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LECTURES AND ESSAYS

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

PREFATORY NOTE. 

These papers have been reprinted for friends who sometimes ask for theback numbers of periodicals in which they appeared. The great public issick of reprints, and with good reason. 

The volume might almost have been called Contributions to CanadianLiterature, for of the papers not originally published in Canada severalwere reproduced in Canadian journals. Political subjects have beenexcluded both to keep a volume intended for friends free from anythingof a party character and because the writer looks forward to putting thethoughts scattered over his political essays and reviews into a moreconnected form. 

The papers on 'The Early Years of the Conqueror of Quebec, ' 'AWirepuller of Kings, ' 'A True Captain of Industry' and 'Early Years ofAbraham Lincoln' can hardly pretend to be more than accounts of books towhich they relate, but they interested some of their readers at the timeand there are probably not many copies of the books in Canada. All thepapers have been revised, so that they do not appear here exactly asthey were in the periodicals from which they are reprinted. 

TORONTO, Feb. 16, 1881

CONTENTS. 

THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS (_Contemporary Review_)

THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND (_Contemporary Review. _)

THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (_Canadian Monthly_)

THE LAMPS OF FICTION (_A Speech on the Centenary of the Birth of SirWalter Scott_)

AN ADDRESS TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART

THE ASCENT OF MAN (_Macmillan's Magazine. _)

THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION (_Macmillan's Magazine. _)

THE LABOUR MOVEMENT (_Canadian Monthly. _)

WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? (_Canadian Monthly. _)

A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY (_Canadian Monthly. _)

A WIREPULLER OF KINGS (_Canadian Monthly. _)

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC (_Toronto Nation. _)

FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS (_Contemporary Review. _)

THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (_Toronto Mail_)

ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR (_Canadian Monthly_)

THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME (_MacMillan's Magazine_)

AUSTEN LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN (_New York Nation_)

PATTISON'S MILTON (_New York Nation_)

CLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE (_New York Nation_)

THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS

Rome was great in arms, in government, in law. This combination was thetalisman of her august fortunes. But the three things, though blended inher, are distinct from each other, and the political analyst is calledupon to give a separate account of each. By what agency was this State, out of all the States of Italy, out of all the States of the world, elected to a triple pre-eminence, and to the imperial supremacy ofwhich, it was the foundation? By what agency was Rome chosen as thefoundress of an empire which we regard almost as a necessary step inhuman development, and which formed the material, and to no small extentthe political matrix of modern Europe, though the spiritual life of ourcivilization is derived from another source? We are not aware that thisquestion has ever been distinctly answered, or even distinctlypropounded. The writer once put it to a very eminent Roman antiquarian, and the answer was a quotation from Virgil--

 "Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice clivum Quis deus incertum est, habitat Deus; Arcades ipsum Credunt se vidisae Jovem cum saepe nigrantem AEgida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret. "

This perhaps was the best answer that Roman patriotism, ancient ormodern, could give; and it certainly was given in the best form. Thepolitical passages of Virgil, like some in Lucan and Juvenal, had agrandeur entirely Roman with which neither Homer nor any other Greek hasanything to do. But historical criticism, without doing injustice to thepoetical aspect of the mystery, is bound to seek a rational solution. Perhaps in seeking the solution we may in some measure supply, or atleast suggest the mode of supplying, a deficiency which we venture tothink is generally found in the first chapters of histories. A nationalhistory, as it seems to us, ought to commence with a survey of thecountry or locality, its geographical position, climate, productions, and other physical circumstances as they bear on the character of thepeople. We ought to be presented, in short, with a complete descriptionof the scene of the historic drama, as well as with an account of therace to which the actors belong. In the early stages of his development, at all events, man is mainly the creature of physical circumstances; andby a systematic examination of physical circumstances we may to someextent cast the horoscope of the infant nation as it lies in the arms ofNature. 

That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow peninsula ofItaly, was highly favourable to her Italian dominion, and that thesituation of Italy was favourable to her dominion over the countriessurrounding the Mediterranean, has been often pointed out. But we haveyet to ask what launched Rome in her career of conquest, and still more, what rendered that career so different from those of ordinaryconquerors? What caused the Empire of Rome to be so durable? What givesit so high an organization? What made it so tolerable, and even in somecases beneficent to her subjects? What enabled it to perform services soimportant in preparing the way for a higher civilization?

About the only answer that we get to these questions is _race_. TheRomans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race. "Theywere the wolves of Italy, " says Mr. Merivale, who may be taken torepresent fairly the state of opinion on this subject. We are presentedin short with the old fable of the Twins suckled by the She-wolf in aslightly rationalized form. It was more likely to be true, if anything, in its original form, for in mythology nothing is so irrational asrationalization. That unfortunate She-wolf with her Twins has now beenlong discarded by criticism as a historical figure; but she stillobtrudes herself as a symbolical legend into the first chapter of Romanhistory, and continues to affect the historian's imagination and to givehim a wrong bias at the outset. Who knows whether the statue which wepossess is a real counterpart of the original? Who knows what themeaning of the original statue was? If the group was of great antiquity, we may be pretty sure that it was not political or historic, butreligious; for primaeval art is the handmaid of religion; historicrepresentation and political portraiture belong generally to a laterage. We cannot tell with certainty even that the original statue wasRoman: it may have been brought to Rome among the spoils of someconquered city, in which case it would have no reference to Romanhistory at all. We must banish it entirely from our minds, with all theassociations and impressions which cling to it, and we must do the samewith regard to the whole of that circle of legends woven out ofmisinterpreted monuments or customs, with the embellishments of purefancy, which grouped itself round the apocryphal statues of the sevenkings in the Capitol, aptly compared by Arnold to the apocryphalportraits of the early kings of Scotland in Holyrood and those of themediaeval founders of Oxford in the Bodleian. We must clear our mindsaltogether of these fictions; they are not even ancient: they came intoexistence at a time when the early history of Rome was viewed in thedeceptive light of her later achievements; when, under the influence ofaltered circumstances, Roman sentiment had probably undergone aconsiderable change; and when, consequently, the national imagination nolonger pointed true to anything primaeval. 

Race, when tribal peculiarities are once formed, is a most importantfeature in history; those who deny this and who seek to resolveeverything, even in advanced humanity, into the influence of externalcircumstances or of some particular external circumstance, such as food, are not less one-sided or less wide of the truth than those who employrace as the universal solution. Who can doubt that between the Englishand the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differencesof character which have profoundly affected and still affect the courseof history? The case is still stronger if we take races more remote fromeach other, such as the English and the Hindoo. But the further weinquire, the more reason there appears to be for believing thatpeculiarities of race are themselves originally formed by the influenceof external circumstances on the primitive tribe; that, however markedand ingrained they may be, they are not congenital and perhaps notindelible. Englishmen and Frenchmen are closely assimilated byeducation; and the weaknesses of character supposed to be inherent inthe Irish gradually disappear under the more benign influences of theNew World. Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Romans to thespecial qualities of their race, we should not be solving the problem, but only stating it again in other terms. 

But besides this, the wolf theory halts in a still more evident manner. The foster-children of the she-wolf, let them have never so much oftheir foster-mother's milk in them, do not do what the Romans did, andthey do precisely what the Romans did not. They kill, ravage, plunder--perhaps they conquer and even for a time retain their conquests--butthey do not found highly organized empires, they do not civilize, muchless do they give birth to law. The brutal and desolating domination ofthe Turk, which after being long artificially upheld by diplomacy, is atlast falling into final ruin, is the type of an empire founded by thefoster-children of the she-wolf. Plunder, in the animal lust of whichalone it originated, remains its law, and its only notion of imperialadministration is a coarse division, imposed by the extent of itsterritory, into satrapies, which, as the central dynasty, enervated bysensuality, loses its force, revolt, and break up the empire. Even theMacedonian, pupil of Aristotle though he was, did not create an empireat all comparable to that created by the Romans. He overran an immenseextent of territory, and scattered over a portion of it the seed of aninferior species of Hellenic civilization, but he did not organize itpolitically, much less did he give it, and through it the world, a codeof law. It at once fell apart into a number of separate kingdoms, thedespotic rulers of which were Sultans with a tinge of Hellenism, andwhich went for nothing in the political development of mankind. 

What if the very opposite theory to that of the she-wolf and her foster-children should be true? What if the Romans should have owed theirpeculiar and unparalleled success to their having been at first not morewarlike, but less warlike than their neighbours? It may seem a paradox, but we suspect in their imperial ascendency is seen one of the earliestand not least important steps in that gradual triumph of intellect overforce, even in war, which has been an essential part of the progress ofcivilization. The happy day may come when Science in the form of abenign old gentleman with a bald head and spectacles on nose, holdingsome beneficent compound in his hand, will confront a standing army andthe standing army will cease to exist. That will be the final victory ofintellect. But in the meantime, our acknowledgments are due to theprimitive inventors of military organization and military discipline. They shivered Goliath's spear. A mass of comparatively unwarlikeburghers, unorganized and undisciplined, though they may be the hope ofcivilization from their mental and industrial qualities, have as littleof collective as they have of individual strength in war; they only getin each other's way, and fall singly victims to the prowess of agigantic barbarian. He who first thought of combining their force byorganization, so as to make their numbers tell, and who taught them toobey officers, to form regularly for action, and to execute unitedmovements at the word of command, was, perhaps, as great a benefactor ofthe species as he who grew the first corn, or built the first canoe. 

What is the special character of the Roman legends, so far as theyrelate to war? Their special character is, that they are legends not ofpersonal prowess but of discipline. Rome has no Achilles. The greatnational heroes, Camillus, Cincinnatus, Papirius, Cursor, FabiusMaximus, Manlius are not prodigies of personal strength and valour, butcommanders and disciplinarians. The most striking incidents areincidents of discipline. The most striking incident of all is theexecution by a commander of his own son for having gained a victoryagainst orders. "_Disciplinam militarem_, " Manlius is made to say, "_qua stetit ad hanc diem Romana res. _" Discipline was the greatsecret of Roman ascendency in war. It is the great secret of allascendency in war. Victories of the undisciplined over the disciplined, such as Killiecrankie and Preston Pans, are rare exceptions which onlyprove the rule. The rule is that in anything like a parity of personalprowess and of generalship discipline is victory. Thrice Romeencountered discipline equal or superior to her own. Pyrrhus at firstbeat her, but there was no nation behind him, Hannibal beat her, but hisnation did not support him; she beat the army of Alexander, but the armyof Alexander when it encountered her, like that of Frederic at Jena, wasan old machine, and it was commanded by a man who was more like TippooSahib than the conqueror of Darius. 

But how came military discipline to be so specially cultivated by theRomans? We can see how it came to be specially cultivated by the Greeks:it was the necessity of civic armies, fighting perhaps against warlikearistocracies; it was the necessity of Greeks in general fightingagainst the invading hordes of the Persian. We can see how it came to becultivated among the mercenaries and professional soldiers of Pyrrhusand Hannibal. But what was the motive power in the case of Rome?Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for arational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which was thecradle of the Roman Empire. 

It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, whenRome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time andcountry, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works of thekings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the Circus Maximus, theServian Wall, and above all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeedundertaken to give us a very disparaging picture of the ancient Rome, which they confidently describe as nothing more than a great village ofshingle-roofed cottages thinly scattered over a large area. We ask invain what are the materials for this description. It is most probablethat the private buildings of Rome under the kings were roofed withnothing better than shingle, and it is very likely that they were meanand dirty, as the private buildings of Athens appear to have been, andas those of most of the great cities of the Middle Ages unquestionablywere. But the Cloaca Maxima is in itself conclusive evidence of a largepopulation, of wealth, and of a not inconsiderable degree ofcivilization. Taking our stand upon this monument, and clearing ourvision entirely of Romulus and his asylum, we seem dimly to perceive theexistence of a deep prehistoric background, richer than is commonlysupposed in the germs of civilization, --a remark which may in alllikelihood be extended to the background of history in general. Nothingsurely can be more grotesque than the idea of a set of wolves, like theNorse pirates before their conversion to Christianity, constructing intheir den the Cloaca Maxima. 

That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain. We can hardlydoubt that she was a seat of industry and commerce, and that the theorywhich represents her industry and commerce as having been developedsubsequently to her conquests is the reverse of the fact. Whence, butfrom industry and commerce, could the population and the wealth havecome? Peasant farmers do not live in cities, and plunderers do notaccumulate. Rome had around her what was then a rich and peopled plain;she stood at a meeting-place of nationalities; she was on a navigableriver, yet out of the reach of pirates; the sea near her was full ofcommerce, Etruscan, Greek, and Carthaginian. Her first colony was Ostia, evidently commercial and connected with salt-works, which may well havesupplied the staple of her trade. Her patricians were financiers andmoney-lenders. We are aware that a different turn has been given to thispart of the story, and that the indebtedness has been represented asincurred not by loans of money, but by advances of farm stock. This, however, completely contradicts the whole tenor of the narrative, andespecially what is said about the measures for relieving the debtor byreducing the rate of interest and by deducting from the principal debtthe interest already paid. The narrative as it stands, moreover, issupported by analogy. It has a parallel in the economical history ofancient Athens, and in the "scaling of debts, " to use the Americanequivalent for _Seisachtheia_, by the legislation of Solon. Whatprevents our supposing that usury, when it first made its appearance onthe scene, before people had learned to draw the distinction betweencrimes and defaults, presented itself in a very coarse and cruel form?True, the currency was clumsy, and retained philological traces of asystem of barter; but without commerce there could have been no currencyat all. 

Even more decisive is the proof afforded by the early political historyof Rome. In that wonderful first decade of Livy there is no doubt enoughof Livy himself to give him a high place among the masters of fiction. It is the epic of a nation of politicians, and admirably adapted for thepurposes of education as the grand picture of Roman character and therichest treasury of Roman sentiment. But we can hardly doubt that in thepolitical portion there is a foundation of fact; it is toocircumstantial, too consistent in itself, and at the same time too muchborne out by analogy, to be altogether fiction. The institutions whichwe find existing in historic times must have been evolved by some suchstruggle between the orders of patricians and plebeians as that whichLivy presents to us. And these politics, with their parties and sectionsof parties, their shades of political character, the sustained interestwhich they imply in political objects, their various devices andcompromises, are not the politics of a community of peasant farmers, living apart each on his own farm and thinking of his own crops: theyare the politics of the quick-witted and gregarious population of anindustrial and commercial city. They are politics of the same sort asthose upon which the Palazzo Vecchio looked down in Florence. Thatancient Rome was a republic there can be no doubt. Even the so-calledmonarchy appears clearly to have been elective; and republicanism may bedescribed broadly with reference to its origin, as the government of thecity and of the artisan, while monarchy and aristocracy are thegovernments of the country and of farmers. 

The legend which ascribes the assembly of centuries to the legislationof Servius probably belongs to the same class as the legend whichascribes trial by jury and the division of England into shires to thelegislation of Alfred. Still the assembly of centuries existed; it wasevidently ancient, belonging apparently to a stratum of institutionsanterior to the assembly of tribes; and it was a constitutiondistributing political power and duties according to a propertyqualification which, in the upper grades, must, for the period, havebeen high, though measured by a primitive currency. The existence ofsuch qualifications, and the social ascendency of wealth which theconstitution implies, are inconsistent with the theory of a merelyagricultural and military Rome. Who would think of framing such aconstitution, say, for one of the rural districts of France?

Other indications of the real character of the prehistoric Rome might bementioned. The preponderance of the infantry and the comparativeweakness of the cavalry is an almost certain sign of democracy, and ofthe social state in which democracy takes its birth--at least in thecase of a country which did not, like Arcadia or Switzerland, precludeby its nature the growth of a cavalry force, but on the contrary wasrather favourable to it. Nor would it be easy to account for the strongfeeling of attachment to the city which led to its restoration when ithad been destroyed by the Gauls, and defeated the project of a migrationto Veii, if Rome was nothing but a collection of miserable huts, theabodes of a tribe of marauders. We have, moreover, the actual traces ofan industrial organization in the existence of certain guilds ofartisans, which may have been more important at first than they werewhen the military spirit had become thoroughly ascendant. 

Of course when Rome had once been drawn into the career of conquest, theascendency of the military spirit would be complete; war, and theorganization of territories acquired in war, would then become the greatoccupation of her leading citizens; industry and commerce would fallinto disesteem, and be deemed unworthy of the members of the imperialrace. Carthage would no doubt have undergone a similar change ofcharacter, had the policy which was carried to its greatest height bythe aspiring house of Barcas succeeded in converting her from a tradingcity into the capital of a great military empire. So would Venice, hadshe been able to carry on her system of conquest in the Levant and ofterritorial aggrandisement on the Italian mainland. The career of Venicewas arrested by the League of Cambray. On Carthage the policy ofmilitary aggrandisement, which was apparently resisted by the sageinstinct of the great merchants while it was supported by theprofessional soldiers and the populace, brought utter ruin; while Romepaid the inevitable penalty of military despotism. Even when the Romannobles had become a caste of conquerors and proconsuls, they retainedcertain mercantile habits; unlike the French aristocracy, andaristocracies generally, they were careful keepers of their accounts, and they showed a mercantile talent for business, as well as a more thanmercantile hardness, in their financial exploitation of the conqueredworld. Brutus and his contemporaries were usurers like the patricians ofthe early times. No one, we venture to think, who has been accustomed tostudy national character, will believe that the Roman character wasformed by war alone: it was manifestly formed by war combined withbusiness. 

To what an extent the later character of Rome affected nationaltradition, or rather fiction, as to her original character, we see fromthe fable which tells us that she had no navy before the first Punicwar, and that when compelled to build a fleet by the exigencies of thatwar, she had to copy a Carthaginian war galley which had been castashore, and to train her rowers by exercising them on dry land. She hada fleet before the war with Pyrrhus, probably from the time at which shetook possession of Antium, if not before; and her first treaty withCarthage even if it is to be assigned to the date to which Mommsen, andnot to that which Polybius assigns it, shows that before 348 B. C. Shehad an interest in a wide sea-board, which must have carried with itsome amount of maritime power. 

Now this wealthy, and, as we suppose, industrial and commercial city wasthe chief place, and in course of time became the mistress andprotectress, of a plain large for that part of Italy, and then in such acondition as to be tempting to the spoiler. Over this plain on two sideshung ranges of mountains inhabited by hill tribes, Sabines, AEquians, Volscians, Hernicans, with the fierce and restless Samnite in the rear. No doubt these hill tribes raided on the plain as hill tribes always do;probably they were continually being pressed down upon it by themigratory movements of other tribes behind them. Some of them seem tohave been in the habit of regularly swarming, like bees, under the formof the _Ver Sacrum_. On the north, again, were the Etruscan hilltowns, with their lords, pirates by sea, and probably marauders by land;for the period of a more degenerate luxury and frivolity may be regardedas subsequent to their subjugation by the Romans; at any rate, when theyfirst appear upon the scene they are a conquering race. The wars withthe AEqui and Volsci have been ludicrously multiplied and exaggerated byLivy; but even without the testimony of any historian, we might assumethat there would be wars with them and with the other mountaineers, andalso with the marauding Etruscan chiefs. At the same time, we may besure that, in personal strength and prowess, the men of the plain and ofthe city would be inferior both to the mountaineers and to thoseEtruscan chiefs whose trade was war. How did the men of the plain and ofthe city manage to make up for this inferiority, to turn the scale offorce in their favour, and ultimately to subdue both the mountaineersand Etruscans? In the conflict with the mountaineers, something might bedone by that superiority of weapons which superior wealth would afford. But more would be done by military organization and discipline. Tomilitary organization and discipline the Romans accordingly learnt tosubmit themselves, as did the English Parliamentarians after theexperience of Edgehill, as did the democracy of the Northern States ofAmerica after the experience of the first campaign. At the same time theRomans learned the lesson so momentous, and at the same time sodifficult for citizen soldiers, of drawing the line between civil andmilitary life. The turbulent democracy of the former, led into thefield, doffed the citizen, donned the soldier; and obeyed the orders ofa commander whom as citizens they detested, and whom when they were ledback to the forum at the end of the summer campaign they were readyagain to oppose and to impeach. No doubt all this part of the historyhas been immensely embellished by the patriotic imagination, the heroicfeatures have been exaggerated, the harsher features softened though notsuppressed. Still it is impossible to question the general fact. Theresult attests the process. The Roman legions were formed in the firstinstance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigiddiscipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength. When, to keep up the siege of Veii, military pay was introduced, a stepwas taken in the transition from a citizen soldiery to a regular army, such as the legions ultimately became, with its standing discipline ofthe camp; and that the measure should have been possible is anotherproof that Rome was a great city, with a well-supplied treasury, not acollection of mud huts. No doubt the habit of military disciplinereacted on the political character of the people, and gave it thestrength and self-control which were so fatally wanting in the case ofFlorence. 

The line was drawn, under the pressure of a stern necessity, betweencivil and military life, and between the rights and duties of each. Thepower of the magistrate, jealously limited in the city, was enlarged toabsolutism for the preservation of discipline in the field. But thedistinction between the king or magistrate and the general, and betweenthe special capacities required for the duties of each, is everywhere oflate growth. We may say the same of departmental distinctionsaltogether. The executive, the legislative, the judicial power, civilauthority and military command, all lie enfolded in the same primitivegerm. The king, or the magistrate who takes his place, is expected tolead the people in war as well as to govern them in peace. In Europeanmonarchies this idea still lingers, fortified no doubt by the personalunwillingness of the kings to let the military power go out of theirhands. Nor in early times is the difference between the qualificationsof a ruler and those of a commander so great as it afterwards became;the business of the State is simple, and force of character is the mainrequisite in both cases. Annual consulships must have been fatal tostrategical experience, while, on the other hand, they would save theRepublic from being tied to an unsuccessful general. But the storms ofwar which broke on Rome from all quarters soon brought about therecognition of special aptitude for military command in the appointmentof dictators. As to the distinction between military and naval ability, it is of very recent birth: Blake, Prince Rupert, and Monk were madeadmirals because they had been successful as generals, just as Hannibalwas appointed by Antiochus to the command of a fleet. 

At Preston Pans, as before at Killiecrankie, the line of the Hanoverianregulars was broken by the headlong charge of the wild clans, for whichthe regulars were unprepared. Taught by the experience of Preston Pans, the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden formed in three lines, so as torepair a broken front. The Romans in like manner formed in three lines--_hastati_, _principes_, and _triarii_--evidently with thesame object. Our knowledge of the history of Roman tactics does notenable us to say exactly at what period this formation began tosupersede the phalanx, which appears to have preceded it, and which isthe natural order of half-disciplined or imperfectly armed masses, as wesee in the case of the army formed by Philip out of the Macedonianpeasantry, and again in the case of the French Revolutionary columns. Wecannot say, therefore, whether this formation in three lines is in anyway traceable to experience dearly bought in wars with Italianhighlanders, or to a lesson taught by the terrible onset of the Gaul. Again, the punctilious care in the entrenchment of the camp, even for anight's halt, which moved the admiration of Pyrrhus and was a materialpart of Roman tactics, was likely to be inculcated by the perils towhich a burgher army would be exposed in carrying on war under or amonghills where it would be always liable to the sudden attack of a swift, sure-footed, and wily foe. The habit of carrying a heavy load ofpalisades on the march would be a part of the same necessity. 

Even from the purely military point of view, then, the She-wolf and theTwins seem to us not appropriate emblems of Roman greatness. A betterfrontispiece for historians of Rome, if we mistake not, would be somesymbol of the patroness of the lowlands and their protectress againstthe wild tribes of the highlands. There should also be something tosymbolize the protectress of Italy against the Gauls, whose irruptionsRome, though defeated at Allia, succeeded ultimately in arresting andhurling back, to the general benefit of Italian civilization which, wemay be sure, felt very grateful to her for that service, and rememberedit when her existence was threatened by Hannibal, with Gauls in hisarmy. Capua, though not so well situated for the leadership of Italy, might have played the part of Rome; but the plain which she commanded, though very rich, was too small, and too closely overhung by the fatalhills of the Samnite, under whose dominion she fell. Rome had space toorganize a strong lowland resistance to the marauding highland powers. It seems probable that her hills were not only the citadel but thegeneral refuge of the lowlanders of those parts, when forced to flybefore the onslaught of the highlanders, who were impelled by successivewars of migration to the plains. The Campagna affords no stronghold orrallying point but those hills, which may have received a population offugitives like the islands of Venice. The city may have drawn part ofits population and some of its political elements from this source. Inthis sense the story of the Asylum may possibly represent a fact, thoughit has itself nothing to do with history. 

Then, as to imperial organization and government. Superiority in thesewould naturally flow from superiority in civilization, and in previouspolitical training, the first of which Rome derived from her comparativewealth and from the mental characteristics of a city population; thesecond she derived from the long struggle through which the rights ofthe plebeians were equalized with those of the patricians, and whichagain must have had its ultimate origin in geographical circumstancebringing together different elements of population. Cromwell was apolitician and a religious leader before he was a soldier; Napoleon wasa soldier before he was a politician: to this difference between themoulds in which their characters were cast may be traced, in greatmeasure, the difference of their conduct when in power, Cromwelldevoting himself to political and ecclesiastical reform, while Napoleonused his supremacy chiefly as the means of gratifying his lust for war. There is something analogous in the case of imperial nations. Had theRoman, when he conquered the world been like the Ottoman, like theOttoman he would probably have remained. His thirst for blood slaked, hewould simply have proceeded to gratify his other animal lusts; he wouldhave destroyed or consumed everything, produced nothing, delivered overthe world to a plundering anarchy of rapacious satraps, and when hissensuality had overpowered his ferocity, he would have fallen in histurn before some horde whose ferocity was fresh, and the round of warand havoc would have commenced again. The Roman destroyed and consumed agood deal; but he also produced not a little: he produced, among otherthings, first in Italy, then in the world at large, the Peace of Romeindispensable to civilization, and destined to be the germ and precursorof the Peace of Humanity. 

In two respects, however, the geographical circumstances of Rome appearspecially to have prepared her for the exercise of universal empire. Inthe first place, her position was such as to bring her into contact fromthe outset with a great variety of races. The cradle of her dominion wasa sort of ethnological microcosm. Latins, Etruscans, Greeks, Campanians, with all the mountain races and the Gauls, make up a school of the mostdiversified experience, which could not fail to open the minds of thefuture masters of the world. How different was this education from thatof a people which is either isolated, like the Egyptians, or comes intocontact perhaps in the way of continual border hostility with a singlerace! What the exact relations of Rome with Etruria were in the earliesttimes we do not know, but evidently they were close; while between theRoman and the Etruscan character the difference appears to have been aswide as possible. The Roman was pre-eminently practical and business-like, sober-minded, moral, unmystical, unsacerdotal, much concerned withpresent duties and interests, very little concerned about a future stateof existence, peculiarly averse from human sacrifices and from all wildand dark superstitions. The Etruscan, as he has portrayed himself to usin his tombs, seems to have been, in his later development at least, amixture of Sybaritism with a gloomy and almost Mexican religion, whichbrooded over the terrors of the next world, and sought in the constantpractice of human sacrifice a relief from its superstitious fear. If theRoman could tolerate the Etruscans, be merciful to them, and manage themwell, he was qualified to deal in a statesmanlike way with thepeculiarities of almost any race, except those whose fierce nationalityrepelled all management whatever. In borrowing from the Etruscans someof their theological lore and their system of divination, small as thevalue of the things borrowed was, the Roman, perhaps, gave an earnest ofthe receptiveness which led him afterwards, in his hour of conquest, tobow to the intellectual ascendency of the conquered Greek, and to becomea propagator of Greek culture, though partly in a Latinized form, moreeffectual than Alexander and his Orientalized successors. 

In the second place, the geographical circumstances of Rome, combinedwith her character, would naturally lead to the foundation of coloniesand of that colonial system which formed a most important and beneficentpart of her empire. We have derived the name colony from Rome; but hercolonies were just what ours are not, military outposts of the empire, _propugnacula imperii_. Political depletion and provision for needycitizens were collateral, but it would seem, in early times at least, secondary objects. Such outposts were the means suggested by Nature, first of securing those parts of the plain which were beyond thesheltering range of the city itself, secondly of guarding the outlets ofthe hills against the hill tribes, and eventually of holding down thetribes in the hills themselves. The custody of the passes is especiallymarked as an object by the position of many of the early colonies. Whenthe Roman dominion extended to the north of Italy, the same system waspursued, in order to guard against incursions from the Alps. Aconquering despot would have planted mere garrisons under militarygovernors, which would not have been centres of civilization, butprobably of the reverse. The Roman colonies, bearing onwards with themthe civil as well as the military life of the Republic, were, with thegeneral system of provincial municipalities of which they constitutedthe core, to no small extent centres of civilization, though doubtlessthey were also to some extent instruments of oppression. "Where theRoman conquered he dwelt, " and the dwelling of the Roman was, on thewhole, the abode of a civilizing influence. Representation ofdependencies in the sovereign assembly of the imperial country wasunknown, and would have been impracticable. Conquest had not so far putoff its iron nature. In giving her dependencies municipal institutionsand municipal life, Rome did the next best thing to giving themrepresentation. A Roman province with its municipal life was far above asatrapy, though far below a nation. 

Then how came Rome to be the foundress and the great source of law?This, as we said before, calls for a separate explanation. Anexplanation we do not pretend to give, but merely a hint which maydeserve notice in looking for the explanation. In primitive society, inplace of law, in the proper sense of the term, we find only tribalcustom, formed mainly by the special exigencies of tribal self-preservation, and confined to the particular tribe. When Saxon and Danesettle down in England side by side under the treaty made between Alfredand Guthurm, each race retains the tribal custom which serves it as acriminal law. A special effort seems to be required in order to riseabove this custom to that conception of general right or expediencywhich is the germ of law as a science. The Greek, sceptical andspeculative as he was, appears never to have quite got rid of the notionthat there was something sacred in ancestral custom, and that to alterit by legislation was a sort of impiety. We in England still conceivethat there is something in the breast of the judge, and the belief is alingering shadow of the tribal custom, the source of the common law. Nowwhat conditions would be most favourable to this critical effort, sofraught with momentous consequences to humanity? Apparently a union ofelements belonging to different tribes such as would compel them, forthe preservation of peace and the regulation of daily intercourse, toadopt some common measure of right. It must be a union, not a conquestof one tribe by another, otherwise the conquering tribe would of coursekeep its own customs, as the Spartans did among the conquered people ofLaconia. Now it appears likely that these conditions were exactlyfulfilled by the primaeval settlements on the hills of Rome. The hillsare either escarped by nature or capable of easy escarpment, and seemoriginally to have been little separate fortresses, by the union ofwhich the city was ultimately formed. That there were tribal differencesamong the inhabitants of the different hills is a belief to which alltraditions and all the evidence of institutions point, whether wesuppose the difference to have been great or not and whatever specialtheory we may form as to the origin of the Roman people. If the germ oflaw, as distinguished from custom, was brought into existence in thismanner, it would be fostered and expanded by the legislative exigenciesof the political and social concordat between the two orders, and alsoby those arising out of the adjustment of relations with other races inthe course of conquest and colonization. 

Roman law had also, in common with Roman morality, the advantage ofbeing comparatively free from the perverting influences of tribalsuperstition. [Footnote: From religious perversion Roman law waseminently free: but it could not be free from perverting influences of asocial kind; so that we ought to be cautious, for instance, in borrowinglaw on any subject concerning the relations between the sexes from thecorrupt society of the Roman Empire. ] Roman morality was in the main arational rule of duty, the shortcomings and aberrations of which arosenot from superstition, but from narrowness of perception, peculiarity ofsphere, and the bias of national circumstance. The auguries, which wereso often used for the purposes of political obstruction or intrigue, fall under the head rather of trickery than of superstition. 

Roman law in the same manner was a rule of expediency, rightly orwrongly conceived, with comparatively little tincture of religion. Inthis again we probably see the effect of a fusion of tribes upon thetribal superstitions. "Rome, " it has been said, "had no mythology. " Thisis scarcely an overstatement; and we do not account for the fact bysaying that the Romans were unimaginative, because it is not thecreative imagination that produces a mythology, but the impression madeby the objects and forces of nature on the minds of the forefathers ofthe tribe. 

A more tenable explanation, at all events, is that just suggested, thedisintegration of mythologies by the mixture of tribes. A part of theRoman religion--the worship of such abstractions as Fides, Fortuna, Salus, Concordia, Bellona, Terminus--even looks like a product of theintellect posterior to the decay of the mythologies, which we may bepretty sure were physical. It is no doubt true that the formalitieswhich were left--hollow ceremonial, auguries, and priesthoods which weregiven without scruple, like secular offices, to the most profligate menof the world--were worse than worthless in a religious point of view. But historians who dwell on this fail to see that the real essence ofreligion, a belief in the power of duty and of righteousness, thatbelief which afterwards took the more definite form of Roman Stoicism, had been detached by the dissolution of the mythologies, and exerted itsforce, such as that force was, independently of the ceremonial, thesacred chickens, and the dissipated high priests. In this sense thetribute paid by Polybius to the religious character of the Romans isdeserved; they had a higher sense of religious obligation than theGreeks; they were more likely than the Greeks, the Phoenicians, or anyof their other rivals, to swear and disappoint not, though it were totheir own hindrance; and this they owed, as we conceive, not to aneffort of speculative intellect, which in an early stage of societywould be out of the question, but to some happy conjunction ofcircumstances such as would be presented by a break-up of tribalmythologies, combined with influences favourable to the formation ofstrong habits of political and social duty. Religious art wassacrificed; that was the exclusive heritage of the Greek; but superiormorality was on the whole the heritage of the Roman, and if he producedno good tragedy himself, he furnished characters for Shakespeare andCorneille. 

Whatever set the Romans free, or comparatively free, from the tyranny oftribal religion may be considered as having in the same measure been thesource of the tolerance which was so indispensable a qualification forthe exercise of dominion over a polytheistic world. They waged no war on"the gods of the nations, " or on the worshippers of those gods as such. They did not set up golden images after the fashion of Nebuchadnezzar. In early times they seem to have adopted the gods of the conquered, andto have transported them to their own city. In later times theyrespected all the religions except Judaism and Druidism, which assumedthe form of national resistance to the empire, and worships which theydeemed immoral or anti-social, and which had intruded themselves intoRome. 

Another grand step in the development of law is the severance of thejudicial power from the legislative and the executive, which permits therise of jurists, and of a regular legal profession. This is a slowprocess. In the stationary East, as a rule, the king has remained thesupreme judge. At Athens, the sovereign people delegated its judicialpowers to a large committee, but it got no further; and the judicialcommittee was hardly more free from political passion, or more competentto decide points of law, than the assembly itself. In England the Houseof Lords still, formally at least, retains judicial functions. Acts ofattainder were a yet more primitive as well as more objectionable relicof the times in which the sovereign power, whether king, assembly, orthe two combined, was ruler, legislator, and judge all in one. We shallnot attempt here to trace the process by which this momentous separationof powers and functions was to a remarkable extent accomplished inancient Rome. But we are pretty safe in saying that the _praetorperegrinus_ was an important figure in it, and that it received aconsiderable impulse from the exigencies of a jurisdiction between thosewho as citizens came under the sovereign assembly and the aliens orsemi-aliens who did not. 

Whether the partial explanations of the mystery of Roman greatness whichwe have here suggested approve themselves to the reader's judgment ornot, it may at least be said for them that they are _verae causae_, which is not the case with the story of the foster-wolf, or anythingderived from it, any more than with the story of the propheticapparitions of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. 

With regard to the public morality of the Romans, and to their conductand influence as masters of the world, the language of historians seemsto us to leave something to be desired. Mommsen's tone, whenevercontroverted questions connected with international morality and the lawof conquest arise, is affected by his Prussianism; it betokens thetransition of the German mind from the speculative and visionary to thepractical and even more than practical state; it is premonitory not onlyof the wars with Austria and France, but of a coming age in which theforces of natural selection are again to operate without the restraintsimposed by religion, and the heaviest fist is once more to make the law. In the work of Ihne we see a certain recoil from Mommsen, and at thesame time an occasional inconsistency and a want of stability in theprinciple of judgment. Our standard ought not to be positive butrelative. It was the age of force and conquest, not only with the Romansbut with all nations; _hospes_ was _hostis_. A perfectlyindependent development of Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, andall the other nationalities, might perhaps have been the best thing forhumanity. But this was out of the question; in that stage of the world'sexistence contact was war, and the end of war was conquest ordestruction, the first of which was at all events preferable to thesecond. What empire then can we imagine which would have done less harmor more good than the Roman? Greek intellect showed its superiority inspeculative politics as in all other departments of speculation, but asa practical politician the Greek was not self-controlled or strong, andhe would never have bestowed on the provinces of his empire local self-government and municipal life; besides, the race, though it includedwonderful varieties in itself, was, as a race, intensely tribal, andtreated persistently all other races as barbarians. It would havedeprived mankind of Roman law and politics, as well as of that vastextension of the Roman aedileship which covered the world with publicworks beneficent in themselves and equally so as examples; whereas theRoman had the greatness of soul to do homage to Greek intellect, and, notwithstanding an occasional Mummius, preserved all that was of thehighest value in Greek civilization, better perhaps than it would havebeen preserved by the tyrants and condottieri of the Greek decadence. Asto a Semitic Empire, whether in the hands of Syrians or Carthaginians, with their low Semitic craft, their Moloch-worships and theircrucifixions, --the very thought fills us with horror. It would havebeen a world-wide tyranny of the strong box, into which all the productsof civilization would have gone. _Parcere subjectis_ was the ruleof Rome as well as _debellare superbos_; and while all conquest isan evil, the Roman was the most clement and the least destructive ofconquerors. This is true of him on the whole, though he sometimes wasguilty of thoroughly primaeval cruelty. He was the great author of thelaws of war as well as of the laws of peace. That he not seldom, whenhis own interest was concerned, put the mere letter of the social law inplace of justice, and that we are justly revolted on these occasions byhis hypocritical observance of forms, is very true: nevertheless, hisscrupulosity and the language of the national critics in these casesprove the existence of at least a rudimentary conscience. No compunctionfor breach of international law or justice we may be sure ever visitedthe heart of Tiglath-Pileser. Cicero's letter of advice to his brotheron the government of a province may seem a tissue of truisms now, thoughWarren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey would hardly have found it so, butit is a landmark in the history of civilization. That the Roman Republicshould die, and that a colossal and heterogeneous empire should fallunder the rule of a military despot, was perhaps a fatal necessity; butthe despotism long continued to be tempered, elevated, and rendered morebeneficent by the lingering spirit of the Republic; the liberalism ofTrajan and the Antonines was distinctly republican nor did Sultanismfinally establish itself before Diocletian. Perhaps we may number amongthe proofs of the Roman's superiority the capacity shown so far as weknow first by him of being touched by the ruin of a rival. We may besure that no Assyrian conqueror even affected to weep over the fall of ahostile city however magnificent and historic. On the whole it must beallowed that physical influences have seldom done better for humanitythan they did in shaping the imperial character and destinies of Rome. 

THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND

[Footnote: The writer some time ago gave a lecture before the RoyalInstitution on "The Influence of Geographical Circumstances on PoliticalCharacter, " using Rome and England as illustrations. It may perhaps beright to say that the present paper, which touches here and there onmatters of political opinion, is not identical with the latter portionof that lecture. ]

Two large islands lie close to that Continent which has hitherto beenselected by Nature as the chief seat of civilization. One island is muchlarger than the other, and the larger island lies between the smallerand the Continent. The larger island is so placed as to receive primaevalimmigration from three quarters--from France, from the coast of NorthernGermany and the Low Countries, and from Scandinavia, the transit beingrendered somewhat easier in the last case by the prevailing winds and bythe little islands which Scotland throws out, as resting-places andguides for the primaeval navigator, into the Northern Sea. The smallerisland, on the other hand, can hardly receive immigration except throughthe larger, though its southern ports look out, somewhat ominously tothe eye of history, towards Spain. The western and northern parts of thelarger island are mountainous, and it is divided into two very unequalparts by the Cheviot Hills and the mosses of the Border. In the largerisland are extensive districts well suited for grain. The climate ofmost of the smaller is too wet for grain and good only for pasture. Thelarger island is full of minerals and coal, of which the smaller islandis almost destitute. These are the most salient features of the scene ofEnglish history, and, with a temperate climate, the chief physicaldeterminants of English destiny. 

What, politically speaking, are the special attributes of an island? Inthe first place, it is likely to be settled by a bold and enterprisingrace. Migration by land under the pressure of hunger or of a strongertribe, or from the mere habit of wandering, calls for no special effortof courage or intelligence on the part of the nomad. Migration by seadoes: to go forth on a strange element at all, courage is required; butwe can hardly realize the amount of courage required to go voluntarilyout of sight of land. The first attempts at ship-building also implysuperior intelligence, or an effort by which the intelligence will beraised. Of the two great races which make up the English nation, theCeltic had only to pass a channel which you can see across, whichperhaps in the time of the earliest migration did not exist. But theTeutons, who are the dominant race and have supplied the basis of theEnglish character and institutions, had to pass a wider sea. FromScandinavia, especially, England received, under the form offreebooters, who afterwards became conquerors and settlers, the verycore and sinews of her maritime population, the progenitors of theBlakes and Nelsons. The Northman, like the Phoenician, had a country toonarrow for him, and timber for ship-building at hand. But the land ofthe Phoenician was a lovely land, which bound him to itself; andwherever he moved his heart still turned to the pleasant abodes ofLebanon and the sunlit quays of Tyre. Thus he became a merchant, and thefather of all who have made the estranging sea a highway and a bondbetween nations, more than atoning by the service thus rendered tohumanity, for his craft, his treachery, his cruelty, and his Moloch-worship. The land of the Scandinavian was not a lovely land, though itwas a land suited to form strong arms, strong hearts, chaste natures, and, with purity, strength of domestic affection. He was glad toexchange it for a sunnier dwelling-place, and thus, instead of becominga merchant, he became the founder of Norman dynasties in Italy, France, and England. We are tempted to linger over the story of these primaevalmariners, for nothing equals it in romance. In our day Science has gonebefore the most adventurous barque, limiting the possibilities ofdiscovery, disenchanting the enchanted Seas, and depriving us for everof Sinbad and Ulysses. But the Phoenician and the Northman put forthinto a really unknown world. The Northman, moreover, was so far as weknow the first ocean sailor. If the story of the circumnavigation ofAfrica by the Phoenicians is true, it was an astonishing enterprise, andalmost dwarfs modern voyages of discovery. Still it would be a coastingvoyage, and the Phoenician seems generally to have hugged the land. Butthe Northman put freely out into the wild Atlantic, and even crossed itbefore Columbus, if we may believe a legend made specially dear to theAmericans by the craving of a new country for antiquities. It has beentruly said, that the feeling of the Greek, mariner as he was, towardsthe sea, remained rather one of fear and aversion, intensified perhapsby the treacherous character of the squally AEgean; but the Northmanevidently felt perfectly at home on the ocean, and rode joyously, like aseabird, on the vast Atlantic waves. 

Not only is a race which comes by sea likely to be peculiarly vigorous, self-reliant, and inclined, when settled, to political liberty, but thevery process of maritime migration can scarcely fail to intensify thespirit of freedom and independence. Timon or Genghis Khan, sweeping onfrom land to land with the vast human herd under his sway, becomes moredespotic as the herd grows larger by accretion, and the area of itsconquests is increased. But a maritime migration is a number of littlejoint stock enterprises implying limited leadership, common counsels, and a good deal of equality among the adventurers. We see in fact thatthe Saxon immigration resulted in the foundation of a number of smallcommunities which, though they were afterwards fused into seven or eightpetty kingdoms and ultimately into one large kingdom, must, while theyexisted, have fostered habits of local independence and self-government. Maritime migration would also facilitate the transition from the tribeto the nation, because the ships could hardly be manned on purely tribalprinciples; the early Saxon communities in England appear in fact tohave been semi-tribal, the local bond predominating over the tribal, though a name with a tribal termination is retained. Room would scarcelybe found in the ships for a full proportion of women; the want would besupplied by taking the women of the conquered country; and thus tribalrules of exclusive intermarriage, and all barriers connected with them, would be broken down. 

Another obvious attribute of an island is freedom from invasion. Thesuccess of the Saxon invaders may be ascribed to the absence of strongresistance. The policy of Roman conquest, by disarming the natives, haddestroyed their military character, as the policy of British conquesthas done in India, where races which once fought hard against theinvader under their native princes, such as the people of Mysore, arenow wholly unwarlike. Anything like national unity, or power of co-operation against a foreign enemy, had at the same time been extirpatedby a government which divided that it might command. The Northman in histurn owed his success partly to the want of unity among the Saxonprincipalities, partly and principally to the command of the sea whichthe Saxon usually abandoned to him, and which enabled him to choose hisown point of attack, and to baffle the movements of the defenders. WhenAlfred built a fleet, the case was changed. 

William of Normandy would scarcely have succeeded, great as his armamentwas, had it not been for the diversion effected in his favour by thelanding of the Scandinavian pretender in the North, and the failure ofprovisions in Harold's Channel fleet, which compelled it to put intoport. Louis of France was called in as a deliverer by the barons whowere in arms against the tyranny of John; and it is not necessary todiscuss the Tory description of the coming of William of Orange as aconquest of England by the Dutch. Bonaparte threatened invasion, butunhappily was unable to invade: unhappily we say, because if he hadlanded in England he would assuredly have there met his doom; theRussian campaign would have been antedated with a more complete result, and all the after-pages in the history of the Arch-Brigand would havebeen torn from the book of fate. England is indebted for her politicalliberties in great measure to the Teutonic character, but she is also inno small measure indebted to this immunity from invasion which hasbrought with it a comparative immunity from standing armies. In theMiddle Ages the question between absolutism and that baronial libertywhich was the germ and precursor of the popular liberty of after-timesturned in great measure upon the relative strength of the nationalmilitia and of the bands of mercenaries kept in pay by overreachingkings. The bands of mercenaries brought over by John proved too strongfor the patriot barons, and would have annulled the Great Charter, hadnot national liberty found a timely and powerful, though sinister, auxiliary in the ambition of the French. Prince Charles I. Had nostanding army, the troops taken into pay for the wars with Spain andFrance had been disbanded before the outbreak of the Revolution; and onthat occasion the nation was able to overthrow the tyranny withoutlooking abroad for assistance. But Charles II. Had learned wisdom fromhis father's fate; he kept up a small standing army; and the Whigs, though at the crisis of the Exclusion Bill they laid their hands upontheir swords, never ventured to draw them, but allowed themselves to beproscribed, their adherents to be ejected from the corporations, andtheir leaders to be brought to the scaffold. Resistance was in the sameway rendered hopeless by the standing army of James II. , and thepatriots were compelled to stretch their hands for aid to William ofOrange. Even so, it might have gone hard with them if James's soldiers, and above all Churchill, had been true to their paymaster. Navies arenot political; they do not overthrow constitutions; and in the time ofCharles I. It appears that the leading seamen were Protestant, inclinedto the side of the Parliament. Perhaps Protestantism had been renderedfashionable in the navy by the naval wars with Spain. 

A third consequence of insular position, especially in early times, isisolation. An extreme case of isolation is presented by Egypt, which isin fact a great island in the desert. The extraordinary fertility of thevalley of the Nile produced an early development, which was afterwardsarrested by its isolation, the isolation being probably intensified bythe jealous exclusiveness of a powerful priesthood which discouragedmaritime pursuits. The isolation of England, though comparativelyslight, has still been an important factor in her history. She underwentless than the Continental provinces the influence of Roman Conquest. Scotland and Ireland escaped it altogether, for the tide of invasion, having flowed to the foot of the Grampians, soon ebbed to the linebetween the Solway and the Tyne. Britain has no monuments of Roman powerand civilization like those which have been left in Gaul and Spain, andof the British Christianity of the Roman period hardly a trace, monumental or historical, remains. By the Saxon conquest England wasentirely severed for a time from the European system. The missionary ofecclesiastical Rome recovered what the legionary had lost. Of the mainelements of English character political and general, five were broughttogether when Ethelbert and Augustine met on the coast of Kent. The kingrepresented Teutonism; the missionary represented Judaism, Christianity, imperial and ecclesiastical Rome. We mention Judaism as a separateelement, because, among other things, the image of the Hebrew monarchyhas certainly entered largely into the political conceptions ofEnglishmen, perhaps at least as largely as the image of Imperial Rome. Asixth element, classical Republicanism, came in with the Reformation, while the political and social influence of science is only justbeginning to be felt. Still, after the conversion of England byAugustine, the Church, which was the main organ of civilization, andalmost identical with it in the early Middle Ages, remained national;and to make it thoroughly Roman and Papal, in other words to assimilateit completely to the Church of the Continent, was the object ofHildebrand in promoting the enterprise of William. Roman and Papal theEnglish Church was made, yet not so thoroughly so as completely todestroy its insular and Teutonic character. The Archbishop of Canterburywas still _Papa alterius orbis_; and the struggle for nationalindependence of the Papacy commenced in England long before the strugglefor doctrinal reform. The Reformation broke up the confederatedChristendom of the Middle Ages, and England was then thrown back into anisolation very marked, though tempered by her sympathy with theProtestant party on the Continent. In later times the growth of Europeaninterests, of commerce, of international law, of internationalintercourse, of the community of intellect and science, has beengradually building again, on a sounder foundation than that of the LatinChurch, the federation of Europe, or rather the federation of mankind. The political sympathy of England with Continental nations, especiallywith France, has been increasing of late in a very marked manner, theFrench Revolution of 1830 told at once upon the fortunes of EnglishReform, and the victory of the Republic over the reactionary attempt ofMay was profoundly felt by both parties in England. Placed too close tothe Continent not to be essentially a part of the European system, England has yet been a peculiar and semi-independent part of it. InEuropean progress she has often acted as a balancing and moderatingpower. She has been the asylum of vanquished ideas and parties. In theseventeenth century, when absolutism and the Catholic reaction prevailedon the Continent, she was the chief refuge of Protestantism andpolitical liberty. When the French Revolution swept Europe, she threwherself into the anti-revolutionary scale. The tricolor has gone nearlyround the world, at least nearly round Europe; but on the flag ofEngland still remains the religious symbol of the era before theRevolution. 

The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke. Itfinds, perhaps, its strongest expression in the saying of Milton thatthe manner of God is to reveal things first to His Englishmen. It hasmade Englishmen odious even to those who, like the Spaniards, havereceived liberation or protection from English hands. It stimulated thedesperate desire to see France rid of the "Goddams" which inspired Joanof Arc. For an imperial people it is a very unlucky peculiarity, sinceit precludes not only fusion but sympathy and almost intercourse withthe subject races. The kind heart of Lord Elgin, when he was Governor-General of India, was shocked by the absolute want of sympathy or bondof any kind, except love of conquest, between the Anglo-Indian and thenative, and the gulf apparently, instead of being filled up, now yawnswider than ever. 

It is needless to dwell on anything so obvious as the effect of aninsular position in giving birth to commerce and developing thecorresponding elements of political character. The British Islands aresingularly well placed for trade with both hemispheres; in them, morethan in any other point, may be placed the commercial centre of theworld. It may be said that the nation looked out unconsciously from itscradle to an immense heritage beyond the Atlantic. France and Spainlooked the same way, and became competitors with England for ascendancyin the New World, but England was more maritime, and the most maritimewas sure to prevail. Canada was conquered by the British fleet. To thecommerce and the maritime enterprise of former days, which were mainlythe results of geographical position, has been added within the lastcentury the vast development of manufactures produced by coal and steam, the parents of manufactures, as well as the expansion of the iron tradein close connection with manufactures. Nothing can be more marked thanthe effect of industry on political character in the case of England. From being the chief seat of reaction, the North has been converted bymanufactures into the chief seat of progress. The Wars of the Roses werenot a struggle of political principle; hardly even a dynastic struggle;they had their origin partly in a patriotic antagonism to the foreignqueen and to her foreign councils; but they were in the main a vastfaction-fight between two sections of an armed and turbulent nobilityturned into buccaneers by the French wars, and, like their compeers allover Europe, bereft, by the decay of Catholicism, of the religiousrestraints with which their morality was bound up. Yet the Lancastrianparty, or rather the party of Margaret of Anjou and her favourites, wasthe more reactionary, and it had the centre of its strength in theNorth, whence Margaret drew the plundering and devastating host whichgained for her the second battle of St. Albans and paid the penalty ofits ravages in the merciless slaughter of Towton. The North had beenkept back in the race of progress by agricultural inferiority, by theabsence of commerce with the Continent, and by border wars withScotland. In the South was the seat of prosperous industry, wealth, andcomparative civilization, and the banners of the Southern cities were inthe armies of the House of York. The South accepted the Reformation, while the North was the scene of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Coming down tothe Civil War in the time of Charles I. , we find the Parliament strongin the South and East, where are still the centres of commerce andmanufactures, even the iron trade, which has its smelting works inSussex. In the North the feudal tie between landlord and tenant, and thesentiment of the past, preserve much of their force, and the great powerin those parts is the Marquis of Newcastle, at once great territoriallord of the Middle Ages and elegant _grand seigneur_ of theRenaissance, who brings into the field a famous regiment of his ownretainers. In certain towns, such as Bradford and Manchester, there aregerms of manufacturing industry, and these form the sinews of theParliamentarian party in the district which is headed by the Fairfaxes. But in the Reform movement which extended through the first half of thepresent century, the geographical position of parties was reversed; theswarming cities of the North were then the great centres of Liberalismand the motive power of Reform; while the South, having by this timefallen into the hands of great landed proprietors, was Conservative. Thestimulating effect of populous centres on opinion is a very familiarfact; even in the rural districts it is noticed by canvassers atelections that men who work in gangs are generally more inclined to theLiberal side than those who work separately. 

In England, however, the agricultural element always has been andremains a full counterpoise to the manufacturing and commercial element. Agricultural England is not what Pericles called Attica, a mere suburbangarden, the embellishment of a queenly city. It is a substantiveinterest and a political power. In the time of Charles I. It happenedthat, owing to the great quantity of land thrown into the market inconsequence of the confiscation of the monastic estates, which hadslipped through the fingers of the spendthrift courtiers to whom theywere at first granted, small freeholders were very numerous in theSouth, and these men like the middle class in the towns, being strongProtestants, went with the Parliament against the Laudian reaction inreligion. But land in the hands of great proprietors is Conservative, especially when it is held under entails and connected with hereditarynobility; and into the hands of great proprietors the land of Englandhas now entirely passed. The last remnant of the old yeomen freeholdersdeparted in the Cumberland Statesmen, and the yeoman freeholder inEngland is now about as rare as the other. Commerce has itself assistedthe process by giving birth to great fortunes, the owners of which areled by social ambition to buy landed estates, because to land the odourof feudal superiority still clings, and it is almost the necessaryqualification for a title. The land has also actually absorbed a largeportion of the wealth produced by manufactures, and by the generaldevelopment of industry; the estates of Northern landowners especiallyhave enormously increased in value, through the increase of population, not to mention the not inconsiderable appropriation of commercial wealthby marriage. Thus the Conservative element retains its predominance, andit even seems as though the land of Milton, Vane, Cromwell, and theReformers of 1832, might after all become, politically as well asterritorially, the domain of a vast aristocracy of landowners, and themost reactionary instead of the most progressive country in Europe. 

Before the repeal of the Corn Laws there was a strong antagonism ofinterest between the landowning aristocracy and the manufacturers of theNorth, but that antagonism is now at an end; the sympathy of wealth hastaken its place; the old aristocracy has veiled its social pride andlearned to conciliate the new men, who on their part are more thanwilling to enter the privileged circle. This junction is at present thegreat fact of English politics, and was the main cause of the overthrowof the Liberal Government in 1874. The growth of the great cities itselfseems likely, as the number of poor householders increases, to furnishReaction with auxiliaries in the shape of political Lazzaroni capable ofbeing organized by wealth in opposition to the higher order of workmenand the middle class. In Harrington's "Oceana, " there is much nonsense, but it rises at least to the level of Montesquieu in tracing theintimate connection of political power, even under electiveinstitutions, with wealth in land. 

Hitherto, the result of the balance between the landowning andcommercial elements has been steadiness of political progress, incontrast on the one hand to the commercial republics of Italy, whosepolitical progress was precocious and rapid but shortlived, and on theother hand to great feudal kingdoms where commerce was comparativelyweak. England, as yet, has taken but few steps backwards. It remains tobe seen what the future may bring under the changed conditions which wehave just described. English commerce, moreover, may have passed itsacme. Her insular position gave Great Britain during the Napoleonicwars, with immunity from invasion, a monopoly of manufactures and of thecarrying trade. This element of her commercial supremacy is transitory, though others, such as the possession of coal, are not. 

Let us now consider the effects of the division between the two islandsand of those between different parts of the larger island. The mostobvious effect of these is tardy consolidation, which is still indicatedby the absence of a collective name for the people of the threekingdoms. The writer was once rebuked by a Scotchman for saying"England" and "English, " instead of saying "Great Britain" and"British. " He replied that the rebuke was just, but that we must say"British and Irish. " The Scot had overlooked his poor connections. 

We always speak of Anglo-Saxons and identify the extension of theColonial Empire with that of the Anglo-Saxon race. But even if we assumethat the Celts of England and of the Scotch Lowlands were exterminatedby the Saxons, taking all the elements of Celtic population in the twoislands together, they must bear a very considerable proportion to theTeutonic element. That large Irish settlements are being formed in thecities of Northern England is proved by election addresses coquettingwith Home Rule. In the competition of the races on the AmericanContinent the Irish more than holds its own. In the age of the steam-engine the Scotch Highlands, the mountains of Cumberland andWestmoreland, of Wales, of Devonshire, and Cornwall, are the asylum ofnatural beauty, of poetry and hearts which seek repose from the din andturmoil of commercial life. In the primaeval age of conquest they, withseagirt Ireland, were the asylum of the weaker race. There the Celtfound refuge when Saxon invasion swept him from the open country ofEngland and from the Scotch Lowlands. There he was preserved with hisown language, indicating by its variety of dialects the rapid flux andchange of unwritten speech; with his own Christianity, which was that ofApostolic Britain; with his un-Teutonic gifts and weaknesses, hislively, social, sympathetic nature, his religious enthusiasm, essentially the same in its Calvinistic as in its Catholic guise, hissuperstition, his clannishness, his devotion to chiefs and leaders, hiscomparative indifference to institutions, and lack of natural aptitudefor self-government. 

The further we go in these inquiries the more reason there seems to befor believing that the peculiarities of races are not congenital, butimpressed by primaeval circumstance. Not only the same moral andintellectual nature, but the same primitive institutions, are found inall the races that come under our view; they appear alike in Teuton, Celt, and Semite. That which is not congenital is probably notindelible, so that the less favoured races, placed under happiercircumstances, may in time be brought to the level of the more favoured, and nothing warrants inhuman pride of race. But it is surely absurd todeny that peculiarities of race, when formed, are important factors inhistory. Mr. Buckle, who is most severe upon the extravagances of therace theory, himself runs into extravagances not less manifest in adifferent direction. He connects the religious character of theSpaniards with the influence of apocryphal volcanoes and earthquakes, whereas it palpably had its origin in the long struggle with the Moors. He, in like manner, connects the theological tendencies of the Scotchwith the thunderstorms which he imagines (wrongly, if we may judge byour own experience) to be very frequent in the Highlands, whereas Scotchtheology and the religious habits of the Scotch generally were formed inthe Lowlands and among the Teutons, not among the Celts. 

The remnant of the Celtic race in Cornwall and West Devon was small, andwas subdued and half incorporated by the Teutons at a comparativelyearly period; yet it played a distinct and a decidedly Celtic part inthe Civil War of the seventeenth century. It played a more importantpart towards the close of the following century by giving itself almostin a mass to John Wesley. No doubt the neglect of the remote districtsby the Bishops of Exeter and their clergy left Wesley a clear field; butthe temperament of the people was also in his favour. Anything ferventtakes with the Celt, while he cannot abide the religious compromisewhich commends itself to the practical Saxon. 

In the Great Charter there is a provision in favour of the Welsh, whowere allied with the Barons in insurrection against the Crown. TheBarons were fighting for the Charter, the Welshmen only for theirbarbarous and predatory independence. But the struggle for Welshindependence helped those who were struggling for the Charter; and theremark may be extended in substance to the general influence of Wales onthe political contest between the Crown and the Barons. Even under theHouse of Lancaster, Llewellyn was faintly reproduced in Owen Glendower. The powerful monarchy of the Tudors finally completed the annexation. But isolation survived independence. The Welshman remained a Celt andpreserved his language and his clannish spirit, though local magnates, such as the family of Wynn, filled the place in his heart once occupiedby the chief. Ecclesiastically he was annexed, but refused to beincorporated, never seeing the advantage of walking in the middle pathwhich the State Church of England had traced between the extremes ofPopery and Dissent. He took Methodism in a Calvinistic and almost wildlyenthusiastic form. In this respect his isolation is likely to prove farmore important than anything which Welsh patriotism strives toresuscitate by Eisteddfodds. In the struggle, apparently imminent, between the system of Church Establishments and religious equality, Wales furnishes a most favourable battle-ground to the party ofDisestablishment. 

The Teutonic realm of England was powerful enough to subdue, if not toassimilate, the remnants of the Celtic race in Wales and their otherwestern hills of refuge. But the Teutonic realm of Scotland was notlarge or powerful enough to subdue the Celts of the Highlands, whosefastnesses constituted in geographical area the greater portion of thecountry. It seems that in the case of the Highlands, as in that ofIreland, Teutonic adventurers found their way into the domain of theCelts and became chieftains, but in becoming chieftains they becameCelts. Down to the Hanoverian times the chain of the Grampians whichfrom the Castle of Stirling is seen rising like a wall over the richplain, divided from each other two nationalities, differing totally inideas, institutions, habits, and costume, as well as in speech, and theless civilized of which still regarded the more civilized as alienintruders, while the more civilized regarded the less civilized asrobbers. Internally, the topographical character of the Highlands wasfavourable to the continuance of the clan system, because each clanhaving its own separate glen, fusion was precluded, and the progresstowards union went no further than the domination of the more powerfulclans over the less powerful. Mountains also preserve the generalequality and brotherhood which are not less essential to theconstitution of the clan than devotion to the chief, by preventing theuse of that great minister of aristocracy, the horse. At Killiecrankieand Prestonpans the leaders of the clan and the humblest clansman stillcharged on foot side by side. Macaulay is undoubtedly right in sayingthat the Highland risings against William III. And the first two Georgeswere not dynastic but clan movements. They were in fact the last raidsof the Gael upon the country which had been wrested from him by theSassenach. Little cared the clansman for the principles of Filmer orLocke, for the claims of the House of Stuart or for those of the Houseof Brunswick. Antipathy to the Clan Campbell was the nearest approach toa political motive. Chiefs alone, such as the unspeakable Lovat, hadentered as political _condottieri_ into the dynastic intrigues ofthe period, and brought the claymores of their clansmen to the standardof their patron, as Indian chiefs in the American wars brought thetomahawks of their tribes to the standard of France or England. Celticindependence greatly contributed to the general perpetuation of anarchyin Scotland, to the backwardness of Scotch civilization, and to theabortive weakness of the Parliamentary institutions. Union with the morepowerful kingdom at last supplied the force requisite for the taming ofthe Celt. Highlanders, at the bidding of Chatham's genius, became thesoldiers, and are now the pet soldiers, of the British monarchy. AHanoverian tailor with improving hand shaped the Highland plaid, whichhad originally resembled the simple drapery of the Irish kern, into agarb of complex beauty, well suited for fancy balls. The power of thechiefs and the substance of the clan system were finally swept away, though the sentiment lingers, even in the Transatlantic abodes of theclansmen, and is prized, like the dress, as a remnant of socialpicturesqueness in a prosaic and levelling age. The hills and lakes--atthe thought of which even Gibbon shuddered--are the favourite retreatsof the luxury which seeks in wildness refreshment from civilization. After Culloden, Presbyterianism effectually made its way into theHighlands, of which a great part had up to that time been little betterthan heathen; but it did not fail to take a strong tinge of Celticenthusiasm and superstition. 

Of all the lines of division in Great Britain, the most importantpolitically has been that which is least clearly traced by the hand ofnature. The natural barriers between England and Scotland were notsufficient to prevent the extension of the Saxon settlements andkingdoms across the border. In the name of the Scotch capital we have amonument of a union before that of 1603. That the Norman Conquest didnot include the Saxons of the Scotch Lowlands was due chiefly to themenacing attitude of Danish pretenders, and the other military dangerswhich led the Conqueror to guard himself on the north by a broad belt ofdesolation. Edward I. , in attempting to extend his feudal supremacy overScotland, may well have seemed to himself to have been acting in theinterest of both nations, for a union would have put an end to borderwar, and would have delivered the Scotch in the Lowlands from theextremity of feudal oppression, and the rest of the country from asavage anarchy, giving them in place of those curses by far the bestgovernment of the time. The resistance came partly from mere barbarism, partly from Norman adventurers, who were no more Scotch than English, whose aims were purely selfish, and who would gladly have acceptedScotland as a vassal kingdom from Edward's hand. But the annexationwould no doubt have formidably increased the power of the Crown, notonly by extending its dominions, but by removing that which was asupport often of aristocratic anarchy in England, but sometimes ofrudimentary freedom. Had the whole island fallen under one victorioussceptre, the next wielder of that sceptre, under the name of the greatEdward's wittold son, would have been Piers Gaveston. But what noprescience on the part of any one in the time of Edward I. Couldpossibly have foreseen was the inestimable benefit which disunion andeven anarchy indirectly conferred on the whole island in the shape of aseparate Scotch Reformation. Divines, when they have exhausted theirreasonings about the rival forms of Church government, will probablyfind that the argument which had practically most effect in determiningthe question was that of the much decried but in his way sagacious JamesI. , "No bishop, no king!" In England the Reformation was semi-Catholic;in Sweden it was Lutheran; but in both countries it was made by thekings, and in both Episcopacy was retained. Where the Reformation wasthe work of the people, more popular forms of Church governmentprevailed. In Scotland the monarchy, always weak, was at the time of theReformation practically in abeyance, and the master of the movement wasemphatically a man of the people. As to the nobles, they seem to havethought only of appropriating the Church lands, and to have been willingto leave to the nation the spiritual gratification of settling its ownreligion. Probably they also felt with regard to the disinheritedproprietors of the Church lands that "stone dead had no fellow. " Theresult was a democratic and thoroughly Protestant Church, which drewinto itself the highest energies, political as well as religious, of astrong and great-hearted people, and by which Laud and his confederates, when they had apparently overcome resistance in England, were as Miltonsays, "more robustiously handled. " If the Scotch auxiliaries did not winthe decisive battle of Marston Moor, they enabled the EnglishParliamentarians to fight and win it. During the dark days of theRestoration, English resistance to tyranny was strongly supported on theecclesiastical side by the martyr steadfastness of the Scotch till thejoint effort triumphed in the Revolution. It is singular and sad to findScotland afterwards becoming one vast rotten borough managed in the timeof Pitt by Dundas, who paid the borough-mongers by appointments inIndia, with calamitous consequences to the poor Hindoo. But theintensity of the local evil perhaps lent force to the revulsion, andScotland has ever since been a distinctly Liberal element in Britishpolitics, and seems now likely to lead the way to a complete measure ofreligious freedom. 

Nature to a great extent fore-ordained the high destiny of the largerisland, to at least an equal extent she fore-ordained the sad destiny ofthe smaller island. Irish history, studied impartially, is a grandlesson in political charity; so clear is it that in these deplorableannals the more important part was played by adverse circumstance, theless important by the malignity of man. That the stronger nation isentitled by the law of force to conquer its weaker neighbour and togovern the conquered in its own interest is a doctrine which civilizedmorality abhors; but in the days before civilized morality, in the dayswhen the only law was that of natural selection, to which philosophy, bya strange counter-revolution seems now inclined to return, the smallerisland was almost sure to be conquered by the possessors of the larger, more especially as the smaller, cut off from the Continent by thelarger, lay completely within its grasp. The map, in short, tells usplainly that the destiny of Ireland was subordinated to that of GreatBritain. At the same time, the smaller island being of considerable sizeand the channel of considerable breadth, it was likely that theresistance would be tough and the conquest slow. The unsettled state ofIreland, and the half-nomad condition in which at a comparatively lateperiod its tribes remained, would also help to protract the bitterprocess of subjugation; and these again were the inevitable results ofthe rainy climate, which, while it clothed the island with green andmade pasture abundant, forbade the cultivation of grain. Ireland andWales alike appear to have been the scenes of a precocious civilization, merely intellectual and literary in its character, and closely connectedwith the Church, though including also a bardic element derived from thetimes before Christianity, the fruits of which were poetry, fantasticlaw-making, and probably the germs of scholastic theology, combined, inthe case of Ireland, with missionary enterprise and such ecclesiasticalarchitecture as the Round Towers. But cities there were none, and it isevident that the native Church with difficulty sustained her higher lifeamidst the influences and encroachments of surrounding barbarism. TheAnglo-Norman conquest of Ireland was a supplement to the Norman conquestof England; and, like the Norman conquest of England, it was a religiousas well as a political enterprise. As Hildebrand had commissionedWilliam to bring the national Church of England into complete submissionto the See of Rome, so Adrian, by the Bull which is the stumbling-blockof Irish Catholics, granted Ireland to Henry upon condition of hisreforming, that is, Romanizing, its primitive and schismatic Church. Ecclesiastical intrigue had already been working in the same direction, and had in some measure prepared the way for the conqueror by disposingthe heads of the Irish clergy to receive him as the emancipator of theChurch from the secular oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in thecase of England, a settled and agricultural country, the conquest wascomplete and final; the conquerors formed everywhere a new upper classwhich, though at first alien and oppressive, became in time a nationalnobility, and ultimately blended with the subject race. In the case ofIreland, though the Septs were easily defeated by the Norman soldiery, and the formal submission of their chiefs was easily extorted, theconquest was neither complete nor final. In their hills and bogs thewandering Septs easily evaded the Norman arms. The Irish Channel waswide; the road lay through North Wales, long unsubdued, and, even whensubdued, mutinous, and presenting natural obstacles to the passage ofheavy troops; the centre of Anglo-Norman power was far away in thesouth-east of England, and the force of the monarchy was eitherattracted to Continental fields or absorbed by struggles with baronialfactions. Richard II. , coming to a throne which had been strengthenedand exalted by the achievements of his grandfather, seems in one of hismoods of fitful ambition to have conceived the design of completing theconquest of Ireland, and he passed over with a great power; but his fateshowed that the arm of the monarchy was still too short to reach thedependency without losing hold upon the imperial country. As a rule, thesubjugation of Ireland during the period before the Tudors was in effectleft to private enterprise, which of course confined its efforts toobjects of private gain, and never thought of undertaking the systematicsubjugation of native fortresses in the interest of order andcivilization. Instead of a national aristocracy the result was amilitary colony or Pale, between the inhabitants of which and thenatives raged a perpetual border war, as savage as that between thesettlers at the Cape and the Kaffirs, or that between the Americanfrontierman and the Red Indian. The religious quarrel was and has alwaysbeen secondary in importance to the struggle of the races for the land. In the period following the conquest it was the Pale that wasdistinctively Romanist; but when at the Reformation the Pale becameProtestant the natives, from antagonism of race, became more intenselyCatholic, and were drawn into the league of Catholic powers on theContinent, in which they suffered the usual fate of the dwarf who goesto battle with the giant. By the strong monarchy of the Tudors theconquest of Ireland was completed with circumstances of crueltysufficient to plant undying hatred in the breasts of the people. But thestruggle for the land did not end there, instead of the form of conquestit took that of confiscation, and was waged by the intruder with thearms of legal chicane. In the form of eviction it has lasted to thepresent hour; and eviction in Ireland is not like eviction in England, where great manufacturing cities receive and employ the evicted; it isstarvation or exile. Into exile the Irish people have gone by millions, and thus, though neither maritime nor by nature colonists, they have hada great share in the peopling of the New World. The cities and railroadsof the United States are to a great extent the monuments of theirlabour. In the political sphere they have retained the weakness producedby ages of political serfage, and are still the _debris_ of brokenclans, with little about them of the genuine republican, apt blindly tofollow the leader who stands to them as a chief, while they areinstinctively hostile to law and government as their immemorialoppressors in their native land. British statesmen, when they hadconceded Catholic emancipation and afterwards Disestablishment, may havefancied that they had removed the root of the evil. But the real rootwas not touched till Parliament took up the question of the land, andeffected a compromise which may perhaps have to be again revised beforecomplete pacification is attained. 

In another way geography has exercised a sinister influence on thefortunes of Ireland. Closely approaching Scotland, the northern coast ofIreland in course of time invited Scotch immigration, which formed as itwere a Presbyterian Pale. If the antagonism between the EnglishEpiscopalian and the Irish Catholic was strong, that between the ScotchPresbyterian and the Irish Catholic was stronger. To the EnglishEpiscopalian the Irish Catholic was a barbarian and a Romanist; to theScotch Presbyterian he was a Canaanite and an idolater. Nothing inhistory is more hideous than the conflict in the north of Ireland in thetime of Charles I. This is the feud which has been tenacious enough ofits evil life to propagate itself even in the New World, and to renew inthe streets of Canadian cities the brutal and scandalous conflicts whichdisgrace Belfast. On the other hand, through the Scotch colony, thelarger island has a second hold upon the smaller. Of all politicalprojects a federal union of England and Ireland with separateParliaments under the same Crown seems the most hopeless, at least ifgovernment is to remain parliamentary; it may be safely said that thenormal relation between the two Parliaments would be collision, andcollision on a question of peace or war would be disruption. But anindependent Ireland might be a feasible as well as natural object ofIrish aspiration if it were not for the strength, moral as well asnumerical, of the two intrusive elements. How could the Catholicmajority be restrained from legislation which the Protestant minoritywould deem oppressive? And how could the Protestant minority, being asit is more English or Scotch than Irish, be restrained from stretchingits hands to England or Scotland for aid? It is true that if scepticismcontinues to advance at its present rate, the lines of religiousseparation may be obliterated or become too faint to exercise a greatpractical influence, and the bond of the soil may then prevail. But thefeeling against England which is the strength of Irish Nationalism islikely to subside at the same time. 

Speculation on unfulfilled contingencies is not invariably barren. It isinteresting at all events to consider what would have been theconsequences to the people of the two islands, and humanity generally, if a Saxon England and a Celtic Ireland had been allowed to grow up anddevelop by the side of each other untouched by Norman conquest. In thecase of Ireland we should have been spared centuries of oppression whichhas profoundly reacted, as oppression always does, on the character ofthe oppressor; and it is difficult to believe that the Isle of Saintsand of primitive Universities would not have produced some good fruitsof its own. In the Norman conquest of England historical optimism sees agreat political and intellectual blessing beneath the disguise ofbarbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The Conquest was the continuation ofthe process of migratory invasions by which the nations of modern Europewere founded, from restless ambition and cupidity, when it had ceased tobe beneficent. It was not the superposition of one primitive element ofpopulation on another, to the ultimate advantage, possibly, of thecompound; but the destruction of a nationality, the nationality ofAlfred and Harold, of Bede and AElfric. The French were superior inmilitary organization; that they had superior gifts of any kind, or thattheir promise was higher than that of the native English, it would notbe easy to prove. The language, we are told, is enriched by theintrusion of the French element. If it was enriched it was shattered;and the result is a mixture so heterogeneous as to be hardly availablefor the purposes of exact thought, while the language of science isborrowed from the Greek, and as regards the unlearned mass of the peopleis hardly a medium of thought at all. There are great calamity inhistory, though their effects may in time be worked off, and they may beattended by some incidental good. Perhaps the greatest calamity inhistory were the wars of Napoleon, in which some incidental good maynevertheless be found. 

To the influences of geographical position, soil, and race is to beadded, to complete the account of the physical heritage, the influenceof climate. But in the case of the British Islands we must speak not ofclimate, but of climates, for within the compass of one small realm areclimates moist and comparatively dry, warm and cold, bracing andenervating, the results of special influences the range of which islimited. Civilized man to a great extent makes a climate for himself;his life in the North is spent mainly indoors, where artificial heatreplaces the sun. The idea which still haunts us, that formidable vigourand aptitude for conquest are the appanage of Northern races, is asurvival from the state in which the rigour of nature selected andhardened the destined conquerors of the Roman Empire. The stoves of St. Petersburg are as enervating as the sun of Naples, and in the strugglebetween the Northern and Southern States of America not the leastvigorous soldiers were those who came from Louisiana. In the barbarousstate the action of a Northern climate as a force of natural selectionmust be tremendous. Of the races which peopled the British Islands themost important had already undergone that action in their originalabodes. They would, however, still feel the beneficent influence of aclimate on the whole eminently favourable to health and to activity;bracing, yet not so rigorous as to kill those tender plants of humanitywhich often bear in them the most precious germs of civilization, neither confining the inhabitant too much to the shelter of hisdwelling, nor, as the suns of the South are apt to do, drawing him toomuch from home. The climate and the soil together formed a good schoolfor the character of the young nation, as they exacted the toil of thehusbandman and rewarded it. Of the varieties of temperature and weatherwithin the island the national character still bears the impress, thoughin a degree always decreasing as the assimilating agencies ofcivilization make their way. Irrespectively of the influence of specialemployments, and perhaps even of peculiarity of race, mental vigour, independence, and reasoning power are always ascribed to the people ofthe North. Variety, in this as in other respects, would naturallyproduce a balance of tendencies in the nation conductive to moderationand evenness of progress. 

