection; and certainly few for whom such a claim is made, could sustain it so well. He nevertheless commands high admiration rather than passionate affection. The sapling he planted has struck its roots far and wide, still true to the spirit of its illustrious planter, his work has resulted in a great organization, rather than in a great soul. We have seen that the proportions of Wesleyanism in America are much more magnificent than in England. English Wesleyanism has narrowed its boundaries by making the sermons of its founder its legal creed; it is not so in America, there the Methodists have accepted his fundamental idea, while they have given room and verge enough for the soul to grow. Sometimes, beyond all question, Wesley himself was occupied by the consideration of the shape and the attitude his gigantic society would assume in future years; but he writes distinctly--'I do not, I will not, concern myself with what will be done when I am dead; I take no thought about that.' His was an ever-growing, keenly penetrating, and widely observant mind, and we cannot but think that he would have so modified his organization and adapted his discipline, that the immense institution he founded would have been saved from many of its ruptures and schisms, and have comprehended a still more extensive operation than it acknowledges at present. We have no space to enter into a comparison between American and English Wesleyanism; enough that the transatlantic child has far outstripped the English parent. In England, indeed, several powerful offshoots, all, it seems to us, comprehensible within Wesley's own idea, have divided the field of labour, which he, perhaps, would have occupied by his organization alone. But what a variety of sects regard him as their father: the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christians, the Wesleyan Association, the New Connexion, and the Free Methodists; so that, regarding the immense Church of America, the old Conference of England, and all its offshoots, it is not too much to say that no single man, in the history of the Church has ever been the father of such a progeny, so many are those who in their temple and services are anxious that the 'shadow of "Wesley" passing may overshadow some of them.' In some particulars, although its numerical strength has ever gone on increasing, Wesleyanism has not grown since the days of its founder. Creating such a hymnology as that of Charles Wesley, the glory and beauty of Methodism, we do not know that since his time it has ever written a single hymn which has become the darling and the property of the Church. It has produced in England few Christian poets, no great hymn writers; certainly none to take place by the side of the lyrists of its early days. It was born in missionary fervour, and baptized into the missionary spirit; it has performed abroad a good and admirable work. To it greatly it is due that the Fiji Islanders, a race of cannibals, have ceased from their horrible manners and customs, and have approached the confines of civilization; but Wesleyanism has produced no great missionaries, and boasts of no vast achievements like those which are the heraldry of some it would be easy to name. It has no literature; it has done nothing for philosophy, with perhaps the exception of the metaphysical shoemaker, Samuel Drew; with the single exception of Richard Watson it has done nothing in scientific theology; here and there scholarly men like the learned Adam Clarke, Spence Hardy, or the recently departed Etheridge, meet us, but the history of the literature of Methodism would present only a poor scroll. There must be some reason for this, although we are not now disposed to inquire where it is to be found; we simply state a fact. Nor do those who are the immediate followers of Wesley occupy the fields of labour Wesley prescribed; we apprehend that Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians would receive the venerable Wesley's special benediction, and be regarded by him as carrying forward most efficiently his labours and intentions. Perhaps, if it were possible for the English Conference to adopt some of the principles of the American Conference, this great religious corporation might soon enlarge its field and sphere, so that even Wesley himself might seem to be the subject of a mighty resurrection.
As time advances, the point of view changes from whence a great man may be most distinctly seen; as the trees are removed which interfered with the prospect, so prejudices which prevented due appreciation are modified. If the subsequent ages do not substantially alter their verdict, yet so much is added to, or subtracted from impressions, either by a larger catholicity of judgment or by the accumulation of additional facts, that new portraits and fresh and more accurate appreciations are demanded. Ours has been called especially the age of resurrections: beyond all former times it is the age in which men have industriously 'garnished the sepulchres of the prophets,' and Wesley's tomb has not been suffered to fall into ruin; many a loving Old Mortality re-cuts his name on the stone; and recently, especially, many able hands have set themselves to the task of faithful and admiring delineation of the features of the man and his work. Miss Wedgewood's interesting little volume, if founded upon no additional information, shows the growing disposition in members of other Churches to do him substantial justice. As a history of the great evangelical reaction and revival, her work is inadequate, and we question very much whether she has qualified herself, either by sufficient sympathy or sufficient knowledge, to fulfil the requirements of the larger and more comprehensive title of her work. Mr. Tyerman's volumes constitute by far the most exhaustive, as they are certainly the bulkiest, and from many points of view, the most interesting of the lives of Wesley. He has industriously ferreted out and brought together a great deal of unpublished or unconnected material, although much material to which he might have found access still remains unexamined, acquaintance with which would probably have modified some of his judgments. The author does not aim at any remarkable melody of style, philosophic disquisition, or even personal portraiture; his work is simply an Index Rerum about Wesley. Mr. Tyerman's judgment is usually characterized by great clearness and good sense; his pen seems to be always governed by the desire to be fair and impartial, and for the first time our libraries receive a full and comprehensive memoir of the great religious teacher and ecclesiastical statesman, of a life as transcendently above ordinary lives in its incessant and immeasureable activity, as it was protracted beyond them in its period of service. We suppose that those readers who desire a philosophy of Methodism, will still turn to the pages of Isaac Taylor; and those who desire to read a charming story, will still find most refreshment in the pages of Robert Southey, or in the more recent glowing collection of anecdotes in Dr. Stevens's 'History of Methodism.'
ART. VII.--Mr. Darwin on the Origin of Man.
(1.) The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex. By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., &c. 2 vols. John Murray.
(2.) On the Genesis of Species. By ST. GEORGE MIVART, F.R.S. Macmillan.
The mode of the origin of man is a question of such momentous interest to intelligent men that it is not easy to handle it with calm philosophical indifference, or to discuss it dispassionately. It is true, we have been informed that the conclusions concerning man's evolution which have been lately taught far and wide are not opposed to religion, but we have not been favoured with the tenets of that religion to which an evolutionist may, without inconsistency, subscribe. We have even been assured that evolution presents us with a most noble view of the Great Creator, who endowed living matter with the capacity of change, and subjected it to natural laws; that it admits the necessity of a directing, intelligent will, and refers all the phenomena of the universe to God. But those who have recorded this remarkable discovery have not been careful to make known to us the attributes of that Deity in whom they trust; and they express themselves in a manner that is rather vague concerning the limits imposed upon His power, His will, and His government by what they call natural law.
The hypothesis of evolution, it has been said, does not touch the question of the origin of life, for evolution is supposed to begin to operate only after that mysterious, if not miraculous phenomenon has been completed. Our readers should, however, remember that quite recently Sir W. Thomson has relegated to a sphere long since shattered, the birth of the first living spark which peopled this earth, and thus we are released from the difficulty of framing an hypothesis to account for the first particle that lived. But a third class of evolutionists professes to be able to trace the actual origin of the living from non-living matter, and even maintains that a series of insensible gradations has been established between the inanimate and the living.
These are some of the considerations which are agitating men's minds in the days in which we live; and Mr. Darwin, in his last work, has clearly defined the conclusions concerning man's origin which, as he maintains, we are compelled by the facts of nature to accept, though he does not indicate, and indeed seems supremely unconscious of the tremendous nature of the issues raised by his philosophic teaching. 'I am aware,' says Mr. Darwin, 'that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious;' but he himself has failed to discover anything irreligious in the view he has taken. It is, however, very difficult to form a correct estimate of this opinion in the absence of any explanation of the meaning which Mr. Darwin attaches to the terms, religion and irreligion. The religious views of those who regard man as a being distinct and altogether apart from brute animals must needs be different from the religious views of those who look upon him as a mere animal, though it is possible that the latter conclusion may not conflict with religious beliefs of some kind or other.
We should not have ventured to offer these remarks upon the religious aspect of the question had it not been adverted to, and, as we think, quite unnecessarily, by Mr. Darwin himself; our main object in this article being to consider the scientific question from the scientific side.
That man began to be in a very remote past is now freely admitted by all; but this is perhaps the only one of the many propositions advanced in connection with man's origin that will be accepted by different authorities who have considered the question from different points of view.
Not a few persons still accept the ancient tradition, and up to this very time maintain, that the idea that man sprang as man direct from the hands of his God remains unshaken, and that the evidence advanced in favour of more recent interferences is not only incomplete, but vague, fragmentary, uncertain, and unconvincing. But while it must be admitted that the majority of scientific men who have studied the subject are agreed in the conclusion, that science can point to no fact at all conclusive in favour of the idea of the direct creation of man from the dust of the ground, it is by no means so certain that the scientific evidence advanced in favour of very different inferences is more convincing, or as worthy of acceptance as their enthusiastic advocates would have us believe. It cannot be too often clearly stated that the whole spirit of science demands that scientific conclusions should rest upon the evidence of facts, and upon facts alone. Evidence advanced by the scientific observer must be evidence which can be adduced over and over again; evidence which will bear to be examined and re-examined in its minutest particulars and with the utmost care. Nothing is to be taken on trust by the man who would advance real knowledge, and he who endeavours to convince an audience of the truth of some new scientific conjecture, by telling it that no other explanation can be advanced than the particular one that he offers, is true neither to science nor to himself. It is his business to produce evidence, not to try to force his own conviction on other minds, and he should most scrupulously avoid phrases which partake more of the character of threats than arguments. 'Accept this view, or I shall regard you as unreasonable, and consider you a savage,' is the language of a member of an intellectual prize-ring rather than that of a calm, dispassionate investigator of nature, searching after the truth for truth's sake.
Into recent discussions concerning the origin of man, much extraneous matter has been imported, and in many articles acrimonious remarks have unfortunately been introduced for which little excuse can be offered; but it appears to us impossible to deny that the conclusion we arrive at concerning the origin of man may, and probably must seriously affect our views concerning the nature of our relation to Deity, and our belief in a future state; but it is surely premature to allow our convictions to be greatly disturbed by such considerations, for it is doubtful whether we are yet in possession of sufficient knowledge to enable us to deduce any definite conclusion upon this most difficult question. Men who call themselves philosophical and scientific may laugh at what they call the legends concerning man's origin, which are received as truths by the unscientific; but much will have to be added to the evidence already existing in favour of the arboreal habits of our ancestors, before the notion will be generally accepted as worthy of serious belief, or as entirely free from ludicrousness. The reader of science in these days must be careful not to mistake conjectural propositions, however ingeniously expressed, for established scientific demonstrations.
Our acceptance or rejection of Mr. Darwin's views regarding the descent of man will be mainly determined by the conclusions we have been led to adopt concerning his doctrine of the formation of different species of animals by natural selection. The writer of this article, disagreeing, as he does, entirely, with the views adopted by Mr. Darwin's opponents, would be quite ready to concede the doctrine of the descent of man from a lower form if he felt convinced that the evidence adduced was sufficient to prove that even a few of the lower animals and plants had resulted by development from lower forms. He is well aware that, both here and on the Continent, many scientific authorities accept the doctrine of natural selection as applied to plants and animals, but hold that as regards man the evidence, is altogether inconclusive. Mr. Darwin evidently wishes his readers to accept upon faith the dictum that it has really been positively demonstrated that all species of the inferior animals have been evolved from some lower beings, for he uses this as an inferential argument in favour of the doctrine that man, 'like every other species,' has descended from pre-existing forms.
We shall not therefore argue, as has often been done, that although natural selection may be true as applied to animals, it is not correct as regards man, but shall concede this point, and admit that, if it could be proved that dissimilar animals had descended from a common progenitor, we might believe that man's body has been formed in the same way. But we dispute the evidence hitherto advanced to prove that even plants as much alike or unlike as the rose and the thistle have descended from a common plant; and we doubt if sufficient time has elapsed for effecting the requisite changes in the very gradual manner in which the hypothesis assumes that they have occurred.
A great array of facts are marshalled before the reader, in order to produce the impression that the foregone conclusion really rests upon a very firm foundation; but it is remarkable how frequently hypothetical inferences are made to do duty for inductive arguments. Thus Mr. Darwin assumes that because man, like the lower animals, is subject to malconformations, arrested development, or reduplication of parts, his origin must have been like theirs. It is, however, obvious that such an argument begs the question at issue. It is clearly possible that man's body might agree with the bodies of the lower animals in these and many other points, and yet be formed upon altogether different principles; while man and animals might be alike in these points, without either having been derived as Mr. Darwin supposes. Again, it seemed scarcely necessary to repeat the affirmation that there was much in common between the bodily structure of man and animals, because everyone who has studied the matter ever so carelessly freely admits that there is, and every child would acknowledge the fact from his own observation. What Mr. Darwin desires us to believe is, that this similarity in structure is due to community of origin; but this is a very different thing. The fact must be accepted, but the proposed explanation of the fact is, after all, only an assertion. It has been audaciously said that Mr. Darwin's explanation ought to be accepted as true if no more probable explanation be advanced; but surely this is to mistake altogether the object of scientific inquiry; for it by no means follows that an improbable hypothesis ought to be accepted and taught as true, because its opponents are unable or unwilling to propose a new hypothesis several degrees less improbable. The question for us to determine, is simply how far the arguments advanced by Mr. Darwin justify the conclusion at which he has arrived; and it is not good reasoning to argue that, because the bodily structure of man resembles that of animals, and the bodily structures of animals resemble one another, therefore all have community of origin; for it is clear that there may be some very different explanation of these facts which cannot be discovered, nor will be until we possess more knowledge of them. We may accept as a fact the well known general resemblance between the tissues of different animals and the tissues of man and animals, but we may deny that this resemblance is sufficiently close to ground upon it the doctrine that all tissues have been derived from a common ancestral tissue-forming substance. We quite agree with Mr. Darwin, that 'man is constructed on the same general type or model with other mammals,' but we fail to see in this an argument for the doctrine that he and they have a common origin.
If, however, the tissues, blood, and secretions of man were like those of animals, that is, if they could not be distinguished from the latter in ultimate structure and chemical composition and properties, we should be quite ready to accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion; and not a few of Mr. Darwin's readers will imagine that such is really the case, for the language employed almost implies that a very exact likeness has been proved to exist. Mr. Darwin has, however, been careful so to express himself as to lead his readers to adopt the inference he desires, without laying himself open to the charge of undue persuasion, while professing only to be laying facts before their unbiassed judgment. In truth, such enthusiasm has been stirred up in favour of Mr. Darwin's doctrines that the task of criticism has become unpleasant, and it requires some courage even to offer a hint that after all they may not turn out to be true. And yet it is not possible for anyone who has studied anatomical structure to assent to many of the statements in the very first chapter of Mr. Darwin's book. As regards bodily structure and chemical composition, and also minute structure of tissues, there are points of difference between man and animals more striking and remarkable than the points in which resemblance may be traced. So, too, with reference to embryonic development, resemblance increases the further we go back, and much more may be proved than Mr. Darwin requires for the support of his hypothesis. An embryo man is not more like an embryo ape than either is like an embryo fish. The mode of origin and the development of every tissue in nature are indeed alike in many particulars, but this fact, so far from being an argument in favour of the common parentage of any or all, seems to indicate that all are formed according to some general law, which nevertheless permits the most remarkable variations, not solely dependent upon either external conditions or internal powers.
It has been shown that certain structural characteristics observable to the unaided eye are common to man and the lower animals, and this fact has been urged in favour of the conclusion adopted by Mr. Darwin. Thus, great stress is laid upon the presence of 'the little blunt point projecting from the inwardly folded margin or helix of the ear of man.' This is decided to be the vestige of the formerly pointed ears of the progenitors of our predecessors with arboreal habits, but nothing is said in explanation of the complete absence of rudiments of parts which we should expect to find. And surely there may be differences of opinion as to the bearing of many of the facts advanced, although Mr. Darwin affirms that their bearing is unmistakable. The observation that, 'on any other view, the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, &c., is utterly inexplicable,' is not complimentary to the ingenuity or conjectural capacity of those who are to succeed Mr. Darwin; but to assert that these parts have been formed on the same ideal plan is not a scientific explanation; it is merely to express an opinion in a very arbitrary and rather abrupt manner. It may be 'natural prejudice' and it may be 'arrogance' which leads some to demur to the conclusions deduced by Mr. Darwin and his friends, and the prophecy[63] at the end of his chapter may be fulfilled, but it is at any rate premature; while it is by no means fair to imply that every naturalist who refuses to accept Mr. Darwin's hypothesis believes that each mammal and man 'was the work of a separate act of creation.'
As is well known, there are certain diseases which may be communicated from man to the lower animals, or from the lower animals to man, and Mr. Darwin tells us that the fact 'proves (!) the close similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition.' Here, again, in what he regards as his proof, Mr. Darwin begs the question. Such premises afford no justification whatever for the conclusion arrived at, while the force of the remark depends entirely upon the meaning attached to the phrase 'close similarity.' We may assert with truth that there is a very close similarity between the blood of a rat and the blood of a Guinea pig, and also that the blood of the rat differs widely from that of the Guinea pig. In the first assertion, 'close similarity' is used in a sense which does not imply that 'widely different' is not equally true of the statement to which it relates. The argument adopted by Mr. Darwin is not an argument in favour of his conclusion. He might urge with equal force that since bacteria grow and multiply in many different fluids and solids, these fluids and solids exhibit a close similarity in structure and composition; or, conversely, it might be held, that because certain poisons produce very different effects upon the nerve-tissues of different animals, therefore the nerve-tissues of these animals must differ widely in minute structure and chemical composition.
As regards the statements that man and animals alike die of apoplexy, suffer from fever, are subject to cataract, take tea, are fond of tobacco, and the like, it is simply astounding that Mr. Darwin should have advanced them with the view of strengthening his case. The circumstance almost leads us to infer that he was not altogether unconscious of the weakness of his own cause. He has been over-sanguine regarding his powers of convincing his readers of the truth of any proposition he might think fit to advance. It would have been more to the purpose to have maintained that, since all mammals have blood and blood-vessels, brains, and nerves, it is certain that all mammals must have had a common origin, since it is not possible to account for the close similarity between these tissues in any other way.
Nor is it easy to understand how the community-of-origin hypothesis is assisted by the fact that man and animals are infested by parasites, seeing that the parasites are as different from one another as are the species which they infest, and, like the latter, are incapable of interbreeding, and exhibit specific distinctions of the most striking kind.
That reproduction and gestation are carried out upon the same general plan in all mammals is universally known, but it is straining argument with a vengeance to advance this in favour of their community of origin, considering the marvellous variations in detail which are observed in respect of these processes in different and even in very closely allied mammals.
The fact that man arrives at maturity more slowly than other animals is met by Mr. Darwin with the cautious observation that 'the orang is believed not to be adult till the age of from ten to fifteen years.' This is by no means a solitary example of the very vague observations which Mr. Darwin admits as data upon which to ground his conclusions. For want of more demonstrative evidence, he is constrained to accept the loose statement to which we have alluded; and it must be admitted that he has displayed considerable ingenuity in making the most of the utterly inconclusive and sometimes unreliable material at his disposal; but it is indeed very remarkable that he should consider himself in any way justified by the facts and arguments to which he has adverted, in summing up so very definitely and so very decidedly as he has done on the sixth page of the first chapter of his book. The italics in the following sentence are our own: 'It is, in short, scarcely possible to exaggerate the close correspondence in general structure, in the minute structure of the tissues, in chemical composition, and in constitution, between man and the higher animals, especially the anthropomorphous apes!'
Mr. Darwin adduces another argument in his favor from embryonic development, and proceeds to show that at a certain period the human embryo is very like that of the dog. He quotes with approval the remark of Mr. Huxley, that as regards development man is 'far nearer to apes than the apes are to the dog;' but if we suppose the resemblance to be far greater than is really the case, it is difficult to see how the fact would strengthen the hypothesis in favour of which it is advanced. Because the embryo of a dog resembles that of a man, therefore both were derived from a common progenitor, seems a very curious specimen of reasoning, and implies the acceptance of a number of other propositions which have been and will continue to be disputed. We are assured that no other explanation than the one advanced by Mr. Darwin 'has ever been given of the marvellous fact that the embryos of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, &c., cannot at first be distinguished from each other;' but as needs scarcely be said, this circumstance adds no weight to the particular explanation in question, and does not increase the probability of its being proved to be true at some future day. According to Mr. Darwin, we ought frankly to admit the force of every argument he thinks fit to advance; but surely, before doing so, there is no harm in examining the facts a little more closely. And, first, it would have been desirable to inquire whether the resemblance was really as great as a superficial examination by the unaided eye seemed to indicate; next, it should have been ascertained whether the differences between the animal and the human embryo were not also very considerable; in which case it would have been necessary to inquire further concerning the bearing of the differences demonstrated, upon the hypothesis of the community of origin of the several embryos, grounded upon the likeness.
But Mr. Darwin does not tell us why he selected one particular period of development for demonstrating the resemblance between the human embryo and that of the dog. The likeness was in truth much greater at a period still earlier than the one selected. Nay, the fact must be known to Mr. Darwin, that at a very early stage in development we fail to discover, after the most careful scrutiny, any difference between the matter which, under certain conditions, will become man, and that which, under certain other conditions, will become dog, or cat, or bird, or frog, or jelly-fish, or plant; yet it would be monstrous to assert that apparent likeness was real identity. It is only during the later stages of development, as Mr. Huxley affirms, and as has been well known for fifty years or more, that 'the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape.' But why is the reader not told that at a very early period of development these embryos are not only like one another, but could not by any means at our disposal be distinguished from each other or from any other form of embryo matter in nature? The results of the act of living in the two cases are very different, but the living matter itself seems to be nearly identical. The material out of which man is evolved is perhaps exactly like that from which every other vertebrate living being proceeds, and it does not differ in any ascertained points from that from which the most destructive morbid growths may be developed. Here, then, is an argument for the community of origin of everything in nature. Not only is man's brain developed like the dog's brain, but the matter in which every one of his organs originates is like that from which every other tissue in nature is evolved.
But when we come to examine more minutely the tissues of the embryo man and the embryo dog at about the period of development selected by Mr. Darwin for comparison, we find very remarkable points of difference in their minute structure. If we examine particular tissues by the aid of high microscopic powers, we shall discover points of difference as well as points in which they agree, and this at every stage of growth subsequent to the time when the tissues have acquired their special characters. If, then, from the fact of general resemblance we are to argue in favour of a common origin, what explanation have we to offer of the peculiar and constant, though definite differences between the corresponding tissues of different animals at corresponding periods of development? Mr. Darwin's explanation may account for the resemblance between the different embryos at a particular period of development, but it does not help us in the least to understand why there should be differences in the ultimate structure of the tissues at this same period, any more than it explains the still more remarkable resemblance between different forms of embryonic matter at every period of life, in health and in disease.
It is difficult to understand how 'natural selection' can work, unless we admit that the matter of the germ possesses the property of undergoing modification. But if modifying power determines the changes, this must itself be referred to something inherent in the matter of the germ itself--a primary power of the organism transmitted from pre-existing organisms. Such a power is, however, inadmissible in any evolutional hypothesis, and so far from being explained by natural selection, explains the facts grouped under that head. It is true that Mr. Darwin does admit the operation of 'unknown agencies' influencing the nature and constitution of the organism, but he adduces no reason for supposing that these unknown agencies will be discovered at some future time, or that they are in any way dependent on natural selection. If we require 'unknown agencies' at all, we may surely dispense with natural selection altogether, and attribute the formation of species to these unknown agencies directly, instead of attributing it to natural selection and referring natural selection to the unknown agencies.
It certainly would be an argument of the very highest importance, and indeed most convincing, if it could be shown that, in their minute structure, the corresponding tissues of man and animals very closely agreed. Mr. Darwin affirms that this is indeed the case, and says that the correspondence in minute structure is so close, especially in the case of man and the anthropomorphous apes, that it is impossible to exaggerate it. But strange to say, he adduces no evidence whatever in support of the assertion, although he does not hesitate to make use of the assumed close correspondence as if it had been demonstrated in the most unequivocal manner. Mr. Darwin is unquestionably correct in attaching the very highest importance to this part of the evidence. As the question of correspondence in the minute structure of tissues between man and animals has scarcely been touched upon in any of the numerous critiques which have been written upon Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, we propose to direct the reader's attention to a few details of considerable interest, affecting not only the validity of views concerning, the descent of man, but affecting also the hypothesis of evolution. It has been already stated that we are ready to admit the full force of the fact of the close correspondence if this can be proved; but, on the other hand, if constant differential characters can be distinctly demonstrated, especially in corresponding tissues of closely allied species, it must be conceded that the circumstance will be very damaging to the hypothesis of evolution; for it is very doubtful if even the very great ingenuity displayed by Mr. Darwin and his followers would enable them to offer an explanation which would be considered plausible. It is somewhat significant that the subject of minute structure, in spite of its great importance having been freely admitted, has been very lightly touched upon. So far, evolutionists have fought rather shy of the evidence to be obtained by a very minute and careful examination of the tissues; though strongly advocating careful investigations of a general character, they have been very reticent on the question of microscopic investigation, and in not a few instances there are indications of an indisposition to study minute details, as if they feared observation might be pushed too far, or too much into detail to serve their purpose. Attention is constantly directed to the general points in which different species resemble each other, and the reader becomes fully impressed with the great importance of the argument resting upon the fact of the strong similarity between man and apes, but no direct comparison in minute structure between any human and simian tissue is instituted, nor are any results of such comparisons anywhere referred to. But if, for example, it could be shown that in their minute anatomy the tissues of an ape so closely resembled those of a dog on the one hand, and of a man on the other, as that they could not be distinguished by the microscope, the fact would be of the highest importance, and would add enormously to the evidence already adduced to Mr. Darwin who lays much stress upon the close correspondence between the tissues of man and animals in minute structure, but never tells us that such comparison has been actually made by himself or by others. It is certainly remarkable that a fact which Mr. Darwin evidently considers of vast importance, and which is capable of being easily put to the test of observation, should be stated without the results of a single observation being recorded. Surely an appeal to actual experiment should have been made in at least a few instances, which would illustrate not only the close correspondence, but the absence of differences between corresponding tissues in different species. This having been done, it should then have been clearly stated in what manner this correspondence in minute structure favours the idea of the common origin of distinct species. But Mr. Darwin is content here, as in many other cases, with asserting the fact as a fact, and then stating that it helps in an important manner to establish the truth of the doctrine he advocates.
As this supposed correspondence in minute structure has never, so far as we are aware, been called in question, we shall occupy some portion of the space allotted to us in adverting to certain facts of interest, and shall supplement our observations by some remarks upon the supposed correspondence, or divergence, in chemical composition between representative solids and fluids in allied but distinct species. We must admit, with many other scientific writers, that if but a very moderate proportion of the arguments advanced by Mr. Darwin in favour of his conclusions rested upon a really firm basis of fact, the formation of species by natural selection would be established; but we have found that in many cases the arguments advanced do not bear the test of careful analysis, and some assertions crumble into dust as soon as they are exposed to investigation. We shall find reason to doubt the validity of Mr. Darwin's inferences concerning chemical composition, as well as concerning minute structure. Although undoubtedly, we do discern a general correspondence, the exceptions are so remarkable, and so far inexplicable upon Mr. Darwin's view, that we are disposed to think that the argument from it must be rejected altogether. If we study carefully the minute structure of corresponding tissues, we shall find that in many instances we are confronted with the most striking and peculiar differences, which tend to establish the idea of individuality and distinctness of origin, rather than that of the community of origin of creatures closely allied in zoological characters.
The differences in minute details in the case of creatures much alike are often very remarkable, and well worthy of attentive consideration. It may be possible to explain some of them by natural selection, but the way in which this can be done has to be pointed out. Nor is it easy to see why many individual peculiarities, that could easily be specified, should exist at all. They are certainly not required by their possessors, they do not seem either of advantage or disadvantage, and it is at least conceivable that in minute structure the tissues of all closely allied animals might exactly resemble one another. But is it not remarkable that, for instance, almost every tissue of the newt, frog, toad, and green tree-frog, has individual characteristics of its own, which could be distinguished by one who was thoroughly familiar with the microscopic characters of the textures? In many cases the differences are so wide that they could not be passed over.[64] In the newt, as would be anticipated, the elementary parts of the tissues are formed altogether upon a much larger scale than, in the other animals, and there are individual differences which are most interesting. The disciples of evolution might gain some facts in support of their theory by comparing in minute structure the tissues of the newt and proteus, in which latter animal everything is on a larger and coarser (?) scale than in the newt. But would the evolutional hypothesis gain by the application of such a test?
The nerve-fibres in every part of the body of the newt differ in many minute particulars from those of the frog, and the muscular fibres of either animal could be recognised if they were successfully prepared in precisely the same manner, so that a comparison might be instituted with fairness. But in these animals not only do corresponding tissues, exhibit peculiarities, but entire organs are totally different. The kidney of the frog diverges in so many points of structure from that of the newt, that the two organs could not be mistaken the one for the other, even if examined in the most cursory manner. Each individual tube of the newt's kidney is lined by ciliated epithelium from one end to the other, while that of the frog is so lined only at the neck. The Malpighian bodies of the two animals are different, and we believe that corresponding tissues taken from these organs could be distinguished from one another. It may be answered, 'This very instance is in favour of evolution, for the kidney tube gradually loses its ciliated lining, as we pass from the lower towards the higher batrachian form. In the latter, only the neck of the tube is ciliated, while in animals higher in the scale than the batrachia, the uriniferous tube is perfectly destitute of cilia.' Will the evolutionist be satisfied with this explanation, or will he suggest some other?
Again, if we take the skin of the four animals mentioned above--although it will be seen that there is a certain general agreement in structure to be recognised, there is not a texture of the skin which is alike in them all. The cuticle is different, the glands of the skin are differently arranged, the pigment-cells present the most marked differences; and individual characteristics are to be detected in great number by anyone who will study the subject in detail with sufficient care. We do not, however, suppose for an instant that Mr. Darwin would be unable upon his hypothesis to offer a plausible explanation of all these minute points. We are well aware that this can be done, and in a manner that to some minds may seem convincing. What we wish to press upon our readers, however, is, that so far as at this time the argument rests upon a close correspondence in minute structure, it must be given up, because the asserted close correspondence in minute structure is not based upon evidence. On the other hand, actual investigation into the structure of certain corresponding tissues demonstrates remarkable individual peculiarities, and these seem to increase in number the more thoroughly and the more minutely the tissues are explored. What if, in the case of closely allied species, such structural differences be demonstrated in every part of the body? Will the fact be urged in support of a common parentage, or in favour of some different view? It may be fairly asked, if two closely allied forms have descended from a common progenitor not far removed from either, why should almost every tissue and organ in the body exhibit individual peculiarities, not one of which can be regarded as of advantage to the creature, or as contributing in any way to its survival? The sensitive fungiform papillæ of the tongue of the common frog and of the hyla differ from one another in minute structure, and specimens could be readily distinguished. Again, it might be asked, why are the hairs of the shrew different from those of the mole, and why is the disposition of the nerve-fibres round the hair-bulb even to their minutest fibrils different in different creatures, all of which possess the particular hairs called tactile, which act as delicate organs of touch? One would have supposed that the apparatus at the side of the base of a tactile hair of a shrew would be very like that upon which the tactile hair of a mole operates, and that the mechanism in both animals would not differ much from that at the base of the tactile hairs of the mouse. But the structure of the hair is different in all three, and the arrangement of the nerves is so different that there would be no difficulty in distinguishing them from the hair-sac alone. In short, there are probably very many different forms of tactile organs, in all of which a hair is the external part, but which organs exhibit important differences of structure.
If close correspondence in minute structure is to be accepted as an argument in Mr. Darwin's favour, he will surely hardly venture to assert that differences in minute structure point to a similar conclusion, though both sets of facts might be ingeniously used in support of this eminently elastic hypothesis. If the supposed correspondence was established, the evolutionist would of course point to the fact in proof of a common parentage; but if, on the other hand, the supposed correspondence should be proved to be a fiction, he might retort triumphantly, 'Only see in what infinitely minute structural particulars the law of variation by natural selection manifests its operation!'
How are we to explain the varying form and size of the red blood-corpuscles in different animals which have been so carefully examined and measured by Mr. Gulliver? The corpuscles do not vary according to the size of the animal, nor, unless our views of classification are utterly erroneous, can any constant relation be demonstrated between the size and form of the blood-disks of the creature and its position in the zoological scale. Again, in some cases, the colourless corpuscles are much larger than the coloured ones, while in others the very reverse obtains. Moreover, in many important characters, the blood-corpuscles of animals of the same class differ remarkably. The writer of this article could multiply such facts to a great extent from the observations he has been led to make incidentally, without reference to any hypothesis whatever; but he feels almost sure that, if a series of observations were made, the distinctive characters of corresponding textures taken from closely allied animals would be enormously multiplied. Such minute anatomical investigation will doubtless be instituted, but at present the leaders of scientific thought in this country seem to consider that general observations extending over a wide range of knowledge are preferable. Mr. Darwin even supposes, or, at any rate, leads his readers to infer that he supposes, that the investigation of the structural character of man and animals has been completed, or is nearly completed. It is evident he would have us believe such to be the case, for he says that to take any view of man's origin different from his own is to admit that our own structural characteristic and those of animals are a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment--as if all our tissues and organs had been thoroughly and finally explored. We know neither our own structure nor that of any plant or animal in the world. Mr. Darwin must surely be aware that the minute anatomy of the body of man or of animals is not yet in any part fully ascertained. It is possible that, as Mr. Darwin himself has not worked much at this subject, he may have been misled by his anatomical friends; but every investigator who goes into details with due care, and with sufficient accuracy, soon finds himself compelled not only to correct the facts advanced by those who have preceded him, but is able to add to known facts many new ones. There is no reason for thinking that there is any limit to this discovery of new facts. We may go on discovering for ever, but our anatomical observations will never be complete; nor must it be supposed that, even with our present means, our present knowledge of minute structure is as far advanced as is possible.
Mr. Darwin admits in many instances the existence of certain facts which he cannot explain by his hypothesis, and in this difficulty he appeals to our 'belief in the general principle of evolution,' and suggests that, 'unless we wilfully close our eyes,' we must assent to a doctrine which he confesses is not proved by the evidence he has adduced in its support. It is, however, only by wilfully closing our eyes, and very tightly indeed, and for a long period of time, that we can hope to force the understanding to accept a belief in the 'general principles in question.'
The differences observed in the minute structure of corresponding tissues in closely allied species ought to have more closely engaged the attention of Mr. Darwin, but he is evidently quite unaware of either their extent or their number. Had he been alive to these, he would scarcely have committed himself so fully, or have left so exposed to attack his argument based on the supposition of close correspondence in structure. Structural variations in detail are indeed infinite, and it is extraordinary that Mr. Darwin's assertion of close correspondence should so long have remained unchallenged. Whatever may ultimately be accepted as the true explanation of the fact, it must be admitted that it does not support Mr. Darwin's hypothesis in its present form.
Structural difference in the tissues and organs of allied species are not, however, limited to microscopic characters. There are many broad anatomical distinctions which have never been explained, such as the absence of a part or organ in an animal very closely related to numerous other species, in every one of which not only does it exist, but is largely developed. Such cases may be regarded by the evolutionist as exceptional, and he may invent some new hypothesis to account for them. Such facts may be treated as anomalies, and referred to laws yet to be discovered, upon which correlation of growth depends. By this old method of overcoming a difficulty, facts which really tell against the favourite conclusion are made to appear to tell in its favour; but in science the exception does not prove the rule. It is clear that very much is thought of the argument from agreement in general structure between more recent forms and the ancestral forms from which they are supposed to have descended, for it has been very pointedly referred to by those who support the hypothesis of natural selection. If, however, it is proved on more minute and careful examination that, although there are some points of resemblance between species, which would render plausible the idea of a common parentage, there are also striking differences, which increase in number and importance the more they are sought for, it will be admitted that the force of this argument is much weakened; and although, after making allowance for exaggerated expression, we may admit with Mr. Huxley 'that in every single visible character man differs less from the higher apes than these do from the lower members of the same order of primates,' we are nevertheless compelled by the facts to maintain that there are so very many points in which man differs from every ape, that the argument in favour of close relationship based upon correspondence in structure completely breaks down. In fact, the differences that cannot be accounted for upon the hypothesis are more important and more numerous than the resemblances which it is advanced to explain. Of what worth is an argument resting on the fact of hundreds of representative muscles, tendons, bones, and eminences on bones, in closely allied species, if the very muscles, tendons, and bones themselves exhibit minute and constant structural differences? And if, besides these anatomical differences, we meet with differences as regards the rate of development--differences in the order of development of certain tissues and organs--differences in the structural changes going on after development is complete, what shall we infer?
It is all very well to explain the presence of muscular variations in man by the tendency to reversion to an earlier condition of existence, but it is of the utmost importance in the first place to be sure that our evidence justifies us in concluding that particular and exceptional muscles in man representing muscles highly developed in some of the lower animals owe their origin to descent. This is the very question upon which proof is wanting. The variations may be due to descent, but it by no means follows that they must be due to descent, and it is still more difficult to be certain that they are not due to the operation of some undiscovered factor.
For many years past, naturalists, in their desire to discover the relationship between the many divergent forms of living things, appear to have closed their eyes to the remarkable differences which establish distinct characteristics between very closely allied forms, and which tend to show that the latter are not so closely related as the hypothesis of Darwin concludes. What, for instance, is the explanation of the fact that in no two animals or men are the branches of the arteries or nerves given off from the larger trunks at precisely the same points or in precisely the same manner, and why are variations in the muscles to be detected in each individual subject?--we cannot call them accidental. Will descent account for the hundreds of variations we meet with, as well as for those particular kinds which have been minutely described by Mr. Wood and others, and of which the evolutionists have made so much? Here, as in many other instances, we find inferences based on a very one-sided, if not a very imperfect statement of the facts. In order to account for all the anatomical varieties, it will be necessary again to call in the help of that 'unknown law' which the advocates of natural selection invoke when they find themselves in a difficulty.
But we come now to consider whether Mr. Darwin is more correct in his assertion concerning the close correspondence in the chemical composition of the tissues and fluids of the different species, than he is upon the question of minute structure. How is it that we find specific characters in the blood, bile, milk, saliva, gastric juice, urine, and other fluids and secretions of nearly related animals? The blood of the Guinea pig differs in important characteristics from that of the rat, mouse, rabbit, and squirrel. The most important constituent of the blood undergoes crystallization, and the form of the blood crystal is very different in the several members of the rodent class. By some undiscovered law of correlation of growth, perhaps, may be explained the curious fact that the blood-corpuscles of the tailless Guinea pig crystallize very readily in beautiful tetrahedra, while those of another rodent in which the tail is remarkably developed take the form of six-sided plates, and in yet another which possesses only a faint apology for a caudal appendage, we find blood crystals taking the form of the most beautiful rhomboids.
The blood of one species will not efficiently nourish the tissues of another; and in cases in which life is temporarily supported by alien blood artificially introduced into the vessels, it is probable that the foreign fluid is gradually destroyed and eliminated, and at last, entirely replaced by blood which is slowly formed anew in the animal's own vessels. Not only does the blood of man differ from that of the lower animals, but the blood of every species of animal differs from that of every other species.
But if we submit any of the other fluids mentioned above to careful chemical and physical analysis, we shall find each endowed with special characteristic properties, and distinguished from the rest by well-marked and constant characters; and we have reason to believe that the more minutely such investigation is carried out, the larger will be the number of divergent characters and properties established.
Mr. Sorby has lately been examining, by the aid of the spectroscope, many of the colouring matters of the leaves and petals of flowers and plants, and has demonstrated the presence of a large number of new substances which can be most positively distinguished from one another by spectrum analysis. Substances belonging to different plants which appear to the eye of nearly the same tint, often exhibit very different characters when submitted to spectroscopic examination.[65] There seems to be, in fact, no limit to divergence in essential particulars in cases in which the correspondence is only to be found in most general and superficial characters. We will recur for a moment to the question of minute structure as illustrated by plants. If the reader will be at the trouble of placing under his microscope, one after another, the petals of any half-dozen flowers of a red or blue colour, he will soon be able to discover anatomical differences by which each of them could be recognised independently of its colour. Moreover, if he studies the subject with sufficient care, he will find that new structural peculiarities will be demonstrated, of the existence of which he had no idea when the investigation was commenced.
Series of facts like those adduced above not only seem to militate against the acceptance of the doctrine of natural selection in its present form, but they cannot be contemplated without exciting in the mind a desire to entertain the hypothesis of fixity of species, or some derivative hypothesis not opposed to that idea.
Although of late much attention has been given to variation, the inheritance of variability, and progressive hereditary changes in the structure of the body, the advocates of evolution have only advanced statements of the most general kind. They have not entered into details; they have not suggested at what particular period in the life of the individual the change in structure occurs. They are silent as to the precise nature of the change, and the several steps by which it is brought about; and they say nothing concerning the characters and properties of the matter, which is the actual seat of the change. It is not sufficient to show us the bone or muscle, the structure of which is modified, and to assure us that the modification in question is due to the law of variability; for the hypothesis deals with the change itself, and we should be informed concerning the phenomenon which are antecedent to the change, and the exact circumstances which determine any particular modification advanced in illustration of the working of the supposed law. Further, it should be definitely determined what degree of change suffices to affect the fully-formed bone and muscle, and whether structural changes occurring at or after the period of full development of the body are inherited or not. The reader is probably aware that Mr. Darwin has invented an hypothesis specially to meet this part of the question--the hypothesis of Pangenesis. But he has recently remarked that it has not yet received its 'death-blow'--an observation which excites a doubt whether its author is not ready to abandon it. This hypothesis was only advanced tentatively from the first. It is incompatible with a number of facts, and appears more and more improbable as the phenomena it comprises are carefully investigated. Many observers well qualified to form a correct judgment felt almost certain from the very first that Pangenesis could not be maintained.
Seeing that, at every period of life, matter exists in every part of the body in at least two very different states, in each of which different classes of phenomena occur, Mr. Darwin should have informed us in what particular matter of the body in his opinion the metabolic property probably resided, and he should have explained at what period of life the change which was to result in the production of a new variety or species occurred. He does not, of course, suppose that fully-formed bone, or muscle, or nerve, changes its characters; nor would he maintain that in old age, or indeed long after adult life had been attained, any great alteration of structural form was possible. If, then, it is only in the plastic state during the early period of development that the changes surmised to take place can occur, the author of the hypothesis should either have given more information upon the details, or he should at the least have shown that microscopical observation had yielded no facts adverse to his doctrine; and something surely should have been suggested concerning the nature and origin of the inherent metabolic property, or tendency, or capacity, which is assumed by the terms of the hypothesis.
It should, however, be stated here that many evolutionists repudiate entirely the idea of any peculiar property under any circumstances influencing matter in the living state which does not influence it in the non-living condition, for the acceptance of the idea of such property would involve an answer to the inquiry as to the nature and origin of the property assumed, and it would have to be shown when and under what circumstances it was acquired by the matter. The evolutionist believes only in the properties which belong to matter as matter, and which are coexistent with the matter itself. The admission of an inherent property peculiar to the living state of matter, almost amounts to the admission of a vital power; but such an hypothesis, it need scarcely be said, would be incompatible with the doctrine of evolution. But physical evolutionists who persist in attributing all the phenomena of living beings to physical agencies only, ignore the most important changes occurring in every form of living matter. Again and again, they repeat the statement that the changes in living matter are molecular; but this is merely a word which is perfectly meaningless as applied to the changes in question, since the 'molecule' is undefined, has not been described, and is quite unknown. The very same authorities acknowledge that conclusions not based upon evidence cannot advance science, or be looked upon as scientific, and yet, with an inconsistency that is extraordinary, they state with confidence that they understand the nature of these changes. But they have not been able to learn anything of them whatever by experiment, nor can they discover any means of imitating them in matter in the laboratory. The changes in question are quite peculiar to living matter; they occur in all living matter, but in living matter only. These changes differ entirely from any other changes of which we have any cognizance. Nothing surely can be more illogical or unscientific than to assert that actions about which we know nothing are of the same kind or nature as actions which are understood, and can be brought about whenever we will. Yet physicists, chemists, and indeed most scientific men, have fully committed themselves to the dogmatic creed that the phenomena of living matter are, like all the other phenomena of nature, due to antecedent physical change. There are no physical phenomena to which they can point, that in the remotest degree resemble the actions peculiar to living matter.
Variation itself is quite peculiar, and as far removed from any physical change as is possible to conceive. The extent of variation, and of variations inherited from ancestors, is perfectly marvellous. Such variations are carried out during that plastic period of life when the body consists almost entirely of living matter, and occur in every individual of every species of animal and plant that is known. Each is like its predecessors, but not one is in any part exactly like the corresponding part of any predecessor. No two individuals were ever formed exactly alike in all particulars. Nay, it is doubtful if any two vital actions that have taken place in nature have been perfectly alike in all points.
That variation occurs in the plastic matter of the organism, while the formative process is taking place, is a truism, for no two noses or fingers, or other parts, have been seen so much alike as not to be distinguishable from one another; nay, it is not supposable that any two should be found precisely similar. Perfect identity in structures of such complexity is indeed hardly conceivable, unless many facts known in connection with tissue formation are utterly ignored. But, on the other hand, it is equally inconceivable that capacity for variability should be manifested in such a manner and to such an extent as to lead to the production of a proboscis in place of a nose, or of a talon in lieu of a finger. Hence, therefore, we must admit that this capacity works within certain, though at this time not to be accurately defined, limits. When, therefore, Mr. Darwin maintains that similarity of pattern between the flipper of the seal, the wing of the bat, the hand of the man, &c., is due to divergence in structure during gradual descent from a common progenitor, does he not beg the question at issue, and by implication assume an extent of variation far exceeding that which is possible within the period of time which he is disposed to think may have elapsed during which the hundreds or thousands of transitional forms have been slowly progressing towards perfection of type? Undoubtedly, if he could show one or two gradations between the paw of the bear and the flipper of the seal, or between the foot of the mole and the wing of the bat, he would have a powerful argument indeed. But the mind fails to realize the possibility of the transitional forms whose existence is assumed by the hypothesis. A thing half bear and half seal, or half mole and half bat, would be an incongruity which we have no right to assume ever existed in the flesh, if indeed it is not absurd to suppose it possible. If such a creature were born, it would die, and the very law of natural selection supposed to operate in favour of its development would render certain its destruction without offspring.
Variation in the living world seems to be indeed infinite, but nevertheless, so to say, restrained within limits. When we come to study variation in any particular species, we marvel at the extraordinary extent of change to be observed without any approach being recognized towards the nearest allied species. The human face may vary, we may say, infinitely, but without in the slightest degree approximating the face of a monkey or any other animal. The animal face and features may vary infinitely within the animal limits without manifesting the slightest approach to the human countenance, or even to that of any other species of animal. Any species of monkey might become modified in many different directions without making any approach to the human form. The ass might change for ages, and yet be something very different from a horse, and so on in other cases. The most degraded savage exhibits no approach to the ape, any more than the most highly developed species of monkey exhibits any nearer approach to man than the very lowest member of its class. There are human variations, monkey variations, ass variations, &c., without end, but there is no evidence of any variations occurring in one species which tend to show that it possesses any intimate relationship with any different species. The facts hitherto discovered, and considered by Mr. Darwin to support the view that we have descended or ascended from monkeys appear to us, therefore, to be very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. We are quite ready to consider patiently every argument that evolutionists can adduce, and if we think the case proved, we are fully prepared to admit it, but when told that we must accept the doctrine, we distrust our would-be teachers. In the suggestion of the alternative, 'accept this hypothesis or none,' there is the suspicion of a threat which ought to be received with indignation. The world may be wanting in scientific knowledge and acumen, but it will never submit to dictatorial science. The world is quite ready to be taught, and to learn, but it will not endure a tyranny enforced by persons who choose to call themselves, philosophers, and who claim to be scientifically infallible. The world knows something of the history of scientific controversies, and will listen with caution, but it rejects upon principle the application of scientific tests, and refuses point blank to subscribe to any articles of scientific belief, or to acknowledge an infallible scientific head.
After all that can be said against evolution has been uttered, there remains the defence that the hypothesis rests upon a vast array of facts--anatomical, physiological, geological--and 'it is scarcely fair,' it may be urged, 'to expect that a generalization which explains so much, should fully account for every slight divergence of structure that can be rendered evident by exquisitely minute and careful investigation.' But surely a view of such wide general application as this is held to be by its supporters ought not to fail when tested by particular facts of general observation. Unfortunately, Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not adequately supported by the very facts upon which he relies for proof; for out of the multitudes of living beings now existing upon the earth, he cannot select any two species whose differences and resemblances can be fully accounted for by the hypothesis which he holds to be universally applicable, and to account for the origin of every species from the monad to man. What must be the ultimate verdict passed upon a doctrine aspiring to universal application, which seems satisfactory only when vaguely applied, and which utterly fails when tested by the individual particulars that are comprised in the generalities? We may be like the savage, as Mr. Darwin suggests, but we are by no means convinced by the arguments adduced by him that man is the co-descendant, with other mammals, of a common progenitor, nor can we admit that certain structural peculiarities of man's bodily frame are to be looked upon as 'the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.'
All naturalists will agree in believing that there is some truth in the doctrine which Mr. Darwin has so thoroughly espoused, but there will be the greatest difference of opinion concerning the acceptance of many of his propositions; while it must be confessed that the more minutely and carefully we analyze the data upon which some of his conclusions rest, the less satisfied are we that they should be relied upon. Indeed, there is reason to think that at least one of his subordinate hypotheses, Pangenesis, will certainly have to be abandoned as untenable. As we have before remarked in this article, neither Mr. Darwin nor those who think with him appear to realize the illimitable possible additions to scientific knowledge, and consequently the continued change in scientific opinion, the abandonment of old hypotheses, and the development of new ones. Never in the history of science have such startling hypotheses been successively advanced as during the last twenty years. Few have stood the test of one quinquennial period, and not one has been retained in its original form. The sentiment, as expressed by Mr. Darwin, 'We are not concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth,' is a favourite one with scientific men, but the truth has not yet been arrived at. Is scientific truth ever to be reached? The nearer we seem to get to actual scientific truth, the more quickly does it recede from us; and it has happened but too often that when we thought to have grasped it, we find it far away, and that what in youth we thought to be scientific truth, afterwards, but long before we have reached old age, is proved to be scientific error.
In conclusion, therefore, we must remark, that while the hypothesis fails in individual cases to which it has been applied, it is incompetent to explain numerous facts known in connection with every particular plant or animal in existence. But, further, the general facts ascertained by careful and more minute investigation into the anatomy and physiology of any two closely allied species, such, for example, as the hare and the rabbit, the rat and the squirrel, the Guinea pig, or the hyla and common frog, are inexplicable upon the doctrine of natural selection, even if the time were extended far beyond the limits which upon other grounds it is not permissible to suppose it to stretch. Nay, the series of changes believed to occur during the formation of species by natural selection cannot be conceived by the imagination, unless multitudes of facts which have been demonstrated and can be confirmed by anyone who will take the trouble to do so are completely ignored. That man is like an ape, bone for bone, muscle for muscle, &c., is only a flourish of rhetoric unworthy of anyone who professes himself to be an observer of nature.
The remarks which have been made in respect to animals apply with marvellously greater force to man himself, for no matter how the evolutionists may strain the force of the analogies existing between man and animals, there are transcendent differences which no sophistry can explain away. We may allow Mr. Darwin and his friends to draw on time as largely as they may desire, we will permit them to strain to any extent they like the argument that the ape differs in far greater degree from the lower animals than he does from man himself, and we could yet succeed in exposing the improbability of the favoured hypothesis by discussing with its advocates its insufficiency to account for one single characteristic, such, for example, as the possession by man of the power of expressing his ideas. It is surely not likely that the attempt to found a general argument on the nature, mode of origin, and formation of all living beings, upon the points in which they exhibit some resemblance to one another, without showing in what manner the argument in question would be affected by the characters in which these same beings differ from one another, will much longer be regarded as a triumph of inductive reasoning, or considered to be in accordance with the spirit of science or true philosophy.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] 'But the time will, before long, come when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists, who were well acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man and other mammals, should have believed that each was the work of a separate act of creation.'--Vol. i. page 33.
[64] An evolutionist who reads these lines may, perhaps, exclaim, 'What, then, do you maintain that the frog, toad, newt, and green tree-frog, were each the work of a separate creative act?' To which question we reply, 'By no means; but, nevertheless, the minute structure of the tissues does not permit the inference that these creatures have community of descent.' It is very curious that Mr. Darwin and many of his supporters seem to think that all men who do not support evolution must believe in separate creations.
[65] 'Proceedings of the Royal Society,' vol. xv., p. 433 (Philosophical Magazine, vol. xxxiv., 1867, p. 144); Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. ix., 1869, pp. 43 and 358; Monthly Microscopical Journal, vol. iii., 1870, p. 299; Quarterly Journal of Science, new ser., vol. i., 1870, p. 64.
ART. VIII.--The Session.
The wearisome assertion that the last session of Parliament has been a 'barren' one, has become a sort of political axiom among a large section of the community. Writers and speakers innumerable assume it as a self-evident fact, which no sane person would dream of disputing. It is, nevertheless, our serious intention to dispute it, and, moreover, to prove that the session, so far from being utterly barren, has produced a legislative harvest of more than average fruitfulness. Putting aside the last two sessions, and that which witnessed the triumph of free trade, we have no hesitation in saying that no session since the first Reform Bill has produced so many measures of equal importance as the last session. It would not be difficult to point to session after session during that period which, for any good the country has derived from their labours, might as well have never been. But no one can say that with truth of the session that has just gone by. On the contrary, we believe that it will be regarded a few years hence as one of the most important sessions of this century. To those who choose to echo an unreasoning cry, rather than take the trouble to think for themselves, this will, no doubt, appear a wild assertion. But what are the facts? The present Parliament was elected chiefly for the purpose of settling the Irish question, and the sessions of 1869-1870 were devoted almost exclusively to the affairs of Ireland. The Irish Church Bill and the Land Bill, however, having been settled, there seemed to be a kind of general understanding that the session of 1871 should be given up to the consideration of English, or at least imperial interests. Ireland accordingly hardly occupied any place in the programme of the session. And yet, in the very region where it was expected, as a matter of course, to be peculiarly barren, the session of 1871 has borne a crop of goodly fruit. Let us glance at a few of the Irish measures of the session.
'It is the very ancient privilege of the people of England,' says Edmund Burke, 'that they shall be tried, except in the known exceptions, not by the judges appointed by the Crown, but by their own fellow-subjects.' Trial by jury has probably exercised more influence than any other institution in moulding our national character, and in impressing on it especially that inborn reverence for law which has become proverbial. But with that singular perverseness which has characterized all our dealings with Ireland for centuries, we not only imposed our own institutions on that unhappy country, but we imposed them shorn of all that which made them precious to Englishmen. This is true in an aggravated sense of trial by jury. The very essence of trial by jury is, as Burke has observed, that the accused 'shall be tried, not by the judges appointed by the Crown, but by his own fellow-subjects.' But how did we carry out this principle in Ireland, in the case of political prisoners in particular? By simply ignoring it. We retained the name and the forms of trial by jury, but we so perverted its intention and spirit, that what Englishmen regard as the palladium of their liberty became in Ireland the symbol of every species of injustice and wrong. When it was an object with the authorities of Dublin Castle to secure the conviction of a prisoner, they never hesitated to pack the jury that tried him. Names which ought to have been on the panel were systematically and arbitrarily excluded, and the jury-box was filled with men of whom it might have been predicted with tolerable certainty beforehand that they would bring in a verdict of guilty. Let us illustrate our argument by a typical example. In 1844, the Government of the day succeeded in getting a verdict of guilty against Mr. O'Connell, a man of whom Macaulay has declared truth that 'the place which he held in the estimation of his countrymen was such as no popular leader in our history, I might perhaps say in the history of the world, has ever attained.' If ever there was an occasion when the Government should have been scrupulously careful to administer justice fairly, it was the trial of O'Connell; for the eyes not only of Ireland, but of all Europe, were upon them. But so inveterate had the habit of managing verdicts become in Ireland, that on a crucial occasion, when trial by jury itself might be said to be on its trial, the authorities shamelessly packed the jury which sat in judgment on the great tribune. Twenty-seven names were omitted from the panel which ought to have been on it. And then from 'this mutilated jury-list,' as Macaulay indignantly calls it, forty-eight names were taken by lot. 'And then'--we must tell the rest of the story in Macaulay's burning language--
'And then came the striking. You struck out all the Roman Catholic names; and you give us your reasons for striking out these names, reasons which I do not think it worth while to examine. The real question which you should have considered was this: Can a great issue between two hostile religions--for such the issue was--be tried in a manner above all suspicion by a jury composed exclusively of men of one of those religions? I know that in striking out the Roman Catholics you did nothing that was not according to technical rules. But my great charge against you is that you have looked on this whole case in a technical point of view, that you have been attorneys when you should have been statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with you; but not the noble spirit of the law. The jury de medietate linguæ is of immemorial antiquity among us. Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is accused of stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit is decided by a mixed body of six Englishmen and six Dutchmen. Such were the securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave to aliens. You are ready enough to call Mr. O'Connell an alien, when it serves your purposes to do so. You are ready enough to inflict on the Irish Roman Catholics all the evils of alienage, but the one privilege, the one advantage of alienage, you deny him. In a case which of all cases most required a jury de medietate, in a case which sprang out of the mutual hostility of races and sects, you pack a jury all of one race and all of one sect.... Yes, you have obtained a verdict of Guilty; but you have obtained that verdict from twelve men brought together by illegal means, and selected in such a manner that their decision can inspire no confidence.'--(Macaulay's Speeches, p. 314.)
Now let it be observed that this system, which treated the Roman Catholics of Ireland as aliens in their own country, and at the same time denied them the rights and privileges of aliens, has been in force up to this year. And yet many on this side of the Channel are innocently surprised that the Irish people have no great reverence for English law, and no great love for British institutions; and so they rashly conclude that the only way to govern such a lawless race is by the strong arm of power. But the simple fact is, that the Irish from time immemorial have been remarkable for their love of justice. To this fact their bitterest enemies bear witness. In that category may certainly be reckoned Sir John Davys, Irish Attorney-General under James I.; yet this is the testimony which he bears:--'There is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it be against themselves, so as they may have the benefit and protection of the law when upon just cause they do desire it.' 'The truth is,' he adds, 'that in time of peace the Irish are more fearful to offend the law than the English, or any other nation whatsoever.' That simple expression, 'in time of peace,' explains the whole matter. English law has unfortunately too often presented itself to the people of Ireland as a cruel enemy, against which it was a duty and a necessity to wage a chronic warfare; and it is no great marvel if they take some time to learn that their enemy of yesterday has suddenly become their friend. We have no faith in sudden political conversions, especially in the case of nations; and we do not despair of Mr. Gladstone's legislation for Ireland, because we find that its healing properties are percolating but slowly through the crust of inevitable prejudice which it had to encounter. We must persevere in the good work, and Mr. Gladstone has shown his earnestness in the ungrateful task of conciliating Ireland by passing last session several measures of great importance to the welfare of that country. Chief and foremost among them is the Juries (Ireland) Bill. It is an elaborate piece of remedial legislation, though it passed through Parliament without exciting attention, and it cannot fail to produce an excellent effect in Ireland, as its character becomes gradually known. It will no longer be possible for the most violent partisan to pack a jury in Ireland, and we may reasonably trust that in process of time Irishmen will learn to appeal to English justice with a confidence to which they have been so long strangers.
Another Irish measure of great importance which received the sanction of the Legislature last session is the Local Government (Ireland) Act. Its clauses are thirty-two in number, and its object is to amend the law relating to the local government of towns and populous places in Ireland. It is not necessary to go through its provisions, but we may say that their general effect is to make all illegality and corruption in municipal elections and in the elections of local commissioners impossible, or at least perilous; to put a stop to anything like jobbing or any corrupt expenditure of public money by the governing bodies of towns; to extend to Ireland, with the necessary modifications, the provisions with regard to the public health which prevail in England; and to empower the governing bodies and ratepayers of all towns in Ireland to obtain lands at a cheap rate, to unite or separate districts, and to alter rates. Another clause of the bill empowers the Lord Lieutenant, with the approval of the Treasury, to create a new Local Government Department of the Chief Secretary's office, 'the salaries of such persons to be paid out of the moneys to be provided by Parliament for such purpose.' The tendency of the whole bill is to develop the faculty of self-government throughout Ireland, and to give the country 'home rule' in the only sense in which that boon would be practicable or beneficial. What is needful above all things is to instil into the minds of the Irish people habits of self-reliance and a respect for English law; and the two bills which have elicited these observations are most valuable contributions to that result. Viewing them in all their bearings, we are bold to say that if the session had produced nothing else, these two bills alone would have redeemed it from the reproach of being a 'barren' session. In the election campaign of 1868, Mr. Gladstone described Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as a great upas tree which was casting its baleful shadow over the whole land; and ever since he has been in office he has set himself vigorously and with unwearied patience not merely to cut down the wide-spreading branches of that fatal tree, but to root up one by one the noxious growths which flourished beneath its friendly shade. The Jury Bill and the Local Government Act are the natural fruits of the Church Bill and the Land Bill. It would have been impossible to pass them while Protestant ascendancy existed. Other Irish bills have been passed this session which, though of less importance than those we have named, have a very practical bearing on the well-being and conciliation of Ireland. Yet all these measures have been simply ignored in the various criticisms of the session which have come under our notice. As if, forsooth! the prosperity and contentment of Ireland were not of the last consequence to the empire at large.
So much for the work of the Government in the field of Irish legislation. Let us now turn to its tale of successful measures in matters of English and imperial policy.
The Army Bill demands, of course, the first and chief place in our review; and we must remark, in limine, on the singular ill-luck which overtook the Government in introducing it. During the autumn and winter of last year, the country very generally, and even passionately, demanded a large scheme of army reorganization. Radicals and Conservatives differed, no doubt, in their views of what was desirable in a good scheme of army reform. The latter wished merely to supplement and improve the existing system, which they considered as near perfection as could reasonably be expected. The former were not quite agreed among themselves. Some had a hankering after the Prussian system, and some preferred the Swiss. But Conservatives, Whigs, and Liberals were all agreed on one point, namely, that Mr. Cardwell's scheme ought to be a large and comprehensive one, and that a large and comprehensive scheme involved expense. The Conservatives wished that expense to go towards the enlargement and perfecting of the old system. On the other hand, the Liberals, as a body, demanded the abolition of the purchase system, and the development of a new system in its place. But all admitted the necessity of a considerable expenditure, and there was a general acquiescence throughout the country in the prospect of an increased income-tax. Meanwhile Bourbaki made his fatal march to the frontier, Chanzy's army was defeated and scattered, and Paris was obliged to capitulate. The preliminaries of peace were agreed upon soon afterwards, and the Eastern question, which Prince Gortschakoff had reopened in so insolent a manner, was in a fair way to a pacific solution.
The return of calm after so violent a storm in the political firmament soon began to tell on English nerves; the panic which prompted, during the bewildering achievements of the German armies, the cry for an efficient scheme of army reform subsided by degrees as the danger of war receded from our shores, and even 'The Battle of Dorking' failed to impress the British taxpayer with any fear of an imminent invasion. The consequence was, that by the time Mr. Cardwell laid his scheme before Parliament, the enthusiasm for army reorganization had cooled down to the temperate, and among some philosophical Radicals, even to the frigid zone. The measure of the Government was admitted on all hands to be thorough and comprehensive, and it received the cordial acquiescence of the country. But the panic was over, and, as a consequence, there was an absence of that enthusiastic support which enables a minister to defeat summarily anything like an attempt at an organized system of factious opposition. Had the Franco-German war ended two months earlier than it did, it is questionable whether the Government would have received sufficient encouragement to attack the purchase system, considering the expense which its abolition entailed on the country. There can be no question that if Mr. Gladstone had taken up the subject and made it his own, as he did the Irish Church Bill and the Land Bill, he could at any time have commanded such support from the country as would have carried all opposition before it. One or two rousing speeches from him, exposing the manifold evils of the purchase system, and explaining the plan of the Government, would have done the thing. But the misfortune of Mr. Cardwell was that he elaborated and matured his scheme at a time when the country was prepared for almost any expense that would give us an army which would secure the safety of the empire, and enable us to hold our proper place in the councils of Europe; and that he propounded his scheme when the looming spectre of increased taxation appeared a more tangible evil than the danger of a foreign invasion. The Opposition availed itself adroitly, if not very patriotically, of the turn of the tide, and wooed the aid of the extreme Radicals by the cry of extravagant expenditure. Nor did it cry altogether in vain. There are a few Radicals in the House of Commons who cannot forgive Mr. Gladstone for being a Christian. That a man of his commanding genius and varied acquirements should still retain the faith of his childhood is an enigma to them. But that he should ever presume to baulk their efforts to sap and overthrow its foundations is an offence to them; and, if the truth must be told, they would far rather have a leader of the Epicurean type of Lord Palmerston or Mr. Disraeli. One or two of these pseudo-Liberals have been practically in opposition all through the session, and we shall be curious to see how they defend themselves before their constituents when the day of reckoning comes. One fact at all events is certain: it was in a great measure through the help which they gave to the Opposition that the session has not been more fruitful than it has been. Whenever the Opposition wished to waste a night in purposeless debate, the manoeuvre was sure to be seconded by this handful of Voltairean Radicals below the gangway.
Such are the circumstances under which the Government introduced their Army Bill. But it is impossible to appreciate the importance of that bill, or to understand the virulence of the opposition which it encountered, without glancing at the evil which it sought to remedy. When the Government resolved to ask the assent of Parliament to a large scheme of army reform, they found themselves hampered and fettered on all sides by the purchase system. The army was enclosed in a network of vested interests which it was found impossible to break through for the purpose of effecting even so slight a reform as the abolition of the ranks of ensign and cornet. It had, in fact, ceased to be the property of the nation, and was no longer under the control of the sovereign. It had become mortgaged to the officers, and it was absolutely necessary to get it out of pawn before it could be effectually dealt with. In short, the purchase system must cease to exist, or all ideas of army reorganization must be abandoned. Does anyone think this too strong a statement of the case? Let him consider the history of the purchase system, and he will think so no longer.
We have been told ad nauseam that the purchase system has been the mainstay of the British army. The bravery of our officers, their well-bred manners, their discipline, even their patriotism and loyalty, have all been ascribed to the magic of the purchase system, and so has the esprit de corps of the men. Now it seems to us that there is a hitch in this style of reasoning, inasmuch as it implies that the things which happen to exist together are necessarily related to each other as cause and effect. The officers of the British army may be all that their admirers declare them to be,--on that point we shall have something to say presently--but it by no means follows that the purchase system is the cause of their excellence. Nearly all the merits which are claimed for the purchase system were conspicuous in the German army in the last war; yet the purchase system is unknown in the German army, and, in fact, in every army in the civilized world, England alone excepted. Nor, indeed, does it embrace the whole of the English army. The navy and the marines, the artillery and the engineers know it not. Its advocates are therefore forced to this dilemma: they must deny to the navy and to the non-purchase corps of the army all those qualities which they claim as resulting from the purchase system, or they are bound to admit that those qualities are independent of the purchase system, and may continue to exist without it. For our own part, we have no doubt whatever that the many admirable qualities of the British officer are not only independent of the purchase system, but that they remain in spite of it; for the purchase system, as it has been in practice among us, is essentially a demoralizing system. We say as it has been in practice among us, because the purchase system and the illegal custom of paying more than the regulation price for the value of commissions have been proved to be inseparable. This has been demonstrated by the Royal Commission which examined into the subject last year. The payment of over-regulation prices has been forbidden in every variety of form for more than a century, but it has grown and prospered on its prohibitions. On a revision of the prices of commissions, in 1766, by a board of general officers, a royal warrant was issued, which contains the following stringent order with respect to over-regulation prices:--'We having approved of the same (i. e., the prices recommended by the board), our will and pleasure is, that in all cases where we shall permit any of the commissions specified therein to be sold,[66] the sum to be paid for the same shall not exceed the prices set down in the said report. And all colonels, agents and others, our military officers, are hereby required and directed to conform strictly and carefully to the regulation hereby laid down and established, upon pain of our highest displeasure.' In 1772 and 1773, some other royal warrants were issued, prohibiting over-regulation prices in equally peremptory terms. Still the unlawful traffic went on unchecked, and in 1783 another step was taken to put a stop to it. A general order was issued by the Commander-in-Chief requiring every officer, in sending his application for leave to dispose of his commission at the regulated price, 'solemnly to declare, on the word and honour of an officer and a gentleman, that nothing beyond the price limited by his Majesty's regulations was stipulated or promised, directly or indirectly, and that no other mode of compensation or gratuity was in contemplation of the parties, or should be given or accepted in respect of such sale or purchase.' A similar declaration was required of the officer desiring to purchase. He 'expressly pledged his word and honour as an officer and a gentleman that he would not, either then, or at any future time, give, by any means or in any shape whatever, directly or indirectly, anymore than the regulated price.' The commanding officer of the regiment was further required to declare that he verily believed the established regulation with regard to price was intended to be strictly complied with, and that no clandestine bargain subsisted between the parties concerned. This prohibition was extended to cases of exchange from half-pay to full-pay, and from one corps to another. The commanding officer was at the same time ordered to transmit the names of such officers in the regiment as were willing to purchase in succession; and in cases where the commanding officer recommended a junior for promotion over a senior's head, he was to give his reasons for such recommendation. It appears, therefore, that in establishing the rule of seniority, tempered by selection, in regimental promotion, Mr. Cardwell has simply revived an item of military reform attempted about ninety years ago. But not to dwell on that, the general order from which we have been quoting went on to clench its prohibition of over-regulation prices in the following explicit language:--
'His Majesty has, by the advice of his board of general officers, been further pleased to declare his determination that any officer who shall be found to have given, or to have stipulated, or promised, directly or indirectly, to give anything beyond the regulated price, in disobedience to these his Majesty's orders, or by any subterfuge or equivocation to have evaded the same, and to have thereby shamefully forfeited his honour as an officer and a gentleman, shall be dismissed from his Majesty's service.'
Still the evil went on. Officers found means of evading the law and escaping punishment, apparently without any prejudice to their honour as officers and gentlemen in the eyes of the profession. Three years later, therefore, that is, in 1786, another attempt was made to compel British officers to keep their solemn and plighted word of honour; for it came to that. A circular letter was addressed by the Secretary of War to colonels of regiments, forbidding officers about to retire to make any stipulation as to their successors, and insisting that they should sell out or exchange 'in favour of such persons as his Majesty should think fit to approve.' For it was discovered that by leaving officers at liberty to select their successors they found means to elude the strict orders prohibiting over-regulation prices.
In 1804, two circulars were issued by the Commander-in-Chief, one addressed to army agents against the secret traffic in respect to commissions, carried on with officers of the army; the other to commanding officers of regiments, giving them precise directions, which were to be strictly observed, in the purchase and sale of all commissions. This paper states that 'his Majesty's regulations in regard to the sums to be given and received for commissions in the army,' had 'in various instances been disregarded.' The previous orders on the subject are therefore repeated, and then 'the Commander-in-Chief thinks proper to declare that any officer who shall be found to have given, directly or indirectly, anything beyond the regulated prices, in disobedience to his Majesty's orders, or to have attempted to evade the regulations in any manner whatever, will be reported by the Commander-in-Chief to his Majesty, in order that he may be removed from the service.' Up to this time, and for three years more, the prohibition of payments in excess of the regulation price rested entirely on royal warrants and regulations. In 1807, however, a clause was inserted in the Mutiny Act, making it a misdemeanor for any agents to traffic in the sale of commissions, since 'great inconvenience had arisen to his Majesty's service,' from the fact that 'much larger sums than are allowed by his Majesty's regulations are often given and received for commissions, and great frauds committed.' This is the first Parliamentary condemnation of over-regulation prices, and it will be observed that the enactment applies to army agents only; officers are not included. But in the year 1809, an Act was passed for the 'Further Prevention of the Sale and Brokerage of Offices,' and in that Act Parliamentary sanction is given for the first time to the various prohibitions of over-regulation prices by royal warrant. Not only was an officer to be immediately cashiered who paid, received, or connived at the payment of over-regulation prices, but further, 'as an encouragement for the detection of such practices, such commission so forfeited shall be sold, and half the regulated value (not exceeding £500) shall be paid to the informer.'
It is not necessary to follow the various alterations which the Mutiny Act underwent in 1815-1829, for they are of no great importance. But it is time that we should take stock of our inquiry thus far, and endeavour to gauge the influence of the purchase system on the character of the officers affected by it, as attested by competent witnesses. It is obvious that up to the period at which we have now arrived, that is, up to the year 1829, the payment of over-regulation prices was found to be practically inseparable from the purchase system. Nothing could have been done to stop it which was not done, except the detection and condign punishment of the offenders. The Sovereign, the Commander-in-Chief, the War Secretary, and Parliament, all set their faces against the illegal traffic, and fulminated threats and penal enactments against it; but all their efforts proved unavailing, because there was an evident conspiracy among the general body of officers to defeat the law, and, it is sad to add, to dishonour their own word. For let it be remembered that the officer who sold, and the officer who bought, and the commanding officer of the regiment in which the transaction took place, were all required 'solemnly to declare,' and did 'solemnly declare on the word and honour of an officer and a gentleman,' that, 'neither directly nor indirectly,' had anything been paid or stipulated for beyond the regulated price. And yet it was notorious that officers were constantly in the habit of evading all their engagements 'by subterfuge or equivocation,' and were thereby habitually violating their plighted word, or, to quote again the language of the royal warrant, 'had thereby shamefully forfeited their honour as officers and gentlemen.'
Now, we should be inclined to say, à priori, that a system which encouraged and enabled officers in the army to 'shamefully forfeit their honour as officers and gentlemen,' could not fail to have a vicious and demoralizing influence, not only on their professional character as officers, but on their whole ἦθος as men. The Duke of Wellington has often been quoted in recent debates as having said that he had an army 'which could go anywhere and do anything.' No doubt the Duke of Wellington succeeded, by dint of hard fighting, and the rare qualities which he possessed as a commander, to manufacture such an army out of the materials that came to his hand; but that was by no means the kind of army which the purchase system gave him. On the contrary, he was continually complaining, up to Waterloo, of the ignorance, the stupidity, the insubordination, and, in short, the general inefficiency of his officers. He could trust them in nothing, he said; for they either could not understand and execute his commands, or they deliberately disobeyed them. And in some cases he found them shirking their duties, and asking permission to return to England on trivial pleas. But it will be better to let the Duke speak for himself. On the 15th of May, 1811, he wrote to the Earl of Liverpool a letter, in which he expresses great vexation at the escape of 1,400 of the enemy, although he had 'employed two divisions and a brigade to prevent their escape,' and 'had done everything that could be done in the way of order and instruction.' And then he goes on to add:--
'I certainly feel every day more and more the difficulty of the situation in which I am placed. I am obliged to be everywhere, and if absent from any operation something goes wrong. It is to be hoped that the general and other officers of the army will at last acquire that experience which will teach them that success can be attained only by attention to the most minute details, and by tracing every part of every operation from its origin to its conclusion, point by point, and ascertaining that the whole is understood by those who are to execute it.'
In another letter to the Earl of Liverpool, dated July 20, 1811, he recommends
'the adoption of the rule which I have made in respect to staff appointments attached to the British army, viz., that those who hold them shall receive no emolument on account of them if absent from their duty on account of their health for a greater length of time than two months, unless their absence should have been occasioned by wounds.'
He thinks that this rule will probably be considered harsh, but he insists on it as necessary, on account of 'the abuse of sick certificates.' In a letter dated 29th September, 1811, and also addressed to the Earl of Liverpool, he uses the following strong language:--
'I must also observe that British officers require to be kept in order, as well as the soldiers under their command, particularly in a foreign service. The experience which I have had of their conduct in the Portuguese service has shown me that there must be an authority, and that a strong one, to keep them within due bounds; otherwise they would only disgust the soldiers over whom they should be placed, the officers whom they should be destined to assist, and the country in whose service they should be employed.'
Again:--
'The ignorance of their duty of the officers of the army who are every day arriving in this country, and the general inattention and disobedience to orders by many of those who have been long here, increase the details of the duty to such an extent as to render it almost impracticable to carry it on; and owing to this disobedience and neglect, I can depend upon nothing, however well regulated and ordered.'--Letter to Lieut.-General Hill, Oct. 13, 1811.
At Freneda, on the 19th of February, 1813, he issued the following general order:--
'The commander of the forces is concerned to be obliged to notice such repeated disobedience to orders on every subject. It might have been expected that in a case in which the convenience of the officers themselves was the object of the orders issued, they would have been obeyed; but the general officers and commanding officers of regiments may depend upon it that until they enforce obedience to every order, and see that the officers under them understand and recollect what is ordered, those subjects of complaint must exist.'