The islands are now the centre of an Empire which to some minds seemsmore important than the islands themselves. An empire it is called, butthe name is really applicable only to India. The relation of England toher free colonies is not in the proper sense of the term imperial, whileher relation to such dependencies as Gibraltar and Malta is militaryalone. Colonization is the natural and entirely beneficent result ofgeneral causes, obvious enough and already mentioned, including thatpower of self-government, fostered by the circumstances of thecolonizing country, which made the character and destiny of New Englandso different from those of New France. 

Equally natural was the choice of the situation for the originalcolonies on the shore of the New World. The foundation of the AustralianColonies, on the other hand, was determined by political accident, compensation for the loss of the American Colonies being sought on theother side of the globe. It will perhaps be thought hereafter that thequarrel with New England was calamitous in its consequences as well asin itself, since it led to the diversion of British emigration fromAmerica, where it supplied, in a democracy of mixed but not uncongenialraces, the necessary element of guidance and control, to Australia, where, as there must be a limit to its own multiplication, it mayhereafter have to struggle for mastery with swarming multitudes ofChinese, almost as incurable of incorporation with it as the negro. India and the other conquered dependencies are the fruits of strength asa war power at sea combined with weakness on land. Though not sogenerally noticed, the second of these two factors has not been lessoperative than the first. Chatham attacked France in her distantdependencies when he had failed to make any impression on her owncoasts. Still more clearly was Chatham's son, the most incapable of warministers, driven to the capture of sugar islands by his inability totake part, otherwise than by subsidies, in the decisive struggle on theContinental fields. This may deserve the attention of those who do notthink it criminal to examine the policy of Empire. Outlying pawns pickedup by a feeble chessplayer merely because he could not mate the king donot at first sight necessarily commend themselves as invaluablepossessions. Carthage and Venice were merely great commercial cities, which, when they entered on a career of conquest, were compelled at onceto form armies of mercenaries, and to incur all the evil consequences bywhich the employment of those vile and fatal instruments of ambition isattended. England being, not a commercial city, but a nation, and anation endowed with the highest military qualities, has escaped the fellnecessity except in the case of India; and India, under the reign of theCompany, and even for some time after its legal annexation to the Crown, was regarded and treated almost as a realm in another planet, with anarmy, a political system, and a morality of its own. But now it appearsthat the wrongs of the Hindoo are going to be avenged, as the wrongs ofthe conquered have often been, by their moral effect upon the conqueror. A body of barbarian mercenaries has appeared upon the European scene asan integral part of the British army, while the reflex influence ofIndian Empire upon the political character and tendencies of theimperial nation is too manifest to be any longer overlooked. England nowstands where the paths divide, the one leading by industrial andcommercial progress to increase of political liberty; the other, by acareer of conquest, to the political results in which such a career hasnever yet failed to end. At present the influences in favour of takingthe path of conquest seemed to preponderate, [Footnote: Written in1878. ] and the probability seems to be that the leadership of politicalprogress, which has hitherto belonged to England and has constituted thespecial interest of her history, will, in the near future, pass intoother hands. 

THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

[Footnote: In this lecture free use has been made of recent writers--Mitchell, Chapman, Vehse, Freytag and Ranke, as well as of the olderauthorities. To Chapman's excellent Life of Gustavus Adolphus we areunder special obligations. In some passages it has been closelyfollowed. Colonel Mitchell has also supplied some remarks and touches, such as are to be found only in a military writer. ]

AN EPISODE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 

The Thirty Years' War is an old story, but its interest has beenrecently revived. The conflict between Austria and German Independencecommenced in the struggle of the Protestant Princes against Charles V. , and, continued on those battle-fields, was renewed and decided atSadowa. At Sadowa Germany was fighting for unity as well as forindependence. But in the Thirty Years' War it was Austria that with herCroats, the Jesuits who inspired her councils, and her Spanish allies, sought to impose a unity of death, against which Protestant Germanystruggled, preserving herself for a unity of life which, opened by thevictories of Frederick the Great, and, more nobly promoted by the greatuprising of the nation against the tyranny of Napoleon, was finallyaccomplished at Sadowa, and ratified against French jealousy at Sedan. Costly has been the achievement; lavish has been the expenditure ofGerman blood, severe the sufferings of the German people. It is the lotof all who aspire high--no man or nation ever was dandled intogreatness. 

The Thirty Years' War was a real world-contest. Austria and Spain drewafter them all the powers of reaction; all the powers of liberty andprogress were arrayed on the other side. The half-barbarous races thatlay between civilized Europe and Turkey mingled in the conflict: Turkeyherself was drawn diplomatically into the vortex. In the mines of Mexicoand Peru the Indian toiled to furnish both the Austrian and Spanishhosts. The Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded the struggle, longremained the Public Law of Europe. 

Half religious, half political, in its character, this war stands midwaybetween the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and the politicalwars of the eighteenth. France took the political view; and, while shecrushed her own Huguenots at home, supported the German Protestantsagainst the House of Austria. Even the Pope, Urban VIII. , morepolitician than churchman, more careful of Peter's patrimony than ofPeter's creed, went with France to the Protestant side. With theprinces, as usual, political motives were the strongest, with the peoplereligious motives. The politics were to a sad extent those ofMachiavelli and the Jesuit; but above the meaner characters who crowdthe scene rise at least two grand forms. 

In a military point of view, the Thirty Years' War will bear nocomparison with that which has just run its marvellous course. Thearmies were small, seldom exceeding thirty thousand. Tilly thought fortythousand the largest number which a general could handle, while VonMoltke has handled half a million. There was no regular commissariat, there were no railroads, there were no good roads, there were noaccurate maps, there was no trained staff. The general had to beeverything and to do everything himself. The financial resources of thepowers were small: their regular revenues soon failed; and they had tofly for loans to great banking houses, such as that of the Fuggers atAugsburgh, so that the money power became the arbiter even of Imperialelections. The country on which the armies lived was soon eaten up bytheir rapine. Hence the feebleness of the operations, the absence ofanything which Von Moltke would call strategy: and hence again the cruellength of the war, a whole generation of German agony. 

But if the war was weak, not so were the warriors. On the Imperial sideespecially, they were types of a class of men, the most terribleperhaps, as well as the vilest, who ever plied the soldier's trade: ofthose mercenary bands, _soldados_, in the literal and originalsense of the term, free companions, _condottieri_, lansquenets, whocame between the feudal militia and the standing armies of modern times. In the wars of Italy and the Low Countries, under Alva and Parma andFreundsberg, these men had opened new abysses of cruelty and lust inhuman nature. They were the lineal representatives of the GreatCompanies which ravaged France in the time of Edward III. They were nearof kin to the buccaneers, and Scott's Bertram Risingham is the portraitof a lansquenet as well as of a rover of the Spanish Main. Many of themwere Croats, a race well known through all history in the ranks ofAustrian tyranny, and Walloons, a name synonymous with that of hiredbutcher and marauder. 

But with Croats and Walloons were mingled Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, outcasts of every land, bearing thedevil's stamp on faces of every complexion, blaspheming in all Europeanand some non-European tongues. Their only country was the camp; theircause booty; their king the bandit general who contracted for theirblood. Of attachment to religious principle they had usually just enoughto make them prefer murdering and plundering in the name of the Virginto murdering and plundering in the name of the Gospel, but outcasts ofall nominal creeds were found together in their camps. Even the dignityof hatred was wanting to their conflicts, for they changed sides withoutscruple, and the comrade of yesterday was the foeman of to-day, andagain the comrade of the morrow. The only moral salt which kept thecarcass of their villainy from rotting was a military code of honour, embodying the freemasonry of the soldier's trade and having as one ofits articles the duel with all the forms--an improvement at any rateupon assassination. A stronger contrast there cannot be than thatbetween these men and the citizen soldiers whom Germany the other daysent forth to defend their country and their hearths. The soldier had alanguage of his own, polyglot as the elements of the band, and garnishedwith unearthly oaths: and the void left by religion in his soul wasfilled with wild superstitions, bullet charming and spells againstbullets, the natural reflection in dark hearts of the blind chance whichsince the introduction of firearms seemed to decide the soldier's fate. Having no home but the camp, he carried with him his family, a she wolfand her cubs, cruel and marauding as himself; and the numbers andunwieldiness of every army were doubled by a train of waggons full ofwomen and children sitting on heaps of booty. It was not, we may guess, as ministering angels that these women went among the wounded after abattle. The chiefs made vast fortunes. Common soldiers sometimes drew agreat prize; left the standard for a time and lived like princes; butthe fiend's gold soon found its way back to the giver through the Jewswho prowled in the wake of war, or at the gambling table which was thecentral object in every camp. When fortune smiled, when pay was good, when a rich city had been stormed, the soldier's life was in its way amerry one; his camp was full of roystering revelry; he, his lady and hischarger glittered with not over-tasteful finery, the lady sometimes withfinery stripped from the altars. Then, glass in hand he might joyouslycry, "The sharp sword is my farm and plundering is my plough; earth ismy bed, the sky my covering, this cloak is my house, this wine myparadise;" or chant the doggerel stave which said that "when a soldierwas born three boors were given him, one to find him food, another tofind him a comely lass, a third to go to perdition in his stead. " Butwhen the country had been eaten up, when the burghers held the citystoutly, when the money-kings refused to advance the war kings any moregold, the soldier shared the miseries which he inflicted, and, unless hewas of iron, sank under his hardships, unpitied by his strongercomrades; for the rule of that world was woe to the weak. Terrible thenwere the mutinies. Fearful was the position of the commander. We cannotaltogether resist the romance which attaches to the life of these men, many a one among whom could have told a tale as wild as that with whichOthello, the hero of their tribe, won his Desdemona, in whose love hefinds the countercharm of his wandering life. But what sort of war sucha soldiery made, may be easily imagined. Its treatment of the people andthe country wherever it marched, as minutely described by trustworthywitnesses, was literally fiendish. Germany did not recover the effectsfor two hundred years. 

A century had passed since the first preaching of Luther. Jesuitism, working from its great seminary at Ingoldstadt, and backed by Austria, had won back many, especially among the princes and nobility, to theChurch of Rome; but in the main the Germans, like the other Teutons, were still Protestant even in the hereditary domains of the House ofAustria. The rival religions stood facing each other within the nominalunity of the Empire, in a state of uneasy truce and compromise, questions about ecclesiastical domains and religious privileges stillopen; formularies styled of concord proving formularies of discord; nomediating authority being able to make church authority and liberty ofprivate judgment, Reaction and Progress, the Spirit of the Past and theSpirit of the Future lie down in real peace together. The Protestantshad formed an Evangelical Union, their opponents a Catholic League, ofwhich Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, a pupil of the Jesuits, was chief. The Protestants were ill prepared for the struggle. There was fataldivision between the Lutherans and the Calvinists, Luther himself havingsaid in his haste that he hated a Calvinist more than a Papist. Thegreat Protestant princes were lukewarm and weak-kneed: like the Tudornobility of England, they clung much more firmly to the lands which theyhad taken from the Catholics than to the faith in the name of which thelands were taken; and as powers of order, naturally alarmed by thedisorders which attended the great religious revolution, they werepolitically inclined to the Imperial side. The lesser nobility andgentry, staunch Protestants for the most part, had shown no capacity forvigorous and united action since their premature attempt under ArnoldVon Sickingen. On the peasantry, also staunch Protestants, still weighedthe reaction produced by the Peasants' war and the excesses of theAnabaptists. In the free cities there was a strong burgher element readyto fight for Protestantism and liberty; but even in the free citieswealth was Conservative, and to the Rothschilds of the day the causewhich offered high interest and good security was the cause of Heaven. 

The smouldering fire burst into a flame in Bohemia, a kingdom of theHouse of Austria, and a member of the Empire, but peopled by hot, impulsive Sclavs, jealous of their nationality, as well as of theirProtestant faith--Bohemia, whither the spark of Wycliffism had passedalong the electric chain of common universities by which mediaevalChristendom was bound, and where it had kindled first the martyr fire ofJohn Huss and Jerome of Prague, then the fiercer conflagration of theHussite war. In that romantic city by the Moldau, with its strange, halfOriental beauty, where Jesuitism now reigns supreme, and St. JohnNepemuch is the popular divinity, Protestantism and Jesuitism then layin jealous neighbourhood, Protestantism supported by the nativenobility, from anarchical propensity as well as from religiousconviction; Jesuitism patronized and furtively aided by the intrusiveAustrian power. From the Emperor Rudolph II. , the Protestants hadobtained a charter of religious liberties. But Rudolph's successor, Ferdinand II. , was the Philip II. Of Germany in bigotry, though not incruelty. In his youth, after a pilgrimage to Loretto, he had vowed atthe feet of the Pope to restore Catholicism at the hazard of his life. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, almost worshipped priests, waspassionately devoted to the ceremonies of his religion, delighting evenin the functions of an acolyte, and, as he said, preferred a desert toan empire full of heretics. He had, moreover, before his accession tothe throne, come into collision with Protestantism where it wastriumphant, and had found in its violence too good an excuse for hisbigotry. It was inevitable that as King of Bohemia he should attempt tonarrow the Protestant liberties. The hot Czech blood took fire, thefierceness of political turbulence mingled with that of religious zeal, and at a council held at Prague, in the old palace of the Bohemiankings, Martiniz and Slavata, the most hated of Ferdinand's creatures, were thrown out of a window in what was called good Bohemian fashion, and only by a marvellous accident escaped with their lives. The firstblow was struck, the signal was given for thirty years of havoc. Insurrection flamed up in Bohemia. At the head of the insurgents, CountThurn rushed on Vienna. The Emperor was saved only by a miracle, asJesuitism averred, --as Rationalism says, by the arrival of Dampierre'sImperial horse. He suffered a fright which must have made him more thanever prefer a desert to an empire full of heretics. By a vote of theStates of Bohemia the crown was taken from Ferdinand and offered toFrederic, Elector Palatine. Frederic was married to the bright andfascinating Princess Elizabeth of England, the darling of Protestanthearts; other qualifications for that crown of peril he had none. But inan evil hour he accepted the offer. Soon his unfitness appeared. Aforeigner, he could not rein the restive and hard mouthed Czechnobility, a Calvinist and a pupil of the Huguenots, he unwisely letloose Calvinist iconoclasm among a people who clung to their ancientimages though they had renounced their ancient faith. Supinely heallowed Austria and the Catholic League to raise their Croats andWalloons with the ready aid, so valuable in that age of unready finance, of Spanish gold. Supinely he saw the storm gather and roll towards him. Supinely he lingered in his palace, while on the White Hill, a namefatal in Protestant annals, his army, filled with his owndiscouragement, was broken by the combined forces of the Empire, underBucquoi, and of the Catholic League, under Count Tilly. Still there washope in resistance, yet Frederic fled. He was in great danger, say hisapologists. It was to face a great danger, and show others how to faceit, that he had come there. Let a man, before he takes the crown ofBohemia, look well into his own heart. Then followed a scaffold scenelike that of Egmont and Horn, but on a larger scale. Ferdinand, itseems, hesitated to shed blood, but his confessor quelled his scruples. Before the City Hall of Prague, and near the Thein Church, bearing theHussite emblems of the chalice and sword, amidst stern military pomp, the Emperor presiding in the person of his High Commissioner, twenty-four victims of high rank were led forth to death. Just as theexecutions commenced a bright rainbow spanned the sky. To the victims itseemed an assurance of Heaven's mercy. To the more far-reaching eye ofhistory it may seem to have been an assurance that, dark as the sky thenwas, the flood of Reaction should no more cover the earth. But dark thesky was: the counter-reformation rode on the wings of victory, and withruthless cruelty, through Bohemia, through Moravia, through AustriaProper, which had shown sympathy with the Bohemian revolt. The lands ofthe Protestant nobility were confiscated, the nobility itself crushed;in its place was erected a new nobility of courtiers, foreigners, military adventurers devoted to the Empire and to Catholicism, the seedof the Metternichs. 

For ten years the tide ran steadily against Protestantism and GermanIndependence. The Protestants were without cohesion, without powerfulchiefs. Count Mansfeldt was a brilliant soldier, with a strong dash ofthe robber. Christian of Brunswick was a brave knight errant, fighting, as his motto had it, for God and for Elizabeth of Bohemia. But neitherof them had any great or stable force at his back, and if a ray ofvictory shone for a moment on their standards, it was soon lost ingloom. In Frederick, ex-king of Bohemia, was no help; and his charmingqueen could only win for him hearts like that of Christian of Brunswick. The great Protestant Princes of the North, Saxony and Brandenburgh, twinpillars of the cause that should have been, were not only lukewarm, timorous, superstitiously afraid of taking part against the Emperor, butthey were sybarites, or rather sots, to whose gross hearts no noblethought could find its way. Their inaction was almost justified by theconduct of the Protestant chiefs, whose councils were full of folly andselfishness, whose policy seemed mere anarchy, and who too often madewar like buccaneers. The Evangelical Union, in which Lutheranism andpolitical quietism prevailed, refused its aid to the Calvinist andusurping King of Bohemia. Among foreign powers, England was divided inwill, the nation being enthusiastically for Protestantism and Elizabethof Bohemia, while the Court leant to the side of order and hankeredafter the Spanish marriage. France was not divided in will: her singlewill was that of Richelieu, who, to weaken Austria, fanned the flame ofcivil war in Germany, as he did in England, but lent no decisive aid. Bethlem Gabor, the Evangelical Prince of Transylvania, led semi-barbarous hosts, useful as auxiliaries, but incapable of bearing themain brunt of the struggle; and he was trammelled by his allegiance tohis suzerain, the Sultan. The Catholic League was served by a first-rategeneral in the person of Tilly; the Empire by a first-rate general andfirst-rate statesman in the person of Wallenstein. The Palatinate wasconquered, and the Electorate was transferred by Imperial fiat toMaximilian of Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, whereby amajority was given to the Catholics in the hitherto equally-dividedCollege of Electors. An Imperial Edict of Restitution went forth, restoring to Catholicism all that it had lost by conversion within thelast seventy years. Over all Germany, Jesuits and Capuchins swarmed withthe mandates of reaction in their hands. The King of Denmark tardilytook up arms only to be overthrown by Tilly at Lutter, and again atWolgast by Wallenstein. The Catholic and Imperial armies were on thenorthern seas. Wallenstein, made Admiral of the Empire, was preparing abasis of maritime operations against the Protestant kingdoms ofScandinavia, against the last asylum of Protestantism and Liberty inHolland. Germany, with all its intellect and all its hopes, was on thepoint of becoming a second Spain. Teutonism was all but enslaved to theCroat. The double star of the House of Austria seemed with balefulaspect to dominate in the sky, and to threaten with extinction Europeanliberty and progress. One bright spot alone remained amidst the gloom. By the side of the brave burghers who beat back the Prince of Parma fromthe cities of Holland, a place must be made in history for the braveburghers who beat back Wallenstein from Stralsund, after he had sworn, in his grand, impious way, that he would take it though it were bound bya chain to Heaven. The eyes of all Protestants were turned, saysRichelieu, like those of sailors, towards the North. And from the Northa deliverer came. On Midsummer day, 1630, a bright day in the annals ofProtestantism, of Germany, and, as Protestants and Germans must believe, of human liberty and progress, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, landedat Penemunde, on the Pomeranian coast, and knelt down on the shore togive thanks to God for his safe passage; then showed at once hisknowledge of the art of war and of the soldier's heart, by himselftaking spade in hand, and commencing the entrenchment of his camp. Gustavus was the grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had broken at oncethe bonds of Denmark and of Rome, and had made Sweden independent andLutheran. He was the son of that Charles Vasa who had defeated thecounter-reformation. Devoted from his childhood to the Protestant cause, hardily trained in a country where even the palace was the abode ofthrift and self-denial, his mind enlarged by a liberal education, inregard for which, amidst her poverty, as in general character and habitsof her people, his Sweden greatly resembled Scotland; his imaginationstimulated by the wild scenery, the dark forests, the starry nights ofScandinavia; gifted by nature both in mind and body; the young king hadalready shown himself a hero. He had waged grim war with the powers ofthe icy north; he bore several scars, proofs of a valour only too greatfor the vast interests which depended on his life; he had been asuccessful innovator in tactics, or rather a successful restorer of themilitary science of the Romans. But the best of his military innovationswere discipline and religion. His discipline redeemed the war fromsavagery, and made it again, so far as war, and war in that iron agecould be, a school of humanity and self-control. In religion he washimself not an ascetic saint, there is one light passage at least in hisearly life: and at Augsburg they show a ruff plucked from his neck by afair Augsburger at the crisis of a very brisk flirtation. But he wasdevout, and he inspired his army with his devotion. The traveller isstill struck with the prayer and hymn which open and close the march ofthe soldiers of Gustavus. Schools for the soldiers' children were heldin his camp. It is true that the besetting sin of the Swedes, and of alldwellers in cold countries, is disclosed by the article in his militarycode directed against the drunkenness of army chaplains. 

Sir Thomas Roe, the most sagacious of the English diplomatists of thatage, wrote of Gustavus to James I. --"The king hath solemnly protestedthat he will not depose arms till he hath spoken one word for yourmajesty in Germany (that was his own phrase), and glory will contendwith policy in his resolution; for he hath unlimited thoughts, and isthe likeliest instrument for God to work by in Europe. We have oftenobserved great alterations to follow great spirits, as if they werefitted for the times. Certainly, _ambit fortunam Caesaris_: hethinks the ship cannot sink that carries him, and doth thus obligeprosperity. "

Gustavus justified his landing in Germany by a manifesto setting forthhostile acts of the Emperor against him in Poland. No doubt there was atechnical _casus belli_. But, morally, the landing of Gustavus wasa glorious breach of the principle of non-intervention. He came to savethe world. He was not the less a fit instrument for God to work bybecause it was likely that he would rule the world when he had saved it. 

"A snow king!" tittered the courtiers of Vienna, "he will soon meltaway. " He soon began to prove to them, both in war and diplomacy, thathis melting would be slow. Richelieu at last ventured on a treaty ofalliance. Charles I. , now on the throne of England, and angry at havingbeen jilted by Spain, also entered into a treaty, and sent Britishauxiliaries, who, though soon reduced in numbers by sickness, alwaysformed a substantial part of the armies of Gustavus, and in battle andstorm earned their full share of the honour of his campaigns. ManyBritish volunteers had already joined the standard of Mansfeldt andother Protestant chiefs; and if some of these men were mere soldiers ofthe Dugald Dalghetty type, some were the Garibaldians of their day, andbrought back at once enthusiasm and military skill from Germanbattlefields to Marston and Naseby. Diplomacy, aided by a little gentlepressure, drew Saxony and Brandenburgh to the better cause, now that thebetter cause was so strong. But while they dallied and haggled one moregreat disaster was added to the sum of Protestant calamity. Magdeburgh, the queen of Protestant cities, the citadel of North German liberty, fell--fell with Gustavus and rescue near--and nameless atrocities wereperpetrated by the ferocious bands of the Empire on innocents of allages and both sexes, whose cry goes up against bloodthirsty fanaticismfor ever. A shriek of horror rang through the Protestant world, notwithout reproaches against Gustavus, who cleared himself by words, andwas soon to clear himself better by deeds. 

Count Tilly was now in sole command on the Catholic and Imperial side. Wallenstein had been dismissed. A military Richelieu, an absolutist inpolitics, an indifferentist in religion, caring at least for thereligious quarrel only as it affected the political question, he aimedat crushing the independence of all the princes, Catholic as well asProtestant, and making the Emperor, or rather Wallenstein in the name ofthe Imperial devotee, as much master of Germany as the Spanish king wasof Spain. But the disclosure of this policy, and the towering pride ofits author had alarmed the Catholic princes, and produced a reactionsimilar to that caused by the absolutist encroachments of Charles V. Aided by the Jesuits, who marked in Wallenstein a statesman whose policywas independent of theirs, and who, if not a traitor to the faith, wasat least a bad persecutor, Maximilian and his confederates forced theEmperor to remove Wallenstein from command. The great man received thebearers of the mandate with stately courtesy, with princely hospitality, showed them that he had read in the stars the predominance of Maximilianover Ferdinand, slightly glanced at the Emperor's weakness, thenwithdrew to that palace at Prague, so like its mysterious lord, so regaland so fantastic in its splendour, yet so gloomy, so jealously guarded, so full of the spirit of dark ambition, so haunted by the shadow of thedagger. There he lay, watching the storm that gathered in the North, scanning the stars and waiting for his hour. 

When the Swedes and Saxons, under Gustavus and the Elector of Saxony, drew near to the Imperial army under Tilly, in the neighbourhood ofLeipsic, there was a crisis, a thrill of worldwide expectation, as whenthe Armada approached the shores of England; as when the allies met theforces of Louis XIV. At Blenheim, as when, on those same plains ofLeipsic, the uprisen nations advanced to battle against Napoleon. CountTilly's military genius fell short only of the highest. His figure wasone which showed that war had become a science, and that the days of thePaladins were past. He was a little old man, with a broad wrinkledforehead, hollow cheeks, a long nose and projecting chin, grotesquelyattired in a slashed doublet of green satin, with a peaked hat and along red feather hanging down behind. His charger was a grey pony, hisonly weapon a pistol, which it was his delight to say he had never firedin the thirty pitched fields which he had fought and won. He was aWalloon by birth, a pupil of the Jesuits, a sincere devotee, and couldboast that he had never yielded to the allurements of wine or women, aswell as that he had never lost a battle. His name was now one of horror, for he was the captor of Magdeburg, and if he had not commanded themassacre, or, as it was said, jested at it, he could not be acquitted ofcruel connivance. That it was the death of his honour to survive thebutchery which he ought to have died, if necessary, in resisting swordin hand, is a soldier's judgment on his case. At his side wasPappenheim, another pupil of the Jesuits, the Dundee of the thirtyyears' war, with all the devotion, all the loyalty, all the ferocity ofthe Cavalier, the most fiery and brilliant of cavalry officers, theleader of the storming column at Magdeburg. 

In those armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The musket wasan unwieldy matchlock fired from a rest, and without a bayonet, so thatin the infantry regiments it was necessary to combine pikemen with themusketeers. Cannon there were of all calibres and with a wholevocabulary of fantastic names, but none capable of advancing andmanoeuvring with troops in battle. The Imperial troops were formed inheavy masses. Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, hadintroduced a more open order--he had lightened the musket, dispensedwith the rest, given the musketeer a cartridge box instead of theflapping bandoleer. He had trained his cavalry, instead of firing theircarbines and wheeling, to charge home with the sword. He had created areal field artillery of imperfect structure, but which told on theImperial masses. 

The harvest had been reaped, and a strong wind blew clouds of dust overthe bare autumn fields, when Count Tilly formed the victorious veteransof the Empire, in what was called Spanish order--infantry in the centre, cavalry on the flanks--upon a rising ground overlooking the broad plainof Breitenfeldt. On him marched the allies in two columns--Gustavus withthe Swedes upon the right, the Elector with his Saxons on the left. Asthey passed a brook in front of the Imperial position, Pappenheim dashedupon them with his cavalry, but was driven back, and the two columnsdeployed upon the plain. The night before the battle Gustavus had dreamtthat he was wrestling with Tilly, and that Tilly bit him in the leftarm, but that he overpowered Tilly with his right arm. That dream camethrough the Gate of Horn, for the Saxons who formed the left wing wereraw troops, but victory was sure to the Swede. Soldiers of the oldschool proudly compare the shock of charging armies at Leipsic withmodern battles, which they call battles of skirmishers with armies inreserve. However this may be, all that day the plain of Breitenfeldt wasfilled with the fierce eddies of a hand-to-hand struggle between mail-clad masses, their cuirasses and helmets gleaming fitfully amidst theclouds of smoke and dust, the mortal shock of the charge and the deadlyring of steel striking the ear with a distinctness impossible in modernbattle. Tilly with his right soon shattered the Saxons, but his centreand left were shattered by the unconquerable Swede. The day was won bythe genius of the Swedish king, by the steadiness with which his troopsmanoeuvred, and the promptness with which they formed a new front whenthe defeat of the Saxons exposed their left, by the rapidity of theirfire and by the vigour with which their cavalry charged. The victory wascomplete. At sunset four veteran Walloon regiments made a last stand forthe honour of the Empire, and with difficulty bore off their redoubtablecommander from his first lost field. Through all Protestant Europe flewthe tidings of a great deliverance and the name of a great deliverer. 

On to Vienna cried hope and daring then. On to Vienna; history stillregretfully repeats the cry. Gustavus judged otherwise--and whatever hisreason was we may be sure it was not weak. Not to the Danube thereforebut to the Main and Rhine the tide of conquest rolled. The Thuringianforest gleams with fires that guide the night march of the Swede. Frankfort the city of empire opens her gates to him who will soon comeas the hearts of all men divine not as a conqueror in the iron garb ofwar but as the elect of Germany to put on the imperial crown. In thecellars of the Prince Bishop of Bamberg and Wurtzburg the rich wine isbroached for heretic lips. Protestantism everywhere uplifts its head, the Archbishop of Mainz, chief of the Catholic persecutors becomes afugitive in his turn. Jesuit and Capuchin must cower or fly. Allfortresses are opened by the arms of Gustavus, all hearts are opened byhis gracious manner, his winning words, his sunny smile. To the peopleaccustomed to a war of massacre and persecution he came as from a betterworld a spirit of humanity and toleration. His toleration was politic nodoubt but it was also sincere. So novel was it that a monk findinghimself not butchered or tortured thought the king's faith must be weakand attempted his conversion. His zeal was repaid with a gracious smile. Once more on the Lech Tilly crossed the path of the thunderbolt. Dishonoured at Magdeburg, defeated at Leipsic, the old man seems to havebeen weary of life, his leg shattered by a cannon hall he was bornedying from the field and left the Imperial cause headless as well asbeaten. Gustavus is in Augsburgh, the queen of German commerce, the cityof the Fuggers with their splendid and romantic money kingdom, the cityof the Confession. He is in Munich, the capital of Maximilian and theCatholic League. His allies the Saxons are in Prague. A few marches moreand he will dictate peace at Vienna with all Germany at his back. A fewmarches more the Germans will be a Protestant nation under a Protestantchief and many a dark page will be torn from the book of fate. 

Ferdinand and Maximilian had sought counsel of the dying Tilly. Tillyhad given them counsel bitter but inevitable. Dissembling their hate andfear they called like trembling necromancers when they invoke the fiendupon the name of power. The name of Wallenstein gave new life to theImperial cause under the very ribs of death. At once he stood betweenthe Empire and destruction with an army of 50, 000 men, conjured, as itwere, out of the earth by the spell of his influence alone. All whosetrade was war came at the call of the grand master of their trade. Thesecret of Wallenstein's ambition is buried in his grave, but the manhimself was the prince of adventurers, the ideal chief of mercenarybands, the arch contractor for the hireling's blood. His character wasformed in a vast political gambling house, a world given up to pillageand the strong hand, an Eldorado of confiscations. Of the lofty dreamerportrayed in the noble dramatic poem of Schiller, there is little tracein the intensely practical character of the man. A scion of a goodBohemian house, poor himself, but married to a rich wife, whose wealthwas the first step in the ladder of his marvellous fortunes, Wallensteinhad amassed immense domains by the purchase of confiscated estates, atraffic redeemed from meanness only by the vastness of the scale onwhich he practised it, and the loftiness of the aim which he had inview. Then he took to raising and commanding mercenary troops, improvingon his predecessors in that trade by doubling the size of his army, onthe theory, coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by itscommand of the country, where a small army would starve. But all wassubservient to his towering ambition, and to a pride which has beencalled theatrical, and which often wore an eccentric garb, but which hisdeath scene proves to have been the native grand infirmity of the man. He walked in dark ways and was unscrupulous and ruthless when on thepath of his ambition; but none can doubt the self sustaining force ofhis lonely intellect, his power of command, the spell which hischaracter cast over the fierce and restless spirits of his age. Prince-Duke of Friedland, Mecklenburgh, and Sagan, Generalissimo of the armiesof the House of Austria, --to this height had the landless and obscureadventurer risen, in envy's despite, as his motto proudly said, not bythe arts of a courtier or a demagogue, but by strength of brain andheart, in a contest with rivals whose brains and hearts were strong. Highest he stood among the uncrowned heads of Europe, and dreaded by thecrowned. We wonder how the boisterous soldiers can have loved a chiefwho was so far from being a comrade, a being so disdainful and reserved, who at the sumptuous table kept by his officers never appeared, neverjoined in the revelry, even in the camp lived alone, punished intrusionon his haughty privacy as a crime. But his name was victory and plunder;he was lavishly munificent, as one who knew that those who play a deepgame must lay down heavy stakes, his eye was quick to discern, his handprompt to reward the merit of the buccaneer; and those who followed hissoaring fortunes knew that they would share them. If he was prompt toreward, he was also stern in punishment, and a certain arbitrarinessboth in reward and punishment made the soldier feel that the commander'swill was law. If Wallenstein was not the boon companion of themercenaries, he was their divinity, and he was himself essentially oneof them--even his superstition was theirs, and filled the same void offaith in his as in their hearts; though, while the common soldier raisedthe fiend to charm bullets, or bought spells and amulets of a quack atNuremburg or Augsburg, Seni, the first astrologer of the age, exploredthe sympathizing stars for the august destiny of the Duke of Friedland. Like Uriel and Satan in Paradise Lost, Gustavus and Wallenstein stoodopposed to each other. On one side was the enthusiast, on the other themighty gamester, playing the great game of his life without emotion, byintensity of thought alone. On one side was the crusader, on the otherthe indifferentist, without faith except in his star. On the one sidewas as much good, perhaps, as has ever appeared in the form of aconqueror, on the other side the majesty of evil. Gustavus was young, his frame was vigorous and active, though inclined to corpulence, hiscomplexion fair, his hair golden, his eye blue and merry, hiscountenance frank as day, and the image of a heart which had felt thekindest influences of love and friendship. Wallenstein was past hisprime, his frame was tall, spare, somewhat bowed by pain, his complexiondark, his eye black and piercing, his look that of a man who trodslippery paths with deadly rivals at his side, and of whose many lettersnot one is to a friend. But, opposites in all else, the two championswere well matched in power. Perhaps there is hardly such another duel inhistory. Such another there would have been if Strafford had lived toencounter Cromwell. 

The market for the great adventurer's services having risen so high, theprice which he asked was large--a principality in hand, a province to beconquered, supreme command of the army which he had raised. The courtsuggested that if the emperor's son, the King of Hungary, were put overWallenstein's head, his name would be a tower of strength, butWallenstein answered with a blasphemous frankness which must have madethe ears of courtiers tingle. He would be emperor of the army; he wouldbe emperor in the matter of confiscations. The last article shows how hewon the soldier's heart. Perhaps in framing his terms, he gave somethingto his wounded pride. If he did, the luxury cost him dear, for here hetrod upon the serpent that stung his life. 

The career of Gustavus was at once arrested, and he took shelter againstthe storm in an entrenched camp protected by three hundred cannon underthe walls of Nuremberg--Nuremberg the eldest daughter of the GermanReformation, the Florence of Germany in art, wealth and freedom, thenthe beautiful home of early commerce, now its romantic tomb. Thedesolation of her grass-grown streets dates from that terrible day. TheSwedish lines were scarcely completed when Wallenstein appeared with allhis power, and sweeping past, entrenched himself four miles from hisenemy in a position the key of which were the wooded hill and old castleof the Altenberg. Those who chance to visit that spot may fancy thereWallenstein's camp as it is in Schiller, ringing with the boisterousrevelry of its wild and motley bands. And they may fancy the suddensilence, the awe of men who knew no other awe, as in his well-knowndress, the laced buff coat with crimson scarf, and the grey hat withcrimson plume, Wallenstein rode by. Week after week and month aftermonth these two heavy clouds of war hung close together, and Europelooked for the bursting of the storm. But famine was to do Wallenstein'swork; and by famine and the pestilence, bred by the horrible state ofthe camp, at last his work was done. The utmost limit of deadly inactionfor the Swedes arrived. Discipline and honour gave way, and couldscarcely be restored by the passionate eloquence of Gustavus. Oxenstiernbrought large reinforcements; and on the 24th August Wallenstein saw--with grim pleasure he must have seen--Gustavus advancing to attack himin his lines. By five hundred at a time--there was room for no more inthe narrow path of death--the Swedes scaled the flashing and thunderingAltenberg. They scaled it again and again through a long summer's day. Once it was all but won. But at evening the Nurembergers saw their heroand protector retiring, for the first time defeated, from the field. YetGustavus had not lost the confidence of his soldiers. He had sharedtheir danger and had spared their blood. In ten hours' hard fighting hehad lost only 2, 000 men. But Wallenstein might well shower upon hiswounded soldiers the only balm for the wounds of men fighting without acountry or a cause. He might well write to the emperor: "The King ofSweden has blunted his horns a good deal. Henceforth the title ofInvincible belongs not to him, but to your Majesty. " No doubt Ferdinandthought it did. 

Gustavus now broke up and marched on Bavaria, abandoning the greatProtestant city, with the memory of Magdeburg in his heart. ButNuremberg was not to share the fate of Magdeburg. The Imperial army wasnot in a condition to form the siege. It had suffered as much as that ofGustavus. That such troops should have been held together in suchextremity proves their general's power of command. Wallenstein soongladdened the eyes of the Nurembergers by firing his camp, and decliningto follow the lure into Bavaria, marched on Saxony, joined anotherImperial army under Pappenheim and took Leipsic. 

To save Saxony Gustavus left Bavaria half conquered. As he hurried tothe rescue, the people on his line of march knelt to kiss the hem of hisgarment, the sheath of his delivering sword, and could scarcely beprevented from adoring him as a god. His religious spirit was filledwith a presentiment that the idol in which they trusted would be soonlaid low. On the 14th of November he was leaving a strongly entrenchedcamp, at Naumberg, where the Imperialists fancied, the season being sofar advanced, he intended to remain, when news reached his ear like thesight which struck Wellington's eye as it ranged over Marmont's army onthe morning of Salamanca. [Footnote: We owe the parallel, we believe, toan article by Lord Ellesmere, in the _Quarterly Review_. ] Theimpetuous Pappenheim, ever anxious for separate command, had persuadedan Imperial council of war to detach him with a large force againstHalle. The rest of the Imperialists, under Wallenstein, were quarteredin the villages around Lutzen, close within the king's reach, andunaware of his approach. "The Lord, " cried Gustavus, "has delivered himinto my hand, " and at once he swooped upon his prey. 

"Break up and march with every man and gun. The enemy is advancinghither. He is already at the pass by the hollow road. " So wroteWallenstein to Pappenheim. The letter is still preserved, stained withPappenheim's life-blood. But, in that mortal race, Pappenheim stood nochance. Halle was a long day's march off, and the troopers, whomPappenheim could lead gallantly, but could not control, after taking thetown had dispersed to plunder. Yet the Swede's great opportunity waslost. Lutzen, though in sight, proved not so near as flattering guidesand eager eyes had made it. The deep-banked Rippach, its bridge all toonarrow for the impetuous columns, the roads heavy from rain, delayed themarch. A skirmish with some Imperial cavalry under Isolani wastedminutes when minutes were years; and the short November day was at anend when the Swede reached the plain of Lutzen. 

No military advantage marks the spot where the storm overtook the Dukeof Friedland. He was caught like a traveller in a tempest off ashelterless plain, and had nothing for it but to bide the brunt. Whatcould be done with ditches, two windmills, a mud wall, a small canal, hedid, moving from point to point during the long night; and beforemorning all his troops, except Pappenheim's division, had come in andwere in line. 

When the morning broke a heavy fog lay on the ground. Historians havenot failed to remark that there is a sympathy in things, and that theday was loath to dawn which was to be the last day of Gustavus. But ifNature sympathized with Gustavus, she chose a bad mode of showing hersympathy, for while the fog prevented the Swedes from advancing, part ofPappenheim's corps arrived. After prayers, the king and all his armysang Luther's hymn, "Our God is a strong tower"--the Marseillaise of themilitant Reformation. Then Gustavus mounted his horse, and addressed thedifferent divisions, adjuring them by their victorious name, by thememory of the Breitenfeld, by the great cause whose issue hung upontheir swords, to fight well for that cause, for their country and theirGod. His heart was uplifted at Lutzen, with that Hebrew fervour whichuplifted the heart of Cromwell at Dunbar. Old wounds made it irksome tohim to wear a cuirass. "God, " he said, "shall be my armour this day". 

Wallenstein has been much belied if he thought of anything that morningmore religious than the order of battle, which has been preserved, drawnup by his own hand, and in which his troops are seen still formed inheavy masses, in contrast to the lighter formations of Gustavus. He wascarried down his lines in a litter being crippled by gout, which thesurgeons of that day had tried to cure by cutting into the flesh. Butwhen the action began, he placed his mangled foot in a stirrup linedwith silk, and mounted the small charger, the skin of which is stillshown in the deserted palace of his pride. We may be sure thatconfidence sat undisturbed upon his brow; but in his heart he must havefelt that though he had brave men around him, the Swedes, fighting fortheir cause under their king, were more than men; and that in thebalance of battle then held out, his scale had kicked the beam. Therecan hardly be a harder trial for human fortitude than to command in agreat action on the weaker side. Villeneuve was a brave man, though anunfortunate admiral, but he owned that his heart sank within him atTrafalgar when he saw Nelson bearing down. 

"God with us, " was the Swedish battle cry. On the other side the words"Jesu-Maria" passed round, as twenty-five thousand of the most godlessand lawless ruffians the world ever saw, stood to the arms which theyhad imbrued in the blood not of soldiers only, but of women and childrenof captured towns. Doubtless many a wild Walloon and savage Croat, manya fierce Spaniard and cruel Italian, who had butchered and tortured atMagdeburg, was here come to bite the dust. These men were children ofthe camp and the battlefield, long familiar with every form of death, yet, had they known what a day was now before them, they might have feltlike a recruit on the morning of his first field. Some were afterwardsbroken or beheaded for misconduct before the enemy; others earned richrewards. Most paid, like men of honour, the price for which they wereallowed to glut every lust and revel in every kind of crime. 

At nine the sky began to clear, straggling shots told that the armieswere catching sight of each other, and a red glare broke the mist, wherethe Imperialists had set fire to Lutzen to cover their right. At tenGustavus placed himself at the head of his cavalry. War has now changed;and the telescope is the general's sword. Yet we cannot help feelingthat the gallant king, who cast in his own life with the lives of thepeasants he had drawn from their Swedish homes, is a nobler figure thanthe great Emperor who, on the same plains, two centuries afterwards, ordered to their death the masses of youthful valour sent by a ruthlessconscription to feed the vanity of a heart of clay. The Swedes, afterthe manner of war in that fierce and hardy age, fell at once with theirmain force on the whole of the Imperial line. On the left, after amurderous struggle, they gained ground and took the enemy's guns. But onthe right the Imperialists held firm, and while Gustavus was carryingvictory with him to that quarter, Wallenstein restored the day upon theright. Again Gustavus hurried to that part of the field. Again theImperialists gave way, and Gustavus, uncovering his head, thanked Godfor his victory. At this moment it seems the mist returned. The Swedeswere confused and lost their advantage. A horse, too well known, ranriderless down their line, and when their cavalry next advanced, theyfound the stripped and mangled body of their king. According to the mostcredible witness, Gustavus who had galloped forward to see how hisadvantage might be best followed up, got too near the enemy, was shotfirst in the arm, then in the back, and fell from his horse. A party ofImperial cuirassiers came up, and learning from the wounded man himselfwho he was, finished the work of death. They then stripped the body forproofs of their great enemy's fate and relics of the mighty slain. Darkreports of treason were spread abroad, and one of these reports followedthe Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, who was with Gustavus that day, through hisquestionable life to his unhappy end. In those times a great man couldscarcely die without suspicion of foul play, and in all times men areunwilling to believe that a life on which the destiny of a cause or anation hangs can be swept away by the blind, indiscriminate hand ofcommon death. 

Gustavus dead, the first thought of his officers was retreat; and thatthought was his best eulogy. Their second thought was revenge. Yet sogreat was the discouragement that one Swedish colonel refused toadvance, and Bernard of Saxe-Weimar cut him down with his own hand. Again the struggle began, and with all the morning's fury. Wallensteinhad used his respite well. He knew that his great antagonist was dead, and that he was now the master-spirit on the field. And with friendlynight near, and victory within his grasp, he directed in person the mostdesperate combat, prodigal of the life on which, according to hisenemies, his treasonable projects hung. Yet the day was again goingagainst him, when the remainder of Pappenheim's corps arrived, and theroad was once more opened to victory by a charge which cost Pappenheimhis own life. At four o'clock the battle was at its last gasp. Thecarnage had been fearful on both sides, and as fearful was theexhaustion. For six hours almost every man in both armies had borne theterrible excitement of mortal combat with pike and sword; and four timesthat excitement had been strained by general charges to its highestpitch. The Imperialists held their ground, but confused and shattered;their constancy sustained only by that commanding presence which stillmoved along their lines, unhurt, grazed and even marked by the storm ofdeath through which he rode. Just as the sun was setting, the Swedesmade the supreme effort which heroism alone can make. Then Wallensteingave the signal for retreat, welcome to the bravest, and as darknessfell upon the field, the shattered masses of the Imperialists drew offslowly and sullenly into the gloom. Slowly and sullenly they drew off, leaving nothing to the victor except some guns of position; but they hadnot gone far when they fell into the disorganization of defeat. 

The judgment of a cause by battle is dreadful. Dreadful it must haveseemed to all who were within sight or hearing of the field of Lutzenwhen that battle was over. But it is not altogether irrational andblind. Providence does not visibly interpose in favour of the right. Thestars in their courses do not now fight for the good cause. At Lutzenthey fought against it. But the good cause is its own star. The strengthgiven to the spirit of the Swedes by religious enthusiasm, the strengthgiven to their bodies by the comparative purity of their lives, enabledthem, when the bravest and hardiest ruffians were exhausted in spiritand body, to make that last effort which won the day. 

_Te Deum_ was sung at Vienna and Madrid, and with good reason. ForVienna and Madrid the death of Gustavus was better than any victory. Forhumanity, if the interests of humanity were not those of Vienna andMadrid, it was worse than any defeat. But for Gustavus himself, was itgood to die glorious and stainless, but before his hour? Triumph andempire, it is said, might have corrupted the soul which up to that timehad been so pure and true. It was, perhaps, well for him that he wassaved from temptation. A deeper morality replies that what was bad forGustavus' cause and for his kind, could not be good for Gustavus; andthat whether he were to stand or fall in the hour of temptation, he hadbetter have lived his time and done his work. We, with our smallphilosophy, can make allowance for the greater dangers of the highersphere; and shall we arrogate to ourselves a larger judgment and amplersympathies than we allow to God? Yet Gustavus was happy. Among soldiersand statesmen, if there is a greater, there is hardly a purer name. Hehad won not only honour but love, and the friend and comrade was as muchbewailed as the deliverer and the king. In him his Sweden appeared forthe first and last time with true glory on the scene of universalhistory. In him the spirit of the famous house of Vasa rose to the firstheroic height. It was soon to mount to madness in Christina and CharlesXII. 

Not till a year had passed could Sweden bring herself to consign theremains of her Gustavus to the dust. Then came a hero's funeral, withpomp not unmeaning, with trophies not unbecoming the obsequies of aChristian warrior, and for mourners the sorrowing nations. In earlyyouth Gustavus had loved the beautiful Ebba Brahe, daughter of a Swedishnobleman, and she had returned his love. But etiquette and policyinterposed, and Gustavus married Eleanor, a princess of Brandenburg, also renowned for beauty. The widowed Queen of Gustavus, though she hadloved him with a fondness too great for their perfect happiness, admitted his first love to a partnership in her grief, and sent Ebbawith her own portrait the portrait of him who was gone where, if lovestill is, there is no more rivalry in love. 

The death of Gustavus was the death of his great antagonist. Gustavusgone, Wallenstein was no longer indispensable, and he was far moreformidable than ever. Lutzen had abated nothing either of his pride orpower. He went forth again from Prague to resume command in almostimperial pomp. The army was completely in his hands. He negotiated as anindependent power, and was carrying into effect a policy of his own, which seems to have been one of peace for the empire with amnesty andtoleration, and which certainly crossed the policy of the Jesuits andSpain, now dominant in the Imperial councils. No doubt the greatadventurer also intended that his own grandeur should be augmented andsecured. Whether his proceedings gave his master just cause for alarmremains a mystery. The word, however, went forth against him, and inAustrian fashion, a friendly correspondence being kept up with him whenhe had been secretly deposed and his command transferred to another. Finding himself denounced and outlawed, he resolved to throw himself onthe Swedes. He had arrived at Eger, a frontier fortress of Bohemia. Itwas a night apt for crime, dark and stormy, when Gordon, a ScotchCalvinist, in the Imperial service (for Wallenstein's camp welcomedadventurers of all creeds), and commandant of Eger, received the mostfaithful of Wallenstein's officers, Terzka, Kinsky, Illo and Neumann, atsupper in the citadel. The social meal was over, the wine cup was goinground; misgiving, if any misgiving there was, had yielded to comradeshipand good cheer, when the door opened and death, in the shape of a partyof Irish troopers, stalked in. The conspirators sprang from the side oftheir victims, and shouting, "Long live the Emperor, " ranged themselveswith drawn swords against the wall, while the assassins overturned thetable and did their work. Wallenstein, as usual, was not at the banquet. He was, indeed, in no condition for revelry. Gout had shattered hisstately form, reduced his bold handwriting to a feeble scrawl, probablyshaken his powerful mind, though it could rally itself, as at Lutzen, for a decisive hour; and, perhaps, if his enemies could have waited, thecourse of nature might have spared them the very high price which theypaid for his blood. He had just dismissed his astrologer, Seni, intowhose mouth the romance of history does not fail to put propheticwarnings, his valet was carrying away the golden salver, on which hisnight draught had been brought to him, and he was about to lie down, when he was drawn to the window by the noise of Butler's regimentsurrounding his quarters, and by the shrieks of the Countesses Terzkaand Kinsky, who were wailing for their murdered husbands. A momentafterwards the Irish Captain Devereux burst into the room, followed byhis fellow-assassins shouting, "Rebels, rebels!" Devereux himself, witha halbert in his hand, rushed up to Wallenstein, and cried, "Villain, you are to die!" True to his own majesty the great man spread out hisarms, received the weapon in his breast, and fell dead without a word. But as thought at such moments is swift, no doubt he saw it all--saw thedark conclave of Italians and Spaniards sitting at Vienna--knew that themurderer before him was the hand and not the head--read at once his owndoom and the doom of his grand designs for Germany and Friedland. Hisbody was wrapped in a carpet, carried in Gordon's carriage to thecitadel, and there left for a day with those of his murdered friends inthe court-yard, then huddled into a hastily constructed coffin, the legsof the corpse being broken to force it in. Different obsequies fromthose of Gustavus, but perhaps equally appropriate, at least equallycharacteristic of the cause which the dead man served. 

Did Friedland desire to be more than Friedland, to unite some shadow ofcommand with the substance, to wear some crown of tinsel, as well as thecrown of power? We do not know, we know only that his ways were dark, that his ambition was vast, and that he was thwarting the policy of theJesuits and Spain. Great efforts were made in vain to get up a caseagainst his memory; recourse was had to torture, the use of which alwaysproves that no good evidence is forthcoming; absurd charges wereincluded in the indictment, such as that of having failed to pursue anddestroy the Swedish army after Lutzen. The three thousand masses whichFerdinand caused to be sung for Wallenstein's soul, whether theybenefited his soul or not, have benefited his fame, for they seem likethe weak self-betrayal of an uneasy conscience, vainly seeking to stifleinfamy and appease the injured shade. Assassination itself condemns allwho take part in it or are accomplices in it, and Ferdinand, whorewarded the assassins of Wallenstein, was at least an accomplice afterthe fact. Vast as Wallenstein's ambition was, even for him age and goutmust have begun to close the possibilities of life, and he cannot havebeen made restless by the pangs of abortive genius, for he had playedthe grandest part upon the grandest stage. He had done enough, it wouldseem, to make repose welcome, and his retirement would not have beendull. Often in his letters his mind turns from the camp and council tohis own domains, his rising palaces, his farms, his gardens, hisschools, his manufactures, the Italian civilization which the student ofPadua was trying to create in Bohemian wilds, the little empire in theadministration of which he showed that he might have been a good Emperoron a larger scale. Against his Imperial master he is probably entitledat least to a verdict of not proven, and to the sympathy due to vastservices requited by murder. Against accusing humanity his plea is farweaker, or rather he has no plea but one of extenuation. If there is agloomy majesty about him the fascination of which we cannot help owning, if he was the noblest spirit that served evil, still it was evil that heserved. The bandit hordes which he led were the scourges of thedefenceless people, and in making war support war he set the evilexample which was followed by Napoleon on a greater scale, and perhapswith more guilt, because in a more moral age. If in any measure he fella martyr to a policy of toleration, his memory may be credited with thesacrifice. His toleration was that of indifference, not that of aChristian; yet the passages of his letters in which he pleads for mildermethods of conversion, and claims for widows an exemption from theextremities of persecution, seem preserved by his better angel to shed aray of brightness on his lurid name. Of his importance in history therecan be no doubt. Take your stand on the battle field of Lutzen. To theNorth all was rescued by Gustavus, to the South all was held tillyesterday by the darker genius of Wallenstein. 

Like the mystic bark in the Mort d'Arthur, the ship which carried theremains of Gustavus from the German shore bore away heroism as well asthe hero. Gustavus left great captains in Bernard of Weimar, Banner, Horn, Wrangel and Tortensohn; in the last, perhaps, a captain equal tohimself. He left in Oxenstierna the greatest statesman and diplomatistof the age. But the guiding light, the grand aim, the ennoblinginfluence were gone. The Swedes sank almost to the level of the vileelement around, and a torture used by the buccaneers to extractconfessions of hidden treasure bore the name of the Swedish draught. Thelast grand figure left the scene in Wallenstein. Nothing remained butmean ferocity and rapine, coarse filibustering among the soldiers, amongthe statesmen and diplomatists filibustering a little more refined. Allhigh motives and interests were dead. The din of controversy which atthe outset accompanied the firing of the cannon, and proved that thecannon was being fired in a great cause, had long since sunk intosilence. Yet for fourteen years after the death of Wallenstein thissoulless, aimless drama of horror and agony dragged on. Every part ofGermany was repeatedly laid under heavy war contributions, and sweptthrough by pillage, murder, rape and arson. For thirty years allcountries, even those of the Cossack and the Stradiot, sent their worstsons to the scene of butchery and plunder. It may be doubted whethersuch desolation ever fell upon any civilized and cultivated country. When the war began Germany was rich and prosperous, full of smilingvillages, of goodly cities, of flourishing universities, of activeindustry, of invention and discovery, of literature and learning, ofhappiness, of progress, of national energy and hope. At its close shewas a material and moral wilderness. In a district, selected as a fairaverage specimen of the effects of the war, it is found that of theinhabitants three-fourths, of the cattle four-fifths had perished. Forthirty years the husbandman never sowed with any confidence that heshould reap; the seed-corn was no doubt often consumed by the recklesstroopers or the starving peasantry; and if foreign countries had beenable to supply food there were no railroads to bring it. The villagesthrough whole provinces were burnt or pulled down to supply materialsfor the huts of the soldiery; the people hid themselves in dens andcaves of the earth, took to the woods and mountains, where many of themremained swelling the multitude of brigands. When they could theywreaked upon the lansquenets a vengeance as dreadful as what they hadsuffered, and were thus degraded to the same level of ferocity. Morallife was broken up. The Germany of Luther with its order and piety anddomestic virtue, with its old ways and customs, even with its fashionsof dress and furniture, perished almost as though it had been swallowedby an earthquake. The nation would hardly have survived had it not beenfor the desperate tenacity with which the peasant clung to his own soil, and the efforts of the pastors, men of contracted views, of dogmatichabits of mind, and of a somewhat narrow and sour morality, but staunchand faithful in the hour of need, who continued to preach and prayamidst blackened ruins to the miserable remnants of their flocks, andsustained something of moral order and of social life. 

Hence in the succeeding centuries, the political nullity of the Germannation, the absence of any strong popular element to make head againstthe petty despotism of the princes, and launch Germany in the career ofprogress. Hence the backwardness and torpor of the Teutonic race in itsoriginal seat, while elsewhere it led the world. Hence, while Englandwas producing Chathams and Burkes, Germany was producing the greatmusical composers. Hence when the movement came it was ratherintellectual than political, rather a movement of the universities thanof the nation. 

At last, nothing being left for the armies to devour, the masters of thearmies began to think of peace. The diplomatists went to work, and intrue diplomatic fashion. Two years they spent in formalities andhaggling, while Germany was swarming with disbanded lansquenets. It wasthen that old Oxenstierna said to his son, who had modestly declined anambassadorship on the ground of inexperience, "Thou knowest not, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed. " The object of all theparties to the negotiations was acquisition of territory at the expenseof their neighbours, and the treaty of Westphalia, though, as we havesaid, it was long the Public Law of Europe, was an embodiment, not ofprinciples of justice or of the rights of nations, but of the relativeforce and cunning of what are happily called the powers. Franceobtained, as the fruit of the diplomatic skill with which she hadprolonged the agony of Germany, a portion of the territory which she hasrecently disgorged. The independence of Germany was saved; and though itwas not a national independence, but an independence of pettydespotisms, it was redemption from Austrian and Jesuit bondage for thepresent, with the hope of national independence in the future. WhenGustavus broke the Imperial line at Lutzen, Luther and Loyola might haveturned in their graves. Luther had still two centuries and a half towait, so much difference in the course of history, in spite of all ourphilosophies and our general laws, may be made by an arrow shot at aventure, a wandering breath of pestilence, a random bullet, a wreath ofmist lingering on one of the world's battlefields. But Luther hasconquered at last. Would that he had conquered by other means than war--war with all its sufferings, with all its passions, with the hatred, therevenge, the evil pride which it leaves behind it. But he has conquered, and his victory opens a new and, so far as we can see, a happier era forEurope. 

THE LAMPS OF FICTION

_Spoken on the Centenary of the Birth of Sir Walter Scott_

Ruskin has lighted seven lamps of Architecture, to guide the steps ofthe architect in the worthy practice of his art. It seems time that somelamps should be lighted to guide the steps of the writer of Fiction. Think what the influence of novelists now is, and how some of them useit! Think of the multitudes who read nothing but novels, and then lookinto the novels which they read! I have seen a young man's whole libraryconsisting of thirty or forty of those paper-bound volumes, which arethe bad tobacco of the mind. In England, I looked over three railwaybook-stalls in one day. There was hardly a novel by an author of anyrepute on one of them. They were heaps of nameless garbage, commended bytasteless, flaunting woodcuts, the promise of which was no doubt wellkept within. Fed upon such food daily, what will the mind of a nationbe? I say that there is no flame at which we can light the Lamp ofFiction purer or brighter than the genius of him in honour to whosememory we are assembled here to-day. Scott does not moralize. Heaven bepraised that he does not. He does not set a moral object before him, norlay down moral rules. But his heart, brave, pure and true, is a law toitself; and by studying what he does we may find the law for all whofollow his calling. If seven lamps have been lighted for architecture, Scott will light as many for fiction. 

I. _The Lamp of Reality_. --The novelist must ground his work infaithful study of human nature. There was a popular writer of romances, who, it was said, used to go round to the fashionable watering-places topick up characters. That was better than nothing. There is anotherpopular writer who, it seems, makes voluminous indices of men andthings, and draws on them for his material. This also is better thannothing. For some writers, and writers dear to the circulating librariestoo, might, for all that appeals in their works, lie in bed all day, andwrite by night under the excitement of green tea. Creative art, Isuppose, they call this, and it is creative with a vengeance. Not so, Scott. The human nature which he paints, he had seen in all its phases, gentle and simple, in burgher and shepherd, Highlander, Lowlander, Borderer, and Islesman; he had come into close contact with it, he hadopened it to himself by the talisman of his joyous and winning presence;he had studied it thoroughly with a clear eye and an all-embracingheart. When his scenes are laid in the past, he has honestly studied thehistory. The history of his novels is perhaps not critically accurate, not up to the mark of our present knowledge, but in the main it is soundand true--sounder and more true than that of many professed historians, and even than that of his own historical works, in which he sometimesyields to prejudice, while in his novels he is lifted above it by hisloyalty to his art. 

II. _The Lamp of Ideality_. --The materials of the novelist must bereal; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actualobservation. But they must pass through the crucible of the imagination;they must be idealized. The artist is not a photographer, but a painter. He must depict not persons but humanity, otherwise he forfeits theartist's name, and the power of doing the artist's work in our hearts. When we see a novelist bring out a novel with one or two goodcharacters, and then, at the fatal bidding of the booksellers, go onmanufacturing his yearly volume, and giving us the same character or thesame few characters over and over again, we may be sure that he iswithout the power of idealization. He has merely photographed what hehas seen, and his stock is exhausted. It is wonderful what a quantity ofthe mere lees of such writers, more and more watered down, the librariesgo on complacently circulating, and the reviews go on complacentlyreviewing. Of course, this power of idealization is the great gift ofgenius. It is that which distinguishes Homer, Shakespeare, and WalterScott, from ordinary men. But there is also a moral effort in risingabove the easy work of mere description to the height of art. Need it besaid that Scott is thoroughly ideal as well as thoroughly real? Thereare vague traditions that this man and the other was the original ofsome character in Scott. But who can point out the man of whom acharacter in Scott is a mere portrait? It would be as hard as to pointout a case of servile delineation in Shakespeare. Scott's characters arenever monsters or caricatures. They are full of nature; but it isuniversal nature. Therefore they have their place in the universalheart, and will keep that place for ever. And mark that even in hishistorical novels he is still ideal. Historical romance is a perilousthing. The fiction is apt to spoil the fact, and the fact the fiction;the history to be perverted and the romance to be shackled: daylight tokill dreamlight, and dreamlight to kill daylight. But Scott takes fewliberties with historical facts and characters; he treats them, with thecostume and the manners of the period, as the background of the picture. The personages with whom he deals freely, are the Peverils and theNigels; and these are his lawful property, the offspring of his ownimagination, and belong to the ideal. 

III. _The Lamp of Impartiality_. --The novelist must look onhumanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of thehistorian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. He mustsee everywhere the good that is mixed with evil, the evil that is mixedwith good. And this he will not do, unless his heart is right. It is inScott's historical novels that his impartiality is most severely triedand is most apparent; though it is apparent in all his works. Shakespeare was a pure dramatist; nothing but art found a home in thatlofty, smooth, idealistic brow. He stands apart not only from thepolitical and religious passions but from the interests of his time, seeming hardly to have any historical surroundings, but to shine like aplanet suspended by itself in the sky. So it is with that femaleShakespeare in miniature, Miss Austen. But Scott took the most intenseinterest in the political struggles of his time. He was a fierypartisan, a Tory in arms against the French Revolution. In his accountof the coronation of George IV. A passionate worship of monarchy breaksforth, which, if we did not know his noble nature, we might callslavish. He sacrificed, ease, and at last life, to his seignorialaspirations. On one occasion he was even carried beyond the bounds ofpropriety by his opposition to the Whig chief. The Cavalier was hispolitical ancestor, the Covenanter the ancestor of his political enemy. The idols which the Covenanting iconoclast broke were his. He would havefought against the first revolution under Montrose, and against thesecond under Dundee. Yet he is perfectly, serenely just to the oppositeparty. Not only is he just, he is sympathetic. He brings out theirworth, their valour, such grandeur of character as they have, with allthe power of his art, making no distinction in this respect betweenfriend and foe. If they have a ridiculous side he uses it for thepurposes of his art, but genially, playfully, without malice. If therewas a laugh left in the Covenanters, they would have laughed at theirown portraits as painted by Scott. He shows no hatred of anything butwickedness itself. Such a novelist is a most effective preacher ofliberality and charity; he brings our hearts nearer to the ImpartialFather of us all. 

IV. _The Lamp of Impersonality_. --Personality is lower thanpartiality. Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it issaid, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all theenemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italyand God. A legend tells that Leonardo da Vinci was warned that hisdivine picture of the Last Supper would fade, because he had introducedhis personal enemy as Judas, and thus desecrated art by making it servepersonal hatred. The legend must be false, Leonardo had too grand asoul. A wretched woman in England, at the beginning of the last century, Mrs. Manley, systematically employed fiction as a cover for personallibel; but such an abuse of art as this could be practiced orcountenanced only by the vile. Novelists, however, often debase fictionby obtruding their personal vanities, favouritisms, fanaticisms andantipathies. We had, the other day, a novel, the author of whichintroduced himself almost by name as a heroic character, with adescription of his own personal appearance, residence, and habits asfond fancy painted them to himself. There is a novelist, who is a man offashion, and who makes the age of the heroes in his successive novelsadvance with his own, so that at last we shall have irresistiblefascination at seven score years and ten. But the commonest and the mostmischievous way in which personality breaks out is pamphleteering underthe guise of fiction. One novel is a pamphlet against lunatic asylums, another against model prisons, a third against the poor law, a fourthagainst the government offices, a fifth against trade unions. In thesepretended works of imagination facts are joined in support of a crotchetor an antipathy with all the license of fiction; calumny revels withoutrestraint, and no cause is served but that of falsehood and injustice. Awriter takes offence at the excessive popularity of athletic sports;instead of bringing out an accurate and conscientious treatise toadvocate moderation, he lets fly a novel painting the typical boatingman as a seducer of confiding women, the betrayer of his friend, and themurderer of his wife. Religious zealots are very apt to take this methodof enlisting imagination, as they think, on the side of truth. We hadonce a high Anglican novel in which the Papist was eaten alive by rats, and the Rationalist and Republican was slowly seethed in molten lead, the fate of each being, of course, a just judgment of heaven on thosewho presumed to differ from the author. Thus the voice of morality isconfounded with that of tyrannical petulance and self-love. Not only isScott not personal, but we cannot conceive his being so. We cannot thinkit possible that he should degrade his art by the indulgence of egotism, or crotchets, or petty piques. Least of all can we think it possiblethat his high and gallant nature should use art as a cover for strikinga foul blow. 

V. _The Lamp of Purity_--I heard Thackeray thank Heaven for thepurity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity of a greater thanDickens--Thackeray himself. We may all thank Heaven for the purity ofone still greater than either, Sir Walter Scott. I say still greatermorally, as well as in power as an artist, because in Thackeray there iscynicism, though the more genial and healthy element predominates; andcynicism, which is not good in the great writer, becomes very bad in thelittle reader. We know what most of the novels were before Scott. Weknow the impurity, half-redeemed, of Fielding, the unredeemed impurityof Smollett, the lecherous leer of Sterne, the coarseness even of Defoe. Parts of Richardson himself could not be read by a woman without ablush. As to French novels, Carlyle says of one of the most famous ofthe last century that after reading it you ought to wash seven times inJordan; but after reading the French novels of the present day, in whichlewdness is sprinkled with sentimental rosewater, and deodorized, but byno means disinfected, your washings had better be seventy times seven. There is no justification for this; it is mere pandering, under whateverpretence, to evil propensities; it makes the divine art of Fiction"procuress to the Lords of Hell, " If our established morality is in anyway narrow and unjust, appeal to Philosophy, not to Comus; and rememberthat the mass of readers are not philosophers. Coleridge pledges himselfto find the deepest sermons under the filth of Rabelais; but Coleridgealone finds the sermons while everybody finds the filth. Impure novelshave brought and are bringing much misery on the world. Scott's purityis not that of cloistered innocence and inexperience, it is the manlypurity of one who had seen the world, mingled with men of the world, known evil as well as good; but who, being a true gentleman, abhorredfilth, and teaches us to abhor it too. 

VI. _The Lamp of Humanity_. --One day we see the walls placardedwith the advertising woodcut of a sensation novel, representing a girltied to a table and a man cutting off her feet into a tub. Another daywe are allured by a picture of a woman sitting at a sewing-machine and aman seizing her behind by the hair, and lifting a club to knock herbrains out. A French novelist stimulates your jaded palate byintroducing a duel fought with butchers' knives by the light oflanterns. One genius subsists by murder, as another does by bigamy andadultery. Scott would have recoiled from the blood as well as from theordure, he would have allowed neither to defile his noble page. He knewthat there was no pretence for bringing before a reader what is merelyhorrible, that by doing so you only stimulate passions as low aslicentiousness itself--the passions which were stimulated by thegladiatorial shows in degraded Rome, which are stimulated by the bull-fights in degraded Spain, which are stimulated among ourselves byexhibitions the attraction of which really consists in their imperillinghuman life. He knew that a novelist had no right even to introduce theterrible except for the purpose of exhibiting human heroism, developingcharacter, awakening emotions which when awakened dignify and save fromharm. It is want of genius and of knowledge of their craft that drivesnovelists to outrage humanity with horrors. Miss Austen can interest andeven excite you as much with the little domestic adventures of Emma assome of her rivals can with a whole Newgate calendar of guilt and gore. 

VII. _The Lamp of Chivalry_. --Of this briefly. Let the writer offiction give us humanity in all its phases, the comic as well as thetragic, the ridiculous as well as the sublime; but let him not lower thestandard of character or the aim of life. Shakespeare does not. Wedelight in his Falstaffs and his clowns as well as in his Hamlets andOthellos, but he never familiarizes us with what is base and mean. Thenoble and chivalrous always holds its place as the aim of true humanityin his ideal world. Perhaps Dickens is not entirely free from blame inthis respect; perhaps Pickwickianism has in some degree familiarized thegeneration of Englishmen who have been fed upon it with what is notchivalrous, to say the least, in conduct, as it unquestionably has withslang in conversation. But Scott, like Shakespeare, wherever the threadof his fiction may lead him, always keeps before himself and us thehighest ideal which he knew, the ideal of a gentleman. If anyone saysthese are narrow bounds wherein to confine fiction I answer there hasbeen room enough within them for the highest tragedy, the deepestpathos, the broadest humour, the widest range of character, the mostmoving incident, that the world has ever enjoyed. There has been roomwithin them for all the kings of pure and healthy fiction--for Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, Scott. "Farewell Sir Walter, " saysCarlyle at the end of his essay, "farewell Sir Walter, pride of allScotchmen. Scotland has said farewell to her mortal son. But allhumanity welcomes him as Scotland's noblest gift to her and crowns himas on this day one of the heirs of immortality. "

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART AT THEDISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, You will not expect me, in complying with the custom which requires yourChairman to address a few words to you before distributing the prizes, to give you instruction about Art or Science. One who was educated, as Iwas, under the old system, can hardly see without a pang the improvementthat has been made in education since his time. In a public school, inmy day, you learned nothing of Science, Art, or Music. Having receivednothing, I have nothing to give. Fortunately, the only thing ofimportance to be said this evening can be said without technicalknowledge of any kind. The School of Art needs better accommodation. Thefinancial details will be explained to you by those who are moreconversant with them than I am. I will only say that parsimony in thismatter on the part of the government or other public bodies will, in myhumble opinion, be unwise. I am not for a lavish expenditure of publicmoney, even on education. It would be a misfortune if parental duty wereto be cast on the State, and parents were to be allowed to forget thatthey are bound to provide their children with education as well as withbread. But it seems that at this moment the soundest and even the moststrictly commercial policy would counsel liberality in providing for theNational Schools of Art and Science. England is labouring undercommercial depression. Of the works in the manufacturing districts, manyare running half time, and some, I fear, are likely, if things do notmend, to stop. When I was there the other day gloom was on all faces. Some people seem to think that the bad time will pass away of itself, and that a good time will come again like a new moon. It is acomfortable but a doubtful doctrine. And suppose the good time does notcome again, the outlook for those masses and their employers is dark. Afriend of mine, who is a manufacturer, said to me the other day that hehad been seeing the ruins of a feudal castle, and that the sight set himthinking if factories should ever, like feudal castles, fall into decay, what their ruins would be like? They would be unromantic no doubt, evenby moonlight. But much worse than the ruins of buildings would be theruin among the people. Imagine these swarming multitudes, or any largeproportion of them, left by the failure of employment without bread. Itwould be something like a chronic Indian famine. The wealth of Englandis unparalleled, unapproached in commercial history. Add Carthage toTyre, Venice to Carthage, Amsterdam to Venice, you will not makeanything like a London. Ten thousand pounds paid for a pair of chinavases. A Roman noble under the Empire might have rivalled this, but thewealth of the Roman nobles was not the fruit of industry, it was theplunder of the world. You can hardly imagine how those who come freshfrom a new country like Canada, or parts of the United States--a landjust redeemed from the wilderness, with all its untrimmed roughness, itsfields half tilled and full of stumps, its snake fences, and the charredpines which stand up gaunt monuments of forest fires--are impressed, Imight almost say ravished, by the sight of the lovely garden whichunlimited wealth expended on a limited space has made of England. Thiscountry, too, has an immense capital invested in the funds andsecurities of foreign nations, and in this way draws tribute from theworld, though, unhappily, we are being made sensible of the fact thatmoney lent to a foreign government is lent to a debtor on whom youcannot distrain. But the sources of this fabulous prosperity, are theyinexhaustible? In part, we may hope they are. A maritime position, admirably adapted for trading with both hemispheres, a race of first-rate seamen, masses of skilled labour, vast accumulations of machineryand capital--these are advantages not easily lost. And there is still inEngland good store of coal and iron. Not so stable, however, is theadvantage given to England by the effects of the Napoleonic war, whichfor the time crushed all manufactures and mercantile marines but hers. Now, the continental nations are developing manufactures and mercantilemarines of their own. You go round asking them to alter their tariffs, so as to enable you to recover their markets, and almost all of themrefuse; about the only door you have really succeeded in getting openedto you is that of France, and this was opened, not by the nation, but byan autocrat, who had diplomatic purposes of his own. The _Times_, indeed, in a noteworthy article the other day, undertook to prove that agreat manufacturing and trading nation might lose its customers withoutbeing much the worse for it, but this seems too good to be true; I fancyYorkshire and Lancashire would say so. Is it not that very margin ofprofit of which _The Times_ speaks so lightly, which, beingaccumulated, has created the wealth of England? Your manufacturers arecertainly under the impression that they want markets, and the loss ofthe great American market seems to them a special matter of concern. Itis doubtful whether that market would be restored to them even by analteration of the tariff. The coal in the great American coal fields ismuch nearer the surface, and consequently more cheaply worked, than thecoal in England; iron is as plentiful, and it is near the coal; labour, which has been much dearer there, is now falling to the English level. Tariff or no tariff, America will probably keep her own market for theheavier and coarser goods. But there is still a kind of goods, in theproduction of which the old country will long have a great advantage. Imean the lighter, finer, and more elegant goods, the products ofcultivated taste and of trained skill in design--that very kind ofgoods, in short, the character of which these Schools of Art arespecially intended to improve. Industry and invention the new world hasin as ample a measure as the old; invention in still ampler measure, forthe Americans are a nation of inventors; but cultivated taste and itsspecial products will long be the appanage of old countries. It will belong before anything of that kind will pass current in the new worldwithout the old world stamp. Adapt your industry in some degree tochanged requirements; acquire those finer faculties which the Schools ofDesign aim at cultivating, but which, in the lucrative production of thecoarser goods, have hitherto been comparatively neglected, and you mayrecover a great American market; it is doubtful whether you will in anyother way. Therefore, I repeat, to stint the Art and Science Schoolswould seem bad policy. I may add that it would be specially bad policyhere in Oxford, where, under the auspices of a University which is nowextending its care to Art as well as Science, it would seem that thefiner industries, such as design applied to furniture, decoration of allkinds, carving, painted glass, bookbinding, ought in time to doparticularly well. If you wish to prosper, cultivate your speciality;the rule holds good for cities as well as for men. 

There are some, perhaps, who dislike to think of Art in connection withanything like manufacture. Let us, then, call it design, and keep thename of art for the higher pursuit. Your Instructor presides, I believe, with success, and without finding his duties clash, over a school, themain object of which is the improvement of manufactures, and anotherschool dedicated to the higher objects of aesthetic cultivation. The namemanufacture reminds you of machines, and you may dislike machines andthink there is something offensive to artists in their products. Well, amachine does not produce, or pretend to produce, poetry or sculpture; itpretends to clothe thousands of people who would otherwise go naked. Itis itself often a miracle of human intellect. It works unrestingly thathumanity may have a chance to rest. If it sometimes supersedes higherwork, it far more often, by relieving man of the lowest work, sets himfree for the higher. Those heaps of stones broken by the hammer of apoor wretch who bends over his dull task through the weary day by theroadside, scantily clad, in sharp frost perhaps or chilling showers, arethey more lovely to a painter's eye than if they had been broken, without so much human labour and suffering, by a steam stone-crusher? Noone doubts the superior interest belonging to any work howeverimperfect, of individual mind; but if we were not to use a pair of tongsthat did not bear the impress of individual mind, millionaires mighthave tongs, but the rest of us would put on coals with our fingers. After all, what is a machine but a perfect tool? The Tyrian loom was amachine, though it was worked by hand and not by steam; and if theTyrian had known the power loom, depend upon it he would have used it. Without machines, the members of this School might all be grinding theircorn with hand mills, instead of learning Art. Common humanity must usemanufactured articles; even uncommon humanity will find it difficult toavoid using them, unless it has the courage of its convictions to thesame extent as George Fox, the Quaker, who encased himself in an entiresuit of home-made leather, bearing the impress of his individual mind;and defied a mechanical and degenerate world. The only practicalquestion is whether the manufactures shall be good or bad, well-designedor ill; South Kensington answers, that if training can do it, they shallbe good and well designed. 