The following letter shows what the Duke meant when he said that he had an army that would 'go anywhere and do anything.' In the rank and file he had splendid material, but here is his description of the kind of officers which the purchase system gave him:--
'I have received your letter of the 5th, and I am sorry that I cannot recommend ---- for promotion, because I have had him in arrest since the battle for disobeying an order given to him by me verbally. The fact is, that if discipline means habits of obedience to orders, as well as military instruction, we have but little of it in the army. Nobody ever thinks of obeying an order; and all the regulations of the Horse Guards, as well as of the War Office, and all the orders of the army applicable to this peculiar service, are so much waste paper. It is, however, an unrivalled army for fighting, if the soldiers can only be kept in their ranks during the battle; but it wants some of those qualities which are indispensable to enable a general to bring them into the field in the order in which an army ought to be to meet an enemy, or to take all the advantage to be derived from a victory; and the cause of these defects is the want of habits of obedience and attention to orders by the inferior officers; and indeed, I might add, by all. They never attend to an order with an intention to obey it, or sufficiently to understand it, be it ever so clear, and therefore never obey it when obedience becomes troublesome, or difficult, or important.'--Letter to Colonel Torrens, dated July 18, 1813.
Two more extracts from the Duke of Wellington's correspondence must suffice for this part of our survey:--
'I really believe that, with the exception of my old Spanish infantry, I have got not only the worst troops, but the worst equipped army, with the worst staff, that was ever brought together.'--Letter to Earl Bathurst, dated June 25, 1815.
In the same letter he goes on to complain of an officer who 'knows no more of his business than a child, and I am obliged to do it for him; and, after all, I cannot get him to do what I order him.'
For the following extract we are indebted to an able pamphlet entitled 'The Purchase System,' by the author of 'The Second Armada:'--
'Our officer is a gentleman.... Indeed, we carry this principle of the gentleman, and the objection of intercourse with those under his command, so far, as that, in my opinion, the duty of a subaltern officer, as done in a foreign army, is not done at all in the cavalry or the British infantry of the line. It is done in the Guards by the sergeants. Then our gentleman-officer, however admirable his conduct in the field, however honourable to himself, however glorious and advantageous to his country, is but a poor creature in disciplining his company, in camp, quarters or cantonments.'--Letter of Duke of Wellington, dated April 22, 1829.
Our inquiry has now led us to this result. The purchase system and the abuse of over-regulation prices have been found to be so bound up together that all efforts to destroy the one while retaining the other have always ended in the most signal failure; and the demoralizing influence of the whole system was such that the officers of the British army were in the habit of 'shamefully forfeiting their honour as officers and gentlemen,' and were utterly incompetent, the Duke of Wellington being witness, to fill the most ordinary duties of their profession. In none of the extracts, however, which we have quoted from the Duke of Wellington's published despatches does he directly attribute the evils of which he complains to the purchase system, with its inseparable concomitant, the payment of over-regulation prices. His mind was too much occupied with the daily labour of correcting the faults of his officers to find time to analyze the causes of which those faults were the natural offspring. Here and there, however, we find indications that the inefficiency of his officers and the system of purchase were in his mind intimately connected. This, at all events, is the sense in which we read the following extract from a letter to the Commissary-in-Chief, dated November 6, 1810:--
'I may be wrong, but I have objections to all those rules which prevent the promotion of officers of merit. It is the abuse of the unlimited power of promotion which ought to be prevented; but the power itself ought not to be taken, by regulation, from the Crown, or from those who do the business of the Crown. By these regulations we are undermining as fast as possible the efficiency of the Government. There is no power anywhere of rewarding extraordinary services or extraordinary merit; and, under circumstances which require unwearied attention in every branch and department of our military system, we appear to be framing regulations to prevent ourselves from commanding it by the only stimulus--the honourable reward of merit.'
It is plain that this criticism strikes at the very root and essence of the purchase system; nor is it the only criticism of the kind that the Duke of Wellington has left on record. In March, 1824, the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York, submitted to the Duke of Wellington, then Master of the Ordnance, three plans of military reform which he had in contemplation. Those plans, unfortunately, are not given, but we gather from the correspondence between the Duke and Major-General Sir Herbert Taylor, that it was proposed, among other things, 'to stop all regimental promotion by purchase, and on the retirement of an officer the successor to be selected by the Commander-in-Chief from the general mass.' It is impossible, without having the whole correspondence before us, clearly to make out what the Duke's views were on this point; but it is obvious that this part of the scheme is in the fullest accord with the opinions expressed by him in the passage last quoted; and we may therefore presume that, if he could have seen his way to any fair and practicable plan for abolishing purchase, he would have given it his support. But, however that may be, one thing is beyond all doubt--the Duke of Wellington condemned absolutely and peremptorily the payment of over-regulation prices. Witness the following passage in his letter to Sir Herbert Taylor, dated 'London, 17th March, 1824:'--
'I would forbid any brokers to interfere, and would declare the determination of the Commander-in-Chief to recommend to his Majesty to cancel the grant of any commission granted in consequence of any negotiation with them. I would likewise recommend to his Royal Highness to declare to the army his determination to recommend to his Majesty to cancel any commission granted for which it shall appear that the officer appointed to it has paid more than the regulated price, and to dismiss from his Majesty's service any colonel or commanding officer of a regiment who may appear to have forwarded or recommended such appointment, knowing that more than the regulated price had been, or was to be, paid for it.'
'I am afraid,' he adds despondingly, 'that much of what I above proposed is difficult to carry into execution, and, as I have above stated, it may be impossible to prevent the evil altogether.' In his reply, Sir Herbert Taylor reminded the Duke that the payment of over-regulation prices was already forbidden by Act of Parliament, and that the prohibition was sanctioned by the imposition of penalties which were, in fact, severer than those suggested by the Duke. 'But in either case the difficulty is to establish the proof, without which the promotion could not be cancelled, nor the officer himself, or those parties to the transaction, dismissed the service.' What stronger proof could we have that the illegal and immoral traffic in over-regulation prices clung, as an inseparable parasite, to the purchase system, and could be destroyed only by cutting down the trunk which supported it?
We have now arrived at the year 1824. Up to that time the regulation was still in force which obliged every officer who was in any way concerned in any step of regimental promotion to declare on his solemn word of honour as an officer and a gentleman that he was not, directly or indirectly, privy to any payment made or stipulated for beyond the regulation price. But this pledge was deliberately and systematically violated. 'Upon this point,' says the Duke of Wellington, in the letter to Sir Herbert Taylor already quoted, 'I believe we are all agreed, as likewise that the certificate upon honour is useless; that it is commonly signed whether the contents are known to be true or known to be otherwise, and that on this ground alone it ought to be discontinued.' Now let the reader just pause for a moment, and consider what this implies. It means that the officer who retired, the officer who succeeded him, and the commanding officer of the regiment in which the transaction took place, all pledged their word and honour as officers and gentlemen to a declaration which they knew to be a lie. Nor were they a small minority who so acted--a minority looked down upon by the general body of their brother officers as men who had disgraced themselves. On the contrary, this practice of dishonouring their plighted word was all but universal wherever the system of purchase prevailed. At the very time when the Duke of Wellington was bringing this serious indictment against the truthfulness and honour of British officers, there was a debate going on in the House of Commons on the Mutiny Act; and it was proposed to abolish the certificate upon honour, on the ground that there was 'scarcely one case in ten in which officers received their commissions at the regulated price.' 'Scarcely one case in ten' in which British officers did not violate their word of honour and subscribe their names to a lie! And to perpetuate a system which produced this result, some two hundred gentlemen in the House of Commons and a majority in the House of Lords had recourse this session to tactics which, but for the resolution of the Premier, would have wasted the best part of the session, and brought an amount of discredit on Parliament from which it might have found it hard to recover. But more of that anon. In pity to the frail virtue of the British officer, the certificate upon honour was abolished in April, 1824, and has not since been revived. But the illegality of over-regulation prices was at the same time reaffirmed, and the same penalties, which had proved so unavailing, were reiterated.
This is briefly, but substantially, the history of the question up to this year. 'The result of our inquiry,' says the Royal Commission of 1870, 'is that the payment and the receipt by officers of the army of any sum in excess of the regulated price for the purchase, sale, or exchange of commissions is expressly prohibited by the Act of 49 Geo. III. c. 126.' Indeed, it was impossible that the commissioners could have come to any other conclusion. The facts are too plain to admit of more than one interpretation; and, moreover, the courts of justice had already ruled the point. In a case that came before him in 1855, the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer decided that an undertaking by an officer to give up his commission in a regiment in consideration of a sum of money promised him beyond the regulated price, was an illegal transaction, and brought the parties concerned within the provisions and penalties of the Act of 49 Geo. III. c. 126. This construction of the Act was confirmed, in 1862, by the Court of Common Pleas. Yet this illegal practice has lived and thrived up to this very year, in spite of all the attempts made at various times to put it down. 'We have no reason to doubt,' says the Report of the Royal Commission of 1870, 'that it prevailed from the time when the prices of commissions were first fixed in the year 1719-20;' and 'experience has shown that the most explicit prohibitions and the most stringent regulations have utterly failed to prevent or even check the practice.' Is there need of further evidence to prove that it was impossible to destroy the illegal and degrading practice of over-regulation prices without the entire abolition of the purchase system?
We have seen how completely the officers reared under the purchase system failed in all the requirements of their profession during the Peninsular War. Is there any reason to believe that the same class of officers would come scathless out of a similar ordeal now? Doubtless, the officers of the British army have participated in the general advancement of society in knowledge and in other respects during the last fifty years. But has their improvement been in anything like the same ratio as that visible in other professions? We seriously doubt it. We believe, indeed, that we have now a far larger proportion of able and highly-trained officers than we had when the Duke of Wellington expressed the opinions which we have quoted. Still, taking our officers in the aggregate, we believe that they are far below the standard even of respectable competency. This, at all events, is the frank confession of a distinguished officer, who happens, in addition, to be a strenuous upholder of the purchase system. In his evidence before the Royal Commission on military education in 1869, Lord Strathnairn declared as follows:--
'These mistakes (which he had just mentioned) consist in officers giving the wrong words of command, and being unable to execute necessary, and often the simplest movements. Some officers of long standing, and even commanding officers, are ignorant of the simple but important detail, the difference between a change of front and a change of position.... Movements are learnt by rote for the occasion.... Hence, at my inspections, in India as well as in Ireland, of regiments, when I have asked officers the object of evolutions in the book, or called on them to perform simple strategical movements adapted to them, I have found that they are ignorant of their use or the advantage to be derived from them in operations.... As officers are uninstructed in the first principles of practical or field operations and movements, they are equally in the dark as to those of a higher order, or which are connected with ground.... The whole course of my evidence goes to prove that, owing to a mistaken system of education and training, and want of reward for merit, the absence of proper qualifications, of course with exceptions, exists in all grades, including that of commanding officers.'
These opinions do not greatly differ from those which the Duke of Wellington expressed in Spain sixty years ago, and we believe that they would be confirmed by every competent authority; indeed, they are abundantly confirmed in the voluminous Blue Book from which we have extracted them. Now, this professional ignorance is a much more serious matter in our time than it was when the Duke of Wellington was fighting against the armies of Napoleon; for in the scientific mastery of his profession the British officer of that day was probably not far behind the officers against whom he was pitted. On both sides the art of war was learnt, for the most part, in the field, and under the tuition of the two great captains of the age. There is very little doubt that, but for the genius of Wellington, the Peninsular campaign would have ended, as far as the British army was concerned, in disaster and ignominy. But the conditions of warfare have been greatly changed since then. Arms of precision, and other improvements in the mechanics of war, have an increasing tendency to diminish the value of individual dash and pluck, and to exalt in a relative proportion the importance of professional skill. The most admirable combinations on the part of a general may now, much more easily than heretofore, be defeated by the bungling of a subordinate. The intelligence and precision with which superior orders were executed by the youngest subalterns in the German army during the late war was a theme of general admiration; and is it not clear that an army equal to the German in all other respects, but inferior to it in this all-important point, must have been inevitably worsted? But subalterns are the raw material out of which generals are made, and it stands to reason, taking human nature as it is, that when you take from men the ordinary incentives to exertion, they are not likely to arrive at any high degree of excellence in their calling. A system which promotes the indolent rich dullard over the industrious poor man of brains, is sure to damp the energies of both: of the one because his money enables him to obtain without labour what he covets; of the other, because he knows that, without money, industry and brains are of no avail. The Duke of Cambridge, in his evidence before the Royal Commission of 1870, stated, as the result of his experience, that rich young men, having fewer motives for exertion than others, would not take the trouble to excel in their profession. But rich young men are precisely the class of officers who are cherished by the purchase system--men who join the army for a few years as a fashionable pastime, but who have never had any serious intention to make the profession of arms the business of their life. It is notorious, on the other hand, that the purchase system keeps in subordinate ranks many men who have genius to command armies. Now and then they come to the surface in the general sifting which real war occasions, but only after much mischief has meanwhile been done by the incapacity of those whom the accident of having a heavier purse had placed over their heads. The Indian Mutiny discovered the talents of Sir Henry Havelock, who had been purchased over so often that he was constrained to speak thus of himself in his fifty-sixth year:--'The honour of an old soldier on the point of having his juniors put over him is so sensitive that, if I had no family to support, and the right of choice in my own hands, I would not serve one hour longer.' Lord Clyde, in his evidence before the Commission of 1856, says:--'I have known very many estimable men, having higher qualities as officers than usual, men of real promise and merit, and well educated, but who could not purchase; when such men were purchased over, their ardour cooled, and they frequently left the service; or, when they continued, it was from necessity, and not from any love of the profession.' In fact, Lord Clyde was himself a conspicuous example of the mischief of the purchase system. He had several times been purchased over, and, but for the Crimean War, it is probable that he would never have commanded an army.
Where, indeed, can we find a stronger argument against the purchase system than in the Crimean war itself? The gallantry and endurance of men and officers alike were beyond all praise. But when that admission has been made, what else can be said with truth in praise of that campaign? Was it not, all through, one dreary series of military blunders and general mismanagement unrelieved by one single ray of military genius engendered by the purchase system? A French General is said to have characterized the British troops at Inkerman as 'an army of lions led by asses.' Whether the epigram was really uttered by the General in question, or was one of the inventions of the British camp, it certainly expressed a very general feeling both at home and in the Crimean army.
Another objection to the purchase system is, that it sets a premium on cowardice. According to a return furnished by Messrs. Cox and Co., who are agents for twenty-one regiments of cavalry, and one hundred and twelve battalions of infantry, exclusive of the household cavalry and brigade of Guards, the following is a correct statement of the regulation prices and over-regulation prices of commissions in the cavalry regiments for which they are agents:--
Regulation. Over-regulation. Total.
Cornet £450 -- £450
Lieutenant 250 £575 825
Captain 1,100 2,006 3,106
Major 1,400 1,600 3,000
Lieut.-Colonel 1,300 1,794 3,094 _______ ______ _______
£4,500 £5,975 £10,475
It appears from this statement that the average over-regulation price paid in the cavalry is more than double the present regulation price. In the infantry of the line the over-regulation price is not so high as this, but it is nevertheless considerable; and the upshot of the whole matter is that, according to the estimate furnished from Messrs. Cox's office, the sum of £3,577,325 is at this moment invested by officers in their commissions over and above the regulation price. In other words, the army, as we have already observed, is mortgaged to the officers by a long-established system of illegal traffic; and no reform was possible till that system was destroyed root and branch. But our immediate object is to show that the system really puts a premium on cowardice, or, at least, on a dereliction of patriotism. Let us take the case of the colonel who has paid upwards of £10,000 for his commission, and let us suppose him to have a family, but to have no private fortune. A war breaks out, and he is ordered on foreign service. He dies from one of the numerous causes--other than wounds which are incident to a soldier's life in a campaign--and the consequence is that his investment of £10,475 is lost for ever to his family. The only exception to this hard fate is the case of an officer killed in action, or dying within six months of wounds received in the face of the enemy. And even in that case the hardship is only mitigated, not redressed; for the families of such officers are not allowed to receive more than the value of the regulation price of the commission. We thus see that at the very moment when the officer's mind ought to be most free from all disturbing influences, it is, in reality, likely to be distracted between two conflicting duties: the duty of making provision for his family on the one hand, and the duty of sacrificing his life, if need be, for his Queen and country on the other.
Nor is death in the fulfilment of his duty the only event which involves the forfeiture of the money paid by an officer in excess of the over-regulation price. He may be dismissed from the service or may receive a hint to retire quietly on condition of being permitted to sell his commission. In either case he loses the value of his over-regulation investment. The same thing happens in the case of an officer promoted to the rank of a major-general on the fixed establishment. He cannot recover any portion of what he has paid for his commissions.
Other illustrations might be given, such as the case of officers placed on temporary half-pay in consequence of a reduction in the establishment; but enough has surely been said to show the utterly indefensible character of the purchase system, and to prove that no efficient scheme of army reorganization was possible till the system was swept clean away. Our main purpose, however, has not been to demonstrate the irretrievable badness of the purchase system, but to draw the attention of our readers to the astounding fact that, for the sake of perpetuating this rotten system, an organized attempt, almost unparalleled in the annals of Parliament, was made by an Opposition in a hopeless minority, to defeat by factious means the declared wishes of the majority, and so to waste the best part of the session. The scheme of the Government, on the motion for its second reading, was submitted to a prolonged and exhaustive debate, and on the last night of the debate, when it was evident that it would be carried by an overwhelming majority, the leader of the Opposition made a speech for the purpose of persuading his followers that, however imperfect the bill might be in details, its animus was so good as to entitle it to a favourable consideration in committee. 'The animus of the measure is purely good,' he said, 'and the proposal of the Government is the first attempt to weld the three great arms of the country--the regulars, the militia, and the volunteers--into one force.' The amendment was accordingly negatived without a division.
But by-and-bye Mr. Lowe produced his unpopular and unstatesmanlike budget, and Mr. Disraeli saw his opportunity. In the middle of March he ventured to ridicule the purchase system as
'Very much belonging to the same class of questions as a marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Each side is convinced that their solution is the only one absolutely necessary for the welfare of society; while calmer minds, who do not take so extreme an interest in the subject, are of opinion that, whatever way it may be decided, it is possible that affairs may go on much the same.'
Two or three weeks later, when Mr. Disraeli wanted to rally the colonels around him in his attack on the Government, he suddenly turned round and defended purchase with the zeal of a fanatic. And then began, under the sanction of the Opposition leader, that series of Fabian tactics which wasted so much of the session, and which, if not opposed to the letter of parliamentary usage, were certainly at variance with its spirit. It has hitherto been understood that the principle of a bill is affirmed on its second reading. Now the cardinal principle of Mr. Cardwell's bill was the abolition of purchase in the army, and it was affirmed by the House of Commons without a division. Yet the question of purchase was fought again, fiercely, over every clause, almost over every word of the bill in its passage through committee. When one amendment was disposed of, it suddenly appeared again in another shape by some ingenious abuse of the forms of the House.
At last, however, the Bill left the House of Commons, and was presented to the House of Lords in the middle of July. There it was met, on the part of the Opposition, by the following amendment:--
'That this House is unwilling to assent to a second reading of this bill until it has laid before it, either by her Majesty's Government, or through the medium of an inquiry and report of a Royal Commission, a complete and comprehensive scheme for the first appointment, promotion, and retirement of officers; for the amalgamation of the regular and auxiliary land forces; and for securing the other changes necessary to place the military system of the country on a sound and efficient basis.'[67]
Either the amendment was insincere on the face of it, or it betrayed the most culpable ignorance. Lord Northbrook had, in fact, anticipated it in a speech of remarkable ability, in which he showed that the Duke of Richmond's amendment was simply inept. For the scheme of the Government fulfilled all the conditions required by the amendment, except in the matter of retirement; and that was one of those details which could not have been put into a bill beforehand, but must be dealt with in the light and under the guidance of experience. The bill was supposed to have been so mutilated in its passage through the House of Commons, that nothing remained of it except the naked proposal to abolish purchase. But the plain fact was, as Lord Northbrook pointed out, that the provisions which had been dropped did not affect the bill vitally, or even materially. One was an extension of the Enlistment Act--a matter of no importance; another related to the ballot for the militia--also of no immediate importance; and the third of the abandoned provisions was that which empowered counties to raise money for supplying militia barracks. In all other respects the bill reached the House of Lords in the shape in which it had been introduced in the House of Commons, and the proposal to postpone the consideration of it till more information was furnished was obviously nothing more than a device for saving the purchase system, with all its evil and all its scandal, for at least another year. The amendment was carried, however, by a majority of twenty-five.
The Government was thus placed in a most awkward dilemma. They had the choice, on the one hand, of accepting the practical rejection of the bill for a year; and the consequence of doing so would have been as follows:--The exhaustive discussion of the subject in the House of Commons would have been thrown away; all the plans of the Government for the reorganization of the army must have remained in abeyance for at least another year; and the interests of the officers would in the meantime have been needlessly sacrificed, for in such a state of uncertainty the value of over-regulation prices would probably have fallen to zero. Moreover, we should have had such an agitation throughout the country as would, almost to a certainty, have made it impossible for any Government to offer a second time the very liberal terms which officers are now enabled to secure. The Opposition denounced the compensation which the Government offered to the officers as wasteful expenditure, and if the short-sighted vote of the House of Lords had not been set aside, the country would have taken the Opposition at its word, and have refused to sanction so much of the increased expenditure as was caused by the payment of over-regulation prices. Purchase would have gone inevitably; but the officers would have lost more than half the compensation which is now secured to them. And for this they would have had to thank their injudicious champions in both Houses of Parliament. The Government has literally 'saved them from their friends.' Earl Russell and the Marquis of Salisbury fired up with indignation when this warning was whispered in their ears during the debate on the second reading of the Army Bill. 'It had been suggested,' said the former, 'that if the amendment were carried the proposal of the Government to compensate officers for what was called the over-regulation price would be withdrawn; but he must say that that seemed to him to be an incredible supposition.... If compensation for over-regulation prices was just in March, 1871, it could not be unjust twelve months later.' With all due deference to Lord Russell, we think that time is an element in the case, and that an offer which was just this year might be unjust next year. It would have been the duty of the Government to consider the will of the country as well as the interests of the officers, and to take care that the former did not suffer by any undue consideration for the latter. A man who refuses a more than equitable offer by way of compensation for a loss incurred in an illegal manner, has no right to complain if the offer is not repeated, more especially if he has received fair warning of what is likely to be the consequence of his refusal.
But, whether just or not, the plain truth is that the House of Commons would not have sanctioned a second time the payment of over-regulation prices. In the interest of the officers themselves, therefore, in the interest of the House of Lords also, but, most of all, in the interest of the army and of the nation, the Government was bound to avail itself of any legal means which might enable it to prevent the mischief that could not fail to follow from the rash vote of the House of Lords. Ministers accordingly advised the Queen to abolish purchase by royal warrant, which was at once done. This has been called a coup d'état, and a display of 'high-handed despotism.' But no one whose opinion is worth anything has ventured to question the legality of the act. Sir Roundell Palmer, whose absence from the House of Commons at the time was supposed to indicate his disapproval, has given the high sanction of his authority, not only to the legality, but to the advisability, under the circumstances, of what the Ministry had done. But though the legality of the act has not been disputed, a chorus of voices in and out of Parliament have pronounced it 'unconstitutional.' It is not easy to see the distinction. An unconstitutional act we take to mean an act perpetrated in violation of the constitution. But what part of the constitution has been infringed, either in letter or in spirit, by the exercise of the royal warrant in the abolition of purchase in the army? The purchase system was created by royal warrant, nor has it ever rested on any other sanction. Constitutionally and legally, therefore, all that was required for its abolition was merely the withdrawal of the warrant which gave it existence; and that is precisely what has been done. Constitutional or legal objection there is none that can bear a moment's examination, and the whole matter resolves itself into a question of expediency. Those who consider the purchase system the mainstay of the British army will, of course, be of opinion that it was highly inexpedient to abolish it. Others, however, who prefer to look at the question in the light of facts rather than of theory and sentiment, will say that it was expedient to abolish at the earliest moment in which it could legally be done, a system whose history is such as we have described, and the continuance of which for another year, after all that had taken place, would have been fraught with evil to public morality, and have effectually prevented in the interval all possibility of reorganizing the army.
But the sting of the royal warrant abolishing purchase in the army lay doubtless in the fact that it was only exercised after the consent of Parliament had been previously asked, and (by the Lords) refused. And if this humiliation had been put upon the House of Lords wantonly, and without sufficient cause, the Government would have merited very severe censure. But was there not a sufficient cause? In the first place, the abolition of purchase was part of a large scheme, which embraced, inter alia, a very liberal offer of compensation for the extinction of the vested interests which the officers of the army had illegally contracted. It seemed, therefore, more respectful to the House of Commons, which was asked to vote the money, that the scheme of the Government should be submitted to it in its integrity; and there is no doubt, we apprehend, that if the House of Commons had met the second reading of the bill by a vote similar to that which was carried in the House of Lords, the Government would have bowed to the decision. But the question assumed quite a different aspect after the bill had been affirmed, in all its essential features, by decisive majorities in the House of Commons. It was then in the power of the Government to abolish purchase by royal warrant, and to send the bill, thus disencumbered of its bone of contention, up to the House of Lords. But the Lords would certainly have resented such treatment even more indignantly than they did the subsequent rescinding of their vote. So the bill was presented to them as it left the lower House; and they met it, not by a direct negative, not even by an amendment affirming the expediency of retaining the purchase system, but by a motion for delay. The debate which followed, however, clearly showed that the majority in the upper House were in reality fighting, not for more information, but for the retention of the purchase system. The consequence of yielding to their injudicious vote would therefore have been simply the waste of a precious twelvemonth; for everybody admitted that the purchase system was doomed, and could not survive another year. But it would have been much more satisfactory if it could have been abolished by Act of Parliament, for its resurrection would have been a moral impossibility; whereas, as matters now stand, it may be revived any moment by the same process which has for the time destroyed it. This consideration alone seems to us to be a sufficient justification for the course which the Government took. The abolition of purchase by Act of Parliament was the more excellent way, and the Government was right in trying it before availing itself of its last resource in the royal warrant. And certainly the officers are the last persons who ought to complain of what has been done; for there can be little doubt that if the Government had begun by abolishing purchase it would have found it hard, in the absence of a quid pro quo, to persuade the House of Commons to sanction the swollen estimates which compensation for over-regulation prices necessitated. The Lords, too, if they would only consider the matter calmly, would see reason to be grateful to a Government which has rescued them from much obloquy and from a most dangerous agitation. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the rejection of the Ballot Bill and of the Army Bill in one session would have gravely imperilled the existence of the House of Lords, at least in its present form. But the unavoidable mortification which the Government was compelled to inflict upon it served to appease the public resentment, and even to create a certain degree of sympathy in favour of our hereditary legislators.
The limits of our space forbid us to do more than notice very cursorily the remaining Ministerial achievements of the session. We do not know what others may think, but our own opinion is that the University Tests Bill is at least as important a measure as the Divorce Bill, which was about the sole legislative triumph of the session of 1857. To the readers of the British Quarterly, at all events, that session will not appear a barren one which has thrown open to Nonconformists the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Nor will the working classes quarrel seriously with a session which has given them the Trades' Unions Bill. The repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill may be considered a small matter. But the passage of it through Parliament consumed the best part of a session, and disturbed the peace of the three kingdoms. It was, moreover, a stride backward in civilization, for it was one of those attempts, against which Nonconformists have always protested, to defend the truth by the carnal weapons of penal legislation. It was also the commencement of a retrograde policy towards Ireland. When the Queen visited that country, and on several other occasions, the territorial titles of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops were freely recognised in official documents. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill made them penal, and the result was what men of sense predicted at the the time. The bill became a dead letter; for it was systematically violated, because it was too absurd and too antagonistic to the principles of religious liberty to be enforced. There was a moral fitness in its repeal, under the Premiership of Mr. Gladstone, for his was the great speech which exposed its mischief and its incongruities when it was passing through the House of Commons.
The Ballot Bill can hardly be reckoned among the achievements of the session, since it has failed to become law; but it is certainly one of the achievements of the Government. It was carried through the House of Commons by overwhelming majorities, and it is not the fault of the Government that it is not now on the statute book. The Ministry was blamed for pressing it on, knowing that the Lords would reject it; but the Ministry had no such knowledge. On the contrary, there was some reason to believe that the Peers would have been satisfied with thwarting one of the capital measures of the session. But even if the Government had felt morally certain that the Lords would reject the Ballot Bill, we still insist that they were bound to go on with it. Nothing did so much to damage the prestige of Parliamentary Government, and to exasperate the working classes against the old Parliament as the dolce far niente policy of the Palmerstonian régime. Lord Palmerston's adroitness consisted mainly in combining the maximum of liberal promises with the minimum of liberal fulfilment. He took up measures to conciliate the more Liberal of the electors, and dropped them to conciliate the majority of the House of Commons. More valuable, therefore, even than the passage of the Ballot Bill into law, is the assurance which the conduct of the Government has given that it was thoroughly in earnest. But it was contended in influential quarters that the sincerity of the Government was sufficiently evinced by the second reading of the bill, and ministers were accordingly advised to suspend all further progress of the bill, and resume it again at that stage next session. Besides other objections to that proposal, it is enough to say of it that it is founded on a misconception of the powers of the Government. It is the simple fact that the Government had no power to do what it was so persistently advised to do. A proposal was made in 1861 that some power of that kind should be given by statute to either House of Parliament. But the House of Commons rejected the proposal on account of 'the grave and numerous objections' to it, and particularly because 'this suspending power in either House of Parliament, if exercised at its own discretion, would be at variance with the prerogative of the Crown.'
Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill has been considered one of the chief failures of the session; and we do not wish to conceal our opinion that there were some tactical blunders in the management of it; but they were blunders which are in a great degree excusable by the peculiar circumstances of the session. It was, in our humble judgment, a blunder to introduce such a bill without a determination to deliver a decisive battle upon it; for the introduction of the bill roused the opposition of a powerful and thoroughly organized class interest, while the withdrawal of it alienated those to whom the Government looked for support. Mr. Bruce's excuse, and it is so far valid, is that the unexpected tactics of the Opposition in respect to the Army Bill wasted so much of the session that there was no opportunity to fight the battle of the Licensing Bill as he had intended to have fought it. The bill itself appears to us to be a fair compromise, and we have no doubt that it was calculated to do much good. The brewers and publicans have gained a victory for the moment, and they have the satisfaction of having beaten the Government candidate in East Surrey; but their victory is likely to prove a Pyrrhic one. It has opened the eyes of the public to the ruin which the excessive indulgence in intoxicating drinks is causing, and the more the question is discussed, the less reason will the publicans have for rejoicing over the defeat of Mr. Bruce's bill. The yearly sum spent on intoxicating liquors in the United Kingdom has now reached the enormous and portentous figure of £110,000,000, and the annual committals for drunkenness amounted in the year 1869 to 122,310. These are frightful facts; and if the interests of the publicans stand in the way of a thorough remedy, so much the worse for the interests of the publicans. Let the Government take away the licensing power from the magistrates, and commit the question to the management of local boards elected by the ratepayers, and we will undertake to say that the publicans will be checkmated politically in the first place, and that we shall witness, in the second place, a rapid decrease in their unholy traffic. Before dismissing the subject, however, it is right to remind our readers that Mr. Bruce's bill did not perish utterly. A portion, and a very valuable portion, of it is now law, and will effectually check the increase of public houses, and at the same time help to diminish the number of those already existing.
We have now glanced through the principal measures of the session, and we confidently ask whether it is not true that both in respect to the quantity and the quality of the work done it will bear a favourable comparison with the large majority of Parliamentary sessions during the last forty years. And yet it cannot be denied that the Government has incurred a certain amount of unpopularity. How is this to be explained? A general answer may be given, to the effect that a Liberal Government which is in earnest is sure to incur some degree of unpopularity; for its raison d'être is to attack abuses wherever it may find them. Its business is to do what is best for the nation at large in the first place, and to consider the interests of particular sections of the nation in the second place. But the interests concerned, as was natural, view the matter in a different light. They object to be relegated to the second place, for they prefer their own welfare to that of the nation, and, like the brewers the other day, are ready, whenever their pockets are menaced, to subordinate the interest of their party to that of their trade. The Government, to use a common expression, has 'trodden on the corns' of several powerful interests, and has thereby incurred their resentment. But it must be owned that it was from Mr. Lowe's budget that the Government received its first serious blow. Our own opinion is that incompetent as it was the budget attracted to itself a good deal of unmerited obloquy. But we feel bound, at the same time, to express our conviction that if Mr. Lowe knew human nature better, or took less pains to exasperate it, he might have produced a budget which would have strengthened instead of weakened the Government. As it was, the Government never quite recovered the prestige which Mr. Lowe's financial blunders had lost them. Then came a series of naval disasters, for which the Government was somehow considered responsible, though it really had no more to do with them than it had with the eruption of Vesuvius.[68] Then the persistent cry of extravagant expenditure, raised by the Conservatives, and echoed by their small band of allies among the Radicals, had some effect. Yet there never was a more dishonest cry. Though the present Government came into office in the end of the year 1868, the naval and military estimates for the ensuing year were prepared by their predecessors, and they reached the respectable figure of twenty-six millions sterling. And this, be it remembered, was in a period of profound peace. Mr. Gladstone's Government had to prepare the estimates for 1870, and the result showed a reduction from £26,000,000 to £21,000,000, with a marked improvement, at the same time, in the efficiency both of the army and navy. It is true, that in consequence of the complications arising out of the Franco-German war, two millions more were added to the estimates in the course of the summer. But no Government can be held responsible for expenditure caused by unforeseen emergencies: and, moreover, the expenditure in question was demanded by the country generally, and cannot in fairness be laid at the door of the Government. The upshot of the whole matter, however, is that the Government now in office reduced, on the first opportunity, the estimates of their predecessors by upwards of £4,000,000, and that, in spite of the expenditure occasioned by a gigantic Continental war, and a thorough reorganization of the army, the estimates are still considerably below the figure which the Tory Government reached in the midst of an universal peace abroad, and in the absence of any extraordinary expenditure at home. And yet Tory politicians, in and out of Parliament, have rent the air with their cries against the 'wasteful and extravagant expenditure' of the Government. Were it not for the war on the Continent, and the cost of abolishing the purchase system, and putting the army on a new basis, it is not too much to say that the navy and army estimates of this year would have been £7,000,000 lower than those which the Conservative Government bequeathed to Mr. Gladstone. We believe, however, that the exceptional expenditure of this session is neither 'wasteful' nor 'extravagant.' It is like the wise outlay of a skilful husbandman who drains and manures his barren land, in the sure confidence that it will repay him tenfold. The new basis on which the Government is reorganizing the army will give us in a few years a force which will free us from the recurrence of those periodical panics which make us the laughing-stock of other nations, and which always involve for the time being a large, but perfectly useless, expenditure. Already our navy is admitted, even by the political opponents of the Government, to be more than a match for all the navies of the world put together; and, under the wise administration of our present rulers, the army also will soon be in a condition to maintain our just influence abroad, and make the invasion of these isles a practical impossibility.
On the whole, then, we believe that the unpopularity which has overtaken the Government this session, is for the most part, undeserved; and we believe in the next place that the unpopularity is mainly confined to certain political cliques and class interests, which the Government, in the prosecution of its plain duty, has unavoidably offended. Through a combination of these causes, a general election at this moment might lose the Government a score of seats all over the country; but it would not seriously shake its position. The nation has not lost its confidence in Mr. Gladstone, and it will think twice before it makes up its mind to exchange him for Mr. Disraeli. The journal 'written by gentlemen for gentlemen' has recently told us in one of its oracular manifestoes, that 'the whole London press has become thoroughly suspicious of Mr. Gladstone's strength and fitness for the place which, for the want of any tolerable competitor, he holds at his own discretion.' We have heard and read this sort of language before. 'The whole London press,' or rather that portion of it which is fortunate enough to receive the imprimatur of the Pall-Mall Gazette, pronounced the same verdict on Mr. Gladstone five years ago. And the result was, that those confiding politicians who trusted in the sagacity of 'the whole London press' either lost their seats in Parliament, or had to sit on the stool of repentance and vow eternal allegiance to Mr. Gladstone. Let those, therefore, who mayhap are contemplating a repetition of the same experiment meditate on the history of the Adullamites, and be wise in time. The country has its eye on that knot of atrabilious Liberals whose voice is that of Jacob, but whose hands are the hands of Esau. They may declare, ore rotundo, that they have no confidence in Mr. Gladstone. Let them have a care lest the next general election prove that the country has no confidence in them.
To sum up, then, the claims of the Government during the past year on the continued confidence of the nation. It succeeded in limiting the area of the war between France and Germany, and, while upholding the dignity of the country, preserved to us the blessings of peace. By the treaty of Washington it has laid the foundation of a cordial understanding and a lasting friendship with the great American Republic. It has passed several measures for the benefit of Ireland which will surely help, as they become thoroughly understood, to lay the demon of disaffection in that impulsive, but not ungenerous people. Then what shall we say of the Army Bill? Its importance is gauged by the unparalleled resistance which it encountered in Parliament, and in times less exacting than the present its success would have made the fortune of an ordinary administration. On the other hand, the Trades' Unions Bill, the University Tests Bill, the Repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and the Local Government Board Bill, (a most valuable piece of legislation) are the quality of bills which ordinarily constitute the work of a session. And, in addition to these outward and visible signs of ministerial toil, the separate departments of the Government have, each in its place, done an immense amount of that kind of work which makes no appeal to public notice, but which is none the less valuable because it works in silence. The Poor-law Board, the Admiralty, and Mr. Cardwell's department have all laboured incessantly, and the fruit of their labour is already becoming visible in the better management of our workhouses, and in the increased efficiency of our army and navy. Nor must we forget the excellent reforms which Mr. Monsell has already made in the Post Office, and which entitle him at no distant day to a seat in the Cabinet. We maintain, therefore, that the Government may, without any remorse, sit down with a good conscience to frame the programme of the coming session. The only serious danger which they have ahead of them is the question of Irish education; and that is a question which can well wait awhile. But if it must be tackled next session, we see no reason why the genius which solved the church and land questions should not be equal to solving that of education also. The danger of the Government lies in the inconsistent conduct of the Opposition, who advocate the application to Ireland of principles which are totally opposed to those for which they contend in the case of England. Still, it does not appear to us that the question of Irish education presents any insurmountable difficulty, provided the same statesmanlike principles are brought to bear upon it which have already solved the vexed problems of land tenure and religious equality. In short, a good budget and a moderate programme will enable the Government to make the next session--we will not say more fruitful, but--more popular than the last.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Let the reader notice, in passing, the passage which we have italicised. We shall consider the exercise of the royal warrant by the Government hereafter; but it may be observed in the meanwhile how completely the above passage justifies (what, indeed, was not seriously denied by any competent authority) the legality of Mr. Gladstone's measure. The purchase system is there made absolutely dependent on the continued permission of the royal will. The moment that permission is withdrawn, the purchase system ceases to be. The Queen simply withdrew the royal warrant which authorized it, and there was an end of the matter legally and constitutionally.