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country areugly, famine would be uglier still. I have no instruction to give you, and you would not thank me for wasting your time with rhetorical praiseof art, even if I had all the flowers of diction at my command. To me, as an outer barbarian, it seems that some of the language on thesesubjects is already pretty high pitched. I have thought so even inreading that one of Mr. Addington Symond's most attractive volumes aboutItaly which relates to Italian art. Art is the interpreter of beauty, and perhaps beauty, if we could penetrate to its essence, might revealto us something higher than itself. But Art is not religion, nor isconnoisseurship priesthood. To happiness Art lends intensity andelevation; but in affliction, in ruin, in the wreck of affection howmuch can Phidias and Raphael do for you? A poet makes Goethe say to asceptical and perplexed world, "Art still has truth, take refuge there. "It would be a poor refuge for most of us; it was so even for the greatGoethe; for with all his intellectual splendour, his character neverrose above a grandiose and statuesque self-love; he behaved ill to hiscountry, ill to women. Instead of being religion, Art seems, for its ownperfection, to need religion--not a system of dogma, but a faith. This, probably, we all feel when we look at the paintings in the Church ofAssisi or in the Arena Chapel at Padua. Perhaps those paintings alsogain something by being in the proper place for religious art, a Church. Since the divorce of religious art from religion, it has been common tosee a Crucifixion hung over a sideboard. That age was an age of faith;and so most likely was the glorious age of Greek art in its way. Ours isan age of doubt, an age of doubt and of strange cross currents andeddies of opinion, ultra scepticism penning its books in the closetwhile the ecclesiastical forms of the Middle Ages stalk the streets. Artseems to feel the disturbing influence like the rest of life. Poetryfeels it less than other arts, because there is a poetry of doubt andTennyson is its poet. Art is expression, and to have high expression youmust have something high to express. In the pictures at our exhibitionsthere may be great technical skill; I take it for granted there is; butin the subject surely there is a void, an appearance of painful seekingfor something to paint, and finding very little. When you come to agreat picture of an Egyptian banquet in the days of the Pharaohs, youfeel that the painter must have had a long way to go for something topaint. Certainly this age is not indifferent to beauty. The art movementis in every house; everywhere you see some proof of a desire to possessnot mere ornament but something really rare and beautiful. The influencetransmutes children's picture books and toys. I turned up the other daya child's picture book of the days of my childhood; probably it had beenthought wonderfully good in its time; and what a thing it was. Some dayour doubts may be cleared up; our beliefs may be settled; faith may comeagain; life may recover its singleness and certainty of aim; poetry maygush forth once more as fresh as Homer, and the art of the future mayappear. What is most difficult to conceive, perhaps, is the sculpture ofthe future; because it is hardly possible that the moderns should everhave such facilities as the ancients had for studying the human form. Inpresence of the overwhelming magnificence of the sculpture in themuseums of Rome and Naples, one wonders how Canova and Co. Can havelooked with any complacency on their own productions. There seems reasonby the way to think that these artists worked not each by himself, butin schools and brotherhoods with mutual aid and sympathy; and this is anadvantage equally within the reach of modern art. Meantime, though theArt of the future delays to come, modern life is not all hideous. Thereare many things, no doubt, such as the Black Country and the suburbs ofour cities, on which the eye cannot rest with pleasure. But Paris is nothideous. There may be in the long lines of buildings too much of theautocratic monotony of the Empire, but the city, as a whole, is theperfect image of a brilliant civilization. From London beauty is almostbanished by smoke and fog, which deny to the poor architect ornament, colour, light and shadow, leaving him nothing but outline. No doubtbesides the smoke and fog there is a fatality. There is a fatality whichdarkly impels us to place on our finest site, and one of the finest inEurope, the niggard facade and inverted teacup dome of the NationalGallery; to temper the grandeurs of Westminster by the introduction ofthe Aquarium, with Mr. Hankey's Tower of Babel in the near distance; toguard against any too-imposing effect which the outline of the Houses ofParliament might have by covering them with minute ornament, sure to beblackened and corroded into one vast blotch by smoke; to collect the artwonders of Pigtail Place; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie likecats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope bymuscular action, like the lions at Genoa; to perch a colossal equestrianstatue of the Duke of Wellington, arrayed in his waterproof cape, andmounted on a low-shouldered hack instead of a charger, on the top of anarch, by way of perpetual atonement to France for Waterloo; and now tothink of planting an obelisk of the Pharaohs on a cab-stand. An obeliskof the Pharaohs in ancient Rome was an august captive, symbolizing theuniversity of the Roman Empire, but an obelisk of the Pharaohs in Londonsymbolizes little more than did the Druidical ring of stones which anEnglish squire of my acquaintance purchased in one of the ChannelIslands and set up in his English park. As to London we must consoleourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than itwas in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper. If the houseis less beautiful the home is more so. Even a house in what Tennysoncalls the long unlovely street is not utterly unlovely when within itdwell cultivated intellect, depth of character and tenderness ofaffection. However the beauty of English life is in the country andthere it may challenge that of Italian palaces. America is supposed tobe given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there andthe ugliest are the most pretentious. As it is in society so it is inarchitecture. America is best when she is content to be herself. AnAmerican city with its spacious streets all planted with avenues oftrees with its blocks of buildings far from unimpeachable probably indetail yet stately in the mass with its wide spreading suburbs whereeach artizan has his neat looking house in his own plot of ground andlight and air and foliage with its countless church towers and spiresfar from faultless yet varying the outline might not please a painterseye but it fills your mind with a sense of well rewarded industry ofcomfort and even opulence shared by the toiling man of a prosperous, law-loving, cheerful, and pious life. I cannot help fancying thatTurner, whose genius got to the soul of everything, would have madesomething of even in American city. The cities of the Middle Ages werepicturesquely huddled within walls for protection from the violence ofthe feudal era, the cities of the New World spread wide in the securityof an age of law and a continent of peace. At Cleveland in Ohio there isa great street called Euclid Avenue, lined with villas each standing inits own grounds and separated from each other and from the street onlyby a light iron fencing instead of the high brick wall with which theBriton shuts out his detested kind. The villas are not vast orsuggestive of over-grown plutocracy, they are suggestive of moderatewealth, pleasant summers, cheerful winters and domestic happiness. Ihardly think you would call Euclid Avenue revolting. I say it with thediffidence of conscious ignorance but I should not be much afraid toshow you one or two buildings that our Professor of Architecture atCornell University has put up for us on a bluff over Cayuga Lake, on asite which you would certainly admit to be magnificent. If I could haveventured on any recommendation concerning Art, I should have pleadedbefore the Royal Commission for a Chair of Architecture here. It mightendow us with some forms of beauty; it might at all events endow us withrules for building a room in which you can be heard, one in which youcan breathe, and a chimney which would not smoke. I said that in Americathe most pretentious buildings were the worst. Another source of failurein buildings, in dress, and not in these alone, is servile imitation ofEurope. In northern America the summer is tropical, the winter isarctic. A house ought to be regular and compact in shape, so as to beeasily warmed from the centre, with a roof of simple construction, highpitched, to prevent the snow from lodging, and large eaves to throw itoff, --this for the arctic winter, for the tropical summer you want ampleverandas, which, in fact, are the summer sitting rooms. An Americanhouse built in this way is capable at least of the beauty which belongsto fitness. But as you see Parisian dresses under an alien sky, so yousee Italian villas with excrescences which no stove can warm, and Tudormansions with gables which hold all the snow. It is needless to say whatis the result, when the New World undertakes to reproduce not only thearchitecture of the Old World, but that of classical Greece and Rome, orthat of the Middle Ages. Jefferson, who was a classical republican, taught a number of his fellow citizens to build their homes like Dorictemples, and you may imagine what a Doric temple freely adapted todomestic purposes must be. But are these attempts to revive the pastvery successful anywhere? We regard as a decided mistake the revivedclassicism of the last generation. May not our revived mediaevalism beregarded as a mistake by the generation that follows us? We could allprobably point to some case in which the clashing of mediaeval beautieswith modern requirements has produced sad and ludicrous results. Thereis our own museum; the best, I suppose, that could be done in the way ofrevival; the work of an architect whom the first judges deemed a man ofgenius. In that, ancient form and modern requirements seem everywhere atcross purposes. Nobody can deny that genius is impressed upon the upperpart of the front, which reminds one of a beautiful building in anItalian city, though the structure at the side recalls the mind toGlastonbury, and the galaxy of chimneys has certainly no parallel inItaly. The front ought to stand in a street, but as it stands in a fieldits flanks have to be covered by devices which are inevitably weak. Whatis to be done with the back always seems to me one of the darkestenigmas of the future. The basement is incongruously plain and bare, inthe street it would perhaps be partly hidden by the passengers. Goingin, you find a beautiful mediaeval court struggling hard for its lifeagainst a railway station and a cloister, considerately offering you ashady walk or shelter from the weather round a room. Listen to themultitudinous voices of Science and you will hear that the conflictextends to practical accommodation. We all know it was not the fault ofthe architect, it was the fault of adverse exigencies which came intocollision with his design, but this only strengthens the moral of thebuilding against revivals. Two humble achievements, if we had chosenwere certainly within our reach, --perfect adaptation to our object andinoffensive dignity. Every one who has a heart, however ignorant ofarchitecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of themediaeval churches. For my part I look up with admiration, as fervent asany one untrained in art can, to those divine creations of old religionwhich soar over the smoke and din of our cities into purity andstillness and seem to challenge us, with all our wealth and culture andscience and mechanical power, to produce their peer till the age offaith shall return. Not Greek Art itself springing forth in itsperfection from the dark background of primaeval history, seems to me agreater miracle than these. How poor beside the lowliest of them inreligious effect in romance, in everything but size and technical skill, is any pile of neo-paganism even I will dare to say, St. Peter's. Yetfor my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of theMiddle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightestemotion in any modern Gothic church. I will even own that, except whererestoration rids us of the unchristian exclusiveness of pews, I preferthe unrestored churches, with something of antiquity about them, to therestored. There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power tobewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancying thatthey wish to try or making believe to fancy that they wish to try, tobring back the Middle Ages. You may hear pinings for the return of anage of force from gentle aestheticists, who, if the awe of force didreturn, would certainly be crushed like eggshells. There is a well-knowntale by Hans Andersen, that great though child-like teacher, called the"Overshoes of Fortune. " A gentleman, at an evening party, has beenrunning down modern society and wishing he were in the heroic MiddleAges. In going away he unwittingly puts on the fairy overshoes, whichhave the gift of transporting the wearer at once to any place and timewhere he wishes to be. Stepping out he finds his own wish fulfilled--heis in the Middle Ages. There is no gas, the street is pitch dark, he isup to his ankles in mud, he is nearly knocked into the kennel by amediaeval bishop returning from a revel with his roystering train, whenhe wants to cross the river there is no bridge; and after vainlyinquiring his way in a tavern full of very rough customers, he wisheshimself in the moon, and to the moon appropriately he goes. Mediaevalismcan hardly be called anything but a rather enfeebling dream. If it werea real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be oneperpetual prevarication. You would be drawn by the steam engine tolecture against steam; you would send eloquent invectives againstprinting to the press, and you would be subsisting meanwhile on theinterest of investments which the Middle Ages would have condemned asusury. If you were like some of the school, you would praise the goldensilence of the Dark Ages and be talking all the time. And surely thehourly failure to act up to your principles, the hourly and consciousapostacy from your ideal, could beget nothing in the character buthollowness and weakness. No student of history can fail to see the moralinterest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to seetheir aesthetic interest. There were some special types of noblecharacter then, of which, when they were done with, nature broke themould. But the mould is broken, and it is broken for ever. Throughaesthetic pining for a past age, we may become unjust to our own, andthus weaken our practical sense of duty, and lessen our power of doinggood. I will call the age bad when it makes me so, is a wise saying, andworth all our visionary cynicism, be it never so eloquent. To say thesame thing in other words, our age will be good enough for most of us, if there is genuine goodness in ourselves. Rousseau fancied he wassoaring above his age, not into the thirteenth century, but into thestate of nature, while he was falling miserably below his own age in allthe common duties and relations of life; and he was a type, not ofenthusiasts, for enthusiasm leads to action, but of mere socialdreamers. Where there is duty, there is poetry, and tragedy too, inplenty, though it be in the most prosaic row of dingy little brickhouses with clothes hanging out to dry, or rather to be wetted, behindthem, in all Lancashire. We have commercial fraud now, too much of it;and the declining character of English goods is a cause of theirexclusion from foreign markets, as well as hostile tariffs; so thateverything South Kensington can do to uphold good and genuine work willbe of the greatest advantage to the English trade. But if anyonesupposes that there was no commercial fraud in the Middle Ages, let himstudy the commercial legislation of England for that period, and hismind will be satisfied, if he has a mind to be satisfied and not only afancy to run away with him. There was fraud beneath the cross of theCrusader, and there was forgery in the cell of the Monk. In comparingthe general quality of work we must remember that it is the best work ofthose times that has survived. I think I could prove from history thatmediaeval floors sometimes gave way even when there was no St. Dunstanthere. You will recollect that the floor miraculously fell in at asynod, and killed all St. Dunstan's opponents; but sceptics, who did noteasily believe in miracles, whispered that the Saint from his pasthabits, knew how to handle tools. We are told by those whose creed isembodied in "Past and Present" that this age is one vast anarchy, industrial and social; and that nothing but military discipline--that isthe perpetual cry--will restore us to anything like order as workers oras men. Well, there are twenty thousand miles of railway in the threekingdoms, forming a system as complex as it is vast. I am told that atone junction, close to London, the trains pass for some hours at therate of two in five minutes. Consider how that service is done by themyriads of men employed, and this in all seasons and weathers inoverwhelming heat, in numbing cold, in blinding storm, in midnightdarkness. Is not this an army pretty well disciplined, though its objectis not bloodshed? If we see masses full of practical energy and goodsense, but wanting in culture, let us take our culture to them, andperhaps they will give us some of their practical energy and good sensein return. Without that Black Country industry, all begrimed and sweaty, our fine culture could not exist. Everything we use, nay, our veriesttoy represents lives spent for us in delving beneath the dark andperilous mine, in battling with the wintry sea, in panting before theglowing forge, in counting the weary hours over the monotonous andunresting loom, lives of little value, one could think, if there were nohereafter. Let us at least be kind. I go to Saltaire. I find a nobleeffort made by a rich man who kept his heart above wealth, Titus Salt--he was a baronet, but we will spare him, as we spare Nelson, thederogatory prefix--to put away what is dark and evil in factory life. Ifind a little town, I should have thought not unpleasant to the eye, andcertainly not unpleasant to the heart, where labour dwells in pure air, amidst beautiful scenery, with all the appliances of civilization, witheverything that can help it to health, morality, and happiness. I find aman, who might, if he pleased, live idly in the lap of luxury, workinglike a horse in the management of this place, bearing calmly not onlytoil and trouble, but perverseness and ingratitude. Surely, aestheticculture would be a doubtful blessing if it made us think or speakunsympathetically and rudely of Saltaire. Four hundred thousand peopleat Manchester are without pure water. They propose to get it fromThirlmere. For this they are denounced in that sort of language which iscalled strong, but the use of which is a sure proof of weakness, forirritability was well defined by Abernethy as debility in a state ofexcitement. Let us spare, whenever they can be spared, history andbeauty; they are a priceless part of the heritage of a great industrialnation, and one which lost can never be restored. The only difference Iever had with my fellow-citizens in Oxford during a pretty longresidence, arose out of my opposition to a measure which would havemarred the historic character and the beauty of our city, while I waspositively assured on the best authority that it was commerciallyinexpedient. If Thirlmere can be spared, spare Thirlmere; but if it isreally needed to supply those masses with a necessary of life, theloveliest lake by which poet or artist ever wandered could not be put toa nobler use. I am glad in this to follow the Bishop of Manchester, whois not made of coarse clay, though he cares for the health as well asfor the religion of his people. A schism between aesthetic Oxford andindustrial Lancashire would be a bad thing for both; and SouthKensington, which, while it teaches art, joins hands with industry, surely does well. It is needless to debate before this audience thequestion whether there is any essential antagonism between art oresthetic culture, and the tendencies of an age of science. An accidentalantagonism there may be, an essential antagonism there cannot be. Whatis science but truth, and why should not truth and beauty live together?Is an artist a worse painter of the human body from being a goodanatomist? Then why should he be a worse painter of nature generally, because he knows her secrets, or because they are being explored in histime? Would he render moonlight better if he believed the moon was agreen cheese? Art and Science dwelt together well enough in the minds ofLeonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. In the large creative mind thereis room for both; though the smaller and merely perceptive mind beingfixed on one may sometimes not have room for the other. True, theperfect concord of art and science, like that of religion and science, may be still to come, and come, we hope, both concords will. One wordmore before we distribute the prizes. A system of prizes is a system ofcompetition, and to competition some object. We can readily sympathisewith their objection. Work done from love of the subject, or from asense of duty, is better than work done for a prize, and, moreover, wecherish the hope that co-operation, not competition, will be theultimate principle of industry, and the final state of man. But nothinghinders that, in working for a prize as in working for your bread, youmay, at the same time, be working from sense of duty and love of thesubject, and though co-operation may be our final state, competition isour present. Here the competition is at least fair. There can hardly beany doubt that the prize system often calls into activity powers ofdoing good work which would otherwise have lain dormant, and if it doesthis it is useful to the community, though the individual needs to be onhis guard against its drawbacks in himself. In reading the Life of LordAlthorp the other day I was struck with the fact, for a fact, I think, it evidently was, that England had owed one of her worthiest and mostuseful statesmen to a college competition, which aroused him to a senseof his own powers, and of the duty of using them, whereas he wouldotherwise never have risen above making betting books and chroniclingthe performances of foxhounds. Perhaps about the worst consequence ofthe prize system, against which, I have no doubt, your Instructorguards, is undue discouragement on the part of those who do not win theprize. And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish you were to receive yourrewards from a hand which would lend them any additional value. Butthough presented by me they have been awarded by good judges; and asthey have been awarded to you, I have no doubt you have deserved themwell. 

THE ASCENT OF MAN. 

Science and criticism have raised the veil of the Mosaic cosmogony andrevealed to us the physical origin of man. We see that, instead of beingcreated out of the dust of the earth by Divine fiat, he has in allprobability been evolved out of it by a process of development through aseries of intermediate forms. 

The discovery is, of course, unspeakably momentous. Among other thingsit seems to open to us a new view of morality, and one which, if it isverified by further investigation, can hardly fail to produce a greatchange in philosophy. Supposing that man has ascended from a loweranimal form, there appears to be ground at least for surmising thatvice, instead of being a diabolical inspiration or a mysterious elementof human nature, is the remnant of the lower animal not yet eliminated;while virtue is the effort, individual and collective, by which thatremnant is being gradually worked off. The acknowledged connection ofvirtue with the ascendency of the social over the selfish desires andtendencies seems to correspond with this view; the nature of the loweranimals being, so far as we can see, almost entirely selfish, andadmitting no regard even for the present interests of their kind, muchless for its interests in the future. The doubtful qualities, and "lastinfirmities of noble minds, " such as ambition and the love of fame, inwhich the selfish element is mingled with one not wholly selfish, andwhich commend themselves at least by their refinement, as contrastedwith the coarseness of the merely animal vices, may perhaps be regardedas belonging to the class of phenomena quaintly designated by somewriters as "pointer facts, " and as marking the process of transition. Inwhat morality consists, no one has yet succeeded in making clear. Mr. Sidgwick's recent criticism of the various theories leads to theconviction that not one of them affords a satisfactory basis for apractical system of ethics. If our lower nature can be traced to ananimal origin, and can be shown to be in course of elimination, howeverslow and interrupted, this at all events will be a solid fact, and onewhich must be the starting-point of any future system of ethics. Lightwould be at once thrown by such a discovery on some parts of the subjectwhich have hitherto been involved in impenetrable darkness. Of the viceof cruelty for example no rational account, we believe, has yet beengiven; it is connected with no human appetite, and seems to gratify nohuman object of desire; but if we can be shown to have inherited it fromanimal progenitors, the mystery of its existence is at least in partexplained. In the event of this surmise being substantiated, moralphantasms, with their mediaeval trappings, would for ever disappear;individual responsibility would be reduced within reasonable limits; thedifficulty of the question respecting free will would shrink tocomparatively narrow proportions; but it does not seem likely that thelove of virtue and the hatred of vice would be diminished; on thecontrary, it seems likely that they would be practically intensified, while a more practical direction would certainly be given to the scienceof ethics as a system of moral training and a method of curing moraldisease. 

It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrineof Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to whichit has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history ofinstitutions. Our general histories will apparently have to be almostrewritten from that point of view. It is only to be noted, with regardto the treatment of history, that the mere introduction of a physicalnomenclature, however elaborate and apparently scientific, does not makeanything physical which before was not so, or exclude from humanactions, of which history is the aggregate, any element not of aphysical kind. We are impressed, perhaps, at first with a sense of newknowledge when we are told that human history is "an integration ofmatter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matterpasses from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherentheterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a paralleltransformation. " But a little reflection suggests to us that such aphilosophy is vitiated by the assumption involved in the word "matter, "and that the philosophy of history is in fact left exactly where it wasbefore. The superior complexity of high civilization is a familiarsocial fact which gains nothing in clearness by the importation ofmechanical or physiological terms. 

We must also be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, though it mayexplain everything else, cannot explain itself. What is the origin ofthe movement, and by what power the order of development is prescribed, are questions yet unsolved by physical science. That the solution, if itcould be supplied, would involve anything arbitrary, miraculous, or atvariance with the observed order of things, need not be assumed; but itmight open a new view of the universe, and dissipate for ever the merelymechanical accounts of it. In the meantime we may fairly enter a caveatagainst the tacit insinuation of an unproved solution. Science canapparently give no reason for assuming that the first cause, and thatwhich gives the law to development, is a blind force rather than anarchetypal idea. The only origination within our experience is that ofhuman action, where the cause is an idea. Science herself, in fact, constantly assumes an analogous cause for the movements of the universein her use of the word "law, " which necessarily conveys the notion, notmerely of observed co-existence and sequence, but of the intelligent andconsistent action of a higher power, on which we rely in reasoning fromthe past to the future, as we do upon consistency in the settled conductof a man. 

Unspeakably momentous, however, we once more admit, the discovery is, and great is the debt of gratitude due to its illustrious authors. Yetit seems not unreasonable to ask whether in some respects we are not toomuch under its immediate influence, and whether the revolution ofthought, though destined ultimately to be vast, may not at present havesomewhat overpassed its bounds. Is it not possible that the physicalorigin of man may be just now occupying too large a space in our mindscompared with his ulterior development and his final destiny? With oureyes fixed on the "Descent, " newly disclosed to us, may we not be losingsight of the _Ascent_ of man?

There seems in the first place, to be a tendency to treat the origin ofa being as finally decisive of its nature and destiny. From the languagesometimes used, we should almost suppose that rudiments alone were real, and that all the rest was mere illusion. An eminent writer on theantiquities of jurisprudence intimates his belief that the idea of humanbrotherhood is not coeval with the race, and that primitive communitieswere governed by sentiments of a very different kind. His words are atonce pounced upon as a warrant for dismissing the idea of humanbrotherhood from our minds, and substituting for it some other socialprinciples, the character of which has not yet been definitelyexplained, though it is beginning in some quarters pretty distinctly toappear. But surely this is not reasonable. There can be no reason whythe first estate of man, which all allow to have been his lowest estate, should claim the prerogative of furnishing his only real andindefeasible principles of action. Granting that the idea of humanbrotherhood was not aboriginal--granting that it came into the world ata comparatively late period, still it has come, and having come, it isas real and seems as much entitled to consideration as inter-tribalhostility and domestic despotism were in their own day. That its adventhas not been unattended by illusions and aberrations is a fact whichdoes not cancel its title to real existence under the presentconditions, and with the present lights of society, any more than inannuls the great effects upon the actions of men and the course ofhistory which the idea has undeniably produced. Human brotherhood wasnot a part of a primaeval revelation; it may not have been an originalinstitution; but it seems to be a real part of a development, and it maybe a part of a plan. That the social principles of certain anti-philanthropic works are identical with those which governed the actionsof mankind in a primaeval and rudimentary state, when man had only justemerged from the animal, and have been since worked off by the foremostraces in the course of development, is surely rather an argument againstthe paramount and indefeasible authority of those principles than infavour of it. It tends rather to show that their real character is thatof a relapse, or, as the physiologists call it, a reversion. When thereis a vast increase of wealth, of sensual enjoyment, and of theselfishness which is apt to attend them, it is not marvellous that suchreversions should occur. 

Another eminent writer appears to think that he has put an end tometaphysical theology, and perhaps to metaphysics and theologyaltogether, by showing that "being, " and the cognate words, originallydenoted merely physical perceptions. But so, probably, did all language. So did "spirit, " so did "geist, " so did "power, " so did even "sweetreasonableness, " and "the not us which makes for righteousness. " Otherperceptions or ideas have gradually come, and are now denoted by thewords which at first denoted physical perceptions only. Why have notthese last comers as good a claim to existence as the first? Suppose theintellectual nature of man has unfolded, and been brought, as itconceivably may, into relations with something in the universe beyondthe mere indications of the five bodily senses--why are we bound tomistrust the results of this unfolding? We might go still further back, and still lower, than to language denoting merely physical perceptions. We might go back to inarticulate sounds and signs; but this does notinvalidate the reality of the perceptions afterwards expressed inarticulate language. It seems not very easy to distinguish, in point oftrustworthiness of source, between the principles of metaphysics and thefirst principles of mathematics, or to say, if we accept the deductionsin one case, why we should not accept them in the other. It isconceivable at least, we venture to repeat, that the development ofman's intellectual nature may have enabled him to perceive other thingsthan those which he perceives by means of his five bodily senses; andmetaphysics, once non-existent, may thus have come into legitimateexistence. Man, if the doctrine of evolution is true, was once acreature with only bodily senses; nay, at a still earlier stage, he wasmatter devoid even of bodily sense; now he has arrived--through theexercise of his bodily senses it may be--at something beyond bodilysense, at such notions as _being, essence, existence_: he reasonsupon these notions, and extends the scope of his once merely physicalvocabulary so as to comprehend them. Why should he not? If we are to beanchored hard and fast to the signification of primaeval language, howare we to obtain an intellectual basis for "the not us which makes forrighteousness?" Do not the anti-metaphysicists themselves unconsciouslymetaphysicize? Does not their fundamental assumption--that the knowledgereceived through our bodily senses alone is trustworthy--involve anappeal to a mental necessity as much as anything in metaphysics, whetherthe mental necessity in this case be real or not?

Again, the great author of the Evolution theory himself, in his_Descent of Man_, has given us an account of morality whichsuggests a remark of the same kind. He seems to have come to theconclusion that what is called our moral sense is merely an indicationof the superior permanency of social compared with personal impressions. Morality, if we take his explanation as complete and final, is reducedto tribal self-preservation subtilized into etiquette; an etiquettewhich, perhaps, a sceptical voluptuary, wishing to remove the obstaclesto a life of enjoyment, might think himself not unreasonable in treatingas an illusion. This, so far as appears, is the explanation offered ofmoral life, with all its beauty, its tenderness, its heroism, its self-sacrifice; to say nothing of spiritual life with its hopes andaspirations, its prayers and fanes. Such an account even of the originof morality seems rather difficult to receive. Surely, even in theirmost rudimentary condition, virtue and vice must have been distinguishedby some other characteristic than the relative permanency of twodifferent sets of impressions. There is a tendency, we may venture toobserve, on the part of eminent physicists, when they have carefullyinvestigated and explained what seems to them the most important andsubstantial subjects of inquiry, to proffer less careful explanations ofmatters which to them seem secondary and less substantial, thoughpossibly to an intelligence surveying the drama of the world fromwithout the distinctly human portion of it might appear more importantthan the rest. Eminent physicists have been known, we believe, toaccount summarily for religion as a surviving reminiscence of theserpent which attacked the ancestral ape and the tree which shelteredhim from the attack, so that Newton's religious belief would be aconcomitant of his remaining trace of a tail. It was assumed thatprimaeval religion was universally the worship of the serpent and of thetree. This assumption was far from being correct; but, even if it hadbeen correct, the theory based on it would surely have been a verysummary account of the phenomena of religious life. 

However, supposing the account of the origin of the moral sense and ofmoral life, given in _The Descent of Man_, to be true, it is anaccount of the origin only. Though profoundly significant, as well asprofoundly interesting, it is not more significant, compared with thesubsequent development, than is the origin of physical life comparedwith the subsequent history of living beings. Suppose a mineralogist ora chemist were to succeed in discovering the exact point at whichinorganic matter gave birth to the organic; his discovery would bemomentous and would convey to us a most distinct assurance of the methodby which the governing power of the universe works: but would it qualifythe mineralogist or the chemist to give a full account of all thediversities of animal life, and of the history of man? Heroism, self-sacrifice, the sense of moral beauty, the refined affections ofcivilized men, philanthropy, the desire of realizing a high moral ideal, whatever else they may be, are not tribal self-preservation subtilizedinto etiquette; nor are they adequately explained by reference to thepermanent character of one set of impressions and the occasionalcharacter of another set. Between the origin of moral life and itspresent manifestation has intervened something so considerable as tobaffle any anticipation of the destiny of humanity which could have beenformed for a mere inspection of the rudiments. We may call thisintervening force circumstance, if we please, provided we remember thatcalling it circumstance does not settle its nature, or exclude theexistence of a power acting through circumstance as the method offulfilling a design. 

Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting otherbeings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs. The connection between the embryo and the adult man, with his moralsense and intelligence, and all that these imply, is manifest, as wellas the gradual evolution of the one out of the other, and a conclusiveargument is hence derived against certain superstitions or fantasticbeliefs; but the embryo is not a man, neither is the man an embryo. Aphysiologist sets before us a set of plates showing the similaritybetween the embryo of Newton and that of his dog Diamond. The inferencewhich he probably expects us to draw is that there is no essentialdifference between the philosopher and the dog. But surely it is atleast as logical to infer, that the importance of the embryo and thesignificance of embryological similarities may not be so great as thephysiologist is disposed to believe. 

So with regard to human institutions. The writer on legal antiquitiesbefore mentioned finds two sets of institutions which are now directlyopposed to each other, and between the respective advocates of which acontroversy has been waged. He proposes to terminate that controversy byshowing that though the two rival systems in their development are sodifferent, in their origin they were the same. This seems very clearlyto bring home to us the fact that, important as the results of aninvestigation of origins are, there is still a limit to theirimportance. 

Again, while we allow no prejudice to stand in the way of our acceptanceof Evolution, we may fairly call upon Evolution to be true to itself. Wemay call upon it to recognise the possibility of development in thefuture as well as the fact of development in the past, and not to shutup the hopes and aspirations of our race in a mundane egg because themundane egg happens to be the special province of the physiologist. Theseries of developments has proceeded from the inorganic to the organic, from the organic upwards to moral and intellectual life. Why should itbe arrested there? Why should it not continue its upward course andarrive at a development which might be designated as spiritual life?Surely the presumption is in favour of a continued operation of the law. Nothing can be more arbitrary than the proceeding of Comte, who, aftertracing humanity, as he thinks, through the Theological and Metaphysicalstages into the Positive, there closes the series and assumes that thePositive stage is absolutely final. How can he be sure that it will notbe followed, for example, by one in which man will apprehend and communewith the Ruler of the Universe, not through mythology or dogma, butthrough Science? He may have had no experience of such a phase of humanexistence, nor may he be able at present distinctly to conceive it. Buthad he lived in the Theological or the Metaphysical era he would havebeen equally without experience of the Positive, and have had the samedifficulty in conceiving its existence. His finality is an assumptionapparently without foundation. 

By Spiritual Life we do not mean the life of a disembodied spirit, oranything supernatural and anti-scientific, but a life the motives ofwhich are beyond the world of sense, and the aim of which is an ideal, individual and collective, which may be approached but cannot beattained under our present conditions, and the conception of whichinvolves the hope of an ulterior and better state. The Positiviststhemselves often use the word "spiritual, " and it may be assumed thatthey mean by it something higher in the way of aspiration than what isdenoted by the mere term moral, though they may not look forward to anyother state of being than this. 

We do not presume, of course, in these few pages to broach any greatquestion, our only purpose being to point out a possible aberration orexaggeration of the prevailing school of thought. But it must surely beapparent to the moral philosopher, no less than to the student ofhistory, that at the time of the appearance of Christianity, a crisistook place in the development of humanity which may be not unfitlydescribed as the commencement of Spiritual Life. The change was notabrupt. It had been preceded and heralded by the increasing spiritualityof the Hebrew religion, especially in the teachings of the prophets, bythe spiritualization of Greek philosophy, and perhaps by the sublimationof Roman duty; but it was critical and decided. So much is admitted evenby those who deplore the advent of Christianity as a fatal historicalcatastrophe, which turned away men's minds from the improvement of theirmaterial condition to the pursuit of a chimerical ideal. Faith, Hope, and Charity, by which the Gospel designates the triple manifestation ofspiritual life, are new names for new things; for it is needless to saythat in classical Greek the words have nothing like their Gospelsignification. It would be difficult, we believe, to find in any Greekor Roman writer an expression of hope for the future of humanity. Thenearest approach to such a sentiment, perhaps, is in the politicalUtopianism of Plato. The social ideal is placed in a golden age whichhas irretrievably passed away. Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, even if it werea more serious production than it is, seems to refer to nothing morethan the pacification of the Roman Empire and the restoration of itsmaterial prosperity by Augustus. But Christianity, in the Apocalypse, atonce breaks forth into a confident prediction of the ultimate triumph ofgood over evil, and of the realization of the ideal. 

The moral aspiration--the striving after an ideal of character, personaland social, the former in and through the latter--seems to be thespecial note of the life, institutions, literature, and art ofChristendom. Christian Fiction, for example, is pervaded by an interestin the development and elevation of character for which we look in vainin the _Arabian Nights_, where there is no development ofcharacter, nothing but incident and adventure. Christian sculpture, inferior perhaps in workmanship to that of Phidias, derives its superiorinterest from its constant suggestion of a spiritual ideal. TheChristian lives, in a manner, two lives, an outward one of necessaryconformity to the fashions and ordinances of the present world; an innerone of protest against the present world and anticipation of an idealstate of things; and this duality is reproduced in the separateexistence of the spiritual society or Church, submitting to existingsocial arrangements, yet struggling to transcend them, and to transmutesociety by the realization of the Christian's social ideal. With this isnecessarily connected a readiness to sacrifice present to future good, and the interests of the present to future good, and the interests ofthe present world to those of the world of hope. Apart from this, thedeath of Christ (and that of Socrates also), instead of being aninstance of "sweet reasonableness, " would be out of the pale of reasonaltogether. 

It is perhaps the absence of an ideal that prevents our feelingsatisfied with Utilitarianism. The Utilitarian definition of moralityhas been so much enlarged, and made to coincide so completely withordinary definitions in point of mere extent, that the differencebetween Utilitarianism and ordinary Moral Philosophy seems to havebecome almost verbal. Yet we feel that there is something wanting. Thereis no ideal of character. And where there is no ideal of character therecan hardly be such a thing as a sense of moral beauty. A Utilitarianperhaps would say that perfect utility is beauty. But whatever may bethe case with material beauty, moral beauty at all events seems tocontain an element not identical with the satisfaction produced by theappearance of perfect utility, but suggestive of an unfulfilled ideal. 

Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the expectation of a FutureState, has physical science anything to say against that expectation?Physical Science is nothing more than the perceptions of our five bodilysenses registered and methodized. But what are these five senses?According to physical science itself, nerves in a certain stage ofevolution. Why then should it be assumed that their account of theuniverse, or of our relations to it, is exhaustive and final? Whyshould it be assumed that these are the only possible organs ofperception, and that no other faculties or means of communication withthe universe can ever in the course of evolution be developed in man?Around us are animals absolutely unconscious, so far as we can discern, of that universe which Science has revealed to us. A sea anemone, if itcan reflect, probably feels as confident that it perceives everythingcapable of being perceived as the man of science. The reasonablesupposition, surely, is that though Science, so far as it goes, is real, and the guide of our present life, its relation to the sum of things isnot much more considerable than that of the perceptions of the lowerorders of animals. That our notions of the universe have been so vastlyenlarged by the mere invention of astronomical instruments is enough initself to suggest the possibility of further and infinitely greaterenlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt, and to physical science, which is limited by them, human existence seems to end with death; butif there is anything in our nature which tells us, with a distinctnessand persistency equal to those of our sensible perceptions, that hopeand responsibility extend beyond death, why is this assurance not asmuch to be trusted as that of the bodily sense itself? There isapparently no ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or moral, except our inability, constituted as we are to believe otherwise; andthis criterion seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradicablemoral conviction as well as by a universal and irresistible impressionof sense. 

We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching that ofecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything which liesbeyond the range of experience. By experience is meant the perceptionsof our bodily senses, the absolute completeness and finality of which, we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant for which must at allevents be produced from other authority than that of the sensesthemselves. On this ground we are called upon to discard, as worthy ofnothing but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But todislodge these ideas from our minds is impossible; just as impossible asit is to dislodge any idea that has entered through the channels of thesenses; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that they may not bemere illusions, but real extensions of our intelligence beyond thedomain of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward progress of ournature. Of course if these ideas correspond to reality, physicalscience, though true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, oreven bear any considerable relation to the whole truth, since itnecessarily presents Being as limited by space and time. 

Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our nature willultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, to say;but there seems no substantial reason for refusing to believe that itcarries us towards a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from theimperfection of our perceptive powers, of the mode in which we shallpass into that better state, or of its precise relation to our presentexistence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise valid, of our generaldestiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to bebrought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, andthe gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surelyno more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it isnow, out of a lower animal form or out of inorganic matter. 

What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature would be uponthe hopes and aspirations of man, or on moral philosophy generally, itmight be difficult, no doubt, to say. But has any one of thedistinguished advocates of the automatic theory ever acted on it, orallowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it for a moment? What can beimagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious ofits own automatic character, reasoning and debating about itautomatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that theautomatic theory of itself is true? Nor is there any occasion here toentangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. If the racecan act progressively on higher and more unselfish motives, as historyproves to be the fact, there can be nothing in the connection betweenour actions and their antecedents inconsistent with the ascent of man. Jonathan Edwards is undoubtedly right in maintaining that there is aconnection between every human action and its antecedents. But thenature of the connection remains a mystery. We learn its existence notfrom inspection, but from consciousness, and this same consciousnesstells us that the connection is not such as to preclude the existence ofliberty of choice, moral aspiration, moral effort, moral responsibility, which are the contradictories of Necessarianism. The terms _cause andeffect_, and others of that kind, which the imperfection ofpsychological language compels us to use in speaking of the mentalconnection between action and its antecedents, are steeped from theiremployment in connection with physical science, in physical association, and the import with them into the moral sphere the notion of physicalenchainment, for which the representations of consciousness, the soleauthority, afford no warrant whatever. 

Another possible source of serious aberration, we venture to think, willbe found in the misapplication of the doctrine of _survivals_. Somelingering remains of its rudimentary state in the shape of primaevalsuperstitions or fancies continue to adhere to a developed, and maturedbelief; and hence it is inferred, or at least the inference issuggested, that the belief itself is nothing but a "survival, " anddestined in the final triumph of reason to pass away. The belief in theimmortality of the soul, for example, is found still connected in thelower and less advanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fanciesabout ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, aswell as with funeral rites and modes of burial indicating irrationalnotions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But neither thesenor any special ideas as to the nature of future rewards and punishmentsor the mode of transition from the present to the future state, arereally essential parts of the belief. They are the rudimentaryimaginations and illusions of which the rational belief is graduallyworking itself clear. The basis of the rational belief in theimmortality of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, in the continuanceof our spiritual existence after death is the conviction, common, so faras we know, to all the higher portions of humanity, and apparentlyineradicable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave;that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our actions, orour relations to those to whom we have done good or evil; and that todie the death of the righteous is better than to have lived a life ofpleasure even with the approbation of an undiscerning world. So far fromgrowing weaker, this conviction appears to grow practically strongeramong the most highly educated and intelligent of mankind, though theymay have cast off the last remnant of primitive or medievalsuperstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in anyspecial form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid ofit, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributivedistinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of theirsingular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by thesurvivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, ingraves of honour or disgrace. 

With regard to religion generally there is the same tendency toexaggerate the significance of "survivals, " and to neglect, on the otherhand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the primitive fables andillusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it isasserted, or suggested, that religion itself is dying. Religion isidentified with mythology. But mythology is merely the primaeval matrixof religion. Mythology is the embodiment of man's childlike notions asto the universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for goodor evil influence his lot; and, when analysed, it is found beneath allits national variations to be merely based upon a worship of the sun, the moon, and the forces of Nature. Religion is the worship and serviceof a moral God and a God who is worshipped and served by virtue. We candistinctly see, in Greek literature for instance, religion disengagingitself from mythology. In Homer the general element is mythology, capable of being rendered more or less directly into simple nature-worship, childish, non-moral, and often immoral. But when Hector saysthat he holds omens of no account, and that the best omen of all is tofight for one's country, he shows an incipient reliance on a MoralPower. The disengagement of religion from mythology is of course muchfurther advanced and more manifest when we come to Plato; while thereligious faith, instead of being weaker, has become infinitelystronger, and is capable of supporting the life and the martyrdom ofSocrates. When Socrates and Plato reject the Homeric mythology, it isnot because they are sceptics but because Homer is a child. 

But it is in the Old Testament that the process of disengagement and thegrowth of a moral out of a ceremonial religion are most distinctlyseen:--

 "'Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh, And bow myself down before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, With the sacrifice of calves of a year old? --Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams, With ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?' '--He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, And what Jahveh doth require of thee; What but to do justly to love mercy, And to walk humbly with thy God?'"

Here no doubt is a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice, even of humansacrifice, even of the sacrifice of the first-born. But it is a recedingand dying belief; while the belief in the power of justice, mercy, humility, moral religion in short, is prevailing over it and taking itsplace. 

So it is again in the New Testament with regard to spiritual life andthe miraculous. Spiritual life commenced in a world full of belief inthe miraculous, and it did not at once break with that belief. But itthrew the miraculous into the background and anticipated its decline, presaging that it would lose its importance and give place finally tothe spiritual. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinklingcymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand allmysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that Icould remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.... Charitynever faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whetherthere be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shallvanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when thatwhich is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be doneaway. " Clearly the writer of this believes in prophecies, in tongues, inmysteries. But clearly, also, he regards them as both secondary andtransient, while he regards charity as primary and eternal. 

It may be added that the advent of spiritual life did at once produce achange in the character of the miraculous itself, divested it of itsfantastic extravagance, and infused into it a moral element. The Gospelmiracles, almost without exception, have a moral significance, and canwithout incongruity be made the text of moral discourses to this day. Anattempt to make Hindoo or Greek miracles the text of moral discourseswould produce strange results. 

Compared with the tract of geological, and still more with that ofastronomical time, spiritual life has not been long in our world; and weneed not wonder if the process of disengagement from the environments ofthe previous state of humanity is as yet far from complete Politicalreligions and persecution, for instance, did not come into the worldwith Christ; they are survivals of an earlier stage of human progress. The Papacy, the great political Church of mediaeval Europe, is thehistorical continuation of the State religion of Rome and thePontificate of the Roman emperors. The Greek Church is the historicalcontinuation of the Eastern offset of the same system. The nationalState Churches are the historical continuations of the tribal religionsand priesthoods of the Northern tribes. We talk of the conversion of theBarbarians, but in point of fact it was the chief of the tribe that wasconverted, or rather that changed his religious allegiance, sometimes bytreaty (as in the case of Guthrum), and carried his tribe with him intothe allegiance of the new God. Hence the new religion, like the old, wasplaced upon the footing of a tribal, and afterwards of a state, religion; heresy was treason; and the state still lent the aid of thesecular arm to the national priesthood for the repression of rebellionagainst the established faith. But since the Reformation the process ofdisengagement has been rapidly going on; and in the North Americancommunities, which are the latest developments of humanity, theconnection between Church and State has ceased to exist, without anydiminution of the strength of the religious sentiment

Whether there is anything deserving of attention in these brief remarksor not, one thing may safely be affirmed: it is time that the questionas to the existence of a rational basis for religion and the reality ofspiritual life should be studied, not merely with a view of overthrowingthe superstitions of the past, but of providing, if possible, a faithfor the present and the future. The battle of criticism and scienceagainst superstition has been won, as every open-minded observer of thecontest must be aware, though the remnants of the broken host stilllinger on the field. It is now time to consider whether religion mustperish with superstition, or whether the death of superstition may notbe the new birth of religion. Religion survived the fall of Polytheism;it is surely conceivable that it may survive the fall ofAnthropomorphism, and that the desperate struggle which is being wagedabout the formal belief in "Personality, " may be merely the sloughingoff of something that when it is gone, will be seen to have not beenvital to religion. 

There are some who would deter us from inquiring into anything beyondthe range of sensible experience, and especially from any inquiry intothe future existence of the soul, which they denounce as utterlyunpractical, and compare with obsolete and fruitless inquiries into thestate of the soul before birth. We have already challenged the exclusiveclaim of the five bodily senses to be the final sources of knowledge;and we may surely add that it is at least as practical to inquire intothe destiny as it is to inquire into the origin of man. 

If the belief in God and in a Future State is true, it will prevail. Thecloud will pass away and the sun will shine out again. But in themeantime society may have "a bad quarter of an hour. " Withoutexaggerating the influence of the belief in Future Reward andPunishment, or of any form of it, on the actions of ordinary men, we maysafely say that the sense of responsibility to a higher power, and ofthe constant presence of an all-seeing Judge, has exercised aninfluence, the removal of which would be greatly felt. Materialism hasin fact already begun to show its effects on human conduct and onsociety. They may perhaps be more visible in communities where socialconduct depends greatly on individual conviction and motive, than incommunities which are more ruled by tradition and bound together bystrong class organizations; though the decay of morality will perhaps beultimately more complete and disastrous in the latter than in theformer. God and future retribution being out of the question, it isdifficult to see what can restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man, and induce him, in the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice hispersonal desires to the public good. The service of Humanity is thesentiment of a refined mind conversant with history; within nocalculable time is it likely to overrule the passions and direct theconduct of the mass. And after all, without God or spirit, what is"Humanity"? One school of science reckons a hundred and fifty differentspecies of man. What is the bond of unity between all these species andwherein consists the obligation to mutual love and help? A zealousservant of science told Agassiz that the age of real civilization wouldhave begun when you could go out and shoot a man for scientificpurposes. _Apparent dirae facies_. We begin to perceive, loomingthrough the mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressedby a government of force. 

PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION

There appears to be a connection between the proposed substitutes forreligion and the special training of their several authors. Historianstender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tenderus Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of thespecter of the Brocken. 

The only organized cultus without a God, at present before us, is thatof Comte. This in all its parts--its high priesthood, its hierarchy, itssacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary canon, itsritualism, and we may add, in its fundamentally intolerant andinquisitorial character--is an obvious reproduction of the Church ofRome, with humanity in place of God, great men in place of the saints, the Founder of Comtism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and evena sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typifiedby Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference whichwould be necessary in order to escape servile imitation. We haveourselves witnessed a case of alternation between the two systems whichtestified to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic Church hasacted on the imagination of Comte at least as powerfully as Sparta actedon that of Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato's _Republic_and other Utopias, exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for aflight of the individual imagination. It would shut up mankind for everin a stereotyped organization which is the vision of a particularthinker. In this respect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage comparedwith Christianity, which, as presented, in the Gospels, does not pretendto organize mankind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply suppliesa new type of character, and a new motive power, leaving government, ritual and organization of every kind to determine themselves from ageto age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry into the composition of thestars, which his priesthood, had it been installed in power, wouldperhaps have converted into a compulsory article of faith, is only aspecimen of his general tendency (the common tendency, as we have said, of all Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits of his own mind. Let his hierarchy become masters of the world, and the effect wouldprobably be like that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy(enlightened no doubt for its time) in Egypt, a brief start forwardfollowed by consecrated immobility for ever. 

Lareveillere Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, invented a newreligion of Theo-philanthropy which seems in fact to have been anorganized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it on France but finding thatin spite of his passionate endeavours he made but little progress hesought the advice of Talleyrand. "I am not surprised" said Talleyrand"at the difficulty you experience. It is no easy matter to introduce anew religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you to do. Irecommend you to be crucified and to rise again on the third day. " Wecannot say whether Lareveillere made any proselytes but if he did theirnumber cannot have been much smaller than the reputed number of thereligious disciples of Comte. As a philosophy, Comtism has found itsplace and exercised its share of influence among the philosophies of thetime but as a religious system it appears to make little way. It is theinvention of a man not the spontaneous expression of the beliefs andfeelings of mankind. Any one with a tolerably lively imagination mightproduce a rival system with as little practical effect. RomanCatholicism was at all events a growth not an invention. 

Cosmic Emotion, though it does not affect to be an organized system, isthe somewhat sudden creation of individual minds set at work apparentlyby the exigencies of a particular situation and on that accountsuggestive _prima facie_ of misgivings similar to those suggestedby the invention of Comte. 

Now is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really a substitute forreligion? That is the only question which we wish in these few pages toask. We do not pretend here to inquire what is or what is not true initself. 

Religion teaches that we have our being in a Power whose character andpurposes are indicated to us by our moral nature, in whom we are unitedand by the union made sacred to each other, whose voice consciencehowever generated, is whose eye is always upon us, sees all our acts, and sees them as they are morally, without reference to worldly successor to the opinion of the world, to whom at death we return, and ourrelations to whom, together with his own nature, are an assurance thataccording as we promote or fail to promote his design by selfimprovement and the improvement of our kind, it will be well or ill forus in the sum of things. This is a hypothesis evidently separable frombelief in a revelation, and from any special theory respecting the nextworld, as well as from all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false initself, capable of demonstration or incapable. We are concerned heresolely with its practical efficiency, compared with that of the proposedsubstitutes. It is only necessary to remark, that there is nothing aboutthe religious hypothesis as here stated, miraculous, supernatural, ormysterious, except so far as those epithets may be applied to anythingbeyond the range of bodily sense, say the influence of opinion oraffection. A universe self-made, and without a God, is at least as greata mystery as a universe with a God; in fact the very attempt to conceiveit in the mind produces a moral vertigo which is a bad omen for thepractical success of Cosmic Emotion. 

For this religion are the service and worship of Humanity likely to be areal equivalent in any respect, as motive power, as restraint, or ascomfort? Will the idea of life in God be adequately replaced by that ofan interest in the condition and progress of Humanity, as they mayaffect us and be influenced by our conduct, together with the hope ofhuman gratitude and fear of human reprobation after death, which theComtists endeavor to organize into a sort of counterpart of the Day ofJudgment?

It will probably be at once conceded that the answer must be in thenegative as regards the immediate future and the mass of mankind. Thesimple truths of religion are intelligible to all, and strike all mindswith equal force, though they may not have the same influence with allmoral natures. A child learns them perfectly at its mother's knee. Honest ignorance in the mine, on the sea, at the forge, striving to doits coarse and perilous duty, performing the lowliest functions ofhumanity, contributing in the humblest way to human progress, itselfscarcely sunned by a ray of what more cultivated natures would deemhappiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest philosopher the idea of aGod who sees and cares for all, who keeps account of the work well doneor the kind act, marks the secret fault, and will hereafter make up toduty for the hardness of its present lot. But a vivid interest--such aninterest as will act both as a restraint and as a comfort--in thecondition and future of humanity can surely exist only in those who havea knowledge of history sufficient to enable them to embrace the unity ofthe past, and an imagination sufficiently cultivated to glow withanticipation of the future. For the bulk of mankind the humanityworshippers point of view seems unattainable at least within anycalculable time. 

As to posthumous reputation good or evil it is and always must be theappendage of a few marked men. The plan of giving it substance byinstituting separate burial places for the virtuous and the wicked isperhaps not very seriously proposed. Any such plan involves the fallacyof a sharp division where there is no clear moral line besidespostulating not only an unattainable knowledge of men's actions but aknowledge still more manifestly unattainable of their hearts. Yet wecannot help thinking that on the men of intellect to whose teaching theworld is listening this hope of posthumous reputation, or to put it moreplainly, of living in the gratitude and affection of their kind by meansof their scientific discoveries and literary works exercises aninfluence of which they are hardly conscious, it prevents them fromfully feeling the void which the annihilation of the hope of futureexistence leaves in the hearts of ordinary men. 

Besides so far as we are aware no attempt has yet been made to show usdistinctly what humanity is and wherein its holiness consists. If thetheological hypothesis is true and all men are united in God, humanityis a substantial reality, but otherwise we fail to see that it is anything more than a metaphysical abstraction converted into an actualentity by philosophers who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Eventhe unity of the species is far from settled, science still debateswhether there is one race of men or whether there are more than ahundred. Man acts on man no doubt, but he also acts on other animals, and other animals on him. Wherein does the special unity or the specialbond consist? Above all what constitutes the holiness? Individual menare not holy, a large proportion of them are very much the reverse. Whyis the aggregate holy? Let the unit be a complex phenomenon, an organismor whatever name science may give it, what multiple of it will be arational object of worship?

For our own part we cannot conceive worship being offered by a saneworshipper to any but a conscious being, in other words to a person. Thefetish worshipper himself probably invests his fetish with a vaguepersonality such as would render it capable of propitiation. But howcan we invest with a collective personality the fleeting generations ofmankind? Even the sum of mankind is never complete, much less are theunits blended into a personal whole, or as it has been called a colossalman. 

There is a gulf here, as it seems to us, which cannot be bridged, andcan barely be hidden from view by the retention of religiousphraseology. In truth, the anxious use of that phraseology betraysweakness, since it shows that you cannot do without the theologicalassociations which cling inseparably to religious terms. 

You look forward to a closer union, a more complete brotherhood of man, an increased sacredness of the human relation. Some things point thatway; some things point the other way. Brotherhood has hardly a definitemeaning without a father; sacredness can hardly be predicated withoutanything which consecrates. We can point to an eminent writer who tellsyou that he detests the idea of brotherly love altogether; that thereare many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that hewould like to write his hatred with a lash upon their backs. Look againat the severe Prussianism which betrays itself in the New Creed ofStrauss. Look at the oligarchy of enlightenment and enjoyment whichRenan, in his _Moral Reform of France_, proposes to institute forthe benefit of a select circle, with sublime indifference to the lot ofthe vulgar, who, he says, "must subsist on the glory and happiness ofothers. " This does not look much like a nearer approach to a brotherhoodof man than is made by the Gospel. We are speaking, of course, merely ofthe comparative moral efficiency of religion and the proposedsubstitutes for it, apart from the influence exercised over individualconduct by the material needs and other non-theological forces ofsociety. 

For the immortality of the individual soul, with the influences of thatbelief, we are asked to substitute the immortality of the race. Buthere, in addition to the difficulty of proving the union andintercommunion of all the members, we are met by the objection thatunless we live in God, the race, in all probability, is not immortal. That our planet and all it contains will come to an end appears to bethe decided opinion of science. This "holy" being, our relation to whichis to take the place of our relation to an Eternal Father, by theadoration of which we are to be sustained and controlled, if it exist atall, is as ephemeral compared with eternity as a fly. We shall be toldthat we ought to be content with an immortality extending through tensof thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years. To the_argumentum ad verecundiam_ there is no reply. But will this banishthe thought of ultimate annihilation? Will it prevent a man, when he iscalled upon to make some great sacrifice for the race, from saying tohimself, that, whether he makes the sacrifice or not, one day all willend in nothing?

Evidently these are points which must be made quite clear before youcan, with any prospect of success, call upon men either to regardHumanity with the same feelings with which they have regarded God, or togive up their own interest or enjoyment for the future benefit of therace. The assurance derived from the fondness felt by parents for theiroffspring, and the self-denying efforts made for the good of children, will hardly carry us very far, even supposing it certain that parentallove would remain unaffected by the general change. It is evidently athing apart from the general love of Humanity. Nobody was ever moreextravagantly fond of his children, or made greater efforts for them, than Alexander Borgia. 

It has been attempted, however, with all the fervour of conviction, andwith all the force of a powerful style, to make us see not only that wehave this corporal immortality as members of the "colossal man, " butthat we may look forward to an actual though impersonal existence in theshape of the prolongation through all future time of the consequences ofour lives. It might with equal truth be said that we have enjoyed anactual though impersonal existence through all time past in ourantecedents. But neither in its consequences nor in its antecedents cananything be said to live except by a figure. The characters and actionsof men surely will never be influenced by such a fanciful use oflanguage as this! Our being is consciousness; with consciousness ourbeing ends, though our physical forces may be conserved, and traces ofour conduct--traces utterly indistinguishable--may remain. That withwhich we are not concerned cannot affect us either presently or byanticipation; and with that of which we shall never be conscious, weshall never feel that we are concerned. Perhaps if the authors of thisnew immortality would tell us what they understand by non-existence, wemight be led to value more highly by contrast the existence which theypropose for a soul when it has ceased to think or feel, and for anorganism when it has been scattered to the winds. 

They would persuade us that their impersonal and unconscious immortalityis a brighter hope than an eternity of personal and conscious existence, the very thought of which they say is torture. This assumes, what thereseems to be no ground for assuming, that eternity is an endlessextension of time; and, in the same way, that infinity is a boundlessspace. It is more natural to conceive of them as emancipationrespectively from time and space, and from the conditions which time andspace involve; and among the conditions of time may apparently bereckoned the palling of pleasure or of existence by mere temporalprotraction. Even as we are, sensual pleasure palls; so does the merelyintellectual: but can the same be said of the happiness of virtue andaffection? It is urged, too, that by exchanging the theologicalimmortality for one of physical and social consequences, we get rid ofthe burden of self, which otherwise we should drag for ever. But surelyin this there is a confusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness isanother name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, howcan there be self-sacrifice? How can the most unselfish motive exist ifthere is nothing to be moved? "He that findeth his life, shall lose it;and he that loseth his life, shall find it, " is not a doctrine ofselfishness, but it implies a self. We have been rebuked in the words ofFrederick to his grenadiers--"Do you want to live for ever?" Thegrenadiers might have answered, "Yes; and therefore we are ready todie. "

It is not when we think of the loss of anything to which a taint ofselfishness can adhere--it is not even when we think of intellectualeffort cut short for ever by death just as the intellect has ripened andequipped itself with the necessary knowledge--that the nothingness ofthis immortality of conservated forces is most keenly felt: it is whenwe think of the miserable end of affection. How much comfort would itafford anyone bending over the deathbed of his wife to know that forcesset free by her dissolution will continue to mingle impersonally andindistinguishably with forces set free by the general mortality?Affection, at all events, requires personality. One cannot love a groupof consequences, even supposing that the filiation could be distinctlypresented to the mind. Pressed by the hand of sorrow craving forcomfort, this Dead Sea fruit crumbles into ashes, paint it witheloquence as you will. 

Humanity, it seems to us, is a fundamentally Christian idea, connectedwith the Christian view of the relations of men to their common Fatherand of their spiritual union in the Church. In the same way the idea ofthe progress of Humanity seems to us to have been derived from theChristian belief in the coming of the Kingdom of God through theextension of the Church, and to that final triumph of good over evilforetold in the imagery of the Apocalypse. At least the founders of theReligion of Humanity will admit that the Christian Church is the matrixof theirs so much their very nomenclature proves and we would fain askthem to review the process of disengagement and see whether the essencehas not been left behind. 

No doubt there are influences at work in modern civilisation which tendto the strengthening of the sentiment of humanity by making men moredistinctly conscious of their position as members of a race. On theother hand the unreflecting devotion of the tribesman which heldtogether primitive societies dies. Man learns to reason and calculateand when he is called upon to immolate himself to the common interest ofthe race he will consider what the common interest of the race when heis dead and gone will be to him and whether he will ever be repaid forhis sacrifice. 

Of Cosmic Emotion it will perhaps be fair to say that it is proposed asa substitute for religious emotion rather than as a substitute forreligion since nothing has been said about embodying it in a cult. Itcomes to us commended by glowing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and WaltWhitman and we cannot help admitting that for common hearts it stands inneed of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an all lovingFather to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seekall the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluckily we arehaunted by the consciousness that the poetry itself is blindly groundout by the same illimitable mill of evolution which grinds out Virtueand affection. We are by no means sure that we understand what CosmicEmotion is even after leading an exposition of its nature by no ungiftedhand. Its symbola so to speak are the feelings produced by the twoobjects of Kant's peculiar reverence--the stars of heaven and the moralfaculty of man. But after all these are only like anything elseaggregations of molecules in a certain stage of evolution. To theunscientific eye they may be awful because they are mysterious, but letscience analyse them and then awfulness disappears. If the interactionof all parts of the material universe is complete we fail to see why oneobject or one feeling is more cosmic than another. However we will notdwell on that which as we have already confessed we do not feel surethat we rightly apprehend. What we do clearly see is that to have cosmicemotion or cosmic anything you must have a cosmos. You must be assuredthat the universe is a cosmos and not a chaos. And what assurance ofthis can materialism or any non theological system give? Law is atheological term, it implies a lawgiver or a governing intelligence ofsome kind. Science can tell us nothing but facts, single or accumulatedas experience, which would not make a law though they had been observedthrough myriads of years. Law is a theological term, and cosmos isequally so, if it may not rather be said to be a Greek name for theaggregate of laws. For order implies intelligent selection andarrangement. Our idea of order would not be satisfied by a number ofobjects falling by mere chance into a particular figure, howeverintricate and regular. All the arguments which have been used againstdesign seem to tell with equal force against order. We have no otheruniverse wherewith we can compare this, so as to assure ourselves thatthis universe is not a chaos, but a cosmos. Both on the earth and in theheavens we see much that is not order, but disorder; not cosmos, butacosmia. If we divine, nevertheless, that order reigns, and that thereis design beneath the seemingly undesigned, and good beneath theappearance of evil, it is by virtue of something not dreamed of in thephilosophy of materialism. 

Have we really come to this, that the world has no longer any goodreason for believing in a God or a life beyond the grave? If so, it isdifficult to deny that with regard to the great mass of mankind up tothis time Schopenhauer and the Pessimists are right, and existence hasbeen a cruel misadventure. The number of those who have sufferedlifelong oppression, disease, or want, who have died deaths of tortureor perished miserably by war, is limited though enormous; but probablythere have been few lives in which the earthly good has not beenoutweighed by the evil. The future may bring increased means ofhappiness, though those who are gone will not be the better for them;but it will bring also increase of sensibility, and the consciousness ofhopeless imperfection and miserable futility will probably become adistinct and growing cause of pain. It is doubtful even whether, aftersuch a raising of Mokanna's veil, faith in everything would not expireand human effort cease. Still we must face the situation: there can beno use in self-delusion. In vain we shall seek to cheat our souls and tofill a void which cannot be filled by the manufacture of artificialreligions and the affectation of a spiritual language to which, howeverpersistently and fervently it may be used, no realities correspond. Ifone of these cults could get itself established, in less than ageneration it would become hollower than the hollowest ofecclesiasticisms. Probably not a few of the highest natures wouldwithdraw themselves from the dreary round of self mockery by suicide, and if a scientific priesthood attempted to close that door bysociological dogma or posthumous denunciation the result would show thedifference between the practical efficacy of a religion with a God andthat of a cult of "Humanity" or "Space. "

Shadows and figments, as they appear to us to be in themselves theseattempts to provide a substitute for religion are of the highestimportance, as showing that men of great powers of mind, who havethoroughly broken loose not only from Christianity but from naturalreligion and in some cases placed themselves in violent antagonism toboth, are still unable to divest themselves of the religious sentimentor to appease its craving for satisfaction. There being no God, theyfind it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one, notfor the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of our spiritualnature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena, and this apparentlyineradicable tendency of the human mind is a phenomenon like the rest. The thoroughgoing Materialist, of course, escapes all thesephilosophical exigencies, but he does it by denying Humanity as well asGod and reducing the difference between the organism of the human animaland that of any other animal to a mere question of complexity. Still, even in this quarter, there has appeared of late a disposition to makeconcessions on the subject of human volition hardly consistent withMaterialism. Nothing can be more likely than that the impetus of greatdiscoveries has carried the discoverers too far. 

Perhaps with the promptings of the religious sentiment there is combineda sense of the immediate danger with which the failure of the religioussanction threatens social order and morality. As we have said already, the men of whom we specially speak are far above anything like socialJesuitism. We have not a doubt but they would regard with abhorrence anyschemes of oligarchic illuminism for guarding the pleasures of the fewby politic deception of the multitude. But they have probably begun tolay to heart the fact that the existing morality, though not dependenton any special theology, any special view of the relations between souland body, or any special theory of future rewards and punishments, islargely dependent on a belief in the indefeasible authority ofconscience, and in that without which conscience can have noindefeasible authority--the presence of a just and all-seeing God. Itmay be true that in primaeval society these beliefs are found only in themost rudimentary form, and, as social sanctions, are very inferior inforce to mere gregarious instincts or the pressure of tribal need. Butman emerges from the primaeval state, and when he does, he demands areason for his submission to moral law. That the leaders of the anti-theological movement in the present day are immoral, nobody but the mostbesotted fanatic would insinuate; no candid antagonist would deny thatsome of them are in every respect the very best of men. The fearlesslove of truth is usually accompanied by other high qualities; andnothing could be more unlikely than that natures disposed to virtue, trained under good influences, peculiarly sensitive to opinion andguarded by intellectual tastes, would lapse into vice as soon as thetraditional sanction was removed. But what is to prevent the withdrawalof the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon themorality of the mass of mankind? The commercial swindler or thepolitical sharper, when the divine authority of conscience is gone, willfeel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and heknows how to reckon with the opinion of society. If Macbeth is ready, provided he can succeed in this world, to "jump the life to come, " muchmore ready will villainy be to "jump" the bad consequences of itsactions to humanity when its own conscious existence shall have closed. Rate the practical effect of religious beliefs as low and that of socialinfluences as high as you may, there can surely be no doubt thatmorality has received some support from the authority of an inwardmonitor regarded as the voice of God. The worst of men would have wishedto die the death of the righteous; he would have been glad, if he could, when death approached, to cancel his crimes; and the conviction, ormisgiving, which this implied, could not fail to have some influenceupon the generality of mankind, though no doubt the influence wasweakened rather than strengthened by the extravagant and incredible formin which the doctrine of future retribution was presented by thedominant theology. 

The denial of the existence of God and of a Future State, in a word, isthe dethronement of conscience; and society will pass, to say the least, through a dangerous interval before social science can fill the vacantthrone. Avowed scepticism is likely to be disinterested and therefore tobe moral; it is among the unavowed sceptics and conformists to politicalreligions that the consequences of the change may be expected to appear. 

But more than this, the doctrines of Natural Selection and the Survivalof the Fittest are beginning to generate a morality of their own, withthe inevitable corollary that the proof of superior fitness is tosurvive--to survive either by force or cunning, like the other animalswhich by dint of force or cunning have come out victorious from theuniversal war and asserted for themselves a place in nature. The"irrepressible struggle for empire" is formally put forward by publicwriters of the highest class as the basis and the rule of the conduct ofthis country towards other nations; and we may be sure that there is notan entire absence of connection between the private code of a school andits international conceptions. The feeling that success coverseverything seems to be gaining ground and to be overcoming, not merelythe old conventional rules of honour, but moral principle itself. Bothin public and private there are symptoms of an approaching failure ofthe motive power which has hitherto sustained men both in self-sacrificing effort and in courageous protest against wrong, though asyet we are only at the threshold of the great change, and establishedsentiment long survives, in the masses, that which originally gave itbirth. Renan says, probably with truth, that had the Second Empireremained at peace, it might have gone on forever; and in the history ofthis country the connection between political effort and religion hasbeen so close that its dissolution, to say the least, can hardly fail toproduce a critical change in the character of the nation. The time maycome, when, as philosophers triumphantly predict, men, under theascendancy of science, will act for the common good, with the samemechanical certainty as bees; though the common good of the human hivewould perhaps not be easy to define. But in the meantime mankind, orsome portions of it, may be in danger of an anarchy of self-interest, compressed for the purpose of political order, by a despotism of force. 

That science and criticism, acting--thanks to the liberty of opinion wonby political effort--with a freedom never known before, have deliveredus from a mass of dark and degrading superstitions, we own withheartfelt thankfulness to the deliverers, and in the firm convictionthat the removal of false beliefs, and of the authorities orinstitutions founded on them, cannot prove in the end anything but ablessing to mankind. But at the same time the foundations of generalmorality have inevitably been shaken, and a crisis has been brought onthe gravity of which nobody can fail to see, and nobody but a fanatic ofMaterialism can see without the most serious misgiving. 

There has been nothing in the history of man like the present situation. The decadence of the ancient mythologies is very far from affording aparallel. The connection of those mythologies with morality wascomparatively slight. Dull and half-animal minds would hardly beconscious of the change which was partly veiled from them by thecontinuance of ritual and state creeds; while in the minds of Plato andMarcus Aurelius it made place for the development of a moral religion. The Reformation was a tremendous earthquake: it shook down the fabric ofmediaeval religion, and as a consequence of the disturbance in thereligious sphere filled the world with revolutions and wars. But it leftthe authority of the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that thedestructive process had its limit, and that adamant was still beneaththeir feet. But a world which is intellectual and keenly alive to thesignificance of these questions, reading all that is written about themwith almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis thecharacter of which any one may realize by distinctly presenting tohimself the idea of existence without a God. 

THE LABOUR MOVEMENT

_(This Lecture was delivered before the Mechanics' Institute ofMontreal, and the Literary Society of Sherbrooke, and published in theCANADIAN MONTHLY, December, 1872. The allusions to facts and events mustbe read with reference to the date. )_

We are in the midst of an industrial war which is extending over Europeand the United States, and has not left Canada untouched. It is notwonderful that great alarm should prevail, or that, in panic-strickenminds, it should assume extravagant forms. London deprived of bread by abakers' strike, or of fuel by a colliers' strike, is a serious prospect;so is the sudden stoppage of any one of the wheels in the vast andcomplicated machine of modern industry. People may be pardoned forthinking that they have fallen on evil times, and that they have a darkfuture before them. Yet, those who have studied industrial history knowthat the present disturbance is mild compared with the annals of even anot very remote past. The study of history shows us where we are, andwhither things are tending. Though it does not diminish the difficultiesof the present hour, it teaches us to estimate them justly, to deal withthem calmly and not to call for cavalry and grapeshot because onemorning we are left without hot bread. 

One of the literary janissaries of the French Empire thought to provethat the working class had no rights against the Bonapartes, by showingthat the first free labourers were only emancipated slaves. One wouldlike to know what he supposed the first Bonapartes were. However thoughhis inference was not worth much, except against those who are pedanticenough, to vouch parchment archives for the rights and interests ofhumanity, he was in the right as to the fact. Labour first appears inhistory as a slave, treated like a beast of burden, chained to the door-post of a Roman master, or lodged in the underground manstables(ergastula) on his estate, treated like a beast, or worse than a beast, recklessly worked out and then cast forth to die, scourged, tortured, flung in a moment of passion to feed the lampreys, crucified for theslightest offence or none. "Set up a cross for the slave, " cries theRoman matron, in, Juvenal. "Why, what has the slave done?" asks herhusband. 

One day labour strikes; finds a leader in Spartacus, a slave devoted asa gladiator to the vilest of Roman pleasures; wages a long and terribleservile war. The revolt is put down at last, after shaking thefoundations of the state. Six thousand slaves are crucified along theroad from Rome to Capua. Labour had its revenge, for slavery brought thedoom of Rome. 

In the twilight of history, between the fall of Rome and the rise of thenew nationalities, we dimly see the struggle going on. There is a greatinsurrection of the oppressed peasantry, under the name of Bagaudae, inGaul. When the light dawns, a step has been gained. Slavery has beengenerally succeeded by serfdom. But serfdom is hard. The peasantry offeudal Normandy conspire against their cruel lords, hold secretmeetings, the ominous name _commune_ is heard. But the conspiracyis discovered and suppressed with the fiendish ferocity with which panicinspires a dominant class, whether in Normandy or Jamaica. Amidst thereligious fervour of the Crusades again breaks out a wild labourmovement, that of the Pastoureaux, striking for equality in the name ofthe Holy Spirit, which, perhaps, they had as good a right to use as somewho deemed their use of it profane. This is in the country, among theshepherds and ploughmen. In the cities labour has congregated numbers, mutual intelligence, union on its side; it is constantly reinforced byfugitives from rural serfdom; it builds city walls, purchases or extortscharters of liberty. The commercial and manufacturing cities of Italy, Germany, Flanders, become the cradles of free industry, and, at the sametime, of intellect, art, civilization. But these are points of lightamidst the feudal darkness of the rural districts. In France, forexample, the peasantry are cattle; in time of peace crushed with forcedlabour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars--Jacques Bonhomme paysfor them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners;have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, likegambling debts, are more binding than debts of honesty. But JacquesBonhomme's back is broad, it will bear everything. Broad as it is, itwill not bear this last straw. The tidings of Flemish freedom have, perhaps, in some way reached his dull ear, taught him that bondage isnot, as his priest, no doubt, assures him it is, a changeless ordinanceof God, that the yoke, though strong, may be broken. He strikes, armshimself with clubs, knives, ploughshares, rude pikes, breaks out into aJacquerie, storms the castles of the oppressor, sacks, burns, slays withthe fury of a wild beast unchained. The lords are stupefied. At lastthey rally and bring their armour, their discipline, their experience inwar, the moral ascendency of a master-class to bear. The Englishgentlemen, in spite of the hostilities, only half suspended, between thenations, join the French gentlemen against the common enemy. Twentythousand peasants are soon cut down, but long afterwards the butcherycontinues. Guillaume Callet, the leader of the Jacquerie, a very craftypeasant, as he is called by the organs of the lords, is crowned with acirclet of red-hot iron. 

In England, during the same period serfdom, we know not exactly how, isbreaking up. There is a large body of labourers working for hire. But inthe midst of the wars of the great conqueror, Edward III. , comes agreater conqueror, the plague called the Black Death, which sweeps away, some think, a third of the population of Europe. The number of labourersis greatly diminished. Wages rise. The feudal parliament passes an Actto compel labourers, under penalties, to work at the old rates. This Actis followed by a train of similar Acts, limiting wages and fixing in theemployers' interest the hours of work, which, in the pages ofimaginative writers, figure as noble attempts made by legislators of agolden age to regulate the relations between employer and employed onsome higher principle than that of contract. The same generous spirit, no doubt, dictated the enactment prohibiting farm labourers frombringing up their children to trades, lest hands should be withdrawnfrom the land-owner's service. Connected with the Statutes of Labourers, are those bloody vagrant laws, in which whipping, branding, hanging areordained as the punishment of vagrancy by lawgivers, many of whom werethemselves among the idlest and most noxious vagabonds in the country, and the authors of senseless wars which generated a mass of vagrancy, byfilling the country with disbanded soldiers. In the reign of RichardII. , the poll tax being added to other elements of class discord, labourstrikes, takes arms under Wat Tyler, demands fixed rents, tenant rightin an extreme form, and the total abolition of serfage. A wild religiouscommunism bred of the preachings of the more visionary among theWycliffites mingles in the movement with the sense of fiscal andindustrial wrong. "When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then thegentleman?" is the motto of the villeins, and it is one of moreformidable import than any utterance of peasant orators at AgriculturalLabourers' meetings in the present day. Then come fearful scenes ofconfusion, violence and crime. London is in the power of hordesbrutalized by oppression. High offices of state, high ecclesiastics aremurdered. Special vengeance falls on the lawyers, as the artificers whoforged the cunning chains of feudal iniquity. The rulers, the troops, are paralyzed by the aspect of the sea of furious savagery raging roundthem. The boy king, by a miraculous exhibition of courageous self-possession, saves the State; but he is compelled to grant generalcharters of manumission, which, when the danger is over, the feudalparliament forces him by a unanimous vote to repudiate. Wholesalehanging of serfs, of course, follows the landlords' victory. 

The rising under Jack Cade, in the reign of Henry VI. , was ratherpolitical than industrial. The demands of the insurgents, politicalreform and freedom of suffrage, show that progress had been made in thecondition and aspirations of the labouring class. But with the age ofthe Tudors came the final breakup in England of feudalism, as well as ofCatholicism, attended by disturbances in the world of labour, similar tothose which have attended the abolition of slavery in the SouthernStates. This is the special epoch of the sanguinary vagrancy laws, themost sanguinary of which was framed by the hand of Henry VIII. The newnobility of courtiers and upstarts, who had shared with the king theplunder of the monasteries, were hard landlords of course; they robbedthe people of their rights of common, and swept away homesteads andcottages, to make room for sheep farms, the wool trade being the greatsource of wealth in those days. By the spoliation of the monasteries, the great alms-houses of the Middle Ages, the poor had also been leftfor a time without the relief, which was given them again in a moreregular form by the Poor Law of Elizabeth. Hence in the reign of EdwardVI. , armed strikes again, in different parts of the kingdom. In theWest, the movement was mainly religious; but in the Eastern countries, under Kett of Norfolk, it was agrarian. Kett's movement after a briefperiod of success, during which the behaviour of the insurgents andtheir leader was very creditable, was put down by the disciplinedmercenaries under the command of the new aristocracy, and itssuppression was of course followed by a vigorous use of the gallows. Nodoubt the industrial conservatives of those days were as frightened, asangry, and as eager for strong measures as their successors are now: butthe awkwardness of the newly liberated captive, in the use of his limbsand eyes, is due not to his recovered liberty, but to the narrowness anddarkness of the dungeon in which he has been immured. 

In Germany, at the same epoch, there was not merely a local rising, buta wide-spread and most terrible peasants' war. The German peasantry hadbeen ground down beyond even an hereditary bondsman's power of enduranceby their lords generally, and by the Prince Bishop and other spirituallords in particular. The Reformation having come with a gospel of truth, love, spiritual brotherhood, the peasants thought it might also havebrought some hope of social justice. The doctors of divinity had toinform them that this was a mistake. But they took the matter into theirown hands and rose far and wide, the fury of social and industrial warblending with the wildest fanaticism, the most delirious ecstacy, thedarkest imposture. Once more there are stormings and burnings of feudalcastles, massacring of their lords. Lords are roasted alive, hunted likewild beasts in savage revenge for the cruelty of the game laws. Munzer, a sort of peasant Mahomet, is at the head of the movement. Under him itbecomes Anabaptist, Antinomian, Communist. At first he and his followerssweep the country with a whirlwind of terror and destruction: but againthe lords rally, bring up regular troops. The peasants are brought tobay on their last hill side, behind a rampart formed of their waggons. Their prophet assures them that the cannon-balls will fall harmless intohis cloak. The cannon-balls take their usual course: a butchery, then atrain of torturings and executions follows, the Prince Bishop, amongothers, adding considerably to the whiteness of the Church's robe. Luther is accused of having incited the ferocity of the lords againstthose, who, it is alleged, had only carried his own principles to anextreme. But in the first place Luther never taught Anabaptism oranything that could logically lead to it; and in the second place, before he denounced the peasants, he tried to mediate and rebuke thetyranny of the lords. No man deserves more sympathy than a greatreformer, who is obliged to turn against the excesses of his own party. He becomes the object of fierce hatred on one side, of exulting derisionon the other; yet he is no traitor, but alone loyal to his conscienceand his cause. 

The French Revolution was a political movement among the middle class inthe cities, but among the peasantry in the country it was an agrarianand labour movement, and the dismantling of chateaux, and chasing awayof their lords which then took place were a renewal of the strugglewhich had given birth to the Jacquerie, the insurrection of Wat Tyler, and the Peasants' War. This time the victory remained with the peasant, and the lord returned no more. 

In England, long after the Tudor period, industrial disturbances tookplace, and wild communistic fancies welled up from the depths of asuffering world of labour, when society was stirred by political andreligious revolution. Under the Commonwealth, communists went up on thehill side, and began to break ground for a poor man's Utopia; and thegreat movement of the Levellers, which had in it an economical as wellas a political element, might have overturned society, if it had notbeen quelled by the strong hand of Cromwell. But in more recent times, within living memory, within the memory of many here there were labourdisturbances in England, compared with which the present industrial waris mild. [Footnote: For the following details, see Martineau's "Historyof the Peace. "] In 1816, there were outbreaks among the sufferingpeasantry which filled the governing classes with fear. In Suffolknightly fires of incendiaries blazed in every district, thrashingmachines were broken or burnt in open day, mills were attacked. AtBrandon large bodies of workmen assembled to prescribe a maximum priceof grain and meat, and to pull down the houses of butchers and bakers. They bore flags with the motto, "Bread or Blood". Insurgents from theFen Country, a special scene of distress, assembled at Littleport, attacked the house of a magistrate in the night, broke open shops, emptied the cellars of public-houses, marched on Ely, and filled thedistrict for two days and nights with drunken rioting and plunder. Thesoldiery was called in; there was an affray in which blood flowed onboth sides, then a special commission and hangings to close the scene. Distressed colliers in Staffordshire and Wales assembled by thousands, stopped works, and were with difficulty diverted from marching toLondon. In 1812, another stain of blood was added to the sanguinarycriminal code of those days by the Act making death the penalty for thedestruction of machinery. This was caused by the Luddite outrages, whichwere carried on in the most systematic manner, and on the largest scalein Nottingham and the adjoining counties. Bodies of desperadoes, armedand disguised, went forth under a leader, styled General Ludd, whodivided them into bands, and aligned to each band its work ofdestruction. Terror reigned around; the inhabitants were commanded tokeep in their houses and put out their lights on pain of death. In thesilence of night houses and factories were broken open, machinesdemolished, unfinished work scattered on the highways. The extent andsecrecy of the conspiracy baffled the efforts of justice and the deathpenalty failed to put the system down. Even the attempts made to relievedistress became new sources of discontent and a soup kitchen riot atGlasgow led to a two days conflict between the soldiery and the mob. In1818, a threatening mass of Manchester spinners, on strike came intobloody collision with the military. Then there were rick burnings, farmers patrolling all night long, gibbets erected on Pennenden heath, and bodies swinging on them, bodies of boys, eighteen or nineteen yearsold. Six labourers of Dorsetshire, the most wretched county in England, were sentenced to seven years' transportation nominally foradministering an illegal oath, really for Unionism. Thereupon all thetrades made a menacing demonstration, marched to Westminster, thirtythousand strong, with a petition for the release of the labourers. London was in an agony of fear, the Duke of Wellington prepared for agreat conflict, pouring in troops and bringing up artillery fromWoolwich. In 1840, again there were formidable movements, and societyfelt itself on the crust of a volcano. Threatening letters were sent tomasters, rewards offered for firing mills, workmen were beaten, drivenout of the country, burned with vitriol, and, there was reason to fear, murdered. Great masses of operatives collected for purposes ofintimidation, shopkeepers were pillaged, collisions again took placebetween the people and the soldiery. Irish agrarianism meanwhileprevailed, in a far more deadly form than at present. And theseindustrial disturbances were connected with political disturbancesequally formidable, with Chartism, Socialism, Cato Street conspiracies, Peterloo massacres, Bristol riots. 

Now the present movement even in England, where there is so muchsuffering and so much ignorance, has been marked by a comparativeabsence of violence, and comparative respect for law. Considering whatlarge bodies of men have been out on strike, how much they have enduredin the conflict, and what appeals have been made to their passions, itis wonderful how little of actual crime or disturbance there has been. There were the Sheffield murders the disclosure of which filled all thefriends of labour with shame and sorrow, all the enemies of labour withmalignant exultation. But we should not have heard so much of theSheffield murders if such things had been common. Sheffield is anexceptional place; some of the work there is deadly, life is short andcharacter is reckless. Even at Sheffield, a very few, out of the wholenumber of trades, were found to have been in any way implicated. Thedenunciation of the outrages by the trades through England generally, was loud and sincere; an attempt was made, of course, to fix the guilton all the Unions, but this was a hypocritical libel. It was stated, inone of our Canadian journals, the other day, that Mr. Roebuck had losthis seat for Sheffield, by protesting against Unionist outrage. Mr. Roebuck lost his seat for Sheffield by turning Tory. The Trades'candidate, by whom Mr. Roebuck was defeated, was Mr. Mundella, arepresentative of whom any constituency may be proud, a great employerof labour, and one who has done more than any other man of his class inEngland to substitute arbitration for industrial war, and to restorekindly relations between the employers and the employed. To Mr. Mundellathe support of Broadhead and the criminal Unionists was offered, and byhim it was decisively rejected. 

The public mind has been filled with hideous fantasies, on the subjectof Unionism, by sensation novelists like Mr. Charles Reade and Mr. Disraeli, the latter of whom has depicted the initiation of a workingman into a Union with horrid rites, in a lofty and spacious room, hungwith black cloth and lighted with tapers, amidst skeletons, men withbattle axes, rows of masked figures in white robes, and holding torches;the novice swearing an awful oath on the Gospel, to do every act whichthe heads of the society enjoin, such as the chastisement of "nobs, " theassassination of tyrannical masters, and the demolition of all millsdeemed incorrigible by the society. People may read such stuff for thesake of amusement and excitement, if they please; but they will fallinto a grave error if they take it for a true picture of the AmalgamatedCarpenters or the Amalgamated Engineers. Besides, the Sheffield outrageswere several years old at the time of their discovery. They belong, morally, to the time when the unions of working men being forbidden byunfair laws framed in the masters' interest were compelled to assume thecharacter of conspiracies; when, to rob a union being no theft, unionists could hardly be expected to have the same respect as thebetter protected interests for public justice; when, moreover, themechanics, excluded from political rights, could scarcely regardGovernment as the impartial guardian of their interests, or thegoverning classes as their friends. Since the legalization of theunions, the extension of legal security to their funds and the admissionof the mechanics to the suffrage there has been comparatively little ofunionist crime. 

I do not say that there has been none. I do not say that there is nonenow. Corporate selfishness of which Trade Unions after all areembodiments seldom keeps quite clear of criminality. But the moraldangers of corporate selfishness are the same in all associations and inall classes. The Pennsylvanian iron master who comes before ourCommissions of Inquiry to testify against Unionist outrage inPennsylvania where a very wild and roving class of workmen are managedby agents who probably take little thought for the moral condition ofthe miner--this iron master I say is himself labouring through his paidorgans in the press, through his representatives in Congress, and byevery means in his power to keep up hatred of England and bad relationsbetween the two countries at the constant risk of war because it suitsthe interest of his Protectionist Ring. The upper classes of Europe inthe same spirit applauded what they called the salvation of society bythe _coup d'etat_, the massacre on the Boulevards and the lawlessdeportation of the leaders of the working men in France. In the mainhowever I repeat the present movement has been legal and pacific and solong as there is no violence, so long as no weapons but those ofargument are employed, so long as law and reason reign, matters are sureto come right in the end. The result may not be exactly what we wishbecause we may wish to take too much for ourselves and to give ourfellow men too little, but it will be just and we cannot deliberatelydesire more. If the law is broken by the Unionists, if violence orintimidation is employed by them instead of reason, let the Governmentprotect the rights of the community and let the community strengthen thehands of the Government for that purpose. 

Perhaps you will say that I have forgotten the International and theCommune. There is undoubtedly a close connection between the labourmovement and democracy, between the struggle for industrial and thestruggle for political emancipation, as there is a connection betweenboth and Secularism, the frank form assumed among the working men bythat which is concealed and conformist Scepticism among the upper class. In this respect the present industrial crisis resembles those of thepast which as we have seen were closely connected with religious andpolitical revolutions. In truth the whole frame of humanity generallymoves at once. With the International, however, as an organ of politicalincendiarism, labour had very little to do. The International was, inits origin, a purely industrial association, born of Prince Albert'sInternational Exhibition, which held a convention at Geneva, whereeverybody goes pic-nicing, for objects which, though chimerical, weredistinctly economical, and free from any taint of petroleum. But a bandof political conspirators got hold of the organization and used it, orat least, so much of it as they could carry with them, for a purposeentirely foreign to the original intent. Mark, too, that it was not somuch labour or even democracy that charged the mine which blew up Paris, as the reactionary Empire, which, like reaction in countries more nearlyconnected with us than France, played the demagogue for its own ends, set the labourers against the liberal middle class, and crowded Pariswith operatives, bribed by employment on public works. I detest allconspiracy, whether it be that of Ignatius Loyola, or that of Karl Marx--not by conspiracy, not by dark and malignant intrigue, is society to bereformed, but by open, honest and kindly appeals to the reason andconscience of mankind. Yet, let us be just, even to the Commune. Thedestruction of the column at the Place Vendome was not a good act; butif it was in any measure the protest of labour against war, it was abetter act than ever was done by the occupant of that column. On thatcolumn it was that, when Napoleon's long orgy of criminal glory wasdrawing to a close, the hand of misery and bereavement wrote "Monster, if all the blood you have shed could be collected in this square, youmight drink without stooping. " Thiers is shooting the Communists;perhaps justly, though humanity will be relieved when the gore ceases totrickle, and vengeance ends its long repast. But Thiers has himself beenthe literary arch-priest of Napoleon and of war: of all the incendiariesin France, he has been the worst. 

The Trade Unions are new things in industrial history. The guilds of theMiddle Ages, with which the unions are often identified, wereconfederations of all engaged in the trade, masters as well as men, against outsiders. The Unions are confederations of the men against themasters. They are the offspring of an age of great capitalists, employing large bodies of hired workmen. The workmen, needy, and obligedto sell their labour without reserve, that they might eat bread, foundthemselves, in their isolation, very much at the mercy of their masters, and resorted to union as a source of strength. Capital, by collecting inthe centres of manufacture masses of operatives who thus becameconscious of their number and their force, gave birth to a power whichnow countervails its own. To talk of a war of labour against capitalgenerally would, of course, be absurd. Capital is nothing but the meansof undertaking any industrial or commercial enterprise, of setting up anAllan line of steamships or setting up a costermonger's cart. We mightas well talk of a war of labour against water power. 

Capital is the fruit of labour past, the condition of labour present, without it no man could do a stroke of work, at least of work requiringtools or food for him who uses them. Let us dismiss from our languageand our minds these impersonations, which though mere creatures of fancyplaying with abstract nouns end by depraving our sentiments andmisdirecting our actions, let us think and speak of capital impersonallyand sensibly as an economical force and as we would think and speak ofthe force of gravitation. Relieve the poor word of the big _c_, which is a greatness thrust upon it, its tyranny, and the burning hatredof its tyranny will at once cease. Nevertheless, the fact remains that aworking man standing alone, and without a breakfast for himself or hisfamily, is not in a position to obtain the best terms from a richemployer, who can hold out as long as he likes or hire other labour onthe spot. Whether Unionism has had much effect in producing a generalrise of wages is very doubtful. Mr. Brassey's book, "Work and Wages, "goes far to prove that it has not, and that while, on the one hand, theunionists have been in a fool's paradise, the masters, on the other, have been crying out before they were hurt. No doubt the general rise ofwages is mainly and fundamentally due to natural causes: theaccumulation of capital, the extension of commercial enterprise, and theopening up of new countries, which have greatly increased thecompetition for labour, and consequently, raised the price, while thenominal price of labour as well as of all other commodities has beenraised by the influx of gold. What Unionism, as I think, has evidentlyeffected, is the economical emancipation of the working man. It hasrendered him independent instead of dependent, and, in some cases almosta serf, as he was before. It has placed him on an equal footing with hisemployer, and enabled him to make the best terms for himself in everyrespect. There is no employer who does not feel that this is so, or whomMr. Brassey's statistics, or any statistics, would convince that it isnot. 

Fundamentally, value determines the price the community will give forany article, or any kind of work, just so much as it is worth. But thereis no economical deity who, in each individual case, exactly adjusts theprice to the value; we may make a good or a bad bargain, as many of usknow to our cost. One source of bad bargains is ignorance. Beforeunions, which have diffused the intelligence of the labour market, andby so doing have equalized prices, the workman hardly knew the rate ofwages in the next town. If this was true of the mechanic, it was stillmore true of the farm labourer. Practically speaking, the farm labourersin each parish of England, ignorant of everything beyond the parish, isolated and, therefore, dependent, had to take what the employers choseto give them. And what the employers chose to give them over largedistricts was ten shillings a week for themselves and their families, out of which they paid, perhaps, eighteen-pence for rent. A squire theother day, at a meeting of labourers, pointed with pride, and no doubt, with honest pride, to a labourer who had brought up a family of twelvechildren on twelve shillings a week I will venture to say the squirespent as much on any horse in his stables. Meat never touched thepeasant's lips, though game, preserved for his landlord's pleasure, wasrunning round his cottage. His children could not be educated, becausethey were wanted, almost from their infancy, to help in keeping thefamily from starving, as stonepickers, or perambulating scarecrows. Hisabode was a hovel, in which comfort, decency, morality could not dwell;and it was mainly owing to this cause that, as I have heard anexperienced clergyman say, even the people in the low quarters of citieswere less immoral than the rural poor. How the English peasants lived onsuch wages as they had, was a question which puzzled the best informed. How they died was clear enough; as penal paupers in a union workhouse. Yet Hodge's back, like that of Jacques Bonhomme, in France, boreeverything, bore the great war against Republican France; for thesquires and rectors, who made that war for class purposes, got theirtaxes back in increased rents and tithes. How did the peasantry exist, what was their condition in those days when wheat was at a hundred, oreven a hundred and thirty shillings? They were reduced to a secondserfage. They became in the mass parish paupers, and were divided, likeslaves, among the employers of each parish. Men may be made serfs, andeven slaves by other means than open force, in a country where, legally, all are free, where the impossibility of slavery is the boast of thelaw. Of late benevolence has been, abroad in the English parish, almsgiving and visiting have increased, good landlords have taken upcottage improvements. There have been harvest-homes, at which the youngsquires have danced with cottagers. But now Hodge has taken the matterinto his own hands, and it seems not without effect. In a letter which Ihave seen, a squire says, "Here the people are all contented; we (theemployers) have seen the necessity of raising their wages. " Conservativejournals begin to talk of measures for the compulsory improvement ofcottages, for limiting ground game, giving tenant right to farmers, granting the franchise to rural householders. Yes, in consequence, partly, at least of this movement, the dwellings and the generalconditions of the English peasantry will be improved, the game laws willbe abolished; the farmers pressed upon from below, and in their turnpressing upon those above, will demand and obtain tenant right; and thecountry, as well as the city householders will be admitted to thefranchise, which, under the elective system, is at once the onlyguarantee for justice to him and for his loyalty to the State. And whenthe country householder has the suffrage there will soon be an end ofthose laws of primogeniture and entail, which are deemed soConservative, but are in fact most revolutionary, since they divorce thenation from its own soil. And then there will be a happier and a moreUnited England in country as well as in town: the poor law, the hateful, degrading, demoralizing poor law will cease to exist; the huge poor-house will no longer darken the rural landscape with its shadow, inhideous contrast with the palace. Suspicion and hatred will no morecower and mutter over the cottage hearth, or round the beer-house fire:the lord of the mansion will no longer be like the man in Tennysonslumbering while a lion is always creeping nearer. Lord Malmesbury isastonished at this disturbance. He always thought the relation betweenthe lord and the pauper peasant was the happiest possible; he cannotconceive what people mean by proposing a change. But then LordMalmesbury was placed at rather a delusive point of view. If he knew thereal state of Hodge's heart he would rejoice in the prospect of achange, not only for Hodge's sake, but, as he is no doubt a good man, for his own. England will be more religious, too, as well as happier andmore harmonious, let the clergy be well assured of it. Social injusticeespecially when backed by the Church, is unfavourable to popularreligion. 

The general rise of wages may at first bring economical disturbance andpressure on certain classes, but, in the end, it brings generalprosperity, diffused civilization, public happiness, security tosociety, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and themany are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase ofproduction, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes abetter workman, which is probably true only where the workman has beenunder-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But thedearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved methods ofproduction, and especially to the invention of machinery, which givesback to the community what it has paid in increased wages a hundred or athousand fold. In Illinois, towards the close of the war, a largeproportion of the male population had been drafted or volunteered, labour had become scarce and wages had risen, but the invention ofmachinery had been so much stimulated that the harvest that year wasgreater than it had ever been before. Machinery will now be used to agreater extent on the English farms; more will be produced by fewerhands, labourers will be set free for the production of other kinds, perhaps for the cultivation of our North-West, and the British peasantwill rise from the industrial and intellectual level of a mere labourerto that of the guider of a machine. Machinery worked by relays of menis, no doubt, one of the principal solutions of our industrial problems, and of the social problems connected with them. Some seem to fancy thatit is the universal solution; but we cannot run reaping machines in thewinter or in the dark. 

High wages, and the independence of the labourers, compel economy oflabour. Economize labour, cries Lord Derby, the cool-headed mentor ofthe rich; we must give up our second under-butler. When the labourer isdependent, and his wages are low, the most precious of commodities, thatcommodity the husbanding of which is the chief condition of increasedproduction, and of the growth of national wealth, is squandered withreckless prodigality. Thirty years the labourers of Egypt wrought bygangs of a hundred thousand at a time to build the great Pyramid whichwas to hold a despot's dust. Even now, when everybody is complaining ofthe dearness of labour, and the insufferable independence of the workingclass, a piece of fine lace, we are told, consumes the labour of sevenpersons, each employed on a distinct portion of the work; and thethread, of exquisite fineness, is spun in dark rooms underground, notwithout injury, we may suppose, to the eyesight or health of thoseemployed. So that the labour movement does not seem to have yet trenchedmaterially even on the elegancies of life. Would it be very detrimentalto real civilization if we were forced, by the dearness of labour, togive up all the trades in which human life or health is sacrificed tomere fancy? In London, the bakers have struck. They are kept up frommidnight to noon, sometimes far even into the afternoon, sleepless, oronly snatching broken slumbers, that London may indulge its fancy forhot bread, which it would be much better without. The result of thestrike probably will be, besides relief to the bakers themselves, whichhas already been in part conceded, a more wholesome kind of bread, suchas will keep fresh and palatable through the day, and cleaner baking;for the wretchedness of the trade has made it vile and filthy, as is thecase in other trades besides that of the bakers. Many an article of mereluxury, many a senseless toy, if our eyes could be opened, would be seento bear the traces of human blood and tears. We are like the MerchantBrothers in Keats:--

 "With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt, Enriched from ancestral merchandize, And for them many a weary hand did swelt In torch-lit mines and noisy factories, And many once proud-quivered loins did melt In blood from stinging whip; with hollow eyes Many all day in dazzling river stood To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood. "

 "For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, And went all naked to the hungry shark; For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark Lay pierced with darts; for them alone did seethe A thousand men in troubles wide and dark: Half ignorant, they turned an easy wheel That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel. "

Among other economies of labour, if this movement among the Englishpeasantry succeeds and spreads to other countries, then will come aneconomy of soldiers' blood. Pauperism has been the grand recruitingserjeant. Hodge listed and went to be shot or scourged within an inch ofhis life for sixpence a day, because he was starving; but he will notleave five shillings for sixpence. Even in former days, the sailor, being somewhat better off than the peasant, could only be forced intothe service by the press gang, a name the recollection of which ought tomitigate our strictures on the encroaching tendencies of the workingclass. There will be a strike, or a refusal of service equivalent to astrike in this direction also. It will be requisite to raise thesoldier's pay; the maintenance of standing armies will become a costlyindulgence. I have little faith in international champagne, or even inGeneva litigation as a universal antidote to war: war will cease or belimited to necessary occasions, when the burden of large standing armiesbecomes too great to be borne. 

The strike of the English colliers again, though it causes greatinconvenience, may have its good effect. It may be a strong indicationthat mining in England is getting very deep, and that the nation mustexorcise a strict economy in the use of coal, the staple of its wealthand greatness. The lot of the colliers, grubbling all day undergroundand begrimed with dirt, is one of the hardest; the sacrifice of theirlives by accidents is terribly large; and we may well believe that thecommunity needs a lesson in favour of these underground toilers, whichcould be effectually taught only by some practical manifestation oftheir discontent. 

To the labour movement, mainly, we owe those efforts to establish betterrelations between the employer and the employed, which are known by thegeneral name of co-operation. The Comtists, in the name of theirautocrat, denounce the whole co-operative system as rotten. Their plan, if you get to the bottom of it, is in fact a permanent division of theindustrial world into capitalists. And workmen; the capitalistsexercising a rule controlled only by the influence of philosophers; theworkmen remaining in a perpetual state of tutelage, not to say ofbabyhood. A little acquaintance with this continent would probablydissipate notions of a permanent division of classes, or a permanenttutelage of any class. It is true that great commercial enterprisesrequire the guidance of superior intelligence with undivided counsels aswell as a large capital, and that co-operative mills have failed orsucceeded only in cases where very little policy and very little capitalwere required. As to co-operative stores, they are co-operative only ina very different sense: combinative would be a more accurate term; andthe department in which they seem likely to produce an alteration, isthat of retail trade, an improvement in the conditions of which, economical and moral, is assuredly much needed. But if we are told thatit is impossible to give the workmen an interest in the enterprise, soas, to make him work more willingly avoid waste and generally identifyhim self with his employer the answer is that the thing has been doneboth in England and here. An artisan working for him self and sellingthe produce of his individual skill has an interest and a pride in hiswork for which it would seem desirable to find if possible somesubstitute in the case of factory hands whose toil otherwise is mereweariness. The increased scale of commercial enterprise however is initself advantageous in this respect. In great works where an army ofworkmen is employed at Saltaire or in the Platt works at Oldham theremust be many grades of promotion and many subordinate places of trustand emolument to which the workmen may rise by industry and probitywithout capital of his own. 

The general effect of the labour movement has been as I have said theindustrial emancipation of the workmen. It has perhaps had an effectmore general still. Aided by the general awakening of social sentimentand of the feeling of social responsibility, it has practically openedour eyes to the fact that a nation and humanity at large is a communitythe good things of which all are entitled to share while all must sharethe evil things. It has forcibly dispelled the notion in which the richindolently acquiesced that enjoyment leisure culture refined affectionhigh civilization are the destined lot of the few while the destined lotof the many is to support the privileged existence of the few byunremitting coarse and jobless toil. Society has been taught that itmust at least endeavour to be just. The old ecclesiastical props ofprivilege are gone. There is no use any longer in quoting or misquotingScripture to prove that God wills the mass of mankind to be always poorand always dependent on the rich. The very peasant has now broken thatspell and will no longer believe the rector if he tells him that thisworld belongs to the squire and that justice is put off to the next. Theprocess of mental emancipation has been assisted by the bishop who wasso rash as to suggest that rural agitators should be ducked in a horsepond. Hodge has determined to find out for himself by a practicalexperiment what the will of God really is. No doubt this is an imperfectworld and is likely to remain so for our time at least; we must all workon in the hope that if we do our duty it will be well for us in the sumof things and that when the far off goal of human effort is at lastreached, every faithful servant of humanity will have his part in theresult; if it were not so, it would be better to be a brute, with nounfulfilled aspirations, than a man. But I repeat, the religion ofprivilege has lost its power to awe or to control, and if society wishesto rest on a safe foundation, it must show that it is at least trying tobe just. 

Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of anyencroachment of the labour movement on its rights. When did it commandsuch means and appliances of pleasure, such satisfaction for everyappetite and every fancy, as it commands now? When did it rear suchenchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the presentday? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuousobject for miles round. Its lord was, I daresay, consuming the income ofsome six hundred of the poor labouring families round him. The thoughtthat you are spending on yourself annually the income of six hundredlabouring families seems to me about as much as a man with a heart and abrain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, thebiggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social homage, publichonours, political power, is ready at his command. Does he fancy a seatin the British House of Commons, the best club in London, as it has beentruly called? All other claims, those of the public service included, atonce give way. I remember a question arising about a nomination for acertain constituency (a working man's constituency, by the way), whichwas cut short by the announcement that the seat was wanted by a localmillionaire. When the name of the millionaire was mentioned, surprisewas expressed. Has he, it was asked, any political knowledge orcapacity, any interest in public affairs, any ambition? The answer was"None. " "Then why does he want the seat?" "He does not want it. " "Thenwhy does he take it?" "Because his wife does. " Cleopatra, as the storygoes, displayed her mad prodigality by melting a pearl in a cup, out ofwhich she drank to Antony. But this modern money-queen could throw intoher cup of pleasure, to give it a keener zest, a share in the governmentof the greatest empire in the world. 

If the movement, by transferring something from the side of profits tothat of wages, checks in any measure the growth of these colossalfortunes, it will benefit society and diminish no man's happiness. I sayit without the slightest feeling of asceticism, and in the convictionthat wealth well made and well spent is as pure as the rill that runsfrom the mountain side. 

Real chiefs of industry have generally a touch of greatness in them andno nobleman of the peerage clings more to his tinsel than do nature'snoblemen to simplicity of life. Mr. Brassey with his millions nevercould be induced to increase his establishment his pride and pleasurewere in the guidance of industry and the accomplishment of great works. But in the hands of the heirs of these men colossal fortunes becomesocial nuisances waste labour breed luxury create unhappiness bypropagating factitious wants too often engender vice and are injuriousfor the most part to real civilization. The most malignant feelingswhich enter into the present struggle have been generated especially inEngland by the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surroundingpoverty. No really high nature covets such a position as that of aluxurious and useless millionaire. Communism as a movement is a mistakebut there is a communism which is deeply seated in the heart of everygood man and which makes him feel that the hardest of all labour isidleness in a world of toil and that the bitterest of all bread is thatwhich is eaten by the sweat of another man's brow. 

The pressure is hardest not on those who are really rich but on thosewho have hitherto on account of their education and the intellectualcharacter of their callings been numbered with the rich and who arestill clinging to the skirts of wealthy society. The best thing whichthose who are clinging to the skirts of wealthy society can do is to letgo. They will find that they have not far to fall and they will rest onthe firm ground of genuine respectability and solid comfort. By keepingup then culture they will preserve their social grade far better than bystruggling for a precarious footing among those whose habits they cannotemulate and whose hospitalities they cannot return. Then income will beincreased by the whole cost of the efforts which they now make it thesacrifice of comforts and often of necessaries to maintain theappearances of wealth. British grandees may be good models for ourmillionaires but what most of us want are models of the art of enjoyinglife thoroughly and nobly without ostentation and at a moderate cost. Itis by people of the class of which I am speaking that the servantdifficulty that doleful but ever recurring theme is most severely felt. Nor would I venture to hold out much hope that the difficulty willbecome less. It is not merely industrial out social. There is a growingrepugnance to anything like servitude which makes the female democracyprefer the independence of the factory to the subordination of thekitchen, however good the wages and however kind the mistress may be. Wemust look to inventions for saving labour, which might be adopted inhouses to a greater extent than they are now. Perhaps when the work hasbeen thus lightened and made less coarse, families may find "help, " inthe true sense, among their relatives, or others in need of a home, whowould be members of the family circle. Homes and suitable employmentmight thus be afforded to women who are now pining in enforced idleness, and sighing for Protestant nunneries, while the daily war with Bridgetwould be at an end. 

I would not make light of these inconveniences or of the presentdisturbance of trade. The tendency of a moment may be good, and yet itmay give society a very bad quarter of an hour. Nor would I attempt toconceal the errors and excesses of which the unions have been guilty, and into which, as organs of corporate selfishness, they are always indanger of running. Industrial history has a record against theworkingman as well as against the master. The guilds of the Middle Agesbecame tyrannical monopolies and leagues against society, turnedcallings open to all into mysteries confined to a privileged few, drovetrade and manufactures from the cities where they reigned to places freefrom their domination. This probably was the cause of the decay ofcities which forms the burden of complaint in the preambles to Acts ofParliament, in the Tudor period. Great guilds oppressed little guilds:strong commercial cities ruled by artisans oppressed their weakerneighbours of the same class. No one agency has done so much to raisethe condition of the workingman as machinery; yet the workingmanresisted the introduction of machinery, rose against it, destroyed it, maltreated its inventors. There is a perpetual warning in the name ofHargreaves, the workingman who, by his inventive genius, providedemployment for millions of his fellows, and was by them rewarded withoutrage and persecution. 

Flushed with confidence at the sight of their serried phalanxes andextending lines, the unionists do like most people invested withunwonted power; they aim at more than is possible or just. They fancythat they can put the screw on the community, almost without limit. Butthey will soon find out their mistake. They will learn it from thosevery things which are filling the world with alarm--the extension ofunionism, and the multiplication of strikes. The builder strikes againstthe rest of the community, including the baker, then the baker strikesagainst the builder and the collier strikes against them both. At firstthe associated trades seem to have it all their own way. But the othertrades learn the secret of association. Everybody strikes againsteverybody else, the price of all articles rises as much as anybody'swages, and thus when the wheel has come full circle, nobody is much thegainer. In fact long before the wheel has come full circle the futilityof a universal strike will be manifest to all. The world sees before ita terrible future of unionism ever increasing in power and tyranny, butit is more likely that in a few years unionism as an instrument forforcing up wages will have ceased to exist. In the meantime the workingclasses will have impressed upon themselves by a practical experimentupon the grandest scale and of the most decisive kind the fact that theyare consumers as well as producers, payers of wages as well as receiversof wages, members of a community as well as workingmen. 

The unionists will learn also after a few trials that the communitycannot easily be cornered, at least that it cannot easily be corneredmore than once by unions any more than by gold rings at New York or porkrings at Chicago. It may apparently succumb once being unable to dowithout its bread or its newspapers or to stop buildings alreadycontracted for and commenced, but it instinctively prepares to defenditself against a repetition of the operation. It limits consumption orinvents new modes of production, improves machinery, encourages nonunion men, calls in foreigners, women, Chinese. In the end the cornerresults in loss. Cornering on the part of workingmen is not a bit worsethan cornering on the part of great financiers; in both cases alike itis as odious as anything can be, which is not actually criminal; butdepend upon it a bad time is coming for corners of all kinds. 

I speak of the community as the power with which the strikers reallyhave to deal. The master hires or organizes the workmen, but thecommunity purchases their work; and though the master when hard pressedmay in his desperation give more for the work than it is worth ratherthan at once take his capital out of the trade the community will letthe trade go to ruin without compunction rather than give more for thearticle than it can afford. Some of the colliers in England, we areinformed, have called upon the masters to reduce the price of coal, offering at the same time to consent to a reduction of their own wages. A great fact has dawned upon their minds. Note too that democraticcommunities have more power of resistance to unionist extortion thanothers, because they are more united, have a keener sense of mutualinterest, and are free from political fear. The way in which Boston, some years ago, turned to and beat a printers' strike, was a remarkableproof of this fact. 

Combination may enable, and, as I believe, has enabled the men inparticular cases to make a fairer bargain with the masters, and to getthe full market value of their labour, but neither combination nor anyother mode of negotiating can raise the value of labour or of any otherarticle to the consumer, and that which cannot raise the value cannotpermanently raise the price. 

All now admit that strikes peaceably conducted are lawful. Nevertheless, they may sometimes be anti-social and immoral. Does any one doubt it?Suppose by an accident to machinery, or the falling in of a mine, anumber of workmen have their limbs broken. One of their mates runs forthe surgeon, and the surgeon puts his head out of the window and says--"the surgeons are on strike. " Does this case much differ from that ofthe man who, in his greed, stops the wheel of industry which he isturning, thereby paralysing the whole machine, and spreading not onlyconfusion, but suffering, and perhaps starvation among multitudes of hisfellows? Language was held by some unionist witnesses, before the TradesUnion Commission, about their exclusive regard for their own interests, and their indifference to the interests of society, which was more frankthan philanthropic, and more gratifying to their enemies than to theirfriends. A man who does not care for the interests of society will find, to his cost, that they are his own, and that he is a member of a bodywhich cannot be dismembered. I spoke of the industrial objects of theInternational as chimerical. They are worse than chimerical. In itsindustrial aspect, the International was an attempt to separate theinterests of a particular class of workers throughout the world fromthose of their fellow workers, and to divide humanity against itself. Such attempts can end only in one way. 

There are some who say, in connection with this question, that you areat liberty to extort anything you can from your fellow men, provided youdo not use a pistol; that you are at liberty to fleece the sailor whoimplores you to save him from a wreck, or the emigrant who is in dangerof missing his ship. I say that this is a moral robbery, and that theman would say so himself if the same thing were done to him. 

A strike is a war, so is a lock out, which is a strike on the otherside. They are warrantable, like other wars, when justice cannot beobtained, or injustice prevented by peaceful means, and in such casesonly. Mediation ought always to be tried first and it will often beeffectual, for the wars of carpenters and builders, as well as the warsof emperors, often arise from passion more than from interest, andpassion may be calmed by mediation. Hence the magnitude of the unions, formidable as it seems, has really a pacific effect; passion is commonlypersonal or local, and does not affect the central government of a unionextending over a whole nation. The governments of great unions haveseldom recommended strikes. A strike or lock-out, I repeat, is anindustrial war, and when the war is over there ought to be peace. Constant bad relations between the masters and the men, a constantattitude of mutual hostility and mistrust, constant threats of strikingupon one side, and of locking out upon the other, are ruinous to thetrade, especially if it depends at all upon foreign orders, as well asdestructive of social comfort. If the state of feeling and the bearingof the men toward the masters, remain what they now are in some Englishtrades, kind-hearted employers who would do their best to improve thecondition of the workman, and to make him a partaker in theirprosperity, will be driven from the trade, and their places will betaken by men with hearts of flint who will fight the workman by forceand fraud, and very likely win. We have seen the full power ofassociated labour, the full power of associated capital has yet to beseen. We shall see it when instead of combinations of the employers in asingle trade, which seldom hold together, employers in all trades learnto combine. 

We must not forget that industrial wars, like other wars, however justand necessary, give birth to men whose trade is war, and who, for thepurpose of their trade are always inflaming the passions which lead towar. Such men I have seen on both sides of the Atlantic, and mosthateful pests of industry and society they are. Nor must we forget thatTrade Unions, like other communities, whatever their legal constitutionsmay be, are apt practically to fall into the hands of a small minorityof active spirits, or even into those of a single astute and ambitiousman. 

Murder, maiming and vitriol throwing are offences punishable by law. Soare, or ought to be, rattening and intimidation. But there are ways lessopenly criminal of interfering with the liberty of non-union men. Theliberty of non-union men, however, must be protected. Freedom ofcontract is the only security which the community has against systematicextortion; and extortion, practised on the community by a Trade Union, is just as bad as extortion practised by a feudal baron in his robberhold. If the unions are not voluntary they are tyrannies, and alltyrannies in the end will be overthrown. 

The same doom awaits all monopolies and attempts to interfere with thefree exercise of any lawful trade or calling, for the advantage of aring of any kind, whether it be a great East India Company, shutting thegates of Eastern commerce on mankind, or a little Bricklayers' Union, limiting the number of bricks to be carried in a hod. All attempts torestrain or cripple production in the interest of a privileged set ofproducers; all trade rules preventing work from being done in the best, cheapest and most expeditious way; all interference with a man's freeuse of his strength and skill on pretence that he is beating his mates, or on any other pretence, all exclusions of people from lawful callingsfor which they are qualified; all apprenticeships not honestly intendedfor the instruction of the apprentice, are unjust and contrary to themanifest interests of the community, including the misguided monopoliststhemselves. All alike will, in the end, be resisted and put down. Infeudal times the lord of the manor used to compel all the people to usehis ferry, sell on his fair ground, and grind their corn at his mill. Bylong and costly effort humanity has broken the yoke of old Privilege, and it is not likely to bow its neck to the yoke of the new. 

Those who in England demanded the suffrage for the working man, whourged, in the name of public safety, as well as in that of justice, thathe should be brought within the pale of the constitution, have no reasonto be ashamed of the result. Instead of voting for anarchy and publicpillage, the working man has voted for economy, administrative reform, army reform, justice to Ireland, public education. But no body of menever found political power in their hands without being tempted to makea selfish use of it. Feudal legislatures, as we have seen, passed lawscompelling workmen to give more work, or work that was worth more, forthe same wages. Working men's legislatures are now disposed to pass lawscompelling employers, that is, the community, to give the same wages forless work. Some day, perhaps, the bakers will get power into their handsand make laws compelling us to give the same price for a smaller loaf. What would the Rochdale pioneers, or the owners of any other co-operative store, with a staff of servants say if a law were passedcompelling them to give the same wages for less service? This is notright, and it cannot stand. Demagogues who want your votes will tell youthat it can stand, but those who are not in that line must pay you thebest homage in their power by speaking the truth. And if I may ventureto offer advice never let the cause of labour be mixed up with the gameof politicians. Before you allow a man to lead you in trade questions besure that he has no eye to your votes. We have a pleasing variety ofpolitical rogues but perhaps, there is hardly a greater rogue among themthan the working man's friend. 

Perhaps you will say as much or more work is done with the short hours. There is reason to hope that it in some cases it may be so. But then theemployer will see his own interest, free contract will produce thedesired result, there will be no need of compulsory law. 

I sympathize heartily with the general object of the nine hoursmovement, of the early closing movement, and all movements of that kind. Leisure well spent is a condition of civilization, and now we want allto be civilized, not only a few. But I do not believe it possible toregulate the hours of work by law with any approach to reason orjustice. One kind of work is more exhausting than another, one iscarried on in a hot room, another in a cool room, one amidst noisewearing to the nerves, another in stillness. Time is not a commonmeasure of them all. The difficulty is increased if you attempt to makeone rule for all nations disregarding differences of race and climate. Besides how in the name of justice, can we say that the man with a wifeand children to support, shall not work more if he pleases than theunmarried man who chooses to be content with less pay and to have moretime for enjoyment? Medical science pronounces, we are told, that it isnot good for a man to work more than eight hours. But supposing this tobe true and true of all kinds of work, this as has been said before isan imperfect world and it is to be feared that we cannot guarantee anyman against having more to do than his doctor would recommend. The smalltradesman, whose case receives no consideration because he forms nounion, often perhaps generally has more than is good for him of anxiety, struggling and care as well as longer business hours, than medicalscience would prescribe. Pressure on the weary brain is, at least, aspainful as pressure on the weary muscle; many a suicide proves it; yetbrains must be pressed or the wheels of industry and society would standstill. Let us all, I repeat, get as much leisure as we fairly andhonestly can; but with all due respect for those who hold the oppositeopinion, I believe that the leisure must be obtained by free arrangementin each ease, as it has already in the case of early closing, not bygeneral law. 

I cannot help regarding industrial war in this new world, rather as animportation than as a native growth. The spirit of it is brought over byBritish workmen, who have been fighting the master class in their formerhome. In old England, the land of class distinctions, the masters are aclass, economically as well as socially, and they are closely alliedwith a political class, which till lately engrossed power and made lawsin the interest of the employer. Seldom does a man in England rise fromthe ranks, and when he does, his position in an aristocratic society isequivocal, and he never feels perfectly at home. Caste runs from thepeerage all down the social scale. The bulk of the land has beenengrossed by wealthy families, and the comfort and dignity of freeholdproprietorship are rarely attainable by any but the rich. Everythingdown to the railway carriages, is regulated by aristocracy; street carscannot run because they would interfere with carriages, a city cannot bedrained because a park is in the way. The labourer has to bear a heavyload of taxation, laid on by the class wars of former days. In this newworld of ours, the heel taps of old-world flunkeyism are sometimespoured upon us, no doubt; as, on the other hand, we feel the reactionfrom the old-world servility in a rudeness of self assertion on the partof the democracy which is sometimes rather discomposing, and which weshould be glad to see exchanged for the courtesy of settled self-respect. But on the whole, class distinctions are very faint. Half, perhaps two-thirds, of the rich men you meet here have risen from theranks, and they are socially quite on a level with the rest. Everythingis really open to industry. Every man can at once invest his savings ina freehold. Everything is arranged for the convenience of the masses. Political power is completely in the hands of the people. There are nofiscal legacies of an oligarchic past. If I were one of our emigrationagents, I should not dwell so much on wages, which in fact are beingrapidly equalized, as on what wages will buy in Canada--the generalimprovement of condition, the brighter hopes, the better socialposition, the enlarged share of all the benefits which the communityaffords. I should show that we have made a step here at all eventstowards being a community indeed. In such a land I can see that theremay still be need of occasional combinations among the working men tomake better bargains with their employers, but I can see no need for theperpetual arraying of class against class or for a standing apparatus ofindustrial war. 

There is one more point which must be touched with tenderness but whichcannot be honestly passed over in silence. It could nowhere be mentionedless invidiously than under the roof of an institution which is at oncean effort to create high tastes in working men and a proof that suchtastes can be created. The period of transition from high to low wagesand from incessant toil to comparative leisure must be one of peril tomasses whom no Mechanics Institute or Literary Society as yet countsamong its members. It is the more so because there is abroad in allclasses a passion for sensual enjoyment and excitement produced by thevast development of wealth and at the same time as I suspect by thetemporary failure of those beliefs which combat the sensual appetitesand sustain our spiritual life. Colliers drinking champagne. The worldstands aghast. Well, I see no reason why a collier should not drinkchampagne if he can afford it as well as a Duke. The collier wants andperhaps deserves it more if he has been working all the week undergroundand at risk of his life. Hard labour naturally produces a craving foranimal enjoyment and so does the monotony of the factory unrelieved byinterest in the work. But what if the collier cannot afford thechampagne or if the whole of his increase of wages is wasted on it whilehis habitation remains a hovel, everything about him is still as filthy, comfortless and barbarous as ever and (saddest of all) his wife andchildren are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What ifhis powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thussurely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of theindustrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What ifinstead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence?I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equalto those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhapsthousands of dollars on his education. Every man has a right to whateverhis labour will fetch. But I do see something shocking in the appearanceof the highly paid mechanic, whenever hard times come, as a mendicant atthe door of a man really poorer than himself. Not only that Englishpoor-law, of which we spoke, but all poor-laws, formal or informal, mustcease when the labourer has the means, with proper self-control andprudence, of providing for winter as well as summer, for hard times aswell as good times, for his family as well as for himself. The traditionof a by-gone state of society must be broken. The nominally rich must nolonger be expected to take care of the nominally poor. The labourer hasceased to be in any sense a slave. He must learn to be, in every sense, a man. 

It is much easier to recommend our neighbours to change their habitsthan to change our own, yet we must never forget, in discussing thequestion between the working man and his employer, or the community, that a slight change in the habits of the working men, in England atleast, would add more to their wealth, their happiness and their hopes, than has been added by all the strikes, or by conflicts of any kind. Inthe life of Mr. Brassey, we are told that the British workman inAustralia has great advantages, but wastes them all in drink. He doesthis not in Australia alone. I hate legislative interference withprivate habits, and I have no fancies about diet. A citizen of Maine, who has eaten too much pork, is just as great a transgressor againstmedical rules, and probably just as unamiable, as if he had drunk toomuch whisky. But when I have seen the havoc--the ever increasing havoc--which drink makes with the industry, the vigour, the character of theBritish workman, I have sometimes asked myself whether in that caseextraordinary measures might not be justified by the extremity of itsdangers. 

The subject is boundless. I might touch upon perils distinct fromUnionism, which threaten industry, especially that growing dislike ofmanual labour which prevails to an alarming extent in the United States, and which some eminent economists are inclined to attribute to errors inthe system of education in the common schools. I might speak of theduties of government in relation to these disturbances, and of thenecessity, for this as well as other purposes, of giving ourselves agovernment of all and for all, capable of arbitrating impartiallybetween conflicting interests as the recognised organ of the commongood. I might speak, too, of the expediency of introducing into populareducation a more social element, of teaching less rivalry anddiscontent, more knowledge of the mutual duties of different members ofthe community and of the connection of those duties with our happiness. But I must conclude. If I have thrown no new light upon the subject, Itrust that I have at least tried to speak the truth impartially, andthat I have said nothing which can add to the bitterness of theindustrial conflict, or lead any of my hearers to forget that above allTrade Unions, and above all combinations of every kind, there is thegreat union of Humanity. 

"WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY?"

A phrase in a lecture on "The Labour Movement, " published in the_Canadian Monthly_, has been the inconsiderable cause of aconsiderable controversy in the English press and notably of a paper bythe eminent economist and moralist Mr. W. R. Greg, entitled "What isCulpable Luxury?" in the _Contemporary Review_. 

The passage of the lecture in which the phrase occurred was: "Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of anyencroachment of the Labour Movement on its rights. When did it commandsuch means and appliances of pleasure, such satisfaction for everyappetite and every fancy, as it commands now? When did it rear suchenchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the presentday? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuousobject for miles round. _Its lord was I dare say consuming the incomeof some six hundred of the poor labouring families round him_. Thethought that you are spending on yourself annually the income of sixhundred labouring families seems to me about as much as a man with aheart and a brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finesthouse, the biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, socialhomage, public honour, political power, is ready at his command" &c, &c. 

The words in italics have been separated from the context and taken asan attack on wealth. But the whole passage is a defence of labouragainst the charge of encroachment brought against it by wealth. I arguethat, if the labouring man gets rather more than he did, theinequalities of fortune and the privileges of the rich are still greatenough. In the next paragraph I say that "wealth well made and wellspent is as pure as the rill that runs from the mountain side. " Aninvidious turn has also been given to the expression "the income of sixhundred labouring families, " as though it meant that the wealthy idleris robbing six hundred labouring families of their income. It means nomore than that the income which he is spending on himself is as large assix hundred of their incomes put together. 

Mr. Greg begins with what he calls a retort courteous. He says that ifthe man with L30 000 is doing this sad thing so is the man with L3000 orL300 and everyone who allows himself anything beyond the necessaries oflife; nay, that the labouring man when he lights his pipe or drinks hisdram is as well as the rest consuming the substance of one poorer thanhimself. This argument appears to its framer irrefutable and a retort towhich there can be no rejoinder. I confess my difficulty is not so muchin refuting it as in seeing any point in it at all. What parallel canthere be between an enormous and a very moderate expenditure or betweenprodigious luxury and ordinary comfort? If a man taxes me with havingsquandered fifty dollars on a repast is it an irrefutable retort to tellhim that he has spent fifty cents? The limited and rational expenditureof an industrious man produces no evils economical, social or moral. Icontend in the lecture that the unlimited and irrational expenditure ofidle millionaires does; that it wastes labour, breeds luxury, createsunhappiness by propagating factitious wants, too often engenders viceand is injurious for the most part to real civilization. I haveobserved and I think with truth that the most malignant feelings whichenter into the present struggle between classes have been generated bythe ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding poverty. Itwould of course be absurd to say this of a man living on a small incomein a modest house and in a plain way. 

If I had said that property or all property beyond a mere sustenance istheft there would be force in Mr. Greg's retort, but as I have said orimplied nothing more than that extravagant luxury is waste andcontrasted with surrounding poverty grates on the feelings, especiallywhen those who waste are idle and those who want are the hardest workinglabourers in the world, I repeat that I can see no force in the retortat all. 

Mr. Greg proceeds to analyse the expenditure of the millionaire and tomaintain that its several items are laudable. 

First he defends pleasure grounds, gardens, shrubberies and deer parks. But he defends them on the ground that they are good things for thecommunity and thereby admits my principle. It is only against wastefulself indulgence that I have anything to say. No doubt, says Mr. Greg, if the land of a country is all occupied and cultivated, and if no moreland is easily accessible, and if the produce of other lands is notprocurable in return for manufactured articles of exchange, then aproprietor who shall employ a hundred acres in growing wine for his owndrinking, which might or would otherwise be employed in growing wheat orother food for twenty poor families who can find no other field fortheir labour, may fairly be said to be consuming, spending on himself, the sustenance of those families. If, again, he, in the midst of aswarming population unable to find productive or remunerativeoccupation, insists upon keeping a considerable extent of ground inmerely ornamental walks and gardens, and, therefore, useless as far asthe support of human life is concerned, he may be held liable to thesame imputation--even though the wages he pays to the gardeners in theone case, and the vine-dressers in the other, be pleaded in mitigationof the charge. Let the writer of this only allow, as he must, that themoral, social and political consequences of expenditure are to be takeninto account as well as the economical consequences, and he will beentirely at one with the writer whom he supposes himself to beconfuting. I have never said, or imagined, that "all land ought to beproducing food. " I hold that no land in England is better employed thanthat of the London parks and the gardens of the Crystal Palace, though Icould not speak so confidently with regard to a vast park from which allare excluded but its owner. Mr. Greg here again takes up what seems tome the strange position that to condemn excess is to condemn moderation. He says that whatever is said against the great parks and gardens of themost luxurious millionaire may equally be said against a tradesman'slittle flower-garden, or the plot of ornamental ground before thecottage windows of a peasant. I must again say that, so far fromregarding this argument as irrefutable, I altogether fail to discoverits cogency. The tradesman's little bit of green, the peasant's flower-bed, are real necessities of a human soul. Can the same thing be said ofa pleasure-ground which consumes the labour of twenty men, and of whichthe object is not to refresh the weariness of labour but to distract thevacancy of idleness?

Mr. Greg specially undertakes the defence of deer-parks. But his groundis that the deer-forests which were denounced as unproductive have beenproved to be the only mode of raising the condition and securing thewell-being of the ill-fed population. If so, "humanitarians" are readyto hold up both hands in favour of deer-forests. Nay, we are ready to dothe same if the pleasure yielded by the deer-forests bears anyreasonable proportion to the expense and the agricultural sacrifice, especially if the sportsman is a worker recruiting his exhausted brain, not a sybarite killing time. 

From parks and pleasure-grounds Mr. Greg goes on to horses; and here itis the same thing over again. The apologist first sneers at those whoobject to the millionaire's stud, then lets in the interest of thecommunity as a limiting principle, and ends by saying: "We may thenallow frankly and without demur, that if he (the millionaire) maintainsmore horses than he needs or can use, his expenditure thereon isstrictly pernicious and indefensible, precisely in the same way as itwould be if he burnt so much hay and threw so many bushels of oats intothe fire. He is destroying human food. " Now Mr. Greg has only todetermine whether a man who is keeping a score or more of carriage andsaddle horses, is "using" them or not. If he is, "humanitarians" areperfectly satisfied. 

Finally Mr. Greg comes to the case of large establishments of servants. And here, having set out with intentions most adverse to my theory, he"blesses it altogether. " "Perhaps, " he says, "of all the branches of awealthy nobleman's expenditure, that which will be condemned with mostunanimity, and defended with most difficulty, is the number ofostentatious and unnecessary servants it is customary to maintain. Forthis practice I have not a word to say. It is directly and indirectlybad. It is bad for all parties. Its reflex action on the mastersthemselves is noxious; it is mischievous to the flunkies who aremaintained in idleness, and in enervating and demoralizing luxury; it ispernicious to the community at large, and especially to the middle andupper middle classes, whose inevitable expenditure in procuring fitdomestic service--already burdensomely great--is thereby oppressivelyenhanced, till it has become difficult not only to find good householdservants at moderate wages, but to find servants who will workdiligently and faithfully for any wages at all. "

How will Mr. Greg keep up the palaces, parks, and studs, when he hastaken away the retinues of servants? If he does not take care, he willfind himself wielding the bosom of sumptuary reform in the most sweepingmanner before he is aware of it. But let me respectfully ask him, whocan he suppose objects to any expenditure except on the ground that itis directly and indirectly bad; bad for all parties, noxious to thevoluptuary himself, noxious to all about him, and noxious to thecommunity? So long as a man does no harm to himself or to anyone else, Ifor one see no objection to his supping like a Roman Emperor, onpheasants' tongues, or making shirt-studs of Koh-i-noors. 

"It is charity, " says Mr. Greg, hurling at the system of greatestablishments his last and bitterest anathema--"It is charity, andcharity of the bastard sort--charity disguised as ostentation. It feeds, clothes, and houses a number of people in strenuous and pretentiouslaziness. If almshouses are noxious and offensive to the economic mind, then, by parity of reasoning, superfluous domestics are noxious also. "And so it would seem, by parity of reasoning, or rather _afortiori_, as being fed, clothed, and housed far more expensively, and in far more strenuous and pretentious laziness, are the superfluousmasters of flunkeys. The flunkey does some work, at all events enough toprevent him from becoming a mere fattened animal. If he is required togrease and powder his head, he does work, as it seems to me, for whichhe may fairly claim a high remuneration. 

As I have said already, let Mr. Greg take in the moral, political, andsocial evils of luxury, as well as the material waste, and I flattermyself that there will be no real difference between his general view ofthe responsibilities of wealth and mine. He seems to be as convinced asI am that there is no happiness in living in strenuous and pretentiouslaziness by the sweat of other men's brows. 

Nor do I believe that even the particular phrase which has been deemedso fraught with treason to plutocracy would, if my critic examined itclosely, seem to him so very objectionable. His own doctrine, it istrue, sounds severely economical. He holds that "the natural man and theChristian" who should be moved by his natural folly and Christianity toforego a bottle of champagne in order to relieve a neighbour in want ofactual food, would do a thing "distinctly criminal and pernicious. "Still I presume he would allow, theoretically, as I am very sure hewould practically, a place to natural sympathy. He would not applaud abanquet given in the midst of a famine, although it might be clearlyproved that the money spent by the banqueters was their own, that thosewho were perishing of famine had not been robbed of it, that theirbellies were none the emptier because those of the banqueters were full, and that the cookery gave a stimulus to gastronomic art. He would not, even, think it wholly irrational that the gloom of the work-houseshould cast a momentary shadow on the enjoyments of the palace. I shouldalso expect him to understand the impression that a man of "brain, " evenone free from any excessive tenderness of "heart, " would not like to seea vast apparatus of luxury, and a great train of flunkeys devoted to hisown material enjoyment--that he would feel it as a slur on his goodsense, as an impeachment of his mental resources, and of his command ofnobler elements of happiness, and even as a degradation of his manhood. There was surely something respectable in the sentiment which made Mr. Brassey refuse, however much his riches might increase, to add to hisestablishment. There is surely something natural in the tendency, whichwe generally find coupled with greatness, to simplicity of life. Aperson whom I knew had dined with a millionaire _tete-a-tete_, withsix flunkeys standing round the table. I suspect that a man of Mr. Greg's intellect and character, in spite of his half-ascetic hatred ofplush, would rather have been one of the six than one of the two. 

While, however, I hope that my view of these matters coincidespractically with that of Mr. Greg far more than he supposes, I mustadmit that there may be a certain difference of sentiment behind. Mr. Greg describes the impressions to which I have given currency as aconfused compound of natural sympathy, vague Christianity, and dimeconomic science. Of the confusion, vagueness and dimness of our views, of course we cannot be expected to be conscious; but I own that I defer, in these matters, not only to natural feeling, but to the ethics ofrational Christianity. I still adhere to the Christian code for want ofa better, the Utilitarian system of morality being, so far as I can see, no morality at all, in the ordinary sense of the term, as it makes noappeal to our moral nature, our conscience, or whatever philosopherschoose to call the deepest part of humanity. Of course, therefore, Iaccept as the fundamental principle of human relations, and of allscience concerning them, the great Christian doctrine that "we are everyone members one of another" As a consequence of this doctrine I holdthat the wealth of mankind is morally a common store; that we aremorally bound to increase it as much, and to waste it as little, as wecan, that of the two it is happier to be underpaid than to be overpaid;and that we shall all find it so in the sum of things. There is nothingin such a view in the least degree subversive of the legal rights ofproperty, which the founders of Christianity distinctly recognised intheir teaching, and strengthened practically by raising the standard ofintegrity; nothing adverse to active industry or good business habits;nothing opposed to economic science as the study of the laws regulatingthe production and distribution of wealth; nothing condemnatory ofpleasure, provided it be pleasure which opens the heart, as I supposewas the case with the marriage feast at Cana, not the pleasure whichcloses the heart, as I fear was the case with the "refined luxury" ofthe Marquis of Steyne. 

If this is superstition, all that I can say is that I have read Strauss, Renan, Mr. Greg on the "Creed of Christendom, " and all the eminentwriters I could hear of on that side, and that I am not conscious of anybias to the side of orthodoxy, at least I have not given satisfaction tothe orthodox classes. 

Christianity, of course, in common with other systems, craves areasonable construction. Plato cannot afford to have his apologuestreated as histories. In "Joshua Davidson, " a good man is made to turnaway from Christianity because he finds that his faith will notliterally remove a mountain and cast it into the sea. But he had omittedan indispensable preliminary. He ought first to have exactly comparedthe bulk of his faith with that of a grain of Palestinian mustard seed. Mr. Greg makes sport of the text "He that hath two coats let him impartto him that hath none, " which he says he heard in his youth, but withoutever considering its present applicability. Yet in the next paragraphbut one he gives it a precise and a very important application bypronouncing that a man is not at liberty to grow wine for himself onland which other people need for food. I fail to see how the principleinvolved in this passage, and others of a similar tendency which I havequoted from Mr. Greg's paper, differ from that involved in Gospel textswhich, if I were to quote them would grate strangely upon his ear. Thetexts comprise a moral sanction; but Mr. Greg must have some moralsanction when he forbids a man to do that which he is permitted to do bylaw. Christianity, whatever its source and authority, was addressed atfirst to childlike minds, and what its antagonists have to prove is notthat its forms of expression or even of thought are adapted to suchminds, but that its principles, when rationally applied to a moreadvanced state of society, are unsound. Rightly understood it does notseem to me to enjoin anything eccentric or spasmodic, to bid you enactprimitive Orientalism in the streets of London, thrust fraternity uponwriters in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, or behave generally as if the"Kingdom of God" were already come. Your duty as a Christian is done ifyou help its coming according to the circumstances of your place insociety and the age in which you live. 

Of course, in subscribing to the Christian code of ethics, one laysoneself open to "retorts corteous" without limit. But so one does insubscribing to any code, or accepting any standard, whether moral or ofany other kind. 

I do not see on what principle Mr. Greg would justify, if he doesjustify, any sort of charitable benefactions. Did not Mr. Peabody givehis glass of champagne to a man in need? He might have spent all hismoney on himself if he had been driven to building Chatsworths, andhanging their walls with Raffaelles. How will he escape the reproach ofhaving done what was criminal and pernicious? And what are we to say ofthe conduct of London plutocrats who abetted his proceedings by theirapplause though they abstained from following his example? Is there anyapology for them at all but one essentially Christian? Not thatChristianity makes any great fuss over munificence, or gives politicaleconomy reasonable ground for apprehension on that score. Plutocracydeifies Mr. Peabody; Christianity measures him and pronounces hismillions worth less than the widow's mite. 

In my lecture I have applied my principles, or tried to apply them, fairly to the mechanic as well as to the millionaire. I have deprecated, as immoral, a resort to strikes solely in the interest of the strikers, without regard to the general interests of industry and of the communityat large. What has my critic to say, from the moral point of view, tothe gas stokers who leave London in the dark, or the colliers who, instruggling to raise their own wages, condemn the ironworkers to "clamm"for want of coal?

I would venture to suggest that Mr. Greg somewhat overrates in his paperthe beneficence of luxury as an agent in the advancement ofcivilization. "Artificial wants, " he says, "what may be termedextravagant wants, the wish to possess something beyond the barenecessaries of existence; the taste for superfluities and luxuriesfirst, the desire for refinements and embellishments next; the cravingfor the higher enjoyments of intellect and art as the final stage--theseare the sources and stimulants of advancing civilization. It is thesedesires, these needs, which raise mankind above mere animal existence, which, in time and gradually, transform the savage into the culturedcitizen of intelligence and leisure. Ample food once obtained, he beginsto long for better, more varied, more succulent food; the richernutriment leads on to the well-stored larder and the well-filled cellar, and culminates in the French cook. " The love of truth, the love ofbeauty, the effort to realize a high type of individual character, and ahigh social ideal, surely these are elements of progress distinct fromgastronomy, and from that special chain of gradual improvement whichculminates in the French cook. It may be doubted whether French cookerydoes always denote the acme of civilization. Perhaps in the case of thetypical London Alderman, it denotes something like the acme ofbarbarism, for the barbarism of the elaborate and expensive gluttonsurely exceeds that of the child of nature who gorges himself on theflesh which he has taken in hunting: not to mention that the child ofnature costs humanity nothing, whereas the gourmand devours the labourof the French cook and probably that of a good many assistants andpurveyors. 

The greatest service is obviously rendered by any one who can improvehuman food. "The man is what he eats, " is a truth though somewhat toobroadly stated. But then the improvement must be one ultimately if notimmediately accessible to mankind in general. That which requires aFrench cook is accessible only to a few. 

Again, in setting forth the civilizing effects of expenditure, Mr. Greg, I think, rather leaves out of sight those of frugality. The Florentines, certainly the leaders of civilization in their day, were frugal in theirpersonal habits, and by that frugality accumulated the public wealthwhich produced Florentine art, and sustained a national policy eminentlygenerous and beneficent for its time. 

Moreover, in estimating the general influence of great fortunes, Mr. Greg seems to take a rather sanguine view of the probable character andconduct of their possessors. He admits that a broad-acred peer oropulent commoner "may spend his L30, 000 a year in such a manner as to bea curse, a reproach, and an object of contempt to the community, demoralizing and disgusting all around him, doing no good to others, andbringing no real enjoyment to himself. " But he appears to think that thenormal case, and the one which should govern our general views andpolicy upon the subject, is that of a man "of refined taste andintellect expanded to the requirements of his position, managing hisproperty with care and judgment, so as to set a feasible example to lesswealthy neighbours; prompt to discern and to aid useful undertakings, tosuccour striving merit, unearned suffering, and overmatched energy. ""Such a man, " he says, in a concluding burst of eloquence, "if hisestablishment in horses and servants is not immoderate, although hesurrounds himself with all that art can offer to render life beautifuland elegant though he gathers round him the best productions of theintellect of all countries and ages, though his gardens and his park aremodels of curiosity and beauty, though he lets his ancestral trees rotin their picturesque mutility instead of converting them into profitabletimber, and disregards the fact that his park would be more productiveif cut up into potato plots though, in fine he lives in the very heightof elegant, refined and tasteful luxury--I should hesitate to denounceas consuming on himself the incomes of countless labouring families, andI should imagine that he might lead his life of temperate and thoughtfuljoy quietly conscious that his liberal expenditure enabled scores ofthese families as well as artists and others to exist in comfort andwithout either brain or heart giving way under the burdensomereflection. "

It must be by a slip of the pen such as naturally occurs amidst the glowof an enthusiastic description that the writer speaks of people asenabling others to subsist by their expenditure. It is clear that peoplecan furnish subsistence to themselves or others only by production. Arich idler may appear to give bread to an artist or opera girl but thebread really comes not from the idler but from the workers who pay hisrents; the idler is at most the channel of distribution. The munificenceof monarchs who generously lavish the money of the taxpayer is afamiliar case of the same fallacy. This is the illusion of the Irishpeasant whose respect for the spendthrift "gentleman" and contempt forthe frugal "sneak" Mr. Greg honours with a place among the seriouselements of an economical and social problem. 

But not to dwell on what is so obvious how many let me ask, of thepossessors of inherited wealth in England or in any other country, fulfil or approach Mr. Greg's ideal? I confess that, as regards the massof the English squires the passage seems to me almost satire. Refinedtaste and expanded intellect, promptness to discern and aid strivingmerit and unearned suffering, life surrounded with all that art can doto render it beautiful and elegant, the best productions of intellectgathered from all intellects and ages--I do not deny that Mr. Greg hasseen all this, but I can hardly believe that he has seen it often, and Isuspect that there are probably people not unfamiliar with the abodes ofgreat landowners who have never seen it at all. Not to speak of artistsand art, what does landed wealth do for popular education? It appearsfrom the Popular Education Report of 1861 (p. 77) that in a districttaken as a fair specimen, the sum of L4, 518, contributed by voluntarysubscription towards the support of 168 schools, was derived from thefollowing sources:

169 clergymen contributed L1, 782 or L10 10 0 each399 landowners " 2, 127 " 5 6 0 "2l7 occupiers " 200 " 18 6 "102 householders " 181 " 1 15 6 "141 other persons " 228 " 1 12 4 "

The rental of the 399 landowners was estimated at, L650, 000 a year. Judging from the result of my own observations, I should not have beenat all surprised if a further analysis of the return had shown that notonly the contributions of the clergy but those of retired professionalmen and others with limited incomes were, in proportion, far greaterthan those of the leviathans of wealth. 

To play the part of Mr. Greg's ideal millionaire, a man must have notonly a large heart but a cultivated mind; and how often are educatorssuccessful in getting work out of boys or youths who know that they havenot to make their own bread?

In my lecture I have drawn a strong distinction, though Mr. Greg has notobserved it, between hereditary wealth and that which, however great, and even, compared with the wages of subordinate producers, excessive, is earned by industry. Wealth earned by industry is, for obviousreasons, generally much more wisely and beneficially spent thanhereditary wealth. The self-made millionaire must at all events, have anactive mind. The late Mr. Brassey was probably one man in a hundred evenamong self-made millionaires; among hereditary millionaires he wouldhave been one in a thousand. Surely we always bestow especial praise onone who resists the evil influences of hereditary wealth, and surely ourpraise is deserved. 

The good which private wealth has done in the way of patronizingliterature and art is, I am convinced, greatly overrated. The beneficentpatronage of Lorenzo di Medici is, like that of Louis XIV. , achronological and moral fallacy. What Lorenzo did was, in effect, tomake literature and art servile and in some cases to taint them with thepropensities of a magnificent debauchee. It was not Lorenzo, nor anynumber of Lorenzos, that made Florence, with her intellect and beauty, but the public spirit, the love of the community, the intensity of civiclife, in which the interest of Florentine history lies. The decree ofthe Commune for the building of the Cathedral directs the architect tomake a design "of such noble and extreme magnificence that the industryand skill of men shall be able to invent nothing grander or morebeautiful, " since it had been decided in Council that no plan should beaccepted "unless the conception was such as to render the work worthy ofan ambition which had become very great, inasmuch as it resulted fromthe continued desires of a great number of citizens united in one solewill. "

I believe, too, that the munificence of a community is generally wiserand better directed than that of private benefactors. Nothing can bemore admirable than the munificence of rich men in the United States. But the drawback in the way of personal fancies and crochets is so greatthat I sometimes doubt whether future generations will have reason tothank the present, especially as the reverence of the Americans forproperty is so intense that they would let a dead founder breed anypestilence rather than touch the letter of his will. 

Politically, no one can have lived in the New World without knowing thata society in which wealth is distributed rests on an incomparably saferfoundation than one in which it is concentrated in the hands of a few. British plutocracy has its cannoneer; but if the cannoneer happens totake fancies into his head the "whiff of grapeshot" goes the wrong way. 

Socially, I do not know whether Mr. Greg has been led to consider theextent to which artificial desires, expensive fashions, and conventionalnecessities created by wealth, interfere with freedom of intercourse andgeneral happiness. The _Saturday Review_ says:

"All classes of Her Majesty's respectable subjects are always doingtheir best to keep up appearances, and a very hard struggle many of usmake of it. Thus a mansion in Belgrave Square ought to mean a corpulenthall-porter, a couple of gigantic footmen, a butler and an under-butlerat the very least, if the owner professes to live op to his socialdignities. If our house is in Baker or Wimpole street, we must certainlyhave a manservant in sombre raiment to open our door, with a hobbledehoyor a buttons to run his superior's messages. In the smart, althoughsomewhat dismal, small squares in South Kensington and the Westernsuburbs, the parlourmaid must wear the freshest of ribbons and trimmestof bows, and be resplendent in starch and clean coloured muslins. So itgoes on, as we run down the gamut of the social scale; our ostentatiousexpenditure must be in harmony throughout with the stuccoed facadebehind which we live, or the staff of domestics we parade. We are aware, of course, as our incomes for the most part are limited, and as we areall of us upon our mettle in the battle of life that we must pinchsomewhere if appearances are to be kept up. We do what we can in secrettowards balancing the budget. We retrench on our charities, save on ourcoals, screw on our cabs, drink the sourest of Bordeaux instead of moregenerous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable, and systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swaggersuccessfully in the face of a critical and carping society. But withthe most of us if our position is an anxious one; it is of our ownmaking and if we dared to be eccentrically rational it might be verytolerable. "

Nor is this the worst. The worst is the exclusion from society of thepeople who do not choose to torture and degrade themselves in order tokeep up appearances and who are probably the best people of all. Theinterference of wealth and its exigencies with social enjoyment is Isuspect a heavy set off against squirearchical patronage of intellectand art. 

Those who believe that the distribution of wealth is more favourable tohappiness and more civilizing than its concentration will of course voteagainst laws which tend to artificial concentration of wealth such asthose of primogeniture and entail. This they may do without advocatingpublic plunder though it suits plutocratic writers to confound the two. For my own part I do not feel bound to pay to British plutocracy arespect which British plutocracy does not pay to humanity. Some of itsorgans are beginning to preach doctrines revolting to a Christian and toany man who has not banished from his heart the love of his kind and wehave seen it when its class passions were excited show a temper as cruelas that of any Maratist or Petroleuse. But so far from attacking theinstitution of property [Footnote: The _Saturday Review_ some timeago charged me with proposing to confiscate the increase in the value ofland. I never said anything of the kind nor anything I believe thatcould easily be mistaken for it. ] I have as great a respect for it asany millionaire can have and as sincerely accept and uphold it as thecondition of our civilization. There is nothing inconsistent with thisin the belief that among the better part of the race property is beinggradually modified by duty or in the surmise that before humanityreaches its distant goal property and duty will alike be merged inaffection. 

A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 

The vast works of the railway and steamboat age called into existence, besides the race of great engineers, a race of great organizers anddirectors of industry, who may be generally termed Contractor. Amongthese no figure was more conspicuous than that of Mr. Brassey, a life ofwhom has just been published by Messrs. Bell and Daldy. Its author isMr. Helps, whose name is a guarantee for the worthy execution of thework. And worthily executed it is, in spite of a little Privy Councilsolemnity in the reflections, and a little "State Paper" in the style. The materials were collected in an unusual way--by examining thepersons who had acted under Mr. Brassey, or knew him well, and takingdown their evidence in shorthand. The examination was conducted by Mr. Brassey, jun. , who prudently declined to write the biography himself, feeling that a son could not speak impartially of his father. The resultis that we have materials for a portrait, which not only is veryinteresting in itself but, by presenting the image of beneficence in anemployer, may help to mediate between capital and labour in a time ofindustrial war. 

Mr. Helps had been acquainted with Mr. Brassey, and had once received avisit from him on official business of difficulty and importance. Heexpected, he says, to see a hard, stern, soldierly sort of person, accustomed to sway armies of working-men in an imperious fashion. Instead of this he saw an elderly gentleman of very dignified appearanceand singularly graceful manners--"a gentleman of the old school. " "Hestated his case, no, I express myself wrongly; he did _not_ statehis case, he _understated_ it; and there are few things moreattractive in a man than that he should be inclined to understate ratherthan overstate his own case. " Mr. Brassey was also very brief, and whenhe went away, Mr. Helps, knowing well the matter in respect to which hisvisitor had a grievance, thought that, if it had been his own case, heshould hardly have been able to restrain himself so well, and speak withso little regard to self-interest, as Mr. Brassey had done. Of all thepersons whom Mr. Helps had known, he thought Mr. Brassey most resembledthat perfect gentleman and excellent public man, Lord Herbert of Lea. 

Mr. Helps commences his work with a general portrait. According to thisportrait, the most striking feature in Mr. Brassey's character wastrustfulness, which he carried to what might appear an extreme. He chosehis agents with care, but, having chosen them, placed implicitconfidence in them, trusting them for all details, and judging byresults. He was very liberal in the conduct of business. His temperamentwas singularly calm and equable, not to be discomposed by success orfailure, easily throwing off the burden of care, and, when all had beendone that could be done, awaiting the result with perfect equanimity. Hewas very delicate in blaming, his censure being always of the gentlestkind, evidently reluctant, and on that account going more to the heart. His generosity made him exceedingly popular with his subordinates andwork-men, who looked forward to his coming among them as a festiveevent; and, when any disaster occurred in the works, the usual parts ofemployer and employed were reversed--the employer it was who framed theexcuses and comforted the employed. He was singularly courteous, andlistened to everybody with respect; so that it was a marked thing whenhe went so far as to say of a voluble and empty chatterer, that "thepeas were overgrowing the stick. " His presence of mind was great; he hadin an eminent degree, as his biographer remarks, what Napoleon called"two o'clock in the morning courage, " being always ready, if called upin the middle of the night, to meet any urgent peril; and his facultieswere stimulated, not overcome, by danger. He had a perfect hatred ofcontention, and would not only refuse to take any questionableadvantage, but would rather even submit to be taken advantage of--agenerosity which turned to his account. In the execution of anyundertaking, his anxiety was that the work should be done quickly anddone well. Minor questions, unprovided for by specific contract, he leftto be settled afterwards. In his life he had only one regular law-suit. It was in Spain, about the Mataro line, and into this he was drawn byhis partner against his will. He declared that he would never haveanother, "for in nineteen cases out of twenty you either gain nothing atall, or what you do gain does not compensate you for the worry andanxiety the lawsuit occasions you. " In case of disputes between hisagents and the engineers, he quietly settled the question by referenceto the "gangers. "

In order to find the key to Mr. Brassey's character, his biographer tookcare to ascertain what was his "ruling passion. " He had none of theordinary ambitions for rank, title, or social position. "His greatambition--his ruling passion--was to win a high reputation for skill, integrity, and success in the difficult vocation of a contractor forpublic works; to give large employment to his fellow-countrymen; bymeans of British labour and British skill to knit together foreigncountries; and to promote civilization, according to his view of it, throughout the world. " "Mr. Brassey, " continues Mr. Helps, "was, inbrief, a singularly trustful, generous, large-hearted, dexterous, rulingkind of personage; blessed with a felicitous temperament for bearing theresponsibility of great affairs. " In the military age he might have beena great soldier, a Turenne or a Marlborough, if he could have brokenthrough the aristocratic barrier which confined high command to theprivileged few; in the industrial age he found a more beneficent road todistinction, and one not limited to the members of a caste. 