[67] The Duke of Argyll questioned the constitutional character of this amendment, and not without reason, as trenching on the royal prerogative, acting through the responsible ministers of the Crown.
'Parliament has a right to call for full information in regard to military matters, for the purpose of enabling it to vote with discretion and intelligence. But this right must not be held to justify an unreasonable interference in respect to the details of military administration.'--Todd's Parliamentary Government in England. Vol. i. p. 328.
[68] Mr. Göschen is certainly much to be pitied. If a first class man-of-war is driven at midday on a well-known rock he is held responsible for the disaster, and if he inflicts condign punishment on the culpable officers, he is accused of unjust and arbitrary conduct. Indeed, some of our Conservative friends have not hesitated to say that Mr. Göschen exceeded his power in superseding the peccant admirals in the Mediterranean. Such an opinion is in the teeth of legal authorities. Let us quote one of the latest and best known:--'It is essential to the constitution of a military body,' says Mr. Todd ('Parliamentary Government in England,' vol. i. p. 326) 'that the Crown should have the power of reducing to a lower grade, or of altogether dismissing, any of its officers from service in the army or navy at its own discretion, and, if need be, without assigning any reason; such power being always exercised through a responsible minister, who is answerable for the same, if it should appear to have been exercised unwarrantably and upon an insufficient ground.' So well established is this rule that it was decided by the Court of Queen's Bench, in the case of Dickson v. Viscount Combermere, that the discretionary power of the Crown to remove officers is so absolute that even if an officer had been tried by a court of inquiry and acquitted, the Crown was justified in removing him from office upon the advice of a minister responsible to Parliament.
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.
Short Studies on Great Subjects. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. Second Series. Longmans, Green, and Co.
Many of these papers, those especially which have appeared in the magazine which Mr. Froude has recently edited, and those delivered as addresses, will be fresh in the recollection of general readers, and they will be glad to possess them in a permanent form. Like Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Froude is not so much a constructor as an expositor of opinion; but he has some rare qualities for exposition, and his emotional and moral fervour especially give a great charm to his advocacy. His defects, moreover, like Mr. Kingsley's, are those of a rhetorician, and severe historical students gravely impugn his accuracy in details, while dispassionate judges seriously condemn his somewhat vehement special pleadings. The papers are some of them political--'England and her Colonies;' 'Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject;' 'The Colonies once More,' 'England's War,' 'The Eastern Question;'--some social--'Education;' 'A Fortnight in Kerry,' in two parts--singularly separated in the volume by half a dozen other papers; 'On Progress,' a striking paper, which appeared in a recent number of Frazer, and attracted much attention;--and some ecclesiastical and theological--'Calvinism,' 'A Bishop of the Twelfth Century'--an interesting account of brave hearted Bishop Hugo, Bishop of Lincoln, and builder of the Cathedral; 'Father Newman on the Grammar of Assent;' 'Conditions and Prospects of Protestantism.' That Mr. Froude has strong partialities and prejudices, sometimes betraying him into an untenable advocacy, if not into historical paradox, his greatest admirers must admit. The first volumes of his history read like an eloquent counsel's brief--we are oftener charmed than convinced. The later volumes are more judicial, although both the partisans of Elizabeth and of Mary Queen of Scots have fair cause of demur to both the coloring of his portraiture and to some of its details. With rhetorical historians we never feel quite safe. The advocate is always more fascinating than the judge--they appeal to wholly different faculties. Macaulay, Froude, Kingsley, all lack, only in different degrees, the severe historical spirit which Hallam and Freeman so ably exemplify. One of Mr. Froude's critics has subjected his account of Bishop Hugo, derived from Mr. Dimock's 'Magna Vita,' to a minute, and we must say damaging historical criticism, which produces an uneasy feeling about Mr. Froude's historical writing generally--especially when we have not at hand means of verification. Mr. Froude's habit of mind tempts him to round unqualified assertions, and to hasty generalizations, especially when he is justifying a foregone conclusion. Another dangerous tendency of his mind is to themes which either through imperfect knowledge or sectarian habit he is but little qualified for treating. Few readers of the 'Nemesis of Faith,' one of Mr. Froude's earliest publications, would feel much confidence in his dispassionate treatment of any theological question; and yet theology is the fatal basilisk to which he seems irresistibly attracted. It was with a startled feeling--half amusement, half annoyance--that we saw announced the theme which his perverse genius characteristically fixed upon for his Rectoral Address at St. Andrew's. No man can possibly give a satisfactory account of Calvinism who is not sympathetically a theologian; and Mr. Froude is not only not this, but theology in any form excites him as a red rag excites a bull. Calvinism, above all theological creeds, might be supposed antipathetic to him. We naturally, therefore, anticipated a Quixotic assault upon the Scottish windmill, and imagined the sensations of the professors and alumni of St. Andrew's on the announcement of his subject; for Mr. Froude to undertake to discuss Calvinism in its very metropolis was a chivalry that could be redeemed from its foolhardiness only by its success. Mr. Froude has not succeeded. He boldly avows himself a quasi champion of something which he calls Calvinism, but which really has very little to do with the system of theology which is known by that designation. We tremble at the bold generalization of his eulogy, and wonder to see men and systems having so little in common brought within their range. It is the exordium of a rhetorician, not of an historical critic. Notwithstanding, therefore, his great literary merits, a fine historical vein, and broad illustrative generalization of a very masterly character, the result is not very satisfactory. Mr. Froude clearly sees that in Calvinism, or its philosophical equivalents--for he finds the latter where the former is unknown, as, for instance, in Parsecism and Judaism, Stoicism and Mahommedanism--there is something very strong and noble; only we suspect that he has confounded what he calls Calvinism with the moral sense or conscience. What this is, he essays to show by historic illustrations gathered from the six or eight great religious movements of history; but he hardly succeeds. The facts are indubitable, but Mr. Froude does not furnish their philosophy. Of course he knows that Calvinism is a great deal more than mere history; he would, no doubt, admit that it is a very pronounced and uncompromising metaphysical theology. If it is not this, it is nothing; but of this he does not attempt to give any account. On the contrary, he formally eschews it, and he certainly has no very great sympathy with it. His historic conscience is forced to admit the strength, persistence, and nobility which the ideas of Calvinism have in all ages inspired. They have uniformly produced the noblest morality, the most heroic faith, the most illustrious characters and movements of their age; they have constituted the great religious and regenerating force of history, the permanent counteractor and corrector of formalism, selfishness, mendacity, and slavishness--the force that has sporadically gathered in all times of lassitude, and that Mr. Froude thinks our own present condition needs for its regeneration. But he admires and wonders without love; he has strong things to say against it. Hence his paper is written with a nec cum te nec sine te feeling. It produces the impression of one who sees men as trees walking; who aims at something worth hitting, and misses it; who has been attracted by the true waters, but to whom it might be said, 'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' We have no sympathy with the logical excesses of Calvinism, but it involves substantially the only true and noble philosophy of religion. It is the theology of the almost universal Church; and its noble inspirations and achievements deserve not only all the eulogy that Mr. Froude bestows, but eulogy of which he does not dream. If Calvinism be not a theology, it is nothing; and yet Mr. Froude proposes to the professors and students of St. Andrew's to discuss Calvinism, while he carefully disavows all theological questions. How oddly to them his address must have sounded! History as a hortus siccus; a drama--the grandest ever played out on human stage--evacuated of convictions and passions; the profoundest metaphysical and spiritual theology sufficiently accounted for by mere history. Mr. Froude's thesis demanded that he should have examined the metaphysical ideas involved in Calvinism, and demonstrated their practical, moral, and spiritual power. This he has not even attempted. He does not seem even to have conceived of it. So again, Mr. Froude altogether misses the philosophy of theology involved in Dr. Newman's 'Grammar of Assent.' He cannot even speak of Butler's great work without altogether misrepresenting it. We suspect that he is constitutionally incapable of even apprehending metaphysical problems. While he sneers at physical science, he regards theological science as a blind superstition. Nevertheless, Mr. Froude's volume is worthy of a place on the shelf of his history.
The National and Domestic History of England. By W. H. S. AUBREY. Vol. I. J. Hagger.
Of the historian, as of the poet, it is emphatically true nascitur non fit. A rare combination of qualities is essential to a historian of the first-class--patience to accumulate information, learning to appreciate it, philosophy to interpret it, and imaginative eloquence to incarnate it. Great histories are more rare than great poems. Histories are of two classes--those which are written directly from original sources, and which are historical authorities; and those which are intended for popular uses, and avail themselves of the results of original investigation, as historical authorities have determined them. Mr. Aubrey's work belongs to the latter class; and is entitled to rank very high in it. In the commendation which we think it just to bestow upon him, we are not to be understood as comparing him with Grote, or Hallam, or Freeman, or Froude, or Masson; but, as gathering into a pleasantly-written and skilfully-constructed work, the results of modern historical investigation, his history of England is by far the best we possess. To indomitable painstaking, he adds the careful judgment of a well-informed student, and of strong common sense. His work is the fruit of many years' assiduous labour. Mr. Aubrey, as might be expected, belongs to the school of historians which holds that the history of a nation is a great deal more than the history of its monarchs, court intrigues, and wars; and he endeavours to put his readers in possession of the springs and characteristics of the social life of the people, of which the most ample knowledge of the former class may leave us in utter ignorance. The influence of monarchs, statesmen, politics, and wars, upon the social life of a people, is necessarily great, and formerly was much greater than it is now; but probably at no time was it so exclusive as the impressions derived from ordinary histories would lead us to suppose. The government of a country, and the policy of a court, except under conditions of republican freedom, are a very imperfect index of the condition and character of the people. Mr. Aubrey pays a just compliment to Sir. Charles Knight's 'Pictorial History of England,' as being the first considerable and systematic attempt to present the social history of the English people. But the conclusions of history have been almost revolutionized since the 'Pictorial History of England' was written. The calendaring of State papers, and the opening of State collections at Simancas, Venice, and elsewhere, have thrown floods of light upon imperfectly understood events. Mr. Aubrey, too, has greatly improved upon the literary style, as well as upon the artistic illustrations of Mr. Knight's great work. His style is quiet and lucid; it never rises to eloquence, or is inspired by passion; no masterly historical groups or biographical portraits are presented by him; but he tells his story with a simple, even excellence of pleasant narration. If he does not greatly excite his readers, he never wearies them. The first volume brings down the history to the time of Richard II. Instead of references in the margin, Mr. Aubrey gives us a general list of the authorities which he has consulted; it is formidable enough, occupying a dozen pages, and comprising between 600 and 700 works. Some of the omissions from it, however, are notable; Mr. Longman's 'Edward III.' for instance, and Professor Creasy's 'History of England.' The salient points in this period are the characters of Edward the Confessor, and Earl Godwin, Harold, and William of Normandy, Becket, and Edward III. Mr. Aubrey forms, on the whole, a just estimate of these men. The plan of his history precludes disquisition, but the positions he assumes are warranted by the most recent criticism; he justly remarks that neither men nor their doings are 'to be regarded in the light of modern opinions and convictions, excepting in so far as these are inherently true.' We commend especially Mr. Aubrey's careful and discriminating estimate of the quarrel between Henry II. and Becket, as a crucial test of his intelligence and fairness. Here, as throughout, Mr. Aubrey enhances the value of his book by well-selected quotations from historians like Mackintosh, Milman, and others. The great period of Edward III.--the fons et origo of so much of our English constitution and modern greatness--is well treated; and the great questions involved in the French war, the rights of Parliament, and religious liberty, are intelligently discussed. We should add that the work is profusely illustrated. In addition to ordinary wood engravings and fac-similes, portraits and autographs, chromolithographs and well-executed steel plates are introduced, together with carefully-constructed maps and plans. The illustrations are scenes and incidents, views of places, dress, manners, sports, houses, furniture, coins, seals, and medals, coats of arms, weapons, and ships, caricatures, monuments, and tombs. Altogether, we may, so far as this first volume goes, commend Mr. Aubrey's work as, in its completeness, ability, and spirit, fully justifying its title as a 'Family History of England,' and incomparably surpassing any other of its class.
View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages. By HENRY HALLAM, LL.D. Incorporating in the text the Author's latest Researches, with Additions from recent Writers, and adapted to the use of Students. By WILLIAM SMITH, D.C.L., LL.D. John Murray.
Dr. Smith has done a great service by including in his series of students' manuals this admirable edition of Hallam's first great work. Originally published in 1818--not in 1816, as Dr. Smith says--it rapidly passed through successive editions; the eleventh and last of which was published in 1855. During these years the author not only accumulated many corrections, but also a body of supplementary notes equal in bulk to one-third of the original work. 'Reluctant to make such alterations as would leave to the purchasers of former editions a right to complain,' and having thoroughly revised the third edition, six subsequent editions appeared without alteration. After the ninth edition, the supplementary notes were published separately in 1848. In the tenth edition (1853) they were included. The copyright of the original edition has recently expired, and has been reprinted in a cheap form, but without either the revision or the supplementary notes of the author's later editions. Comparatively, therefore, it is of little worth. Dr. Smith has not only reproduced Hallam's latest edition, he has incorporated all of the notes that could be incorporated, inserting at the end of each chapter such information as could not conveniently be interwoven with the text. For this students' edition some of the less important remarks have been abbreviated, and the references to authorities omitted. Valuable additions, moreover, have been made by the editor, for which the student will thank him. Among those are the Statutes of William the Conqueror, the Charter of the Liberties of Henry I. and Magna Charta, together with genealogical and other tables, and certain items of information from books which have appeared since Hallam wrote. A good reference index is also added. More than this concerning so well-known a work we need not say; too much we scarcely could say.
Cameos from English History: the Wars in France. By the Author of the 'Heir of Redclyffe.' Second Series. Macmillan & Co.
The very skilful way in which Miss Yonge selects the chief incidents of her episodes, and groups around them such subordinate matters as may be necessary for a complete historic picture, has given to the first series of her 'Cameos' a popularity which the second will not fall short of. Miss Yonge is executing a gallery of historic compositions that have individual completeness enough to make them interesting, and connection enough to make them instructive. Without any affectation of originality in the sources or methods of her narrative, she skilfully uses the materials and conclusions of the best historical authorities, and thus provides for young people and for general readers a historical manual, the ability and interest of which will convey a vast amount of information to readers whom more pretentious works would fail to attract. This second series is almost entirely occupied with the French wars. Beginning in 1330 with the romantic conquests of Edward III. and the Black Prince, it narrates the strange solecism of English rule in France, and ends in 1435 with the still more romantic mission of the Maid of Orleans, and the Congress of Arras, and the extinction of the English cause in France. We cannot speak too highly of the care, good sense, and literary skill with which these historic cameos are cut. The most romantic incidents--battles such as those of Crecy and Poitiers, achievements such as those of Joan of Arc--lose nothing in the artistic setting of the author, while the least interesting are made attractive by it. A more fascinating and instructive book, as we can testify from our own well-thumbed copy of the first series, and from the eagerness with which the second has been seized, could not be put into the hands of young people.
Life of William Cunningham, D.D., Principal and Professor of Theology and Church History, New College, Edinburgh. By ROBERT RAINY, D.D., and the late Rev. JAMES MACKENZIE. 8vo. Nelson and Sons. 1871.
As long as the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 is remembered, the name of Dr. Cunningham will be indissolubly associated with it. The Free Church party, to which he belonged, was rich in eminent men at the great crisis. Chalmers, of course, towered over all the rest as its man of many-sided genius. Candlish was its popular champion; Hugh Miller was its journalist; Buchanan its ecclesiastical statesman; Guthrie its orator and wit; Murray Dunlop its jurist. Dr. Cunningham, however, as a dogmatic theologian and master of Church principles, long occupied a place by himself in the councils and the inner life of his Church, and we cordially welcome his memoir.
The volume is the work of two successive biographers. Rather more than one-third of it had been prepared by the late Rev. James Mackenzie, when, his untimely death interrupted his labours; the rest of the book is written by Dr. Rainy, who, once a pupil of Cunningham's, was afterwards his pastor and most intimate friend, and is now his successor in the Chair of Historical Theology. Mr. Mackenzie's portion is picturesque and lively. The story of the disruption conflict, which it embraces, has already been told, by Dr. Hanna in his life of Chalmers, in a way that can hardly be equalled, but the version here given is at once elaborate and fresh. Dr. Rainy, who continues the life from 1843 till its close in 1861, has executed his task with judgment and loving fidelity, and with so entire a mastery of all the bearings of his subject that his chapters will have a permanent value for the members of the Free Church as a contribution to her history.
The outward incidents of Cunningham's life are soon told. Born at Hamilton in 1805, he lost his father in early childhood, and was brought up by an admirable mother. At the age of fifteen he entered the university of Edinburgh, where he remained eight years. At twenty-five he was ordained to one of the largest churches in Greenock. Thence, four years afterwards, in 1834, he was translated to Trinity College Church, in Edinburgh. Quitting the Establishment in 1843, he visited America on a public mission, and on his return was appointed to the Chair of Apologetical Theology in the Free Church College. In 1845, he succeeded Dr. Welsh as Professor of Church History, and on the death of Dr. Chalmers, in 1847, he became Principal of the College, retaining, however, his Professorship.
From his very boyhood, Cunningham was wont 'to scorn delights and live laborious days.' In one long vacation, before he was seventeen, he read eighty volumes, among them the whole of the Iliad in Greek, Barrow on the 'Pope's Supremacy,' Taylor's 'Ductor Dubitantium,' and the like. Such studious habits adhered to him through life. 'He reads Greek and Latin,' says his biographer, 'in immense quantities, and French in great abundance.' It was only a strong judgment and a wonderful memory that prevented his enormous reading from overloading his powers of mental digestion. At first, metaphysics attracted him, but soon theology became his favourite field. Up to the age of eighteen his sympathies were with the 'moderate' or high-and-dry party in the Scottish Church; but about that time his mind underwent a great and blessed spiritual change, which, as it was brought about by the influence of evangelical truth, naturally led him to join the evangelical party.
As a preacher, he was decidedly successful during the four years of his ministry at Greenock. In Edinburgh his gifts were buried in an almost inaccessible and gloomy church, and his sermons became dry. The ten years' conflict, however, called forth all his powers. The annual general assemblies of those days furnished an arena for high debate unequalled in the history of Scotland. Judges of the supreme courts, eminent lawyers, physicians, merchants, and landowners, sat on their benches as elders, along with the flower of the Scottish clergy. The audience was only limited by the breadth to which galleries could be carried. The questions at issue, first, the spiritual rights of the people in the formation of the pastoral tie, and, growing out of that, the spiritual independence of the Church itself, affected all classes of society, and interested Dissenters as well as members of the Establishment. Amidst these scenes Cunningham proved himself--
'No carpet knight so trim, But in close fights a champion grim, In camps a leader, sage.'
Both his biographers labour to describe his power as a debater, but in truth there must have been something indescribable about it. 'As you heard him,' says Dr. Rainy, 'you were yourself working at the question, not with your own faculties, but with Cunningham's, and were possessed with the same intense moral perceptions.... This effect was due to the personality of the man put into his speech, to his intensity, and his vehemence.... The absence of all rhetoric, except that which sparkled red-hot from the forge at which the workman was labouring contributed to the same effect. To the same result conduced, and that very powerfully, his manifest scorn of foul play, and the manliness and fairness of his battle.' The testimony also is adduced of Mr. Murray Dunlop, late member for Greenock, who, after long experience both of the General Assembly and of Parliament, said, 'There is no man in the House of Commons that approaches to Cunningham.'
The disruption, to Cunningham and his associates, was a political defeat, but it was even more than a moral victory. It seems destined to secure the triumph of their principles in Scotland as it has powerfully helped to introduce them into Ireland. Now that a generation has passed away, we see the strange spectacle of the Scottish Establishment agitating for the abolition of patronage, and we hear her divines boasting of spiritual independence as if a satisfactory concordat on the matter had already been concluded with the State. Dread of another disruption is manifestly the only concordat that exists.
It was in the Chair of Historical Theology that Cunningham found his true sphere of continuous labour. As a lecturer, an examiner, a director of young men's studies, and a critic of their productions, he was unsurpassed in his time. Dr. Rainy considers that he was even superior to Chalmers in the power of producing the feeling of obligation in the minds of others. His own personal godliness, and his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his students, showed itself quite spontaneously both in the classroom and out of it. Youths who trembled at coming under the jurisdiction of the great controversialist were delighted to find him in private intercourse as gentle as a lamb, and they yielded themselves all the more readily to the mastery of his influence. Hundreds of his old pupils are now in the ministry, scattered all over Scotland, and are to be found here and there in England, Ireland, America, and the colonies; and it may safely be said that few of them ever mention his name without affection and reverence.
Yet with all his gentleness of nature, Cunningham was a born controversialist. He was quite conscious of this himself. When a student of divinity, he said to a friend. 'If my life is spared, it will be spent in controversy, I believe;' and the event went far to justify the prediction. With true Christian magnanimity, he would at once apologise, and that in public, for unwarrantable expressions dropped in the heat of debate; and in one of his later tractates he says, 'We have some apprehension that the controversial spirit is rising and swelling in our breast, and therefore we abstain,' &c., as if he were applying the curb; but the temperament remained. Part of the last decade of his life was embittered by a controversy within the Free Church itself, which separated him for a time from some of his oldest and dearest friends, and made him the object of unwarrantable attacks on the part of others. His spirit was chastened and purified by the ordeal. In the beautiful record given by Dr. Rainy of his last days on earth, we read that two hours before his death he said, 'I am done with all controversies and all fightings now; I am at rest for ever.' Then raising his hand, he very emphatically said twice, 'From the rage of theologians, good Lord, deliver us.' Thus adopting one of the dying sayings of the gentle Melancthon.
After his death, Dr. Cunningham's literary executors published two large volumes of his lectures on 'Historical Theology,' and two additional volumes of his 'Essays and Reviews'--the one on the 'Reformers and their Doctrines,' the other on 'Church Principles.' These works are no unworthy monument of his vast learning, of his logical power, and of the depth of his own convictions. Dr. Rainy, in the volume before us, has very ably explained and defended Cunningham's method of teaching theology and the history of dogma, but we wish he had descended more into particulars, showing the growth of Cunningham's own mind as a theologian, and the comparative importance assigned by him to certain truths and views of truth at an earlier and a later period of his life. It is somewhat unsatisfactory to be told that on visiting Oxford in his later years Cunningham said musingly to a friend, 'I am more of a bigot and more of a latitudinarian than I used to be.'
Journals kept in France and Italy from 1848-1852; with a Sketch of the Revolution of 1848. By the late NASSAU WILLIAM SENIOR. Edited by his Daughter, M. C. M. SIMPSON. 2 vols. Henry S. King and Co.
Mr. Senior's journals suggest some curious speculations concerning the writer, and the order of literati to which he belongs; and they are a contemporary record of some facts which may be regarded as a contribution to history, and of some speculations which, after twenty years, it is interesting to test by events. Mr. Senior apparently aspired to a distinguished place in the class of writers more prominent in French literature than in English, who contribute, for the use of the historian and for the gratification of the gossip, mémoires pour servir. With considerable literary ability, he contributed essays to the Edinburgh and other reviews, two or three series of which have been published. He wrote a treatise on political economy, which evinced considerable power of philosophical thinking, and considerable knowledge of economical science, but which fell just short of classical authority. He was a Master in Chancery, and a well-informed man of the world. He had an extensive acquaintance with literati and politicians, which he sedulously cultivated. Probably, had he chosen to concentrate his intellectual powers and to subordinate his general knowledge, he might have produced works which would have taken an honourable and permanent place in literature. But the difficulty we feel in saying in what department of thought he would have succeeded the best, indicates the versatility which made him a clever man, and hindered him from becoming a profound one. He belonged to the literary class of which, perhaps, Southey may be regarded as facile princeps. Probably a man does best when he follows spontaneously his own literary instinct; and Mr. Senior, in becoming a very able chronicler and critic of the opinions of others, has avoided the fate of a second-rate publicist. It is difficult to find an exact type that may represent his special function and quality. His work is the work of a Boswell, only generally applied, and done with far more intellectual power, but at the cost of that exactness of record which is Boswell's great charm. All Mr. Senior's reports of the opinions and conversations of others are reproduced in his own mould of thought. Although he had apparently that peculiar kind of very bad memory which forgets nothing, yet clearly he does not reproduce the ipsissima verba of the interlocutors: while their sentiments are exactly conveyed, it is a version 'according to Mr. Senior.' One thinks again of Crabbe Robinson. What he was in a more literary and limited sphere, Mr. Senior was in his wider sphere of statesmen, diplomatists, and politicians. Mr. Senior's methods remind us of the 'interviewing' of American reporters. A highly gifted, well-informed, agreeable, and brilliant man, he was a welcome addition to every society. Princes, statesmen, and political leaders found pleasure in his conversation, and in the information concerning English opinion and feeling that he was able to impart. He assiduously prepared himself for making the most of his opportunities. He sought introductions wherever he went, and had the rare faculty of using them to the greatest advantage. Clearly, he knew how to put questions without being intrusive, how to conciliate sympathies without offensive toadyism, and how to make his note-taking purpose well understood without loss of dignity, and apparently--but of this we are not quite sure--without either shutting up his informants, or making them talk with a view to the record. He has aimed at whatever degree of literary renown attaches to men like Beaumarchais, De Grammont, and Pepys, and he will probably be quoted as a witness to contemporary facts and opinions when he is remembered for nothing else. It is not everyone who could submit to the conditions of such a function, or who could be successful in it. Mr. Senior's success is almost perfect. He is not a describer of men and manners--he has neither dramatic nor pictorial faculty; he is simply a chronicler of contemporary opinions. The value of his book, therefore, depends primarily upon the character of those to whom he had access. In this it leaves little to be desired. These journals kept in France and Italy are rich in the affirmations and opinions of the leading personages in these countries--of men who were chiefly making their history. It is impossible even to attempt an enumeration of the illustrious men with whom Mr. Senior freely conversed. The editor of his journals is so embarrassed by their riches, that he not only suppresses all mere travellers' impressions, observations, and descriptions, but reserves for separate publication the conversations with De Tocqueville, with whom Mr. Senior was on intimate terms. This, we think, however interesting as a contribution to the biography of De Tocqueville, is very injurious to the historic value of the journals. An account of the Revolution of 1848 and of the coup d'état of 1852, which chronicles the opinions of men like De Beaumont, Fauchet, Dunoyer, Gioberti, Circourt, and Horace Say, and systematically omits those of De Tocqueville, the greatest political philosopher among them all, is surely Hamlet with the part of the Prince omitted. Better have omitted the Italian journal, and have presented complete the opinions of French events which he was able to gather.
Nevertheless, the journals are remarkably rich in both incident and opinions, which, as communicated by political leaders themselves, may be implicitly accepted as authentic. Perhaps the thing that will chiefly strike the reader is the singular lack of political prevision which characterizes the forecasts of even the ablest statesmen. The surprise and violence of revolutionary incident probably disorder the faculty of the political philosopher, as well as disarrange the ordinary sequence of things. Whatever the cause, save in things palpable to ordinary thoughtfulness, few of the anticipations of statesmen here recorded have been verified. We have noted some dozens of instances of political sagacity utterly at fault, which justify this general remark, but our space forbids us to cite them.
Mr. Senior's journals in France begin about three months after the abdication of Louis Philippe; but he gathers up a tolerably complete account of the circumstances attending it, and of the opinions formed concerning it. A letter of General Bergeaud gives a military account of the overthrow of the constitutional throne, and attributes it to defective military preparations, and to vacillating purposes:--'If I had had the command a fortnight before, things might have passed differently.' True! but would that have secured respect for the time-serving king, or have given high-mindedness and dignity to the shuffling policy of his time-serving minister? Of what advantage would it have been to avert the revolution of February, if its provocatives had been left to gather afresh? This policy of expedients has been the ruin of the French nation; as De Beaumont justly said to Mr. Senior--'In France we are not good balancers of inconveniences. Nous sommes trop logiques. As soon as we see the faults of an institution, nous la brisons. In England you calculate, we act upon impulse.'
Mr. Senior throws much interesting light upon the conduct and motives of Lamartine in his brilliant and meteoric career, equally sudden in its kindling and its extinction;--possible, surely, only in France. De Beaumont seems to us to do more justice to Lamartine than Mr. Senior himself does. 'He thinks that Lamartine has managed foreign affairs honestly and ably, with an earnest wish for peace, but that the rest of his conduct has been vain, selfish, and timid. Ten days ago he would have been elected President by acclamation, now he would be chosen only to keep out somebody worse.' Whatever Lamartine's vanity and weakness, he must, we think, have credit for patriotic purpose. A mere selfish man would surely have pressed his enormous advantage very differently.
Much interesting light is also thrown upon the singular and incongruous character of Louis Napoleon. Certainly our estimate of him is not enhanced; his narrow, intriguing selfishness, his puerile fanaticism, and the diabolical unscrupulousness of his coup d'état of December 2nd, seem to justify all that his worst enemies have said about him. A singular incident is recorded. The colonel of one of the regiments to be employed on December 2nd was absent on the previous night a few miles from Paris. An aide-de-camp of St Arnaud was sent to summon him. He owed his success in life to Changarnier. As he passed Changarnier's door he thought that this mysterious summons must have something to do with the coup d'état which everybody was expecting. He got off his horse, and rang the bell. The porter, probably in bed, did not answer. Second thoughts suggested to the aide-de-camp that to tell Changarnier would be a breach of duty. He rode off without ringing again. Had Changarnier been warned, the coup d'état might have been prevented, and the subsequent history of France might have been different.
Read in the light of the history of France during the last twelve months, Mr. Senior's volumes have a singular and instructive interest. The conclusion to which they force us is a melancholy one;--the French seem to have learned nothing, and to have forgotten nothing, but to be simply whirled in a chaotic circle of furious revolution and delusive order. 'The instant,' says M. Bastiat, 'three Frenchmen meet, they talk of nothing but extending French influence over Europe, and vote by acclamation for a military expenditure;' a singular comment upon which is the recent determination by M. Thiers and his Government to raise the French army to 500,000 men. In 1849, Mr. Senior was present at a meeting of the Assembly; Jules Favre attempted to read a letter from Rome stating that the French prisoners had offered to serve in the Roman army; a scene of indescribable confusion followed, some saying that, whether true or false, the ears of Frenchmen ought not to be disgusted with such statements. General Leflô protested against letters being read from a French tribune, which insultent le drapeau. 'You tell us that the enemy has taken one of our colours. You know it is impossible, for only five hundred men are said to have fallen on our side; but before a colour could be taken whole regiments must have died.' This was received with enthusiastic applause, and Jules Favre was not permitted to read the letter. De Beaumont is right, the French are too logical--even for facts. 'The French,' said Dunoyer to Bancroft, 'utterly misconceive the purposes for which a Government ought to exist, and if that misconception continue, they will fall from revolution to revolution, and from distress to distress, till they end in bankruptcy, anarchy, and barbarism. They think that the purpose of Government is not to allow men to make their fortunes, but to make their fortunes for them. The great object of every Frenchman is to exchange the labours and risks of a business or a profession or even a trade for a public salary. The thousands of workmen who deserted employments at which they were earning four or five francs a day to get thirty sous from the ateliers nationaux were mere examples of the general feeling. To satisfy this desire, every Government goes on increasing the extent of its duties, the number of its servants, and the amount of its expenditure.'
Sumner told Mr. Senior, on the authority of the Minister of War, that 'Persigny was going to Berlin and Vienna to ask for Belgium and the Rhine and Egypt, giving Hanover to Prussia, Wallachia and Moldavia and the legations to Austria, Constantinople to Russia, and Piedmont to the Prince of Leuchtenberg.' This was confirmed by Beaumont, who said that when he was French Minister at Vienna, in 1849, Schwartzenberg showed him pretty nearly the same propositions made by Persigny.
What hope can there be for a people so flippant, so superficial, so unscrupulous! One is almost thankful for the destruction of a power whose only law is that of selfishness and opportunity.
Mr. Senior's journals in Italy are scarcely less interesting; only they seem to belong to bygone centuries. The King of Naples and the Duke of Tuscany were in power, the Pope was recoiling into a despot, Charles Albert was staking and losing his crown at Novara, and Louis Napoleon was occupying Rome.
Mr. Senior's journals are choke full of interest--a social comment on public history which future generations will peruse with greater eagerness than ourselves.
Life and Letters of William Bewick (Artist). Edited by THOMAS LANDSEER, A.R.A. Hurst and Blackett.
Mr. Landseer is not so careful as he should be to tell us that his hero is not the Bewick whose engravings are amongst the glories of the English school. True, William is not Thomas, and Mr. Landseer somewhat ambiguously suggests the distinction by appending in a parenthesis the word 'Artist' to his name; but Art knows only one Bewick, and the lustre of his surname may well make careless readers oblivious of his Christian name. Mr. Landseer does not tell us whether there was any relationship between the two northern men, less remote, that is, than the ancestry of whom Scott reminded William. The absence of affirmation leads to the conclusion that there was not; as, doubtless, William would have been proud of a family connection with Thomas. William Bewick, then, of whose existence we frankly confess we were ignorant until we made our acquaintance with him in Mr. Landseer's book, was, notwithstanding, a man and an artist of respectable ability, whose memoir and letters are interesting chiefly for their anecdotes and characterizations of people more illustrious than himself. His father was an upholsterer in Darlington, sorely disquieted by the artistic tendencies of his son, who bravely struggled against the genius of upholstery, and dared the paternal prognostications of beggary, and the stern refusal to give him any help in his artistic aspirations. He went to London almost penniless, pleased Haydon, who saw him drawing at Burlington House, and became his pupil, as were also George Lance, William Harvey, Sir Edwin Landseer, and the brothers Charles and Thomas Landseer. He struggled hard for existence, became a pupil at the Academy, so far won the approbation of Sir Thomas Lawrence as to be commissioned by him to copy some of Michael Angelo's figures in the Sistine Chapel; and greatly delighted him by his execution of the 'Sybil,' somewhat less by that of the 'Jeremiah.' The President intended to present these copies to the Royal Academy for the benefit of future students, but died when only four of them were completed. These were sold with his effects, and, with other copies made by Mr. Bewick, are hidden in some collection, or scattered among many. The difficulties of procuring them were very great; and we agree with Mr. Landseer in his regret that they are not secured for public inspection and use. Mr. Bewick seems to have had peculiar skill as a copyist. Goethe gave him a commission to execute copies of some of the figures in the Elgin marbles. A head painted by him was mistaken for a Murillo by both Wilkie and Calcott. His 'Jacob and Rachel' was exhibited in London, and won encomiums from men whose praise was almost fame. Mr. Bewick seems also to have been a skilful portrait painter, or rather sketcher, for he usually asked only a couple of sittings from the notable men whom he sought to include in his portfolio. Thus, he sketched Hazlitt, Scott, Brewster, Jeffrey, Professor Wilson, Mrs. Grant of Logan, Jamieson, McCulloch, Liston, the Ettrick Shepherd, Dr. Birkbeck, Lord Norbury, O'Connell, Lady Morgan, Maturin, Shiel, and many others. To these he easily procured introductions, and his artistic ability induced them to sit to him. He seems to have been singularly successful, and his personal agreeableness and social abilities seem to have won greatly upon all who thus made his acquaintance.
Hence he became acquainted with a large number of persons celebrated in literature and art. These he carefully Boswellized, drawing their portraits with the pen as well as with the pencil, and telling interesting anecdotes concerning them. Hence these volumes, consisting chiefly of his journals and letters, are a rich repertory of reminiscences of notable men, which, like Senior's journals in other circles of life, will have a permanent interest and value as the records of an intelligent contemporary observer. Mr. Bewick's literary style is somewhat inflated, and his story-telling is somewhat prolix; it is not therefore easy, within our limits, to pick out any of the plums of the really dainty feast that he has set before us. With Haydon and Hazlitt, Bewick was on terms of personal friendship, and of both he presents lengthened and interesting sketches. While, of course, fully conscious of Haydon's faults, he was bravely faithful to him. Haydon was very kind to Bewick. The latter was moneyless, and Haydon had only £5. 'However,' says he, 'I'll let you have five shillings, that will help a little.' He likewise offered to guarantee a quarter's living at an eating-house. Haydon took no fees from his pupils, but repaid himself in a characteristic way. He induced his pupils to put their names to accommodation bills, and Bewick was so implicated that when the smash came he 'found it impossible to deliver himself from the difficulties which beset him in consequence of the desperate state of Haydon's affairs.' Bewick sat as model for the head of Haydon's 'Lazarus,' he being at the time opportunely ill. Wilkie, otherwise a clumsy figure, had very fine hands. Taking hold of them, Haydon said one day, 'Look here, Bewick, these are what I painted my "Christ's" hands from. Wilkie's hands are the only parts of his person that are like his pictures. They are made for fine execution; my hands are very good, but they are not so tremulously nervous,--so delicate or refined. These will never paint large works with power, nor will mine ever paint small pictures with sufficient delicacy and refinement. You would never suppose that these hands would have such a miserable mess upon the palette as you see there (looking down at Wilkie's dirty palette). Wilkie's hands were copied for the real mother in my picture of "Solomon," and it has been said that they are the most tender and expressive part of the whole picture.' Wilkie's hands were artistically close as well as symmetrical. Haydon, hard up, as usual, went to Kensington to ask his friend for the loan of £5. 'I was struck with his blank expression of face; if I had given him a blow he could not have been more staggered. I knew he had received some hundreds for his last work, and I ought to have done the same. Wilkie put his hand to his mouth, and pressed his under lip between his finger and thumb, like one of the figures in his "Rent-Day," and drawled out in cold Scotch that he "raaly couldn't" let me have it. I said, "You can't, eh?" He replied, "No, indeed he could not." I was silent--numbed; my young heart, warm then in the feelings and sentiments of friendship, had received a shock. I felt my cheek hot with the blush of wounded pride and disappointment, and could only say, "I am sorry for it;" and, wishing him a good morning, left him to himself and his hundreds.' Haydon was an awkward leech; but considering their friendship, this was a little too bad of Wilkie. On his way home, an eating-house keeper was more generous. To eat was a necessity. Haydon, who had dined at the place often, went in therefore, and after his dinner 'my hand went into my empty pocket in make-belief, and I said, "Oh, I've forgot my money to-day, I will pay, you to-morrow!" Just as I put foot upon the step of the outer door, a gentle tap on my shoulder stayed my progress, and I was very civilly invited by the keeper of the eating-house to walk into his room, as he wished to speak to me. I returned with him. He then shut the door, and after apologising for the liberty he was taking, said he had read in the papers how badly I had been used with regard to my picture ("Macbeth," which Sir G. Beaumont had returned because Haydon had increased its size), and that if dining there, or living entirely at his house, would be any convenience to me, he should be quite delighted, and I might pay him when I was able. I agreed to dine there for the future, with many thanks for this noble, disinterested kindness.' It is pleasant to add that when, shortly afterwards, 'Solomon' sold for eight hundred guineas, Haydon paid all his creditors, the generous eating-housekeeper included; and, still more, that his friendship for Wilkie still continued. 'I did not let trifles of this kind come between us to mar our mutual satisfaction in the pursuit of our beloved art.'
We regret that we cannot extract Bewick's interesting descriptions of Hazlitt, nor his exciting account of an evening with Ugo Foscolo and Wordsworth--the best picture in the book--when the passionate Italian declaimed his poetry before the philosophic Lakeist; and in Haydon's small parlour, greatly to the peril of Wordsworth's nose, especially when, in the extraordinary discussion which followed, Foscolo clenched his fist in the poet's face. Amusing anecdotes of Wilkie, especially one of his visit to Castle Howard, and of Lord Carlisle's indignation at the thought that he wanted to dine with him--'What does the fellow mean? Does he want to dine with me? I think my steward or housekeeper might content him;' interviews with Curran, Lord Norbury, O'Connell; two visits to Abbotsford, introducing anecdotes and characteristic traits of Scott; a visit to the Ettrick Shepherd; sketches, anecdotes, gossip concerning dozens of notables in literature and art; letters and journals from Rome and Naples, with anecdotes of Gibson, whose friendship he secured, and who modelled his bust; correspondence in leisurely age with his friend Davison concerning art and artists, with the various methods and merits of the latter, make up two volumes of the most interesting ana, which few will be able to throw aside until they are finished. It is pleasant to add that Mr. Bewick acquired a competence, built a house and a picture gallery at Darlington, and although for some years a valetudinarian, died in a good old age, greatly respected by a large circle of friends.
Life and Adventures of Count Beugnot, Minister of State under Napoleon I. Edited from the French by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Two vols. Hurst and Blackett.
Jean Claude Count Beugnot lived through the entire period of the French Revolution. He was born early enough (in July, 1761) to have attained to maturity at its actual outbreak, and to have some intelligent recollection of its immediate antecedents. He lived long enough (until June, 1835) to see its course and issue, and to judge its effects under three succeeding monarchs--Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis Philippe. No life could have been more exactly timed for a complete experience of it, and perhaps no life could have been better circumstanced for an intelligent and just appreciation of it. As a minister and a courtier, he was eminent enough to stand within the circle of confidential knowledge, but not so eminent as to be a leader of parties, so as to be blinded by their passions, or to share their fate; as a politician, he was clever enough to fill offices, and to be employed in affairs of importance, but not so clever as to be the victim of great and blinding ambitions. He was, moreover, flexible enough to serve under Louis XVI.--at any rate, as a loyalist member of the States General of 1789, and of the Legislative Assembly of 1791, and to suffer imprisonment during the Reign of Terror; to be Prefect of La Seine Inférieure, and Administrator of the Grand Duchy of Berg under Napoleon; to be Minister of the Home Department under the Provisional Government; and to serve under Louis XVIII. in various important offices--first, as one of the three commissioners selected by the King in the commission for the preparation of the Charter of 1814, next as Director-General of Police, next as Minister of Marine Affairs, next as Postmaster-General. In 1819, a Royal ordinance summoned him to the Chamber of Peers, but before it could be countersigned the ministry resigned, and he did not take his seat until 1830, a few months before the revolution which placed Louis Philippe on the throne. The retrospect of such a man must have been something like that of Noah and his sons. He was a good administrator, a fair Parliamentary orator, an admirable drawer-up of State papers, a cautious, respectable, able coadjutor; ranking, relatively with men in English political history, like Sir J. Graham or Lord Halifax. His literary ability was considerable, as these memoirs prove, but it was not so great as to cause his ambition for original authorship to disqualify his talent for reporting or recording what he heard and saw. He was of the literary type of Mr. Nassau Senior, only with far better opportunities of knowing; and instead of merely reporting the sayings and doings and opinions of others, he aspired to quasi-historical memoir writing, which throws the information that he had such rare opportunities of possessing into an independent narrative form, which is to all intents and purposes history, only with the episodical freedom of journal writing. Perhaps no man, unless it were Talleyrand himself, could have told us so much of the secret history of his times, and Talleyrand could not help writing fiction instead of history. Count Beugnot, as portrayed by himself, produces a feeling of high respect and esteem. He was sincere, honest, and faithful; he was a consistent Liberal, who had respect for authority, and felt it right, in the interests of liberty, to accept whatever Government was in power; he was, moreover, bold and faithful, sometimes in circumstances of great personal peril. We do not feel towards him as towards Mirabeau, or Talleyrand, or Lamartine, or Guizot. He was not positive enough or brilliant enough to excite either high admiration or great antagonism. He was a safe politician, an honourable man, and a literary mediocrity of the very highest class, but no more.
It is impossible to exaggerate the rich materials of these volumes. They lack the aristocratic gossip of the memoirs of St. Simon; they have not the melodramatic excitement or literary brilliancy of the historical romances of Lamartine; they are destitute of the doctrinaire philosophising which characterizes Guizot; but they are most interesting and sober recitals of what may be called the social history of the Revolution, in many of its byways, as well as at its centre. Almost every page is a romance, revealing--sometimes pitiably and ignominiously--the secret springs of great transactions, the littleness of great men, the selfishness of patriots, the intrigues of politics, the little wisdom with which the world is governed. Count Beugnot, moreover, possesses the rare qualities of truthfulness and fairness. He manifestly tries to tell us the truth, and with great shrewdness and justice he endeavours to present both the defects and excellencies of the monarchs under whom he served. He has generous words for Napoleon, does full justice to his superb genius, while he exhibits his hard coarseness and selfish, unscrupulousness, and clearly discerns the fatal defects which led to his fall. He respects Louis XVIII., his refinement and his wit, while in a very quiet way he exhibits his intense heartlessness and selfishness. He penetrates the unprincipled, intriguing character of the Orleans Princes, and prepares his readers for their fall, which he did not live to see. He appreciates, too, with much of the judicial power of an Englishman, the character of the French nation, and the fatal defects which keep it in almost a chronic state of eruption. It is impossible to cull from the rich repertory of these pages. We can only indicate a few of the points of interest. A native of Bar-sur-Aube, Count Beugnot became acquainted with the notorious Madame de Lamotte, the heroine of the 'Diamond Necklace,' who in 1762 (a misprint, surely, for 1782) took refuge in Bar-sur-Aube, on escaping with her sister from the Convent at Longchamps. The two young ladies were descendants of the Baron de Rémi, a natural son of Henry II., and claimed the estates of their family, the only thing which it had preserved being its pedigree. The king had granted to their father a pension of £40, and to the girls £24 each, besides placing them gratuitously in the Abbey of Longchamps, near Paris, with a view to the honourable extinction of a family which had troublesome claims. Madame de Surmont took compassion upon them, and Mademoiselle de St. Rémi fascinated M. de Surmont, and married his nephew, M. de Lamotte. The part of Madame de Lamotte in the amazing story of the 'Diamond Necklace' is told at great length, as also are many details of her history, M. de Beugnot being on terms of intimacy with her, and more than once coming into perilous contact with this strange tragedy. To her and Cagliostro three chapters are devoted; both are admirably sketched, and many illustrative anecdotes of them are told. The Cardinal de Rohan had faith in Cagliostro and 'the Duke de Chartres (Egalité), at whose court it had been decided no longer to believe in a God, but who was quite inclined to believe in Cagliostro.' Beugnot helped Madame de Lamotte to destroy her letters on the night of her arrest. 'Here it was that, casting cursory glances over some of the thousands of the letters of Cardinal de Rohan, I was sorry to see what a wreck the delirium of love, exaggerated by the madness of ambition, had made of this wretched man. It is fortunate for the Cardinal's memory that these letters have been suppressed, but it is a loss to the history of human passion. What an age was that when a prince of the Church did not hesitate to write, to sign with his name, and to address to a woman, letters that a man of our day, who had the least self-respect, might begin to read, but would never finish!' This story, in the light which it throws upon the condition of France, forms a kind of prelude to the personal history of Beugnot, who is first elected a Deputy to the States General. Curious things are told of Marat, who 'was then only a professor of physic, and made a crusade against the sun, declaring that it was not the fountain of light, and found persons senseless enough to listen to, and even to commend him.'
A characteristic story of the hauteur of the old French aristocracy is told of Madame de Brionne, who, at the time of the first insurrection of Paris, was advised by the Bishop of Autun to go and spend some time in a little provincial town, where she would not be known. 'A little provincial town!' she replied, 'Oh, M. de Perigord, I can be a peasant if you please, but never a bourgeoise!'
Louis XV. blamed the Archbishop of Narbonne for his inordinate love of hunting. 'My Lord Archbishop, you are a great hunter; I know something about it. How can you forbid your priests from hunting if you spend your life in setting them an example of it?' 'Sire,' he replied, 'for my priests, hunting is their own vice; in my case, it is the vice of my ancestors.' 'My Lord Archbishop,' said the King on another occasion, 'they say that you are in debt, and, very deeply.' 'Sire,' was the reply, 'I will ask my steward about it, and have the honour of informing your Majesty.'
In October, 1793, M. de Beugnot was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, where, and at La Force, he remained until the fall of Robespierre, in daily danger of death, but, strangely, escaping it. Of the interior of prison life during this period he gives vivid sketches; describes his fellow-prisoners--many of them illustrious for rank, talents, or virtues--and the incidents connected with the daily death delivery of one or more of them. It is a vivid and powerful sketch of a notable interior. This section of the work is a series of carefully executed sketches of notable persons, especially of the leading Girondists, including a full-length portrait of Madame Roland. He says, 'I more than once made this reflection, that death on the scaffold only causes horror to the generality of men, because they compare it with a state of peace, of enjoyment, and perhaps of happiness they are experiencing; but death considered from the depths of a dungeon, or what is more, death when the whole existence is changed into torture, is no longer the height of evils, but their remedy.'
Here we must leave M. de Beugnot. The subsequent portions of his book are even more important and interesting, as the author himself rose to eminence, and came into closer contact with the great movements of history. Every page teems with interest, not only to the historical student, but to the general reader. Miss Yonge has done good service in translating this important work, especially at this juncture, when the spiral cycle of French destiny has again brought its revolutionary tragedy. It is needless to say that she has executed her task well, although she might, in one or two places, have still further exercised her power of excision.
The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs. Notes of a Journey to British Guiana, with a review of the System and of the recent Commission of Inquiry. By the Author of 'Ginx's Baby.' Strahan and Co.
The conditions of coolie emigration from the East Indies to the West, although attracting but little attention from the general public, have been regarded anxiously by politicians and philanthropists, who know how easily enormous oppression and cruel wrong may shelter themselves under legal forms of emigration, and what a peculiar field for unscrupulous cupidity is constituted by the transmigration of helpless Hindoos and Chinese to British plantations in British Guiana. That great abuses have been perpetrated admits of no doubt, but happily facilities of knowledge and of redress are much greater than in the old days of slavery; and experience has made the British public and the British Government susceptible and suspicious so that long continuance of wrong is not possible. A Mr. Des Voeux, formerly a stipendiary magistrate in Demerara, now an administrator in St. Lucia, at the close of 1869 addressed a letter to Earl Granville, the Colonial Secretary, representing the state of the coolie emigrants 'to be little other than that from which not many years ago the tillers of the same soil were redeemed by our generous fathers. Seduced from India or China by false promises (so he seems to have averred), not duly notified of the legislation which would affect their relations when they reached the field of labour, assigned without due caution on the part of the executive to the power of unconscientious masters, wronged by the law and against law, daily injured, and unable to obtain redress because of combinations between unjust magistrates, hireling doctors, and manoeuvring planters, dying unrecked and unreckoned (I have tried faithfully thus to sum up this man's charges), such a fifty thousand British subjects anywhere existing would heat the sympathies of English hearts to boiling point.' Earl Granville consequently appointed a commission of inquiry, and two philanthropic societies, 'The Anti-Slavery,' and 'The Aborigines Protection Society,' induced no doubt by the humane sympathies and the great descriptive power of 'Ginx's Baby,' engaged Mr. Jenkins, who is a barrister, to go out as counsel to watch proceedings on their behalf--'to represent the coolies in this inquiry.' 'I accepted and held their retainer as a counsel, not as a partisan.' This volume is his report. It is, we must confess, simply a blue-book; but little of the dash and humour and graphic description of 'Ginx's Baby' characterize it. His clients are distant; his employers required exact statements of facts and figures. It is a law case, and not a romance. It is full of valuable information, but useful information is interesting only to politicians and philanthropic societies. Mr. Jenkins is not dull--he is most so when he tries to force the fun; ordinarily, he is as graphic in description and as picturesque in statistics as his subject-matter will permit him to be. Everywhere he is intelligent and apparently most solicitously impartial. In the descriptive parts of his book he suffers by comparison with the graphic power of Mr. Kingsley's 'At Last,' yet fresh in the memory of all readers. The book is to be accepted, therefore, simply as a blue-book of useful information. The question is one of interest and importance; it affects our national honour and philanthropy. It is 'whether an artificial system for the transfer of the swarming hives of Eastern Asia to the needy plains of the tropical West can be formed, organized, and conducted with results equally efficacious to the capitalists and beneficial to the emigrants.'
Although Mr. Jenkins thinks that Mr. Des Voeux's statement, made under fear, as he says, of a coolie rising, are exaggerated, and that his examination before the commissioners 'proved to be of a very unsatisfactory character,' that he had written 'a very long and serious letter, with the honestest of intentions but with the least business-like of performance,' he thinks that there was a necessity for the inquiry, and that 'the severe animadversions on Mr. Des Voeux's conduct, in the report of the commissioners, was beyond the proper sphere of their duty;' also that, 'on one or two points, absolute justice does not seem to have been done him in the report.' Mr. Jenkins describes his voyage out, several farms which he visited, the proceedings before the commissioner, the organization for emigration in India and in British Guiana, with the management of the emigration office, indentures, registers, &c., women and marriages, emigration laws, remedies against employers, wages, medical inspection, &c., illustrating each by facts, anecdotes which may not be always facts, and various details. He also traces the growth of the coolie system from the time of the abolition of slavery, and discusses the apprenticeship and other provisions for its regulation. The home Government has refused to subsidize the emigration; hence it has been in a state of chronic feud with the colony. The details given by Mr. Jenkins in his appendix, under the head 'Review of Emigration,' are of a very grave and ominous character. First he tells us that 'every importation of African blood, whether aboriginal or West Indian, has from the first regularly disappointed its promoters; the causes 'lie partly in the character of the negro, partly in the incapacity of the old labour system for adaptation to a state of things in which the labourers had become free.' In 1839, a society was formed to procure emigrants without the aid of the State; 2,900 labourers were obtained from Barbadoes, and thirty from the United States. The emigrants were speedily absorbed into the mass of village population. In 1841, bounty was paid on 8,098 emigrants, chiefly Portuguese, from Madeira and Brazil; the mortality was appalling, and under an act of disallowance in October of the same year, public emigration came to an end. In 1844, Acts were passed providing for Chinese and coolie emigration, and the next year 563 emigrants came from Calcutta, and 225 from Madras. In the following year nearly 6,000 Portuguese emigrants arrived, together with 1,373 from Calcutta, and 2,455 from Madras. They were 'ravaged by disease, and literally decimated year by year in the process of acclimatization.' Between 1845 and 1851, 18,707 Madeirans had been imported. The census of 1851 showed that only 7,928 were in the colony; some, however, had returned to their native country. The quinquennial increase in the number of Indian emigrants arriving during each of the four periods 1851-1855, 1856-1861, 1861-1865, 1806-1870, is represented by the figures 9,000, 14,000, 18,000, and 24,000. In 1853, besides the Indians, 647 Chinese were added, and in the seven years 1859-1866, about 12,000 more. The Chinese have proved very valuable emigrants. About 10,000 Barbadians, 12 Portuguese, and 2,500 Africans, made an estimated rural population of 92,466. The death-rate is very high, never less than 10 per cent. The proportion of women to men among the coolies in British Guiana is as 10,000 to 29,000, among the Chinese as 2 to 114. The detailed evils resulting from this, given in Mr. Jenkins's chapter on the subject, are appalling. Mr. Jenkins also quotes from the Pioneer of India an ugly story concerning Jamaica emigration agents, who attempted in India to carry off some twenty women by force, whom they had got into confinement; and were defeated only by the energy of the Rev. Mr. Evans. Although women are almost useless as labourers, it is a suspicious fact that the fee for each woman recruited in India is seven rupees, while that for a man is only four. We cannot discuss the various points of emigration policy advocated by Mr. Jenkins; we can only thank him for directing public attention to a matter so deeply affecting our colonial future on the one hand, and our national honour on the other.
Westward by Rail; a Journey to San Francisco and Back, and a Visit to the Mormons. By W. T. RAE. Longmans, Green, and Co.
In a new introductory chapter to this second and cheaper edition of his book, concerning which, on its first appearance, we spake with strong and merited commendation, Mr. Rae gives additional information concerning the Mormons, and the effect produced upon Mormonism by the new railway, by the Mormon revolt under Mr. Godbe and the sons of Joseph Smith, and by the vigorous policy of the United States Government. Mr. Rae does not think that it has sustained much damage by either. Brigham Young said that he did not 'care anything for a religion which could not stand a railroad.' Mr. Godbe's reform is brought under suspicion by its commercial motive, and was checkmated by Brigham Young giving the electoral franchise to women. The chief perils to Mormonism are the successful assertion of the control of the Mormon militia by Governor Schaffer, and some decisions of Chief Justice McKean securing absolute impartiality between Mormon and Gentile in the law courts, refusing to naturalize any aliens who are polygamists, and refusing to legalize certain donations of public land made by the Mormon Legislative Assembly. The recent census gives a population in Salt Lake City of 17,246 persons, in the territory of Utah of 86,786, both much below the calculation of the Mormons themselves.
Mr. Rae also gives the latest information concerning gold and silver mining in the States of California and Nevada, and the territory of Utah, and concerning the development of traffic on the Great Pacific Railway.
Canoe Travelling: Log of a Cruise in the Baltic, and Practical Hints in Building and Fitting Canoes. By WARINGTON BADEN-POWELL. With Twenty-four Illustrations and a Map. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The canoe achievements of Mr. McGregor--and perhaps even more the graphic way in which they have been described--have provoked much emulation, and bid fair to raise canoeing into one of our characteristic national recreations, like yachting and Alpine climbing. Mr. Baden-Powell records a remarkable achievement of 400 miles of canoeing in the Baltic. Starting from Gothenburg in the Cattegat, on the western coast of Sweden, he and his companion took their two canoes up the river Gotha, and across the large inland lake Wevern, 100 miles long, which they crossed in a steamer; then through the West Gotha Canal, and across the Lakes Wicken and Wettern, Boven, Roxen, and Elen, with their connecting canals, to the Baltic; then along the north coast of the Baltic, with its innumerable islets, and up the Oxlo Sound to Stockholm. From Stockholm they went by steamer to Gothland, Carlsharm, and Malmo, from which place they crossed in the canoes to Copenhagen, thence by railway and steamer to Ketson, Kiel, and Hamburg, where, after some short river canoe excursions, they took steamer to England. The account of the voyage is little more than a log of sailing experiences, with slight touches of description of people and places; but it will be read with interest by all who are fond of boating, and by many who are not. The second part of the book is purely technical, and furnishes data for the construction of canoes.
POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.
Balaustion's Adventure: including a Transcript from Euripides. By ROBERT BROWNING. Smith, Elder, and Co.
Mr. Browning's pastimes are characteristic enough. This new poem he calls a May-month amusement, in the very graceful dedication in which he explains its origin; but still we have the personal qualities as predominant as elsewhere. The Countess Cowper, it appears, urged him to give a version of a play of Euripides, 'of that strangest, sweetest song of his, Alkestis;' and Mr. Browning gallantly set himself to the task. But well may he say, in a slightly different sense from what he meant it, though truly in no disparagement of his own originality, 'Euripides might fear little; out I, also, have an interest in the performance; and what wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your feet?' Had it not been for the skill with which Mr. Browning invents dramatic expedients to aid him in relieving and toning down the contrast which would inevitably have been felt between the direct and sunny simplicity of the Greek, and his own wayward, imperative many-moodedness--to coin a phrase--something of the grotesque would assuredly have mingled itself with this performance. But, though the clear wine has been poured into a coloured glass, ornamented with design all too florid, it is presented to us by so sweet a hand that we often forget the contrast in the singular grace of the maidenly face and figure. Balaustion--wild pomegranate flower--has in her something of the Greek; but she has also an ineffable touch of our modern time. Her image comes as that of a reconciling spirit between Mr. Browning and the old Greek poet, in such a manner, as suffices to divert the mind from a too exclusive devotion to particular points. The necessity that rests on Mr. Browning to first of all create a series of media through which any circumstance or event may be seen, comes out most strongly here, where the subject-matter seemed least of all to admit of it. The triumph of Mr. Browning's genius lies in this, that in some sort he justifies his own injustice to those Greek qualities of unvarying clearness and grace of outline. Goethe, in his 'Helena,' celebrated in significant style the marriage of the Greek and Gothic spirit, and he even condescended under allegorical figure to point at individual poets. Had he lived to read 'Balaustion's Adventure,' he would have found in it a valuable instance. Mr. Browning is Greek in the fresh simplicity of his feeling; but Gothic in the necessity he is ever under to see his thoughts reduplicated in the shade and sunshine of many different moods or minds. Hence the lyrical spirit and the peculiarly dramatic form of his work; and so it is in this 'Adventure.'
The girlish simplicity of Balaustion, the Rhodian maiden who recites the play, and her capacity for pure unalloyed devotion--for she twice saves her friends by her patriotism and love of poetry--justify, in part at least, what appear to be inconsistencies in Mr. Browning's rendering; such, for example, as the lofty idealisation of the character of Admetos. It is just such as a fresh enthusiastic girl would, out of her own maidenly conception, impose on a hero of her own, thrown into such tragic circumstances of those of Alkestis. Thus, even where we are most induced to criticise, the figure of the teller comes in to warn us; but after all, the modern poet, by virtue of his dramatic medium, has reached a truer conception than that of Euripides, or has illumined his conception by letting full upon it the freer lights of earlier time. But clearly, the transcript from Euripides, in the hands of Mr. Browning, undergoes a strange transformation. It is not alone that lines here and there vary very much from the original, and that expressions are amplified or departed from; it is that on the old Greek thought a wholly modern conception of love, and of life and death, is superimposed, and a dim doctrine of spiritual compensation interwoven with it, which is quite alien to Greek feeling. Something, however, may be said for the fact that we have here really a reminiscence of a former telling, in which, naturally, much of the halo that rests on the past, simply because it has 'orbed into the perfect star,' would unconsciously well up round the recollection, and colour the incident. All this, of course, shows Mr. Browning's supreme art in dramatic expedient; but some of the expressions of Herakles and not a few utterances of Admetos, are almost too distinctly spiritualistic to pass muster in the connection in which we find them. For example, this:--
'Since death divides the pair, 'Tis well that I depart and thou remain Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh: Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more, So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh, Read yet awhile, a very flame above The rift I drop into the darkness by,-- And bid remember, flesh and spirit once Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake. Never be that abominable show Of passive death without a quickening life, Admetos only, no Alkestis now!'
Mr. Browning, in quoting the verse from Mrs. Browning, sufficiently indicates the spirit in which he would read the Alkestis; but clear it is that he might have chosen from the earlier poets passages far less likely to give rise to the contradiction which we have spoken of, and which cannot but be more or less felt in this instance. In Euripides, we see the first fatal symptoms of the skepticism and materialism which finally overtook the Greek stage. There is a good deal of casuistry in his expedients, which often the stage-play (of which Mr. Browning has decisively got rid) helped him to conceal. The old honest belief in the myths was beginning to fade and weaken, and had already become pretty much a thing for the theatre. Mr. Browning has aimed at idealising Euripides--at elevating him, as it were, to the point at which Greek myth will reflect the rising lights of modern ideas. But it is inevitable that scholars should feel that there is a lack of solid foundation for the rendering. To those who choose to receive Mr. Browning's Alkestis implicitly, it can only be a thing of beauty and of noblest meaning. So far as it is Greek, it gives the earlier rather than the later conception; but it has wrapped the Greek ideal in a new atmosphere of spiritual truth. If Mr. Browning had chosen the Alkestis of Euripides for the sole purpose of proving his wonderful dramatic capability, and his power of involving himself in a theme and so transforming it, he could not have found a better, that is to say, a more difficult, subject. In Greece the husband existed for the State, the wife for the husband, and the conjugal relation was little relieved by sentiment. Euripides celebrates the mere triumph of this Greek wifely duty--no more; but how exquisitely does Mr. Browning make Balaustion play chorus, so as occasionally to give opportunity for the infusion of his own transcendentalism. Sometimes, however, Mr. Browning shows fine capacity for catching the Greek grace and unconscious sensuousness of conception. Nothing could be more faithful than this:--
'For thee, Alkestis, Queen! Many a time those haunters of the Muse Shall sing thee to the seven-stringed mountain shell, And glorify in hymns that need no harp, At Sparta when the cycle comes about, And that Karneian month wherein the moon Rises and never sets the whole night through: So too at splendid and magnificent Athenai. Such the spread of thy renown, And such the lay that, dying, thou hast left, Singer and sayer.'
We take it for granted that our readers, either directly or indirectly, have got some notion of what we may call the machinery of the poem. When the Rhodians revolt because of the disastrous failure of the Nikian expedition against Syracuse, Balaustion urges her friends not to throw off their allegiance, but--
'Rather go die at Athens, lie outstretched For feet to trample on, before the gate Of Diomedes or the Hippadai, Before the temples and among the tombs, Than tolerate the grim felicity Of harsh Lakonia.'
She urges them to go to Athens, and they set sail. When they are blown out of their course she encourages them to new effort by singing poems; and when they are cast on the Syracusan coast, she wins the suffrages even of the Syracusans by her recitations. She tells her friends, just when she is about to be happily wedded, of this her early adventure, and recites the 'whole main of a play from first to last,' which was associated in her mind with such strange, glad memories.
And this is Mr. Browning's way of reproducing Euripides to us. Nothing could be more characteristic than this performance. It is full of dramatic subtleties; yet ever and anon the pure naturalness and simplicity of Greek life break through upon us with subduing force from the strange relief of contrast. One of our poets, in a very clever jeu d'esprit, spoke of Mr. Browning as 'thinking in Greek.' This poem proves, in a certain respect, how true was the characterization. But if Mr. Browning thinks in Greek, then it is most often to the low, sad undertone of modern doubt, question, and perplexity. The sunshine that is cast over this whole adventure is what most entitles it to be called Greek, though there is far too much suggestion of shadow, in the shape of perilous speculation, in the background.
Faust; a Tragedy. By JOHN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. Translated in the original metres by BAYARD TAYLOR. Strahan and Co.
All translators of first-class poetry have a difficult series of problems to solve; but we are disposed to think a version of 'Faust' in the original metres is about the most arduous task a man could set himself. We would almost rather attempt 'The Birds' of Aristophanes. Mr. Taylor, hitherto known as one of the choicest writers of that variety of English prose which has developed itself across the Atlantic--a variety which is what gardeners call a 'sport'--is not quite up to the great work he has undertaken. He is not a sufficiently subtle metrist to echo the delicate melodies which lurk in Goethe's simplest forms of rhythm; nor does he always faithfully reflect Goethe's ideas--which, though twisted into recondite form, are usually simple reproductions of archaic axioms. It is the highest compliment you can pay Goethe, to say that there is nothing new in him. He iterated ancient truths in forms that suited his own era. He was like a mighty tree, bearing fresh foliage every year, but always the same old oak that cast cool shadows on the lawns of Eden. Nothing can be more certain than that absolutely new ideas must be false ideas; but it is equally certain that a man of great genius does infinite good by thinking out old ideas afresh, and presenting them in a form that suits his generation. There is not much in 'Faust' that there is not in 'Job' (which some authorities deem the oldest poem in existence), and there is much in 'Job' which there is not in 'Faust.' But 'Faust' was a necessity of the age, for all that. And even Bailey's 'Festus,' a very crude and washed-out variation of the theme, did good in its time.
The deficiencies we have indicated in Mr. Taylor's work are more visible in the second part of 'Faust' than in the first. In both they are painfully observable. Take Gretchen's song, 'The King in Thule:' we select the first, second, and fifth stanzas:--
'There was a king in Thule Was faithful till the grave, To whom his mistress dying A golden goblet gave.
'Nought was to him more precious; He drained it at every bout; His eyes with tears ran over As oft as he drank out.
* * * * *
'Then stood the old carouser, And drank the last life-glow, And hurled the hallowed goblet Into the tide below.'
Herewith we venture to compare the same stanzas, in a boyish translation of our own, made when we had a vision of translating 'Faust':--
'There was a king in Thule, the ancient sea beside; His love a goblet gave him upon the day she died. 'At festival and banquet he loved that cup of gold, For many a dream it brought him of the sweet days of old.
* * * * *
'The aged king arises; a mighty draught drinks he, Then hurls the golden-goblet away into the sea.'
Some of Mr. Taylor's expressions in the few lines we have cited are unpoetic, and some are unintelligible; for example, what is to be understood by the old king's drinking 'his last life-glow?' Rhyme is of course answerable for the barbarism.
Now let us take the first four lines of 'The Prologue in Heaven'--the song of Raphael, the Archangel. Thus Mr. Taylor:--
'The sun-orb sings in emulation, 'Mid brother spheres, his ancient round-- His path predestined through creation, He ends with step of thunder-sound.'
This is awkward and unpoetic. The sun 'singing a round' makes one think of
'Three blind mice-- See how they run!'
Here is Dr. Anster's version of the same lines:--
'The sun, as in the ancient days, 'Mong sister stars in rival song, His destined path preserves, obeys. And still in thunder rolls along.'
Shelley writes:--
'The sun makes music as of old Amid the rival spheres of Heaven, On its predestined circle rolled With thunder speed.'
Again, let us place in parallel the final lines of Raphael's song. Taylor:--
'The lofty works, uncomprehended, Are bright as on the earliest day.'
Anster:--
'Mysterious all--yet all is good, All fair as at the birth of light.'
Shelley:--
'The world's unwithered countenance Is bright as at the birth of day.'
Mr. Taylor's liability to mistake Goethe's meaning--a liability shared by most translators, because the poet is really simple, when they fancy him only an utterer of enigmas--is curiously shown by his rendering of a famous line:--
'Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.'
Goethe meant simply this, 'Man errs when he strives'--calm is both power and joy--leave the great movement of the world do to its work, and be passive in the hands of the Creator. His faith was in repose. Well, Mr. Taylor gives us the renderings of nine translators, none of whom have approached the simplicity, and only one or two the meaning of the original.
Ex. gr.:--
'HAYWARD.--Man is liable to error, while his struggle lasts.
ANSTER.--Man's hour on earth is weakness, error, strife.
BROOKS.--Man errs and staggers from his birth.
SWANWICK.--Man, while he striveth, is prone to err.
BLACKIE.--Man must still err, so long as he strives.
MARTIN.--Man, while his struggle lasts, is prone to stray.
BERESFORD.--Man errs as long as lasts his life.
BIRCH.--Man's prone to err in acquisition.
BLAZE.--L'Homme s'égare, tant qu'il cherche son but.'
To which let us add:--
BAYARD TAYLOR.--'While man's desires and aspirations stir, He cannot choose but err.'
One would like to know what becomes of the original metres, when a line of eight monosyllables is transmuted into two claudicant lines that run to sixteen syllables. By the way, we must remember one other rendering:--
SHELLY.-- ... 'Man Must err till he has ceased to struggle.'
But even Shelley has not quite caught Goethe's meaning. This is excusable, as we know that Shelley's German was imperfect.
Our ultimate judgment on Mr. Bayard Taylor's effort is simply this: it is a worthy piece of work, but it does not, and cannot stand as representative of 'Faust,' for the two reasons already assigned. Mr. Taylor cannot fathom Goethe's meaning, and cannot catch his music.
The Breitmann Ballads. By CHARLES G. LELAND. Complete Edition. Trübner and Co.
Mr. Leland has found it necessary to protest against spurious Breitmanns, and to say that his only authentic ballads are contained in this volume--a testimony at once to both the popularity of the ballads and the value of this edition. The various parts of the volume are very unequal in merit, but 'Hans Breitmann in Italy' is equal to the best work of the author, and attests his varied attainments. We have already done justice to the ballads, and need only quote his advice to the Pope:--
'"Tonitrus et cespes!" dixit Johanes Breitmann.
"Si veritatem cupies, tunc ego sum der right man; Percute semper ferrum dum caldum est et malleable, Nunc est tuum tempus te facere infallible.
'"In nostra America quum Præses decet abire, Die ultimo fecit omne quodposset imaginire. Appointet ambasciatores et post-magistros, Consules et alios, per dextros et sinistros.
'"Quum Rex Bomba ista Neapolit--anus, Compulsus fuit to shin it--ut dixit Africanus-- Fecit ultimo die ducos et countos, vanus. (Inter alios McCloskey, tuus Hibernicus chamberlanus.)
'"Et quia tu es; ut credo; ultimus Poporum, Facis bene devenire, quod dicitur High Cockalorum-- Sei magnissimus toad in the puddle, ite caput, magnamente; Et ERITUS SICUT DEUS, nemine contradicente!
'"Unus error solus, Sancte Pater commisisti. Quia primus infallible non te proclamavisti, Nam nemo audet dicere: Papa fecit quod non est bonus. Decet semper jactare super alios probandi onus.
'"Conceptio Immaculata, hoc modo fixisti, Et nemo audet dicere unum verbum, de isti: Non vides si infallibilis es, et vultis es exdare, Non alius sed tu solus hanc debet proclamare."
'"Figlio mio," dixit Papa; "tu es homo mirabilis, Tua verba sunt mi dulcior quam ostriche cum Chablis, In tutta Roma, de Alemania gente, Non ho visto uno con si grande mente.
Ver obenedetto es--eris benedictus, '"Tibi mitterem photographiam in qua sum depictus, Tu comprendes situatio--il punto et gravamen. Sunt pauci clerici ut te. Nunc dico tibi.--Amen."'
The Member for Paris: a Tale of the Second Empire. By TROIS-ETOILES. Three vols. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The purpose of this very clever book is to give a picture of the political and social state of France during the early period of the Second Empire, the period immediately subsequent to the coup d'état--the period of the Crimean War, and of the Crédit Mobilier. Anything more shrewd in observation, more competent in knowledge, more healthy in judgment, more caustic in refined sarcasm, more sparkling in style, it is difficult to imagine. The thread of story upon which these sketches are strung is of the slenderest. Raoul Aimé was Duke of Hautbourg, on the Loire, whose head shared the fate of those of so many of the old aristocracy in 1793, and whose estate was sold for a mere song to an attorney. Raoul Aimé's son went into exile, married the wealthy daughter of an English slave-owner, with whose money he bought back the estate, returned to France with Louis XVIII., and died a Minister of State. His son was accidentally killed in the streets the day after the coup d'état of 1851, his nephew, Manuel Gerald, being heir to his title and property. A sturdy, and noble-hearted Republican, Gerald cannot take possession of estates purchased with the money of a slaveholder, or live in France under the régime of Napoleon III. He lives, therefore, in comparative poverty in Brussels, and distributes the large revenue of his estates in charities. His two sons, Horace and Emile, enthusiastically ratify their father's repudiations, and study law in Paris in order to practise as barristers. The father, however, wisely refuses to accept the verdict of his sons as final, puts into their hands a deed conveying the estate to them, and puts them upon a probation of five years, at the end of which their decision is to be given. The two young men enter at the bar, take modest lodgings in the house of a haberdasher, and become the heroes of the story. Their characters are finely discriminated. Horace, the elder, is full of fine generous impulses and virtues, but has certain social weaknesses that render him incapable of the austere, not to say Quixotic virtues of his father. Emile, who is subordinate in the narrative, is less brilliant than Horace, but studious, solid, modest, and Spartan; both brothers, moreover, are affectionate and filial. The interest centres on Horace, who makes a brilliant début in defence of a press prosecution, and becomes famous; is returned deputy for Paris, becomes acquainted with M. Macrobe, the great financier, the founder and chairman of the Crédit Parisien; is so far entangled by him as to marry his daughter Angelique, notwithstanding a deeper passion for Georgette, the haberdasher's daughter; writes brilliant articles, makes effective speeches, passes through various phases of Parisian life, and ultimately, after his father's death, determines to claim the dukedom. Almost every class and aspect of the venal life of Paris during this humiliating period is made to pass before us, the chief personages being portraits from life, easily cognizable by anyone moderately acquainted with history: indeed, the names of some are but very thinly disguised. Thus, Jules Favre is Claude Febre, M. Thiers is M. Tiré, M. Arsène Houssaye is Arsène Gousset, Mr. Worth is Mr. Girth, Blanqui is Albi. Journalist, Republican, Legitimist, and Imperial, notably the renowned correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, who is everywhere and knows everything; politicians, lawyers, novel writers, financiers, aristocrats, bourgeoisie, Parisians, and villagers, are presented in careful portraiture--evidently from life--the whole being done with very great literary skill and brilliancy. The story, slight as it is, and notwithstanding the somewhat melodramatic incidents of the struggle between Horace and Albi at his father's grave, and the death of the former and his wife on the day they take possession of the estate, indicates great powers of novel writing, if the writer be so minded. Nothing can be more skilful, discriminating, or beautiful than the delicate contrasts in character between the two brothers, Horace and Emile, the two girls Georgette and Angelique, the two patriots Horace Gerald and Nestor Roche; or more masterly than the way in which the working of Imperial institutions is exhibited. The marvel is that any despot, in such a position of moral isolation, and with such unscrupulous and reckless methods of tyranny and corruption could, for eighteen years, have maintained himself upon the throne of France. The fact speaks volumes for the condition to which unscrupulous rulers and blind revolutions may reduce a great people. The writer's intimate acquaintance with the interior of French life, whether the court life of Paris, or the village life of Hautbourg, the legal life of the Palais de Justice, or the bourgeoise life of commercial travellers, and Parisian shopkeepers, is manifest in every sentence, and is something unique. The book is a gallery of portraits, in a series of social sketches eminently original and clever. A genial and high-minded Asmodeus, in a vein of delicate sarcasm, reveals a state of things which all were assured of, but which very few could picture. Here, with graphic realism, and yet with perfect delicacy, its terrible rottenness is indicated. In his very different field, and with a very different genius, both in quality and degree, the author of "The Member for Paris" has been as eminently successful as MM. Erckmann-Châtrian. We trust that the writer, whom we can scarcely err in identifying with the author of the brilliant French sketches which have appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, will work yet more fully the mine of which he has given us these specimens.