Mr. Brassey's family is stated by his biographer to have come over withthe Conqueror. If Mr. Brassey attached any importance to his pedigree(of which there is no appearance) it is to be hoped that he was able tomake it out more clearly than most of those who claim descent fromcompanions of the Conqueror. Long after the Conquest--so long, indeed, as England and Normandy remained united under one crown--there was aconstant flow of Norman immigration into England, and England swarmswith people bearing Norman or French names, whose ancestors wereperfectly guiltless of the bloodshed of Hastings, and made theirentrance into the country as peaceful traders, and, perhaps, in evenhumbler capacities. What is certain is that the great contractor sprangfrom a line of those small landed proprietors, once the pillars ofEngland's strength, virtue and freedom, who, in the old country havebeen "improved off the face of the earth" by the great landowners, whilethey live again on the happier side of the Atlantic. A sound morality, freedom from luxury, and a moderate degree of culture, are the heritageof the scion of such a stock. Mr. Brassey was brought up at home till hewas twelve years old, when he was sent to school at Chester. At sixteenhe was articled to a surveyor, and as an initiation into great works, hehelped, as a pupil, to make the surveys for the then famous Holyheadroad. His master, Mr. Lawton, saw his worth, and ultimately took himinto partnership. The firm set up at Birkenhead, then a very smallplace, but destined to a greatness which, it seems, Mr. Lawton had theshrewdness to discern. At Birkenhead Mr. Brassey did well, of course;and there, after a time, he was brought into contact with GeorgeStephenson, and by him at once appreciated and induced to engage inrailways. The first contract which he obtained was for the PembridgeViaduct, between Stafford and Wolverhampton, and for this he was enabledto tender by the liberality of his bankers, whose confidence, like thatof all with whom he came into contact, he had won. Railway-making was atthat time a new business, and a contractor was required to meet greatdemands upon his organizing power; the system of sub-contracts, which somuch facilitates the work, being then only in its infancy. From GeorgeStephenson Mr. Brassey passed to Mr. Locke, whose great coadjutor hespeedily became. And now the question arose whether he should venture toleave his moorings at Birkenhead and launch upon the wide sea ofrailroad enterprise. His wife is said, by a happy inspiration, to havedecided him in favour of the more important and ambitious sphere. Shedid so at the sacrifice of her domestic comfort; for in the prosecutionof her husband's multifarious enterprises they changed their residenceeleven times in the next thirteen years, several times to places abroad;and little during those years did his wife and family see of Mr. Brassey. 

A high place in Mr. Brassey's calling had now been won, and it had beenwon not by going into rings or making corners, but by treading steadilythe steep path of honour. Mr. Locke was accused of unduly favouring Mr. Brassey. Mr. Helps replies that the partiality of a man like Mr. Lockemust have been based on business grounds. It was found that when Mr. Brassey had undertaken a contract, the engineer-in-chief had little todo in the way of supervision. Mr. Locke felt assured that the bargainwould be not only exactly but handsomely fulfilled, and that no excusewould be pleaded for alteration or delay. After the fall of a greatviaduct it was suggested to Mr. Brassey that, by representing his case, he might obtain a reduction of his loss. "No, " was his reply, "I havecontracted to make and maintain the road, and nothing shall preventThomas Brassey from being as good as his word. "

As a contractor on a large scale, and especially as a contractor forforeign railroads, Mr. Brassey was led rapidly to develop the system ofsub-contracting. His mode of dealing with his sub-contractors, however, was peculiar. They did not regularly contract with him, but he appointedthem their work, telling them what price he should give for it. Theywere ready to take his word, knowing that they would not suffer by sodoing. The sub-contractor who had made a bad bargain, and found himselfin a scrape, anxiously looked for the coming of Mr. Brassey. "Mr. Brassey, " says one of the witnesses examined for this biography, "came, saw how matters stood, and invariably satisfied the man. If a cuttingtaken to be clay turned out after a very short time to be rock, the sub-contractor would be getting disheartened, yet he still persevered, looking to the time when Mr. Brassey should come. He came, walking alongthe line as usual with a number of followers, and on coming to thecutting he looked round, counted the number of waggons at the work, scanned the cutting, and took stock of the nature of the stuff. "This isvery hard, " said he to the sub-contractor. "Yes, it is a pretty dealharder than I bargained for. " Mr. Brassey would linger behind, allowingthe others to go on, and then commence the following conversation: "Whatis your price for this cutting?" "So much a yard, Sir. " "It is veryevident you are not getting it out for that price. Have you asked forany advance to be made to you for this rock?" "Yes, sir, but I can makeno sense of them. " "If you say that your price is so much, it is quiteclear that you do not do it for that. I am glad that you have perseveredwith it; but I shall not alter your price, it must remain as it is; butthe rock must be measured for you twice. Will that do for you?" "Yes, very well indeed, and I am very much obliged to you, Sir. " "Very well, go on; you have done very well in persevering, and I shall look to youagain. " One of these tours of inspection would often cost Mr. Brassey athousand pounds. "

Mr. Brassey, like all men who have done great things in the practicalworld, knew his way to men's hearts. In his tours along the line heremembered even the navvies, and saluted them by their names. 

He understood the value of the co-operative principle as a guarantee forhearty work. His agents were made partakers in his success, and hefavoured the butty-gang system--that of letting work to a gang of adozen men, who divide the pay, allowing something extra to the head ofthe gang. 

Throughout his life it was a prime object with him to collect around hima good staff of well-tried and capable men. He chose well, and adheredto his choice. If a man failed in one line, he did not cast him off, buttried him in another. It was well known in the labour market that bewould never give a man up if he could help it. He did not even give menup when they had gone to law with him. In the appendix is a letterwritten by him to provide employment for a person who "had by some meansgot into a suit or reference against him, " but whom he described as"knowing his work well. " In hard times he still kept his staff togetherby subdividing the employment. 

Those social philosophers who delight in imagining that there is noengineering skill, or skill of any kind, in England, have to account forthe fact that a large proportion of the foreign railways are of Britishconstruction. The lines built by Mr. Brassey form an imposing figure notonly on the map of England, but on those of Europe, North and SouthAmerica, and Australia. The Paris and Rouen Railway was the first of theseries. In passing to the foreign scene of action new difficulties hadto be encountered, including that of carrying over, managing and housinglarge bodies of British navvies; and Mr. Brassey's administrative powerswere further tried and more conspicuously developed. The railway army, under its commander-in-chief, was now fully organized. "If, " says Mr. Helps, "we look at the several persons and classes engaged, they may beenumerated thus:--There were the engineers of the company or of thegovernment who were promoters of the line. There were the principalcontractors, whose work had to satisfy these engineers; and there werethe agents of the contractors to whom were apportioned the severallengths of the line. These agents had the duties, in some respects, of acommissary-general in an army; and for the work to go on well, it wasnecessary that they should be men of much intelligence and force ofcharacter. Then there were the various artizans, such as bricklayers andmasons, whose work, of course, was principally that of constructing theculverts, bridges, stations, tunnels and viaducts, to which points ofthe work the attention of the agents had to be carefully directed. Again, there were the sub-contractors, whose duties I have enumerated, and under them were the gangers, the corporals, as it were, in thisgreat army, being the persons who had the control of small bodies ofworkmen, say twenty or more. Then came the great body of navvies, theprivates of the army, upon whose endurance and valour so much depended. "

There is a striking passage in one of the Erckmann-Chatrian novels, depicting the French army going into action, with its vast bodies oftroops of all arms moving over the whole field, marshalled by perfectdiscipline and wielded by the single will of Napoleon. The army ofindustry when in action also presented a striking appearance in its way. I think, says one of Mr. Brassey's time keepers with professionalenthusiasm, as fine a spectacle as any man could witness who isaccustomed to look at work is to see a cutting in full operation withabout twenty waggons being filled, every man at his post, and every manwith his shirt open working in the heat of the day, the ganger walkingabout and everything going like clockwork. Such an exhibition ofphysical power attracted many French gentlemen who came on to thecuttings at Paris and Rouen and looking at the English workmen withastonishment said _Mon Dieu, les Anglais comme ils travaillent!_Another thing that called forth remark was the complete silence thatprevailed amongst the men. It was a fine sight to see the Englishmenthat were there with their muscular arms and hands hairy and brown. 

The army was composed of elements as motley as ever met under anycommander. On the Paris and Rouen Railway eleven languages were spoken--English, Erse, Gaelic, Welsh, French, German, Belgian (Flemish), Dutch, Piedmontese, Spanish, and Polish. A common lingo naturally sprang uplike the Pigeon English of China. But in the end it seems many of thenavvies learnt to speak French pretty well. We are told that at firstthe mode in which the English instructed the French was of a veryoriginal character. They pointed to the earth to be moved or the waggonto be filled said the word d--n emphatically, stamped their feet andsomehow or other their instructions thus conveyed were generallycomprehended by the foreigners. It is added however that this form ofinstruction was only applicable in very simple cases. 

The English navvy was found to be the first workman in the world. Somenavvies utterly distanced in working power the labourers of all othercountries. The French at first earned only two francs a day to theEnglishman's four and a half, but with better living, more instruction, and improved tools (for the French tools were very poor at first) theFrenchmen came to earn four francs. In the severe and dangerous work ofmining, however the Englishman maintained his superiority in nerve andsteadiness. The Piedmontese were very good hands especially for cuttingrock and at the same time well conducted, sober and saving. TheNeapolitans would not take any heavy work, but they seem to have beentemperate and thrifty. The men from Lucca ranked midway between thePiedmontese and the Neapolitans. The Germans proved less enduring thanthe French; those employed, however, were mostly Bavarians. The Belgianswere good labourers. In the mode of working, the foreign labourers hadof course much to learn from the English, whose experience in railway-making had taught them the most compendious processes for moving earth. 

Mr. Hawkshaw, the engineer, however says, as to the relative cost ofunskilled labour in different countries: "I have come to the conclusionthat its cost is much the same in all. I have had personal experience inSouth America, in Russia, and in Holland, as well as in my own country, and, as consulting engineer to some of the Indian and other foreignrailways. I am pretty well acquainted with the value of Hindoo and otherlabour; and though an English labourer will do a larger amount of workthan a Creole or a Hindoo, yet you have to pay them proportionatelyhigher wages. Dutch labourers are, I think, as good as English, ornearly so; and Russian workmen are docile and easily taught, and readilyadopt every method shown to them to be better than their own. "

The "navvies, " though rough, seem not to have been unmanageable. Thereare no trades' unions among them, and they seldom strike. Brandy beingcheap in France, they were given to drink, which was not the Frenchhabit: but their good nature, and the freedom with which they spenttheir money, made them popular, and even the _gendarmes_ soon foundout the best way of managing them. They sometimes, but not generally, got unruly on pay day. They came to their foreign work without wife orfamily. The unmarried often took foreign wives. It is pleasant to hearthat those who had wives and families in England sent home moneyperiodically to them; and that they all sent money often to theirparents. They sturdily kept their English habits and their Englishdress, with the high-low boots laced up, if they could possibly get themmade. 

The multiplicity of schemes now submitted to Mr. Brassey brought out hispowers of calculation and mental arithmetic, which appear to have beenvery great. After listening to a multitude of complicated details, hewould arrive mentally in a few seconds at the approximate cost of aline. He made little use of notes, trusting to his memory, which, naturally strong, was strengthened by habit. Dealing with hundreds ofpeople, he kept their affairs in his head and at every halt in hisjourneys even for a quarter of an hour at a railway station he would sitdown and write letters of the clearest kind. His biographer says that hewas one of the greatest letter writers ever known. 

If he ever got into serious difficulties it was not from miscalculationbut from financial embarrassment which in 1866 pressed upon him in sucha manner and with such severity that his property of all kinds waslargely committed and he weathered the storm only by the aid of thestaunch friends whom his high qualities and honourable conduct hadwedded to his person and his fortunes. In the midst of his difficultieshe pushed on his works to their conclusion with his characteristicrapidity. His perseverance supported his reputation and turned thewavering balance in his favour. The daring and vigorous completion ofthe Lemberg and Czarnovitz works especially had this good effect and anincident in connection with them showed the zeal and devotion which Mr. Brassey's character inspired. The works were chiefly going on at Lembergfive hundred miles from Vienna and the difficulty was, how to get themoney to pay the men from Vienna to Lemberg, the intervening countrybeing occupied by the Austrian and Prussian armies. Mr. Brassey'scoadjutor and devoted friend Mr. Ofenheim, Director General of theCompany, undertook to do it. He was told there was no engine but hefound an old engine in a shed. Next he wanted an engine driver and hefound one but the man said that he had a wife and children and that hewould not go. His reluctance was overcome by the promise of a highreward for himself and a provision in case of death for his wife andfamily. The two jumped on the old engine and got up steam. They thenstarted and ran at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour between thesentinels of the opposing armies who were so surprised, Mr. Ofenheimsays, that they had not time to shoot him. His only fear was that theremight be a rail up somewhere. But he got to Lemberg and paid the men whowould otherwise have gone home, leaving the line unfinished for thewinter. The Emperor of Austria might well ask, Who is this Mr. Brassey, the English contractor for whom men are to be found who work with suchzeal and risk their lives? In recognition of a power which the Emperorhad reason to envy he sent Mr. Brassey the Cross of the Iron Crown. 

It was only in Spain, the land where two and two make five, that Mr. Brassey's powers of calculation failed him. He and his partners lostlargely upon the Bilbao railway. It seems that there was a mistake as tothe nature of the soil, and that the climate proved wetter than wasexpected. But the firm also forgot to allow for the ecclesiasticalcalendar, and the stoppage of work on the numberless fete days. Therewere, however, other difficulties peculiarly Spanish, --antediluvianfinance, antediluvian currency, the necessity of sending pay under aguard of clerks armed with revolvers, and the strange nature of thepeople whom it was requisite to employ--one of them, a Carlist chief, living in defiance of the Government with a tail of ruffians likehimself, who, when you would not transact business as he wished, "bivouacked" with his tail round your office and threatened to "kill youas he would a fly. " Mr. Brassey managed notwithstanding to illustratethe civilizing power of railways by teaching the Basques the use ofpaper money. 

Minor misfortunes of course occurred, such as the fall of the BarentinViaduct on the Rouen and Havre railway, a brick structure one hundredfeet high and a third of a mile in length, which had just elicited thepraise of the Minister of Public Works. Rapid execution in bad weather, and inferior mortar, were the principal causes of this accident. Byextraordinary effort the viaduct was built in less than six months, adisplay of energy and resource which the company acknowledged by anallowance of L1, 000. On the Bilbao railway some of the works weredestroyed by very heavy rains. The agent telegraphed to Mr. Brassey tocome at once, as a bridge had been washed down. There hours afterwardscame a telegraph announcing that a large bank was carried away, and nextmorning another saying that the rain continued and more damage had beendone. Mr. Brassey, turning to a friend, said, laughing: "I think I hadbetter wait till I hear that the wind has ceased, so that when I do go Imay see what is _left_ of the works, and estimate all the disastersat once, and so save a second journey. "

Mr. Brassey's business rapidly developed to an immense extent, and, instead of being contractor for one or two lines, he became a sort ofcontractor-in-chief, and a man to be consulted by all railwayproprietors. In thirty-six years be executed no less than one hundredand seventy railway and other contracts. In his residence, as in hisenterprises, he now became cosmopolitan, and lived a good deal on therail. He had the physical power to bear this life. His brother-in-lawsays, "I have known him come direct from France to Rugby having leftHavre the night before--he would have been engaged in the office thewhole day. " He would then come down to Rugby by the mail train attwelve o'clock, and it was his common practice to be on the works by sixo'clock the next morning. He would frequently walk from Rugby toNuneaton, a distance of sixteen miles. Having arrived at Nuneaton in theafternoon he would proceed the same night by road to Tamworth, and thenext morning he would be out on the road so soon that he had thereputation among his staff of being the first man on the works. He usedto proceed over the works from Tamworth to Stafford, walking the greaterpart of the distance, and would frequently proceed that same evening toLancaster in order to inspect the works there in progress, under thecontract which he had for the execution of the railway from Lancaster toCarlisle. 

In constructing the Great Northern Railway the difficulties of the FenCountry were met and surmounted. Mr. Brassey's chief agent in this wasMr. Ballard, a man self raised from the ranks of labour but indebted forthe eminence which he ultimately attained to Mr. Brassey'sdiscrimination in selecting him for the arduous undertaking. He hasborne interesting testimony to his superior's comprehensiveness andrapidity of view, the directness with which he went to the importantpoint, disregarding secondary matters and economizing his time andthought. 

The Italian Railway enterprises of Mr. Brassey owed their origin to theeconomical genius of Count Cavour and their execution drew from theCount the declaration that Mr. Brassey was one of the most remarkablemen he knew; clear-headed, cautious, yet very enterprising andfulfilling his engagements faithfully. "We never, " said the Count, "hada difficulty with him. " And he added that Mr. Brassey would make asplendid minister of public works. Mr. Brassey took shares gallantly, and, when their value had risen most generously resigned them with aview to enabling the government to interest Piedmontese investors in theundertaking. So far was he from being a maker of corners. It is justlyremarked that these Piedmontese railroads constructed by Englishenterprise were a most important link in the chain of events whichbrought about the emancipation and unification of Italy. 

Mr. Brassey has left on record the notable remark that the railway fromTurin to Novara was completed for about the same money as was spent inobtaining the Bill for the railway from London to York. If the historyof railway bills in the British Parliament, of which this statementgives us an inkling, could be disclosed, it would probably be one of themost scandalous revelations in commercial history. The contests whichled to such ruinous expense and to so much demoralization, both ofParliament and of the commercial world, were a consequence of adoptingthe system of uncontrolled competition in place of that of governmentcontrol. Mr. Brassey was in favour of the system of government control. "He was of opinion that the French policy, which did not admit theprinciple of free competition, was not only more calculated to serve theinterests of the shareholders, but more favourable to the public. Hemoreover considered that a multiplicity of parallel lines ofcommunication between the same termini, and the uncontrolled competitionin regard to the service of trains, such as exists in England, did notsecure so efficient a service for the public as the system adopted inFrance. " Mr. Thomas Brassey says that he remembers that his father, whentravelling in France, would constantly point out the superiority of thearrangements, and express his regret that the French policy had not beenadopted in England. "He thought that all the advantage of cheap serviceand of sufficiently frequent communication, which were intended to besecured for the British public under a system of free competition, wouldhave been equally well secured by adopting the foreign system, andgiving a monopoly to the interest of railway communication in a givendistrict to one company; and then limiting the exercise of that monopolyby watchful supervision on the part of the State in the interests of thepublic. " With regard to extensions, he thought that the government mighthave secured sufficient compulsory powers. There can be no sort of doubtthat this sort of policy would have saved England an enormous amount ofpecuniary loss, personal distress and public demoralization. It is apolicy, it will be observed, of government regulation, not of governmentsubsidies or construction by government. It of course implies theexistence of an administration capable of regulating a railway system, and placed above the influence of jobbery and corruption. 

For the adoption of the policy of free competition Sir Robert Peel wasespecially responsible. He said, in his own defence, that he had not athis command power to control those undertakings. Mr. Helps assumesrather characteristically that he meant official power, and draws amoral in favour of the extension of the civil service. But there is nodoubt that Peel really meant Parliamentary power. The railway men in theParliament were too strong for him and compelled him to throw overboardthe scheme of government control framed by his own committee under thepresidency of Lord Dalhousie. The moral to be drawn therefore is notthat of civil service extension, but that of the necessity of guardingagainst Parliamentary rings in legislation concerning public works. 

Of all Mr. Brassey's undertakings not one was superior in importance tothat with which Canadians are best acquainted--the Grand Trunk Railway, with the Victoria Bridge. It is needless here to describe thisenterprise, or to recount the tragic annals of the loss brought onthousands of shareholders, which financially speaking was its calamitoussequel. The severest part of the undertaking was the Victoria Bridge. "The first working season there, " says one of the chief agents, "was aperiod of difficulty, trouble and disaster. " The agents of thecontractors had no experience of the climate. There were numerousstrikes among the workmen. The cholera committed dreadful ravages in theneighbourhood. In one case, out of a gang of two hundred men, sixty weresick at one time, many of whom ultimately died. The shortness of theworking season in this country involved much loss of time. It was seldomthat the setting of the masonry was fairly commenced before the middleof August, and it was certain that all work must cease at the end ofNovember. Then there were the shoving of the ice at the beginning andbreaking up of the frosts, and the collisions between floating rafts 250feet long and the staging erected for putting together the tubes. Greatfinancial difficulties were experienced in consequence of the Crimeanwar. The mechanical difficulties were also immense, and called forextraordinary efforts both of energy and invention. The bridge, however, was completed, as had been intended, in December, 1859 and formallyopened by the Prince of Wales in the following year. "The devotion andenergy of the large number of workmen employed, " says Mr. Hodges, "canhardly be praised too highly. Once brought into proper discipline, theyworked as we alone can work against difficulties. They have left behindthem in Canada an imperishable monument of British skill, pluck, scienceand perseverance in this bridge, which they not only designed, butconstructed. "

The whole of the iron for the tubes was prepared at Birkenhead, but sowell prepared that, in the centre tube, consisting of no less than10, 309 pieces, in which nearly half a million of holes were punched, notone plate required alteration, neither was there a plate punched wrong. The faculty of invention, however, was developed in the Britishengineers and workmen by the air of the New World. A steam-traveller wasmade and sent out by one of the most eminent firms in England, after twoyears of experiments and an outlay of some thousands of pounds, whichwould never do much more than move itself about, and at last had to belaid aside as useless. But the same descriptions and drawings havingbeen shown to Mr. Chaffey, one of the sub-contractors, who "had been inCanada a sufficient length of time to free his genius from the crampedideas of early life, " a rough and ugly machine was constructed, whichwas soon working well. The same increase of inventiveness, according toMr. Hodges, was visible in the ordinary workman, when transferred fromthe perfect but mechanical and cramping routine of British industry, toa country where he has to mix trades and turn his hands to all kinds ofwork. "In England he is a machine, but as soon as he gets out to theUnited States he becomes an intellectual being. " Comparing the Germanwith the British mechanic, Mr. Hodges says, "I do not think that aGerman is a better man than an Englishman; but I draw this distinctionbetween them, that when a German leaves school he begins to educatehimself, but the Englishman does not, for, as soon as he casts off thethraldom of school, he learns nothing more unless he is forced to do it, and if he is forced to do it, he will then beat the German. AnEnglishman acts well when he is put under compulsion by circumstances. "

Labour being scarce, a number of French-Canadians were, at Mr. Brassey's suggestion, brought up in organized gangs, each having anEnglishman or an American as their leader. We are told, however, thatthey proved useless except for very light work. "They could ballast, butthey could not excavate. They could not even ballast as the Englishnavvy does, continuously working at filling for the whole day. The onlyway in which they could be useful was by allowing them to fill thewaggons, and then ride out with the ballast train to the place where theballast was tipped, giving them an opportunity of resting. Then theempty waggon went back again to be filled and so alternately restingduring the work; in that way, they did very much more. They would workfast for ten minutes and then they were 'done. ' This was not throughidleness but physical weakness. They are small men, and they are a classwho are not well fed. They live entirely on vegetable food, and theyscarcely ever taste meat. " It is natural to suppose that the want ofmeat is the cause of their inefficiency. Yet the common farm labourer inEngland, who does a very hard and long day's work, hardly tastes meat, in many counties, the year round. 

In the case of the Crimean railway, private enterprise came, in amemorable manner, to the assistance of a government overwhelmed byadministrative difficulties. A forty years peace had rusted themachinery of the war department, while the machinery of railwayconstruction was in the highest working order. Sir John Burgoyne, thechief of the engineering staff, testified that it was impossible tooverrate the services rendered by the railway, or its effects inshortening the time of the siege, and alleviating the fatigues andsufferings of the troops. The disorganization of the governmentdepartment was accidental and temporary, as was subsequently proved bythe success of the Abyssinian expedition, and, indeed, by the closingperiod of the Crimean war itself, when the British army was wellsupplied, while the French administration broke down. On the other handthe resources of private industry, on which the embarrassed governmentdrew, are always there; and their immense auxiliary power would be atonce manifested if England should become involved in a dangerous war. Itshould be remembered, too, that the crushing war expenditure in time ofpeace, which alarmists always advocate, would prevent the growth ofthose resources, and deprive England of the "sinews of war. "

The Danish railways brought the British navvy again into comparison withhis foreign rivals. Mr. Rowan, the agent of Messrs. Peto and Brassey, was greatly pleased with his Danish labourers, but, on being pressed, said, "No man is equal to the British navvy; but the Dane, from hissteady, constant labour, is a good workman, and a first-class one willdo nearly as much work in a day as an Englishman. " The Dane takes time:his habit is in summer to begin work at four in the morning, andcontinue till eight in the evening, taking five intervals of rest. 

The Danish engineers, in Mr. Rowan's judgment, are over-educated, and, as a consequence, wanting in decisiveness. "They have been in the habitof applying to their masters for everything, finding out nothing forthemselves; the consequence is that they are children, and cannot form ajudgment. It is the same in the North of Germany; the great difficultyis that you cannot get them to come to a decision. They want always toinquire and to investigate, and they never come to a result. " Thisevidence must have been given some years ago, for of late it has beenmade pretty apparent that the investigations and inquiries of the NorthGermans do not prevent their coming to a decision, or that decision fromleading to a result. Mr. Helps seizes the opportunity for a thrust atthe system of competitive examination, which has taken from the heads ofdepartments the power of "personal selection. " The answer to him isSedan. A bullet through your heart is the strongest proof which logiccan afford that the German, from whose rifle it comes, was not preventedby his knowledge of the theory of projectiles from marking his man withpromptness and taking a steady aim. That over-exertion of the intellectin youth does a man harm, is a true though not a very fruitfulproposition; but knowledge does not destroy decisiveness: it only turnsit from the decisiveness of a bull into the decisiveness of a man. Whichnations do the great works? The educated nations, or Mexico and Spain?

The Australian railways brought out two facts, one gratifying, the otherthe reverse. The gratifying fact was that the unlimited confidence whichMr. Brassey reposed in his agents was repaid by their zeal and fidelityin his service. The fact which was the reverse of gratifying was, thatthe great advantage which the English Labourer gains in Australia, fromthe higher wages and comparative cheapness of living, is counteracted byhis love of drink. 

The Argentine Railway had special importance and interest, in opening upa vast and most fruitful and salubrious region to European emigration. Those territories offer room and food for myriads. "The population ofRussia, that hard-featured country, is about 75, 000, 000, the populationof the Argentine Republic, to which nature has been so bountiful, and inwhich she is so beautiful, is about 1, 000, 000. " If ever government inthe South American States becomes more settled, we shall find themformidable rivals. 

The Indian Railways are also likely to be a landmark in the history ofcivilization. They unite that vast country and its people, bothmaterially and morally, break down caste, bring the natives from allparts to the centres of instruction, and distribute the produce of thesoil evenly and rapidly, so as to mitigate famines. The Orissa faminewould never have occurred, had Mr. Brassey's works been there. Whateffect the railways will ultimately have on British rule is anotherquestion. They multiply the army by increasing the rapidity oftransport, but, on the other hand, they are likely to diminish thatdivision among the native powers on which the Empire is partly based. Rebellion may run along the railway line as well as command. 

There were periods in Mr. Brassey's career during which he and hispartners were giving employment to 80, 000 persons, upon works requiringseventeen millions of capital for their completion. It is alsosatisfactory to know, that in the foreign countries and colonies overwhich his operations extended, he was instrumental in raising the wagesand condition of the working class, as well as in affording to the_elite_ of that class opportunities for rising to higher positions. 

His remuneration for all this, though in the aggregate very large, wasby no means excessive. Upon seventy-eight millions of money laid out inthe enterprises which he conducted, he retained two millions and a half, that is as nearly as possible three per cent. The rest of his fortuneconsisted of accumulations. Three per cent. Was not more than a fairpayment for the brain-work, the anxiety and the risk. The risk, it mustbe recollected, was constant, and there were moments at which, if Mr. Brassey had died, he would have been found comparatively poor. Hisfortune was made, not by immoderate gains upon any one transaction, butby reasonable profits in a business which was of vast extent, and owedits vast extent to a reputation, fairly earned by probity, energy andskill. We do not learn that he figured in any lobby, or formed a memberof any ring. Whether he was a Norman or not, he was too much agentleman, in the best sense of the term, to crawl to opulence by lowand petty ways. He left no stain on the escutcheon of a captain ofindustry. 

Nor when riches increased did he set his heart upon them. His heart wasset on the work rather than on the pay. The monuments and enterprise ofhis skill were more to him than the millions. He seems even to have beenrather careless in keeping his accounts. He gave away freely--as much asL200, 000, it is believed--in the course of his life. His accumulationsarose not from parsimony but from the smallness of his personalexpenses. He hated show and luxury, and kept a moderate establishment, which the increase of his wealth never induced him to extend. He seemsto have felt a singular diffidence as to his capacity for aristocraticexpenditure. The conversation turning one day on the immense fortunes ofcertain noblemen, he said, "I understand it is easy and natural enoughfor those who are born and brought up to it, to spend L50, 000 or evenL150, 000 a year; but I should be very sorry to have to undergo thefatigue of even spending L30, 000 a year. I believe such a job as thatwould drive me mad. " He felt an equally strange misgiving as to hiscapacity for aristocratic idleness. "It requires a special education, "he said, "to be idle, or to employ the twenty-four hours, in a rationalway, without any calling or occupation. To live the life of a gentleman, one must have been brought up to it. It is impossible for a man who hasbeen engaged in business pursuits the greater part of his life toretire; if he does so, he soon discovers that he has made a greatmistake. I shall not retire, but if for some good reason, I should beobliged to do so, it would be to a farm. There I would bring up stockwhich I would cause to be weighed every day, ascertaining at the sametime their daily cost, as against the increasing weight. I should thenknow when to sell and start again with another lot. "

Of tinsel, which sometimes is as corrupting to vulgar souls as money, this man seems to have been as regardless as he was of pelf. He receivedthe Cross of the Iron Crown from the Emperor of Austria. He acceptedwhat was graciously offered, but he said that, as an Englishman, he didnot know what good Crosses were to him. The circumstance reminded himthat he had received other Crosses, but he had to ask his agent whatthey were, and where they were. He was told that they were the Legion ofHonour of France, and the Chevaliership of Italy; but the Crosses couldnot be found. Duplicates were procured to be taken to Mrs. Brassey, who, her husband remarked, would be glad to possess them all. 

Such millionaires would do unmixed good in the world; but unfortunatelythey are apt to die and leave their millions, and the social influencewhich the millions confer, to "that unfeathered two-legged thing, ason. " This is by no means said with a personal reference. On thecontrary, it is evident that Mr. Brassey was especially fortunate in hisheir. We find some indication of this in a chapter towards the close ofMr. Helps' volume, in which are thrown together the son's miscellaneousrecollections of the father. The chapter affords further proof that thegreat contractor was not made of the same clay as the Fisks andVanderbilts--that he was not a mere market-rigger and money-grubber--buta really great man, devoted to a special calling. He is represented byhis son as having taken a lively interest in a wide and varied range ofsubjects--engineering subjects especially as a matter of course, but notengineering subjects alone. He studied countries and their people, evincing the utmost interest in Chicago, speculating on the futureindustrial prosperity of Canada, and imparting the results of hisobservations admirably when he got home. Like all great men, he had apoetic element in his character. He loved the beauties of nature, anddelighted in mountain scenery. He was a great sight-seer, and when hevisited a city on business, went through its churches, public buildings, and picture-galleries, as assiduously as a tourist. For half an hour hestood gazing with delight on the Maison Carree, at Nismes. For sculptureand painting he had a strong taste, and the Venus of Milo "was a joy tohim. " He had a keen eye for beauty, shapeliness and comelinesseverywhere, in porcelain, in furniture, in dress, in a well built yacht, in a well appointed regiment of horse. Society, too, he liked, in spiteof his simplicity of habits; loved to gather his friends around hisboard, and was always a genial host. For literature he had no time, buthe enjoyed oratory, and liked to hear good reading. He used to test hisson's progress in reading, at the close of each half year, by making himread aloud a chapter of the Bible. His good sense confined his ambitionto his proper sphere, and prevented him from giving ear to anysolicitations to go into politics, which he had not leisure to study, and which he knew ought not to be handled by ignorance. His own leaningswere Conservative; but his son, who is a Liberal, testifies that hisfather never offered him advice on political matters, or remonstratedwith him on a single vote which he gave in the House of Commons. It islittle to the discredit of a man so immersed in business that he shouldhave been fascinated, as he was, by the outward appearance of perfectorder presented by the French Empire and by the brilliancy of itsvisible edifice, not discerning the explosive forces which its policywas all the time accumulating in the dark social realms below; thoughthe fact that he, with all his natural sagacity, did fall into thistremendous error, is a warning to railway and steamboat politicians. 

Mr. Brassey's advice was often sought by parents who had sons to startin the world. "As usual, a disposition was shewn to prefer a careerwhich did not involve the apparent degradation of learning a tradepractically, side by side with operatives in a workshop. But my father, who had known, by his wide experience, the immense value of a technicalknowledge of a trade or business as compared with general educationaladvantages of the second order, and who knew how much more easy it is toearn a living as a skilful artisan than as a clerk, possessing a meregeneral education, always urged those who sought his advice to begin bygiving to their sons a practical knowledge of a trade. "

"My father, " says Mr. Brassey, junior, "ever mindful of his ownstruggles and efforts in early life, evinced at all times the mostanxious disposition to assist young men to enter upon a career. Thesmall loans which he advanced for this purpose, and the innumerableletters which he wrote in the hope of obtaining for his young clientshelp or employment in other quarters, constitute a bright and mosthonourable feature in his life. " His powers of letter-writing wereenormous, and, it seems to us, were exercised even to excess. So muchwriting would, at least, in the case of any ordinary man, have consumedtoo much of the energy which should be devoted to thought. Hiscorrespondence was brought with his luncheon basket when he was shootingon the moors. After a long day's journey he sat down in the coffee roomof the hotel, and wrote thirty-two letters before he went to bed. Henever allowed a letter, even a begging letter, to remain unanswered;and, says his son, "the same benignity and courtesy which marked hisconduct in every relation of life, pervaded his whole correspondence. ""In the many volumes of his letters which are preserved, I venture toaffirm that there is not the faintest indication of an ungenerous orunkindly sentiment--not a sentence which is not inspired by the spiritof equity and justice, and by universal charity to mankind. "

By the same authority we are assured that "Mr. Brassey was of asingularly patient disposition in dealing with all ordinary affairs oflife. We know how, whenever a hitch occurs in a railway journey, a greatnumber of passengers become irritated, almost to a kind of foolishfrenzy. He always took these matters most patiently. He well knew thatno persons are so anxious to avoid such detentions as the officialsthemselves, and never allowed himself to altercate with a helpless guardor distracted station-master. "

The only blemish which the son can recollect in the father's character, is a want of firmness in blaming when blame was due, and an incapacityof refusing a request or rejecting a proposal strongly urged by others. The latter defect was, in his son's judgment, the cause of the greatestdisasters which he experienced as a man of business. Both defects wereclosely allied to virtues--extreme tenderness of heart and considerationfor the feelings of others. 

"He was graceful, " says Mr. Brassey, junior, in conclusion, "in everymovement, always intelligent in observation, with an excellent commandof language, and only here and there betrayed, by some slightprovincialisms, in how small a degree he had in early life enjoyed theeducational advantages of those with whom his high commercial positionin later years placed him in constant communication. But these thingsare small in comparison to the greater points of character by which heseemed to me to be distinguished. In all he said or did, he showedhimself to be inspired by that chivalry of heart and mind which musttruly ennoble him who possesses it, and without which one cannot be aperfect gentleman. "

Mention has been made of his great generosity. One of his old agentshaving lost all his earnings, Mr. Brassey gave him several new missions, that be might have a chance of recovering himself. But the agent diedsuddenly, and his wife nearly at the same time, leaving six orphanchildren without provision. Mr. Brassey gave up, in their favour, apolicy of insurance which he held as security for several thousands, and, in addition, headed a subscription list for them with a large sum. It seems that his delicacy in giving was equal to his generosity; thatof his numberless benefactions, very few were published in subscriptionlists, and that his right hand seldom knew what his left hand did. 

His refinement was of the truly moral kind, and of the kind that tellson others. Not only was coarse and indecent language checked in hispresence, but the pain he evinced at all outbreaks of unkind feeling, and at manifestation of petty jealousies, operated strongly inpreventing any such displays from taking place before him. As one whowas the most intimate with him observed, "his people seemed to enterinto a higher atmosphere when they were in his presence, conscious, nodoubt, of the intense dislike which he had of everything that was mean, petty, or contentious. "

Mr. Helps tells us that the tender-heartedness which pervaded Mr. Brassey's character was never more manifested than on the occasion ofany illness of his friends. At the busiest period of his life he wouldtravel hundreds of miles to be at the bedside of a sick or dying friend. In his turn he experienced, in his own last illness, similarmanifestations of affectionate solicitude. Many of the persons, we aretold, who had served him in foreign countries and at home, came fromgreat distances solely for the chance of seeing once more their oldmaster whom they loved so much. They were men of all classes, humblenavvies as well as trusted agents. They would not intrude upon hisillness, but would wait for hours in the hall, in the hope of seeing himborne to his carriage, and getting a shake of the hand or a sign offriendly recognition. "The world, " remarks Mr. Helps, "is after all notso ungrateful as it is sometimes supposed to be; those who deserve to beloved generally are loved, having elicited the faculty of loving whichexists to a great extent in all of us. "

"Mr. Brassey, " we are told, "had ever been a very religious man. Hisreligion was of that kind which most of us would desire for ourselves--utterly undisturbed by doubts of any sort, entirely tolerant, not builtupon small or even upon great differences of belief. He clung resolutelyand with entire hopefulness to that creed, and abode by that form ofworship, in which he had been brought up as a child. " The religiouselement in his character was no doubt strong, and lay at the root of histender-heartedness and his charity as well as of the calm resignationwith which he met disaster, and his indifference to gain. At the time ofa great panic, when things were at the worst, he only said: "Never mind, we must be content with a little less, that is all. " This was when hesupposed himself to have lost a million. The duty of religious inquiry, which he could not perform himself, he would no doubt have recognised inthose to whose lot it falls to give their fellow-men assurance ofreligious truth. 

Mr. Brassey's wife said of him that "he was a most unworldly man. " Thismay seem a strange thing to say of a great contractor and a millionaire. Yet, in the highest sense, it was true. Mr. Brassey was not a monk; hislife was passed in the world, and in the world's most engrossing, and, as it proves in too many cases, most contaminating business. Yet, if thepicture of him presented to us be true, he kept himself "unspotted fromthe world. "

His character is reflected in the portrait which forms the frontispieceto the biography, and on which those who pursue his calling will do wellsometimes to look. 

A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 

[Footnote: Memoirs of Baron Stockmar. By his son, Baron E. Von Stockmar. Translated from the German by G. A. M. Edited by F. Max Muller. In twovolumes. London: Longman's, Green and Co. ]

Some of our readers will remember that there was at one time a greatpanic in England about the unconstitutional influence of Prince Albert, and that, connected with Prince Albert's name in the invectives of apart of the press, was that of the intimate friend, constant guest, andtrusted adviser of the Royal Family, Baron Stockmar. The suspicion wasjustified by the fact in both cases; but in the case of Baron Stockmar, as well as in that of Prince Albert, the influence appears to have beenexercised on the whole for good. Lord Aberdeen, who spoke his mind withthe sincerity and simplicity of a perfectly honest man, said ofStockmar; "I have known men as clever, as discreet, as good, and with asgood judgment; but I never knew any one who united all these qualitiesas he did. " Melbourne was jealous of his reputed influence, buttestified to his sense and worth. Palmerston disliked, we may say hated, him; but he declared him the only disinterested man of the kind he hadever known. 

Stockmar was a man of good family, who originally pursued the professionof medicine, and having attracted the notice of Prince Leopold of SaxeCoburg, the husband of Princess Charlotte, and afterwards king of theBelgians, was appointed physician in ordinary to that Prince upon hismarriage. When, in course of time, he exchanged the functions ofphysician in ordinary for those of wirepuller in ordinary, he found thatthe time passed in medical study had not been thrown away. He saidhimself, "It was a clever stroke to have originally studied medicine;without the knowledge thus acquired, without the psychological andphysiological experiences thus obtained, my _savoir faire_ wouldoften have gone a-begging. " It seems also that he practised politics onmedical principles, penetrating a political situation, or detecting apolitical disease, by the help of single expressions or acts, after themanner of medical diagnosis, and in his curative treatment endeavouringto remove as far as possible every pathological impediment, so that thehealing moral nature might be set free, and social and human laws resumetheir restorative power. He might have graduated as a politician in aworse school. 

He was not able to cure himself of dyspepsia and affections of the eye, which clung to him through life, the dyspepsia producing fluctuation ofspirits, and occasional hypochondria, which, it might have been thought, would seriously interfere with his success as a court favourite. "At onetime he astonished the observer by his sanguine, bubbling, provoking, unreserved, quick, fiery or humorous, cheerful, even unrestrainedly gaymanner, winning him by his hearty open advances where he felt himselfattracted and encouraged to confidence; at other times he was allseriousness, placidity, self-possession, cool circumspection, methodicalconsideration, prudence, criticism, even irony and scepticism. " Such isnot the portrait which imagination paints of the demeanour of a courtfavourite. But Stockmar had one invaluable qualification for the part--he had conscientiously made up his mind that it is a man's duty in lifeto endure being bored. 

The favour of a Prince of Saxe Coburg would not in itself have beenfortune. A certain Royal Duke was, as everybody who ever had the honourof being within earshot of him knew, in the habit of thinking aloud. Itwas said that at the marriage of a German prince with an Englishprincess, at which the Duke was present, when the bridegroom pronouncedthe words: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow, " a voice from thecircle responded, "The boots you stand in are not paid for. " But as itwas sung of the aggrandizement of Austria in former days--

 "Let others war, do thou, blest Austria, wed, "

so the house of Saxe Coburg may be said in later days to have beenaggrandized by weddings. The marriage of his patron with the presumptiveheiress to the Crown of England was the beginning of Stockmar'ssubterranean greatness. 

The Princess Charlotte expressed herself to Stockmar with regard to thecharacter of her revered parents in the following "pithy" manner:--"Mymother was bad, but she could not have become as bad as she was if myfather had not been infinitely worse. " The Regent was anxious to havethe Princess married for two reasons, in the opinion of the judiciousauthor of this memoir--because he wanted to be rid of his daughter, andbecause when she married she would form less of a link between him andhis wife. Accordingly, when she was eighteen, hints were given herthrough the court physician, Sir Henry Halford (such is the course ofroyal love), that if she would have the kindness to fix her affectionson the hereditary Prince of Orange (afterwards King William II. Of theNetherlands), whom she had never seen, it would be exceedinglyconvenient. The Prince came over to England, and, by the help of a"certain amount of artful precipitation on the part of the father, " thepair became formally engaged. The Princess said at first that she didnot think her betrothed "by any means so disagreeable as she hadexpected. " In time, however, this ardour of affection abated. The Princewas a baddish subject, and he had a free-and-easy manner, and wantedtact and refinement. He returned to London from some races seated on theoutside of a coach, and in a highly excited state. Worst of all, helodged at his tailor's. The engagement was ultimately broken off by adifficulty with regard to the future residence of the couple, whichwould evidently have become more complicated and serious if the Queen ofthe Netherlands had ever inherited the Crown of England. The Princesswas passionately opposed to leaving her country. The Regent and hisministers tried to keep the poor girl in the dark, and get her into aposition from which there would be no retreat. But she had a temper anda will of her own; and her recalcitration was assisted by theParliamentary Opposition, who saw in the marriage a move of Tory policy, and by her mother, who saw in it something agreeable to her husband. Anyone who wishes to see how diplomatic lovers quarrel will findinstruction in these pages. 

The place left vacant by the rejected William was taken by PrinceLeopold, with whom Stockmar came to England. In Stockmar's Diary of May5th, 1806, is the entry:--"I saw the sun (that of royalty we presume, not the much calumniated sun of Britain) for the first time at Oatlands. Baron Hardenbroek, the Prince's equerry, was going into the breakfast-room. I followed him, when he suddenly signed to me with his hand tostay behind; but she had already seen me and I her. '_Aha, docteur_, ' she said, '_entrez_. ' She was handsomer than I hadexpected, with most peculiar manners, her hands generally folded behindher, her body always pushed forward, never standing quiet, from time totime stamping her foot, laughing a great deal and talking still more. Iwas examined from head to foot, without, however, losing my countenance. My first impression was not favourable. In the evening she pleased memore. Her dress was simple and in good taste. " The Princess took to thedoctor, and, of course, he took to her. A subsequent entry in his Diaryis:--"The Princess is in good humour, and then she pleases easily. Ithought her dress particularly becoming; dark roses in her hair, a shortlight blue dress without sleeves, with a low round collar, a whitepuffed out Russian chemisette, the sleeves of lace. I have never seenher in any dress which was not both simple and in good taste. " She seemsto have improved under the influence of her husband, whom his physiciancalls "a manly prince and a princely man. " In her manners there was someroom for improvement, if we may judge from her treatment of Duke Prosperof Aremburg, who was one of the guests at a great dinner recorded in theDiary:--"Prosper is a hideous little mannikin, dressed entirely inblack, with a large star. The Prince presented him to the Princess, whowas at the moment talking to the Minister Castlereagh. She returned theduke's two profound continental bows by a slight nod of the head, without looking at him or saying a word to him, and brought her elbow soclose to him that he could not move. He sat looking straight before himwith some, though not very marked, embarrassment. He exchanged now andthen a few words in French with the massive and mighty Lady Castlereagh, by whose side he looked no larger than a child. When he left, thePrincess dismissed him in the same manner in which she had welcomed him, and broke into a loud laugh before he was fairly out of the room. "

Stockmar's position in the little court was not very flattering oragreeable. The members of the household hardly regarded the poor Germanphysician as their equal; and if one or two of the men were pleasant, the lady who constituted their only lawful female society, Mrs. Campbell, Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess, was, in her ordinary moods, decidedly the reverse. Stockmar, however, in drawing a piquant portraitof her, has recorded the extenuating circumstances that she had oncebeen pretty, that she had had bitter experiences with men, and that, inan illness during a seven months' sea-voyage, she had been kept aliveonly on brandy and water. Col. Addenbrooke, the equerry to the Princess, is painted in more favourable colours, his only weak point being "a weakstomach, into which he carefully crams a mass of the most incongruousthings, and then complains the next day of fearful headache. " What apower of evil is a man who keeps a diary!

Greater personages than Mrs. Campbell and Colonel Addenbrooke passedunder the quick eye of the humble medical attendant, and werephotographed without being aware of it. 

"_The Queen Mother_ (Charlotte, wife of George III. ). 'Small andcrooked, with a true mulatto face. '

"_The Regent. _ 'Very stout, though of a fine figure; distinguishedmanners; does not talk half as much as his brothers; speaks tolerablygood French. He ate and drank a good deal at dinner. His brown scratchwig not particularly becoming. '

"_The Duke of York_, the eldest son of the Regent's brothers. 'Tall, with immense _embonpoint_, and not proportionately stronglegs; he holds himself in such a way that one is always afraid he willtumble over backwards; very bald, and not a very intelligent face: onecan see that eating, drinking, and sensual pleasure are everything tohim. Spoke a good deal of French, with a bad accent. '

"_Duchess of York_, daughter of Frederick William II. Of Prussia. 'A little animated woman, talks immensely, and laughs still more. Nobeauty, mouth and teeth bad. She disfigures herself still more bydistorting her mouth and blinking her eyes. In spite of the Duke'svarious infidelities, their matrimonial relations are good. She is quiteaware of her husband's embarrassed circumstances, and is his primeminister and truest friend; so that nothing is done without her help. Assoon as she entered the room, she looked round for the Banker Greenwood, who immediately came up to her with the confidentially familiar mannerwhich the wealthy go-between assumes towards grand people in embarrassedcircumstances. At dinner the Duchess related that her royal father hadforced her as a girl to learn to shoot, as he had observed she had agreat aversion to it. At a grand _chasse_ she had always fired withclosed eyes, because she could not bear to see the sufferings of thewounded animals. When the huntsmen told her that in this way she ran therisk of causing the game more suffering through her uncertain aims, shewent to the King and asked if he would excuse her from all sport infuture if she shot a stag dead. The King promised to grant her requestif she could kill two deer, one after the other, with out missing; whichshe did. '

"_Duke of Clarence_ (afterwards King William IV. ). 'The smallestand least good-looking of the brothers, decidedly like his mother; astalkative as the rest. '

"_Duke of Kent_ (father of Queen Victoria). 'A large, powerful man;like the King, and as bald as any one can be. The quietest of all theDukes I have seen; talks slowly and deliberately; is kind andcourteous. '

"_Duke of Cumberland_ (afterwards King Ernest Augustus of Hanover). 'A tall, powerful man, with a hideous face; can't see two inches beforehim; one eye turned quite out of its place. '

"_Duke of Cambridge_ (the youngest son of George III. ). 'A good-looking man, with a blonde wig; is partly like his father, partly likehis mother. Speaks French and German very well, but like English, withsuch rapidity, that he carries off the palm in the family art. '

"_Duke of Gloucester. _ 'Prominent, meaningless eyes; without beingactually ugly, a very unpleasant face, with an animal expression; largeand stout, but with weak, helpless legs. He wears a neckcloth thickerthan his head. '

"_Wellington_, 'Middle height, neither stout nor thin; erectfigure, not stiff, not very lively, though more so than I expected, andyet in every movement repose. Black hair, simply cut, strongly mixedwith grey: not a very high forehead, immense hawk's nose, tightlycompressed lips, strong massive under jaw. After he had spoken for sometime in the anteroom with the Royal Family, he came straight to the twoFrench singers, with whom he talked in a very friendly manner, and thengoing round the circle, shook hands with all his acquaintance. He wasdressed entirely in black, with the Star of the Order of the Garter andthe Maria Theresa Cross. He spoke to all the officers present in an openfriendly way, though but briefly. At table he sat next the Princess. Heate and drank moderately, and laughed at times most heartily, andwhispered many things to the Princess' ear, which made her blush andlaugh. '

"_Lord Anglesea_, (the General). 'Who lost a leg at Waterloo; atall, well-made man; wild, martial face, high forehead, with a largehawk's nose, which makes a small deep angle where it joins the forehead. A great deal of ease in his manners. Lauderdale [Footnote: LordLauderdale, d. 1339; the friend of Fox; since 1807, under the Tories, anactive member of the Opposition. ] told us later that it was he whobrought Lady Anglesea the intelligence that her husband had lost his legat Waterloo. Contrary to his wishes she had been informed of hisarrival, and, before he could say a word, she guessed that he hadbrought her news of her husband, screamed out, "He is dead!" and fellinto hysterics. But when he said, "Not in the least; here is a letterfrom him, " she was so wonderfully relieved that she bore the truth withgreat composure. He also related that, not long before the campaign, Anglesea was having his portrait taken, and the picture was entirelyfinished except one leg. Anglesea sent for the painter and said to him, "You had better finish the leg now. I might not bring it back with me. "He lost that very leg. '

"_The Minister. Lord Castlereagh_. 'Of middle height; a verystriking and at the same time handsome face; his manners are verypleasant and gentle, yet perfectly natural. One misses in him a certainculture which one expects in a statesman of his eminence. He speaksFrench badly, in fact execrably, and not very choice English. [Footnote:Lord Byron, in the introduction to the sixth and the eighth cantos of"Don Juan" says, "It is the first time since the Normans that Englandhas been insulted by a minister (at least) who could not speak English, and that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in the languageof Mrs. Malaprop. "] The Princess rallied him on the part he played inthe House of Commons as a bad speaker, as against the brilliant oratorsof the Opposition, which he acknowledged merrily, and with a heartylaugh. I am sure there is a great deal of thoughtless indifference inhim, and that this has sometimes been reckoned to him as statesmanshipof a high order. '"

In proof of Castlereagh's bad French we are told in a note that, havingto propose the health of the ladies at a great dinner, he did it in thewords--"Le bel sexe partoutte dans le monde. "

Though looked down upon at the second table, Stockmar had thoroughlyestablished himself in the confidence and affection of the Prince andPrincess. He had become the Prince's Secretary, and in Leopold's ownwords "the most valued physician of his soul and body"--wirepuller, infact, to the destined wirepuller of Royalty in general. 

Perhaps his gratification at having attained this position may have lenta roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the Royal couple, which hepaints in rapturous terms, saying that nothing was so great as theirlove--except the British National Debt. There is, however, no reason todoubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happyexceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic endplunged a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on whichperhaps he reflects with a little too much satisfaction, refused to haveanything to do with the treatment of the Princess from the commencementof her pregnancy. He thought he detected mistakes on the part of theEnglish physicians, arising from the custom then prevalent in England oflowering the strength of the expectant mother by bleeding, aperients, and low diet, a regimen which was carried on for months. The Princess, in fact, having been delivered of a dead son after a fifty hours'labour, afterwards succumbed to weakness. It fell to Stockmar's lot tobreak the news to the Prince, who was overwhelmed with sorrow. At themoment of his desolation Leopold exacted from Stockmar a promise that hewould never leave him. Stockmar gave the promise, indulging at the sametime his sceptical vein by expressing in a letter to his sister hisdoubt whether the Prince would remain of the same mind. This scepticismhowever did not interfere with his devotion. "My health is tolerable, for though I am uncommonly shaken, and shall be yet more so by thesorrow of the Prince, still I feel strong enough, even stronger than Iused to be. I only leave the Prince when obliged by pressing business. Idine alone with him and sleep in his room. Directly he wakes in thenight I get up and sit talking by his bedside till he falls asleepagain. I feel increasingly that unlooked for trials are my portion inlife, and that there will be many more of them before life is over. Iseem to be here more to care for others than for myself, and I am wellcontent with this destiny. "

Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur of the Princess, overwhelmed by thecalamity, committed suicide. "Poor Croft, " exclaims the cool andbenevolent Stockmar, "does not the whole thing look like some malicioustemptation, which might have overcome even some one stronger than you?The first link in the chain of your misery was nothing but an especiallyhonourable and desirable event in the course of your profession. Youmade a mistake in your mode of treatment; still, individual mistakes arehere so easy. Thoughtlessness and excessive reliance on your ownexperience, prevented you from weighing deeply the course to be followedby you. When the catastrophe had happened, doubts, of course, arose inyour mind as to whether you ought not to have acted differently, andthese doubts, coupled with the impossibility of proving your innocenceto the public, even though you were blameless, became torture to you. Peace to thy ashes, on which no guilt rests save that thou wert notexceptionally wise or exceptionally strong. "

Leopold was inclined to go home, but remained in England by the adviceof Stockmar, who perceived that, in the first place, there would besomething odious in the Prince's spending his English allowance ofL50, 000 a year on the Continent, and in the second place, that a goodposition in England would be his strongest vantage ground in case of anynew opening presenting itself elsewhere. 

About this time another birth took place in the Royal Family underhappier auspices. The Duke of Kent was married to the widowed Princessof Leiningen, a sister of Prince Leopold. The Duke was a Liberal inpolitics, on bad terms with his brothers, and in financial difficultieswhich prevented his living in England. Finding, however, that hisDuchess was likely to present him with an heir who would also be theheir to the Crown, and being very anxious that the child should be bornin England, he obtained the means of coming home through friends, afterappealing to his brothers in vain. Shortly after his return "a prettylittle princess, plump as a partridge, " was born. In the same year theDuke died. His widow, owing to his debts, was left in a veryuncomfortable position. Her brother Leopold enabled her to return toKensington, where she devoted herself to the education of her child--Queen Victoria. 

The first opening which presented itself to Leopold was the Kingdom ofGreece, which was offered him by "The Powers. " After going pretty far hebacked out, much to the disgust of "The Powers, " who called him "MarquisPeu-a-peu" (the nickname given him by George IV. ) and said that "he hadno colour, " and that he wanted the English Regency. The fact seems to bethat he and his Stockmar, on further consideration of the enterprise, did not like the look of it. Neither of them, especially Stockmar, desired a "crown of thorns, " which their disinterested advisers wouldhave had them take on heroic and ascetic principles. Leopold was ratherattracted by the poetry of the thing: Stockmar was not. "For the poetrywhich Greece would have afforded, I am not inclined to give very much. Mortals see only the bad side of things they have, and the good side ofthe things they have not. That is the whole difference between Greeceand Belgium, though I do not mean to deny that when the first King ofGreece shall, after all manner of toils, have died, his life may notfurnish the poet with excellent matter for an epic poem. " Thephilosophic creed of Stockmar was that "the most valuable side of lifeconsists in its negative conditions, "--in other words in freedom fromannoyance, and in the absence of "crowns of thorns. "

The candidature of Leopold for the Greek Throne coincided with theWellington Administration, and the active part taken by Stockmar gavehim special opportunities of studying the Duke's political characterwhich he did with great attention. His estimate of it is low. 

"The way in which Wellington would preserve and husband the rewards ofhis own services and the gifts of fortune, I took as the measure of thehigher capabilities of his mind. It required no long time, however, andno great exertion, to perceive that the natural sobriety of histemperament, founded upon an inborn want of sensibility, was unable towithstand the intoxicating influence of the flattery by which he wassurrounded. The knowledge of himself became visibly more and moreobscured. The restlessness of his activity, and his natural lust forpower, became daily more ungovernable. 

"Blinded by the language of his admirers, and too much elated toestimate correctly his own powers, he impatiently and of his own accordabandoned the proud position of the victorious general to exchange itfor the most painful position which a human being can occupy--viz. , themanagement of the affairs of a great nation with insufficient mentalgifts and inadequate knowledge. He had hardly forced himself upon thenation as Prime Minister, intending to add the glory of a statesman tothat of a warrior when he succeeded, by his manner of conductingbusiness, in shaking the confidence of the people. With laughableinfatuation he sedulously employed every opportunity of proving to theworld the hopeless incapacity which made it impossible for him to seizethe natural connection between cause and effect. With a rare_naivete_ he confessed publicly and without hesitation the mistakenconclusions he had come to in the weightiest affairs of State; mistakeswith the commonest understanding could have discovered, which filled theimpartial with pitying astonishment, and caused terror and consternationeven among the host of his flatterers and partisans. Yet, so great andso strong was the preconceived opinion of the people in his favour, thatonly the irresistible proofs furnished by the man's own actions couldgradually shake this opinion. It required the full force and obstinacyof this strange self-deception in Wellington, it required the fullmeasure of his activity and iron persistency, in order at last, by aperpetual reiteration of errors and mistakes, to create in the peoplethe firm conviction that the Duke of Wellington was one of the leastadroit and most mischievous Ministers that England ever had. "

Stockmar formed a more favourable opinion afterwards, when the Duke hadceased to be a party leader, and become the Nestor of the State. But itmust be allowed that Wellington's most intimate associates and warmestfriends thought him a failure as a politician. To the last he seemedincapable of understanding the position of a constitutional minister, and talked of sacrificing his convictions in order to support theGovernment, as though he were not one of the Government that was to besupported. Nor did he ever appreciate the force of opinion or the natureof the great European movement with which he had to deal. 

It seems clear from Stockmar's statement, that Wellington used hisinfluence over Charles X to get the Martignac Ministry, which wasmoderately liberal, turned out and Polignac made Minister. In this hedoubly blundered. In the first place Polignac was not friendly buthostile to England, and at once began to intrigue against her; in thesecond place he was a fool, and by his precipitate rashness brought onthe second French Revolution, which overthrew the ascendency of theDuke's policy in Europe, and had no small influence in overthrowing theascendency of his party in England. It appears that the Duke was as muchimpressed with the "honesty" of Talleyrand, as he was with the "ability"of Polignac. 

A certain transitional phase of the European Revolution created a briskdemand for kings who would "reign without governing. " Having backed outof Greece, Leopold got Belgium. And here we enter, in these Memoirs, ona series of chapters giving the history of the Belgian Question, withall its supplementary entanglements, as dry as saw-dust, and scarcelyreadable, we should think, at the present day, even to diplomatists, much less to mortal men. Unfortunately the greater part of the twovolumes is taken up with similar dissertations on various Europeanquestions, while the personal touches, and details which Stockmar couldhave given us in abundance, are few and far between. We seldom care muchfor his opinions on European questions even when the questionsthemselves are still alive and the sand-built structures of diplomacyhave not been swept away by the advancing tide of revolution. Thesovereigns whose wirepuller he was were constitutional, and themselvesexercised practically very little influence on the course of events. 

In the Belgian question however, he seems to have really played anactive part. We get from him a strong impression of the restless vanityand unscrupulous ambition of France. We learn also that Leopoldpractised very early in the day the policy which assured him a quietreign--that of keeping his trunk packed and letting the peopleunderstand that if they were tired of him he was ready to take the nexttrain and leave them to enjoy the deluge. 

Stockmar found employment especially suited to him in settling thequestion of Leopold's English annuity, which was given up on the Price'selection to the Crown of Belgium, but with certain reservations, uponwhich the Radicals made attacks, Sir Samuel Whalley, a physician leadingthe van. In the course of the struggle Stockmar received acharacteristic letter from Palmerston. 

"March 9, 1834

"MY DEAR BARON, --I have many apologies to make to you for not havingsooner acknowledged the receipt of the papers you sent me last week, andfor which I am much obliged to you. The case seems to me as clear as dayand without meaning to question the omnipotence of Parliament, which itis well known can do anything but turn men into women and women intomen, I must and shall assert that the House of Commons have no moreright to enquire into the details of those debts and engagements, whichthe King of the Belgians considers himself bound to satisfy before hebegins to make his payments into the Exchequer, than they have to askSir Samuel Whalley how he disposed of the fees which his mad patientsused to pay him before he began to practise upon the foolishconstituents who have sent him to Parliament. There can be no doubtwhatever that we must positively resist any such enquiry, and I am verymuch mistaken in my estimate of the present House of Commons if a largemajority do not concur in scouting so untenable a proposition. 

"My dear Baron, "Yours sincerely, "PALMERSTON

"The Baron de Stockmar"

That the House of Commons cannot turn women into men is a position notso unquestioned now as it was in Palmerston's day. 

Stockmar now left England for a time, but he kept his eye on Englishaffairs, to his continued interest in which we owe it seems, thepublication of a rather curious document, the existence of which inmanuscript was, however, well known. It is a Memoir of King William IV. , purporting to be drawn up by himself, and extending over the eventfulyears of 1830-35 'King William's style, ' says the uncourtly biographer, "abounds to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentarycircumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the endintolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner todespair. " The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not theKing, whose strong point was not grammatical composition, but someconfidant, very likely Sir Herbert Taylor, who was employed by the Kingto negotiate with the "waverers" in the House of Lords, and get theReform Bill passed without a swamping creation of peers. The Memoircontains nothing of the slightest historical importance. It isinstructive only as showing how completely a constitutional king may beunder the illusion of his office--how complacently he may fancy that heis himself guiding the State, when he is in fact merely signing what isput before him by his advisers, who are themselves the organs of themajority in Parliament. Old William, Duke of Gloucester, the king'suncle, being rather weak in intellect, was called "Silly Billy. " WhenKing William IV. Gave his assent to the Reform Bill, the Duke, who knewhis own nickname, cried "Who's Silly Billy now?" It would have been moredifficult from the Conservative point of view to answer that question ifthe King had possessed the liberty of action which in his Memoir heimagines himself to possess. 

The year 1836 opened a new field to the active beneficence of Stockmar. "The approaching majority, and probably not distant accession to thethrone, of Princess Victoria of England, engaged the vigilant and far-sighted care of her uncle, King Leopold. At the same time he was alreadymaking preparations for the eventual execution of a plan, which had longformed the subject of the wishes of the Coburg family, to wit, themarriage of the future Queen of England with his nephew, Prince Albertof Coburg. " Stockmar was charged with the duty of standing by thePrincess, as her confidential adviser, at the critical moment of hercoming of age, which might also be that of her accession to the throne. Meanwhile King Leopold consulted with him as to the manner in whichPrince Albert should make acquaintance with his cousin, and how he"should be prepared for his future vocation. " This is pretty broad, anda little lets down the expressions of intense affection for the Queenand unbounded admiration of Prince Albert with which Stockmar overflows. However, a feeling may be genuine though its source is not divine. 

Stockmar played his part adroitly. He came over to England, slipped intothe place of private Secretary to the Queen, and for fifteen months"continued his noiseless, quiet activity, without any publicly definedposition. " The marriage was brought about and resulted, as we all know, in perfect happiness till death entered the Royal home. 

Stockmar was evidently very useful in guiding the Royal couple throughthe difficulties connected with the settlement of the Prince's incomeand his rank, and with the Regency Bill. His idea was that questionsaffecting the Royal family should be regarded as above party, and inthis he apparently induced the leaders of both parties to acquiesce, though they could not perfectly control their followers. The connectionwith the Whigs into which the young Queen had been drawn by attachmentto her political mentor, Lord Melbourne, had strewn her path withthorns. The Tory party was bitterly hostile to the Court. If Sir CharlesDilke and Mr. Odger wish to provide themselves with material for retortsto Tory denunciations of their disloyalty, they cannot do better thanlook up the speeches and writings of the Tory party during the years1835-1841. What was called the Bedchamber Plot, in 1839, had renderedthe relations between the Court and the Conservative leaders still moreawkward, and Stockmar appears to have done a real service in smoothingthe way for the formation of the Conservative Ministry in 1841. 

Stockmar, looking at Peel from the Court point of view, was at firstprejudiced against him, especially on account of his having, indeference probably to the feelings of his party against the Court, cutdown the Prince Consort's allowance. All the more striking is thetestimony which, after long acquaintance, the Baron bears to Peel'scharacter and merits as a statesman. 

"Peel's mind and character rested on moral foundations, which I have notseen once shaken, either in his private or his public life. From thesefoundations rose that never-failing spring of fairness, honesty, kindness, moderation and regard for others, which Peel showed to allmen, and under all circumstances. On these foundations grew that love ofcountry which pervaded his whole being, which knew of but one object--the true welfare of England of but one glory and one reward for eachcitizen, viz. , to have contributed something towards that welfare. Suchlove of country admits of but one ambition, and hence the ambition ofthat man was as pure as his heart. To make every sacrifice for thatambition, which the fates of his country demand from everyone, heconsidered his most sacred duty, and he has made these sacrifices, however difficult they might have been to him. Wherein lay the realdifficulty of those sacrifices will perhaps hereafter be explained bythose who knew the secret of the political circumstances and thepersonal character of the men with whom he was brought in contact; andwho would not think of weighing imponderable sacrifices on the balanceof vulgar gain. 

"The man whose feelings for his own country rested on so firm afoundation could not be dishonest or unfair towards foreign countries. The same right understanding, fairness, and moderation, which he evincedin his treatment of internal affairs, guided Peel in his treatment ofall foreign questions. The wish frequently expressed by him, to see thewelfare of all nations improved, was thoroughly sincere. He knew Franceand Italy from his own observation, and he had studied the politicalhistory of the former with great industry. For Germany he had a goodwill, nay, a predilection, particularly for Prussia. 

"In his private life, Peel was a real pattern. He was the most loving, faithful, conscientious husband, father, and brother, unchanging andindulgent to his friends, and always ready to help his fellow-citizensaccording to his power. 

"Of the vulnerable parts of his character his enemies may have manythings to tell. What had been observed by all who came into closercontact with him, could not escape my own observation. I mean his toogreat prudence, caution, and at times, extreme reserve, in important aswell as in unimportant matters, which he showed, not only towards moredistant, but even towards his nearer acquaintances. If he was but toooften sparing of words, and timidly cautious in oral transactions, hewas naturally still more so in his written communications. The fearnever left him that he might have to hear an opinion once expressed, ora, judgment once uttered by him, repeated by the wrong man, and in thewrong place, and misapplied. His friends were sometimes in despair overthis peculiarity. To his opponents it supplied an apparent ground forsuspicion and incrimination. It seemed but too likely that there was adoubtful motive for such reserve, or that it was intended to covernarrowness and weakness of thought and feeling, or want of enterpriseand courage. To me also this peculiarity deemed often injurious tohimself and to the matter in hand; and I could not help being sometimesput out by it, and wishing from the bottom of my heart that he couldhave got rid of it. But when one came to weigh the acts of the managainst his manner, the disagreeable impression soon gave way. I quicklyconvinced myself, that this, to me, so objectionable a trait was but aninnate peculiarity; and that in a sphere of activity where thoughtlessunreserve and _laisser aller_ showed themselves in every possibleform, Peel was not likely to find any incentive, or to form a resolutionto overcome, in this point, his natural disposition. 

"I have been told, or I have read it somewhere, that Peel was the mostsuccessful type of political mediocrity. In accepting this estimate ofmy departed friend as perfectly true, I ask Heaven to relieve allMinisters, within and without Europe, of their superiority, and to endowthem with Peel's mediocrity: and I ask this for the welfare of allnations, and in the firm conviction that ninety-nine hundredths of thehigher political affairs can be properly and successfully conducted bysuch Ministers only as possess Peel's mediocrity: though I am willing toadmit that the remaining hundredth may, through the power and boldnessof a true genius, be brought to a particularly happy, or, it may be, toa particularly unhappy, issue. "

Of the late Lord Derby, on the other hand, Stockmar speaks with thegreatest contempt, calling him "a frivolous aristocrat who delighted inmaking mischief. "It does not appear whether the two men ever came intocollision with each other, but if they did, Lord Derby was likely enoughto leave a sting. 

Stockmar regularly spent a great part of each year with the EnglishRoyal Family. Apartments were appropriated to him in each of the Royalresidences, and he lived with the Queen and Prince on the footing of anintimate, or rather of a member, and almost the father, of the family. Indeed, he used a familiarity beyond that of any friend or relative. Having an objection to taking leave, he was in the habit of disappearingwithout notice, and leaving his rooms vacant when the fancy took him. Then we are told, letters complaining of his faithlessness would followhim, and in course of time others urging his return. Etiquette, thehighest of all laws, was dispensed within his case. After dining withthe Queen, when Her Majesty had risen from table, and after holding acircle had sat down again to tea, Stockmar would generally be seenwalking straight through the drawing-room and returning to hisapartment, there to study his own comfort. More than this, when Mordecaibecame the King's favorite, he was led forth on the royal steed, apparelled in the royal robe, and with the royal crown upon his head. Aless demonstrative and picturesque, but not less signal or significant, mark of Royal favor was bestowed on Stockmar. In his case tights weredispensed with, and he was allowed to wear trousers, which better suitedhis thin legs. We believe this exemption to be without parallel, thoughwe have heard of a single dispensation being granted, after manysearchings of heart, in a case where the invitation had been sudden, andthe mystic garment did not exist, and also of a more melancholy case, inwhich the garment was split in rushing down to dinner, and its wearerwas compelled to appear in the forbidden trousers, and very late, without the possibility of explaining what had occurred. 

Notwithstanding the enormous power indicated by his privileged netherlimbs, Stockmar remained disinterested. A rich Englishman, described asan author, and member of Parliament, called upon him one day, andpromised to give him L10, 000 if he would further his petition to theQueen for a peerage. Stockmar replied, "I will now go into the nextroom, in order to give you time. If upon my return I still find youhere, I shall have you turned out by the servants. "

We are told that the Baron had little intercourse with any circles butthose of the court--a circumstance which was not likely to diminish anybad impressions that might prevail with regard to his secret influence. Among his intimate friends in the household was his fellow-countrymanDr. Pratorius, "who ever zealously strengthened the Prince'sinclinations in the sense which Stockmar desired, and always insistedupon the highest moral considerations. " Nature, in the case of thedoctor; had not been so lavish of personal beauty as of moralendowments. The Queen was once reading the Bible with her daughter, thelittle Princess Victoria. They came to the passage, "God created man inhis own image, in the image of God created He him. " "O Mamma, " cried thePrincess, "not Dr. Pratorius!"

Stockmar's administrative genius effected a reform in the Royalhousehold, and as appears from his memorandum, not before there wasoccasion for it. "The housekeepers, pages, housemaids, etc. , are underthe authority of the Lord Chamberlain; all the footmen, livery-portersand under-butlers, by the strangest anomaly, under that of Master of theHorse, at whose office they are clothed and paid; and the rest of theservants, such as the clerk of the kitchen, the cooks, the porters, etc. , are under the jurisdiction of the Lord Steward. Yet theseludicrous divisions extend not only to persons, but likewise to thingsand actions. The Lord Steward, for example, finds the fuel and lays thefire, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it. It was under this state ofthings that the writer of this paper, having been sent one day by Herpresent Majesty to Sir Frederick Watson, then the Master of theHousehold, to complain that the dining-room was always cold, was gravelyanswered: 'You see, properly speaking, it is not our fault, for the LordSteward lays the fire only, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it. ' In thesame manner the Lord Chamberlain provides all the lamps, and the LordSteward must clean, trim and light them. If a pane of glass or the doorin a cupboard in the scullery requires mending, it cannot now be donewithout the following process: A requisition is prepared and signed bythe chief cook, it is then countersigned by the clerk of the kitchen, then it is taken to be signed by the Master of the Household, thence itis taken to the Lord Chamberlain's office, where it is authorized, andthen laid before the Clerk of the Works under the office of Woods andForests; and consequently many a window and cupboard have remainedbroken for months" Worse than this--"There is no one who attends to thecomforts of the Queen's guests on their arrival at the Royal residence. When they arrive at present there is no one prepared to show them to orfrom their apartments; there is no gentleman in the palace who evenknows where they are lodged, and there is not even a servant who canperform this duty, which is attached to the Lord Chamberlain'sdepartment. It frequently happens at Windsor that some of the visitorsare at a loss to find the drawing-room, and, at night, if they happen toforget the right entrance from the corridor, they wander for an hourhelpless, and unassisted. There is nobody to apply to in such a case, for it is not in the department of the Master of the Household, and theonly remedy is to send a servant, if one can be found, to the porter'slodge, to ascertain the apartment in question. " People were rathersurprised when the boy Jones was discovered, at one o'clock in themorning, under the sofa in the room adjoining Her Majesty's bedroom. Butit seems nobody was responsible--not the Lord Chamberlain, who was inStaffordshire, and in whose department the porters were not; not theLord Steward, who was in London, and had nothing to do with the pagesand attendants nearest to the royal person; not the Master of theHousehold, who was only a subordinate officer in the Lord Steward'sdepartment. So the King of Spain, who was roasted to death because theright Lord-in-Waiting could not be found to take him from the fire, wasnot without a parallel in that which calls itself the most practical ofnations. Stockmar reformed the system by simply inducing each of thethree great officers, without nominally giving up his authority (whichwould have shaken the foundations of the Monarchy), to delegate so muchof it as would enable the fire to be laid and lighted by the same power. We fancy, however, that even since the Stockmarian reconstruction, wehave heard of guests finding themselves adrift in the corridors ofWindsor. There used to be no bells to the rooms, it being assumed thatin the abode of Royalty servants, were always within call, a theorywhich would have been full of comfort to any nervous gentleman, who, onthe approach of the royal dinner hour, might happen to find himself leftwith somebody else's small clothes. 

In 1854 came the outbreak of public feeling against Prince Albert andStockmar, as his friend and adviser, to which we have referred at thebeginning of this article. The Prince's lamented death caused such areaction of feeling in his favor that it is difficult now to recall torecollection the degree of unpopularity under which he at one timelaboured. Some of the causes of this unpopularity are correctly statedby the author of the present memoir. The Prince was a foreigner, hisways were not those of Englishmen, he did not dress like an Englishman, shake hands like an Englishman. He was suspected of "Germanizing"tendencies, very offensive to high churchmen, especially in philosophyand religion. He displeased the Conservatives by his Liberalism, thecoarser Radicals by his pietism and culture. He displeased the fast setby his strict morality; they called him slow, because he did not bet, gamble, use bad language, keep an opera dancer. With more reason hedispleased the army by meddling, under the name of a too courtlyCommander-in-Chief, with professional matters which he could notunderstand. But there was a cause of his unpopularity scarcelyappreciable by the German author of this memoir. He had brought with himthe condescending manner of a German Prince. The English prefer a frankmanner; they will bear a high manner in persons of sufficient rank, buta condescending manner they will not endure; nor will any man or womanbut those who live in a German Court. So it was, however, that thePrince, during his life, though respected by the people for his virtues, and by men of intellect for his culture, was disliked and disparaged by"Society, " and especially by the great ladies who are at the head of it. The Conservatives, male and female, had a further grudge against him asthe reputed friend of Peel, who was the object of their almost demoniachatred. 

The part of a Prince Consort is a very difficult one to play. In thecase of Queen Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, nature solvedthe difficulty by not encumbering his Royal Highness with any brains. But Prince Albert had brains, and it was morally impossible that heshould not exercise a power not contemplated by the Constitution. He didso almost from the first, with the full knowledge and approbation of theMinisters, who had no doubt the sense to see what could not be avoidedhad better be recognised and kept under control. But in 1851 the Courtquarrelled with Palmerston, who was dismissed from office, veryproperly, for having, in direct violation of a recent order of theQueen, communicated to the French Ambassador his approval of the coupd'etat, without the knowledge of Her Majesty or the Cabinet. In 1854came the rupture with Russia, which led to the Crimean war. Palmerston, in correspondence with his friend the French Emperor, was working for awar, with a separate French alliance. Prince Albert, in conjunction withAberdeen, was trying to keep the Four Powers together, and by theircombined action to avert a war. Palmerston and his partizans appealedthrough the press to the people, among whom the war feeling was growingstrong, against the unconstitutional influence of the Prince Consort andhis foreign advisers. Thereupon arose a storm of insane suspicion andfury which almost recalled the fever of the Popish Plot. Thousands ofLondoners collected round the Tower to see the Prince's entry into theState Prison, and dispersed only upon being told that the Queen had saidthat if her husband was sent to prison she would go with him. Reportswere circulated of a pamphlet drawn up under Palmerston's eye, andcontaining the most damning proofs of the Prince's guilt, thepublication of which it was said the Prince had managed to prevent, butof which six copies were still in existence. The pamphlet was at lastprinted _in extenso_ in the _Times_, and the bottled lightningproved to be ditchwater. Of course Stockmar, the "spy, " the "agent ofLeopold, " did not escape denunciation, and though it was proved he hadbeen at Coburg all the time, people persisted in believing he wasconcealed about the Court, coming out only at night. The outcry was ledby the _Morning Post_, Lord Palmerston's personal organ, and the_Morning Advertiser_, the bellicose and truly British journal ofthe Licensed Victuallers; but these were supported by the Conservativepress, and by some Radical papers. A debate in Parliament broke thewaterspout as quickly as it had been formed. The people had complainedwith transports of rage that the Prince Consort exercised an influenceunrecognised by the Constitution in affairs of State. They wereofficially assured that he _did_; and they at once declaredthemselves perfectly satisfied. 