Behind the Veil. By the Author of 'Six Months Hence.' Smith, Elder, and Co.
It is an undoubted weakness in a writer of fiction when the interest of the story is made to depend upon a succession of exciting situations and tragic catastrophes. There was in this writer's former work a weird interest in the strange psychological problem which he set himself to work out, and which was done with a considerable degree of power and promise. In the present story sensational incident abounds, and is not earned off by morbid psychology. Here, as in the former work, the interest centres upon a murder--surely human life is varied enough for a fresh source of interest. The story opens with a railway accident, in which the hero is well-nigh killed, and, in his delirium, awakens certain suspicions about his antecedents, the pendant picture of which is a scene of murder in the Australian bush. After his marriage is broken off he nearly dies of typhus fever, in the delirium of which he removes the suspicions which had gathered round him; and Jessie, his betrothed, nearly dies of a ruptured blood-vessel. Twice he is found by Beresford in a remote part of Wales--the chances of finding him there being a hundred thousand to one, while the plot is carried on by a dozen most improbable coincidences. Then James his brother, who in fleeing from justice has slept in a railway truck, apparently rides to his death in a furnace, into which, by automatic action, it is likely to deliver him; but by a refinement of feeling, resembling that of a cat with a mouse, he is made to jump off and over a precipice, only to die a few hours after in the custody of the police, who are in pursuit of him for murder--having confessed himself guilty, first of the murder, then of the crime of blocking the railway, to cause the death of his brother. In addition to all this, Jessie's brother dies of consumption, and a seaside acquaintance is half killed by cardiac asthma. Now we have no objection to a reasonable amount of the tragic, but thus to fill a novel with it is simply repulsive, and is defective art. A good plot should be constructed like a Chinese puzzle, and, like a Chinese puzzle, taken to pieces. The Author of 'Behind the Veil' simply breaks the puzzle after cleverly putting it together. There can be but little good, and a very inferior land of interest in such melodramatic stories; we get too impatient even to be amused, and we cannot rank very highly the writer who chiefly depends upon them. The best parts of 'Behind the Veil' are its dialogues and letters--especially those of Jessie and Flo--which are very spirited and clever; as is also the schoolboy slang of Conrad. If the writer would trust himself to a novel of character he would, judging from these, succeed well. The characters themselves, too, are well conceived and discriminated, especially those of the mother and the two sisters. Noel Arlington is too galvanic to be natural or interesting. Beresford is better, and has two amusing foils in Smith, the pianoforte tuner, and Pinthorne, the curate--both of which are very clever caricatures. The literary power evinced is considerable; the love-making is well-nigh perfect, although we do not quite like a man of thirty-five and upwards marrying a girl of fifteen. The writer ought to do good work; and will, if he will only emancipate himself from a vicious school, depend less upon blue lights, and more upon natural human developments. His book is one in which, while the defects hinder perfect sympathy, the excellences are too distinctive to permit us to lay it aside.
Fernyhurst Court; an Every-day Story. By the Author of 'Stone Edge.' Strahan and Co.
If the author of 'Behind the Veil' has gone to the one extreme, the author of 'Fernyhurst Court' has gone to the other. Although her work belongs to the higher and more thoughtful school of character, and although it is written with the delicacy, beauty, and power that challenged attention and excited expectation in 'Stone Edge,' it has not movement enough to sustain its characters. The artistic structure is loose, although upon the artistic finish much careful pains is bestowed. More of the evolution of a story would have prevented the tendency to run into inordinate descriptions and to desultoriness which has sometimes wearied us. The book is a thoroughly good one--it could not be otherwise from the pen of its author--but like 'Benoni Blake,' upon which we have offered some criticisms in another place, it might have been better. Whatever the skill of touch and the effects of colour, the first great requisite of a picture is composition; so the first great work of a novel writer is a story--and story there is none in 'Fernyhurst Court.' Its studies are chiefly of women, and are apparently intended to exhibit the causes of wifely unfitness and motherly failure, in little defects of temper and unselfishness. Some half-dozen thoroughly disagreeable women are delineated--none of them wicked, but all unloveable through little naggings, or little selfishnesses. We confess that we could have dispensed with one-half of them, and could have desired the substitution of two or three contrasts like May. Milly is an improvement upon Dickens's Dora, but Lionel's chances of happiness are not great. The moral of the story is a wholesome one if the girls will but take it; but we confess we should like to see the authoress devoting her fine perception of character, and her great descriptive powers, to a work architecturally great, as well as artistically beautiful.
Her Title of Honour. By HOLME LEE. Henry S. King.
This charming biographical fiction is constructed upon the outline of Henry Martyn's history, which it clothes with imaginative flesh and blood, incident, conversation, and motive; so far, that is, as the actual history does not supply these. The authoress has been very faithful to biographical fact; her religious sympathies, moreover, have enabled her to enter with great appreciation into the purposes and motives, the hopes and fears, the fluctuations and resolves of that heroic life. The result is an imaginative story that is probably more true to actual life than the ordinary biographies of Henry Martyn are; for imaginative genius--faithful, as here, to ascertained facts, even the minutest--can represent men and women much more truly and vividly than a mere common-place biographer who is restricted to literal fact. The conception of Eleanor's character, generous and loving, and yet falling short of needful heroism, is not only very fine, but is, perhaps, the true explanation of the great disappointment in Martyn's career. Personal and local names are changed so as to give greater freedom of treatment to the artist, but they are easily identified--Truro with Pengarvon, Salisbury with Craxon, Eleanor Trevelyan with Lydia Grenfell. We scarcely need say of a book of Holme Lee's writing that it is carefully finished, and redolent of a refined and beautiful soul. We have no more accomplished or conscientious literary artist. The fine touches of characterization of which the book is full, give it a great charm to cultivated minds. The broken-off purposes of Henry Martyn's life give novelty to the course and issue of the story, and significance to the moral which wise preachers often proclaim, that tangible achievement is not the greatest end or influence of a life. Henry Martyn may have applied great scholarship and refined intellectual powers to work, which ordinary literati would have done even better, but the consecration of ordinary powers would not have filled the Church and the world with such an influence.
Benoni Blake, M.D., Surgeon at Glenaldie. By the Author of 'Peasant Life in the North.' Strahan and Co.
'Peasant Life in the North' won for its author a respectful attention to whatever else he might publish. Few sketches, of contemporaneous writers, surpass or equal the racy characterizations and subtle human tenderness of 'Muckle Jock,' the mild Rhadamanthus doom of 'The Dainty Drainer,' or the perfect admixture of refined passion and rustic roughness of 'The Mason's Daughter.' 'Benoni Blake,' therefore, excited expectations which it will both gratify and disappoint. Let us have done with the grumbling first. Of course the subjective characteristics of this author were to be anticipated. No one could have looked for a novel in the style of Charles Lever or Wilkie Collins from him. Subtle analysis, quiet description, and a certain vein of sentimental and philosophical reflection and comment were to be expected. We will not say that in these rather than in crowded incident and dramatic representations the chief genius of fiction lies. Every man in his own order. 'Charles O'Malley' is, in its way, as good as 'The Transformations;' but we may say that the greatest achievement of genius is a just equilibrium between the two, and this the author of 'Benoni Blake' has not maintained. His work is a photograph rather than a story, a photograph of the kind that presents the same face in four aspects of it. The effect is like looking through an album containing only different photographs of the same person. The art is very beautiful, and the effect for a little while very charming, but one gets tired before the second volume, and wishes that 'Benoni Blake' would do something, or that somebody would do something to him. We get as tired of his simple inertia as he of the simple facile sweetness of Bessie's kisses. There is, moreover, a little too much about kissing; the sweetness of kisses is better suggested than described. The author has made the mistake of expanding a sketch, such as might have found a place in 'Peasant Life,' into a book--story it scarcely is--and he has done this by repetitions and reiterations of substantially the same situation and sentiments. This probably is an unconscious revolt against mere sensationalism, for the writer is clearly capable of spirited dialogue and of inventive construction. We are not, however, quite sure of the limit of this power. Neither the peasant dialogues nor the conversations of educated persons have much variety; the latter, indeed, if we except the brief episodes at Fanflare Lodge and of the flirtation with Miss Shawe, are almost wholly substituted by descriptions. We are told what the characters are--they do not unfold or exhibit themselves. The author has, however, a minute acquaintance with the provincial thought and speech of the Scottish peasantry; their racy humour, pawky shrewdness, and quaint prejudices, are admirably described. John, the minister's man, and Nannie, his female counterpart, are genuine types;--John's leal affection comes out very nobly in the proffer of his hoarded savings. So, in a somewhat higher grade, are Mr. Bowie, the 'paper minister,' and Miss Robison. The conversation between Mr. Bowie and John, as the latter drives home the former, is the raciest bit in the book; but all this runs in a very narrow groove. There are, too, certain mannerisms, which recall unpleasantly reminiscences of the way in which Thackeray buttonholes his readers and takes them into his confidence, which had better be avoided, as also a covert, although not ill-natured, vein of sarcasm, which leaves you in doubt whether the writer is in jest or earnest; in which again, the influence of Thackeray is a little too perceptible. Decidedly, too, the puff indirect, in reference to the opinion of the Saturday Review on 'Peasant Life in the North,' is in bad taste. Altogether, there is a lack of the ars celandi artem, a certain artificialness, and self-conscious mannerism that mars the effect of the book. The writer is apparently ashamed of his gentle sympathies, and tries to appear cynical.
It is easier, however, to speak of defects than of excellences, and the manifold and great excellences of 'Benoni Blake' alone justify us in saying so much about its defects. The former are a minute knowledge and love of nature, a keen insight into the fluctuations and inconsistencies of human nature, a sympathetic tenderness for its sorrows and loves and pure joys, hearty enjoyment of its humour and pathos, and a quiet realism, exquisitely flavoured with sentiment, which portrays life as an accomplished artist paints a portrait, with just that idealism which adorns character without falsifying it. The character of Benoni, gentle and good but not heroic, drifting into virtue rather than fighting for it; that of Bessie, tender, yet resolute; lowly yet great in self-sacrificing power; trustful as worship, yet sensitive and very refined in feeling, and capable of being helped, as her friend Miss Robison helps her--are both admirably done: so is the contrast between the two ministers, Mr. Blake and Mr. Bowie. There is, however, something unnatural and improbable in the relative feeling of father and son, and we are sorry that Miss Robison should fall into the arms of a selfish and vulgar fellow like Bowie. The Fanfare family are also well portrayed. Altogether there is great power and greater promise in 'Benoni Blake.' It exhibits the fine elements of Scottish life in its lowlier walks, with a degree of ability that equals that of the author of 'Robin Grey.' It is full of beautiful lights and shades, tender touches, and racy humour, great truthfulness, and delicate discrimination. It does not fulfil the promise of 'Peasant Life in the North,' but had not that appeared first, it would be the promise of much better things to come.
A Harmony of the Essays, &c., of Francis Bacon. Arranged by EDWARD ARBER. English Reprints. London: 5, Queen-square, Bloomsbury.
Mr. Arber has here furnished us with one of the most curious and interesting books even of his rich series. His ample bibliography leaves no point necessary for elucidation untouched. It includes Dr. Rowley's 'Life of Lord Bacon,' Ben Jonson's testimony, Aubrey's gossip, 'A Prologue on Varieties of Species in Literature, with special reference to the Essay and its Natural History;' a general introduction concerning Bacon's literary character in connection with his personal history; a bibliographical catalogue and tabular return of the various editions of the essays, with an account of translations, &c. Nothing, indeed, seems to have escaped the industry of this prince of modern bibliographers. But the chief interest of the volume is its harmony of different texts. The texts selected are--I. The Editio Princeps, published 1597. II. Second edition, 1598; these two editions being almost identical. III. A volume preserved among the Harleian Manuscripts, containing interlineations and corrections in Bacon's own hand. IV. Second revised text, published 1612. V. Final English edition, 1625; usually regarded as the standard edition, but nevertheless varied and corrected by Bacon. These texts are printed by Mr. Arber in four parallel columns, Nos. I. and II. being identical in the first column, and Bacon's final corrections of No. V. being appended in foot-notes. The different works included in Mr. Arber's volume are:--I. A Harmony of the first group of ten Essays. II. 'Meditationes Sacræ,' Latin text with English translation. III. 'On the Colours of Good and Evil.' IV. A Harmony of the second group of twenty-four Essays. V. A Harmony of the third group of six Essays. VI. A Harmony of the fourth group of eighteen Essays. VII. The Fragment of an Essay on Fame. We scarcely need point out the great literary curiosity which this harmony of the essays constitutes, nor the means which it affords of studying Bacon's painstaking 'file,' and its illustration of his own saying, 'I alter ever when I add, so that nothing is finished till all be finished;' the significant comment of the great master on 'easy' writing. The perfection of Bacon's essays is the result of nearly forty years' continuous labour.
Publications of the Early English Text Society. Trübner and Co. 1871.
46. Legends of the Holy Rood; Symbols of the Passion and Cross Poems. Edited by RICHARD MORRIS, LL.D.
47. Sir David Lyndesay's Works. Part V. The Minor Poems of Lyndesay. Edited by J. A. H. MURRAY, Esq.
48. The Time's Whistle: or a Newe Daunce of Seven Satires, and other Poems. Compiled by R. C., Gent. Edited by J. M. COWPER, Esq.
Extra Series. XIV. On Early English Pronunciation, with especial reference to Shakspeare and Chaucer. By ALEXANDER J. ELLIS, F.R.S., F.S.A., &c., &c. Part III.
The present issue will more than satisfy the members of this valuable Society, and we can scarcely doubt that the publications of which it consists will attract to it more subscribers.
Dr. Morris's collection of 'Legends of the Holy Rood' will be welcomed both for the examples which it furnishes of the English language, as written in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and still more for its exhibition of one of the most interesting of the Christian legends, in several of the forms in which our forefathers were accustomed to hear it. The learned editor has prefixed to the collection a summary of the incidents of the legend in its various forms, and many who do not care to grope their way through the legends themselves, may be delighted and instructed by this sketch of a work of pious imagination which, while it amuses by its quaintness, can hardly fail also to strike the mind of a reader of the present day with admiration at the intensity of feeling, the abandonment to belief, and the wealth of spiritual apprehension, under the influence of which the story must have grown. To those who are unacquainted with the forms of Christian thought and feeling in the 'ages of faith,' and may wish to acquire some knowledge of it from original sources, under competent guidance, no better aid could probably be recommended than that afforded by this volume.
Nearly half of the volume containing the minor poems of Lyndesay is occupied by a preface by Professor Nichol, giving a sketch of Scottish poetry up to the time of Sir David Lyndesay, with an outline of his works. Some of the poems are amusing. That entitled 'The Justyng betuix James Watsoun and Jhone Barbour,' has a ring of humour, reminding us of Burns; but, on the whole, these pieces do not give a very high impression of the poet's power. The expression is better than the matter.
The author of 'The Time's Whistle' is unknown, but his present editor, Mr. Cowper, appears to be inclined to identify him with Richard Corbet, successively Bishop of Oxford, and of Norwich. Whoever he was, he hated well Papistry and Puritanism, as well as the grosser vices of his day, which seem to have been those of most days. The blows of his satire do not lack force, though they may delicacy of epithet, and his judgments on others are made from the firm ground of a supreme self-satisfaction. It is noteworthy how, just after the golden days of Queen Bess, the age appeared to its censors as evil as that of Queen Victoria does to ours. The attitude of High and Dry Churchmen towards Papist and Dissenter also appears in these verses just as we are familiar with it, and the vices castigated are those of all times. There is, however, one exception, in the description given of the ignorant frequenter of bookstalls, who sought to make himself appear a man of learning by poring over and seeming to read authors whose language he did not know. The description of him is very amusing. In some of the smaller poems the writer shows poetic feeling, especially in reference to the beauties of nature, expressed in graceful verse.
The third part of Mr. Ellis's valuable work on 'English Pronunciation' is a vast mine of information and suggestion concerning the great subject he is attempting to treat. This part contains, besides Mr. Ellis's own writing, and the passages from authors which he prints for the purposes of his arguments, reprints of several early tracts on pronunciation and phonetic writing, and a pronouncing vocabulary of the sixteenth century, compiled from several authors of that age. We venture, however, to think that Mr. Ellis will need an interpreter to make the fruit of his labours available to any but those who can wholly devote themselves to the study of his subject. His 'Glossic, or New System of Spelling,' and 'Key to Universal Glossic,' by means of which he seeks to express the many sounds of human language, are, to say the least, very hard to be understood. The problem is, doubtless, a most difficult one, and Mr. Ellis's signal qualifications to deal with it are so well known that we can do no more here than acknowledge gratefully this further contribution of his learned labour in a field of unknown fertility, little cultivated, and painful to till: while we at the same time point out the hindrance we find in deriving all the benefit from his work which we believe it is capable of affording.
THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOLOGY.
History of Protestant Theology, particularly in Germany, viewed according to its fundamental Movement, and in connection with the Religious, Moral, and Intellectual Life. By Dr. J. A. DORNER, Oberconsistorialrath and Professor of Theology at Berlin. Translated by the Rev. George Robson, M.A., Inverness, and Sophia Taylor. 2 vols. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1871.
Dr. Dorner is already well known in this country by the translation, published by Messrs. Clark, in their Foreign Theological Library, of his admirable and exhaustive work on the 'Person of Christ,' as a theologian who unites profound and extensive learning with spiritual insight, rare intellectual acumen, and earnest piety. The translation of his 'History of Protestant Theology,' now published, will be hailed as a welcome boon by all thoughtful students of Christian doctrine. It cannot fail to increase and extend the high estimation in which the author is held, and must lead to what is peculiarly needed at the present time, the formation of deeper and sounder views of the great principles involved in the religious and intellectual movement of the Reformation. The original work came out about five years ago, as one of a series of Histories of the Sciences, undertaken by the Historical Commission of the Royal Academy of Science at Munich, under the auspices of the King of Bavaria. It took at once a high position in the recent theological literature of Germany. The companion work of the series, 'a History of Catholic Theology,' by Dr. Werner, is admitted, even by Roman Catholic reviewers, to be decidedly inferior to it in scientific depth and thoroughness. Unquestionably a history like this, so intimately pervaded by the true spirit of a living Protestantism, which enables one clearly to understand the course of evolution pursued by the doctrinal systems included under that name, deserves to be regarded as 'a classic, both in respect of matter and form.' We cannot, however, add in respect of style; for it must be admitted that Dr. Dorner, like most of his countrymen, is very little solicitous to recommend his thoughts by arranging them in an attractive dress. His sentences are too often cumbrous and intricate, sometimes even to obscurity, and require a degree of attention in the reader that is rather fatiguing. Still there is a vigorous pulse in them, and an exact propriety in the language, by which the mind is stimulated and satisfied, so that when we have got to the end of a chapter or division, and look back on the road we have travelled, we feel as we might after a laborious climb which has rewarded us with a noble prospect.
The distinctive excellencies of Dr. Dorner's history appear to us to be the following:--First of all, as might be expected, it is marked by depth and thoroughness of learning. The investigation is carried out over the whole field, embracing all the sections and national branches of Protestantism, with their subdivisions, from the time of Luther onwards to our own day. So far from confining his review to the Lutheran communities of Germany, ample space is assigned to the leading representatives of opinion in the Reformed or Calvinistic churches of France and Switzerland, Great Britain, and North America. These are all taken up in due order, analyzed, and classified according to their respective tendencies. The schools of Germany, no doubt, receive the largest measure of attention, but there is a good reason for this in the fact which the author says will be owned by all, 'that the strength of scientific Protestantism, both in exegetical, historical, and systematic theology, rests in Germany.' He follows up this claim, however, with an ingenuous confession of the weakness and shortcomings of the German Churches, in comparison with those of other countries, in the practical and moral application of Protestant principles. The accounts given of the different systems, their origin, method of inquiry, and influence, are very complete and faithful. They show a wonderful capacity to grasp the contents and scope of widely different forms of thought and speculation, together with admirable skill in the exposition of them, so as to make even their abstruse portions intelligible. There is none of the dryness and heaviness that is often complained of as attaching to the discussion of the dogmas of a bygone age; but the vivid force of a subtle and active mind runs through and enlivens the whole. Some writers on those subjects remind one of a spiritless cicerone leading you through avenues of ruins, pointing out each object with the wearisome and formal minuteness of a catalogue; but our author is like one who resuscitates the spirit of the past, and who can throw a human interest around the fallen columns and deserted halls, awakening sympathy with the men who reared them and made them their home. In this respect he reminds us of the great Church historian, Neander. The gift is certainly one of rarer occurrence among theological writers than in the class of general historians.
This feeling of interest which is breathed into the discussions and controversies of the past, is closely associated with what we conceive to be the cardinal excellence of this history, stamping it with real scientific worth. We refer to the instinctive skill and fidelity displayed in tracing out the inner and formative principles of each movement, defining the limits and relations of each, and with keen and well-practised judgment determining the degrees of validity that should be assigned to them. This process is carried out by the author, not under the influence of some philosophic assumptions--which have too frequently been set up as a regulation standard in this kind of criticism--but in a spirit of Christian enlightenment and evangelical experience. Everywhere we mark the union of reverence for divine authority with the manly assertion of spiritual freedom in an honest search after truth. Hence his mode of judging those theories of religion which are most divergent from his own views, and antagonistic (as we should say) to Scriptural orthodoxy, is free from all narrowness, prejudice, and bitterness. He does not pronounce upon them according to their deviation from certain human formularies, but seeks to indicate the relation which they hold to ascertained laws of intellectual and spiritual progress. He shows how, in several instances, erroneous as they were, they formed a natural and partly justifiable revolt from the injurious impositions and restrictions of a barren orthodoxy, and led many to a healthier and more fruitful cultivation of the intellect and of the spiritual faculty. We have never read a delineation of the deep-seated causes which occasioned the birth and growth of Rationalism, so instructive and admonitory--we might add so impressive--from its candour and tenderness, as that which is given in the second volume of this work. Hagenbach's valuable history of the same phenomena is indeed composed with great fairness and ability, and is presented in a more popular method and style; but from that very cause it deals more with the superficial and obvious aspects of the case, and lacks the spiritual depth and completeness of Dorner's diagnosis. The study of both histories, however, should be combined; for each supplies what is wanting in the other. We require to conjoin with the scientific analysis of principles and tendencies which we have here, the striking pictures of men, society, and events, which enliven the pages of the more popular writer. In Dorner's view, the aberrations of Rationalism formed a needful stage, though an unhappy one, in the purification and elevation of Protestant theology, which has come forth from it enlarged and liberalized in its scope, better adapted to the wants of humanity, and more directly based on just and firm foundations. Accordingly we find that, while he does not look upon error with cool philosophic indifference, he can expose it without severity, or any approach to denunciation. He detects the elements of forgotten truths, which are often mixed up with it; perceives the openings by which it liberated and brought into play those faculties of our nature which had been unwisely fettered and suppressed; and shows how, by the fermentation which it stirred in the inert mass, it contributed to an ultimate reform both of theology and religion. In short, in this history we are not only guided to the sources of the stream in the healthy uplands of a new spiritual life--that region of experience which was the birthplace of the Reformation--but it is followed down in its various windings till it becomes hemmed in and imprisoned by artificial reservoirs; we see it gradually undermining, and at length bursting through the barriers, carrying with it for a space wide-spread ruin, till the flood subsides, and it begins once more to flow with deeper and ampler current in its proper channel, fertilizing the surrounding fields. All that now remains, perhaps, is to have patience till the waters become clearer, more limpid, freer from sediment and wreck; and care must be taken to keep up and strengthen the natural embankments, that the river may nowhere diffuse itself into a sluggish, unwholesome swamp--an expanse of shallow sentiment where boundaries are lost, and the current of action is imperceptible.
The work is in two volumes, and is divided into three books, the first of which occupies the whole of the former volume, embracing three divisions. The first presents a most interesting account of the preparatory forces, intellectual and spiritual, which were at work in the Protestant Reformation period. This sketch is necessarily rapid, yet it is remarkably complete and accurate. The Papal Church of the Middle Ages departed from the true idea of Christianity 'in not subordinating herself to the spiritual renovation of the nations, but setting up the principle of [Church] authority, and lordship, of its own end and highest good,' which led to all the spiritual blessings and ordinances of the Church being 'transferred into instruments of ecclesiastical power and hierarchical rule.' Thus, religion was changed in its very essence. Its blessings ceased to consist in personal fellowship with God, and assumed a materialistic and impersonal character. Mysterious influences and powers belonging to the Church and the clergy were made to constitute the riches of Christianity; and so piety, robbed of its personal end, attached itself to the visible altar, and to other sensible things. An ethical personal holiness was exchanged for a material relation, dependent on ceremonies. This is the radical error of all sacramentalism. The more sincere, who were anxious about their personal salvation, could not rest satisfied in such a system. Dr. Dorner--after discussing the relations of the Mediæval Church to the questions of man's salvation, to truth, and to the sphere of the civil power, which it strove to subjugate; and having traced the influence of Anselm, Aquinas, and the Schoolmen upon doctrine--treats briefly of the Latin and German mystics, showing how they sought direct communion with God, by contemplation and self abnegation. Their defects and excellencies are ably analyzed. Among the pioneers of the Reformation a high place is assigned to John Wessel, because of the prominence he gives to evangelical faith in the Mediator. When the representatives of the Biblical principle, in this preparatory stage, are introduced, it is shown how Wycliffe advanced it in alliance with the scientific and moral factors; but some injustice is done to him in respect of his doctrinal views, which the translator, Mr. Robson, has carefully corrected in one of the valuable notes with which he has enriched this volume. The treatises of Wycliffe, edited by Dr. Vaughan, in 1845, prove beyond question that the cardinal doctrines of grace were clearly apprehended and taught by the English Reformer.
In the second division, the Reformation itself is handled, as it appeared in Germany and in Switzerland, together with the various phases and relations it assumed up to the time of the Wittenberg Concord in 1536. A leading place is, of course, given to the character and experience of Luther, and the strongest light is thrown upon the fact that the movement in his case, and in Calvin's as well, had its origin in a great spiritual conflict and personal change. It was in seeking for and in obtaining the assurance of pardon, and in the experience of a power renovating the heart and life, bringing the whole man into communion with God through Christ, that Luther rose to the conception of faith as a divine principle uniting the soul to the Saviour, and freeing the believer, not only from the terrors of conscience and the moral impotency of the will, but from all subjection to human authority in divine things. This is justly exalted by Dr. Dorner as the material principle, and the moving force of the Reformation; this is at once its life and its law. It is by the harmonious working of this element, in a normal conjunction with the formal principle which sprung out of it, and which derives from it a solid application--viz.: The recognition of the divine authority and inspiration of the Scriptures,--that the life of the Reformation is fully and healthily developed. Both the evangelical systems of doctrine, the Lutheran and the Calvinistic, owe their characteristic excellencies to the interaction of these two principles which gave them birth. Their improvement, and the prosecution of the truths they contain, must spring from the same source. It is only by the renewed mind and heart of the believer, enlightened and guided by the Spirit speaking through the Word, that the doctrines of Christianity can be apprehended and embraced. Christianity is the salvation of God, and can be understood by none but those who personally appropriate its blessings through the Spirit by a living faith in the Redeemer. Throughout his history, Dr. Dorner never allows us to lose sight of that fact. The controversies, the declensions, the errors, the revivals, which he follows out in long array through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, are so many instructive, admonitory, or cheering illustrations of this fundamental law of Protestantism. There is no security for the material principle when separated from the formal, while the formal is emptied of life and fruitfulness if divorced from the material principle, the new life of faith in the soul. A divine, child-like faith in the heart, owning and yielding to divine authority in the Word, is the secret of safety and progress. That will give us at once Scriptural orthodoxy, and true freedom.
Space fails us, or we would fain have touched on the contents of the second volume, which, in some respects, is the more interesting of the two, from the account it gives of English Deism, and the rise and progress of German Rationalism. The critical analysis of the views and influence of Lessing, and the way in which Schleiermacher's system is drawn out and displayed, appear to us especially worthy of admiration. Towards the close of the work, the state of theology in England receives some attention; but here we are disposed to note, not only the meagreness of the information supplied, but in one case its inexactness. We refer to the introduction of the late Dean Mansel's argument in his 'Hampton Lectures,' given in p. 494, which the writer (we humbly conceive) has quite misapprehended in some important points. Further, it is most inaccurate to say that Mansel was 'triumphantly encountered by Maurice, and Professor M'Cosh, of Belfast.' Anything more crushing and scathing than Hansel's examination of Maurice's 'Strictures,' which are a mere farrago of fantastic misrepresentations and hysterical outcries, we never read. Between M'Cosh and Mansel there is no real opposition; it is in language rather than in substance that they differ, and as M'Cosh' himself says, he 'would rather agree with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, than any metaphysicians of the past or present age.'[69] This mistake, however, is but a slight speck on the lustre of so great a production, and may readily be excused in a foreign writer, who can hardly be expected--though he be better acquainted with our theology than most foreigners--to look at a controversy of this kind from our point of view.
Both translators deserve high commendation for the manner in which they have executed their laborious task. Mr. Robson's part is marked by great exactness, which at times becomes too closely literal; Miss Taylor's performance is more smooth and flowing, but in some of the metaphysical portions a doubt occurs as to whether the author's thought has been precisely seized. Yet, in many a paragraph we have admired the facility with which the lady has worked her way through rather abstruse speculations and involved periods. We tender both our most hearty thanks for the service they have rendered the theological public, and would beg most strongly to commend the work to all scientific students of our common Protestantism.
The Witness of History to Christ. Five Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge; being the Hulsean Lecture for the year 1870. By the Rev. F. W. FARRAR, M.A. Macmillan and Co.
Mr. Farrar's object in his Hulsean Lecture is to examine the moral and intellectual causes of modern unbelief. This he does in five lectures--the first demonstrating 'the Antecedent Credibility of the Miraculous;' the second affirming 'the Adequacy (for reasonable conviction) of the Gospel Records;' the third setting forth, from the facts of its history, 'The Victories of Christianity;' the fourth and fifth on 'Christianity and the Individual' and 'Christianity and the Race,' demonstrating the transcendent and transforming moral power of the religion of Jesus Christ, as a presumptive argument for its truthfulness--the whole being a cumulative argument, demonstrating that Christianity is the Divine and supernatural truth of God, which it professes to be. Mr. Farrar is necessarily restricted in these several lines of argument, by the limits of a spoken discourse devoted to each, to a few salient points, and to an indicative mode of argument; and we, of course, can follow even him but a very little way. The first, and fundamental question in the controversy between sceptical science and religious faith is the credibility of the supernatural. We do not think that Mr. Farrar has carried the intellectual argument further than it has hitherto been carried, or than perhaps it can be carried. Whatever theologians may say, it revolves in a circle. Science refuses to be represented by men like Strauss, who begin all argument by the petitio principii that the supernatural is antecedently incredible and absolutely impossible--for a more thoroughly unscientific position cannot be conceived. Nothing is antecedently impossible to true science; by the very conditions of it, it is restricted to the demonstration and interpretation of actual facts. Concerning the possible discovery of unknown facts it can say absolutely nothing. The question really is, Have the alleged supernatural facts of Scripture been demonstrated? Nor is it enough that science can urge nothing in disproof--the onus probandi lies with those who affirm. What then is the scientific value of the testimony to the alleged miracles of Scripture? First, it has to be admitted that the testimony is furnished solely by Scripture--that is, by the book which the miraculous is adduced to authenticate. Next, it can scarcely be denied that the chief strength of the Scriptural evidence lies in the transcendent moral qualities of Scripture. It is not the miraculous that authenticates the holy doctrine; it is the holy doctrine that authenticates the miraculous. The miraculous is affirmed by Prophets, Evangelists, and by Christ; and it is a moral impossibility that these should affirm falsely. We, therefore, who did not see the miracle, but only receive it on testimony, accept the testimony because the witnesses are unimpeachable. The actual beholders did not; to them the miracle was the credential of the teacher; but to us the teacher is the credential of the miracle. From which it follows that science will never accept the evidence of the miracle until it has accepted the unimpeachableness of the witnesses--that is, it must accept the truth and holiness of Jesus Christ before it will believe His miraculous works. Mr. Farrar, therefore, is perfectly justified in affirming that 'modern scepticism has not advanced one step further than the blank assertion, as regards the inadequacy of testimony to establish a miracle;' but, on the other hand, he must admit that beyond the assertion of the book, theology has not advanced a single step to demonstrate its occurrence. The mere intellectual argument must be left there, and the decision must turn upon the unanswerable moral demonstration--first, of the Scriptures themselves, and, above all, of the perfect character of our Lord; and next upon the history of Christianity in its progress through the world, and its contact with the philosophy and the moral phenomena of human life. Mr. Farrar does not deal with the moral evidence of Scripture, but he deals very effectively with the moral evidence which Christian history furnishes. The victories of Christianity are illustrated by the conditions and issues of its conflicts with Judaism and Paganism. Judaism without the Church, and Judaism within, and Paganism in its eclectic revival, its brilliant literature, and its ruthless persecution. What is more, it had to contend with the pseudo-Christianity of Constantine. 'Little, indeed,' says Mr. Farrar, 'did Christianity owe to that trimming emperor and unbaptized catechumen--that strange Christian, indeed, who placed his own bust on the statue of Apollo, and thought the nails of the true cross a fitting ornament for the bridle of his charger, and on whose extraordinary figure the robes, so besmeared with gold and crusted with jewels, could not conceal the Neronian stain of a son's and a consort's blood!' Then followed its conflicts with the Northern barbarian invasion, with Mahometanism, and with the internal corruptions of the Papacy. Thus, in its material and moral victories, Christianity witnesses to the truth and power of its Divine Founder's words. In the chapters in which Mr. Farrar demonstrates its triumphs over individual hearts and lives, and its total influences on the social life of nations, his facts are well selected, and his reasoning is unanswerable. Mr. Farrar's book evinces immense reading. His quotations are almost in excess of his text, and are gathered from the most diverse sources, from Ignatius to Lord Derby's speech at Glasgow. The impression is of a man who has collected his opinions rather than evolved them by processes of independent reasoning--only there is the impress of a strong hand upon the whole. Mr. Farrar is master of his quotations. His lectures are rhetorically eloquent, sometimes too much so for their character and purpose; but his arguments are well arranged, and his book is really a valuable contribution to modern Christian apologetics.
Modern Scepticism. A Course of Lectures delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society. With an Explanatory Paper by the Right Rev. J. ELLICOTT, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Hodder and Stoughton. 1871.
The present volume is an interesting sign of the times. Those who love our common Christianity more than they love the ecclesiastical systems which have so often interfered with their co-operation in Christian work, here stand side by side to advocate positions common to them all. The general diffusion of an atmosphere of sceptical speculation which has not only crept over the outworks but has invaded the very citadel of the Christian faith, has received great augmentation from the mutual antagonism of some Christians, and from the unhappy concessions of others. If nothing more had been gained for the cause of Christian truth than the juxtaposition of these essays in one volume, with the assurance thus given to the world that the most distinguished dignitaries of the Church of England hold common ground with learned Congregationalists and Wesleyan divines on the fundamental bases of religious faith, the Christian Evidence Society might be fairly congratulated on the success of its enterprise. There is an intrinsic value in the re-assertion of the deep convictions of cultured men and genuine Christians, touching the very foundation of religious thought. When a volume of 500 pages professes to cover the controversies that have been stirred during the last half century on the very nature of evidence, on the presence of design in nature, on the pantheistic and positivistic interpretation of the facts of the universe, on the relations of science and revelation, on the nature of miracles, on the gradual development of revelation, on the historical difficulties of the entire Bible, on the mythical theories of Christianity, on the credential value of the Pauline Epistles, on the character of the Lord Jesus, and on the totality and adequacy of Christian evidences; it is obvious that these topics must many of them be touched, rather than discussed; approached, rather than developed. The reader of these discourses is not supposed to be a convert to the doctrines of either Mr. Darwin or Auguste Comte, of Professor Tyndall or M. Rénan. Those who have plunged into the rapid current of materialistic philosophy, or have mastered the details of positivism, or become thoroughly familiar with the 'higher criticism' of Germany, will not be diverted from their opinions by these popular and interesting addresses. But there is a large class of educated young men and cultivated women who are at the present moment staggered by second-hand rechauffés of various scepticisms, who are fascinated by the audacity of modern doubt, and relieved from ugly fears by the confident assertions of triumphant students of history and science, who relish the boisterous breeze of these cloudy uplands of speculation, and take greedily any assurance which wars with old prejudices and threatens to uproot old systems or institutions. There are, moreover, multitudes of busy men who have no time to study these various forms of scepticism, but who are made miserable whenever they have time to think, by the thickly flying shafts of the enemies of Christianity. To these classes we conceive the volume before us may be of great service. Everywhere we discover honesty of purpose, sympathy with the doubter, an endeavour on the part of thoughtful and learned Christian teachers to put themselves into the position of the inquirer. There is comparatively little dogmatism, there is very considerable beauty of illustration, and there breathes throughout the whole volume a healthy vigorous faith. Several of the distinguished writers have discoursed on themes on which they were by previous well-known labours, entitled to speak. Thus the Archbishop of York has discussed the purely philosophical question of 'design in nature;' Dr. Rigg has handled Pantheism; and Dr. Stoughton the nature of miracle. Professor Rawlinson has reviewed the 'Historical Difficulties of the Old and New Testaments,' and the author of the 'Jesus of the Evangelists,' the Rev. Charles Row, has given us the pith of the argument of that deeply interesting volume. For our own part, we think Mr. Row's essay is by far the most complete and satisfactory attempt in the whole volume to grapple with a great subject, and to add something to the considerable literature of the mythical theory. The Bishop of Ely has also approached the fascinating question of 'Christ's teaching and influence on the world' with fulness and sweetness of exposition. We trust the volume, which is in every way attractive, will lead to more thorough investigation of the great steps of this high argument, and will result in deeper and more hearty appreciation of the bases of religious faith.
Freedom in the Church of England. Six Sermons Suggested by the Voysey Judgment, Preached in St. James's Chapel, York-street. By the Rev. STOPFORD A. BROOK. London: Henry S. King.
This little volume contains many things--Doctrinal, Ecclesiastical, and Social--put with much freshness and power, albeit with some rashness, upon which much detailed criticism might be bestowed. The doctrinal sermons on the Atonement and Original Sin would necessarily demand for their adequate criticism a space equal to that which they themselves occupy. They lay down positions that must be tested--first by Scripture, next by general principles of moral philosophy, and lastly, by the doctrinal standards of the Episcopal Church. We do not of course attempt to test them. Gladly recognising in them much that is eternally true, much that is profoundly philosophical, and much that commands our admiration for its intellectual acuteness and vigour, we make only one or two remarks concerning them. First, scarcely any attempt is made to show the harmony of the views propounded with the doctrinal statements of Scripture; they are evolved out of the depths of the author's own moral consciousness, which is perfectly legitimate; only his anxiety to justify them to the standards of the Episcopal Church rather than to the statements of the Christian apostles, is not so legitimate and satisfactory for a simple inquirer after truth, however necessary for a Churchman. The two great factors of all true doctrine are surely the Divine revelation and man's moral consciousness. It is the misery of doctrinal Church standards that they necessarily rule so much of a man's thinking. We, outside the Episcopal Church care but very subordinately about the harmony of a clergyman's views with his Church Articles; we care very much about the harmony of his teachings concerning atonement and original sin with Divine revelation and the eternal truth of things. As the result of the whole argumentation, we can say, only, that if Mr. Brook's conclusions respecting the congruity of his teaching with the standards of his Church be satisfactory to himself, the acute and fearless author of the arguments themselves is a mystery to us. To us it is a painful illustration of the influence of an embarrassing position upon freedom and coherence of thought. Mr. Brook seems to us to contradict categorically the explicit teaching of his Church, both about original sin and the Atonement. Concerning his views on original sin we have to say (1) that with the ninth article before us, it is to us utterly incredible that the men, most of whom, Mr. Brook admits, held the same doctrine which he 'rejects with dismay and horror,' purposely left their statement so undefined as to admit of views so opposed to theirs as Mr. Brook's. If they did, all the worse for them and their article. (2) Mr. Brook altogether fails, in our judgment, to justify, by his attenuated exposition of the 'fault and corruption of our nature,' the strong expression of the article 'it deserveth God's wrath and damnation.' (3) Mr. Brook's answer to the question 'Why should God have made us with this wrong twist?' is simply 'Because God wanted humanity,' and not 'a new angelic nature in which there should be no effort, no contest, no dramatic possibilities.' The only conclusion that he leaves open to us is, that whatever original sin is, it is a created part or condition of our nature--that is, God creates us in a condition that 'deserveth God's wrath and damnation.' Mr. Brook's view of original sin may be the true one, but this is the result to which he brings us by applying to it the test of the ninth article.
Concerning the Atonement, Mr. Brook's theory is, that Christ was the ideal man, in whom union with God was gradually developed--being from 'the moment of his birth potentially His, as the whole growth of the oak is in the acorn.' That the merit of His suffering consisted in His perfectly identifying himself with the sorrow of mankind; 'losing the consciousness of Himself and of His own pain, through the intensity of His sympathy with us,' He threw himself 'into the whole sense of this vast human suffering, and so realizing it as His own, offered it up to the pity and love of God.' 'In this way He took unto himself our suffering, and suffered for it; in this way He represented in that hour unto the Father, by means of the perfect self-forgetfulness of love, all the spiritual pain of the world's absence from God.' 'God sees in Christ the ideal of humanity, the whole race as sinless, as one with himself;' 'the innocent suffered, through love, the pain which comes of sin.' 'He passed from feeling as a man, to feeling as a representative man.' 'He lost all thought of self in awful realization of the sin of the whole' world.' 'God saw, in the absolute self-sacrifice which enabled Christ to lose himself in love of man, and to bear the burden of the sin of man in passionate sympathy with the awfulness of the burden, the highest reach of human virtue, the highest ideal of human sacrifice realized;' and, 'as He took into himself and into union with himself, the humanity of Christ, so He took into himself and into union with himself the humanity which Christ represented. This is the reconciliation of God to man, the forgiveness of men's sin by God. This is the objective side of the Atonement.' 'With existing humanity God, though pitying and loving it as a Father, could not, because of its sin, unite himself fully. But when humanity in Christ had fulfilled all righteousness, and displayed itself as wholly at one with God's life of self-sacrifice, God was then able to unite himself to it, to take it up into Himself.' 'To believe in Christ is to look upon his life and death of self-sacrifice, and to say with a true heart, "I know that this is true life; I accept it as mine. I will fulfil it in thought and action, God being my helper."' From this theory of atonement Mr. Brook deduces universalism. 'The whole race being in Christ, is now by right redeemed, righteous, at one with God. But it is not redeemed, righteous, or at one with God, in fact. It is still struggling with sin, still wandering away from its inheritance, still rejecting its rights. But that which has been done in God is done for ever: and man--every soul of man--must become in fact what they are now by right. And though no thought may count the years, yet all humanity shall at last be made coincident with that ideal of it which exists in God in Christ.'
Concerning this theory, we remark, that while very much that is said by Mr. Brook about the sufferings of Christ is beautifully true, yet, as a theory of the Atonement, it is (1) to our conception, utterly at variance with the doctrine of the Prayer Book, and with the theories of its compilers. It is for lawyers to say whether under such standards such a divergent theory is legally tenable--we can only say that we should not like to shelter a moral contradiction like this under a legal possibility. (2) Whatever may be the merits of the 'forensic theory' which, says Mr. Brook, 'I utterly deny and repudiate,' 'it outrages our idea of God; it makes him satisfied with a fiction;' this martyr theory of an ideal humanity suffering in Christ, infinitely surpasses it in unreality. If the forensic theory involves a legal fiction, this involves a moral fiction--which is not only unthinkable in the domain of moral realities, but which, so far as we can think, contradicts our deepest moral instincts. If there is to be a fiction at all, which we think there need not be, we infinitely prefer the legal fiction of Aquinas. No! whatever the true theory of Atonement, this is not it. We can understand a federal headship of humanity, which obtains for it fresh probation and fresh privileges, but we cannot understand a federal headship which gives a quasi spiritual character, and which induces in God an unreal moral estimate.
In passing from this doctrinal part of the book, we may ask why Mr. Brook represents David as being from early morning until noon in ascending the Mount of Olives, the summit of which may be easily reached from St. Stephen's Gate in half an hour?
The first sermon here printed, however, although the last preached, naturally challenges our chief attention. It discusses the question of 'Freedom in the [Established] Church' apropos of the bearing upon it of the judgment in Mr. Voysey's case. We note one or two points in it only. First Mr. Brook says 'that the restrictions upon liberty of thought, which he deprecates, would soon make the Church into a narrow and bigoted sect.' The phrase, omitting the adjectives, has become a kind of formula with Churchmen of Mr. Brook's school. We have frequently tried to apprehend this attempted distinction between a Church and a sect, but we are unable to do so; and we should unaffectedly feel that Mr. Brook had laid us under a great obligation if he had given us a distinct and intelligible definition. What is a Church, and what is a sect? and wherein lies the differentia of the two? In what sense is the Episcopal communion a Church and not a sect, that is not equally true of the Presbyterian and Congregational communions? Will Mr. Brook accept the definition of a Church given in the 19th Article? 'The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered,' &c.? If so, then he can deny the designation 'Church' to every congregational ecclesia--only by impugning its 'faithful' character, its preaching or its sacraments. Is it the criterion of a Church to be without formulated dogmas--or to have doctrinal standards from which her clergy have indefinite liberty to dissent? In the former case the Episcopal communion is not a Church--in the latter, Congregationalists or Presbyterians might easily become a Church, by according liberty of dissent from their standards. The only thing that hinders among them the laxity of subscription and interpretation which Mr. Brook claims for his own Church is that they really believe in their beliefs, and make fidelity to them a matter of conscience. We should be glad to know the exact variation of the theological compass that converts a sect into a Church. Or does Mr. Brook regard a National Establishment as the criterion of a Church? Then he unchurches the Church of Rome in England, the Episcopal Church in Ireland and Scotland, and prepares for the unchurching of Episcopacy in England ere long. If universality be the criterion, then Episcopacy cannot claim it. If to be the largest religious body in a country be the criterion, then what is Episcopacy in Scotland, Ireland, or Wales? If the criterion be catholicity of spirit towards those who differ from us, we fear that neither historically nor actually could his own Church make out a very unequivocal claim. We have really looked at this rhetorical distinction on all sides, and are unable to apprehend it; and yet it is perpetually flung at our poor Nonconformist heads as a missile that is as potent as David's sling and stone.
Is it worthy of intelligent and candid men, such as Mr. Brook, to use controversial terms, with a view, if possible, to affix a reproach, to which no intelligible meaning can be attached? In our view of it every Church is a sect, in the good sense,--in the sense of being but a section of the universal Church; and any Church, however large or however small, established or unestablished, with fixed dogmas, or with flexible ones, may be sectarian, in the bad sense, of being exclusive in its claims, intolerant in its recognitions, and exacting in its conduct. It is for members of the Established Church of England to ask themselves of which of the ecclesiastical communities of the kingdom these are the most characteristic features. We can scarcely believe our eyes, when we read, 'In the assent of all to these doctrines, and in the common love of all to God in Christ, and in the common love of the body to which they belong, co-existing with an almost endless variety of individual views about these doctrines, consists the unity of the Church of England.' Is it then, really so, that all the Church feuds and litigation from Tract 90 to the Purchas judgment--the Hampden and Gorham cases, the 'Essays and Reviews' warfare, the Ritualistic riots, the Liddel case, the Colenso controversy, the Machonochie, Voysey, and Purchas cases, with the pamphlets and sermons, the schisms and hatreds of the three great parties within the Establishment, which for the last forty years have kept the religious world in a state of intense excitement, that all these things are the phantasmagoria of a bad dream, or the amiable reciprocations of brotherly respect and Christian affection? Is there any Church in Christendom with such a polemical history or at the present moment so hopelessly and bitterly schismatic? How, in the face of the English people, such a sentence could be written by a man like Mr. Brook, is simply inscrutable; 'They do,' he says, 'work together remarkably well.' 'There is no body of men more united than the English clergy;' but he makes this fatal admission, 'Destroy the connection of the State with the Church, and all that vanishes at once. All the several parties begin quarrelling, and split up into sects.' Then where is the vaunted unity, and what is the moral worth of the legal bond that unites such discordant elements?
Mr. Brook propounds once more the old crippled fallacy, 'By right every Englishman is a member of the National Church. It is of his own free choice that he rejects that right.' But what if he conscientiously disbelieves in that Church--and holds that in establishing it and requiring national assent to it, both Church and State have gone beyond the domain of the things that are Cæsar's into that of the things that are God's? This, the real gist of the whole matter, is carefully avoided. The Jews used the same argument against the Christians; the Inquisition of the Romish Church against Protestants. The essential injustice lies in maintaining any established Church in a divided nation; and in the attempt to control a man's religious conscience by any civil law or institution whatsoever. Is it not simply childish to affirm, with England as it is, that the parochial clergy 'feel as representatives of a National Church, that all within the range of their several districts--no matter what and who those are--dissenters, non-church-goers, infidels, are their responsibility, and are given into their spiritual care by the nation.' No doubt they do; but does anybody else feel it? is not this the impertinence which one half the nation so resents? Mr. Brook is too candid not to see that all this is the theory of a by-gone state of things, and that the very mention of it now excites ridicule. Accordingly the word 'ought,' and its equivalents do yeoman's service throughout this sermon. It is indeed a discourse upon what a National Church ought to be, rather than upon what the National Church actually is. So far as we understand Mr. Brook, there ought to be almost every conceivable diversity of religious belief in the community, and the National Church ought to be so vague in its dogmas, or so flexible in their interpretation, as that its clergy ought to represent them all. And to this the argument must come.
With very many of Mr. Brook's subordinate remarks we cordially agree. He is thoughtful and catholic-hearted, and has a keen perception of much that is beautiful in Christian doctrine and life. But the task that he has set himself is simply an impossible one. He wishes contradictories, perfect freedom, and distinctive dogmas; a definite Church character, and an indiscriminate inclusiveness; the prerogatives of a supreme Church, while only the fragment of a nation; which itself again is only a small part of Christendom. There is in Mr. Brook's direction no possible way out of the embarrassments, unrealities, and self-contradictions of the English Episcopal Church.
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Human Power in the Divine Life; or the Active Powers of the Mind in Relation to Religion. By Rev. NICHOLAS BISHOP, M.A. Hodder and Stoughton.
The author of this book has attempted a difficult task, viz., to exhibit in philosophical language the synthesis of the divine and human in the new life. With profound reverence for God's revelation and with great insight into the life of God in the soul, he has discussed the function of the human will in Repentance, Faith, Conversion, Sanctification, Christian Perfection and its Limits, in Preaching and Prayer, and in relation to Divine Providence. The range of thought is very wide, the mode of treatment very stimulating and fresh. It would be difficult in a brief notice to convey an adequate idea of the book. Some of the most difficult problems are broached, and much light is thrown upon them. There are gems of thought scattered through the discussion which nevertheless form a distinct and integral part of the argument. Thus 'God's plan of instructing man seems to be from the lower to the higher forms of thought. The nearer the instruction can accommodate itself to the sense or to the simpler acts of the intelligence the more likely it is to succeed. It must begin with the concrete and rise by slow degrees, to abstract truth. Christ, as revealed in His gospel, is the nearest possible approach to this. He is to the weakest mind the simplest possible concrete truth, and He is also to the strongest mind the greatest possible abstraction.' Again, 'If man could repent without the Divine Spirit, his repentance could not be divine; and if the Spirit could produce repentance without man's co-operation, it could not be human; but upon God's plan it is perfectly human and perfectly divine--so perfect that it could not be more divine if man were completely passive in it, nor more human if the Spirit exercised no power in it.' With the fundamental principle that 'the divine life is a developed spiritual consciousness,' the writer has said much that is most refreshing, stimulating, and practical, and we strongly commend this volume to those who are seeking a higher life, and would find help and consolation by an approximate rationale of that life.
Ten Great Religions; an Essay in Comparative Theology. By JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. Trübner and Co.
Mr. Clarke has made an interesting and earnest endeavour to establish some of the principles of a science which is likely before long to occupy a high place in human thought. He has, moreover, shown decided skill and considerable learning in his view of the salient features of Brahmanism and Buddhism, in his summary of Confucianism and Tæpingism, in his sketch of Persic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, and Græco-Roman religions, and in his estimate of Judaism and Mahometanism. The materials were ready to his hand in rich abundance, and he has set forth the leading ideas of each of these great forms of faith with commendable modesty and fine critical tact. The strong point he makes, and in which we entirely agree with him, is--that Christ and Christianity recognise the age-long witness to certain great truths embodied in these ethnic faiths, that Christ is the fulfilment of the prophetic visions which the founders of these varied religions beheld;--that Christianity is the answer to the problem of Brahmanism, the pleroma of the faith of Sakya-muni, and the complement to all the speculations of Egypt, Athens, and Scandinavia;--that Christianity contains all that is living, all that is true to God and nature and man, in any or all of these religious systems, and a great deal more;--that it has absorbed many of them, and will eventually solve the continuity, and embrace the devotees of them all in its catholic fulness. He claims to find the highest evidence for the truth of Christianity in this,--that while all other forms of faith have been more or less one-sided, ethnic in their range, and local in their influence, Christianity meets the need of every kind of race and generation of mankind. The 'symphony of religions' is to him the pledge of the eternal excellency, the indisputable supremacy, and the absolute truth of Christianity. He will not admit that other religions are 'natural' and that this alone is 'supernatural;' that other religions are excogitated by the human intelligence, this alone 'revealed' from heaven; others the work of lying impostors, this alone preserved from human frailty; others 'human religions,' and this alone a 'divine' religion. All truth is divine with him, and all such truth as has been intuitively perceived by great ethnic religious teachers has been 'revealed' to them by God, the one God. But he maintains the great position that all other religions are limited in their range of thought, and in their adaptability to man; while Christianity includes within itself the sum of all religious truth, the nexus of all justifiable religious tendencies, the correction of all extravagances, the answer and solvent to all human inquiry. As we have said, Mr. Clarke holds here positions with which we sympathize and which we have often advocated. But while we admit with him, the significance of the ethnic religions, the truth uttered by Sakya-muni and found in the Vedas, there is to our ear an exceeding bitter cry for help and teaching and deliverance, coming out of the very constitution of the heathen culture, and revealing itself in the religious rites and in the literature of the East, to which he seems comparatively indifferent. He is afraid of compromising the dignity and majesty of human nature, or of saying anything offensive to its unaided and unregenerated powers. To our view, human nature is in a much more diseased and miserable condition than he admits; and we hold that there was a specialty in the vision and faculty given to Hebrew prophets, and possessed by the Great Master, which make them differ in kind from those of the sages of India, Persia, or Greece. Though he furnishes the facts with great fairness and skill, he seems strangely unwilling to admit the grand difference between Hebraism and Ethnicism, viz.: that in the one case, God is represented as seeking and finding his people, pleading with their unwillingness and disloyalty, unveiling to them his own glorious name, and in the other cases men are 'feeling after God if haply they might find him, though he is not far from any one of them.' The argument of Mr. Clarke, moreover, is in our opinion, truncated and paralyzed by the extremely low view that he entertains of the person of our Lord, and of the essence of that very monotheism which has won the victories to which he points with Christian exultation. There is no disrespect cast upon the faith of nineteen-twentieths of Christendom, it is simply ignored; and his Christianity is, after all, little more than 'the morality touched by emotion,' of which we have heard a good deal lately. We believe that a sounder and larger view of Christianity itself would supply wards to the key here used by Mr. Clarke, which would enable him to unlock many more of the mysteries of human life. We thank him for the work he has done, so far as it goes, and can agree with him that the philosophy of missions will lie very much in the direction of comparative theology.
Sermons for my Curates. By the late Rev. THOMAS T. LYNCH, Minister of Mornington Church, London. Edited by Samuel Cox. Strahan and Co.
Twelve months ago, in calling the attention of our readers to one of the latest volumes of Mr. Lynch's sermons, we ventured to predict that when it was too late, the world would find out that a prophet had lifted up his voice in the heart of modern London, comparatively disregarded; and now a ministry exercising transcendent influence over a few sympathetic minds, the spiritual work of a great poet and philosopher, the subtle wit, and delicate humour, and piercing satire of a gifted man are things of the past. We have lost him. We, and many others beside ourselves, are by this volume made to feel how incalculable that loss is. Hundreds of busy men, and hasty critics, will, we are satisfied, feel a species of pang when they discover the realities and the significance of this volume. Here was a man suffering from the agonies of angina pectoris, precluded by dire necessity from conducting two services on the Sunday, and out of the sheer love which he bore to his little flock, in the course of three months of bitter suffering, producing for their use and advantage a series of services, each including two prayers and a discourse which, to say the least, no one but Thomas Lynch could have originated. Mr. Cox's preface is painfully affecting. We might have expected, if he had not forewarned us to the contrary, that these pages would have shivered in sympathy with the intense agony under which they were penned. On the contrary, they sparkle with life and beauty, with cheerfulness and Christian hope. There is less of their author's well-known quaintness, less abundant illustration; he seems more intent upon the pure thought, and the logical concatenation of idea than had been customary with him. There is much sweet reasoning with despondency; there is an absence of all controversial atmosphere; there is not a trace of bitterness, nor a morbid thought about either God or man, but there is great fulness of heart and gentleness of soul; and these are the only signs the printed page reveals of the almost unutterable physical distress in which they were produced. Although neither these nor others of Mr. Lynch's published sermons can be called doctrinal deliverances, and though they deal with the life of faith, rather than with its essence or its object, yet they will be singularly valuable, and even indispensable to one who wishes to understand the doctrinal position of their author. Produced in the manner to which we have referred, they are above and beyond criticism. We accept them reverently; we commend them heartily and tenderly to our readers.
The Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament: A Study for the Present Crisis in the Church of England. By the Rev. G. A. JACOB, D.D., late Head Master of Christ's Hospital. Strahan and Co.
Churches and their Creeds. By the Rev. Sir PHILIP PERRING, Bart. Longmans, Green, and Co.
Few things in modern controversy are more astounding, and cause more scandal to Nonconformists than the unwarrantable assumptions and unscholarly arguments of their Anglican opponents. We scarcely hesitate to say that such a work as Mr. Blunt's 'Ecclesiastical Dictionary--while evincing most patient research and abundant knowledge--contains more arbitrary assumptions and illogical conclusions than all the works on ecclesiastical controversy which Nonconformists have published during the present century. Had a Nonconformist been guilty of a tithe of such, every ecclesiastical newspaper in the land would have poured out upon him its jubilant ridicule. In any other science than theology such a treatment of facts would be simply impossible. We are sadly forced to the conclusion, that in the judgment of certain Churchmen, Sacramentarianism, and even an Episcopal Establishment, are religious truths so vital, that the very investigation of evidence is presumption of a reprobate mind, and no testimony of history or conclusion of reason is valid against them. It seems, at any rate, as if it were the first of religious duties so to manipulate facts and reconstruct history as to compel testimony in their support. For ourselves, we sorrowfully affirm that, speaking generally, we have lost all confidence in the conclusions of Anglican scholarship, and feel it imperative to test every citation and every assertion before we can attach the slightest argumentative value to it.
It is refreshing, therefore, to meet with the work of an Episcopalian clergyman equally conspicuous for its learning and for its fearless honesty. Dr. Jacob's work is one of those productions, rare, alas! which impress the reader from the beginning that he is in the hands of a man whose supreme solicitude is to ascertain truth--who permits no ecclesiastical prepossessions or interests to influence his conclusions; who however much he may love Plato, loves truth more. Dr. Jacob is an Episcopalian by conviction and preference--he does not utter a word that either questions the one or impugns the other; and yet he has written a book which is a patient, scholarly, and dispassionate investigation into the Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament, from the conclusions of which only men who contend for the divine right of Presbyterianism or Congregationalism, and possibly of Episcopalianism, will dissent. Since Archbishop Whately's 'Kingdom of Christ,' no such thorough treatment, and candid an examination of Church questions has appeared. To the fearless candour and acuteness of Whately, Dr. Jacob adds a habit of minute and patient scholarly investigation, which supplies the evidence upon which his important conclusions are reached. Had all ecclesiastical controversy been conducted in his spirit there would still be--as there ever will be--Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists; but these would have regarded their Church differences as preferential modes rather than as divine rights; and Christendom would have presented an aspect of harmonious diversity instead of one of sectarian assumptions and animosity. For ourselves, we most heartily thank him for his book, which, if there were any hope at all from the fanatical sectarianism of what is known as Anglicanism, would be the best eirenicon of these latter days. We cannot do better than try briefly to indicate a few of Dr. Jacob's conclusions, the more especially as our general accord with them calls for little criticism. 'In the apostolic writings, the word ἐκκλησία is never said of a country or nation. It is always the church in a city or town. Neither is it ever said to be the church of any given town, but always in or at the place.' 'Whenever the Christians of a country or nation are spoken of collectively, the word is always in the plural number, as "The churches of Galatia," &c. 'Hence national churches, however justifiable and desirable in certain periods of national life, are not divine nor apostolic institutions--their propriety rests altogether on the ground of general expediency and public advantage; and to attempt to furnish them with a higher sanction by arguments drawn from the theocratic government of the Jewish people seems to me to savour but little of sound reasoning, and to confound together some of the distinctive characteristics of two widely different dispensations.' 'Neither is the word ever applied to a building or a place of worship,' 'nor does it ever mean Christian ministers as distinguished from the general body of Christians.' The Catholic Church in its visible form includes any number of Christian societies, which, as far as human authority is concerned, are independent of each other.'
'The Episcopate, in the modern acceptation of the term, and as a distinct clerical order, does not appear in the New Testament, but was gradually introduced and extended throughout the Church at a later period.' 'Timothy at Ephesus, and Titus in Crete, are never called "bishops," or any other name which might indicate a special order or ecclesiastical office; their commission was evidently an exceptional and temporary charge, to meet some peculiar wants in those places during the necessary absence of St. Paul.' 'There is evidence of the most satisfactory kind, because unintentional, to the effect that Episcopacy was established in different churches after the decease of the apostles who founded them, and at different times.' 'The custom of the Church, rather than any ordinance of the Lord, made bishops greater than the rest.' Dr. Jacob attributes the idea of a priesthood in the Christian Church to the combined leaven of Jewish and of Pagan influences; and in this he differs from Professor Lightfoot, who attributes it exclusively to Pagan influence. 'Tertullian is the first Christian author by whom the Church ministry is directly asserted to be a priesthood.' Dr. Jacob undertakes to prove the proposition--'That, according to Scripture truth, the Christian ministry is not a priesthood, and Christian ministers are not priests, are not invested with any sacerdotal powers, and have no sacerdotal functions to perform.' The proof is wrought out in detail, with great amplitude of evidence, acuteness of argument, and to an irresistible conclusion. We should deal unfairly with it were we to attempt either citation or summary. The points of the argument are: 1. That the Christian Church was moulded upon the form of the synagogue, which had no altar; and not upon that of the temple, which had no pulpit. 2. The equality of privilege or standing-ground in Christ which Christians of all orders or degrees possessed. 3. The position and argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 4. The remarkable omissions concerning a priesthood of the New Testament, which Dr. Jacob contends is 'an insuperable bar to all sacerdotal assumptions, inasmuch as a positive and express appointment of divine authority is imperative.' A further argument is derived from the nature of New Testament ordination, which is fully discussed, and shown to confer, not power, but authority quoad hoc. 'Authority it gives according to the order and constitution of each church, but no other power than was possessed before, or afterwards, by whatever means obtained.' 'Those, therefore, amongst ourselves who contend that spiritual power is given by the act of ordaining, if they are not merely misunderstanding the word and using it in a sense which does not belong to it, are brought to the assumption, that it is not a power producing effects which are seen and felt in the hearts and lives of men, but one much more secret and unappreciable in its working;--the power, as it is alleged, of conferring divine grace through the sacraments, thus making the effect of the sacraments to depend upon something in the administrator, instead of the ordinance of Christ.'
'The authority to appoint Church officers was inherent in every duly constituted church, as the natural right of a lawful and well organized society.' Hence presbyters were competent to ordain, which Hooker also admits ('Eccl. Pol.,' vii. 14). 'The government and ordinations of Presbyterian churches are just as valid, Scriptural, and apostolic, as our own.' 'A priest, indeed, whose office is to stand between God and man must be specially called by God; but a pastor and teacher and administrator of sacred things in a congregation of Christian men who have access to God through the priesthood of Jesus Christ, whatever inward call he may require, needs no other outward appointment to his office than the authority of the church in which he ministers.' 'Neither apostle nor presbyter in the primitive church, so far as we know, pronounced absolution upon those who had confessed their sins for the purpose of conveying to them a grace from God, which otherwise they would not have had; nor is there anything in the New Testament to show that the declaration of God's forgiveness has any greater efficacy from the mouth of an ordained presbyter, than from that of any ordinary Christian.' 'The clergy, not being a priestly caste, or a mediating, sacrificing, absolving order, but Church officers appointed for the maintenance of due religious solemnity, the devout exercise of Christian worship, the instruction of the people in Divine truth, and their general edification in righteous living, are the acting representatives of the church to which they belong, and derive their ministerial authority from it.' 'The Christian ministry was requisite, not on account of any spiritual functions which could not otherwise have been lawfully discharged; but for the sake of the solemnity and regularity which are essential in a religious and permanent society. There was no spiritual act which in itself was of such a nature that it might not have been done by every individual Christian.' Hence Dr. Jacob concludes that neither of the sacraments demand imperatively the administration of a minister. 'As at the Jewish Passover any person might preside, usually the master of the house--this was probably the case in the earliest times in the Christian Church.' At the celebration of the Eucharist, 'Church members,' moreover, 'might depose their presbyters.' 'It is evident from the New Testament that questions of dogmatic theology are to be considered by lay members of the church, as well as by the clergy; and that no Christian man is to resign his reason or apprehensions of religious truth, any more than his conscience, to the judgment of his pastor.' When ministers teach false doctrine 'it would necessarily be the duty of every Christian to refuse their teaching.' 'In the apostolic age, and during the time when Christian worshippers met in private rooms, or in edifices of a simple style, there was no distinction made between different portions of the building, men and women were not separated in the congregation; neither was any form of consecration then used, or any particular sanctity or reverence attached to the place. The sanctity was in the worshippers who met together in the Saviour's name, and the reverence was given to His spiritual presence, which had been promised to those who should be thus assembled.' 'The consecration of churches with formal solemnities, which were supposed to impart a sacredness to the place and building, does not appear until the fourth century.' 'As no forms of prayer of apostolic authority are given in the sacred record, nor any command from the apostles as to the use or non-use of such forms, this is an open question to be decided by every church for itself; each church having a full right to act according to its discretion and deliberate judgment; but no right at all to condemn or disparage the opposite practice which another Christian community may prefer.' 'I think it is perfectly certain that in the earliest period of the apostolic age a fixed and prescribed liturgy could not have been used.' 'All the evidence directly deducible from the New Testament is against the use of such formularies in the apostolic age.' 'This, very briefly expressed, is the sum and substance of the contemporary patristic testimony; and it points us conclusively to the third and fourth centuries, and not to the apostolic age for the distinct appearance and growth to maturity of formal liturgies in Christian churches.' 'There is in the New Testament no trace whatever of any one of the annual days of hallowed commemoration which are now celebrated in Christian churches.' Equally decisive are Dr. Jacob's arguments and conclusions against anything like sacramental grace in the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. 'There is not the slightest intimation that the validity of the Sacrament (of the Lord's Supper) depended upon any ministerial power or act, or that any Christian minister had the power of conferring sacramental grace through his administration of it.' 'There is not the slightest intimation that any change whatever was effected in the bread and wine, or that any power or virtue, natural or supernatural, was infused into them. They are not even said to be "consecrated," but only to have a blessing or thanksgiving offered over them. There is not the slightest intimation that our Lord Jesus Christ is in any sense present in, or in conjunction with the consecrated elements; or that His presence in the believer's heart at this service is different in kind from His presence in him at prayer, or in any other spiritual communion.'
The conclusions which Dr. Jacob has reached are those which every severe and impartial historical student must come to--which any legal testing of evidence must necessarily compel. They have our hearty concurrence. Dr. Jacob, as we have said, is, by conviction and preference, an Episcopalian; our convictions and preferences induce us to reject Episcopacy as having been almost uniformily and inevitably inimical to the freedom and spirituality of the Church. On some minor points, moreover, which are not important enough for remark here, we differ from his conclusions; but as a vade mecum of the Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament we are well contented to accept his book--we know of none, indeed, comparable with it; and we cordially commend it, not only to the Anglicans, Evangelicals, and Broad Churchmen of his own ecclesiastical body, with a strong desire to know what replies they will give to it, but we recommend it to all Congregational and Presbyterian ministers, as equally full of learned fidelity to truth, of just recognitions of the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and of broad, loving charities, which alone can secure, and which are sufficient to secure, the unity of the Church of God.
Sir Philip Perring's book is of a very different character--loose, garrulous, and impetuous; but yet it contains many good things. It is the production of one of those men of restless ingenuity--not unfrequently found in all Churches--whose impulses are good, whose intentions are true, whose utterance is fearless, but who yet want the closeness, self-control, and exact logic which give opinions their just influence. The book is a hotchpotch, made up of papers on miscellaneous subjects--an 'Address to Conformists and to Nonconformists,' on their respective faults and differences; 'A Hint to Bishops,' urging them to call a council, and agree with their Nonconformist brethren; 'Regulations of Public Worship,' advocating liberty for Congregational gifts; 'Expenses of Public Worship,' condemning pew rents and the offertory alike, and advocating occasional collections; 'Episcopal Ordination;' 'Non-Episcopal Ordination,' condemning the dogma of apostolical succession; 'The Baptismal Service,' 'Everlasting Damnation,' 'Biblical Revision,' 'Passages in the Gospels revised,' 'Gospel accounts of the Resurrection harmonized,' 'Silver Filings,'--a Collection of Aphorisms and Sentences. Nonconformists have but little reason to complain of Sir Philip's volume; his chief adjurations are directed against his own Church, and he denounces in it assumptions, errors, and abuses which have been the raison d'être of Nonconformity. We are not let off without rebuke; but our sins are light in comparison. On some points we plead guilty. Nonconformity is, no doubt, amenable to the reproach of undue sectarianism and unnecessary division. We are too prone to party shibboleths; it is the characteristic sin which our necessary nonconformity has generated. The evils which Sir P. Perring rebukes, however, some of which he exaggerates, are evils of human nature, not of Nonconformity as such. By God's grace we trust to amend them. He is in error, however, when he says 'we wage a continual warfare for participation in endowments,' to a fair share of which he is just enough to say we are entitled. We may forgive a State Churchman for failing to understand that we really have a strong objection to endowments, and should deem them a spiritual injury to our Churches; and yet, if he would look at Nonconformist history, especially at the history of Regium Donum, he might be assured of the fact. Our contention is not for a share of endowments; but that endowments of one particular Church or of any number of Churches, out of the property of the entire nation should, as an essential injustice and as practically a prolific source of mischief, altogether cease. We object to national endowments for religion per se, whoever may participate in them, as being necessarily inequitable and inexpedient; neither can we see the religious right or wisdom of acquiescing in the wrong which the Established Church is doing. We are under religious obligations to put an end to all wrong done to ourselves and others. We do not interfere with the Episcopal Church as such--we concede to it all the liberty we claim ourselves; we object to the National Establishment as a wrong to all Nonconformists--that is, to one half of the nation; and as citizens, we feel that we have the civil right, and are under religious obligations to seek at the hands of the Legislature the redress of this wrong. Can Sir P. Perring understand the difference between finding fault with others, and seeking to emancipate ourselves? Righteousness must come before peace is possible, and it is consistent with the highest religiousness and the most perfect charity to seek it.
Ante-Nicene Christian Library:--
Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. Edited by Rev. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D., and JAMES DONALDSON, D.D.
Vol. XIX. The Seven Books of Arnobius adversus Gentes. Translated by A. H. BRYCE, LL.D., D.C.L., and HUGH CAMPBELL, M.A.
Vol. XX. The Works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Archelaus. Translated by Rev. S. D. F. SALMOND, M.A. And Syriac Documents, attributed to the First Three Centuries. Translated by Rev. B. P. PRATTEN, B.A. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
The editors of this valuable series of translations are resolved to furnish the English reader with nearly all the Christian literature of the first three centuries. The volumes before us are singularly important. The celebrated books of Arnobius adversus Gentes reflect the intense antagonism which the monstra horrendaque of heathenism had excited in pure-minded and thoughtful men. There is exceedingly little of the peculiar form of Ante-Nicene Christianity to be gleaned from this apologia; there is hardly a reference either to the Old Testament or the New, or to any distinctively Christian doctrine, but there is the most elaborate impeachment of the popular faith. The incredible obscenity of the mythology of Greece and Rome is drawn out in revolting detail, and is the sufficient reply to the maddened hostility of heathen persecutors of Christians. Arnobius repudiated the allegorical interpretation which had been put by philosophers upon popular legend as a flimsy expedient to condone intolerable impurity, and he drags out the sensuous earthworm, slime and all, into the light. The same spirit of uncompromising detestation of the impurities of heathenism that is conspicuous in the 'Apology' of Tertullian and the 'Octavius' of Minucius Felix pervades this treatise, which yet, by its philosophical arrangement and fulness of detail, has gained for Arnobius the reputation of being the Christian Varro.
The translations of the genuine and spurious works of Gregory Thaumaturgus are executed with great care, and contain the panegyric on Origen, as well as the metaphrase of Ecclesiastes. One of the most interesting things in the volume is the 'Disputation between Bishop Archelaus and Manes,' which, for its picturesque surroundings, and for the insight it gives into the activity and intensity of the Manichæan faith, and the mode in which this great heresiarch was met by the early Christians, is of immense value. The translations of the Syriac documents, though acknowledged to have been done with Dr. Cureton's translations open before the editor, are claimed by him as an independent translation. The extent of these obligations are differently estimated by Mr. Pratten and some of his critics; at all events, they are a valuable addition to the series of the 'Ante-Nicene Library.'
The Story of Hare Court. Being the History of an Independent Church. By JOHN B. MARSH; with an introduction by the Rev. A. RALEIGH, D.D. Strahan and Co.
This is an admirable specimen of a class of books that we should like to see greatly multiplied. The history of many a Nonconforming Church would be the best defence of its existence, and the best evidence of its vitality. The Hare Court Church dates from the Commonwealth, some of the illustrious names of which were connected with it, and with its first pastor, George Cokayne, notably Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, Lord Mayor Tichborne, ancestor of the family just now attracting so much notoriety--who also signed the death-warrant of Charles I., and Lord Mayor Ireton, brother of Cromwell's famous Colonel. The Communion plate now in use by the Church at Canonbury was presented by Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke and Sir Robert Tichborne. Cokayne was also a friend of Milton and of Bunyan, who died in the house of Mr. John Strudwicke, one of Mr. Cokayne's deacons. The church has a great history, and both in the distinction of its present honoured pastor and in the noble achievements of the church itself it will perpetuate its honourable traditions.