Our readers would not thank us for taking them again through thequestion of the Spanish marriages, a transaction which Stockmar viewedin the only way in which the most criminal and the filthiest ofintrigues could be viewed by an honest man and a gentleman; or throughthe question of German unity, on which his opinions have been at onceratified and deprived of their practical interest by events. The lastpart of his life he passed in Germany, managing German Royalties, especially the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia, forwhom he had conceived a profound affection. His presence, we are told, was regarded by German statesmen and magnates as "uncanny, " and CountK. , on being told that it was Stockmar with whom an acquaintance hadjust crossed a bridge, asked the acquaintance why he had not pitched theBaron into the river. That Stockmar did not deserve such a fate, thetestimony cited at the beginning of this paper is sufficient to prove. He was the unrecognised Minister of Constitutional Sovereigns whowanted, besides their regular Parliamentary advisers, a personal adviserto attend to the special interests of royalty. It was a part somewhatclandestine, rather equivocal, and not exactly such as a very proud manwould choose. But Stockmar was called to it by circumstances, he wasadmirably adapted for it, and if it sometimes led him further than hewas entitled or qualified to go, he played it on the whole very well. 

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC

A discussion which was raised some time ago by a very pleasant articleof Professor Wilson in the _Canadian Monthly_ disclosed the factthat Wright's "Life of Wolfe, " though it had been published some years, was still very little known. It is not only the best but the onlycomplete life of the soldier, so memorable in Canadian annals, whomChatham's hand launched on our coast, a thunderbolt of war, and whosevictory decided that the destiny of this land of great possibilitiesshould be shaped not by French but by British hands. Almost all that isknown about Wolfe is here, and it is well told. Perhaps the biographermight have enhanced the interest of the figure by a more vividpresentation of its historic surroundings. It is when viewed incomparison with an age which was generally one of unbelief, of low aims, of hearts hardened by vice, of blunted affections, of coarse excesses, and in the military sphere one of excesses more than usually coarse, ofprofessional ignorance and neglect of duty among the officers, while thehabits of the rank and file were those depicted in Hogarth's _March toFinckley_ that the life of this aspiring, gentle, affectionate, pureand conscientious soldier shines forth against the dark background likea star. 

Squerryes Court, near Westerham, in Kent, is an ample and pleasantmansion in the Queen Anne style, which has long been in the possessionof the Warde family--they are very particular about the _e_. Inlater times it was the abode of a memorable character in his way--oldJohn Warde, the "Father of Fox-hunting. " There it was that the greatestof all fox-hunters, Asheton Smithe, when on a visit to John Warde, rodeWarde's horse _Blue Ruin_ over a frozen country through a fast runof twenty-five minutes and killed his fox. On the terrace stands amonument. It marks the spot where in 1741, James Wolfe, the son ofLieut-Col. Wolfe, of Westerham, then barely fourteen years of age, wasplaying with two young Wardes, when the father of the playmatesapproached and handed him a large letter "On His Majesty's Service"which, on being opened, was found to contain his commission in the army. We may be sure that the young face flushed with undisguised emotion. There cannot be a greater contrast than that which the frank, impulsivefeatures, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes of Wolfe present to thepower expressed in the commanding brow, the settled look, and the evileye [Footnote: The late Lord Russell, who had seen Napoleon at Elba, used to say that there was something very evil in his eye. ] of Napoleon. 

James Wolfe was a delicate child, and though he grew energetic andfearless, never grew strong, or ceased to merit the interest whichattaches to a gallant spirit in a weak frame. He escaped a publicschool, and without any forfeiture of the manliness which public schoolsare supposed exclusively to produce, retained his home affections andhis tenderness of heart. He received the chief part of his literaryeducation in a school at Greenwich, where his parents resided, and he atall events learned enough Latin to get himself a dinner, in his firstcampaign on the Continent, by asking for it in that language. He isgrateful to his schoolmaster, Mr. Stebbings, and speaks of him withaffection in afterlife. But no doubt his military intelligence, as wellas his military tastes, was gained by intercourse with his father, areal soldier, who had pushed his way by merit in an age of corruptpatronage, and was Adjutant-General to Lord Cathcart's forces in 1740. Bred in a home of military duty, the young soldier saw before him aworthy example of conscientious attention to all the details of theprofession--not only to the fighting of battles, but to the making ofthe soldiers with whom battles are to be fought. 

Walpole's reign of peace was over, the "Patriots" had driven the nationinto war, and the trade of Colonel Wolfe and his son was again inrequest. Before he got his commission, and when he was only thirteenyears-and a-half old, the boy's ardent spirit led him to embark with hisfather as a volunteer in the ill-fated expedition to Carthagena. Happily, though he assured his mother that he was "in a very good stateof health, " his health was so far from being good that they were obligedto put him on shore at Portsmouth. Thus he escaped that masterpiece ofthe military and naval administration of the aristocracy, to the horrorsof which his frail frame would undoubtedly have succumbed. His fathersaw the unspeakable things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett, and warned his son never, if he could help it, to go on jointexpeditions of the two services--a precept which the soldier of anisland power would have found it difficult to observe. 

Wolfe's mother had struggled to prevent her boy from going, and appealedto his love of her. It was a strong appeal, for he was the most dutifulof sons. The first in the series of his letters is one written to her onthis occasion, assuring her of his affection and promising to write toher by every ship he meets. She kept all his letters from this one tothe last written from the banks of the St. Lawrence. They are in thestiff old style, beginning "Dear Madam, " and signed "dutiful;" but theyare full of warm feeling, scarcely interrupted by a little jealousy oftemper which there appears to have been on the mother's side. 

Wolfe's first commission was in his father's regiment of marines, but henever served as a marine. He could scarcely have done so, for to the endof his life, he suffered tortures from sea-sickness. He is now an Ensignin Duroure's regiment of foot. We see him a tall slender boy of fifteen, in scarlet coat, folded back from the breast after the old fashion inbroad lapels to display its white or yellow lining, breeches andgaiters, with his young face surmounted by a wig and a cocked hat edgedwith gold lace, setting off, colours in hand, with his regiment for thewar in the Low Countries. If he missed seeing aristocratic management atCarthagena, he shall see aristocratic and royal strategy at Dettingen. His brother Ned, a boy still more frail than himself, but emulous of hismilitary ardour, goes in another regiment on the same expedition. 

The regiment was accidentally preceded by a large body of troops of theother sex, who landing unexpectedly by themselves at Ostend caused someperplexity to the Quartermaster. The home affections must have beenstrong which could keep a soldier pure in those days. 

The regiment was at first quartered at Ghent, where, amidst the din ofgarrison riot and murderous brawls, we hear the gentle sound of Wolfe'sflute, and where he studies the fortifications, already anxious toprepare himself for the higher walks of his profession. From Ghent thearmy moved to the actual scene of war in Germany, suffering of course onthe march from the badness of the commissariat. Wolfe's body feels thefatigue and hardship. He "never comes into quarters without aching hipsand thighs. " But he is "in the greatest spirits in the world. " "Don'ttell me of a constitution" he said afterwards, when a remark was made onthe weakness of a brother officer, "he has good spirits, and goodspirits will carry a man through everything. "

All the world knows into what a position His Martial Majesty King GeorgeII. , with the help of sundry persons of quality, styling themselvesgenerals, got the British army at Dettingen, and how the British soldierfought his way out of the scrape. Wolfe was in the thick of it, and hishorse was shot under him. His first letter is to his mother--"I take thevery first opportunity I can to acquaint you that my brother and selfescaped in the engagement we had with the French, the 16th June last, and, thank God, are as well as ever we were in our lives, after not onlybeing canonnaded two hours and three quarters, and fighting with smallarms two hours and one quarter, but lay the two following nights uponour arms, whilst it rained for about twenty hours in the same time; yetare ready and as capable to do the same again. " But this letter isfollowed by one to his father, which seems to us to rank among thewonders of literature. It is full of fire and yet as calm as a dispatch, giving a complete, detailed, and masterly account of the battle, andshowing that the boy kept his head, and played the part of a goodofficer as well as of a brave soldier in his first field. The cavalrydid indifferently, and there is a sharp soldiery criticism on the causeof its failure. But the infantry did better. 

"The third and last attack was made by the foot on both sides. Weadvanced towards one another; our men in high spirits, and veryimpatient for fighting, being elated with beating the French Horse, partof which advanced towards us, while the rest attacked our Horse, butwere soon driven back by the great fire we gave them. The Major and I(for we had neither Colonel nor Lieutenant-Colonel), before they camenear, were employed in begging and ordering the men not to fire at toogreat a distance, but to keep it till the enemy should come near us; butto little purpose. The whole fired when they thought they could reachthem, which had like to have ruined us. We did very little executionwith it. As soon as the French saw we presented they all fell down, andwhen we had fired they got up and marched close to us in tolerable goodorder, and gave us a brisk fire, which put us into some disorder andmade us give way a little, particularly ours and two or three moreregiments who were in the hottest of it. However, we soon rallied again, and attacked them again with great fury, which gained us a completevictory, and forced the enemy to retire in great haste. "

Edward distinguished himself, too. "I sometimes thought I had lost poorNed, when I saw arms and legs and heads beat off close by him. He iscalled 'The old Soldier, ' and very deservedly. " Poor "Old Soldier, " hiscareer was as brief as that of a shooting star. Next year he dies, notby sword or bullet, but of consumption hastened by hardships--dies alonein a foreign land, "often calling on those who were dear to him;" hisbrother, though within reach, being kept away by the calls of duty andby ignorance of the danger. The only comfort was that he had a faithfulservant, and that as he shared with his brother the gift of winninghearts, brother officers were likely to be kind. James, writing to theirmother, some time after, shed tears over the letter. 

Though only sixteen, Wolfe had acted as Adjutant to his regiment atDettingen. He was regularly appointed Adjutant a few days after. Hisfather, as we have seen, had been an Adjutant-General. Even under thereign of Patronage there was one chance for merit. Patronage could notdo without adjutants. From this time, Wolfe, following in his father'sfootsteps, seems to have given his steady attention to theadministrative and, so far as his very scanty opportunities permitted, to the scientific part of his profession. 

Happily for him, he was not at Fontenoy. But he was at Laffeldt, and sawwhat must have been a grand sight for a soldier--the French infantrycoming down from the heights in one vast column, ten battalions in frontand as many deep, to attack the British position in the village. Afterall, it was not by the British, but by the Austrians and Dutch, thatLaffeldt was lost. We have no account of the battle from Wolfe's pen. But he was wounded, and it is stated, on what authority his biographerdoes not tell us, that he was thanked by the Commander-in-Chief. Fouryears afterwards he said of his old servant, Roland: "He came to me atthe hazard of his life, in the last action, with offers of his service, took off my cloak, and brought a fresh horse, and would have continuedclose by me had I not ordered him to retire. I believe he was slightlywounded just at that time, and the horse he held was shot likewise. Manya time has he pitched my tent and made the bed ready to receive me, halfdead with fatigue, and this I owe to his diligence. "

But between Dettingen and Laffeldt, Wolfe had been called to serve on adifferent scene. The Patriots, in bringing on a European war, hadrenewed the Civil War at home. Attached to the army sent against thePretender, Wolfe (now major), fought under "Hangman Hawley, " in theblundering and disastrous hustle at Falkirk, and, on a happier day, under Cumberland at Culloden. Some years afterwards he revisited thefield of Culloden, and he has recorded his opinion that there also"somebody blundered, " though he refrains from saying who. The mass ofthe rebel army, he seems to think, ought not to have been allowed toescape. These campaigns were a military curiosity. The Roman order ofbattle, evidently intended to repair a broken front, was perhaps alesson taught the Roman tacticians on the day when their front wasbroken by the rush of the Celtic clans at Allia. That rush produced thesame effect on troops unaccustomed to it and unprepared for it atKilliecrankie, and again at Preston Pans and Falkirk. At Culloden theDuke of Cumberland formed so as to repair a broken front, and when therush came, but few of the Highlanders got beyond the second line. Killiecrankie and Preston Pans tell us nothing against Discipline. 

There is an apocryphal anecdote of the Duke's cruelty and of Wolfe'shumanity towards the wounded after the battle, --"Wolfe, shoot me thatHighland scoundrel who thus dares to look on us with such contempt andinsolence. " "My commission is at your Royal Highness's disposal, but Inever can consent to become an executioner. " The anecdotist adds thatfrom that day Wolfe declined in the favour and confidence of theCommander-in-Chief. But it happens that Wolfe did nothing of the kind. On the other hand, Mr. Wright does not doubt, nor is there any groundfor doubting, the identity of the Major Wolfe who, under orders, relieves a Jacobite lady, named Gordon, of a considerable amount ofstores and miscellaneous property accumulated in her house, butaccording to her own account belonging partly to other people; amongother things, of a collection of pictures to make room for which, as shesaid, she had been obliged to send away her son, who was missing at thatcritical juncture. The duty was a harsh one, but seems, by Mrs. Gordon'sown account, not to have been harshly performed. If any property thatought to have been restored was kept, it was kept not by Wolfe but by"Hangman Hawley. " Still one could wish to see Wolfe fighting on abrighter field than Culloden, and engaged in a work more befitting asoldier than the ruthless extirpation of rebellion which ensued. 

The young soldier is now thoroughly in love with his profession. "Abattle gained, " he says, "is, I believe the highest joy mankind iscapable of receiving to him who commands; and his merit must be equal tohis success if it works no change to his disadvantage. " He dilates onthe value of war as a school of character. "We have all our passions andaffections roused and exercised, many of which must have wanted theirproper employment had not suitable occasions obliged us to exert them. Few men are acquainted with the degrees of their own courage till dangerprove them, and are seldom justly informed how far the love of honourand dread of shame are superior to the love of life. " But now peacecomes, the sword is consigned to rust, and in promotion Patronageresumes its sway. "In these cooler times the parliamentary interest andweight of particular families annihilate all other pretensions. " Theconsequence was, of course, that when the hotter times returned theyfound the army officered by fine gentlemen, and its path, as Napiersays, was like that of Satan in "Paradise Lost" through chaos to death. 

Wolfe would fain have gone abroad (England affording no schools) tocomplete his military and general education; but the Duke ofCumberland's only notion of military education was drill; so Wolfe hadto remain with his regiment. It was quartered in Scotland, and besidesthe cankering inaction to which the gallant spirit was condemned, Scotchquarters were not pleasant in those days. The country was socially asfar from London as Norway. The houses were small, dirty, unventilated, devoid of any kind of comfort; and habits and manners were not muchbetter than the habitations. Perhaps Wolfe saw the Scotch society ofthose days through an unfavourable medium, at all events he did not findit charming. "The men here, " he writes from Glasgow, "are civil, designing, and treacherous, with their immediate interest always inview; they pursue trade with warmth and a necessary mercantile spirit, arising from the baseness of their other qualifications. The womencoarse, cold and cunning, for ever enquiring after men's circumstances;they make that the standing of their good breeding. " Even the sermonsfailed to please. "I do several things in my character of commandingofficer which I should never think of in any other; for instance, I'mevery Sunday at the Kirk, an example justly to be admired. I would notlose two hours of a day if it would not answer some end. When I say'lose two hours, ' I must complain to you that the generality of Scotchpreachers are excessive blockheads, so truly and obstinately dull, thatthey seem to shut out knowledge at every entrance. " If Glasgow and Perthwere bad, still worse were dreary Banff and barbarous Inverness. TheScotch burghers, their ladies, and the preachers are entitled to thebenefit of the remark that the Scotch climate greatly affected Wolfe'ssensitive frame, and that he took a wrong though established method ofkeeping out the cold and damp. When there is nothing in the way ofaction to lift the soul above the clay his spirits, as he admits riseand fall with the weather and his impressions vary with them. "I'm sorryto say that my writings are greatly influenced by the state of my bodyor mind at the time of writing and I'm either happy or ruined by my lastnight's rest or from sunshine or light and sickly air; such infirmity isthe mortal frame subject to. "

Inverness was the climax of discomfort, coarseness and dulness, as wellas a centre of disaffection. Quarters there in those days must have beensomething like quarters in an Indian village, with the Scotch climatesuperadded. The houses were hovels, worse and more fetid than those atPerth. Even when it was fine there was no amusement but shootingwoodcocks at the risk of rheumatism. When the rains poured down and theroads were broken up there was no society, not even a newspaper, nothingto be done but to eat coarse food and sleep in bad beds. If there was alaird in the neighbourhood he was apt to be some 'Bumper John' whosefirst act of hospitality was to make you drunk. "I wonder how long a manmoderately inclined that way would require in a place like this to wearout his love for arms and soften his martial spirit. I believe thepassion would be something diminished in less than ten years and thegentleman be contented to be a little lower than Caesar in the list toget rid of the encumbrance of greatness. "

It is in his dreary quarters at Inverness at the dead of night perhapswith a Highland tempest howling outside that the future conqueror ofQuebec thus moralizes on his own condition and prospects in a letter tohis mother:

"The winter wears away, so do our years and so does life itself, and itmatters little where a man passes his days and what station he fills orwhether he be great or considerable but it imports him something to lookto his manner of life. This day am I twenty five years of age, and allthat time is as nothing. When I am fifty (if it so happens) and lookback, it will be the same, and so on to the last hour. But it is worth amoment's consideration that one may be called away on a sudden unguardedand unprepared, and the oftener these thoughts are entertained the lesswill be the dread or fear of death. You will judge by this sort ofdiscourse that it is the dead of night when all is quiet and at rest, and one of those intervals wherein men think of what they really are andwhat they really should be, how much is expected and how littleperformed. Our short duration here and the doubts of the hereaftershould awe the most flagitious, if they reflected on them. The littletaken in for meditation is the best employed in all their lives for ifthe uncertainty of our state and being is then brought before us who isthere that will not immediately discover the inconsistency of all hisbehaviour and the vanity of all his pursuits? And yet, we are so mixedand compounded that, though I think seriously this minute, and lie downwith good intentions, it is likely I may rise with my old nature, orperhaps with the addition of some new impertinence, and be the samewandering lump of idle errors that I have ever been. 

"You certainly advise me well. You have pointed out the only way wherethere can be no disappointment, and comfort that will never fail us, carrying men steadily and cheerfully in their journey, and a place ofrest at the end. Nobody can be more persuaded of it than I am; butsituation, example, the current of things, and our natural weakness, draw me away with the herd, and only leave me just strength enough toresist the worst degree of our iniquities. There are times when men fretat trifles and quarrel with their toothpicks. In one of these ill-habitsI exclaim against the present condition, and think it is the worst ofall; but coolly and temperately it is plainly the best. Where there ismost employment and least vice, there one should wish to be. There is ameanness and a baseness not to endure with patience the littleinconveniences we are subject to; and to know no happiness but in onespot, and that in ease, in luxury, in idleness, seems to deserve ourcontempt. There are young men amongst us that have great revenues andhigh military stations, that repine at three months' service with theirregiments if they go fifty miles from home. Soup and _venaison_ andturtle are their supreme delight and joy, --an effeminate race ofcoxcombs, the future leaders of our armies, defenders and protectors ofour great and free nation!

"You bid me avoid Fort William, because you believe it still worse thanthis place. That will not be my reason for wishing to avoid it; but thechange of conversation; the fear of becoming a mere ruffian; and ofimbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or, givingway insensibly to the temptations of power, till I become proud, insolent and intolerable;--these considerations will make me wish toleave the regiment before the next winter, and always if it could be soafter eight months duty; that by frequenting men above myself I may knowmy true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn somecivility and mildness of carriage, but never pay the price of the lastimprovement with the loss of reason. Better be a savage of some use thana gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious to all the world. One of the wildestof wild clans is a worthier being than a perfect Philander. "

Wolfe, it must be owned, does not write well. He has reason to envy, ashe does, the grace of the female style. He is not only ungrammatical, which, in a familiar letter, is a matter of very small consequence, butsomewhat stilted. Perhaps it was like the "Madam, " the fashion of theJohnsonian era. Yet beneath the buckram you always feel that there is aheart. Persons even of the same profession are cast in very differentmoulds; and the mould of Wolfe was as different as possible from that ofthe Iron Duke. 

Wolfe's dreary garrison leisures in Scotland, however, were not idle. His books go with him, and he is doing his best to cultivate himself, both professionally and generally. He afterwards recommends to a friend, evidently from his own experience, a long list of military histories andother works ancient and modern. The ancients he read in translations. His range is wide and he appreciates military genius in all its forms. "There is an abundance of military knowledge to be picked out of thelives of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. , King of Sweden, and ofZisca the Bohemian, and if a tolerable account could be got of theexploits of Scanderbeg, it would be inestimable, for he excels all theofficers ancient and modern in the conduct of a small defensive army. "At Louisburg, Wolfe put in practice, with good effect, a manoeuvre whichhe had learned from the Carduchi in Xenophon, showing perhaps by thisreproduction of the tactics employed two thousand years before by abarbarous tribe, that in the so-called art of war there is a largeelement which is not progressive. Books will never make a soldier, butWolfe, as a military student, had the advantage of actual experience ofwar. Whenever he could find a teacher, he studied mathematics, zealouslythough apparently not with delight. "I have read the mathematics till Iam grown perfectly stupid, and have algebraically worked away the littleportion of understanding that was allowed to me. They have not even leftme the qualities of a coxcomb for I can neither laugh nor sing nor talkan hour upon nothing. The latter of these is a sensible loss, for itexcludes a gentleman from all good company and makes him entirely unfitfor the conversation of the polite world. " "I don't know how themathematics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency tomake men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in my gaiety, amthe very reverse of it at this time. " Certainly to produce sprightlinessis neither the aim nor the general effect of mathematics. That whilemilitary education was carried on, general culture was not whollyneglected, is proved by the famous exclamation about Gray's Elegy, themost signal homage perhaps that a poet ever received. At Glasgow, wherethere is a University, Wolfe studies mathematics in the morning, in theafternoon he endeavours to regain his lost Latin. 

Nor in training himself did he neglect to train his soldiers. He hadmarked with bitterness of heart the murderous consequence to whichneglect of training had led in the beginning of every war. Probably hehad the army of Frederick before his eyes. His words on musketrypractice may still have an interest. "Marksmen are nowhere so necessaryas in a mountainous country; besides, firing at objects teaches thesoldiers to level incomparably, makes the recruit steady, and removesthe foolish apprehension that seizes young soldiers when they first loadtheir arms with bullets. We fire, first singly, then by files, one, two, three, or more, then by ranks, and lastly by platoons; and the soldierssee the effects of their shots, especially at a mark or upon water. Weshoot obliquely and in different situations of ground, from heightsdownwards and contrariwise. "

Military education and attention to the details of the profession werenot very common under the Duke of Wellington. They were still lesscommon under the Duke of Cumberland. Before he was thirty, Wolfe was agreat military authority, and what was required of Chatham, in his case, was not so much the eye to discern latent merit, as the boldness topromote merit over the head of rank. 

In a passage just quoted Wolfe expresses his fear lest command shouldmake him tyrannical. He was early tried by the temptation of power. Hebecame Lieut. -Colonel at twenty-five; but in the absence of his Colonelhe had already been in command at Stirling when he was only twenty-three. This was in quarters where he was practically despotic. He doesnot fail in his letters to pour out his heart on his situation. "Tomorrow Lord George Sackville goes away, and I take upon me thedifficult and troublesome employment of a commander. You can't conceivehow difficult a thing it is to keep the passions within bounds, whenauthority and immaturity go together: to endeavour at a character whichhas every opposition from within, and that the very condition of theblood is a sufficient obstacle to. Fancy you see me that must do justiceto good and bad; reward and punish with an equal unbiassed hand; onethat is to reconcile the severity of discipline with the dictates ofhumanity, one that must study the tempers and dispositions of many men, in order to make their situation easy and agreeable to them, and shouldendeavour to oblige all without partiality; a mark set up for everybodyto observe and judge of; and last of all, suppose one employed indiscouraging vice, and recommending the reverse, at the turbulent age oftwenty-three, when it is possible I may have as great a propensity thatway as any of the men that I converse with. " He had difficulties ofcharacter to contend with, as well as difficulties of age. His temperwas quick; he knew it. "My temper is much too warm, and suddenresentment forces out expressions and even actions that are neitherjustifiable nor excusable, and perhaps I do not conceal the natural heatso much as I ought to do. " He even felt that he was apt to misconstruethe intentions of those around him, and to cherish groundlessprejudices. "I have that wicked disposition of mind that whenever I knowthat people have entertained a very ill opinion, I imagine they neverchange. From whence one passes easily to an indifference about them, andthen to dislike, and though I flatter myself that I have the seeds ofjustice strong enough to keep from doing wrong, even to an enemy, yetthere lurks a hidden poison in the heart that it is difficult to rootout. It is my misfortune to catch fire on a sudden, to answer lettersthe moment I receive them, when they touch me sensibly, and to sufferpassion to dictate my expressions more than my reason. The next day, perhaps, would have changed this, and earned more moderation with it. Every ill turn of my life has had this haste and first impulse of themoment for its cause, and it proceeds from pride. " Solitary command andabsence from the tempering influences of general society were, as hekeenly felt, likely to aggravate his infirmities. Yet he proves not onlya successful but a popular commander, and he seems never to have losthis friends. The "seeds of justice" no doubt were really strong, and thetransparent frankness of his character, its freedom from anything likeinsidiousness or malignity, must have had a powerful effect indispelling resentment. 

His first regimental minute, of which his biographer gives us anabstract, evinces a care for his men which must have been almoststartling in the days of "Hangman Hawley. " He desires to be acquaintedin writing with the men and the companies they belong to, and as soon aspossible with their characters, that he may know the proper objects toencourage, and those over whom it will be necessary to keep a stricthand. The officers are enjoined to visit the soldiers' quartersfrequently; now and then to go round between nine and eleven o'clock atnight, and not trust to sergeants' reports. They are also requested towatch the looks of the privates, and observe whether any of them werepaler than usual, that the reason might be inquired into and propermeans used to restore them to their former vigour. Subalterns are toldthat "a young officer should not think he does too much. " But firmness, and great firmness, must have been required, as well as watchfulness andkindness. His confidential expressions with regard to the state of thearmy are as strong as words can make them. "I have a very mean opinionof the Infantry in general. I know their discipline to be bad and theirvalour precarious. They are easily put into disorder and hard to recoverout of it. They frequently kill their officers in their fear and murderone another in their confusion. " "Nothing, I think, can hurt theirdiscipline--it is at its worst. They shall drink and swear, plunder andmurder, with any troops in Europe, the Cossacks and Calmucks themselvesnot excepted. " "If I stay much longer with the regiment I shall beperfectly corrupt; the officers are loose and profligate and thesoldiers are very devils. " He brought the 67th, however, into such acondition that it remained a model regiment for years after he was gone. 

Nor were the duties of a commanding officer in Scotland at that periodmerely military. In the Highlands especially, he was employed inquenching the smoking embers of rebellion, and in re-organizing thecountry after the anarchy of civil war. Disarming had to be done, andsuppression of the Highland costume, which now marks the Queen'sfavourite regiment, but then marked a rebel. This is bad, as well asunworthy, work for soldiers, who have not the trained self-command whichbelongs to a good police, and for which the Irish Constabulary are asremarkable as they are for courage and vigour. Even Wolfe's sentimentscontracted a tinge of cruelty from his occupation. In one of hissubsequent letters he avows a design which would have led to themassacre of a whole clan. "Would you believe that I am so bloody?" We donot believe that he was so bloody, and are confident that the design, ifit was ever really formed, would not have been carried into effect. Butthe passage is the most painful one in his letters. The net result ofhis military administration, however, was that the people at Invernesswere willing to celebrate the Duke of Cumberland's birthday, though theywere not willing to comply with the insolent demand of Colonel LordBury, who had come down to take the command for a short time, that theyshould celebrate it on the anniversary of Culloden. It is a highlyprobable tradition that the formation of Highland regiments wassuggested by Wolfe. 

In a passage which we have quoted Wolfe glances at the awkward andperilous position in which a young commander was placed in having tocontrol the moral habits of officers his equals in age, and to rebukethe passions which mutinied in his own blood. He could hardly beexpected to keep himself immaculate. But he is always struggling to doright and repentant when he does wrong. "We use a very dangerous freedomand looseness of speech among ourselves; this by degrees makeswickedness and debauchery less odious than it should be, if notfamiliar, and sets truth, religion, and virtue at a great distance. Ihear things every day said that would shock your ears, and often saythings myself that are not fit to be repeated, perhaps without any illintention, but merely by the force of custom. The best that can beoffered in our defence is that some of us see the evil and wish to avoidit. " Among the very early letters there is one to his brother about"pretty mantua makers, " etc, but it is evidently nothing but a nominaldeference to the military immorality of the age. Once when on a shortvisit to London, and away from the restraining responsibilities of hiscommand, Wolfe, according to his own account, lapsed into debauchery. "In that short time I committed more imprudent acts than in all my lifebefore I lived in the idlest, [most] dissolute, abandoned manner thatcould be conceived, and that not out of vice, which is the mostextraordinary part of it. I have escaped at length and am once moremaster of my reason, and hereafter it shall rule my conduct; at least Ihope so. " Perhaps the lapse may have been worse by contrast than initself. The intensity of pure affection which pervades all Wolfe'sletters is sufficient proof that he had never abandoned himself tosensuality to an extent sufficient to corrupt his heart. The age wasprofoundly sceptical, and if the scepticism had not spread to the armythe scoffing had. Wolfe more than once talks lightly of going to churchas a polite form; but he appears always to have a practical belief inGod. 

It is worthy of remark that a plunge into London dissipation followsvery close upon the disappointment of an honourable passion. Wolfe had acertain turn of mind which favoured matrimony "prodigiously, " and he hadfallen very much in love with Miss Lawson, Maid of Honour to thePrincess of Wales. But the old General and Mrs. Wolfe opposed the match--apparently on pecuniary grounds. "They have their eye upon one ofL30, 000. " Miss Lawson had only L12, 000. Parents had more authority thenthan they have now, Wolfe was exceedingly dutiful, and he allowed theold people, on whom, from the insufficiency of his pay, he was stillpartly dependent, to break off the affair. Such at least seems to havebeen the history of its termination. The way in which Wolfe records thecatastrophe, it must be owned, is not very romantic. "This lastdisappointment in love has changed my natural disposition to such adegree that I believe it is now possible that I might prevail uponmyself not to refuse twenty or thirty thousand pounds, if properlyoffered. Rage and despair do not commonly produce such reasonableeffects; nor are they the instruments to make a man's fortune by but inparticular cases. " It was long, however, before he could think of MissLawson without a pang, and the sight of her portrait, he tells us, takesaway his appetite for some days. 

At seven and twenty Wolfe left Scotland, having already to seven years'experience of warfare added five years' experience of difficult command. He is now able to move about a little and open his mind, which has beenlong cramped by confinement in Highland quarters. He visits an old unclein Ireland, and, as one of the victors of Culloden, views with specialinterest that field of the Boyne, where in the last generation Libertyand Progress had triumphed over the House of Stuart. "I had moresatisfaction in looking at this spot than in all the variety that I havemet with; and perhaps there is not another piece of ground in the worldthat I could take so much pleasure to observe. " Then, though withdifficulty, he obtained the leave of the pipe-clay Duke to go to Paris. There he saw the hollow grandeur of the decaying monarchy and theimmoral glories of Pompadour. "I was yesterday at Versailles, a coldspectator of what we commonly call splendour and magnificence. Amultitude of men and women were assembled to bow and pay theircompliments in the most submissive manner to a creature of their ownspecies. " He went into the great world, to which he gains admission withan ease which shows that he has a good position, and tries to make uphis leeway in the graces by learning to fence, dance, and ride. Hewishes to extend his tour and see the European armies; but the Dukeinexorably calls him back to pipe-clay. It is proposed to him that heshould undertake the tutorship of the young Duke of Richmond on amilitary tour through the Low Countries. But he declines the offer. "Idon't think myself quite equal to the task, and as for the pension thatmight follow, it is very certain that it would not become me to acceptit. I can't take money from any one but the King, my master, or fromsome of his blood. "

Back, therefore, to England and two years more of garrison duty there. Quartered in the high-perched keep of Dover where "the winds rattlepretty loud" and cut off from the world without, as he says, by theabsence of newspapers or coffee houses, he employs the tedious hours inreading while his officers waste them in piquet. The ladies in the townbelow complain through Miss Brett to Mrs. Wolfe of the unsociality ofthe garrison. "Tell Nannie Brett's ladies, " Wolfe replies, "that if theylived as loftily and as much in the clouds as we do, their appetites fordancing or anything else would not be so keen. If we dress, the winddisorders our curls; if we walk, we are in danger of our legs; if weride, of our necks. " Afterwards, however, he takes to dancing to pleasethe ladies and apparently grows fond of it. 

Among the High Tories of Devonshire he has to do a little more of thework of pacification in which he had been employed in the Highlands. "Weare upon such terms with the people in general that I have been forcedto put on all my address, and employ my best skill to conciliatematters. It begins to work a little favourably, but not certainly, because the perverseness of these folks, built upon their disaffection, makes the task very difficult. We had a little ball last night, tocelebrate His Majesty's birthday--purely military; that is the men wereall officers except one. The female branches of the Tory families camereadily enough, but not one man would accept the invitation because itwas the King's birthday. If it had not fallen in my way to see such aninstance of folly I should not readily be brought to conceive it. " Hehas once more to sully a soldier's sword by undertaking police dutyagainst the poor Gloucestershire weavers, who are on strike, and, as hejudges, not without good cause. "This expedition carries me a little outof my road and a little in the dirt.... I hope it will turn out a goodrecruiting party, for the people are so oppressed, so poor and sowretched, that they will perhaps hazard a knock on the pate for breadand clothes and turn soldiers through sheer necessity. "

Chatham and glory are now at hand; and the hero is ready for the hour--_Sed mors atra caput nigra, circumvolat umbra_. "Folks aresurprised to see the meagre, decaying, consumptive figure of the son, when the father and mother preserve such good looks; and people are noteasily persuaded that I am one of the family. The campaigns of 1743, '4, '5, '6, and '7 stripped me of my bloom, and the winters in Scotland andat Dover have brought me almost to old age and infirmity, and thiswithout any remarkable intemperance. A few years more or less are ofvery little consequence to the common run of men, and therefore I neednot lament that I am perhaps somewhat nearer my end than others of mytime. I think and write upon these points without being at all moved. Itis not the vapours, but a desire I have to be familiar with those ideaswhich frighten and terrify the half of mankind that makes me speak uponthe subject of my dissolution. "

The biographer aptly compares Wolfe to Nelson. Both were frail in body, aspiring in soul, sensitive, liable to fits of despondency, sustainedagainst all weaknesses by an ardent zeal for the public service, andgifted with the same quick eye and the same intuitive powers of command. But it is also a just remark that there was more in Nelson of the loveof glory, more in Wolfe of the love of duty. "It is no time to think ofwhat is convenient or agreeable; that service is certainly the best inwhich we are the most useful. For my part I am determined never to givemyself a moment's concern about the nature of the duty which His Majestyis pleased to order us upon; and whether it is by sea or by land that weare to act in obedience to his commands, I hope that we shall conductourselves so as to deserve his approbation. It will be sufficientcomfort to you, too, as far as my person is concerned, at least it willbe a reasonable consolation, to reflect that the Power which hashitherto preserved me may, if it be his pleasure, continue to do so; ifnot, that it is but a few days or a few years more or less, and thatthose who perish in their duty and in the service of their country diehonourably. I hope I shall have resolution and firmness enough to meetevery appearance of danger without great concern, and not be oversolicitous about the event. " "I have this day signified to Mr. Pitt thathe may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am readyfor any undertaking within the reach and compass of my skill andcunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel andrheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of servicethat offers itself: if I followed my own taste it would lead me intoGermany, and if my poor talent was consulted they should place me in thecavalry, because nature has given me good eyes and a warmth of temper tofollow the first impressions. However, it is not our part to choose butto obey. "

All know that the way in which Mr. Pitt pleased to dispose of the"slight carcass" was by sending it to Rochefort, Louisburg, Quebec. Montcalm, when he found himself dying, shut himself up with hisConfessor and the Bishop of Quebec, and to those who came to him fororders said "I have business that must be attended to of greater momentthan your ruined garrison and this wretched country. " Wolfe's last wordswere, "Tell Colonel Baxter to march Webb's regiment down to CharlesRiver, to cut off their retreat from the Bridge. Now, God be praised, Iwill die in peace. "

FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS

[Footnote: Published in the _Contemporary Review_ as a reply to Mr. Matthew Arnold's Essay on Falkland. ]

We have the most unfeigned respect for the memory of Falkland. Carlyle'ssneer at him has always seemed to us about the most painful thing in thewritings of Carlyle. Our knowledge of his public life is meagre, and isderived mainly from a writer under whose personal influence he acted, who is specially responsible for the most questionable step that hetook, and on whose veracity, with regard to this portion of the historynot much reliance can be placed. But we cannot doubt his title to ouradmiration and our love. Of his character as a friend, as a host, and asthe centre of a literary circle, we have a picture almost peerless insocial history. He seems to have presented in a very attractive form thecombination--rare now, though not rare in that age, especially among thegreat Puritan chiefs--of practical activity and military valour withhigh culture and a serious interest in great questions. Of his finefeelings as a man of honour we have more than one proof. We have proofequally strong of his self-sacrificing devotion to his country; thoughin this he stood not alone: with his blood on the field of Newburymingled that of many an English yeoman, whose cheeks were as wet when heleft his Puritan home to die for the religion and liberties of Englandas were those of Lord Falkland when he left the "lime-trees and violets"of Great Tew. 

Of political moderation, if it means merely steering a middle coursebetween two extremes, the praise is cheap, and would be shared byFalkland with many weak and with many dishonest men. It may, withoutdisparagement, be remarked of him that his rank as a nobleman was almostsufficient in itself, without any special soundness of understanding orcalmness of temperament, to prevent him from throwing himself headlongeither into an absolutist reaction which was identified with theascendency of upstart favourites, and contemners of the old nobility, orinto a popular revolution which soon disclosed its tendency to come intocollision with the privileged order, and which ended its parricidalcareer by leaving England, during some of the most glorious years of herhistory, destitute of a House of Lords. But as an adherent, and no doubta deliberate adherent, of Constitutional Monarchy, Falkland was in thatwhich in the upshot proved to be the right line of English progress, though by no means the right line of progress for the whole world. TheCommonwealth is the ideal of America, where it is practicable, and italone. Constitutional Monarchy, as Falkland rightly judged, was thehighest attainable ideal for England, at any rate in that day. Ofattaining that ideal, of doing anything considerable towards itsattainment, or towards its defence against the powers of absolutistreaction whose triumph would have rendered its attainment for everimpossible, he was no more capable than he was of performing the laboursof Hercules. 

In this he bears some resemblance to a man of incomparably greaterintellect than his. The fame of Bacon as a philosopher has eclipsed hisimportance as a politician. But his ideal of an enlightened monarchy, invested with plenary power, but always using its power in conformitywith law, and having a Verulam at its right hand, not only is grand andworthy of the majestic intelligence from which it sprang, but isentitled to a good deal of sympathy, when we consider how wanting inenlightenment, how rough, how uncertain, how provoking to a trained andinstructed statesman the action of parliaments composed of countrygentlemen and meeting at long intervals, in an age when there were nopolitical newspapers or other general organs of political information, could not fail sometimes to be. But Bacon, hampered by enfeeblingselfishness, as Falkland was by more generous defects, was incapable oftaking a single step toward the realization of his august vision, andthe result was, a miserable fall from the ethereal height to the feet ofa Somerset and a Buckingham. 

As a theologian, Falkland appears to have been a Chillingworth on a verysmall scale. It does not seem to us that Principal Tulloch, in hisinteresting chapter on him, succeeds in putting him higher. But heshared, with Chillingworth and Hales, the spirit of liberality andtoleration, for which both were nobly conspicuous, though Hales did notshow himself a very uncompromising champion of his principles when heaccepted preferment from the hands of their arch-enemy, Laud. Thelearned men and religious philosophers whom Falkland gathered round himat Tew, were among the best and foremost thinkers of their age: thebeauty of the group is marred, perhaps, only by the sinister intrusionof Sheldon. 

Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the very graceful sketch of Falkland's lifepublished by him in aid of the Falkland Memorial, has endowed hisfavourite character with gifts far rarer and more memorable than thoseof which we have spoken; with an extraordinary largeness and lucidity ofmind, with almost divine superiority to party narrowness and bias, withconceptions anticipative of the most advanced philosophy of moderntimes. He quotes the Dean of Westminster as affirming that "Falkland isthe founder, or nearly the founder, of the best and most enlighteningtendencies of the Church of England"--a statement which breedsreflection as to the character of the Church of England during theprevious century, in the course of which its creed and liturgy wereformed. The evidence of these transactions lies wide; much of it isstill in the British Museum; and it may be possible to produce somethingsufficient to sustain Falkland on the pinnacle on which Mr. Arnold andthe Dean of Westminster have placed him. But we cannot help surmisingthat he has in some measure undergone the process which, in an ageprolific in historic fancies as well as pre-eminent in historicresearch, has been undergone by almost every character in history--thatof being transmuted by a loving biographer, and converted into a sort ofventriloquial apparatus through which the biographer preaches to thepresent from the pulpit of the past. The philosophy ascribed to Falklandis, we suspect, partly that of a teacher who was then in the womb oftime. We should not be extreme to mark this, if the praise of Falklandhad not been turned to the dispraise and even to the vilification of menwho are at least as much entitled to reverent treatment at the hands ofEnglishmen as he is, and at the same time of a large body of Englishcitizens at the present day, who are the objects, we venture to think, of a somewhat fanciful and somewhat unmeasured antipathy. Those whosubscribe to the Falkland Testimonial are collectively set down by Mr. Arnold as the "amiable"--those who do not subscribe as the "unamiable. "Few, we trust, would be so careful of their money and so careless oftheir reputation for moral beauty as to refuse to pay a guinea for acertificate of amiability countersigned by Mr. Matthew Arnold. Yet eventhe amiable might hesitate to take part in erecting a monument to thehonour of Falkland, if it was at the same time to be a monument to thedishonour, of Luther, Gustavus, Walsingham, Sir John Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, Vane, and Milton. As to the Nonconformists, theircontributions are probably not desired: otherwise, accustomed to notvery courteous treatment though they are, it would still be imprudent towarn them that their own "hideousness" was to be carved in the samemarble with the beauty of Lord Falkland. 

On Luther, Hampden, and Cromwell, Mr. Arnold expressly bestows the nameof "Philistine, " and if he bestows it on these he can hardly abstainfrom bestowing it on the rest of those we have named. Milton, at allevents, has identified himself with Cromwell as thoroughly as one manever identified himself with another, and whatever aspersion is cast on"Worcester's laureate wreath" must fall equally on the interminglingbays. We may say this without pretending to know what the exact meaningof "Philistine" now is. Originally, no doubt, it pointed to somespecific defect on the part of those with regard to whom it was used, and possibly also on the part of those who used it. But with the fatewhich usually attends the cant phrase of a clique, it seems to bedegenerating, by lavish application, into something which irritateswithout conveying any definite instruction. As Luther did not live underthe same conditions as Heinrich Heine, perfect ethical identity washardly to be expected. "Simpleton" and "savage" have the advantage ofbeing intelligible to all, and when introduced into discussion withgrace, perhaps they may be urbane. 

It is useless to attempt, without authentic materials, to fill in thefaint outline of an historic figure. But judging from such indicationsas we have, we should be inclined to say that Falkland, instead of beinga man of extraordinarily serene and well-balanced mind, was ratherexcitable and impulsive. His tones and gestures are vehement; whereanother man would be content to protest against what he thought anundeserved act of homage by simply keeping his hat on, Falkland rams hisdown upon his head with both his hands. He goes most ardently with thepopular party through the early stages of the revolution; then hesomewhat abruptly breaks away from it, disgusted with its defects, though they certainly did not exceed those of other parties under thesame circumstances, and feeling in himself no power to control it andkeep it in the right path. He is under the influence of others, first ofHampden and then of Hyde, to an extent hardly compatible with thepossession of a mind of first-rate power. When he is taxed withinconsistency for going round upon the Bill for removing the Bishopsfrom Parliament, his plea is that at the time when he voted for the Bill"he had been persuaded by that worthy gentleman (Hampden) to believemany things which he had since found to be untrue, and therefore he hadchanged his opinion in many particulars as well to things as persons. "Hampden himself would hardly have been led by anybody's persuasions onthe great question of the day. Clarendon tells us that his friend, fromhis experience of the Short Parliament, "contracted such a reverence forParliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever producemischief or inconvenience to the kingdom. " We always regard with somesuspicion Clarendon's artful touches, otherwise we should say that thereis a pretty brusque change from this unbounded reverence for the ShortParliament to an appearance in arms against its successor, especially asthe leader and soul of both Parliaments was Pym. 

In the prosecution of Strafford, Falkland showed such ardour that, asClarendon intimates, those who knew him not ascribed his behaviour topersonal resentment. His lips formulated the very doctrine so fatal tothe great accused, that a number of acts severally not amounting to hightreason might cumulatively support the charge. "How many haires'breadths makes a tall man and how many makes a little man, noe man canwell say, yet we know a tall man when we see him from a low man; soe'tis in this, --how many illegal acts make a treason is not certainlywell known, but we well know it when we see. " Mr. Arnold says that"alone amongst his party Falkland raised his voice against pressingforward Strafford's impeachment with unfair or vindictive haste. " Thatis to say, when Pym proposed to the House, sitting with closed doors, atonce to carry up the impeachment to the Lords and demand the arrest ofStrafford without delay, Falkland, moved by his great, and, in allordinary cases, laudable respect for regularity of proceeding, proposedfirst to have the charges formally drawn up by a committee. Falkland'sproposal was almost fatuous; it proves that the grand difference betweenhim and Pym was that Pym was a great man of action and that he was not. It would have been about as rational to suggest that the lighted matchshould not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes till a committee hadformally reported on the probable effects of gunpowder if ignited inlarge quantities beneath the chamber in which the Parliament wassitting. Strafford would not have respected forms in the midst of whathe must have well known was a revolution. He would probably have struckat the Commons if they had not struck at him; certainly he would haveplaced himself beyond their reach; and the promptness of Pym's decisionsaved the party and the country. No practical injustice was done bywresting the sword out of Strafford's hand and putting him in safekeeping till the charges could be drawn up in form, as they immediatelywere. Falkland himself in proposing a committee avowed his convictionthat the grounds for the impeachment were perfectly sufficient. His namedoes not appear among the Straffordians; and had he opposed the Bill ofAttainder it seems morally certain that Clarendon would have told us so. The strength of this presumption is not impaired by any vague words ofBaxter coupling the name of Falkland with that of Digby as a secederfrom the party on the occasion of the Bill. Had Falkland voted withDigby, his name would have appeared in the same list. That he feltqualms and wavered at the last is very likely; but it is almost certainthat he voted for the Bill. There is some reason for believing that hetook the sterner, though probably more constitutional, line, on thequestion of allowing the accused to be heard by counsel. But theevidence is meagre and doubtful; and the difficulty of reading it arighthas been increased by the discovery that Pym and Hampden themselves wereagainst proceeding by Bill, and in favour of demanding judgment on theimpeachment. It seems certain, however, that Falkland pleaded againstextending the consequences of the Act of Attainder to Strafford'schildren, and in this he showed himself a true gentleman. 

Again, in the case of Laud, Mr. Arnold wishes to draw a strong linebetween the conduct of his favourite and that of the savage "Puritans. "He says that Falkland "refused to concur in Laud's impeachment. " If hedid, we must say he acted very inconsistently, for in his speech infavour of the Bishops' Bill he violently denounced Laud as aparticipator in Strafford's treason:--

"We shall find both of them to have kindled and blown the common fire ofboth nations, to have both sent and maintained that book (of Canons) ofwhich the author, no doubt, hath long since wished with Nero, _Utinamnescissem literas!_ and of which more than one kingdom hath cause towish that when he wrote that he had rather burned a library, though ofthe value of Ptolemy's. We shall find them to have been the first andprincipal cause of the breach, I will not say of, but since, thepacification of Berwick. We shall find them to have been the almost soleabettors of my Lord Strafford, whilst he was practising upon anotherkingdom that manner of government which he intended to settle in this;where he committed so many mighty and so manifest enormities andoppressions as the like have not been committed by any governor in anygovernment since Verras left Sicily; and after they had called him overfrom being Deputy of Ireland to be in a manner Deputy of England (allthings here being goverend by a junctillo and the junctillo goverend byhim) to have assisted him in the giving such counsels and the pursuingsuch courses, as it is a hard and measuring cost whether they were moreunwise, more unjust, or more unfortunate, and which had infallibly beenour destruction if by the grace of God their share had not been a smallin the subtilty of serpents as in the innocency of doves. "

We are not aware, however, of the existence of any positive proof thatFalkland did "refuse to concur" in the impeachment of Laud. There isnothing, we believe, but the general statement of Clarendon that hisfriend regarded with horror the storm gathering against the archbishop, which the words of Falkland himself, just quoted, seem sufficient todisprove. Mr. Arnold tells us that "Falkland disliked Laud; he had anatural antipathy to his heat, fussiness, and arbitrary temper. " He hadan antipathy to a good deal more in Laud than this, and expressed hisdislike in language which showed that he was himself not deficient inheat when his religious feelings were aroused. He accused Laud and theecclesiastics of his party of having "destroyed unity under pretence ofuniformity;" of having "brought in Superstition and Scandal under thetitles of Reverence and Decency;" of having "defiled the Church byadorning the churches, " of having "destroyed as much of the Gospel asthey could without themselves being destroyed by the law. " He comparedthem to the hen in AEsop, fed too fat to lay eggs, and to dogs in themanger, who would neither preach nor let others preach. He charged themwith checking instruction in order to introduce that religion whichaccounts ignorance the mother of devotion. He endorsed the common beliefthat one of them was a Papist at heart, and that only regard for hissalary prevented him from going over to Rome. All this uttered to aParliament in such a mood would hardly be in favour of gentle dealingwith the archbishop. But Pym and Hampden, as Clarendon himself admits, never intended to proceed to extremities against the old man; they weresatisfied with having put him in safe keeping and removed him from thecouncils of the King. When they were gone, the Presbyterians, to whomthe leadership of the Revolution then passed, took up the impeachmentand brought Laud to the block. 

The parts were distributed among the leaders. To Falkland was entrustedthe prosecution of the Lord Keeper Finch; and this part he performed ina style which thoroughly identifies him with the other leaders, and withthe general spirit of the movement at this stage of the Revolution. Noman, so far as we can see, did more to set the stone rolling; it was notlikely that, with his slender force, he would be able to stop it at oncein mid career. 

In contrasting Falkland's line of conduct with that of the "Puritans, "on the question of the Bishops' Bill and of the impeachment of Laud, Mr. Arnold indicates his impression that all Puritans were on principleenemies, and as a matter of course fanatical enemies, of Episcopacy. Buthe will find that at this time many Puritans were Low ChurchEpiscopalians, wishing only to moderate the pretensions and curb theauthority of the Bishops. Episcopacy is not one of the grievancesprotested against in the Millenary Petition Sir John Eliot appears tohave been as strong an Erastian as Mr. Arnold could desire. 

It seems to us hardly possible to draw a sharp line of distinction inany respect, except that of practical ability, between Falkland andHampden. Falkland failed to understand, while Hampden understood, thecharacter of the King and the full peril of the situation; that was thereal difference between the two men. The political and ecclesiasticalideal of both in all probability was pretty much the same. Mr. Arnoldchooses to describe Hampden as "seeking the Lord about militia or ship-money, " and he undertakes to represent Jesus as "whispering to him withbenign disdain. " Sceptics, to disprove the objective reality of theDeity, allege that every man makes God in his own image. They mightperhaps find an indirect confirmation of their remark in the numerouslives and portraitures of Christ which have appeared of late years, eachentirely different from the rest, and each stamped clearly enough withthe impress of an individual mind. But where has Hampden spoken ofhimself as "seeking the Lord about militia or ship-money?" He appears tohave been a highly-educated man of the world. In one of his fewremaining letters there are recommendations to a friend, who hadconsulted him about the education of his sons, which seem to blendregard for religion with enlightened liberality of view. If he prayedfor support and guidance in his undertakings, surely he did no more thanMr. Arnold himself practically recommends people to do when he urgesthem to join the Established Church of England. Even should Mr. Arnoldlight on an authentic instance of Scripture phraseology used by Hampden, or any other Puritan chief, in a way which would now be against goodtaste, his critical and historical sense will readily make allowance forthe difference between the present time and the time when the Bible wasa newly-recovered book, and when its language, on the believer's lipsand to the believer's ears, was still fresh as the dew of the morning. 

It would be even more difficult to separate Falkland's general characterfrom that of Pym, of whose existence Mr. Arnold has shown himselfconscious by once mentioning his name. The political philosophy of Pym'sspeeches is most distinctly constitutional, and we do not see that inpoint of breadth or dignity they leave much to be desired, while theyunquestionably express, in the fullest manner, the mind of a leader ofthe Puritan party. 

Whoever contrasts Falkland with the Puritans will have to encounter thesomewhat untoward fact that in his speech against the High ChurchBishops, Falkland, if he does not actually call himself a Puritan, twiceidentifies the Puritan cause with his own. Among the bad objects whichhe accuses the clergy of advocating in their sermons is "the demolishingof Puritanism and propriety" Again he cries--

"Alas! they whose ancestors in the darkest times excommunicated thebreakers of Magna Charta do now by themselves, and their adherents, bothwrite, preach, plot, and act against it, by encouraging Dr. Beale, bypreferring Dr. Mainwaring, appearing forward for monopolies and ship-money, and if any were slow and backward to comply, blasting both themand their preferment with the utmost expression of their hatred--thetitle of Puritans. "

These words may help to make Mr. Arnold aware, when he mows down thePuritan party with some trenchant epithet, how wide the sweep of hisscythe is, and the same thing will be still more distinctively broughtbefore him by a perusal (if he has not already perused it) of thechapter on the subject in Mr. Sandford's "Studies and Illustrations ofthe Great Rebellion. " It can hardly be necessary to remind him, or anyone else, of the portrait of one who was a most undoubted Puritan, drawnby Lucy Hutchinson. If this portrait betrays the hand of a wife, Clarendon's portrait of Falkland betrays the hand of a friend, and evena beloved husband is not more likely to be the object of exaggerated, though sincere praise, than the social head and the habitual host of acircle of literary men. At all events Lucy Hutchinson is painting whatshe thought a perfect Puritan would be; and her picture presents to us, not a coarse, crop-eared, and snuffling fanatic, but a highlyaccomplished, refined, gallant, and most "amiable, " though religious andseriously-minded gentleman. The Spencerian school of sentiment seems toMr. Arnold very lovely compared with the men of the New Model Army andtheir ways. In the general of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, hehas a distinct, and we venture to say very worthy, pupil of that school. 

Over the most questionable as well as the most momentous passage inFalkland's public life, his admirer passes with a graceful literarymovement. Falkland was sworn in as a Privy Councillor three days before, and as Secretary of State, four days after, the attempt of the King toseize the Five Members. He was thus, in outward appearance at least, brought into calamitous connection with an act which, as Clarendon sees, was the signal for civil war. Clarendon vehemently disclaims for himselfand his two friends any knowledge of the King's design. So far as themore violent part of the proceeding is concerned, we can easily believehim; a woman mad with vindictive arrogance inspired it, and nobodyexcept a madman would have been privy to it; but it is not so easy tobelieve him with regard to the impeachment, which was in fact an attemptto take the lives of the King's enemies by arraigning them before apolitical tribunal, hostile to them and favourable to their accuser, instead of bringing them to a fair and legal trial before a jury. Byaccepting the Secretaryship, Falkland at all events assumed a certainmeasure of responsibility after the fact for a proceeding which, werepeat, rendered civil war inevitable, because it must have convincedthe popular leaders that to put faith in Charles with such councillorsas he had about him would be insanity; and that if they allowedParliament to rise and the Kong to resume the power of the sword, notonly would all their work of reform be undone, but the fate of Sir JohnEliot would be theirs. Clarendon owns that Hampden's carriage from thatday was changed, implying that up to that day it had been temperate; andthe insinuation that, beneath the cloak of apparent moderation, Hampdenhad been secretly breathing counsels of violence into the minds ofothers deserves no attention, when it comes from a hostile source. Ofthe purity of Falkland's motives we entertain not the shadow of a doubt;but we venture to think that it is very questionable whether he didright, and this not only on grounds of technical constitutionalism, which in the present day would render imperative the retirement of aMinister whose advice had been so flagrantly disregarded, but on groundsof the most broadly practical kind. He forfeited for ever, not only anyinfluence which he might have retained over the popular leaders, and anyaccess which he might have had to them in their more pacific mood, butprobably all real control over the King. Charles was the very last manwhom you could afford to allow in the slightest degree to tamper withyour honour. It is surely conceivable that the recollection of anunfortunate step, and the sense of a false position, may have mingledwith the sorrow caused by the public calamities in the melancholy whichdrove Falkland to cast away his life. 

In the Civil War Falkland was always "ingeminating _Peace, Peace_". Our hearts are with him, but it was of no use. It is an unhappy part ofcivil wars that there can be no real peace till one party has succumbed:compromise only leads to a renewal of the conflict. There is sense aswell as dignity in the deliberate though mournful acceptance ofnecessity, and the determination to play out the part which could not bedeclined, expressed in the letter written at the outbreak of theconflict by the Parliamentarian, Sir William Waller, to a personalfriend in the other camp:

"My affections to you are so unchangeable that hostility itself cannotviolate my friendship to your person; but I must be true to the causewherein I serve. The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knowswith what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what perfecthatred I look upon a war without an enemy. The God of peace, in His goodtime, sent us peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it! We areboth on the stage, and we must act the parts that are assigned us inthis tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and without personalanimosities. "

A man in this frame of mind, we submit, was likely to get to the end ofa civil war more speedily than a man in the mood, amiable as it was, ofFalkland. 

Perhaps, after all, the failure, the inevitable failure of Falkland'spassionate pleadings for peace may have saved him from a worse doom thandeath on the field even of civil war. In the case of the Five Members, the King had shown how little regard he had, at least how little regardthe mistress of his councils had, for the honour of his advisers. Thepair might have used Falkland to lure by the pledge of his highcharacter the leaders of the Parliament into the acceptance of a treaty?which the King, with his notions of divine right, and the Queen with herpassionate love of absolute power, would, there can be little doubt, have violated as soon as the army of the Parliament had been disbanded, and the power of the sword had returned into the King's hands. Falklandmight have even seen the scaffold erected, through the prostitution ofhis own honour, for the men whose ardent associate he had been in theoverthrow of government by prerogative and in the impeachment ofStrafford. 

Flinging epithets at Cromwell is a very harmless indulgence ofsentiment. His memory has passed unscathed even through the burningeloquence which, from the pulpit of the Restoration, denounced him as"wearing a bad hat, and that not paid for. " Since research has placedhim before us as he really was, the opinion has been gaining ground thathe was about the greatest human force ever directed to a moral purpose;and in that sense, about the greatest man, take him all in all, thatever trod the scene of history. If his entire devotion to his cause, hisvalour, his magnanimity, his clemency, his fidelity to the publicservice, his domestic excellence and tenderness are not "conduct, " allwe can say is, so much the worse for "conduct. " The type to which hischaracter belonged, in common with the whole series of historic types, had in it something that was special and transitory, combined with muchthat, so far as we see, was universal and will endure for ever. It is infailing to note the special and transitory element, and the limitationswhich it imposed on the hero's greatness, that Carlyle's noble biographyruns into poetry, and departs from historic truth. To supply this defectis the proper work of rational criticism; but the criticism which beginswith "Philistine" is not likely to be very rational. 

The objection urged by Bolingbroke against Cromwell's foreign policy, onthe ground that to unite with France, which was gaining strength, against Spain, which was beginning to decline, was not the way tomaintain the balance of power in Europe, is once more reproduced asthough it had not been often brought forward and answered. Cromwell wasnot bound to trouble his head about such a figment of a specialdiplomacy as the balance of power any more than Shakespeare was bound totrouble his head about Voltaire's rules for the drama. He was the chiefand the defender of Protestantism, and as such he was naturally led toally himself with France, which was comparatively liberal, againstSpain, which was the great organ of the Catholic reaction. An alliancewith Spain was a thing impossible for a Puritan. Looking to the narrowerinterest of England, much more was to be gained by a war with Spain thanby a war with France, because by a war with Spain an entrance was forcedfor English enterprise through the barriers which Spanish monopoly hadraised against commercial enterprise in America. The security of Englandappears, in Cromwell's judgment, to have depended on her intrinsicstrength, which no one can doubt that, under extraordinarydisadvantages, he immensely increased, rather than on the maintenance ofa European equilibrium which, as the number of the powers increased, became palpably impracticable. It may be added, that the incipientdecline of the double-headed House of Austria, if it is visible to oureyes as we trace back the course of events, can hardly have been visibleto any eye at that time, and, what is still more to the purpose, thatthe dangerous ascendency of Louis XIV. Resulted in great measure fromthe betrayal of England by Charles II. , and would have been impossiblehad, we will not say a second Cromwell, but a Protestant or patrioticmonarch, sat on the Protector's throne. 

Bolingbroke suggests, and Mr. Arnold embraces the suggestion, thatCharles I. , by making war on France, showed himself more sagacious withregard to foreign policy than Cromwell. But Mr. Arnold, in recommendingBolingbroke's philosophy to a generation which he thinks has too muchneglected it, has discreetly warned us to let his history alone. CharlesI. , or rather Buckingham, in whose hands Charles was a puppet, made waron Spain, though in the most incapable manner, and with a mostignominious result: he at one time lent the French Government Englishships to be used against the Protestants of Rochelle, whose resistance, apart from the religious question, was the one great obstacle to theconcentration of the French power; and though he subsequently quarrelledwith France, few will believe--assuredly Clarendon did not believe--thatamong the motives for the change, policy of any kind predominated overthe passions and the vanity of the favourite. That Cromwell would havelent a steady and effective support to the Protestants, and thus haveprevented the concentration of the French power, is as certain as anyunfulfilled contingency can be. 

Mr. Arnold is evidently anxious to bring Bolingbroke into fashion. "HearBolingbroke upon the success of Puritanism. " Hear Lovelace on Dr. Johnson; one critic would be about as edifying as the other. Bolingbroke, a sceptical writer and a scoffer at Anglican doctrine, tosay nothing about his morals, allied himself for party purposes with thefanatical clergy of the Anglican Establishment, well represented bySacheverel, and, to gratify his allies, passed as Minister persecutinglaws, about the last of the series, against Nonconformists. This, perhaps, is a proof in a certain way, of philosophic largeness of view. But if Bolingbroke is to be commended to ingenuous youth as a guidesuperior to party narrowness or bias, it may be well to remember thepassage of his letter to Sir William Wyndham, in which he very franklydescribes his own aims, and those of his confederates on their accessionto office, admitting that "the principal spring of their actions was tohave the government of the State in their hands, and that theirprincipal views were the conservation of this power, great employmentsto themselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had helpedto raise them, and of hurting those who stood in opposition to them;"though he has the grace to add that with these considerations of partyand private interest were intermingled some which had for their objectthe public good. In another place he avows that he and his partydesigned "to fill the employments of the kingdom down to the meanestwith Tories, " by which they would have anticipated, and, indeed, byanticipation outdone, the vilest and most noxious proceeding of thecoarsest demagogue who ever climbed to power on the shoulders of factionin the United States. It may be instructive to compare with this theprinciples upon which public employments were distributed by Cromwell. 

It would be out of place to discuss the whole question of theProtector's administration by way of reply to a passing thrust ofantipathy. But when judgment is pronounced on his external policy, hiscritics ought not to leave out of consideration the Union of Scotlandand Ireland with England, successfully accomplished by him, repealed bythe Restoration, and, like not a few of his other measures, revived andratified by posterity, after a delay fraught with calamitousconsequences in both cases, and which, in the case of Ireland, mayperhaps even yet prove fatal. 

We cannot help remarking, however, that the ecclesiastical policy of theProtectorate was one which it would be most inconsistent on the part ofMr. Arnold and those who hold the same view with him to decry. It was anational church (to prevent the hasty abolition of which, seems to havebeen Cromwell's main reason for dissolving the Barebones Parliament)with the largest possible measure of comprehension. To us the weakpoints of such a policy appear manifest enough, but by Mr. Arnold andthose of his way of thinking it ought, if we mistake not, to berespected as an anticipation of their own deal. 

Of one great and irretrievable error Cromwell was guilty--he died beforehis hour. That his government was taking root is clear from the bearingof Mazarin and Don Lewis De Haro, sufficiently cool judges, towards theStuart Pretender. The Restoration was a reaction not against theProtectorate but against the military anarchy which ensued. Had Cromwelllived ten years longer, or had his marshals been true to his successor, to his cause, and to their own fortunes, there would have been an end ofthe struggle against Stuart prerogative, the spirit of Laud would havebeen laid for ever; the temporal power of ecclesiastics would havetroubled no more; the Union with Scotland and Ireland would haveremained unbroken; and the genuine representation of the people embodiedin the Instrument of Government would have continued to exist, in theplace of rotten boroughs, the sources of oligarchy and corruption, ofclass government and class wars. Let us philosophize about generalcauses as much as we will, untoward accidents occur: the loss of Pym andHampden in the early part of the Revolution, and that of Cromwell at itsclose, may be fairly reckoned as accidents, and they were untoward inthe highest degree. 

No doubt, while Falkland fits perfectly into the line of Englishprogress and takes his place with obvious propriety among the Saints ofConstitutionalism in the vestibule of the House of Commons, while evenHampden finds admission as the opponent of ship-money, the kind veil ofoblivion being drawn over the part he played as a leader in theRevolution, Cromwell, though his hold over the hearts of the Englishpeople is growing all the time, remains in an uncovenanted condition. The problem of his statue is still, and, so far as England is concerned, seems likely long to be, unsolved. Put him high or low, in the line ofkings or out of it, he is hopelessly incongruous, incommensurable, andout of place. He is in fact the man of the New World; his institutionsin the main embody the organic principles of New World society: atWashington, not at Westminster should be his statue. 

What Puritanism did for England, and what credit is due to it as anelement of English character, are questions which cannot be settled bymere assertion, on our side at least. In its highest development, and atthe period of its greatest men, it was militant, and everything militantis sure to bear evil traces of the battle. For that reason Christianityhas always been in favour of peace and goodwill; let the RegiusProfessor of Theology at Oxford, in his Christian philosophy of war, beas ingenious and as admirable as he may. But sometimes it is necessaryto accept the arbitrament of the sword. It was necessary at Marathon, onthe plain of Tours, on the waters which bore the Armada, at Lutzen, atMarston, at Leipsic, at Gettysburg. Darius, the Moors, Philip II. , Wallenstein, Prince Rupert, Bonaparte, the Slave-owners, did not offeryou the opportunity which you would so gladly have embraced, of atranquil and amicable discussion among lime-trees and violets. On eachoccasion the cause of human progress drew along with it plenty of mudand slime, nevertheless it was the cause of human progress. On eachoccasion the wrong side no doubt had its Falklands, nevertheless it wasthe wrong side. 

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Reformation was broughtto the verge of destruction. When Wallenstein sat down before Stralsundeverything was gone but England, Holland, Sweden, and some cantons ofSwitzerland. In England the stream of reaction was running strong;Holland could not have stood by herself; Sweden was nothing as a power, though it turned out that she had a man. Fortunately the Lambeth Popedomand the Royal Supremacy prevented the English division of the army ofReaction from getting into line with the other divisions and compelledit to accept decisive battle on a separate field against the mostformidable soldiers of the Reformation. These soldiers savedProtestantism, which was their first object, and they saved Englishliberty into the bargain. We who have come after can stand by thebattlefield, pouncet-box in hand, and sniff and sneer as much as wewill. 

Great Tew was an anticipation, for ever beautiful and memorable, of thetime when all swords shall be sheathed, and the world shall have enteredinto final peace. But in its philosophy there were, as the world thenwas, two defects; it did not reach the people, and it was incapable ofprotecting its own existence. Laud himself did not care to crush it; hewas an ecclesiastical despot rather than a theological bigot; he had agenuine respect for learned men; he preferred winning them by graciouswords and preferment to coercing them with the pillory and the shears. But had Laud's system prevailed, there would soon have been an end ofthe philosophy of Great Tew. Mr. Arnold points to the free thought ofBacon. Nobody in those days scented mischief in the inductivephilosophy, while in politics and religion Bacon was scrupulouslyorthodox. Cromwell's faith was a narrower and coarser thing by far thanthat of the inmates of the "college in a purer air;" but it broughtreligion and morality--not the most genial or rational morality, butstill morality--into the cottage as well as into the manor-house, and itwas able to protect its own existence When it had mounted to power inthe person of its chief, the opinions of Great Tew, and all opinionsthat would abstain from trying to overthrow the Government and restorethe tyranny, enjoyed practically larger and more assured liberty thanthey had ever enjoyed in England before or were destined to enjoy formany a year to come. Falkland, says Mr. Arnold, was in the grasp of_fatality, hence the transcendent interest that attaches to him_. Cromwell, happily for his cause and for his country, was, or felthimself to be, not in the grasp of fatality but in the hand of God. 

Might we not have done just as well without Puritanism? Might not someother way have been found of preserving the serious element in Englishcharacter and saving English liberty from those who were conspiring forits destruction? Such questions as these may be asked without end, andthey may be answered by any one who is endowed with a knowledge of menwho were never born, and of events that have never happened. Might not away have been found of rescuing the great interests of humanity withoutGreek resistance to Persian invasion, or German resistance to thetyranny of Bonaparte? Suppose in place of the Puritan chiefs there hadbeen raised up by miracle a set of men at once consummate soldiers andperfect philosophers, who would have fought and won the battle withoutbeing heated by the conflict. Suppose, to prevent the necessity of anyconflict at all, Charles, Strafford, and Laud had voluntarily abandonedtheir designs. As it was, Puritanism did, and alone could do, the work. What the Renaissance would have been without Puritan morality we canpretty well guess from the experience of Italy. It would have probablybeen like the life of Lorenzo--vice, filthy vice, decorated with art andwith elegant philosophy; an academy under the same roof with a brothel. There were ages before morality, and there have been ages between themoralities. There was, in England, an age between the decline of theCatholic morality and the rise of the Puritan, marked by a laxity ofconduct, public and private, which was partly redeemed but notneutralized by Elizabethan genius and enterprise. No doubt when therevival came, there was a High Church as well as a Puritan morality, andthat fact ought always to be borne in mind; but the High Church moralitywas inextricably bound up with sacerdotal superstition and with absolutegovernment; it had no hold on the people; and it found itselfsuspiciously at home in the Court of James, in the households ofSomerset and Buckingham, and in the tribunal which lent itself to thedivorce of Essex. 

That the Puritan Revolution was followed by a sacerdotal and sensualistreaction is too true: all revolutions are followed by reactions; it isone great reason for avoiding them. But let it be remembered, first, that the disbanded soldiers of the Commonwealth and the other relics ofthe Puritan party still remained the most moral and respectable elementin the country; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which followsgreat efforts, whether of men or nations, is not altogether thecondemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness of humanity. Nationsas well as men, if they aim high, must sometimes overstrain themselves, and weariness must ensue. Nor did the Commonwealth of England come tonothing, though in a society not half emancipated from feudalism it waspremature, and therefore, at the time, a failure. It opened a glimpse ofa new order of things: it was the first example of a great nationalrepublic, the republics of antiquity having been at once city republicsand republics of slave-owners: it not only heralded but, to some extent, prepared the American and even the French Revolution. In its sublimedeath-song, chanted by the great Puritan poet, our ears catch theaccents of a hope that did not die. 

The Restoration was the end of the Puritan party, which thenceforthseparated into two portions, the high political element taking the formof Whiggism, while the more religious element was represented insubsequent history by the Nonconformists. Under the Marian reactionProtestantism had been saved, and the errors which it had committed inits hour of ascendency had been redeemed by the champions, drawn mostlyfrom the humbler classes, who suffered for it at the stake. Under theRestoration it was again saved, and the errors which it had once morecommitted in the hour of political triumph were once more redeemed bymartyrs of the same class, whose sufferings in the noisome andpestilential prisons of that day were probably not much less severe thanthe pangs of those who died by fire. Both in the Marian and in theRestoration martyrs of Protestantism there was no doubt much that wasirrational and unattractive; yet the record of their services tohumanity remains, and will remain; let the free-thought of modern times, for which their self-devoting loyalty to such truth as they knew madeway, be grateful or ungrateful to them as it will. 

The relations of Nonconformity, with which we must couple ScotchPresbyterianism, its partner in fundamental doctrine, its constant allyin the conflict, and fellow-sufferer in the hour of adversity, toEnglish religion, morality, industry, education, philanthropy, science, and to the English civilization in general, would be a most importantand instructive chapter in English history, but we are hardly calledupon to attempt to write it in refutation of jocose charges of"hideousness" and "immense ennui. " A sufficient answer to such quips andcranks will be found, we believe, within the same covers with Mr. Arnold's "Falkland, " in the shape of an article on the Pulpit, by Mr. Baldwin Brown, which in tone and culture appears to us a fit companionfor any other paper in the journal. 

That Nonconformity has been political is true. Fortunately for theliberties of England it has had to struggle for civil right in order toobtain religious freedom. No doubt in the course of the conflict it hascontracted a certain gloominess of character, and shown an unamiableside. Treat men with persistent and insolent injustice, strip them oftheir rights as citizens, put on them a social brand, compel them to payfor the maintenance of the pulpits from which their religion isassailed, and you will run a very great risk of souring their tempers. But without rehearsing disagreeable details, we may say generally thatwhoever should undertake to prove that the Established Church had notbeen, from the hour of her birth down to the last general election, atleast as political as the Free Churches, and at least as responsible forthe evils which political religion has brought upon the nation, wouldshow considerable confidence in his powers of dealing with history. Could he find a parallel on the side of the Established Church to themagnanimous loyalty to national interests shown by Nonconformists, inrejecting the bribe offered them by James II. , and supporting theirpersecutors against an illegal toleration? Could he find a parallel onthe side of the Nonconformists to the conduct of the Established Church, in turning round, the moment the victory had been won by Nonconformistaid, and recommencing the persecution of the Nonconformists?

We fully agree with Mr. Arnold, however, in thinking that politicalNonconformity is an evil. There are two known modes of getting rid ofit--the Spanish Inquisition and religious equality. Mr. Arnold seems tothink that there is yet a third--general submission, in matterstheological and ecclesiastical, to the gentle sway of Beau Nash. 

Religious equality in the United States may not be perfect unity, it maynot be the height of culture or of grace, but at all events it is peace. Ultramontanism there, as everywhere else, is aggressive, and a source ofdisturbance; and, on the other hand, in the struggle against slavery, political and religious elements were inevitably intermingled, but as arule politics are kept perfectly clear of religion. Saving in the caseof Roman Catholicism, we cannot call to mind a single instance of aserious appeal in an election to sectarian feeling. Much as we haveheard of the two candidates for the Presidency, we could not at thismoment tell to what Church either of them belongs. Where no Church isprivileged, there can be no cause for jealousy. The Churches dwell sideby side, without disturbing the State with any quarrels; they are allalike loyal to the government; they unite in supporting a system ofpopular education which generally includes a certain element ofunsectarian religion, they combine for social and philanthropic objects;they testify, by their common celebration of national thanksgivings andfasts their unity at all events as portions of the same Christiannation. So far as we know, controversy between them is very rare; thereis more of it within the several Churches between their own moreorthodox and more liberal members. In none does it rage more violentlythan in the Episcopal Church, though, under religious equality, irreconcilable disagreement on religious questions leads to seccession, not to mutual lawsuits and imprisonments. 