The Moabite Stone; a fac-simile of the Original Inscription, with an English Translation, and an Historical and Critical Commentary. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with a Map of the Land of Moab. By CHRISTIAN D. GINSBURG, LL.D. Reeves and Turner.
The discovery and interpretation of the Moabite stone equal, and in some respects surpass in importance and interest, those of the celebrated Rosetta stone; these thirty-four lines, which have been exposed to the chances of Bedouin ignorance and way-side accident for nearly as many centuries, throw unexpected light upon both the history and language of the Old Testament. The relations of Moab and Israel were very intimate, and the Biblical records of these are very perplexing. Thus we find David, who was of Moabite descent, and whose parents had been sheltered by the king of Moab, for some inscrutable reason, waging a bloody war against this hospitable monarch, and slaughtering two-thirds of his subjects. It has been assumed that for nearly a century the Moabites were tributory to the Israelites, but the Moabite inscription implies that they had during this period thrown off the yoke, and were conquered again by Omri. Dr. Ginsburg thinks that Solomon granted their liberty, as there are several indications of his friendly feeling. The inscription is a record of the successful attempt of Mesha, king of Moab, circa B.C. 936, to reconquer the territory and rebuild the cities anciently subjugated by the Israelites, 2 Kings iii.; these they retained for upwards of a century and a half, until in the time of Ahaz the 'burden of Moab' was pronounced by Isaiah. (Isaiah xv., xvi.) Mesha, this triumphal tablet tells us, made Dijon his fortified capital, and erected this memorial in it. He took from Nebo 'the vessels of Jehovah' and dedicated them to Chemosh, giving the important and entirely novel information that the Jews had a house for the worship of Jehovah in Nebo, beyond Jordan. The mention of the name of Jehovah on this tablet is remarkable, implying that at that time it was commonly pronounced by the Israelites--that is, the sacred Tetragrammaton had not then ceased to be used. This superstition, Dr. Ginsburg thinks, was introduced by the Alexandrine Jews.
The linguistical interest of the stone consists in the fact that it is the only pre-Maccabean original written in a language almost identical with the Biblical Hebrew. It is older than two-thirds of the Old Testament. Its bearings on the Masoretic text, therefore, are profoundly important and interesting; these Dr. Ginsburg discusses. The important fact emerges that the Hebrew words were divided by points, and the verses by vertical strokes. A system of original punctuation is thus virtually demonstrated, confirming the Masoretic division. The palæographical importance of the Moabite stone is equally great. It is, by a century and a half, the oldest alphabet of its character that we possess; it is three centuries older than our most ancient inscription, the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar. The characters are the so-called Phoenician, from which the Greek, Roman, and other European alphabets are derived. We have thus 'the veritable prototype of modern writings,' for all the twenty-two letters are here. All these points Dr. Ginsburg evolves and elucidates with great scholarship and ingenuity. He narrates fully the history of the discovery of this remarkable monument by the Rev. F. Klein; of the foolish and fussy, and, as it proved, disastrous jealousy and selfishness of the French Consul, M. Clermont-Gonneau, and of its destruction by the Bedouins. The volume is one of almost romantic interest. Dr. Ginsburg has wisely written for the comprehension of even unlearned readers. His volume supplies not only a fac-simile of the stone, the various translations of it already made, but a full exposition of its manifold significance. It is a wonderful corroboration of Old Testament authority.
Palestine: its Holy Sites and Sacred Story. By JOHN TILLOTSON. Ward, Lock, and Tyler. 1871.
The history of the Jews, in the form in which we have it in the Old St. Clair Testament, is a medley. The absence of chronological arrangement in the books, the positive inversion of the order of events within the limits of the same book--sometimes the brief account of some reigns, the interruption of the story by long episodes, the want of any means of correlating the prophets with the monarchs in whose reigns they prophesy, combine to confuse the reader; and in addition to this, the history is absent altogether for the 400 years immediately before Christ. As a consequence, the Bible history is but little studied by young people, and for a hundred lads who can readily run through the list of sovereigns from Egbert to Victoria, or Clovis to Napoleon, there is hardly one who can distinctly enumerate the succession of the kings of Israel and Judah. The Bible history seems far off and shadowy, and needs to be made near and real; it is passed over for lighter literature, and needs to be invested with the charms of a story; Palestine geography is neglected, while its relations with the sacred story are close and living, and a graphic description of the physical features of the country should always accompany an account of the events which occurred in it. In those parts where the Biblical narrative is detailed and connected through a few chapters--as in the history of the patriarchs, or that of David and Solomon, of Elijah and Elisha--it is read with interest by the young; so that if we give continuity to the entire account, we may expect to create interest in the entire book. We are therefore indebted to those who reduce the elements to order, and present us with a connected history of Palestine, like the history of any other country, as Dean Stanley has done in his 'Lectures on the Jewish Church,' and Milman in his 'History of the Jews.' Those works, however, are learned and expensive, and Stanley's book still wants the concluding volume; so that a cheap popular history for young people was a desideratum. The author of the present volume has long held a position in general literature, and in this history of Palestine, as well as in the Bible Dictionary which preceded it, he shows so much knowledge of Biblical matters, and so much talent in dealing with them, that his death, which took place before a copy of this book could be placed in his hands, will be much regretted by many. In the preparation of his book he has no doubt availed himself of the labours of his predecessors; though at the same time he has put himself into his work, and his fine, healthy, genial, and sympathising spirit is exhibited in every chapter. In critical and scientific matters many will disagree from some of his conclusions, as, for instance, when he accepts Ussher's chronology, places Job earlier than Abraham, makes the bed of the Dead Sea the site of Sodom, attributes Ecclesiastes to Solomon, and ignores a deutero-Isaiah. It is better, perhaps, that these questions should not all be discussed--nor without discussion be decided adversely to common belief--in a book intended for young people: else the author here and there shows his capacity to weigh the evidence on both sides of a disputed matter. For the same reason, it is well, perhaps, that while the natural and human sides of marvellous events are made prominent, the question of the supernatural is not formally discussed, but the very language of the Old Testament is often quoted and left to make its own impression. In addition to the Old Testament, the writer makes considerable use of Josephus, and sometimes borrows from tradition, though more sparingly than does Stanley. His style is more simple than Stanley's, his language more homely; he writes in the present tense, and so gives the events a dramatic interest; he makes old acts and practices understood by running references to that which is analogous in modern society, and finishes a portrait or a description with an apt quotation or proverb. In historical parallels and allusions, the book abounds. For instance, with reference to Abram's position in idolatrous Chaldæa, when John Knox, bound as a galley slave, was wearily tugging at the oar in French waters, he is said to have seized on a wooden image of the Virgin. 'This a mother of God!' quoth he, 'she is fitter for swimming than for being worshipped;' and so he flung her into the river. Abram was more discreet. One day, when his father was away from the atelier, he took a strong hammer and knocked half the idols to pieces. When Terah returned and inquired the cause, Abram told him the gods had fallen to fighting as to which was the greatest, and in the battle had reduced themselves to the sight he saw; Terah, who would not give up his faith in their vitality, was forced to silence (p. 14). With regard to Israel's passage of the Red Sea, at low tide the sea may be forded at Suez, as Napoleon and his officers forded it on horseback; yet the tide comes in with a mighty flood, such as well-nigh overwhelmed Napoleon and his officers when re-crossing to Suez (p. 52). When Saul took a yoke of oxen and hewed them in pieces and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, 'Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen!' the challenge spread, with extraordinary rapidity from family to family, from tribe to tribe. Like the fiery cross of the old Highlanders, the signs were borne along, and the people responded with one consent:--
'Fast as the fatal symbol flies, In arms the huts and hamlets rise; From winding glen, from upland brown, Then poured each hardy tenant down: Nor slacked the messenger his pace-- He showed the sign, he named the place; And pressing forward like the wind, Left clamour and surprise behind.' (P. 110.)
We trust that the author will succeed in his object of awakening a deeper interest in the holy sites and sacred story of Palestine, and in quickening a desire to know more about both.
On a fresh Revision of the English New Testament. By J. D. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., Canon of St. Paul's, and Hulsean Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. Macmillan and Co. 1871.
The substance of this work was read by Dr. Lightfoot to a clerical meeting before the Revision Committee had held its first session. The publication of the volume will do good service. The author introduces his discussion by a clear résumé of the circumstances which led to Jerome's revision of the Latin Bible, and he then recounts the difficulties and suspicions that were engendered by the proposals which issued in the production of the authorized English version. It is curious to find that the criticisms and fears which disturb good people in the end of the nineteenth century are almost identical with those which greeted the translators of the seventeenth century. Dr. Lightfoot vindicates 'the necessity for a fresh revision of the authorized version.' Though he here traverses ground which has often been canvassed, the argument has never been more strongly or more adequately presented. It consists of a careful and condensed exposition, first of the textual defects and 'false readings' of the English version; it goes on to enumerate the 'artificial distinctions created' by an arbitrary variety of translation of the same Greek words, and the 'real distinctions obliterated' by the reverse process of using the same English word as the representative of several different Greek words. Our author accumulates further proof of the fact that many of the niceties of Greek grammar were not known to our translators, that they were foggy in the extreme as to the use of the definite article and the aorist tense, as well as to the fundamental modifications effected in the meaning of verbs by the 'voice' in which they are used. He is particularly happy in showing the inconsistency, confusion, and utter lack of definite principle on which 'proper names' are introduced into the English New Testament, and in this and other ways shows that the time is come for a thorough revision of blunders which often conceal truth and beauty, and interfere with the vivid impression which the words of Jesus and his apostles ought to produce upon the English reader. The chief and only criticism we feel disposed to express is, that in many scores of places Dr. Lightfoot indicates the obvious blunder of the English version, but does not show us how he would find a remedy. Dr. Lightfoot argues that there need be no violation whatever of this 'well of English undefiled;' that in the matter of Greek scholarship we are never likely to have a larger body of men competent to execute the work, and to criticise it when done; and that a revised translation will not now be exposed to the affectations and Latinisms that might possibly have disturbed such a work as this at the commencement of the present century. Our author speaks, moreover, with grateful satisfaction of the fine spirit which has been expressed and consecrated by the actual co-operation of the revisers.
FOOTNOTE:
[69] See his work on 'The Intuitions of the Mind,' pp. 228 and 229, and compare his criticism of Maurice in the same work, p. 496.
SERMONS.
The Religion of the Present and the Future. Sermons preached chiefly at Yale College, by THEODORE D. WOOLSEY. (New York: Charles Scribner and Co.) The name of the venerable and honoured President of Yale College is well known on this side the Atlantic. His authority as a jurist has been often cited in our international disputes with the United States. His articles on the Alabama question have probably done as much as anything to convince his countrymen that there were two sides to it, and to induce the temper which has happily led to the recent convention. In the United States he is universally regarded as facile princeps on all questions of international law. Connected with Yale College for forty years, its President for twenty-five, he has just retired from the latter office into private life, carrying with him a degree of public respect and of personal affection such as few men are permitted to win. This volume is a record of his more pastoral relations to the professors and alumni of Yale. None of his predecessors, not even Dr. Dwight, have won more religious respect and affection. His dignified and yet gentle wisdom, his high purity and deep spirituality, and especially the affectionate sympathy called forth by his unusual domestic sorrows--for, like Archbishop Tait, his children have been taken from him more than one at once; his last bereavement was two daughters, who died last December, in Jerusalem, within two days of each other--these have gathered round his name and his home a peculiar reverence, love, and influence on the part not only of many hundreds of young men who have been under his care, but of many thousands of his countrymen besides. This volume is a memorial of his College-chapel preaching, compiled at the request of members of his classes. It consists of twenty-five sermons on ordinary but diversified Christian themes; all, however, indirectly having respect to a collegiate audience. The circumstances of the publication place the volume beyond our criticism, and were there anything in it to find fault with, we should simply refrain from commendation. As it is, we do not hesitate to say that its qualities of thoughtful, earnest, catholic, practical religiousness, combined with finished scholarship, high-toned simplicity, and cultured grace, are of a very high character--every word is pure gold. We trust that it will find its way into the hands of English readers. We cannot forbear transcribing the elegant, touching, and characteristic dedication--'To those who have now and then heard my voice in the pulpit of Yale College, and especially to the graduates who have gone forth from these halls, leaving me here until now, when my time of graduation is nearly come, I affectionately inscribe these discourses as an acknowledgment of the respect and love which they have shown me.'--The Training of the Twelve; or, Passages out of the Gospels, exhibiting the twelve Disciples of Jesus under discipline for the Apostleship. By the Rev. ALEXANDER B. BRUCE, Broughty Ferry. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.) Mr. Bruce has hit upon a good idea, and has wrought it out in a stronger manner than his preface, which is somewhat fussy and egotistical, gives promise of. He selects for elucidation the passages in the Gospels which set forth our Lord's relations with the Twelve, and examines them in the light of his great purpose to teach and train these selected men as the founders of his Church and the Apostles of his religion. Mr. Bruce's treatment is homiletical rather than scientific, most of his chapters having evidently done duty in the pulpit. He is, however, an intellectual and well-read expositor. If there be nothing in his discoursing that is very penetrating; neither is there anything inane. His predominant characteristic is sound, practical common sense. He belongs to the school of Dr. John Brown. His book is too big. An octavo volume of 550 pages is a great undertaking for a reader, unless redeemed by originality, or power of vivid presentation. Mr. Bruce is thoroughly orthodox, even according to Scottish standards. But he is not blind. He has clearly thought for himself, and he puts the result with intelligence and independence. It must, however, have been a difficult task to speak of our Lord's doctrine of Sabbath-keeping, and to refrain from a rebuke of the Sabbatarianism into which some of his own countrymen have fallen, which is surely as superstitious and burdensome as that which our Lord rebuked; but Mr. Bruce has achieved this. His remarks on liturgies, which, he thinks, are for private rather than public use, are moderate and wise. Indeed, Mr. Bruce holds the balance in most things very fairly. As we have said, a more profound, scientific treatment of his subject is conceivable. At the hands of a man like Neander, for instance, it would have received it; but as a practical exposition, conducted on a high level of common sense, the book is a very good one. It touches on multitudinous questions, and always intelligently and wisely. Sometimes Mr. Bruce does not quite get to the heart of the matter, as for instance, in the section on Peter's sifting. The true nature of the crisis is brought out by Whateley, in his 'Lectures on the Apostles,' much more fully and distinctly. But the book is worthy a place by the side of Dr. Brown's expository volumes.--Young Men and Maidens; a Pastoral for the Times. By J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A. (Hodder and Stoughton.) These sermons are only partially designated in this title, for in addition to the two on young men and women, a third is devoted to 'our elders.' What Mr. Brown has to say to these will be anticipated by all who know his writings. His intense earnestness almost irresistibly takes a monitory form. He stands in the midst of his generation, like a Hebrew prophet, saying noble and eloquent things; but he would speak more effectually if he spoke in a more hopeful spirit of faith. There is evil enough in our life, God knows! but there is also much good, more, perhaps, than ever there was; and the most effectual of all inspirations in the battle with evil is the inspiration of faith. Is it not saying too much of any vice among us, that 'England is likely to die of it'? This is a rhetorical exaggeration from which the good dissent, at which the evil laugh. Mr. Brown's very intensity betrays him into this characteristic fault. Few men, however, speak better things; and those three sermons cannot fail to stimulate nobly all into whose hands they fall.--Sermons, by the Rev. FERGUS FERGUSON, Dalkeith. (Edinburgh: Andrew Elliott.) We have a dim recollection of reading some newspaper paragraph anent the heresy of Mr. Ferguson, and some proceedings taken thereupon by the Presbytery of his Church; and in this volume Mr. Ferguson prints a request of 450 members of his congregation for the publication of it, on the ground that such a charge was brought. We have utterly failed, either to recall the nature of the charge, or to gather it from the request, or from Mr. Ferguson's preface. We had no alternative, therefore, but to examine the sermons themselves with the eyes of a lynx-like orthodoxy. We have done so, selecting such as from their subject seemed most likely to betray the cloven-foot. Our sagacity is at fault. We have found nothing even suspicious, but only the sermons of a strong, intelligent, devout man, everywhere fresh, and everywhere wholesome and stimulating, occasionally fanciful in their ingenuity; as for instance, in the sermon entitled the 'Centre of the Universe,' the idea of which, derived from his position between two thieves, is that Christ is the centre of the visible and invisible worlds, and of the interstice between the two. We very heartily commend these true sermons of a true man. God help the orthodoxy that is intolerant of such teaching as this!--Sermons, by JAMES MCDOUGALL, Pastor of the Belgrave Congregational Church, Darwen, Lancashire. (Williams and Norgate.) Mr. McDougall's sermons are remarkable for their independence and strength--a wonderful contrast to the puny pietisms that are so often put forth under the name of sermons. Conceived in unconventional modes, expressed in unconventional, albeit sometimes rugged, phrase--e.g., 'eld-time,' 'age-lasting,' and similar terms--they have a breadth, vigour, and independence that are quite refreshing, and that are as creditable to hearers as to the preacher. Mr. McDougall lays hold firmly upon the incarnation, but seems to attribute the expiation of Christ unduly to it, rather than to his death upon the cross. Doubtless, the entire human life of our Lord enters into it; but the language employed by Mr. McDougall is distributed and guarded compared with the enthusiastic emphasis given to the cross by the sacred writers. This, however, may be merely accidental. Perhaps the finest sermon in the volume is that on Christian Theism, suggested by the British Association addresses of Professors Huxley and Tyndall. With a feeling of true theistic conservatism, Mr. McDougall seeks for points of sympathy rather than of difference, and while uncompromising in his own religious recognitions, is courteous and sympathetic towards those who fall short of them. Readers of Mr. McDougall's sermons must feel great respect for the Church that can produce such men, and rejoice in their teaching.--The Companions of St. Paul. By JOHN S. HOWSON, D.D., Dean of Chester. (Strahan and Co.) Dean Howson has made the sphere of Paul's life pre-eminently his own. It is the field of literary and theological culture to which he has devoted the best energies of his life. Beside his life of the Apostle, written conjointly with Mr. Conybeare, he has published, as a Hulsean lecture, 'The Character of St. Paul: a Series of Papers on the Metaphors of St. Paul;' another on 'Scenes from the Life of St. Paul.' Now he portrays the companions of St. Paul, Barnabas, Lydia, Luke, Apollos, Titus, Phoebe, &c. Dean Howson is not a very fervid writer: he presents us with no glowing pictures; but all that scholarly care, clear good sense, and elegant simplicity can do, he does. Everything that he writes is instructive and interesting. These sketches, especially of subordinate and little-regarded characters will have a special value to all curious about the bye-ways of Scripture history.--Synoptical Lectures on the Books of Holy Scripture. First Series. Genesis--Song of Songs. By the Rev. DONALD FRASER, M.A. (James Nisbet.) Mr. Fraser has attempted to work out a very good idea. We quite agree with him as to the pernicious effects of the proof-text system, as inducing fragmentary knowledge, capricious interpretations, and arbitrary dogma. Preaching from sentences was a thing unknown to the early Church. Mr. Fraser has attempted to bring the whole scope of a book of Scripture within the compass of a pulpit lecture. Perhaps a medium course, the treatment of a single narrative or subject, would have been best. We do not think that he has succeeded greatly. He has necessarily extended historical exposition at the cost of religious instruction. It is, of course, important to understand the Bible; but understanding the Bible is not an end in itself; the preacher fails when the meanings of the Bible are not applied either formally or by necessary suggestions to practical religious life. It is no sufficient justification of a preacher dealing with an audience of living souls that he has explained the Bible to them. Mr. Fraser's discourses are necessarily too much like a table of contents to be of much practical religious use. On the other hand the popular character of spoken addresses deprives his book of scholastic value. The points of difficulty, some of them, at least, are popularly touched, and judgment is pronounced upon them, generally in the light of sufficient reading; but Mr. Fraser settles nothing. His chapter on the canon is very superficial. We cannot but think that these exercises would have been more suitable for a Bible-class than for sermons. Sometimes, as in the lecture on Ruth, Mr. Fraser, in his desire to be practical, is driven to allegorizing. Mr. Fraser, however, has failed only comparatively, and in what is intrinsically impracticable. There is great positive value in his synthetical attempt, in the habit of broad general views which it necessitates, and in the exhibition of the successive links of the grand chain of the revelation of God. Men sceptically inclined, and men not sceptically inclined, who feel deeply and painfully, literary, scientific, and religious difficulties in connection with the Pentateuch and the Jewish histories, will be impatient with Mr. Fraser; but those who feel no such difficulties will be benefited by his generalizations, the more because they proceed upon intelligent conclusions of his own.--Vital Truths from the Book of Jonah. By a Labourer in the Lord's Vineyard. (S. W. Partridge and Co.) Those addresses make no pretence to scholarly criticism; they are simply practical exhortations by a lady to a Sunday class of young women, delivered without notes, and written down from memory. Accepting them for what they profess to be, they are to be commended as calculated for practical religious usefulness. Criticism of their positions would be out of place; the history is wholly subordinated to spiritual uses.--Sermons preached at Auckland, New Zealand. By SAMUEL EDGER, B.A., London. Second Series. (Bartlett.) Mr. Edger has produced a second series of very thoughtful and interesting sermons, but, to our mind, has spoiled them by a sour, angry, impertinent preface. Why arrogate so exclusive a monopoly of Christian feeling, intelligence, and candour? Why impute vulgar and base motives to all chapel-goers? Why strive so hard to appear heterodox, and not succeed very well after all? Many of the discourses are full of fine feeling and ingenious speculation.--Sermons chiefly on Subjects from the Sunday Lessons. By HENRY WHITEHEAD, Vicar of St. John's, Limehouse. (Strahan and Co.) We have only commendation to give to these sermons, and commendation of a high character. We do not mean that they indicate a very high degree of mental power, or that they deal with high theological speculations. Their great merit is not that they run along lofty levels of thought, but that they are sermons eminently adapted for ordinary hearers, and yet as eminently satisfactory to the most cultured. They are simple and easy, giving no impression of effort; but they are full of a quiet, natural thoughtfulness, spirituality, and suggestiveness, which are eminently adapted to the nurture of the spiritual life. Intuitively, Mr. Whitehead apprehends the spiritual significance of things. Every incident is presented in its spiritual root and fruit. The sermons are consequently full of a fine catholicity of spiritual sympathy, which, while it is infinitely above all mere ecclesiasticism, is very refreshing and very winning. The little volume is a genuine help to all that is best in the spiritual life.--Sermons preached in Rugby School Chapel in 1862-1867. By the Right Rev. FREDERICK TEMPLE, D.D., Lord Bishop of Exeter. Second series. (Macmillan and Co.) Dr. Temple published his first series of Rugby sermons immediately after the publication of 'Essays and Reviews'--that indirectly he might vindicate himself from the wild charges of heresy and infidelity brought against him. They were published, therefore, exactly as they had been preached. This second series has presumably been more specially prepared for the press. They are distinctively sermons to boys, and their characteristics are a penetrating and direct practicalness--informed by a rare intuitive sympathy with boy nature--its keen perception of reality and earnestness, its equally keen sympathy with what is noblest in sentiment and feeling. Avoiding all doctrinal disquisition, Dr. Temple is in every sermon intensely practical--doctrine, however, apparently ordinary evangelical doctrine, being implied--as for instance in the sermons about 'Abiding in Christ' and 'The Comforter.' It is needless to say that Dr. Temple looks at things in a fresh, unconventional way, and puts things with cultured vigour. The sermons would be better were the motive-force of the evangelical element more present, but they are stimulating and instructive, in the best sense.
Body and Mind; being the Gulstonian Lectures for 1870. By Dr. MAUDSLEY. Macmillan and Co.
In reading the volume before us we have been forcibly reminded of the truth of the statement made by Lecky, in his 'History of Rationalism,' that 'the discoveries of physical science form a habit of mind which is carried far beyond the limits of physics;' for Dr. Maudsley, while professing to confine himself within the domain of physiology, is constantly pronouncing on psychological matters, and that, too, with a dogmatism which is quite as genuine as that against which he repeatedly protests. We admit that, from his general intelligence and culture, he is eminently qualified to judge of psychological subjects, but not as a professed physiologist. As long as he keeps to his own science, we are prepared to listen to his statements, and to bow to his authority; and when discoursing on these topics he is always clear, interesting, and instructive; but whenever he meddles with mental facts, those qualities seem to forsake him, and he involves both himself and his readers in a maze. After perusing a previous work of Dr. Maudsley on a kindred subject, we were quite prepared for a violent tirade against metaphysical psychologists, and are therefore not surprised to find them abused in terms which are neither very correct nor very scientific. In the preface he says, 'The physiological inquirer into mind may, if he care to do so, justly protest against the easy confidence with which some metaphysical psychologists disdain physiological inquiry, and ignore its results, without having ever been at the pains to make themselves acquainted with what these results are, and with the steps by which they have been reached.... The very terms of metaphysical psychology have, instead of helping, oppressed and hindered him (the physiologist) to an extent which it is impossible to measure; they have been hob-goblins, to frighten him from entering on his path of inquiry; phantoms, to lead him astray at every turn, after he has entered upon it; deceivers lurking to betray him, under the guise of seeming friends tendering help.' Again, 'Without speculating at all concerning the nature of mind, I do not shrink from saying that we shall make no progress towards a mental science, if we begin by depreciating the body; not by disdaining it, as metaphysicians, religious ascetics, and maniacs have done, but by labouring in an earnest and inquiring spirit to understand it, shall we make any step forwards,' &c. We deny the correctness of these statements, in their application to psychologists of the present day. There was a time, it is true, when the old dualistic principle was supreme, when mind and body were regarded as two distinct essences, formed and developed by entirely different agencies, and adapted to each other for a time by some intelligent power distinct from and superior to both; but as regards the present time, of which Dr. Maudsley is here speaking, we do not hesitate to state (if we may take the writer as a fair representative of his class) that the metaphysical psychologists, who disdain physiological facts, are neither half so numerous nor so bigoted as the physiological psychologists, who pour contempt on psychological science, without ever having acquainted themselves with its results, and do not hesitate to express their disdain for the testimony of consciousness, the only direct evidence we can ever possess in psychical matters. Surely the masterly treatise of James Mill, the voluminous expositions of Professor Bain, and the far more acute and comprehensive analyses of Herbert Spencer,--all of whom regard mental phenomena as so necessarily and essentially springing out of physical conditions, that very little room is left to insinuate, even the mildest form of spiritualism between them--are a sufficient refutation of such assertions as the above. Is it a truly scientific procedure, because the old dualistic hypothesis proved dull, incorrect, and unfruitful, to refuse the evidence of self-consciousness, and to treat with contempt all psychological inquiry?
Dr. Maudsley lays great emphasis on the close connection between the mind and body; this is, in fact, the foundation-stone of the whole of his fabric. We fully admit their intimate union, and their mutual action and reaction on each other. Nay, more, we can conceive of mental operations only in conjunction with some corporeal form; but we nevertheless refuse to be shut up to the alternative that all mental phenomena are strictly and absolutely dependent on physical conditions, and to set aside all questions respecting the nature of the mind as wholly futile and transcendental. Is it not much nearer the truth to regard the mind as the formative principle, pervading and adapting the body as its instrument, to its own nature and requirements? Again, we fully admit that the author does not attach too much weight to the statement that the abnormal phenomena of mind, omitted by the earlier philosophers, as well as the normal, should be included in a complete system of mental analysis, and that both should form a part of the same inquiry. But this has been done (and successfully we think), even by psychologists. Does Dr. Maudsley ignore, or is he unacquainted with, the labours of Herbart, Beneke, and J. H. Fichte, which do ample justice to this department of mind? Would it not be well for him to take them into his counsel? We come now to that which is in some respects the most important part of the work, viz., where it treats of the well-known phenomena of reflex action. In dealing with this subject, Dr. Maudsley's method is to proceed from the lower nerve-centres to the higher, and to explain the latter as developments of the former; to show that in the highest nervous centres, the hemispherical ganglia, the organic properties, and the various processes are essentially the same as in the lowest, and that in all the different centres of action there is a simple and necessary change in response to the external impulses. He sets out with an examination of the 'purposive' movements of a decapitated frog, from which he deduces the conclusion, 'that actions bearing the semblance of design may be unconscious and automatic.' After remarking that faculties are not innate in the case of man to the same degree and extent as in the lower animals, and have therefore to be acquired by education, but that when acquired they become as purely automatic as the primitive reflex actions of the frog, he adds another conclusion, 'that acts consciously designed at first, may, by repetition become unconscious and automatic, the faculties of them being organized in the constitution of the nerve-centres, and they being then performed as reflex effects of an external stimulus.' Here we expected to meet with a careful distinction drawn between automatic, voluntary, and volitional movements, and a cautious handling of the explanations and teachings of these facts; but we are disappointed. Many explanations of them have been given. According to some, the second conclusion is an explanation of the first; the education of the 'sensory and motor nuclei,' in conjunction with the law of inherited qualities, may make it conceivable that the various 'purposive movements' of the decapitated frog represent the experience of its ancestors applied to purposes of self-preservation. Others have ascribed the purposive faculties to a creative mind, external to the organization, which chose its own instruments with a view to its own ends. Others, again, have held that there is a twofold life of the soul--a pre-conscious and a conscious; that the pre-conscious manifests itself not simply in the building up of the organization, but in all 'instinctive' action, and in all the involuntary workings of the intelligence. Lastly, granting that there is no opposition, but only a distinction in degree between the conscious and unconscious activities, is that mode of procedure above all question, or is it not rather contrary to experience, to regard the mental changes which respond to external stimulus as the mere result of an outer mechanical and necessary influence exerted upon the soul? Is it not more correct to consider the mind, by virtue of its original powers as reacting independently, and that, too, with purpose and design--not simply within the province of self-conscious thought, but also in the unconscious region of our mental activities? Dr. Maudsley does not even discuss this question, but with a dogmatism which equals that of any of the metaphysical psychologists, he assumes that the only explanation of the conscious and voluntary is to be found in the unconscious and involuntary acts. On page 17, he tells us, 'The highest functions of the nervous system are those to which the hemispherical ganglia minister. These are the functions of intelligence, of emotion, and of will; they are the strictly neutral functions. The question at once arises, whether we have to do in these supreme centres with fundamentally different properties and different laws of evolution from those which belong to the lower nerve-centres? We have to do with different functions certainly, but are the organic processes which take place in them essentially different from, or are they identical with, those of the lower nerve-centres? They appear to be essentially the same: there is a reception of impressions, and there is a reaction to impressions, and there is a registration of the effects both of the impressions and of the reactions to them.' He then defines on this principle the various mental operations as follows: 'The impressions which are made there--i.e., in the higher nervous centres--are the physiological conditions of ideas; the feeling of the ideas is emotion, for I hold emotion to mean the special sensibility of the vesicular neurine to ideas; the registration of them is memory; and the reaction to them is volition. Attention is the maintenance of the tension of an idea, or a group of ideas, before the mind; and reflexion is the successive transference of energy from one to another of a series of ideas.' Precluded from assuming the co-operation of mind, and barred from appealing to self-consciousness, we are at a loss to understand where he gets these definitions from. There are things included in them which physiology alone could never discover. For all we know, a microscope may reveal a 'vesicular neurine,' but surely not a 'group of ideas.' But all this is eclipsed by his interpretation of memory, on pp. 19-20 (space will not allow us to give the passage entire), where he says: 'A ganglionic centre, whether of mind, sensation, or movement, which was without memory, would be an idiotic centre, incapable of being taught its functions. In every nerve-cell there is memory, and not only so, but there is memory in every organic element of the body. The virus of the small-pox makes its mark on the constitution for the rest of life.' 'And so,' he adds, 'is the scar of a cut on a child's finger; the organic element of the past remembers the change which it has suffered.' Again, 'the more sure and perfect memory becomes, the more unconscious it becomes.' In our opinion, it would be difficult to find a greater confusion of ideas than this passage contains. If, as Dr. Maudsley implies, memory is to be assigned to any ganglionic centre, whether accompanied by consciousness or not, then a rose has a memory of its being budded, an apple-tree of its being grafted, the earth of its being ploughed--in fact, every material thing which bears the impression of any action upon it whereby its future destiny will be affected, is endowed with memory. If we accept the statement that 'the more sure and perfect memory becomes, the more unconscious it becomes,' then it seems the more memory we have the less we remember. In the former statement the author seems to confound memory as a conscious act, and the sign by means of which the conscious act is performed; and in the latter to give an undue extension to the term memory--viz., that we remember all which under certain circumstances we might recall, but have really forgotten; and is therefore equal to potential memory.
These confusions and contradictions establish the one-sidedness of the method of investigation. The author has expended all his efforts on the search for some single force which would afford adequate explanation of all known phenomena. He has attempted to account for the product of two factors by means of one, and the least important of them. Physiology tells us that there is a contrivance for the transmission of impressions from the tips of the fingers to the brain, and that certain physical changes ensue, but here physiology comes to a standstill. Further than this physiological investigations cannot carry us. There is an impassable gulf between it and the facts beyond--the facts of consciousness. Consciousness knows nothing of the action of the brain and of the motor nerves. Dr. Maudsley has tried to bridge the chasm by physiology alone; in that he has attempted the impossible. Professor Tyndall, in the Report of the British Association, says: 'The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and the definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomena to the other. They appear together, but we know not why.' He denies that any acquaintance with the action of the brain can show how 'these physical processes are connected with the facts of consciousness.' The dissecting knife, the forceps, and the microscope can render us no aid here. In the paper on 'Life or Vitality,' the next greatest mystery to that of consciousness, we find the same tendency and attempt to account for all its phenomena by a combination of forces, necessary laws, nerves, and muscles. Here, we are tempted to quote from Huxley's 'Lay Sermons,' page 373; when men 'begin to talk about there being (or as if there were) nothing else in the universe but matter and force and necessary laws, and all the rest of their "grenadiers," I decline to follow them.' When treating of the physical causes of insanity, Dr. Maudsley is always interesting and instructive, and this work so far will be gladly accepted as a valuable contribution to the alleviation of this darkest and most blighting of human ills.
The Public School Latin Grammar. Longmans, Green and Co. 1871.
The very appearance of this book is decidedly unattractive, and we fear that much of its contents cannot fail to intensify one's first impressions. It consists of 540 duodecimo pages, crammed with matter enough to fill two volumes of the same dimensions. It bears all the marks of an attempt to put the greatest amount of information into the smallest possible compass, and, as a natural consequence, its pages are over-crowded, and its contents much more dull and unreadable than even a Latin grammar need be. From the same cause, we presume, we have frequently an appalling number of facts strung together, without the enunciation of any well-defined connecting principles to guide and assist the student in retaining and applying them; and that, too, while professedly aiming, by systematic arrangement and philosophical definitions, to bring into active exercise the reflective faculties. It thus becomes chargeable with the faults of most of the older grammars, which burdened the memory without quickening the intellect. In addition to these general features of the work, we have noticed that almost every subject is broken up into divisions, and subdivisions, which are endless in number and far from definite in character. They are enough to frighten the most courageous student at the outset, and to bewilder him in his studies. Examples of this are furnished on almost every page. Take, e.g., pp. 55-6, the gender of consonant-nouns and clipt I-nouns, which are divided into three classes, denoted by A, B, and C. A is again divided into (1), (2), and (3), and (1) is again subdivided into (a) α, β, and (b) α, β. B and C also undergo a similar dissection. Again, the pronouns are divided into six classes, the sixth being universalia: the universalia are again subdivided into five, called--relativa, libitiva, distributiva, inclusiva, and exclusiva.
The adverbs are, first of all, divided into nine classes; and the ninth, consisting 'of various logical adverbs used to modify discourse,' is further divided into six kinds--the significative, the concessive, the dubitative, the corrective, the affirmative, the negative; a division which, if logically tested, will be found as faulty as the much-criticised categories of Aristotle. In fact, if there be as many principles as there are divisions in this book, the student may justly conclude that Latin grammar is as boundless as the ocean. For the same feature in syntax see the division of simple sentences on p. 252.
Our readers, if they have had the patience to follow us thus far, will have observed the occurrence of many new grammatical terms in the quotations we have given; which is another characteristic of this volume. They can be counted by the dozen, of which the following will serve as specimens:--Phonology, or sound-lore; and morphology, which the author renders word-lore; trajective adjectives, quotientive adverbs, factitive and static verbs, annexive relativa, oblique complement, circumstantive entheses, synesis, &c. The author has aimed at a revolution rather than a reform. Novelty, however, should constitute no objection to a terminology, provided it justifies its own existence by its superiority over the old. The advantage of the new terms should be such as to compensate for the trouble of learning what they mean. We do not hesitate to say that in the 'Public School Grammar' novelty has been carried to excess.
Once more we have observed great irregularity in the amount of explanation given in different subjects; disappointing us both by its abundance and deficiency; e.g., we have the origin and history of cases explained by the ordinary diagram, as well as additional explanation; but there is no explanation of mood, tense, and conjugation. We are also informed in a foot-note that the names given by grammarians to the cases are ill-chosen, but the meaning of the terms--e.g., of genitive and accusative, is not interpreted. We turn, accidentally, to the verbs, and we are told that possum is from pote-sum, and that pote is from pati, lord, whence Greek πόσις ποτνία (lord, lady); that fero is from bhar, Gr. φερ; but of volo, which comes between, we have no such explanation. Of this verb the author only says that vis is for vol-i-s, and vult for vol-i-t, but he omits to add that vellem and velle are for vellĕrem and vellĕre. The above we consider to be some of the main defects of this work. A grammar brought out under such auspices as the one before us, cannot fail to have many excellences. No doubt it meets one of the great wants of the times--viz., a manual of convenient size, and easy of reference, presenting a fuller account of the structure of the language than the ordinary class-room grammars, and containing, in a condensed form, the best results of the linguistic discoveries of modern philologists. The syntax is copious, and carefully arranged, and every important rule is illustrated by a profusion of well-selected examples, in which the idiomatic characteristics of Latin are clearly exhibited. One of the greatest merits of the work is the vast amount of classical Latinity embodied in its pages, taken directly from the best classical authors. The Appendix, treating of 'Latin Orthography,' Latin 'pronunciation,' Affinities in the 'Aryan family,' 'Umbrean' and 'Oscar dialects,' &c., furnishes valuable information to the advanced student. It is, in fact, a complete and comprehensive manual containing the most recent and useful information on all subjects coming within the province of a Latin grammar.