Mr. Arnold says in praise of Falkland that "he was profoundly serious. "We presume he means not only that Falkland treated great questions in aserious way, without unseasonable quizzing, but that he was, in thewords quoted from Clarendon in the next sentence, "a precise lover oftruth, and superior to all possible temptations for its violation. " Thetemptations, we presume, would have included those of taste or fancy, aswell as those of the more obvious kind; and Falkland's paramount regardfor truth would have extended to all his fellow-men as well as tohimself and his own intellectual circle. He would never, we areconfident, have advised any human being to separate religion from truth, he would never have suffered himself to intimate that truth was theproperty of a select circle, while "poetry" was good enough for thecommon people, he would never have encouraged thousands of clergymen, educated men with sensitive consciences, to go on preaching to theirflocks from the pulpit, on grounds of social convenience, doctrineswhich they repudiated in the study, and derided in the company ofcultivated men, he would never have exhorted people to enter fromaesthetic considerations a spiritual society of which, in the samebreath, he proclaimed the creeds to be figments, the priesthood to be anillusion, the sacred narratives to be myths, and the Triune God to be acaricature of Lord Shaftesbury multiplied by three. If he had done so, and if his propagandism had been successful, we suspect he would soonhave produced an anarchy, not only religious but social, compared withwhich the most chaotic periods of the Revolution would have been harmonyand order. In the days of the Antonines, to which Gibbon looks back sowistfully, opinion had little influence; the organic forces of societywere of a more primitive and a coarser kind. In modern times if a writercould succeed in separating truth from religion, he would shake thepillars of the moral and social as well as the intellectual world. 

That religion is inseparable from truth is the strong and specialtradition of the Nonconformists. Their history has been a long strugglefor the rights of conscience against spurious authority, an authoritywhich we believe Mr. Arnold holds to be spurious as well as they. Thisis not altogether a bad start in the pursuit of the truth for which theworld now craves, and which, we cordially admit, lies beyond theexisting creed of any particular Church. At all events, it would seemimprovident to merge such an element of religious inquiry in that ofwhich the tradition is submission to spurious authority, whateveradvantages the latter may have in social, literary, and aestheticrespects. Not a generation has yet passed since the admission ofNonconformists to the Universities; and more than a generation is neededin order to attain the highest culture. Give the Free Churches time, andlet us see whether they have not something better to give us in returnthan "hideousness" and "immense ennui. "

THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Our readers need not be afraid that we are going to bore them with theSlavery Question or the Civil War. We deal here not with the MartyrPresident, but with Abe Lincoln in embryo, leaving the great man at theentrance of the grand scene. Mr. Ward H. Lamon has published a biography[Footnote: The Life of Abraham Lincoln from his Birth to hisInauguration as President. By Ward H. Lamon. Boston: James R. Osgood &Co. 1872] which enables us to do this, and which, besides containing agood deal that is amusing, is a curious contribution to politicalscience, as illustrating, by a world-renowned instance, the origin ofthe species Politician. The materials for it appear to be drawn from themost authentic sources, and to have been used with diligence, though inpoint of form the book leaves something to be desired. We trust it andthe authorities quoted in it for our facts. 

After the murder, criticism, of course, was for a time impossible. Martyrdom was followed by canonization, and the popular heart could notbe blamed for overflowing in hyperbole. The fallen chief "wasWashington, he was Moses, and there were not wanting even those wholikened him to the God and Redeemer of all the earth. These latterthought they discovered in his early origin, his kindly nature, hisbenevolent precepts, and the homely anecdotes in which he taught thepeople, strong points of resemblance between him and the Divine Son ofMary. " A halo of myth naturally gathered round the cradle of this newMoses--for we will not pursue the more extravagant and offensiveparallel which may serve as a set-off against that which was drawn byEnglish Royalists between the death of Charles I. And the Crucifixion. Among other fables, it was believed that the President's family had fledfrom Kentucky to Indiana to escape the taint of Slavery. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the course of hismigrations was not determined by high moral motives, and we may safelyaffirm that had he ever found himself among the fleshpots of Egypt, hewould have stayed there, however deep the moral darkness might havebeen. He was a thriftless "ne'er do weel, " who had very commonplacereasons for wandering away from the miserable, solitary farm inKentucky, on which his child first formed a sad acquaintance with lifeand nature, and which, as it happened, was not in the slave-owningregion of the State. His decision appears to have been hastened by a"difficulty, " in which he bit off his antagonist's nose--an incident towhich it would be difficult to find a parallel in the family historiesof Scripture heroes, or even in those of the Sainted Fathers of theRepublic. He drifted to Indiana, and in a spot which was then an almostuntrodden wilderness, built a _casa santa_, which his connection, Dennis Hanks, calls "that darned little half-faced camp"--a dwellingenclosed on three sides and open on the fourth, without a floor, andcalled a camp, it seems, because it was made of poles, not of logs. Heafterwards exchanged the "camp" for the more ambitious "cabin, " but hiscabin, was "a rough, rough log one, " made of unhewn timber, and withoutfloor, door or window. In this "rough, rough, " abode, his lanky, lean-visaged, awkward and somewhat pensive though strong, hearty and patientson Abraham had a "rough, rough" life, and underwent experiences which, if they were not calculated to form a Pitt or a Turgot, were calculatedto season an American politician, and make him a winner in the toughstruggle for existence, as well as to identify him with the people, faithful representation of whose aims, sentiments, tastes, passions andprejudices was the one thing needful to qualify him for obtaining theprize of his ambition. "For two years Lincoln (the father) continued tolive alone in the old way. He did not like to farm, and he never gotmuch of his land under cultivation. His principal crop was corn; andthis, with the game which a rifleman so expert would easily take fromthe woods around him, supplied his table. " It does not appear that heemployed any of his mechanical skill in completing and furnishing hisown cabin. It has already been stated that the latter had no window, door or floor. "But the furniture, if it might be called furniture, waseven worse than the house. Three-legged stools served for chairs. Abedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one cornerof the cabin, while the other end rested in the crotch of a forked stickstuck in the earthen floor. On these were laid some boards, and on theboards a shake-down of leaves, covered with skins and old petticoats. The table was a hewed puncheon supported by four legs. They had a fewpewter and tin dishes to eat from, but the most minute inventory oftheir effects makes no mention of knives or forks. Their cookingutensils were a Dutch oven and a skillet. Abraham slept in the loft, towhich he ascended by means of pins driven into holes in the wall. " Ofhis father's disposition, Abraham seems to have inherited at all eventsthe dislike to labour, though his sounder moral nature prevented himfrom being an idler. His tendency to politics came from the same elementof character as his father's preference for the rifle. In after life weare told his mind "was filled with gloomy forebodings and strongapprehensions of impending evil, mingled with extravagant visions ofpersonal grandeur and power. " His melancholy, characterized by all hisfriends as "terrible, " was closely connected with the cravings of hisdemagogic ambition, and the root of both was in him from a boy. 

In the Indiana cabin Abraham's mother, whose maiden name was NancyHanks, died, far from medical aid, of the epidemic called milk sickness. She was preceded in death by her relatives, the Sparrows, who hadsucceeded the Lincolns in the "camp, " and by many neighbours, whosecoffins Thomas Lincoln made out of "green lumber cut with a whip saw. "Upon Nancy's death he took to his green lumber again and made a box forher. "There were about twenty persons at her funeral. They took her tothe summit of a deeply wooded knoll, about half a mile south-east of thecabin, and laid her beside the Sparrows. If there were any burialceremonies, they were of the briefest. But it happened that a few monthslater an itinerant preacher, named David Elkin, whom the Lincolns hadknown in Kentucky, wandered into the settlement, and he eithervolunteered or was employed to preach a sermon, which should commemoratethe many virtues and pass over in silence the few frailties of the poorwoman who slept in the forest. Many years later the bodies of Levi Halland his wife (relatives), were deposited in the same earth with that ofMr. Lincoln. The graves of two or three children, belonging to aneighbour's family, are also near theirs. They are all crumbled, sunkenand covered with wild vines in deep and tangled mats. The great treeswere originally cut away to make a small cleared space for thisprimitive graveyard; but the young dogwoods have sprung up unopposed ingreat luxuriance, and in many instances the names of pilgrims to theburial place of the great Abraham Lincoln's mother are carved on theirbark. With this exception, the spot is wholly unmarked. The grave neverhad a stone, nor even a board, at its head or its foot, and theneighbours still dispute as to which of these unsightly hollows containsthe ashes of Nancy Lincoln. " If Democracy in the New World sometimesstones the prophets, it is seldom guilty of building their sepulchres. Out of sight, off the stump, beyond the range of the interviewer, heroesand martyrs soon pass from the mind of a fast-living people; and weedsmay grow out of the dust of Washington. But in this case what neglecthas done good taste would have dictated; it is well that the dogwoodsare allowed to grow unchecked over the wilderness grave. 

Thirteen months after the death of his Nancy, Thomas Lincoln went toElizabethtown, Kentucky, and suddenly presented himself to Mrs. SallyJohnston, who had in former days rejected him for a better match, buthad become a widow. "Well, Mrs. Johnston, I have no wife and you have nohusband, I came a purpose to marry you. I knowed you from a gal and youknowed me from a boy. I have no time to lose, and if you are willin', let it be done straight off. " "Tommy, I know you well, and have noobjection to marrying you; but I cannot do it straight off, as I owesome debts that must first be paid. " They were married next morning, andthe new Mrs. Lincoln, who owned, among other wondrous household goods, abureau that cost forty dollars, and who had been led, it seems, tobelieve that her new husband was reformed and a prosperous farmer, wasconveyed with her bureau to the smiling scene of his reformation andprosperity. Being, however, a sensible Christian woman, she made thebest of a bad bargain, got her husband to put down a floor and hangdoors and windows, made things generally decent, and was very kind tothe children, especially to Abe, to whom she took a great liking, andwho owed to his good stepmother what other heroes have owed to theirmothers. "From that time on, " according to his garrulous relative, Dennis Hanks, "he appeared to lead a new life. " It seems to have beendifficult to extract from him "for campaign purposes" the incidents ofhis life before it took this happy turn. 

He described his own education in a Congressional handbook as"defective. " In Kentucky he occasionally trudged with his little sister, rather as an escort than as a school-fellow, to a school four miles off, kept by one Caleb Hazel, who could teach reading and writing after afashion, and a little arithmetic, but whose great qualification for hisoffice lay in his power and readiness "to whip the big boys. " So far theAmerican respect for popular education as the key to success in lifeprevailed even in those wilds, and in such a family as that of ThomasLincoln. 

Under the auspices of his new mother, Abraham began attending schoolagain. The master was one Crawford, who taught not only reading, writingand arithmetic, but "manners. " One of the scholars was made to retire, and re-enter "as a polite gentleman enters a drawing room, " after whichhe was led round by another scholar and introduced to all "the youngladies and gentlemen. " The polite gentleman who entered the drawing roomand was introduced as Mr. Abraham Lincoln, is thus depicted: "He wasgrowing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his fullheight of six feet four inches. He was long, wiry and strong, while hisbig feet and hands and the length of his arms and legs were out of allproportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and Mr. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey woolsey shirt, and a capmade of the skin of an opossum or a coon. The breeches clung close tohis thighs and legs, but parted by a large space to meet the tops of hisshoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much ofshinbone, sharp, blue and narrow. " At a subsequent period, when chargedby a Democratic rival with being "a Whig aristocrat, " he gave a minuteand touching description of the breeches. "I had only one pair, " hesaid, "and they were buckskin. And if you know the nature of buckskinwhen wet and dried by the sun they will shrink; and mine kept shrinkinguntil they left several inches of my legs bare between the tops of mysocks and the lower part of my breeches, and whilst I was growing tallerthey were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a bluestreak around my legs, which can be seen to this day. "

Mr. Crawford, it seems, was a martinet in spelling, and one day he wasgoing to punish a whole class for failing to spell _defied_, whenLincoln telegraphed the right letter to a young lady by putting hisfinger with a significant smile to his eye. Many years later, however, and after his entrance into public life, Lincoln himself spelt_apology_ with a double p, _planning_ with a single n, and_very_ with a double r. His schooling was very irregular, hisschool days hardly amounting to a year in all, and such education as hehad was picked up afterwards by himself. His appetite for mental food, however, was always strong, and he devoured all the books, few and notvery select, which could be found in the neighbourhood of "PigeonCreek. " Equally strong was his passion for stump oratory, the taste forwhich pervades the American people, even in the least intellectualdistricts, as the taste for church festivals pervades the people ofSpain, or the taste for cricket the people of England. Abe's neighbour, John Romine, says, "he was awful lazy. He worked for me; was alwaysreading and thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, andcrack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love hispay. " He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabinand read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of thefire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeatingthe sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers andsister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it wasannounced in the harvest field that Abe had taken the stump, work was atan end. The lineaments of the future politician distinctly appear in thedislike of manual labour as well as in the rest. We shall presently haveLincoln's own opinion on that point. 

Abe's first written composition appears to have been an essay againstcruelty to animals, a theme the choice of which was at once indicativeof his kindness of heart and practically judicious, since the younggentlemen in the neighbourhood were in the habit of catching terrapinsand putting hot coals upon their backs. The essay appears not to havebeen preserved, and we cannot say whether its author succeeded inexplaining that ethical mystery--the love of cruelty in boys. 

In spite of his laziness, Abe was greatly in demand at hog-killing time, notwithstanding, or possibly in consequence of which, he contracted apeculiarly tender feeling towards swine, and in later life would get offhis horse to help a struggling hog out of the mire or to save a littlepig from the jaws of an unnatural mother. 

Society in the neighbourhood of Pigeon Creek was of the thoroughbackwoods type; as coarse as possible, but hospitable and kindly, freefrom cant and varnish, and a better school of life than of manners, though, after all, the best manners are learnt in the best school oflife, and the school of life in which Abe studied was not the worst. Hebecame a leading favourite, and his appearance, towering above the otherhunting shirts, was always the signal for the fun to begin. His natureseems to have been, like many others, open alike to cheerful and togloomy impressions. A main source of his popularity was the fund ofstories to which he was always adding, and to which in after life, heconstantly went for solace, under depression or responsibility, asanother man would go to his cigar or snuff box. The taste was notindividual but local, and natural to keen-witted people who had no otherfood for their wits. In those circles "the ladies drank whiskey-toddy, while the men drank it straight. " Lincoln was by no means fond of drink, but in this, as in every thing else, he followed the great law of hislife as a politician, by falling in with the humour of the people. Onecold night be and his companions found an acquaintance lying dead-drunkin a puddle. All but Lincoln were disposed to let him lie where he was, and freeze to death. But Abe "bent his mighty frame, and taking the manin his long arms, carried him a great distance to Dennis Hanks' cabin. There he built a fire, warmed, rubbed and nursed him through the entirenight, his companions having left him alone in his merciful task. " Hisreal kindness of heart is always coming out in the most striking way, and it was not impaired even by civil war. 

Though sallow-faced, Lincoln had a very good constitution, but his framehardly bespoke great strength: he was six feet four and large-boned, butnarrow chested, and had almost a consumptive appearance. His strength, nevertheless, was great. We are told that harnessed with ropes andstraps he could lift a box of stones weighing from a thousand to twelvehundred pounds. But that he could raise a cask of whiskey in his armsstanding upright, and drink out of the bung-hole, his biographer doesnot believe. The story is no doubt a part of the legendary halo whichhas gathered round the head of the martyr. In wrestling, of which he wasvery fond, he had not his match near Pigeon Creek, and only once foundhim anywhere else. He was also formidable as a pugilist. But he was nobully; on the contrary, he was peaceable and chivalrous in a rough way. His chivalry once displayed itself in a rather singular fashion. He wasin the habit, among other intellectual exercises, of writing satires onhis neighbours in the form of chronicles, the remains of which, unlikeany known writings of Moses, or even of Washington, are "too indecentfor publication. " In one of these he assailed the Grigsbys, who hadfailed to invite him to a brilliant wedding. The Grigsby blood tookfire, and a fight was arranged. But when they came to the ring, Lincoln, deeming the Grigsby champion too much overmatched, magnanimouslysubstituted for himself his less puissant stepbrother, John Johnston, who was getting well pounded when Abe, on pretence of foul play, interfered, seized Grigsby by the neck, flung him off and cleared thering. He then "swung a whiskey bottle over his head, and swore that hewas the big buck of the lick, "--a proposition which it seems, the otherbucks of the lick, there assembled in large numbers, did not feelthemselves called upon to dispute. 

That Abraham Lincoln should have said, when a bare-legged boy, that heintended to be President of the United States, is not remarkable. Everyboy in the United States says it; soon, perhaps, every girl will be ableto say it, and then human happiness will be complete. But Lincoln wasreally carrying on his political education. Dennis Hanks is asked how heand Lincoln acquired their knowledge. "We learned, " he replies, "bysight, scent and hearing. We heard all that was said, and talked overand over the questions heard; wore them slick, greasy and threadbare. Went to political and other speeches and gatherings, as you do now; wewould hear all sides and opinions, talk them over, discuss them, agreeing or disagreeing. Abe, as I said before, was originally aDemocrat after the order of Jackson; so was his father, so we allwere.... He preached, made speeches, read for us, explained to us, &c.... Abe was a cheerful boy, a witty boy; was humorous always, sometimes would get sad, not very often.... Lincoln would frequentlymake political and other speeches; he was calm, logical and clearalways. He attended trials, went to court always, read the RevisedStatutes of Indiana, dated 1824, heard law speeches, and listened to lawtrials. Lincoln was lazy, a very lazy man. He was always reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing poetry, and the like.... InGentryville, about one mile west of Thomas Lincoln's farm, Lincoln wouldgo and tell his jokes and stories, &c. , and was so odd, original andhumorous and witty, that all the people in town would gather around him. He would keep them there till midnight. I would get tired, want to gohome, cuss Abe most heartily. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, andwas a kind of newsboy. " One or two articles written by Abe found theirway into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot wason the first round of the ladder. It is right to say that his culturewas not solely political, and that he was able to astonish the nativesof Gentryville by explaining that when the sun appeared to set, it "waswe did the sinking and not the sun. "

Abe was tired of his home, as a son of Thomas Lincoln might be, withoutdisparagement to his filial piety; and he was glad to get off with aneighbour on a commercial trip down the river to New Orleans. The tripwas successful in a small way, and Abe soon after repeated it with othercompanions. He shewed his practical ingenuity in getting the boat off adam, and perhaps still more signally in quieting some restive hogs bythe simple expedient of sewing up their eyes. In the first trip thegreat emancipator came in contact with the negro in a way that did notseem likely to prepossess him in favour of the race. The boat wasboarded by negro robbers, who were repulsed only after a fray in whichAbe got a scar which he carried to the grave. But he saw with his owneyes slaves manacled and whipped at New Orleans; and though hissympathies were not far-reaching, the actual sight of suffering neverfailed to make an impression on his mind. "In 1841, " he says, in aletter to a friend, "you and I had together a tedious low-water trip ona steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I welldo, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on boardten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was acontinued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touchthe Ohio or any other slave border. " A negrophilist he never became. "Iprotest, " he said afterwards, when engaged in the slavery controversy, "against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do notwant a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. Ineed not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In somerespects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eatthe bread which she earns with her own hands she is my equal and theequal of all others. " It would be difficult to put the case better. 

While Abraham Lincoln was trading to New Orleans his father, ThomasLincoln, was on the move again. This time he migrated to Illinois, andthere again shifted from place to place, gathering no moss, till he diedas thriftless and poor as he had lived. We have, in later years, anapplication from him to his son for money, to which the son responds ina tone which implies some doubt as to the strict accuracy of the groundon which the old gentleman's request was preferred. Their relations wereevidently not very affectionate, though there is nothing unfilial inAbe's conduct. Abraham himself drifted to Salem on the Sangamon, inIllinois, twenty miles north-west of Springfield, where he became clerkin a new store, set up by Denton Offutt, with whom he had formed aconnection in one of his trips to New Orleans. Salem was then a villageof a dozen houses, and the little centre of a society very like that ofPigeon Creek and its neighbourhood, but more decidedly western. We aretold that "here Mr. Lincoln became acquainted with a class of men theworld never saw the like of before or since. They were large men, --largein body and large in mind; hard to whip and never to be fooled. Theywere a bold, daring and reckless set of men; they were men of their ownmind, --believed what was demonstrable, were men of great common sense. With these men Mr. Lincoln was thrown; with them he lived and with themhe moved and almost had his being. They were sceptics all--scofferssome. These scoffers were good men, and their scoffs were protestsagainst theology, --loud protests against the follies of Christianity;they had never heard of theism and the new and better religious thoughtsof this age. Hence, being natural sceptics and being bold, brave menthey uttered their thoughts freely.... They were on all occasions, whenopportunity offered, debating the various questions of Christianityamong themselves; they took their stand on common sense and on their ownsouls; and though their arguments were rude and rough, no man couldoverthrow their homely logic. They riddled all divines, and notunfrequently made them sceptics, --disbelievers as bad as themselves. They were a jovial, healthful, generous, true and manly set of people. "It is evident that W. Herndon, the speaker, is himself a disbeliever inChristianity, and addicted to the "newer and better thought of thisage. " He gives one specimen, which we have omitted for fear of shockingour readers, of the theological criticism of these redoubtable logiciansof nature; and we are inclined to infer from it that the divines whomthey "riddled" and converted to scepticism must have been children ofnature as well as themselves. The passage, however, is a life-like, though idealized, portrait of the Western man; and the tendency toreligious scepticism of the most daring kind is as truly ascribed to himas the rest. 

It seems to be proved by conclusive evidence that Mr. Lincoln shared thesentiments of his companions, and that he was never a member of anyChurch, a believer in the divinity of Christ, or a Christian of anydenomination. He is described as an avowed, an open freethinker, sometimes bordering on atheism, going extreme lengths against Christiandoctrines, and "shocking" men whom it was probably not very easy toshock. He even wrote a little work on "Infidelity, " attackingChristianity in general, and especially the belief that Jesus was theSon of God; but the manuscript was destroyed by a prescient friend, whoknew that its publication would ruin the writer in the political market. There is reason to believe that Burns contributed to Lincoln'sscepticism, but he drew it more directly from Volney, Paine, Hume andGibbon. His fits of downright atheism appear to have been transient; hissettled belief was theism with a morality which, though he was not awareof it, he had really derived from the Gospel. It is needless to say thatthe case had never been rationally presented to him, and that hisdecision against Christianity would prove nothing, even if his mind hadbeen more powerful than it was. His theism was not strong enough to savehim from deep depression under misfortune; and we heard, on what wethought at the time good authority, that after Chancellorsville, heactually meditated suicide. Like many sceptics, he was liable tosuperstition, especially to the superstition of self-consciousness, aconviction that he was the subject of a special decree made by somenameless and mysterious power. Even from a belief in apparitions he wasnot free. "It was just after my election, in 1860, " he said to hisSecretary, John Hay, "when the news had been coming in thick and fastall day, and there had been a great 'hurrah, boys!' so that I was welltired, I went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and, on looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length;but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip ofthe nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. Iwas a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in theglass; but the illusion vanished. On lying down again I saw it a secondtime--plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one ofthe faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got upand the thing melted away; and I went off and in the excitement of thehour forgot all about it, --nearly, but not quite, for the thing wouldonce in a while come up and give me a little pang, as though somethinguncomfortable had happened. When I went home I told my wife about it;and in a few days afterwards I tried the experiment again, when, sureenough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing theghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously, to showit to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'asign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that thepaleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see lifethrough the last term. " The apparition is, of course, easily explainedby reference to a generally morbid temperament and a specially excitedfancy. The impression which it made on the mind of a sceptic, noted fornever believing in anything which was not actually submitted to hissenses, is an instance of the tendency of superstition to creep into thevoid left in the heart by faith, and as such may be classed with theastrological superstitions of the Roman Empire, and of that later age ofreligious and moral infidelity of which the prophet was Machiavelli. Butif Mr. John Hay has faithfully repeated Lincoln's words, a point uponwhich we may have our doubts without prejudice to Mr. Hay's veracity, Mrs. Lincoln's interpretation of the vision is, to say the least, a verycurious coincidence. 

The flower of the heroic race in the neighbourhood of Salem, were the"Clary's Grove boys, " whose chief and champion was Jack Armstrong. "Never, " we are assured, "was there a more generous parcel of ruffiansthan those over whom Jack held sway. " It does not appear, however, thatthe term ruffian is altogether misplaced. The boys were in the habit of"initiating" candidates for admission to society at New Salem. "Theyfirst bantered the gentleman to run a foot race, jump, pitch the mall, or wrestle; and if none of these propositions seemed agreeable to him, they would request to know what he would do in case another gentlemanshould pull his nose or squirt tobacco juice in his face. If he did notseem entirely decided in his views as to what should be done in such acontingency, perhaps he would be nailed in a hogshead and rolled downNew Salem hill, perhaps his ideas would be brightened by a brief duckingin the Sangamon; or perhaps he would be scoffed, kicked and cuffed by agreat number of persons in concert, until he reached the confines of thevillage, and then turned adrift as being unfit company for the people ofthat settlement. " If the stranger consented to race or wrestle, it wasarranged that there should be foul play, which would lead to a fight; aproper display of mettle in which was accepted as a proof of the"gentleman's" fitness for society. Abe escaped initiation, his lengthand strength of limb being apparently deemed satisfactory evidence ofhis social respectability. But Clary's Grove was at last brought downupon him by the indiscretion of his friend and admirer, Offutt, who wasalready beginning to run him for President, and whose vauntings of hispowers made a trial of strength inevitable. A wrestling match wascontrived between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, and money, jackknives andwhiskey were freely staked on the result. Neither combatant could throwthe other, and Abe proposed to Jack to "quit. " But Jack, goaded on byhis partisans, resorted to a "foul, " upon which Abe's righteous wrathblazed up, and taking the champion of Clary's Grove by the throat he"shook him like a child. " A fight was impending, and Abe, his backplanted against Offutt's store, was facing a circle of foes, when amediator appeared. Jack Armstrong was so satisfied of the strength ofAbe's arm, that he at once declared him the best fellow that ever cameinto the settlement, and the two thenceforth reigned conjointly over theroughs and bullies of New Salem. Abe seems always to have used his powerhumanely and to have done his best to substitute arbitration for war. Astrange man coming into the settlement, on being beset as usual byClary's Grove and insulted by Jack Armstrong, knocked the bully downwith a stick. Jack being as strong as two of him was going to "whip himbadly, " when Abe interposed, "Well Jack, what did you say to the man?"Jack repeated his words. "And what would you do if you were in a strangeplace and you were called a d--d liar?" "Whip him, by ---. " "Then thatman has done to you no more than you have done to him. " Jackacknowledged the golden rule and "treated" his intended victim. If therewere ever dissensions between the two "Caesars" of Salem, it was becauseJack "in the abundance of his animal spirits" was addicted to nailingpeople in barrels and rolling them down the hill, while Abe was alwayson the side of mercy. 

Abe's popularity grew apace; his ambition grew with it; it isastonishing how readily and freely the plant sprouts upon that soil. Hewas at this time carrying on his education evidently with a view topublic life. Books were not easily found. He wanted to study EnglishGrammar, considering that accomplishment desirable for a statesman; and, being told that there was a grammar in a house six miles from Salem, heleft his breakfast at once and walked off to borrow it. He would slipaway into the woods and spend hours in study and thinking. He sat uplate at night, and as light was expensive, made a blaze of shavings inthe cooper's shop. He waylaid every visitor to New Salem who had anypretence to scholarship, and extracted explanations of things which hedid not understand. It does not appear that the work of Adam Smith, orany work upon political economy, currency, or any financial subject fellinto the hands of the student who was destined to conduct the mosttremendous operations in the whole history of finance. 

The next episode in Lincoln's life which may be regarded as a part ofhis training was the command of a company of militia in the "Black Hawk"war. Black Hawk was an Indian Chief of great craft and power, and, apparently, of fine character, who had the effrontery to object to beingimproved off the face of creation, an offence which he aggravated by anhereditary attachment to the British. At a muster of the Sangamoncompany at Clary's Grove, Lincoln was elected captain. The election wasa proof of his popularity, but he found it rather hard to manage hisconstituents in the field. One morning on the march the Captaincommanded his orderly to form the company for parade; but when theorderly called "parade, " the men called "parade" too, but could not fallinto line. They had found their way to the officers' liquor the eveningbefore. The regiment had to march and leave the company behind. Aboutten o'clock the company set out to follow; but when it had marched twomiles "the drunken ones lay down and slept their drink off. " Lincoln, who seems to have been perfectly blameless, was placed under arrest andcondemned to carry a wooden sword; but it does not appear that anynotice was taken of the conduct of that portion of the sovereign peoplewhich lay down drunk on the march when the army was advancing againstthe enemy. Something like this was probably the state of things in theNorthern army at the beginning of the civil war, before discipline hadbeen enforced by disaster. The campaign opened with a cleverly-wonvictory on the part of Black Hawk, and a rapid retrograde movement onthe part of the militia, as to which we will be content to say with Mr. Lamon, "of drunkenness no public account makes any mention, andindividual cowardice is never to be imputed to American troops. "Ultimately, however, Black Hawk was overpowered and most of his men mettheir doom in attempting to retreat across the Mississippi. "During thisshort Indian campaign, " says one who took part in it, "we had some hardtimes, often hungry; but we had a great deal of sport, especially atnights--foot racing, some horse racing, jumping, telling anecdotes, inwhich Lincoln beat all, keeping up a constant laughter and good humourall the time, among the soldiers some card-playing and wrestling inwhich Lincoln took a prominent part. I think it safe to say he was neverthrown in a wrestle. While in the army he kept a handkerchief tiedaround him all the time for wrestling purposes, and loved the sport aswell as any one could. He was seldom if ever beat jumping. During thecampaign Lincoln himself was always ready for an emergency. He enduredhardships like a good soldier; he never complained, nor did he feardangers. When fighting was expected or danger apprehended, Lincoln wasthe first to say 'Let's go. ' He had the confidence of every man of hiscompany, and they strictly obeyed his orders at a word. His company wasall young men, and full of sport. " The assertion as to the strict anduniform obedience of the company at its captain's word, requires, as wehave seen, some qualification in a democratic sense. Whether Lincoln wasever beaten in wrestling is also one of the moot points of history. 

In the course of this campaign one Mr. Thompson, whose fame as awrestler was great throughout the west, accepted Lincoln's challenge. Great excitement prevailed, and Lincoln's company and backers "put upall their portable property and some perhaps not their own, includingknives, blankets, tomahawks, and all the necessary articles of asoldier's outfit. " As soon as Lincoln laid hold of his antagonist hefound that he had got at least his match, and warned his friends of thatunwelcome fact. He was thrown once fairly, and a second time fell withThompson on the top of him. "We were taken by surprise, " candidly saysMr. Green, "and being unwilling to put with our property and lose ourbets, got up an excuse as to the result. We declared the fall a kind ofa dog-fall--did so apparently angrily. " A fight was about to begin, whenLincoln rose up and said, "Boys, the man actually threw me once fair, broadly so; and the second time, this very fall, he threw me fairly, though not so apparently so. " This quelled the disturbance. 

On the same authority we are told that Lincoln gallantly interfered tosave the life of a poor old Indian who had thrown himself on the mercyof the soldiers, and whom, notwithstanding that he had a pass, they wereproceeding to slay. The anecdote wears a somewhat melodramatic aspect;but there is no doubt of Lincoln's humanity, or of his readiness toprotest against oppression and cruelty when they actually fell under hisnotice. It was also in keeping with his character to insist firmly onthe right of his militiamen to the same rations and pay as the regulars, and to draw the legal line sharply and clearly when the regular officersexceeded their authority in the exercise of command. 

Returning to New Salem, Lincoln, having served his apprenticeship as aclerk, commenced storekeeping on his own account. An opening was madefor him by the departure of Mr. Radford, the keeper of a grocery, who, having offended the Clary's Grove boys, they "selected a convenientnight for breaking in his windows and gutting his establishment. " Fromhis ruins rose the firm of Lincoln & Berry. Doubt rests on the greathistoric question whether Lincoln sold liquor in his store, and on thatquestion still more agonizing to a sensitive morality--whether he soldit by the dram. The points remain, we are told, and will forever remainundetermined. The only fact in which history can repose with certaintyis that some liquor must have been _given_ away, since nobody inthe neighbourhood of Clary's Grove could keep store without offering thecustomary dram to the patrons of the place. When taxed on the platformby his rival, Douglas, with having sold liquor, Mr. Lincoln replied thatif he figured on one side of the counter, Douglas figured on the other. "As a storekeeper, " says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linenpantaloons--I thought about five inches too short in the legs--andfrequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calicoshirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour;blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and without a band. " It isrecorded that he preferred dealing with men and boys, and disliked towait on the ladies. Possibly, if his attire has been rightly described, the ladies, even the Clary's Grove ladies, may have reciprocated thefeeling. 

In storekeeping, however, Mr. Lincoln did not prosper; neitherstorekeeping nor any other regular business or occupation was congenialto his character. He was born to be a politician. Accordingly he beganto read law, with which he combined surveying, at which we are assuredhe made himself "expert" by a six weeks' course of study. They mixtrades a little in the West. We expected on turning the page to findthat Mr. Lincoln had also taken up surgery and performed the Caesareanoperation. The few law books needed for Western practice were suppliedto him by a kind friend at Springfield, and according to a witness whohas evidently an accurate memory for details, "he went to read law in1832 or 1833 barefooted, seated in the shade of a tree and would grindaround with the shade, just opposite Berry's grocery store, a few feetsouth of the door, occasionally lying flat on his back and putting hisfeet up the tree. " Evidently, whatever he read, especially of apractical kind, he made thoroughly his own. It is needless to say thathe did not become a master of scientific jurisprudence, but it seemsthat he did become an effective Western advocate. What is more, there isconclusive testimony to the fact that he was--what has been scandalouslyalleged to be rare, even in the United States--an honest lawyer. "Loveof justice and fair play, " says one of his brothers of the bar, "was hispredominant trait. I have often listened to him when I thought he wouldstate his case out of Court. It was not in his nature to assume orattempt to bolster up a false position. He would abandon his case first. He did so in the case of _Buckmaster for the use of Durham v. Beener &Arthur_, in our Supreme Court, in which I happened to be opposed tohim. Another gentleman, less fastidious, took Mr. Lincoln's place andgained the case. " His power as an advocate seems to have depended on hisconviction that the right was on his side. "Tell Harris it's no use to_waste money on me_; in that case, he'll get beat. " In a larcenycase he took those who were counsel with him for the defence aside andsaid, "If you can say anything for the man do it. I can't. If I attemptit, the jury will see that I think he is guilty and convict him ofcourse. " In another case he proved an account for his client, who, though he did not know it, was a rogue. The counsel on the other sideproved a receipt. By the time he had done Lincoln was missing; and onthe Court sending for him, he replied, "Tell the judge I can't come; myhands are dirty, and I came over to clean them. " Mr. Herndon, whovisited Lincoln's office on business, gives the following reminiscence:--"Mr. Lincoln was seated at his table, listening very attentively to aman who was talking earnestly in a low tone. After the would-be clienthad stated the facts of the case, Mr. Lincoln replied, 'yes, there is noreasonable doubt but that I can gain your case for you. I can set awhole neighbourhood at logger heads; I can distress a widowed mother andher six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundreddollars, which rightly belongs, it appears to me, as much to the womanand her children as it does to you. You must remember that some thingsthat are legally right are not morally right. I shall not take your casebut will give you a bit of advice, for which I will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to tryyour hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way. '" On oneoccasion, however, Lincoln, we believe it must be admitted, resorted tosharp practice. William Armstrong, the son of Jack Armstrong, of Clary'sGrove, inheriting, as it seems, the "abundant animal spirits" of hisfather, committed, as was universally believed, a very brutal murder ata camp meeting, and being brought to trial was in imminent peril of thehalter. Lincoln volunteered to defend him. The witness whose testimonybore hardest on the prisoner swore that he saw the murder committed bythe light of the moon. Lincoln put in an almanac, which, on referencebeing made to it showed that at the time stated by the witness there wasno moon. This broke down the witness and the prisoner was acquitted. Itwas not observed at the moment that the almanac was one of the yearprevious to the murder; and therefore morally a fabrication. Herculeanefforts are made to prove that _two_ almanacs were produced andthat Mr. Lincoln was innocent of any deception. But the best plea, weconceive, is, that Mr. Lincoln had rocked William Armstrong in thecradle. 

There is one part of Lincoln's early life which, though scandal maybatten on it, we shall pass over lightly, we mean that part whichrelates to his love affairs and his marriage. Criticism, and evenbiography, should respect as far as possible the sanctuary of affection. That a man has dedicated his life to the service of the public is noreason why the public should be licensed to amuse itself by playing withhis heart-strings. Not only as a storekeeper, but in every capacity, Mr. Lincoln was far more happy in his relations with men than with women. Hehowever loved, and loved deeply, Ann Rutledge, who appears to have beenentirely worthy of his attachment, and whose death at the moment whenshe would have felt herself at liberty to marry him threw him into atransport of grief, which threatened his reason and excited the gravestapprehensions of his friends. In stormy weather especially he would ravepiteously, crying that "he could never be reconciled to have the snow, rains and storms to beat upon her grave. " This first love he seems neverto have forgotten. He next had an affair, not so creditable to him, witha Miss Owens, of whom, after their rupture, he wrote things which he hadbetter have left unwritten. Finally, he made a match of which the worldhas heard more than enough, though the Western Boy was too true agentleman to let it hear anything about the matter from his lips. It isenough to say that this man was not wanting in that not inconsiderableelement of worth, even of the worth of statesmen, strong and pureaffection. 

"If ever, " said Abraham Lincoln, "American society and the United StatesGovernment are demoralized and overthrown, it will come from thevoracious desire of office--this wriggle to live without toil, fromwhich I am not free myself. " These words ought to be written up in thelargest characters in every schoolroom in the United States. Theconfession with which they conclude is as true as the rest. Mr. Lincoln, we are told, took no part in the promotion of local enterprises, railroads, schools, churches, asylums. The benefits he proposed for hisfellow men were to be accomplished by political means alone "Politicswere his world--a world filled with hopeful enchantments. Ordinarily hedisliked to discuss any other subject. " "In the office, " says hispartner, Mr. Herndon, "he sat down or spilt himself (_sic_) on hislounge, read aloud, told stories, talked politics--never science, art, literature, railroad gatherings, colleges, asylums, hospitals, commerce, education, progress--nothing that interested the world generally, exceptpolitics. " "He seldom, " says his present biographer, "took an activepart in local or minor elections, or wasted his power to advance afriend. He did nothing out of mere gratitude, and forgot the devotion ofhis warmest partisans, as soon as the occasion for their services hadpassed. What they did for him was quietly appropriated as the reward ofsuperior merit, calling for no return in kind. " We are told that whilehe was "wriggling, " he was in effect boarded and clothed for some yearsby his friend, Hon. W. Butler, at Springfield, and that, when in power, he refused to exercise his patronage in favour of his friend. On thatoccasion, his biographer tells us, that he considered his patronage asolemn trust. We give him credit for a conscientiousness above theordinary level of his species on this as well as on other subjects. Buthis sense of the solemn character of his trust, though it prevented himfrom giving a petty place to the old friend who had helped him in theday of his need, did not prevent him, as President, from sometimespaying for support by a far more questionable use of the highestpatronage in his gift. 

The fact is not that the man was by nature wanting in gratitude or inany kindly quality, on the contrary, he seems to have abounded in themall. But the excitement of the game was so intense that it swallowed upall other considerations and emotions. In a dead season of politics, hisdepression was extreme. "He said gloomily, despairingly, sadly, 'Howhard, oh! how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better thanif one had never lived for it. This world is dead to hope, deaf to itsown death-struggle. '" Possibly this is the way in which "wriggling"politicians generally put the case to themselves. 

Lincoln's fundamental principle was devotion to the popular will. In hisaddress to the people of Sangamon County, he says, "while acting astheir representative I shall be governed by their will on all subjectsupon which I have the means of knowing what their will is, and upon allothers I will do what my own judgment teaches me will advance theirinterests. " "'It is a maxim, ' with many politicians, just to keep alongeven with the humour of the people right or wrong. " "This maxim, " addsthe biographer, "Mr. Lincoln held then, as ever since, in very highestimation. " It may occur to some enquiring minds to ask what, uponthose principles, is the use of having representation at all, andwhether it would not be better to let the people themselves votedirectly on all questions without interposing a representative todiminish their sense of responsibility, to say nothing of the sacrificeof the representative's conscience, which, in the cases of the statesmenhere described, was probably not very great. With regard to Slavery, however, Mr. Lincoln showed forecast, if not conscientious independence. He stepped forth in advance of the sentiments of his party, and to hispolitical friends appeared rash in the extreme. 

Lincoln's first attempt to get elected to the State Legislature wasunsuccessful. It however brought him the means of "doing something forhis country, " and partly averting the "death-struggle of the world, " inthe shape of the postmastership of New Salem. The business of the officewas not on a large scale, for it was carried on in Mr. Lincoln's hat--anintegument of which it is recorded, that he refused to give it to aconjurer to play the egg trick in, "not from respect for his own hat, but for the conjurer's eggs. " The future President did not fail tosignalize his first appearance as an administrator by a sally of thejocularity which was always struggling with melancholy in his mind. Agentleman of the place, whose education had been defective, was in thehabit of calling two or three times a day at the post-office, andostentatiously inquiring for letters. At last he received a letter, which, being unable to read himself, he got the postmaster to read forhim before a large circle of friends. It proved to be from a negro ladyengaged in domestic service in the South, recalling the memory of amutual attachment, with a number of incidents more delectable thansublime. It is needless to say that the postmaster, by a slightextension of the sphere of his office, had written the letter as well asdelivered it. 

In a second candidature the aspirant was more successful, and he becameone of nine representatives of Sangamon County, in the State Legislatureof Illinois, who, being all more than six feet high, were called "TheLong Nine. " With his Brobdingnagian colleagues Abraham plunged at onceinto the "internal improvement system, " and distinguished himself abovehis fellows by the unscrupulous energy and strategy with which he urgedthrough the Legislature a series of bubble schemes and jobs. Railroadsand other improvements, especially improvements of river navigation, were voted out of all proportion to the means or credit of the thenthinly-peopled State. To set these little matters in motion, a loan ofeight millions of dollars was authorized, and to complete the canal fromChicago to Peru, another loan of four millions of dollars was voted atthe same session, two hundred thousand dollars being given as a gratuityto those counties which seemed to have no special interest in any of theforegoing projects. Work on all these roads was to commence, not only atthe same time, but at both ends of each road and at all the river-crossings. There were as yet no surveys of any route, no estimates, noreports of engineers, or even unprofessional viewers. "Progress was notto wait on trifles; capitalists were supposed to be lying in wait tocatch these precious bonds; the money would be raised in a twinkling, and being applied with all the skill of a hundred De Witt Clintons--aclass of gentlemen at that time extremely numerous and obtrusive--theloan would build railroads, the railroads would build cities, citieswould create farms, foreign capital would rush in to so inviting afield, the lands would be taken up with marvellous celerity, and theland tax going into a sinking fund, that, with some tolls and certainsly speculations to be made by the State, would pay principal andinterest of debt without even a cent of taxation upon the people. Inshort, everybody was to be enriched, while the munificence of the Statein selling its credit and spending the proceeds, would make its emptycoffers overflow with ready money. It was a dark stroke ofstatesmanship, a mysterious device in finance, which, whether from beingmisunderstood or mismanaged, bore from the beginning fruits the veryreverse of those it had promised. " We seem here to be reading thehistory of more than one great railway enterprise undertaken bypoliticians without the red tape preliminaries of surveying or framingestimates, progress not deigning to wait upon trifles. This system ofpolicy gave fine scope for the talents of the "log-roller, " here definedas an especially wily and persuasive person, who could depict the meritsof his scheme with roseate but delusive eloquence, and who was said tocarry a gourd of "possum fat"--wherewith he "greased and swallowed" hisprey. One of the largest of these gourds was carried by "honest Abe, "who was especially active in "log-rolling" a bill for the removal of theseat of government from Vandalia to Springfield, at a virtual cost tothe State of about six millions of dollars, which we were told wouldhave purchased all the real estate in the town three times over. "Thusby log-rolling on the loud measure, by multiplying railroads, byterminating these roads at Alton, that Alton might become a great cityin opposition to St. Louis; by distributing money to some of thecounties to be wasted by the County Commissioners, and by giving theseat of government to Springfield--was the whole State bought up andbribed to approve the most senseless and disastrous policy which evercrippled the energies of a young country. " We are told, and do notdoubt, that Mr. Lincoln shared the popular delusion; but we are alsotold, and are equally sure, that "even if he had been unhappilyafflicted with individual scruples of his own he would have deemed itbut simple duty to obey the almost unanimous voice of his constituency. "In other words, he would have deemed it his duty to pander to thepopular madness by taking a part in financial swindling. Yet he and hisprincipal confederates obtained afterwards high places of honour andtrust. A historian of Illinois calls them "spared monuments of popularwrath, evincing how safe it is to be a politician, but how disastrous itmay be to the country to keep along with the present fervour of thepeople. " It is instructive as well as just to remember that all thistime the man was strictly, nay sensitively, honourable in his privatedealings, that he was regarded by his fellows as a paragon of probity, that his word was never questioned, that of personal corruption calumnyitself, so far as we are aware, never dared to accuse him. Politics, itseems, may be a game apart, with rules of its own which supersedemorality. 

Considering that, as we said before, this man was destined to presideover the most tremendous operations in the whole history of finance, itis especially instructive to see what was the state of his mind oneconomical subjects. He actually proposed to pass a usury law, havingarrived, it appears, at the sage conviction that while to pay thecurrent rent for the use of a house or the current fee for the servicesof a lawyer is perfectly proper, to pay the current price for money isto "allow a few individuals to levy a direct tax on the community. " Butthis is an ordinary illusion. Abraham Lincoln's illusions went farbeyond it. He actually proposed so to legislate that in cases of extremenecessity there might "always be found means to cheat the law, while inall other cases it would have its intended effect. " He proposed in factabsurdity qualified by fraud, the established practice of which would, no doubt, have had a most excellent effect in teaching the citizens toreverence and the Courts to uphold the law. As President, when told thatthe finances were low, he asked whether the printing machine had givenout, and he suggested, as a special temptation to capitalists, the issueof a class of bonds which should be exempt from seizure for debt. It maysafely be said that the burden of the United States debt was ultimatelyincreased fifty per cent through sheer ignorance of the simplestprinciples of economy and finance on the part of those by whom it wascontracted. 

Lincoln's style, both as a speaker and a writer, ultimately becameplain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, caused by imperfecteducation, pure as well as effective. His Gettysburg address and some ofhis State Papers are admirable in their way. Saving one very flatexpression, the address has no superior in literature. But it wasimpossible that the oratory of a rising politician, especially in theWest, should be free from spread-eagleism. Scattered through these pageswe find such gems as the following:--

"All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all thetreasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with aBonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from theOhio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years!"... "Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news ofthe times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana;they are neither peculiar to the eternal (?) snows of the former, nor tothe burning sun of the latter. " ... "That we improve to the last, thatwe revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permittedno hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be thatwhich to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington. " Washington'smind, when he rises from his grave at the Last Day, will be immediatelyrelieved by the information that no Britisher has ever trodden on hisbones. 

In debate he was neither bitter nor personal in the bad sense, though hehad a good deal of caustic humour and knew how to make an effective useof it. 

Passing from State politics to those of the Union, and elected toCongress as a Whig, a party to which he had gradually found his way fromhis original position as a "nominal Jackson man, " Mr. Lincoln stoodforth in vigorous though discreet and temperate opposition to theMexican War. 

Some extra charges made by General Cass upon the Treasury for expensesin a public mission, afforded an opportunity for a hit at the greatDemocratic "war-horse. " "I have introduced, " said Lincoln, "GeneralCass's name here chiefly to show the wonderful physical capacity of theman. They show that he not only did the labour of several men at thesame _time_, but that he often did it at several _places_, many hundred miles apart _at the same time_. And in eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful. From October, 1821, to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day in Michigan, ten rations a dayhere in Washington, and nearly five dollars' worth a day besides, partlyon the road between the two places. And then there is an importantdiscovery in his example, the art of being paid for what one eats, instead of having to pay for it. Hereafter if any nice young man shouldowe a bill which he cannot pay in any other way, he can just board itout. Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubtbetween two stacks of hay, and starving to death. The like of that couldnever happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand miles apart, he would stand stock still midway between them, and eat them both atonce; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some atthe same time. By all means make him President, gentlemen. He will feedyou bounteously, if--if there is any left after he has helped himself. "

Great events were by this time beginning to loom on the politicalhorizon. The Missouri Compromise was broken. Parties commenced slowlybut surely to divide themselves into Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery. The"irrepressible conflict" was coming on, though none of the Americanpoliticians--not even the author of that famous phrase--distinctlyrecognised its advent. Lincoln seems to have been sincerely opposed toslavery, though he was not an Abolitionist. But he was evidently ledmore and more to take anti-slavery ground by his antagonism to Douglas, who occupied a middle position, and tried to gain at once the support ofthe South and that of the waverers at the North, by theoreticallysupporting the extension of slavery, yet practically excluding it fromthe territories by the doctrine of squatters' sovereignty. Lincoln hadto be very wary in angling for the vote of the Abolitionists, who hadrecently been the objects of universal obloquy, and were still offensiveto a large section of the Republican party. On one occasion, theopinions which he propounded by no means suited the Abolitionists, and"they required him to change them forthwith. _He thought it would bewise to do so considering the peculiar circumstances of his case_;but, before committing himself finally, he sought an understanding withJudge Logan. He told the judge what he was disposed to do, and said hewould act upon the inclination if the judge would not regard it astreading on his toes. The judge said he was opposed to the doctrineproposed, but for the sake of the cause on hand he would cheerfully riskhis toes. _And so the Abolitionists were accommodated. _ Mr. Lincolnquietly made the pledge, and they voted for him. " He came out, however, square enough, and in the very nick of time with his "house dividedagainst itself" speech, which took the wind out of the sails of Sewardwith his "irrepressible conflict. " Douglas, whom Lincoln regarded withintense personal rivalry, was tripped up by a string of astuteinterrogations, the answers to which hopelessly embroiled him with theSouth. Lincoln's campaign against Douglas for the Senatorship greatlyand deservedly enhanced his reputation as a debater, and he becamemarked out as the Western candidate for the Republican nomination to thePresidency. A committee favourable to his claims sent to him to make aspeech at New York. He arrived "in a sleek and shining suit of newblack, covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles acquired by beingpacked too closely and too long in his little valise. " Some of hissupporters must have moralized on the strange apparition which theirsummons had raised. His speech, however, made before an immense audienceat the Cooper Institute, was most successful. And as a display ofconstitutional logic it is a very good speech. It fails, as the speechesof these practical men one and all did fail, their "common sense" and"shrewdness" notwithstanding, in clear perception of the great factsthat two totally different systems of society had been formed, one inthe Slave States and the other in the Free, and that politicalinstitutions necessarily conform themselves to the social character ofthe people. Whether the Civil War could, by any men or means, have beenarrested, it would be hard to say; but assuredly stump orators, even thevery best of them, were not the men to avert it. At that great crisis nosaviour appeared. On May 10th, in the eventful year 1860, the RepublicanState Convention of Illinois, by acclamation, and amidst greatenthusiasm, nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. One who saw himreceive the nomination says, "I then thought him one of the mostdiffident and most plagued of men I ever saw. " We may depend upon it, however, that his diffidence of manner was accompanied by no reluctanceof heart. The splendid prize which he had won had been the object of hispassionate desire. In the midst of the proceedings the door of thewigwam opened, and Lincoln's kinsman, John Hanks, entered, with "twosmall triangular 'heart-rails, ' surmounted by a banner with theinscription, 'Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and JohnHanks in the Sangamon bottom, in the year 1830'. " The bearer of therails, we are told, was met "with wild and tumultuous cheers, " and "thewhole scene was simply tempestuous and bewildering. "

The Democrats, of course, did not share the delight. An old man, out ofEgypt, (the southern end of Illinois) came up to Mr. Lincoln, and said. "So you're Abe Lincoln?" "That's my name, sir. " "They say you're a self-made man. " "Well, yes what there is of me is self-made. " "Well, all Ihave got to say, " observed the old Egyptian, after a careful survey ofthe statesman, "is, that it was a d--n bad job. " This seems to be thegerm of the smart reply to the remark that Andrew Johnson was a self-made man, "that relieves the Almighty of a very heavy responsibility. "

The nomination of the State Convention of Illinois was accepted after avery close and exciting contest between Lincoln and Seward by theconvention of the Republican party assembled at Chicago. The proceedingsseem to have been disgraceful. A large delegation of roughs, we aretold, headed by Tom Shyer, the pugilist, attended for Seward. TheLincoln party, on the other side, spent the whole night in musteringtheir "loose fellows, " and at daylight the next morning packed thewigwam, so that the Seward men were unable to get in. 

Another politician was there nominally as a candidate, but really onlyto sell himself for a seat in the Cabinet. When he claimed thefulfilment of the bond, Lincoln's conscience, or at least his regard forhis own reputation, struggled hard. "All that I am in the world--thePresidency and all else--I owe to that opinion of me which the peopleexpress when they call me 'honest old Abe. ' Now, what will they think oftheir honest Abe when he appoints this man to be his familiar adviser?"What they might have said with truth was that Abe was still honest butpolitics were not. 

Widely different was the training undergone for the leadership of thepeople by the Pericles of the American Republic from that undergone bythe Pericles of Athens, or by any group of statesmen before him, Greek, Roman, or European. In this point of view, Mr. Lamon's book is a mostvaluable addition to the library of political science. The advantagesand the disadvantages of Lincoln's political education are manifest at aglance. He was sure to produce something strong, genuine, practical, andentirely in unison with the thoughts and feelings of a people which, like the Athenians in the days of Pericles, was to be led, not governed. On the other hand, it necessarily left the statesman without the specialknowledge necessary for certain portions of his work, such as finance, which was detestably managed during Lincoln's Presidency, without thewisdom which flows from a knowledge of the political world and of thepast, without elevation, and comprehensiveness of view. It was fortunatefor Lincoln that the questions with which he had to deal, and with whichhis country and the world proclaim him to have dealt, on the whole, admirably well, though not in their magnitude and importance, werecompletely within his ken, and had been always present to his mind. Reconstruction would have made a heavier demand on the political scienceof Clary's Grove. But that task was reserved for other hands. 

ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR

A few weeks ago an Oxford College celebrated the thousandth anniversaryof its foundation by King Alfred. [Footnote: We keep the commonspelling, though AElfred is more correct. It is impossible, in deferenceto antiquarian preciseness, to change the spelling of all these names, which are now imbedded in the English classics. ]

The college which claims this honour is commonly called UniversityCollege, though its legal name is _Magna Aula Universitatis_. Thename "University College" causes much perplexity to visitors. They arewith difficulty taught by the friend who is lionizing them todistinguish it from the University. But the University of Oxford is afederation of colleges, of which University College is one, resemblingin all respects the rest of the sisterhood, being, like them, under thefederal authority of the University, retaining the same measure ofcollege right, conducting the domestic instruction and discipline of itsstudents through its own officers, but sending them to the lecture roomsof the University Professors for the higher teaching, and to theUniversity examination rooms to be examined for their degrees. Thecollege is an ample and venerable pile, with two towered gateways, eachopening into a quadrangle, its front stretching along the High Street, on the side opposite St. Mary's Church. The darkness of the stone seemsto bespeak immemorial antiquity, but the style, which is the laterGothic characteristic of Oxford, and symbolical of its history, showsthat the buildings really belong to the time of the Stuarts. "Thatbuilding must be very old, Sir, " said an American visitor to the masterof the college, pointing to its dark front. "Oh, no, " was the master'sreply, "the colour deceives you; that building is not more than twohundred years old. " In invidious contrast to this mass, debased butimposing in its style, the pedantic mania for pure Gothic which marksthe Neo-catholic reaction in Oxford, and which will perhaps hereafter bederided as we deride the classic mania of the last century, has led Mr. Gilbert Scott to erect a pure Gothic library. This building, moreover, has nothing in its form to bespeak its purpose, but resembles a chapel. Over the gateway of the larger quadrangle is a statue, in Roman costume, of James II. ; one of the few memorials of the ejected tyrant, who in hiscareer of reaction visited the college and had two rooms on the eastside of the quadrangle fitted up for the performance of mass. ObadiahWalker, the master of the college, had turned Papist, and became one ofthe leaders of the reaction, in the overthrow of which he was involved, the fall of his master and the ruin of his party being announced to himby the boys singing at his window--"Ave Maria, old Obadiah. " In the samequadrangle are the chambers of Shelley, and the room to which he wassummoned by the assembled college authorities to receive, with hisfriend Hogg, sentence of expulsion for having circulated an atheisticaltreatise. In the ante-chapel is the florid monument of Sir WilliamJones. But the modern divinities of the college are the two great legalbrothers, Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, whose colossal statuesfraternally united are conspicuous in the library, whose portraits hangside by side in the hall, whose medallion busts greet you at theentrance to the Common Room. Pass by these medallions, and look into theCommon Room itself, with panelled walls, red curtains, polished mahoganytable, and generally cozy aspect, whither after the dinner in hall thefellows of the college retire to sip their wine and taste such socialhappiness as the rule of celibacy permits. Over that ample fire-place, round the blaze of which the circle is drawn in the winter evenings, youwill see the marble bust, carved by no mean hand, of an ancient king, and underneath it are the words _Alfredus Rex Fundator_. 

Alas! both traditions--the tradition that Alfred founded the Universityof Oxford, and the tradition that he founded University College--aredevoid of historical foundation. Universities did not exist in Alfred'sdays. They were developed centuries later out of the monastery schools. When Queen Elizabeth was on a visit to Cambridge, a scholar deliveredbefore her an oration, in which he exalted the antiquity of his ownuniversity at the expense of that of the University of Oxford. TheUniversity of Oxford was roused to arms. In that uncritical age anyantiquarian weapon which the fury of academical patriotism could supplywas eagerly grasped, and the reputation of the great antiquary Camden issomewhat compromised with regard to an interpolation in Asser's Life ofAlfred, which formed the chief documentary support of the Oxford case. The historic existence of both the English universities dawns in thereign of the scholar king, and the restorer of order and prosperityafter the ravages of the conquest and the tyranny of Rufus--Henry I. Inthat reign the Abbot of Croyland, to gain money for the rebuilding ofhis abbey, set up a school where, we are told, Priscian's grammar, Aristotle's logic with the commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, Ciceroand Quintilian as masters of rhetoric, were taught after the manner ofthe school of Orleans. In the following reign a foreign professor, Vacarius, roused the jealousy of the English monarchy and baronage byteaching Roman law in the schools of Oxford. The thirteenth century, that marvellous and romantic age of mediaeval religion and character, mediaeval art, mediaeval philosophy, was also the palmy age of theuniversities. Then Oxford gloried in Groseteste, at once paragon andpatron of learning, church reformer and champion of the national churchagainst Roman aggression; in his learned and pious friend, Adam deMarisco; and in Roger Bacon, the pioneer and proto-martyr of physicalscience. Then, with Paris, she was the great seat of that schoolphilosophy, wonderful in its subtlety as well as in its aridity, which, albeit it bore no fruit itself, trained the mind of Europe for morefruitful studies, and was the original product of mediaeval Christendom, though its forms of thought were taken from the deified Stagyrite, andit was clothed in the Latin language, though in a form of that languageso much altered and debased from the classical as to become, in fact, aliterary vernacular of the Middle Ages. Then her schools, her churchporches, her very street corners, every spot where a professor couldgather an audience, were thronged with the aspiring youth who hadflocked, many of them begging their way out of the dark prison-house offeudalism, to what was then, in the absence of printing, the sole centreof intellectual light. Then Oxford, which in later times became from theclerical character of the headships and fellowships the great organ ofreaction, was the great organ of progress, produced the political songswhich embodied, with wonderful force, the principles of free government, and sent her students to fight under the banner of the university in thearmy of Simon de Montfort. 

It was in the thirteenth century that University College was reallyfounded. The founder was William of Durham, an English ecclesiastic whohad studied in the University of Paris. The universities were, like thechurch, common to all the natives of Latin Christendom, thatecclesiastical and literary federation of the European States, which, afterwards broken up by the Reformation, is now in course ofreconstruction through uniting influences of a new kind. William ofDurham bequeathed to the University a fund for the maintenance ofstudents in theology. The university purchased with the fund a house inwhich these students were maintained, and which was styled the GreatHall of the University, in contra-distinction to the multitude of littleprivate halls or hospices in which students lived, generally under thesuperintendence of a graduate who was their teacher. The hall or collegewas under the visitorship of the University; but this visitorship beingirksome, and a dispute having arisen in the early part of the lastcentury whether it was to be exercised by the University at large, inconvocation, or by the theological faculty only, the college set up aclaim to be a royal foundation of the time of King Alfred, the reputedfounder of the University, and thus exempt from any visitorship but thatof the Crown. It was probably not very difficult to convince aHanoverian court of law that the visitorship of an Oxford college oughtto be transferred from the Jacobite university to the Crown; and so itcame to pass that the Court of King's Bench solemnly ratified as a factwhat historical criticism pronounces to be a baseless fable. The case infavour of William of Durham as the founder is so clear, that theantiquaries are ready to burst with righteous indignation, and onealmost enjoys the intensity of their wrath. 

The Great Hall of the University was not, when first founded, a perfectcollege. It was only a house for some eight or ten graduates in arts whowere studying divinity. The first perfect college was founded by Walterde Merton, the Chancellor of Henry III. , to whom is due the conceptionof uniting the anti-monastic pursuit of secular learning with monasticseclusion and discipline, for the benefit of that multitude of youngstudents who had hitherto dwelt at large in the city under little or nocontrol, and often showed, by their faction fights and other outrages, that they contained the quintessence of the nation's turbulence as wellas of its intellectual activity and ambition. The quaint old quadrangleof Merton, called, nobody seems to know why, "Mob" Quad, may be regardedas the cradle of collegiate life in England, and indeed in Europe. 

Still University College is the oldest foundation of learning nowexisting in England; and therefore it may be not inappropriatelydedicated to the memory of the king who was the restorer of ourintellectual life as well as the preserver of our religion and ourinstitutions. Mr. Freeman, as the stern minister of fact, would, nodoubt, cast down the bust of Alfred from the Common Room chimney-pieceand set up that of William of Durham, if a likeness of him could befound, in its place. But it may be doubted whether William of Durham, ifhe were alive, would do the same. 

Marcus Aurelius, Alfred and St. Louis, are the three examples of perfectvirtue on a throne. But the virtue of St. Louis is deeply tainted withasceticism; and with the sublimated selfishness on which asceticism isfounded, he sacrifices everything and everybody--sacrifices nationalinterests, sacrifices the lives of the thousands of his subjects whom hedrags with him in his chimerical crusades--to the good of his own soul. The Reflections of Marcus Aurelius will be read with ever increasingadmiration by all who have learned to study character, and to read it inits connection with history. Alone in every sense, without guidance orsupport but that which he found in his own breast, the imperial Stoicstruggled serenely, though hopelessly, against the powers of evil whichwere dragging heathen Rome to her inevitable doom. Alfred was aChristian hero, and in his Christianity he found the force which borehim, through calamity apparently hopeless, to victory and happiness. 

It must be owned that the materials for the history of the English kingare not very good. His biography by Bishop Asser, his counsellor andfriend, which forms the principal authority, is panegyrical anduncritical, not to mention that a doubt rests on the authenticity ofsome portions of it. But in the general picture there are a consistencyand a sobriety, which, combined with its peculiarity, commend it to usas historical. The leading acts of Alfred's life are, of course, beyonddoubt. And as to his character, he speaks to us himself in his works, and the sentiments which he expresses perfectly correspond with thephysiognomy of the portrait. 

We have called him a Christian hero. He was the victorious champion ofChristianity against Paganism. This is the real significance of thestruggle and of his character. The Northmen, or, as we loosely termthem, the Danes, are called by the Saxon chroniclers the Pagans. As torace, the Northman, like the Saxon, was a Teuton, and the institutions, and the political and social tendencies of both, were radically thesame. 

It has been said that Christianity enervated the English and gave themover into the hands of the fresh and robust sons of nature. Asceticismand the abuse of monachism enervated the English. Asceticism taught thespiritual selfishness which flies from the world and abandons it to ruininstead of serving God by serving humanity. Kings and chieftains, underthe hypocritical pretence of exchanging a worldly for an angelic life, buried themselves in the indolence, not seldom in the sensuality, of thecloister, when they ought to have been leading their people against theDane. But Christianity formed the bond which held the English together, and the strength of their resistance. It inspired their patriot martyrs, it raised up to them a deliverer at their utmost need. The causes ofDanish success are manifest; superior prowess and valour, sustained bymore constant practice in war, of which the Saxon had probably hadcomparatively little since the final subjection of the Celt and theunion of the Saxon kingdoms under Egbert; the imperfect character ofthat union, each kingdom retaining its own council and its owninterests; and above all the command of the sea, which made the invadersubiquitous, while the march of the defenders was delayed, and theirjunction prevented, by the woods and morasses of the uncleared island, in which the only roads worthy of the name were those left by theRomans. 

It would be wrong to call the Northmen mere corsairs, or even to classthem with piratical states such as Cilicia of old, or Barbary in morerecent times. Their invasions were rather to be regarded as an after-actof the great migration of the Germanic tribes, one of the last waves ofthe flood which overwhelmed the Roman Empire, and deposited the germs ofmodern Christendom. They were, and but for the defensive energy of theChristianized Teuton would have been, to the Saxon what the Saxon hadbeen to the Celt, whose sole monuments in England now are the names ofhills and rivers, the usual epitaph of exterminated races. Like theSaxons the Northmen came by sea, untouched by those Roman influences, political and religious, by which most of the barbarians had been moreor less transmuted before their actual irruption into the Empire. Ifthey treated all the rest of mankind as their prey, this was theinternational law of heathendom, modified only by a politic humanity inthe case of the Imperial Roman, who preferred enduring dominion to bloodand booty. With Christianity came the idea, even now imperfectlyrealized, of the brotherhood of man. The Northmen were a memorable race, and English character, especially its maritime element, received in thema momentous addition. In their northern abodes they had undergone, nodoubt, the most rigorous process of national selection. The sea-rovinglife, to which they were driven by the poverty of their soil, as theScandinavian of our day is driven to emigration, intensified in them thevigour, the enterprise, and the independence of the Teuton. As has beensaid before, they were the first ocean sailors; for the Phoenicians, though adventurous had crept along the shore; and the Greeks and Romanshad done the same. The Northman, stouter of heart than they, put forthinto mid Atlantic. American antiquarians are anxious to believe in aNorse discovery of America. Norse colonies were planted in Greenlandbeyond what is now the limit of human habitation; and when a power grewup in his native seats which could not be brooked by the Northman's loveof freedom, he founded amidst the unearthly scenery of Iceland acommunity which brought the image of a republic of the Homeric type fardown into historic times. His race, widely dispersed in its course ofadventure, and everywhere asserting its ascendancy, sat on the thronesof Normandy, Apulia, Sicily, England, Ireland, and even Russia, and gaveheroic chiefs to the crusaders. The pirates were not without hearttowards each other, nor without a rudimentary civilization, whichincluded on the one hand a strong regard for freehold property in land, and on the other a passionate love of heroic days. Their mythology wasthe universal story of the progress of the sun and the changes of theyear, but in a northern version, wild with storms and icebergs, gloomywith the darkness of Scandinavian winters. Their religion was a warreligion, the lord of their hearts a war god; their only heaven was thatof the brave, their only hell that of the coward; and the joys ofParadise were a renewal of the fierce combat and the fierce carouse ofearth. Some of them wound themselves up on the eve of battle to a frenzylike that of a Malay running amuck. But this was, at all events, areligion of action, not of ceremonial or spell; and it quelled the fearof death. In some legends of the Norse mythology there is a humorouselement which shows freedom of spirit; while in others, such as thelegend of the death of Balder, there is a pathos not uncongenial toChristianity. The Northmen were not priest-ridden. Their gods were notmonstrous and overwhelming forces like the hundred-handed idols of theHindu, but human forms, their own high qualities idealized, like thegods of the Greek, though with Scandinavian force in place of Hellenicgrace. 

Converted to Christianity, the Northman transferred his enthusiasm, hismartial prowess and his spirit of adventure from the service of Odin tothat of Christ, and became a devotee and a crusader. But in hisunconverted state he was an exterminating enemy of Christianity; andChristianity was the civilization as well as the religion of England. 

Scarcely had the Saxon kingdom been united by Egbert, when the barks ofthe Northmen appeared, filling the English Charlemagne, no doubt, withthe same foreboding sorrow with which they had filled his Frankishprototype and master. In the course of the half century which followed, the swarms of rovers constantly increased, and grew more pertinaciousand daring in their attacks. Leaving their ships they took horses, extended their incursions inland, and formed in the interior of thecountry strongholds, into which they brought the plunder of thedistrict. At last they in effect conquered the North and Midland, andset up a satrap king, as the agent of their extortion. They seem, likethe Franks of Clovis, to have quartered themselves as "guests" upon theunhappy people of the land. The monasteries and churches were thespecial objects of their attacks, both as the seats of the hatedreligion, and as the centres of wealth; and their sword never spared amonk. Croyland, Peterborough, Huntingdon and Ely, were turned to blood-stained ashes. Edmund, the Christian chief of East Anglia, found amartyrdom, of which one of the holiest and most magnificent of Englishabbeys was afterwards the monument. The brave Algar, another EastAnglian chieftain, having taken the holy sacrament with all hisfollowers on the eve of battle, perished with them in a desperatestruggle, overcome by the vulpine cunning of the marauders. Among theleaders of the Northmen were the terrible brothers Ingrar and Ubba, fired, if the Norse legend may be trusted, by revenge as well as by thelove of plunder and horror; for they were the sons of that RagnarLodbrok who had perished in the serpent tower of the Saxon Ella. WhenAlfred appeared upon the scene, Wessex itself, the heritage of the houseof Cerdic and the supreme kingdom, was in peril from the Pagans, who hadfirmly entrenched themselves at Reading, in the angle between the Thamesand Kennet, and English Christianity was threatened with destruction. 

A younger but a favourite child, Alfred was sent in his infancy by hisfather to Rome to receive the Pope's blessing. He was thus affiliated, as it were, to that Roman element, ecclesiastical and political, which, combined with the Christian and Teutonic elements, has made up Englishcivilization. But he remained through life a true Teuton. He went asecond time, in company with his father, to Rome, still a child, yet oldenough, especially if he was precocious, to receive some impressionsfrom the city of historic grandeur, ancient art, ecclesiastical order, centralized power. There is a pretty legend, denoting the docility ofthe boy and his love of learning, or at least of the national lays; buthe was also a hunter and a warrior. From his youth he had a thorn in hisflesh, in the shape of a mysterious disease, perhaps epilepsy, to whichmonkish chroniclers have given an ascetic and miraculous turn; and thisenhances our sense of the hero's moral energy in the case of Alfred, asin that of William III. 

As "Crown Prince, " to use the phrase of a German writer, Alfred tookpart with his elder brother, King Ethelbert, in the mortal struggleagainst the Pagans, then raging around Reading and along the rich valleythrough which the 'Great Western Railway' now runs, and where a Saxonvictory is commemorated by the White Horse, which forms the subject of alittle work by Thomas Hughes, a true representative, if any there be, ofthe liegemen and soldiers of King Alfred. When Ethelbert was showingthat in him at all events Christianity was not free from the ascetictaint, by continuing to hear mass in his tent when the moment had comefor decisive action, Alfred charged up-hill "like a wild boar" againstthe heathen, and began a battle which, his brother at last coming up, ended in a great victory. The death of Ethelbert, in the midst of thecrisis, placed the perilous crown on Alfred's head. Ethelbert leftinfant sons, but the monarchy was elective, though one of the line ofCerdic was always chosen; and those were the days of the real king, theruler judge, and captain of the people, not of what Napoleon called the_cochon a l'engrais a cinq millions par an_. In pitched battles, eight of which were fought in rapid succession, the English held theirown; but they were worn out, and at length could no longer be broughtinto the field. Whether a faint monkish tradition of the estrangement ofthe people by unpopular courses on the part of the young king has anysubstance of truth we cannot say. 

Utter gloom now settled down upon the Christian king and people. HadAlfred yielded to his inclinations, he would probably have followed theexample of his brother-in-law, Buhred of Mercia, and sought a congenialretreat amidst the churches and libraries of Rome; asceticism would haveafforded him a pretext for so doing; but he remained at the post ofduty. Athelney, a little island in the marshes of Somersetshire--thenmarshes, now drained and a fruitful plain--to which he retired with thefew followers left him, has been aptly compared to the mountains ofAsturias, which formed the last asylum of Christianity in Spain. A jewelwith the legend in Anglo-Saxon, "Alfred caused me to be made, " was foundnear the spot, and is now in the University Museum at Oxford. A similarisland in the marshes of Cambridgeshire formed the last rallying pointof English patriotism against the Norman Conquest. Of course, after thedeliverance, a halo of legends gathered around Athelney. The legends ofthe king disguised as a peasant in the cottage of the herdsman, and ofthe king disguised as a harper in the camp of the Dane, are familiar tochildhood. There is also a legend of the miraculous appearance of thegreat Saxon Saint Cuthbert. The king in his extreme need had gone tofish in a neighbouring stream, but had caught nothing, and was trying tocomfort himself by reading the Psalms, when a poor man came to the doorand begged for a piece of bread. The king gave him half his last loafand the little wine left in the pitcher. The beggar vanished; the loafwas unbroken, the pitcher brimful of wine; and fishermen came inbringing a rich haul of fish from the river. In the night St. Cuthbertappeared to the king in a dream and promised him victory. We see atleast what notion the generations nearest to him had of the character ofAlfred. 

At last the heart of the oppressed people turned to its king, and thetime arrived for a war of liberation. But on the morrow of victoryAlfred compromised with the Northmen. He despaired, it seems, of theirfinal expulsion, and thought it better, if possible, to make themEnglishmen and Christians, and, to convert them into a barrier againsttheir foreign and heathen brethren. We see in this politic moderation atonce a trait of national character and a proof that the exploits ofAlfred are not mythical. By the treaty of Wedmore, the northeastern partof England became the portion of the Dane, where he was to dwell inpeace with the Saxon people, and in allegiance to their king, but underhis own laws--an arrangement which had nothing strange in it when lawwas only the custom of the tribe. As a part of the compact, Guthorm ledover his Northmen from the allegiance of Odin to that of Christ, and washimself baptized by the Christian name of Athelstan. When religions werenational, or rather tribal, conversions were tribal too. The Northmen ofEast Anglia had not so far put off their heathen propensities or theirsavage perfidy as to remain perfectly true to their covenant: but, onthe whole, Alfred's policy of compromise and assimilation wassuccessful. A new section of heathen Teutonism was incorporated intoChristendom, and England absorbed a large Norse population whosedwelling-place is still marked by the names of places, and perhaps insome measure by the features and character of the people. In thefishermen of Whitby, for example, a town with a Danish name, there is apeculiarity which is probably Scandinavian. 

The transaction resembled the cession of Normandy to Rolf and hisfollowers by the Carlovingian King of France. But the cession ofNormandy marked the dissolution of the Carlovingian monarchy: from thecession of East Anglia to Guthorm dates a regeneration of the monarchyof Cerdic. 

Alfred had rescued the country. But the country which he had rescued wasa wreck. The Church, the great organ of civilization as well as ofspiritual life, was ruined. The monasteries were in ashes. The monks ofSt. Cuthbert were wandering from place to place, with the relics of thegreat northern Saint. The worship of Woden seemed on the point ofreturning. The clergy had exchanged the missal and censer for thebattle-axe, and had become secularized and brutalized by the conflict. The learning of the Order was dead. The Latin language, the tongue ofthe Church, of literature, of education, was almost extinct. Alfredhimself says that he could not recollect a priest, south of the Thames, who understood the Latin service or could translate a document from theLatin when he became king. Political institutions were in an equal stateof disorganization. Spiritual, intellectual, civil life--everything wasto be restored; and Alfred undertook to restore everything. No man inthese days stands alone, or towers in unapproachable superiority abovehis fellows. Nor can any man now play all the parts. A division oflabour has taken place in all spheres. The time when the missionaries atonce converted and civilized the forefathers of European Christendom, when Charlemagne or Alfred was the master spirit in everything, haspassed away, and with it the day of hero-worship, of rational hero-worship, has departed, at least for the European nations. The morebackward races may still need, and have reason to venerate, a Peter theGreat. 

Alfred had to do everything almost with his own hands. He was himselfthe inventor of the candle-clock which measured his time, so unspeakablyprecious, and of the lantern of transparent horn which protected thecandle-clock against the wind in the tent, or the lodging scarcely moreimpervious to the weather than a tent, which in those times shelteredthe head of wandering royalty. Far and wide he sought for men, like abee in quest of honey, to condense a somewhat prolix trope of hisbiographer. An embassy of bishops, priests and religious laymen, withgreat gifts, was sent to the Archbishop of Rheims, within whose diocesethe famous Grimbald resided, to persuade him to allow Grimbald to cometo England, and with difficulty the ambassadors prevailed, Alfredpromising to treat Grimbald with distinguished honour during the rest ofhis life. It is touching to see what a price the king set upon a goodand able man. "I was called, " says Asser, "from the western extremity ofWales. I was led to Sussex, and first saw the king in the royal mansionof Dene. He received me with kindness, and amongst other conversation, earnestly besought me to devote myself to his service, and to become hiscompanion. He begged me to give up my preferments beyond the Severn, promising to bestow on me still richer preferments in their place. "Asser said that he was unwilling to quit, merely for worldly honour, thecountry in which he had been brought up and ordained. "At least, "replied the king, "give me half your time. Pass six months of the yearwith me and the rest in Wales. " Asser still hesitated. The king repeatedhis solicitations, and Asser promised to return within half a year; thetime was fixed for his visit, and on the fourth day of their interviewhe left the king and went home. 

In order to restore civilization, it was necessary above all things toreform the Church. "I have often thought, " says Alfred, "what wise menthere were once among the English people, both clergy and laymen, andwhat blessed times those were when the people were governed by kings whoobeyed God and His gospels, and how they maintained peace, virtue andgood order at home, and even extended them beyond their own country; howthey prospered in battle as well as in wisdom, and how zealous theclergy were in teaching and learning, and in all their sacred duties;and how people came hither from foreign countries to seek forinstruction, whereas now, when we desire it, we can only obtain it fromabroad. " It is clear that the king, unlike the literary devotees ofScandinavian paganism, looked upon Christianity as the root of thegreatness, and even of the military force, of the nation. 

In order to restore the Church again, it was necessary above all thingsto refound the monasteries. Afterwards--society having become settled, religion being established, and the Church herself having acquired fatalwealth--these brotherhoods sank into torpor and corruption; but whilethe Church was still a missionary in a spiritual and materialwilderness, waging a death struggle with heathenism and barbarism, theywere the indispensable engines of the holy war. The re-foundation ofmonasteries, therefore, was one of Alfred's first cares; and he did notfail, in token of his pious gratitude, to build at Athelney a house ofGod which was far holier than the memorial abbey afterwards built by theNorman Conqueror at Battle. The revival of monasticism among theEnglish, however, was probably no easy task, for their domestic andsomewhat material nature never was well suited to monastic life. Themonastery schools, the germs, as has been already said, of our modernuniversities and colleges, were the King's main organs in restoringeducation; but he had also a school in his palace for the children ofthe nobility and the royal household. It was not only clerical educationthat he desired to promote. His wish was "that all the free-born youthof his people, who possessed the means, might persevere in learning solong as they had no other work to occupy them, until they couldperfectly read the English scriptures; while such as desired to devotethemselves to the service of the Church might be taught Latin. " No doubtthe wish was most imperfectly fulfilled, but still it was a noble wish. We are told the King himself was often present at the instruction of thechildren in the palace school. A pleasant calm after the storms ofbattle with the Dane!

Oxford (Ousen-ford, the ford of the Ouse) was already a royal city; andit may be conjectured that, amidst the general restoration of learningunder Alfred, a school of some sort would be opened there. This is theonly particle of historical foundation for the academic legend whichgave rise to the recent celebration. Oxford was desolated by the NormanConquest, and anything that remained of the educational institution ofAlfred was in all probability swept away. 

Another measure, indispensable to the civilizer as well as to the churchreformer in those days, was to restore the intercourse with Rome, andthrough her with continental Christendom, which had been interrupted bythe troubles. The Pope, upon Alfred's accession, had sent him gifts anda piece of the Holy Cross. Alfred sent embassies to the Pope, and made avoluntary annual offering, to obtain favourable treatment for hissubjects at Rome. But, adopted child of Rome, and naturally attached toher as the centre of ecclesiastical order and its civilizing influencesthough he was, and much as he was surrounded by ecclesiastical friendsand ministers, we trace in him no ultramontanism, no servile submissionto priests. The English Church, so far as we can see, remains national, and the English King remains its head. 

Not only with Latin but with Eastern Christendom, Alfred, if we maytrust the contemporary Saxon chronicles, opened communication. AsCharlemagne, in the spirit partly perhaps of piety, partly of ambition, had sent an embassy with proofs of his grandeur to the Caliph of Bagdad;as Louis XIV. , in the spirit of mere ambition, delighted to receive anembassy from Siam; so Alfred, in a spirit of piety unmixed, sentambassadors to the traditional Church of St. Thomas in India: and theambassadors returned, we are told, with perfumes and precious stones asthe memorials of their journey, which were long preserved in thechurches. "This was the first intercourse, " remarks Pauli, "that tookplace between England and Hindostan. "

All nations are inclined to ascribe their primitive institutions to somenational founder, a Lycurgus, a Theseus, a Romulus. It is not necessarynow to prove that Alfred did not found trial by jury, or the frank-pledge, or that he was not the first who divided the kingdom intoshires, hundreds, or tithings. The part of trial by jury which has beenpolitically of so much importance, its popular character, as opposed toarbitrary trial by a royal or imperial officer--that of which thepreservation, amidst the general prevalence of judicial imperialism, hasbeen the glory of England--was simply Teutonic; so was the frank-pledge, the rude machinery for preserving law and order by mutual responsibilityin the days before police; so were the hundreds and the tithings, rudimentary institutions marking the transition from the clan to thelocal community or canton. The shires probably marked some stage in theconsolidation of the Saxon settlements; at all events they were ancientdivisions which Alfred can at most only have reconstituted in a revisedform after the anarchy. 

He seems, however, to have introduced a real and momentous innovation byappointing special judges to administer a more regular justice than thatwhich was administered in the local courts of the earls and bishops, oreven in the national assembly. In this respect he was the imitator, probably the unconscious imitator, of Charlemagne, and the precursor ofHenry II. , the institutor of our Justices in Eyre. The powers andfunctions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, lie atfirst enfolded in the same germ, and are alike exercised by the king, or, as in the case of the ancient republics, by the national assembly. It is a great step when the special office of the judiciary is separatedfrom the rest. It is a great step also when uniformity of justice isintroduced. Probably, however, these judges, like the itinerant justicesof Henry II. , were administrative as well as judicial officers; or, inthe terms of our modern polity, they were delegates of the Home Officeas well as of the Central Courts of Law. 

In his laws, Alfred, with the sobriety and caution on which thestatesmen of his race have prided themselves, renounces the character ofan innovator, fearing, as he says, that his innovations might not beaccepted by those who would come after him. His code, if so inartificiala document can be dignified with the name, is mainly a compilation fromthe laws of his Saxon predecessors. We trace, however, an advance fromthe barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and othercrimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of criminal justice. Intotally forbidding composition for blood, and asserting thatindefeasible sanctity of human life which is the essential basis ofcivilization, the code of Moses stands contrasted with other primaevalcodes. Alfred, in fact, incorporated an unusually large amount of theMosaic and Christian elements, which blend with Germanic customs and therelics of Roman law, in different proportions, to make up the variouscodes of the early Middle Ages, called the Laws of the Barbarians. Hiscode opens with the Ten Commandments, followed by extracts from Exodus, containing the Mosaic law respecting the relations between masters andservants, murder and other crimes, and the observance of holy days, andthe Apostolic Epistle from Acts xv 23-29. Then is added Matthew vii. 12, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. ""By this one Commandment, " says Alfred, "a man shall know whether hedoes right, and he will then require no other law-book. " This is not theform of a modern Act of Parliament, but legislation in those days was asmuch preaching as enactment; it often resembled in character the RoyalProclamation against Vice and Immorality. 

Alfred's laws unquestionably show a tendency to enforce loyalty to theking, and to enhance the guilt of treason, which, in the case of anattempt on the king's life, is punished with death and confiscation, instead of the old composition by payment of the royal weregeld. Hencehe has been accused of imperializing and anti-Teutonic tendencies; hehad even the misfortune to be fixed upon as a prototype by Oxfordadvocates of the absolutism of Charles I. There is no ground for thecharge, so far at least as Alfred's legislation or any known measure ofhis government is concerned. The kingly power was the great source oforder and justice amidst that anarchy, the sole rallying point and bondof union for the imperilled nation; to maintain it, and protect fromviolence the life of its holder, was the duty of a patriot law-giver:and as the authority of a Saxon king depended in great measure on hispersonal character and position, no doubt the personal authority ofAlfred was exceptionally great. But he continued to govern by the adviceof the national council; and the fundamental principles of the Teutonicpolity remained unimpaired by him, and were transmitted intact to hissuccessors. His writings breathe a sense of the responsibilities ofrulers and a hatred of tyranny. He did not even attempt to carry furtherthe incorporation of the subordinate kingdoms with Wessex; but ruledMercia as a separate state by the hand of his brother-in-law, and leftit to its own national council or witan. Considering his circumstances, and the chaos from which his government had emerged, it is wonderfulthat he did not centralize more. He was, we repeat, a true Teuton, andentirely worthy of his place in the Germanic Walhalla. 

The most striking proof of his multifarious activity of mind, and of theunlimited extent of the task which his circumstances imposed upon him, as well as of his thoroughly English character, is his undertaking togive his people a literature in their own tongue. To do this he hadfirst to educate himself--to educate himself at an advanced age, aftera life of fierce distraction, and with the reorganization of hisshattered kingdom on his hands. In his boyhood he had got by heart Saxonlays, vigorous and inspiring, but barbarous; he had learned to read, butit is thought that he had not learned to write. "As we were one daysitting in the royal chamber, " says Asser, "and were conversing as wasour wont, it chanced that I read him a passage out of a certain book. After he had listened with fixed attention, and expressed great delight, he showed me the little book which he always carried about with him, andin which the daily lessons, psalms and prayers, were written, and beggedme to transcribe that passage into his book. " Asser assented, but foundthat the book was already full, and proposed to the king to beginanother book, which was soon in its turn filled with extracts. A portionof the process of Alfred's education is recorded by Asser. "I washonourably received at the royal mansion, and at that time stayed eightmonths in the king's court. I translated and read to him whatever bookshe wished which were within our reach; for it was his custom, day andnight, amidst all his afflictions of mind and body, to read bookshimself or have them read to him by others. " To original compositionAlfred did not aspire; he was content with giving his people a body oftranslations of what he deemed the best authors; here again showing hisroyal good sense. In the selection of his authors, he showed liberalityand freedom from Roman, ecclesiastical, imperialist, or other bias. Onthe one hand he chooses for the benefit of the clergy whom he desired toreform, the "Pastoral Care" of the good Pope, Gregory the Great, theauthor of the mission which had converted England to Christianity; buton the other hand he chooses the "Consolations of Philosophy, " the chiefwork of Boethius, the last of the Romans, and the victim of the crueljealousy of Theodoric. Of Boethius Hallam says "Last of the classicwriters, in style not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poeticexuberance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centuries;in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers; and minglinga Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks from his prison inthe swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The philosophy which consoledhim in bonds was soon required in the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gaveno more light; the language of Tully and Virgil soon ceased to bespoken; and many ages were to pass away before learned diligencerestored its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a fewmodern writers to 'surpass in eloquence' the Latinity of Boethius. "Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the highest product ofthat memorable burst of Saxon intellect which followed the conversion, and a work, not untainted by miracle and legend, yet most remarkable forits historical qualities as well as for its mild and liberalChristianity, is balanced in the king's series of translations by thework of Orosius, who wrote of general and secular history, though with areligious object. In the translation of Orosius, Alfred has inserted asketch of the geography of Germany, and the reports of explorations madeby two mariners under his auspices among the natives dwelling on thecoasts of the Baltic and the North Sea--further proof of the variety ofhis interests and the reach of his mind. 

In his prefaces, and in his amplifications and interpolations of thephilosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an independent author, and shows us something of his own mind on theology, on philosophy, ongovernment, and generally as to the estate of man. To estimate thesepassages rightly, we must put ourselves back into the anarchical andilliterate England of the ninth century, and imagine a writer, who, ifwe could see him, would appear barbarous and grotesque, as would all hisequipments and surroundings, and one who had spent his days in adesperate struggle with wolfish Danes, seated at his literary work inhis rude Saxon mansion, with his candle-clock protected by the hornlantern against the wind. The utterances of Alfred will then appearaltogether worthy of his character and his deeds. He always emphasizesand expands passages which speak either of the responsibilities ofrulers or of the nothingness of earthly power; and the reflections arepervaded by a pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. Thepolitical world had not much advanced when, six centuries after Alfred, it arrived at Machiavelli. 

There is an especial sadness in the tone of some words respecting theestate of kings, their intrinsic weakness, disguised only by their royaltrains, the mutual dread that exists between them and those by whom theyare surrounded, the drawn sword that always hangs over their heads, "asto me it ever did. " We seem to catch a glimpse of some trials, andperhaps errors, not recorded by Asser or the chroniclers. 

In his private life Alfred appears to have been an example of conjugalfidelity and manly purity, while we see no traces of the asceticismwhich was revered by the superstition of the age of Edward theConfessor. His words on the value and the claims of a wife, if not up tothe standard of modern sentiment, are at least instinct with genuineaffection. 

The struggle with the Northmen was not over. Their swarms came again, inthe latter part of Alfred's reign, from Germany, whence they had beenrepulsed, and from France, which they had exhausted by their ravages. But the king's generalship foiled them and compelled them to depart. Seeing where their strength lay, he built a regular fleet to encounterthem on their own element, and he may be called the founder of the RoyalNavy. 

His victory was decisive. The English monarchy rose from the ground inrenewed strength, and entered on a fresh lease of greatness. A line ofable kings followed Alfred. His son and successor, Edward, inherited hisvigour. His favourite grandson, Athelstan, smote the Dane and the Scottogether at Brunanburgh, and awoke by his glorious victory the lastechoes of Saxon song. Under Edgar the greatness of the monarchy reachedits highest pitch, and it embraced the whole island under its imperialascendancy. At last its hour came; but when Canute founded a Danishdynasty he and his Danes were Christians. 

"This I can now truly say, that so long as I have lived I have strivento live worthily, and after my death to leave my memory to mydescendants in good works. " If the king who wrote those words did notfound a university or a polity, he restored and perpetuated thefoundations of English institutions, and he left what is almost asvaluable as any institution--a great and inspiring example of publicduty. 

THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME

"Has humanity such forces at its command wherewith to combat vice andbaseness, that each school of virtue can afford to repel the aid of therest, and to maintain that it alone is entitled to the praise ofcourage, of goodness, and of resignation?" Such is the rebukeadministered by M. Renan to the Christians who refuse to recognise themartyrs of Stoicism under the Roman Empire. My eye fell upon the wordswhen I had just laid down Professor Mommsen's harsh judgment of the lastdefenders of the Republic, and they seemed to me applicable to this casealso. 

It is needless to say that there has been a curious change of opinion asto the merits of these men who, a century ago, were political saints ofthe Liberal party, but whom in the present day Liberal writers areemulously striving, with Dante, to thrust down into the nethermost hell. Dante puts Brutus and Cassius in hell not because he knows the realhistory of their acts, or because he is qualified to judge of the moraland political conditions under which they acted, but simply because heis a Ghibelin, and they slew the head of the Holy Roman Empire; and thepresent change of opinion arises, in the main, not from the discovery ofany new fact, or from the better sifting of those already known, butfrom the prevalence of new sentiments--Imperialism of different shades, Bonapartist or Positivist, and perhaps also hero-worship, which ofcourse fixes upon Caesar. Positivism and Hero-worship are somewhatincongruous allies, for Hero-worship is evidently the least scientific, while Positivism aims at being the most scientific, of all the theoriesof history. 

We are judging the opponents of Caesar, it seems to me, under thedominion of exaggerated notions of the beneficence of the Empire whichCaesar founded, of its value as a political model, of its connection withthe life of modern civilization, and of the respect, not to saydevotion, due to the memory of its founder. Let us try to cast off foran hour the influence of these modern sentiments, and put the wholegroup of ancient figures back into its place in ancient history. 

The Empire was a necessity at the time when it came--granted. But anecessity of what sort? Was it a necessity created by an upward effort, by an elevation of humanity, or by degradation and decline? In theformer case you may pass the same sentence upon those who opposed itscoming which is passed upon those who crucified Christ, or who, likePhilip II. , opposed the Reformation in the spirit of bigoted reaction. But in the latter case they must be charged, not with moral blindness ordepravity, but only with the lack of that clearness of sight which leadsmen and parties at the right moment, or even in anticipation of theright moment, to despair; and such perspicacity, to say the least, is ahighly scientific quality, requiring perhaps, to make it respectable andsafe, a more exact knowledge of historical sequences than we even nowpossess. Even now we determine these historical necessities by ourknowledge of the result. It was a necessity, given all the conditions--the treachery of Ephialtes included--that the Persians should force thepass of Thermopylae. But the Three Hundred could not know all theconditions. Even if they had, would they have done right in giving way?They fell, but their spirits fought again at Salamis. 

To me it appears that the Empire was a necessity of the second kind;that it was an inevitable concession to incurable evil, not a newdevelopment of good. The Roman morality, the morality which had producedand sustained the Republic, was now in a state of final and irremediabledecay. That morality was narrow and imperfect, or rather it wasrudimentary, a feeble and transient prototype of the sounder and moreenduring morality which was soon to be born into the world. It was themorality of devotion to a single community, and in fact consisted mainlyof the performance of duty to that community in war. But it was real andenergetic after its measure and its own time. It produced a type ofcharacter, which, if reproduced now, would be out of date and evenodious, but which stands in history dignified and imposing even to thelast. Nor was it without elements of permanent value. It contributedlargely to the patriotism of the seventeenth century, a patriotism whichhas now perhaps become obsolete in its turn, and is superseded in ouraspirations by an ideal with less of right and self-assertion, with moreof duty and of social affection, yet did good service against theStuarts. The Roman morality, together with dignity of character, produced as usual simplicity of life. It produced a reverence for themajesty of law, the voice of the community. It produced relationsbetween the sexes, and domestic relations generally, far indeed belowthe ideal, yet decidedly above those which commonly existed in the paganworld. It produced a high degree of self-control and of abstinence fromvices which prevailed elsewhere. It produced fruits of intellect, someoriginal, especially in the political sphere, others merely borrowedfrom Greece, yet evincing on the part of the borrower a power ofappreciating the superior excellence of another, and that a conquerednation, the value of which, as breaking through the iron boundary ofnational self-love, has perhaps not received sufficient notice. What wasof most consequence to the world at large and to history, it produced, though probably not so much in the way of obedience to recognisedprinciple as of noble instinct, a signal mitigation of Conquest, whichwas then the universal habit, but from being extermination anddestruction, at best slavery or forcible transplantation, became underthe Romans a supremacy, imposed indeed by force, and at the cost of muchsuffering, yet, in a certain sense civilizing, and not exercised whollywithout regard for the good of the subject races. Thus that politicalunity of the nations round the Mediterranean was brought about, whichwas the necessary precursor and protector of a union of a better kind. Ameasure of the same praise is due to Alexander, who was a conqueror ofthe higher order for a similar reason--namely, that though a Macedonianprince, he was imbued with the ideas and the morality of the Greekrepublics. But Alexander was a single man, and he could not accomplishwhat was accomplished in a succession of generations by the corporateenergies and virtues of the Roman Senate. 

The conditions under which this morality had maintained itself were nowgone. It depended on the circumstances of a small community, longengaged in a struggle for existence with powerful and aggressiveneighbours, the Latin, the Etruscan, the Samnite, and the Gaul; enteringin turn, when its own safety had been secured, on a career of conquest, still in a certain sense defensive, since every neighbour was in thosedays an enemy; and continuing to task to the utmost the citizen'sdevotion to the State, the virtues of command and obedience necessary tovictory, and the frugality necessary to supply the means of greatnational efforts; while luxury was kept at bay, though the means ofindulging it had begun to flow in, by the check of national danger andthe counter-attraction of military glory. But all this was at an endwhen Carthage and Macedon were overthrown. National danger and thenecessity for national effort being removed, self-devotion failed, egotism broke loose, and began to revel in the pillage and oppression ofa conquered world. The Roman character was corrupted, as the Spartancharacter was corrupted when Sparta, from being a camp in the midst ofhostile Helots, became a dominant power and sent out governors tosubject states; though the corruption in the case of Sparta was far morerapid, because Spartan excellence was more exclusively military, moreformal and more obsolete. The mass of the Romans ceased to performmilitary duty, and there being no great public duty except military dutyto be performed, there remained no school of public virtue. Such publicvirtue as there was lingered, though in a degraded form round the eaglesof the standing armies, to which the duties of the citizen-soldier werenow consigned; and the soldiery thus acquired not only the power but theright of electing the emperors, the best of whom, in fact, afterAugustus, were generally soldiers. The ruling nation became a cityrabble, the vices of which were but little tempered by the fitfulintervention of the enfranchised communities of Italy. Of this rabble, political adventurers bought the consulships, which led to thegovernment of provinces, and wrung out of the unhappy provincials thepurchase money and a fortune for themselves besides. These fortunesbegot colossal luxury and a general reign of vice. Violence minglingwith corruption in the elections was breeding a complete anarchy inRome. Roman religion, to which, if we believe Polybius, we must ascribea real influence in the maintenance of morality, was at the same timeundermined by the sceptical philosophy of Greece, and by contact withconflicting religions, the spectacle of which had its effect inproducing the scepticism of Montaigne. 

The empire itself was on the point of dissolution. In empires founded bysingle conquerors, such as those of the East, when corruption has madethe reigning family its prey, the satraps make themselves independent. The empire of Alexander was divided among his generals. The empire ofthe conquering republic of Rome, the republic itself having succumbed tovices analagous to the corruption of a reigning family, was about to bebroken up by the great military chiefs. Pompey had already, in fact, carved out for himself a separate kingdom in Spain, which with itslegions he had got permanently into his own hands. Thus the unity of thecivilized portion of humanity, so indispensable to the future of therace, would have been lost. Nor was there any remedy but one. Representation of the provinces was out of the question. Supposing itpossible that a single assembly could have been formed out of all thesedifferent races and tongues, the representation of the conquered wouldhave been the abdication of the conqueror, and abdication was a step forwhich the lazzaroni of the so-called democratic party were as littleprepared as the haughtiest aristocrat in Rome. A world of egotism, without faith or morality, could be held together only by force, whichpresented itself in the person of the ablest, most daring, and mostunscrupulous adventurer of the time. If faith should again fail, and theworld again be reduced to a mass of egotism, the same sort of governmentwill again, be needed. In fact, we are at this moment rather in dangerof something of the kind, and these revivals of Caesarism are not whollyout of season. But in any other case to propose to society such a modelwould be treason to humanity. 

The abandonment of military duty by the Roman people had, among otherthings, made slavery more immoral than ever, because there was no longerany semblance of a division of labour: the master could no longer besaid to defend the slave in war while the slave supported him by labourat home. Becoming more immoral, slavery became more cruel. The sixthousand crosses erected on the road from Capua to Rome after theServile War were the terrible proof. 

As to the existence of an oligarchy in the bosom of the dominantrepublic, this would in itself have been no great evil to the subjectworld, to which it mattered little whether its tyrants were a hundred ora hundred thousand; just as to the unenfranchised in modern communitiesit matters little whether the enfranchised class be large or small. Infact, the broader the basis of a tyranny, the more fearless andunscrupulous, generally speaking, the tyranny is. 

We need not overstate the case. If we do we shall tarnish the laurels ofCaesar, who would have shown no genius in killing the republic had therepublic been already dead. There was still respect for the law and theconstitution. Pompey's hesitation when supreme power was within hisgrasp, Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civilwars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of Romans, but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of Rome. There werestill great characters--characters which you may dislike, but of whichyou can never rationally speak with contempt--and there must have beensome general element of worth in which these characters were formed. Ifthe recent administration of the Senate had not been glorious, still, from a Roman point of view, it had not been disastrous: the revolt ofthe slaves and the insurrection in Spain had been quelled; Mithridateshad been conquered; the pirates, though for a time their dominationaccused the feebleness of the government, had at length been put down. The only great military calamity of recent date was the defeat ofCrassus, whose unprovoked and insane invasion of Parthia was the error, not of the Senate, but of the Triumvirate. Legions were forthcoming forthe conquest of Gaul, and a large reserve of treasure was found in thesacred treasure-house when it was broken open by Caesar. Bad governors ofprovinces, Verres, Fonteius, Gabinius, were impeached and punished. Lucullus, autocrat and voluptuary as he was, governed his province well. So did Cicero, if we may take his own word for it. We may, at allevents, take his own word for this, that he was anxious to be thought tohave ruled with purity and justice, which proves that purity and justicewere not quite out of fashion. The old Roman spirit still struggledagainst luxury, and we find Cicero suffering from indigestion, caused bya supper of vegetables at the house of a wealthy friend, whose excellentcook had developed all the resources of gastronomic art in strugglingwith the restrictions imposed by a sumptuary law. There was intellectuallife, and all the civilized tastes and half-moral qualities which theexistence of intellectual life implies. In spite of the sanguinaryanarchy which often broke out in the Roman streets, Cicero, the mostcultivated and the least combative of men, when in exile or in hisprovince, sighs for the capital as a Frenchman sighs for Paris. Inshort, if we consider the case fairly, we shall admit, I believe, that, besides the force of memory and of old allegiance, there was enough ofworth and of apparent hope left, not only to excuse republicanillusions, but probably to make it a duty to try the issue with fate. Isay probably, and, after all, how can we presume to speak with certaintyof a situation so distant from us in time, and so imperfectly recorded?

The great need of the world was public virtue--the spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good. This the empire could not possibly callinto being. The public virtue of the ancient world resided in thenationalities which the conquering republic had broken up, and of whichthe empire only sealed the doom. The empire could never call forth eventhe lowest form of public virtue, loyalty to the hereditary right of aroyal family, because the empire never presented itself as a right, butmerely as a personal power. The idea of legitimacy, I apprehend neverconnected itself with these dynasts who were, in fact, a series ofusurpers, veiling their usurpation under republican forms. When thespirit which leads man to sacrifice himself to the good of the communityappeared again it appeared in associations and notably in one greatassociation formed not by the empire but independently of it inantagonism to its immorality, and in spite of its persecutions. Accidentally the empire assisted the extension of the great Christianassociation by completing the overthrow of the national religions, butthe main part of this work had been done by the republic and it was themerit neither of the republic nor of the empire. 

It is said with confidence that the empire vastly improved thegovernment of the provinces, and that on this account it was a greatblessing to the world. I do not believe that any nation had thenattained, I do not believe that any nation has now attained, and I doubtwhether any nation ever will attain, such a point of morality as to beable to govern other nations for the benefit of the governed. I will saynothing about our Christian policy in India, but let those who rateFrench morality so highly, consider what French tutelage is to thepeople of Algeria. But supposing the task undertaken, the question whichis the best organ of imperial government--an assembly or an autocrat--isa curious one. I am disposed to think that, taking the average ofassemblies and the average of autocrats, there is more hope in theassembly, because in the assembly opinion must have some force. Theautocrat is in a certain sense, raised above the dominant nation and itsinterests, but, after all, he is one of that nation, he lives in it, andsubsists by its support. Even in the time of Augustus, if we may trustDion Cassius Licinius the Governor of Gaul, was guilty of corruptionsand peculations curiously resembling those of Verres, from whom he seemsto have borrowed the device of tampering with the calendar for thepurpose of fiscal fraud, and when the provinces complained, the Emperorhushed up the matter, partly to avoid scandal, partly because Liciniuswas cunning enough to pretend that his peculations had been intended tocut the sinews of revolt, and that his spoils were reserved for theimperial exchequer. The rebellions of Vindex and Civilis seem to provethat even Caesar's favourite province was not happy. Spain wasmisgoverned by the deputies both of Julius and Augustus. In Britain, thehistory of the revolt of the Iceni shews that neither the extortions ofRoman usurers, nor the brutalities of Roman officers, had ended with therepublic. The blood tax of the conscription appears also to have beencruelly exacted. The tribute of largesses and shows which the empire, though supposed to be lifted high above all partialities, paid to theRoman populace, was drawn almost entirely from the provinces. Emperorswho coined money with the tongue of the informer and the sword of theexecutioner, were not likely to abstain from selling governorships; and, in fact, Seneca intimates that under bad emperors governorships weresold. Of course, the tyranny was felt most at Rome, where it waspresent; but when Caligula or Caracalla made a tour in the provinces, itwas like the march of the pestilence. The absence of a regularbureaucracy, practically controlling, as the Russian bureaucracy does, the personal will of the Emperor, must have made government better underTrajan, but much worse under Nero. The aggregation of land in the handsof a few great land-holders evidently continued, and under this systemthe garden of Italy became a desert. The decisive fact, however, is thatthe provinces decayed, and that when the barbarians arrived, all powerof resistance was gone. That the empire was consciously levelling andcosmopolitan, surely cannot be maintained. Actium was a Roman victoryover the gods of the nations. Augustus, who must have known somethingabout the system, avowedly aimed at restoring the number, the purity, the privileged exclusiveness of the dominant race. His legislation wasan attempt to regenerate old Rome; and the political odes of the courtpoet are full of that purpose. That the empire degraded all that hadonce been noble in Rome is true; but the degradation of what had oncebeen noble in Rome was not the regeneration of humanity. The vast slavepopulation was no more elevated by the ascendency of the freedmen of theimperial household than the female sex was elevated by the ascendancy ofMessalina. 

That intellect declined under the emperors, and that the great writersof its earlier period, Tacitus included, were really legacies of theRepublic, cannot be denied; and surely it is a pregnant fact. The empireis credited with Roman law. But the Roman law was ripe for codificationin the time of the first Caesar. The leading principles of the civil lawseem by that time to have been in existence. Unquestionably the greatstep had been taken of separating law as a science from consecratedcustom, and of calling into existence regular law courts and what wastantamount to a legal profession. The mere evolution of the system fromits principles required no transcendant effort; and the idea ofcodification must have been something less than divine, or it could nothave been compassed by the intellect of Justinian. The criminal law ofthe empire, with its arbitrary courts, its secret procedure, its elasticlaw of treason, and its practice of torture, was the scourge of Europetill it was encountered and overthrown by the jury system, acharacteristic offspring of the Teutonic mind. 

Tolerant the empire was, at least if you did not object to having thestatue of Caligula set up in your Holy of Holies, and this tolerationfostered the growth of a new religion. But it is needless to say that, in this respect, the politicians of the empire only inherited thenegative virtue of those of the republic. 

As to private morality, we may surely trust the common authorities--Juvenal, Suetonius, Petronius Arbiter--supported as they are by theevidence of the museums. There was one family, at least, whose colossalvices and crimes afforded a picture in the deepest sense tragic, considering their tremendous effect on the lot and destinies ofhumanity. 

It is a glorious dream, this of an autocrat, the elect of humanity, raised above all factions and petty interests, armed with absolute powerto govern well, agreeing exactly with all our ideas, giving effect toall our schemes of beneficence, and dealing summarily with ouropponents; but it does not come through the "horngate" of history, atleast not of the history of the Roman empire. 

The one great service which the empire performed to humanity was this:it held together, as nothing else could have held together, the nationsof the civilized world, and thus rendered possible a higher unity ofmankind. 

I ventured to note, as one of the sources of illusion, a somewhatexaggerated estimate of the amount and value of the Roman elementtransfused by the empire into modern civilization. The theory ofcontinuity, suggested by the discoveries of physical science, isprevailing also in history. A historical theory is to me scientific, notbecause it is suggested by physical science, but because it fits thehistorical facts. It may be true that there are no cataclysms inhistory, but still there are great epochs. In fact, there are greatepochs, even in the natural history of the world; there were periods atwhich organization and life began to exist. There may have been a timeat which a still further effort was made, and spiritual life also wasbrought into being. Things which do not come suddenly or abruptly, maynevertheless be new. A great sensation has been created by an article inthe _Quarterly_, on "The Talmud, " which purports to shew that theteachings of Christianity were, in fact, only those of Pharisaism. Theorgan of orthodoxy, in publishing that article, was rather like ourgreat mother Eve in Milton, who "knew not eating death. " But after all, Pharisaism crucified Christianity, and probably it was not forplagiarism. Supposing we adopt the infiltration theory of the Barbarianconquests, and discard that of a sudden deluge of invasion, it remainscertain, unless all contemporary writers were much mistaken, that somevery momentous change did, after all, occur. Catholicism and Feudalismwere the life of the Middle Ages. Catholicism, though it had grown upunder the Empire, and at last subjugated it, was not of it. As toFeudalism, it is possible, no doubt, to find lands held on condition ofmilitary service under the Roman empire as well as under the Ottomanempire, and in other military states. But is it possible to findanything like the social hierarchy of Feudalism, its code of mutualrights and duties, or the political and social characters which itformed?

In France and Spain, much of the Roman province survived, but inEngland, not the least influential of the group of modern nations, itwas, as we have every reason to believe, completely erased by the Saxoninvaders, who came fresh from the seats of their barbarism, hatingcities and city life, and ignorant of the majesty of Rome. If a Romanelement afterwards found its way into England with the Norman conquest, it was rather ecclesiastical than imperial, and those who brought itwere Scandinavians to the core. Alfred had been at Rome in his boyhood, it is true, and may have brought away some ideas of central dominion;but his laws open with a long quotation, not from the Pandects, but fromthe New Testament--his character is altogether that of a Christian, notof a Roman ruler, and if he had any political model before him, it was, probably, at least as much the Hebrew monarchy as the military despotismof the Caesars. Many of the Roman cities remained, and with them theirmunicipal governments, and hence it is assumed that municipal governmentaltogether is Roman. But there was a municipal government in the Saxoncapital, and evidently there must be wherever large cities exist withany degree of independence. The Roman law was, at all events so far lostin the early part of the Middle Ages when Christendom was in process offormation that the study of it afterwards seemed new. Roman literatureinfluenced that of mediaeval Christendom down to about the end of thetwelfth century. Our writers of the time of Henry II. Compose in halfclassical Latin and affect classical elegancies of style. But then comesa philosophy which in spite of its worship of Aristotle is essentiallyan original creation of the mediaeval and Catholic mind couched in alanguage Latin indeed but almost as remote from classical Latin asGerman itself: the tongue in truth of a new intellectual world. OpenAquinas and ask yourself how much is left of the language or the mind ofRome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the Cathedral, butwhat essential resemblance does the Roman place of judicature andbusiness bear to that marvellous and fantastic poetry of religionwriting its hymns in stone? In the same manner the Roman _castra_are traceable in the form as well as the designation of the mediaeval_castella_. But what resemblance did the feudal militia bear to thelegionaries? And what became of the Roman art of war till it was revivedby Gustavus Adolphus? The outward mould of Christendom the Roman empirewas and that it was so gives it great dignity and interest, but it wasno more. The life came from the German forest the life of life from thepeasantry of Galilee the least Romanized perhaps of the populationsbeneath the sway of Rome. 

The founder of the Roman empire was a very great man. With such geniusand such fortune it is not surprising that he should be made an idol. Inintellectual stature he was at least an inch higher than his fellowswhich is in itself enough to confound all our notions of right andwrong. He had the advantage of being a statesman before he was a soldierwhereas Napoleon was a soldier before he was a statesman. His ambitioncoincided with the necessity of the world which required to be heldtogether by force, and therefore his empire endured for four hundred, orif we include its eastern offset, for fourteen hundred years, while thatof Napoleon crumbled to pieces in four. But unscrupulous ambition wasthe root of his character. It was necessary in fact to enable him totrample down the respect for legality which still hampered other men. Toconnect him with any principle seems to me impossible. He came forward, it is true, as the leader of what is styled the democratic party, and inthat sense the empire which he founded may be called democratic. But tothe gamblers who brought their fortunes to that vast hazard table, thedemocratic and aristocratic parties were merely _rouge_ and_noir_. The social and political equity, the reign of which wedesire to see was, in truth, unknown to the men of Caesar's time. It isimpossible to believe that there was an essential difference ofprinciple between one member of the triumvirate and another. The greatadventurer had begun by getting deeply into debt, and had thus in factbound himself to overthrow the republic. He fomented anarchy to preparethe way for his dictatorship. He shrank from no accomplice howevertainted, not even from Catiline; from no act however profligate or eveninhuman. Abusing his authority as a magistrate, for party purposes, hetries to put to a cruel and ignominious death Rabirius, an aged andhelpless man, for an act done in party warfare thirty years before. Thecase of Vettius is less clear, but Dr. Mommsen, at all events, seems tohave little doubt that Caesar was privy to the subornation of thisperjurer, and when his perjuries had broken down, to his assassination. Dr. Mommsen owns that there was a dark period in the life of the greatman; in that darkness it could scarcely be expected that the Republicansshould see light. 

The noblest feature in Caesar's character was his clemency. But we arereminded that it was ancient, not modern clemency, when we find numberedamong the signal instances of it his having cut the throats of thepirates before he hanged them, and his having put to death withouttorture (_simplici morte punivit_) a slave suspected of conspiringagainst his life. Some have gone so far as to speak of him as theincarnation of humanity. But where in the whole history of Romanconquest will you find a more ruthless conqueror? A million of Gauls, weare told, perished by the sword. Multitudes were sold into slavery. Theextermination of the Eburones went to the verge even of ancient license. The gallant Vercingetorix, who had fallen into Caesar's hands undercircumstances which would have touched any but a depraved heart, waskept by him a captive for six years, and butchered in cold blood on theday of the triumph. The sentiment of humanity was at that timeundeveloped. Be it so, but then we must not call Caesar the incarnationof humanity. 

Vast plans are ascribed to Caesar at the time of his death, and it seemsto be thought that a world of hopes for humanity perished when he fell. But if he had lived and acted for another century what could he havedone with those moral and political materials but found what he didfound--a military and sensualist empire? A multitude of projects areattributed to him by writers who we must remember are late and who makehim ride a fairy charger with feet like the hands of a man. Some ofthese projects are really great, such as the codification of the law andmeasures for the encouragement of intellect and science; others arequestionable, such as the restoration of commercial cities from whichcommerce had retired; others, great works to be accomplished by anunlimited command of men and money, are the common dreams of everyNebuchadnezzar. What we know if we know anything of his intentions isthat he was about to set out on a campaign against the Parthians inwhose plains this prototype of Napoleon might perhaps have found atorrid Moscow. No great advance of humanity can take place without agreat moral effort excited by higher moral desires. The masters of thelegions can only set in action by their fiat material forces. Even thesethey often misdirect; but if the empire could have given every manNero's golden house the inhabitants might still have been as unhappy asNero. 

It is not doubtful that Caesar was a type of the sensuality of his age. His worshippers even feel it necessary to gird at characters deficientin sensual passion with a friskiness which is a little amusing when youconnect it with the spectacles and the blameless life of a learnedprofessor. So gifted a nature will absorb a good deal of mere sensualvice, it is true, but a sensualist could hardly be a pure and nobleorgan of humanity. In this I have the Positivists with me. Even inCaesar's lifetime the world had a taste of the vicissitudes of empirewhile he was revelling in the palace of Cleopatra and leaving affairs toAntony and Dolabella. Perhaps the satiety of the voluptuary hadsomething to do with the recklessness with which at the last heneglected to guard his life. He was the greatest patron of gladiatorialshows and signalized his accession to power by magnificent scenes ofcarnage in the arena--a strange dawn for the day of a new civilization. Must we not a little doubt the consistency of his policy and even hisinsight when we find him after all this enacting sumptuary laws?

Still Caesar was a very great man and he played a dazzling part, as allmen do who come just at the fall of an old system, when society is asclay in the hands of the potter, and found a new system in its place, while the less dazzling task of making the new system work, by probityand industry, and of restoring the shattered allegiance of a people toits institutions, descends upon unlaurelled heads. But that the men ofhis time were bound to recognise in him a Messiah, to use the phrase ofthe Emperor of the French, and that those who opposed him were Jewscrucifying their Saviour, is an impression which I venture to think willin time subside. No golden scales were hung out in heaven to shew therepublicans that the balance of Divine will had turned, and that theirduty was submission. "Momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum--" The onlysign vouchsafed to them was the conversion of an unprincipled debauchee. 

They have, therefore, a fair claim to be judged each upon the merits ofhis case, and not in the lump as enemies of the human race; and to judgethem fairly is a good exercise in historical morality. The threeprincipal names in the party are those of Cato, Cicero, and MarcusBrutus. Pompey, though the nominal chief of the republicans, may rather, as Dr Mommsen truly says, be called the first military monarch of Rome. There is a vigorous portrait of him, from the republican point of view, by Lucan, who, though detestable as an epic poet, sometimes in hispolitical passages, and especially in his characters, shews himself thecountryman of Tacitus. Pompey is there described with truth as combiningthe desire of supreme power with a lingering respect for theconstitution. The great aristocrat is painted as simple in his habits oflife, and his household as uncorrupted by the fortunes of its lord--thelast relics of the control imposed by the spirit of the republic onprivate luxury, which was soon to be released by the Empire from allrestraint and carried to the most revolting height. 

Marcus Cato was the one man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidentlydreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphletsentitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of which we have one or twospecimens, in Plutarch, from which we should infer that they werescurrilous and slanderous to the last degree; a proof that even Caesarcould feel fear, and that in Caesar, too, fear was mean. Dr Mommsenthrows himself heartily into Caesar's antipathy, and can scarcely speakof Cato without something like loss of temper. The least uncivil thingwhich he says of him, is that he was a Don Quixote, with Favonius forhis Sancho. The phrase is not a happy one, since Sancho is not thecaricature but the counterfoil of Don Quixote; Don Quixote being spiritwithout sense and Sancho sense without spirit. Imperialism, if it couldsee itself, is in fact a world of Sanchos and it would not be the lessso if every Sancho of the number were master of the whole of physicalscience, and used it to cook his food. Of the two court poets of Caesar'ssuccessor, one makes Cato preside over the spirits of the good in theElysian fields, while the other speaks with respect, at all events, ofthe soul which remained unconquered in a conquered world--"Et cunetaterrarum subacta praeter atrocem animum Catonis. " Paterculus, an officerof Tiberius and a thorough Caesarian, calls Cato a man of ideal virtue("homo virtuti simillimus") who did right not for appearance sake, butbecause it was not in his nature to do wrong. When the victor is thusoverawed by the shade of the vanquished, the vanquished can hardly havebeen a "fool. " Contemporaries may be mistaken as to the merits of acharacter, but they cannot well be mistaken as to the space which itoccupied in their own eyes. Sallust, the partizan of Marius and Caesar, who had so much reason to hate the senatorial party, speaks of Caesar andCato as the two mighty opposites of his time, and in an elaborateparallel ascribes to Caesar the qualities which secure the success of theadventurer; to Cato those which make up the character of the patriot. Itis a mistake to regard Cato the younger as merely an unseasonablerepetition of Cato the elder. His inspiration came not from a Roman, butfrom a Greek school, which, with all its errors and absurdities, and inspite of the hypocrisy of many of its professors, really aimed highestin the formation of character; and the practical teachings andaspirations of which, embodied in the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius, itis impossible to study without profound respect for the force of moralconception and the depth of moral insight which they sometimes display. Cato went to Greece to sit at the feet of a Greek teacher in a spiritvery different from the national pride of his ancestor. It is this whichmakes his character interesting: it was an attempt at all events tograsp and hold fast a high rule of life in an age when the whole moralworld was sinking in a vortex of scoundrelism, and faith in morality, public or private, had been lost. Of course the character is formal, andin some respects even grotesque. But you may trace formalism, if youlook closely enough, in every life led by a rule; in everything in factbetween the purest spiritual impulse on one side and abandonedsensuality on the other. 

Attempts to revive old Roman simplicity of dress and habits in the ageof Lucullus, were no doubt futile enough: yet this is only thesymbolical garb of the Hebrew prophet. The scene is in ancient Rome, notin the smoking-room of the House of Commons. The character as painted byPlutarch, who seems to have drawn from the writings of contemporaries, is hard of course, but not cynical. Cato was devoted to his brotherCaepio, and when Caepio died, forgot all his Stoicism in the passionateindulgence of his grief, and all his frugality in lavishing gold andperfumes on the funeral. Caesar in "Anti-Cato" accused him of sifting theashes for the gold, which, says Plutarch, is like charging Hercules withcowardice. Where the sensual appetites are repressed, whatever may bethe theory of life, the affections are pretty sure to be strong, unlessthey are nipped by some such process as is undergone by a monk. Cato'sresignation of his fruitful wife to a childless friend, revolting as itis to our sense, betokens not so much brutality in him as coarseness ofthe conjugal relations at Rome. Evidently the man had the power oftouching the hearts of others. His soldiers, though he has given them nolargesses, and indulged them in no license, when he leaves them, strewtheir garments under his feet. His friends at Utica linger at the perilof their lives to give him a sumptuous funeral. He affected convivialitylike Socrates. He seems to have been able to enjoy a joke too at his ownexpense. He can laugh when Cicero ridicules his Stoicism in a speech;and when in a province he meets the inhabitants of a town turning out, and thinks at first that it is in his own honour, but soon finds that itis in honour of a much greater man, the confidential servant of Pompey, at first his dignity is outraged, but his anger soon gives place toamusement. That his public character was perfectly pure, no one seems tohave doubted; and there is a kindliness in his dealings with thedependants of Rome which shews that had he been an emperor he would havebeen such an emperor as Trajan--a man whom he probably resembled, bothin the goodness of his intentions and in the limited powers of his mind. Impracticable, of course, in a certain sense he was; but his part wasthat of a reformer, and to compromise with the corruption against whichhe was contending would have been to lose the only means of influence, which, having no military force and no party, he possessed--theunquestioned integrity of his character. He is said by Dr. Mommsen tohave been incapable of even conceiving a policy. By policy I suppose ismeant one of those brilliant schemes of ambition with which someliterary men are fond of identifying themselves, fancying, it seems, that thereby they themselves after their measure play the Caesar. Thepolicy which Cato conceived was simply that of purifying and preservingthe Republic. So far, at all events, he had an insight into thesituation, that he knew the real malady of the State to be want ofpublic spirit, which he did his best to supply. And the fact is, that hedid more than once succeed in a remarkable way in stemming the tide ofcorruption. Though every instinct bade him struggle to the last, he hadsense enough to see the state of the case, and to advise that, to avertanarchy, supreme power should be put into the hands of Pompey, whosepolitical superstition, if not his loyalty, there was good reason totrust. When at last civil war broke out, Cato went into it likeFalkland, crying "peace;" he set his face steadily against the excessesand cruelties of his party; and when he saw the field of Dyrrhaeiumcovered with his slain enemies, he covered his face and wept. He wept aRoman over Romans, but humanity will not refuse the tribute of histears. After Pharsalus he cherished no illusion, as Dr Mommsen himselfadmits, and though he determined himself to fall fighting, he urged noone else to resistance: he felt that the duty of an ordinary citizen wasdone. His terrible march over the African desert shewed high powers ofcommand, as we shall see by comparing it with the desert march ofNapoleon. Dr. Mommsen ridicules his pedantry in refusing, on grounds ofloyalty, to take the commandership-in-chief over the head of a superiorin rank. Cato was fighting for legality, and the spirit of legality wasthe soul of his cause. But besides this, he was himself withoutexperience of war; and by declining the nominal command he retained thereal control. He remained master to the last of the burning vessel. Ourmorality will not approve of his voluntary death; but then our moralitywould give him a sufficient motive for living, even if he was to bebound to the car of the conqueror. Looking to Roman opinion, he probablydid what honour dictated; and those who prefer honour to life are not sonumerous that we can afford to speak of them with scorn. "The fool, "says Dr Mommsen, when the drama of the republic closes with Cato'sdeath--"The fool spoke the Epilogue" Whether Cato was a fool or not, itwas not he that spoke the Epilogue. The Epilogue was spoken by MarcusAurelius, whose principles, political as well as philosophical, wereidentical with those for which Cato gave his life. All that time theStoic and Republican party lived, sustained by the memory of itsmartyrs, and above them all by that of Cato. At first it struggledagainst the Empire; at last it accepted it, and when the world was wearyof Caesars, assumed the government and gave humanity the respite of theAntonines. The doctrine of continuity is valid for all parties alike, and the current of public virtue was not cut off by Pharsalus. On thewhole, remote as the character of Cato is in some respects from oursympathies, absurd as it would be if taken as a model for our imitation, I recognise it as a proof of the reality and indestructibility of moralforce, even when pitted against the masters of thirty legions. 

Against Cicero, again, Dr. Mommsen is so bitter, he is so determined tosuppress as well as to degrade him, that it would be difficult even tomake out from his pages who and what the once divine Tully was. Much ofDr. Mommsen's dashing criticism on Cicero's writings appears just, though we might trust the critic more if we did not find him in the nextpage evading the unwelcome duty of criticising Caesar's "Bellum Civile, "under cover of some sentimental remarks about the difference betweenhope and fulfilment in a great soul. Cicero was no philosopher, in thehighest sense of the term; yet it is not certain that he did not do someservice to humanity by promulgating, in eloquent language, a pretty highand liberal morality, which both modified monkish ethics, and, whenmonkish ethics fell, and brought down Christian ethics in their fall, did something to supply the void. The Orations, even the greatPhilippic, I must confess I could never enjoy. But all orations, readlong after their delivery, are like spent missiles, wingless and cold:they retain the deformities of passion, without the fire. A speechembodying great principles may live with the principles which itembodies; otherwise happy are the orators whose speeches are lost. TheLetters it is not so easy to give up, especially when we consider of howmany graceful and pleasant compositions of the same kind, of how manyself-revelations, which have brought the hearts of men nearer to eachother, those letters have been the model. That, however, which pleasesmost in Cicero is that he is, for his age, a thoroughly and pre-eminently civilized man. He hates gladiatorial shows; he despises eventhe tasteless pageantry of the Roman theatre; he heartily loves books;he is saving up all his earnings to buy a coveted library for his oldage; he has a real enthusiasm for great writers; he breaks throughnational pride, and feels sincerely grateful to the Greeks as theauthors; of civilization, rogues though he knew them to be in his time;he mourns, albeit with an apology, over the death of a slave; his slavesevidently are attached to him, and are faithful to him at the last; hewrites to his favourite freedman with all the warmth of equalfriendship. In his writings--in the "De Legibus, " for instance--youwill find principles of humanity far more comprehensive than those bywhich the policy of the empire was moulded. His tastes were pure andrefined, and though he multiplied his villas, and decorated them withcost and elegance, it is certain that he was perfectly free alike fromthe prodigal ostentation and from the debauchery of the time indeed hisvast intellectual industry implies a temperate life. For the game-preserving tendencies of the great oligarchs, he had a hearty dislikeand contempt; in spite of the ill-looking, though obscure, episode ofhis divorce from his wife Terentia, he was evidently a man of strongfamily affections, the natural adjuncts of moral purity; he isinconsolable for the death of his daughter, spends days in melancholywandering in the woods, and finds consolation only in erecting a templeto the beloved shade. His faults of character, both in private andpublic, are glaring, and the only thing to be said in excuse of hisvanity is that it is so frank, and says plainly, "Puff me, " not "Puff menot. " As a political adventurer of the higher class, pushing his wayunder an aristocratic government by his talents and his training, received in course of time into the ranks of the aristocracy, yet neverone of them, he will bear comparison with Burke. He resembles Burke, too, in his religious constitutionalism and reverence for the wisdom ofpolitical ancestors and perhaps his hope of creating a party at onceconservative and reforming, by a combination of the moneyed interestwith the aristocracy, was not much more chimerical than Burke's hope ofcreating a party at once conservative and reforming out of the materialsof Whiggism. Each of the two men affected a balanced, and in the literalsense, a trimming policy, as opposed to one of abstract principle, Burke, perhaps, from temperament, Cicero from necessity. Impeachments atRome in Cicero's time were no doubt the regular stepping-stones ofrising politicians; nevertheless, the accuser of Verres may fairly becredited with some, at least, of the genuine sentiment which impelledthe accuser of Warren Hastings. We must couple with the Verrines theadmirable letter of the orator to his brother Quintus on the governmentof a province, and his own provincial administration, which, as was saidbefore, appears to have been excellent. Cicero rose, not as an adherentof the aristocracy, but as their opponent, and the assailant, a boldassailant, of the tyranny of Sulla. He was brought to the front inpolitics, as Sallust avers, by his merit, in spite of his birth andsocial position, when the mortal peril of the Catilinarian conspiracywas gathering round the state, and necessity called for the man, and notthe game-preserver. His conduct in that hour of supreme peril isridiculously overpraised by himself. Not only so, but he begs a friendin plain terms to write a history of it and to exaggerate. Now, it isdenounced as brutal tyranny and judicial murder. But those who hold thislanguage have new lights on the subject of Catiline. I confess that onme these new lights have not dawned; I still believe Catiline to havebeen a terrible anarchist, coming forth from the abyss of debauchery, ruin, and despair, which lay beneath: the great fortunes of Rome. Theland of Caesar Borgia has produced such men in more than one period ofhistory. The alleged illegality of the execution was made the stalking-horse of a party move, and scrupulous legality found a champion and anavenger in Clodius. On his return from exile, Cicero was received withthe greatest enthusiasm by the whole population of Italy, a fact whichDr. Mommsen is inclined to explain away, but which we should, perhaps, accept as the key to some other facts in Cicero's history. The Italianswere probably the most respectable of the political elements, and itseems they not only looked up to their fellow-provincial with pride, but saw in him a statesman who was saving their homesteads from a reignof terror. That Cicero had the general support of the Italians was quiteenough to make his adherence an object of serious consideration toCaesar, though Dr. Mommsen persists in interpolating into the relationsof the two men the contempt which he feels, and which he fancies Caesarmust have felt, for an advocate. Surely, however, it is a mistake tothink that oratory was not even in those days a real power at Rome. Cana greater platitude be conceived than railing at a statesman ofantiquity for having been a rhetorician? Was not Pericles a rhetorician?Was not Caesar himself a rhetorician? Did he not learn rhetoric from thesame master as Cicero? Some day we may be ruled by political science;but rhetoric was, at all events, an improvement on mere force. Thesituation at Rome had now become essentially military; and Cicero havingno military force at his command could not really control the situation. 

His attempts to control it exposed him to all the miscarriages and allthe indignities which such an attempt is sure to entail. He was a vesselof earthenware, or rather of very fragile porcelain, swimming amongvessels of brass. Self-respect would perhaps have prescribedretirement from public life; but, to say nothing of his egotism, he haddone too much to retire. Egotistical he was in the highest degree, andthat failing made all his humiliations doubly ignominious; but still, Ithink, if you judge him candidly, you wilt see that he really loved hiscountry, and that his greatest object of desire was, as he himself says, to live in the grateful memory of after-times; not the highest of allaims, but higher than that of the political adventurer. When the civilwar came, his perplexity was painful, and he betrayed it with his usualwant of reticence. In that, as in other respects, his character is thedirect opposite of that of the "gloomy sporting man, " whose ways LouisNapoleon, it is said, avowed that he had studied during his exile inEngland, and followed with profit as a conspirator in France. Cicero andCato knew too well that Pompey had "licked the sword of Sulla;" but theyknew also, by long experience of his political character, that he shrankfrom doing the last violence to the constitution. On the other hand, allmen expected that Caesar, who had formerly given himself out as thepolitical heir of Marius, who had restored the trophies of Marius, andhad undertaken the conquest of Gaul, evidently as a continuation of thevictories of Marius, descending upon Italy with an army partlyconsisting of barbarians and trained in the most ferocious warfare, would renew the Marian reign of terror. This fear put all Italy at firston Pompey's side. Caesar had not yet revealed his nobler and moreglorious self. Even Curio told Cicero, in an interview, the object ofwhich was to draw Cicero to the Caesarian side, that Caesar's clemency wasmerely policy, not in his nature. The best security against the bloodyexcesses of a victorious party at that moment, undoubtedly, was thepresence of Marcus Cato in the camp of Pompey. After Pharsalus, Cicerosubmitted like many men of sterner mould. This departure of the advocatefrom the Pompeian camp is surrounded by Dr. Mommsen with circumstancesof ridicule, for which, on reference to what I suppose to be theauthorities, I can find no historical foundation. The fiercer Pompeiansvery nearly killed him for refusing to stay and command them; his lifewas in fact only saved by the intrepid moderation of Cato; and this issurely not a proof that they deemed his presence worthless. Once more, orators were not ridiculous in the eyes of antiquity. Cicero accepted, and, in a certain sense, served under the dictatorate of Caesar; thoughhe afterwards rejoiced when it was overthrown, and the constitution, theidol of his political worship, was restored; just as we may suppose aFrench constitutionalist, not of stern mould, yet not dishonest, accepting and serving under the empire, yet rejoicing at the restorationof constitutional government. In the interval, between the death ofCaesar and Philippi, he was really the soul and the main support of theRestoration. I have said what I think of the Philippics; but there canbe no doubt that they told, or that Brutus and Cassius thought them, worth at least a legion. 

Cicero met death with a physical courage, which there is no reason tobelieve that he wanted in life. His cowardice was political; his fearswere for his position and reputation. If Cato survived in the traditionof public virtue, so did Cicero in the tradition of culture, which savedthe empire of the Caesars from being an empire of Moguls. The culture ofa republic saved Caesar himself from being a mere Timur, and set himafter his victory to reforming calendars and endowing science, insteadof making pyramids of heads. Is it absurd to suppose that the greatsoldier, who was also a great man of letters, had more respect forintellect without military force than his literary admirers, and that hereally wished to adorn his monarchy by allying to it the leading man ofintellect of the time?

Our accounts of Marcus Brutus are not very clear. Appian confoundsMarcus with Decimus; and it appears not unlikely that "Et tu Brute, " ifit was said at all, was said to Decimus, who was a special favourite ofCaesar, and was named in his will. Marcus seems to have been a man ofworth after his fashion; a patriot of the narrow Roman type, reproducedin later days by Fletcher of Saltoun, whose ideal republic was anoligarchy, and who did not shrink from proposing to settle theproletariat difficulty by making the common people slaves. This is quitecompatible with the fact revealed to us in the letters of Cicero, thatBrutus was implicated, through his agents, in the infamous practice oflending money to provincials at exorbitant interest, and abusing thepower of the Imperial Governments to exact the debt. One can imagine aWest Indian slave-owner, dealing with negroes through his agentaccording to the established custom, and yet being a good citizen inEngland. 

Cicero, though he suffered from the imperious temper of Brutus, speaksof him as one of those, the sight of whom banished his fears andanxieties for the republic. That the most famous and most terrible actof this man's life was an act of republican fanaticism, not of selfishambition, is proved by his refusing, with magnanimous imprudence, tomake all sure, as the more worldly spirits about him suggested, bycutting off Antony and the outer leading partisans of Caesar, and by hispermitting public honours to be done to the corpse of the man whom hehad immolated to civil duty. One almost shrinks from speaking of thedeath of Caesar; so much modern nonsense on both sides has been talkedabout this, the most tragic, the most piteous, and at the same time themost inevitable event of ancient story. Peculiar phases of society havetheir peculiar sentiments, with reference to which events must beexplained. The greased cartridges were the real account of the Indianmutiny. Caesar was slain because he had shown that he was going to assumethe title of king. Cicero speaks the literal truth, when he says: thatthe real murderer was Antony, and the fatal day the day of theLupercalia, when Antony offered and Caesar faintly put aside the crown. Adictator they would have borne, a king they would not bear, neither thennor for ages afterwards; because the title of king to their minds spokenot of a St. Louis, or an Edward I. , or even a Louis XIV. , but of theunutterable degradation of the Oriental slave. To use a homely image, ifyou put your leg in the way of a cannon ball which seems spent, but isstill rolling, you will suffer by the experiment. This is exactly whatCaesar, in the giddiness of victory and supremacy, did, and theconsequence was as certain as it was deplorable. The republicansentiment seemed to him to have entirely lost its force, so that hemight spurn it with impunity; whereas, it had in it still enough of themomentum gathered through centuries of republican training and glory todestroy him, to restore the republic for a brief period, and to makevictory doubtful at Phillipi. He began by celebrating a triumph over hisfellow-citizens, against the generous tradition of Rome: in that triumphhe displayed pictures of the tragic deaths of Cato and other Romanchiefs, which disgusted even the populace; he sported with the curuleoffices, the immemorial objects of republican reverence, so wantonlythat he might almost as well have given a consulship to his horse; heflooded the Senate with soldiers and barbarians; he forced a Romanknight to appear upon the stage: at last, craving, as natures destituteof a high controlling principle do crave, for the form as well as thesubstance of power, he put out his hand to grasp a crown. The feeling onthat subject was not only of terrible strength, but was actuallyembodied in a law by which the state solemnly armed the hand of theprivate citizen against any man who should attempt to make himself aking. How completely Caesar's insight failed him is proved by the generalacquiescence or apathy with which his fall was received, the subduedtone in which even his warm friend Marius speaks of it, and thereadiness with which his own soldiers and officers served under therestored republic. We have nothing to do here with any problem of modernethics respecting military usurpation and tyrannicide, two things whichmust always stand together in the court of morality. Tyrannicide, likesuicide, was the rule of the ancient world, and would have beenacknowledged by Caesar himself, before he grasped supreme power, as anestablished duty. And certainly morality would stretch its bounds toinclude anything really necessary to protect the Greek and Italianrepublics, with the treasures which they bore in them for humanity, fromthe barbarous lust of power which was always lying in wait to devourthem. I have said that the spirits of Cato and Cicero lived and workedafter their deaths. So I suspect did that of Brutus. The Caesars had noGod, no fear of public opinion at home, no general sentiment ofcivilized nations to control their tyranny. They had only the shadow ofa hand armed with a dagger. One shrewd observer of the times at least, if I mistake not, had profited by the lesson of Caesar's folly and fate. To the constitutional demeanour and personal moderation of Augustus theworld owes an epoch of grandeur of a certain kind, and an example oftrue dignity in the use of power. And Augustus, I suspect, had studiedhis part at the foot of Pompey's statue. 

Plutarch parallels Cato with Phocion, Demosthenes with Cicero, Brutuswith Dion--the Dion whose history inspired the poem of Wordsworth. Greekrepublicanism, too, had its fatal hour; but we do not pour scorn andcontumely on those who strove to prolong the life of Athens beyond theterm assigned by fate. The case of Athens, a single independent state, was no doubt different from that of Rome with so many subject nationsunder her sway. Still in each case there was the commonwealth, standingin glorious contrast to the barbarous despotisms of other nations, thehighest social and political state which humanity had known or for agesafterwards was to know. And this light of civilization was, so far asthe last republicans could see, not only to be eclipsed for a time orput out, as now in a single nation, while it burns on in others, but tobe swallowed up in hopeless night. 

Mr. Charles Norton in the notes to his recent translation of the "VitaNuova" of Dante quotes a decree made by the commonwealth of Florence forthe building of the cathedral. 

"Whereas it is the highest interest of a people of illustrious origin soto proceed in their affairs that men may perceive from their externalworks that their doings are at once wise and magnanimous, it istherefore ordered that Arnulf, architect of our commune, prepare themodel or design for the rebuilding of Santa Reparata with such supremeand lavish magnificence, that neither the industry nor the capacity ofman shall be able to devise anything more grand or more beautiful, inasmuch as the most judicious in this city have pronounced the opinion, in public and private conferences, that no work of the commune should beundertaken unless the design be such as to make it correspond with aheart which is of the greatest nature because composed of the spirit ofmany citizens united together in one single will. " [Footnote: In hislater and very valuable work on _Church Building in the MiddleAges_, Mr. Norton casts doubt on the authenticity of the decree. Itis genuine at all events, as an expression of Florentine sentiment, ifnot as an extract from the archives. ]

Let Imperialism, legitimist or democratic, match that! Florence, too, had her political vices, many and grave, she tyrannized over Pisa andother dependants, there was faction in her councils, anarchy, bloodyanarchy, in her streets, for her, too, the hour of doom arrived, and theconspiracy of the Pazzi was as much an anachronism as that of therepublicans who slew Caesar. But Florence had that heart composed of theunited spirits of many citizens out of which came all that the worldadmires and loves in the works of the Florentine. She produced, thoughshe exiled Dante. That which followed was more tranquil, more orderlyperhaps, materially speaking, not less happy, but it had no heart atall. 

AUSTEN-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN

[Footnote: "A Memoir of Jane Austen. By her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh, Vicar of Bray, Berks. " London: Richard Bentley; New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. ]

The walls of our cities were placarded, the other day, with anadvertisement of a new sensational novel, the flaring woodcut of whichrepresented a girl tied down upon a table, and a villain preparing tocut off her feet. If this were the general taste, there would be no usein talking about Jane Austen. But if you ask at the libraries you willfind that her works are still taken out; so that there must still be afaithful few who, like ourselves, will have welcomed the announcement ofa Memoir of the authoress of "Pride and Prejudice, " "Mansfield Park, "and "Emma. "

If Jane Austen's train of admirers has not been so large as those ofmany other novelists, it has been first-rate in quality. She has beenpraised--we should rather say, loved by all, from Walter Scott toGuizot, whose love was the truest fame. Her name has often been coupledwith that of Shakespeare, to whom Macaulay places her second in the nicediscrimination of shades of character. The difference between the twominds in degree is, of course, immense; but both belong to the same rarekind. Both are really creative; both purely artistic; both have themarvellous power of endowing the products of their imagination with alife, as it were, apart from their own. Each holds up a perfectly clearand undistorting mirror--Shakespeare to the moral universe, Jane Austento the little world in which she lived. In the case of neither does thepersonality of the author ever come between the spectator and the drama. Vulgar criticism calls Jane Austen's work Dutch painting. Miniaturepainting would be nearer the truth; she speaks of herself as workingwith a fine brush on a piece of ivory two inches wide. Dutch paintingimplies the selection of subjects in themselves low and uninteresting, for the purpose of displaying the skill of a painter, who can interestby the mere excellence of his imitation. Jane Austen lived in thesociety of English country gentlemen and their families as they were inthe last century--a society affluent, comfortable, domestic, rathermonotonous, without the interest which attaches to the struggles oflabour without tragic events or figures seldom, in fact risingdramatically above the level of sentimental comedy, but presentingnevertheless, its varieties of character, its vicissitudes, its morallessons--in a word, its humanity. She has painted it as it was, in allits features the most tragic as well as the most comic, avoiding onlymelodrama. "In all the important preparations of the mind, she (MissBertram) was complete, being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, restraint and tranquillity, by the misery of disappointed affection andcontempt of the man she was to marry; the rest might wait. " This is notthe touch of Gerard Douw. An undertone of irony, never obtrusive buteverywhere perceptible, shows that the artist herself knew very wellthat she was not painting gods and Titans, and keeps everything on theright level. 

Jane Austen, then, was worthy of a memoir. But it was almost too late towrite one. Like Shakespeare, she was too artistic to be autobiographic. She was never brought into contact with men of letters, and her own famewas almost posthumous, so that nobody took notes. She had been fiftyyears in her grave when her nephew, the Rev J. E. Austen-Leigh, theyoungest of the mourners who attended her funeral, undertook to make avolume of his own recollections, those of one or two other survivingrelatives, and a few letters. Of 230 pages, in large print, and with amargin the vastness of which requires to be relieved by a rod rubric, not above a third is really biography, the rest is genealogy, description of places, manners, and customs, critical disquisition, testimonies of admirers. Still, thanks to the real capacity of thebiographer, and to the strong impression left by a character ofremarkable beauty on his mind, we catch a pretty perfect though faintoutline of the figure which was just hovering on the verge of memory, and in a few years more would, like the figure of Shakespeare, have beenswallowed up in night. 

Jane Austen was the flower of a stock, full, apparently, through all itsbranches, of shrewd sense and caustic humour, which in her were combinedwith the creative imagination. She was born in 1775, at Steventon, inHampshire, a country parish, of which her father was the rector. Avillage of cottages at the foot of a gentle slope, an old church withits coeval yew, an old manor-house, an old parsonage all surrounded bytall elms, green meadows, hedgerows full of primroses and wildhyacinths--such was the scene in which Jane Austen grew. It is thepicture which rises in the mind of every Englishman when he thinks ofhis country. Around dwelt the gentry, more numerous and, if coarser andduller, more home-loving and less like pachas than they are now, whenthe smaller squires and yeomen have been swallowed up in the growinglordships of a few grandees who spend more than half their time inLondon or in other seats of politics or pleasure. Not far off was acountry town, a "Meriton, " the central gossiping place of theneighbourhood, and the abode of the semi-genteel. If a gentleman likeMr. Woodhouse lives equivocally close to the town, his "place" isdistinguished by a separate name. There was no resident squire atSteventon, the old manor-house being let to a tenant, so that Jane'sfather was at once parson and squire. "That house (Edmund Bertram'sparsonage) may receive such an air as to make its owner be set down asthe great landowner of the parish by every creature travelling the road, especially as there is no real squire's house to dispute the point, acircumstance, between ourselves, to enhance the value of such asituation in point of privilege and advantage beyond all calculation. "Her father having from old age resigned Steventon when Jane was six andtwenty, she afterwards lived for a time with her family at Bath, a greatwatering-place, and the scene of the first part of "Northanger Abbey;"at Lyme, a pretty little sea-bathing place on the coast of Dorset, onthe "Cobb" of which takes place the catastrophe of "Persuasion;" and atSouthampton, now a great port, then a special seat of gentility. Finally, she found a second home with her widowed mother and her sisterat Chawton, another village in Hampshire. 

"In person, " says Jane's biographer, "she was very attractive. Herfigure was rather tall and slender, her step light and firm, and herwhole appearance expressive of health and animation. In complexion, shewas a clear brunette, with a rich colour; she had full round cheeks, with mouth and nose small and well formed; bright hazel eyes (it is atouch of the woman, then, when Emma is described as having _the truehazel eye_), and brown hair forming natural curls close round herface. " The sweetness and playfulness of "Dear Aunt Jane" are fresh afterso many years in the memories of her nephew and nieces, who alsostrongly attest the sound sense and sterling excellence of characterwhich lay beneath. She was a special favourite with children, for whomshe delighted to exercise her talent in improvising fairy-tales. Unknownto fame, uncaressed save by family affection, and, therefore, unspoilt, while writing was her delight, she kept it in complete subordination tothe duties of life, which she performed with exemplary conscientiousnessin the house of mourning as well as in the house of feasting. Even herneedlework was superfine. We doubt not that, if the truth was known, shewas a good cook. 

She calls herself "the most unlearned and uninformed female who everdared to be an authoress;" but this is a nominal tribute to the jealousyof female erudition which then prevailed, and at which she sometimesglances, though herself very far from desiring a masculine education forwomen. In fact, she was well versed in English literature, read Frenchwith ease, and knew something of Italian--German was not thought of inthose days. She had a sweet voice, and sang to her own accompanimentsimple old songs which still linger in her nephew's ear. Her favouriteauthors were Johnson, whose strong sense was congenial to her, while shehappily did not allow him to infect her pure and easy style, Cowper, Richardson and Crabbe. She said that, if she married at all, she shouldlike to be Mrs. Crabbe. And besides Crabbe's general influence, which isobvious, we often see his special touch in her writings:

"Emma's spirits were mounted up quite to happiness. Everything wore adifferent air. James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish asbefore. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at leastmust soon be coming out; and, when she turned round to Harriet, she sawsomething like a look of spring--a tender smile even there. "

Jane was supremely happy in her family relations, especially in the loveof her elder sister, Cassandra, from whom she was inseparable. Of herfour brothers, two were officers in the Royal Navy. How she watchedtheir career, how she welcomed them home from the perils not only of thesea but of war (for it was the time of the great war with France), shehas told us in painting the reception of William Price by his sisterFanny, in "Mansfield Park. " It is there that she compares conjugal andfraternal love, giving the preference in one respect to the latter, because with brothers and sisters "all the evil and good of the earliestyears can be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasureretraced with the fondest recollection: an advantage this, astrengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath thefraternal. " It was, perhaps, because she was so happy in the love of herbrothers and sisters, as well as because she was wedded to literature, that she was content, in spite of her good looks, to assume the symboliccap of perpetual maidenhood at an unusually early age. 

Thus she grew in a spot as sunny, as sheltered, and as holy as do theviolets which her biographer tells us abound beneath the south wall ofSteventon church. It was impossible that she should have the experiencesof Miss Bronte or Madame Sand, and without some experience the mostvivid imagination cannot act, or can act only in the production of merechimeras. To forestall Miss Braddon in the art of criminalphantasmagoria might have been within Jane's power by the aid of stronggreen tea, but would obviously have been repugnant to her nature. Wemust not ask her, then, for the emotions and excitements which she couldnot possibly afford. The character of Emma is called commonplace. It iscommonplace in the sense in which the same term might be applied to anynormal beauty of nature--to a well-grown tree or to a perfectlydeveloped flower. She is, as Mr. Weston says, "the picture of grown-uphealth. " "There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, hergait, her glance. " She has been brought up like Jane Austen herself, ina pure English household, among loving relations and good old servants. Her feet have been in the path of domestic and neighbourly duty, quietas the path which leads to the village church. It has been impossiblefor strong temptations or fierce passions to come near her. Yet menaccustomed to the most exciting struggles, to the most powerful emotionsof parliamentary life, have found an interest, equal to the greatestever created by a sensation novel, in the little scrapes and adventuresinto which her weakness betrays her, and in the process by which herheart is gradually drawn away from objects apparently more attractive tothe robust nature in union with which she is destined to find strengthas well as happiness. 

With more justice may Jane Austen be reproached with having been toomuch influenced by the prejudices of the somewhat narrow and somewhatvulgarly aristocratic, or rather plutocratic, society in which shelived. Her irony and her complete dramatic impersonality render itdifficult to see how far this goes; but certainly it goes further thanwe could wish. Decidedly she believes in gentility, and in its intimateconnection with affluence and good family; in its incompatibility withany but certain very refined and privileged kinds of labour; in theimpossibility of finding a gentleman in a trader, much more in a yeomanor mechanic. "The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom Ifeel I can have nothing to do; a degree or two lower, and a creditableappearance, might interest me; I might hope to be useful to theirfamilies in some way or other; but a farmer can need none of my help, and is, therefore, in one sense, as much above my notice as in everyother he is below it. " This is said by Emma--by Emma when she is tryingto deter her friend from marrying a yeoman, it is true, but still byEmma. The picture of the coarseness of poverty in the household ofFanny's parents in "Mansfield Park" is truth, but it is hard truth, andneeds some counterpoise. Both in the case of Fanny Price and in that ofFrank Churchill, the entire separation of a child from its own home forthe sake of the worldly advantages furnished by an adoptive home of asuperior class, is presented too much as a part of the order of nature. The charge of acquiescence in the low standard of clerical dutyprevalent in the Establishment of that day is well founded, thoughperhaps not of much importance. Of more importance is the charge whichmight be made, with equal justice, of acquiescence in somewhat low andcoarse ideas of the relations between the sexes, and of the destiniesand proper aspirations of young women. "Mr. Collins, to be sure, wasneither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and hisattachment to her must be imaginary; but still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had alwaysbeen her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educatedyoung women of small fortune; and, however uncertain of givinghappiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. Thispreservative she had now attained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good-luck of it. "This reflection is ascribed to Charlotte Lucas, an inferior character, but still thought worthy to be the heroine's bosom friend. 

Jane's first essays in composition were burlesques on the fashionablemanners of the day; whence grew "Northanger Abbey, " with its anti-heroine, Catharine Morley, "roving and wild, hating constraint andcleanliness, and loving nothing so much as rolling down the green slopeat the back of the house, " and with its exquisite travestie of the"Mysteries of Udolpho. " But she soon felt her higher power. Marvellousto say, she began "Pride and Prejudice" in 1796, before she was twenty-one years old, and completed it in the following year. "Sense andSensibility" and "Northanger Abbey" immediately followed; it appears, with regard to the latter, that she had already visited Bath, though itwas not till afterwards that she resided there. But she publishednothing--not only so, but it seems that she entirely suspendedcomposition--till 1809, when her family settled at Chawton. Here sherevised for the press what she had written, and wrote "Mansfield Park, ""Emma" and "Persuasion. " "Persuasion, " whatever her nephew andbiographer may say, and however Dr. Whewell may have fired up at thesuggestion, betrays an enfeeblement of her faculties, and tells ofapproaching death. But we still see in it the genuine creative powermultiplying new characters; whereas novelists who are not creative, whenthey have exhausted their original fund of observations, are forced tosubsist by exaggeration of their old characters, by aggravatedextravagances of plot, by multiplied adulteries and increased carnage. 

"Pride and Prejudice, " when first offered to Cadell, was declined byreturn of post. The fate of "Northanger Abbey" was still moreignominious: it was sold for ten pounds to a Bath publisher, who, afterkeeping it many years in his drawer, was very glad to return it and getback his ten pounds. No burst of applause greeted the works of JaneAusten like that which greeted the far inferior works of Miss Burney. _Crevit occulto velut arbor oevo fama_. A few years ago, the vergerof Winchester cathedral asked a visitor who desired to be shown hertomb, "what there was so particular about that lady that so many peoplewanted to see where she was buried?" Nevertheless, she lived to feelthat "her own dear children" were appreciated, if not by the vergers, yet in the right quarters, and to enjoy a quiet pleasure in theconsciousness of her success. One tribute she received which wasoverwhelming. It was intimated to her by authority that His RoyalHighness, the Prince Regent, had read her novels with pleasure, and thatshe was at liberty to dedicate the next to him. More than this, theRoyal Librarian, Mr. Clarke, of his own motion apparently, did her thehonour to suggest that, changing her style for a higher, she shouldwrite "a historical romance in illustration of the august house ofCobourg, " and dedicate it to Prince Leopold. She answered in effectthat, if her life depended on it, she could not be serious for a wholechapter. Let it be said, however, for the Prince Regent, that underneathhis royalty and his sybaritism, there was, at first, something of abetter and higher nature, which at last was entirely stifled by them. His love for Mrs. Fitzherbert was not merely sensual, and Heliogabaluswould not have been amused by the novels of Miss Austen. 

Jane was never the authoress but when she was writing her novels; and inthe few letters with which this memoir is enriched there is nothing ofpoint or literary effort, and very little of special interest. We find, however, some pleasant and characteristic touches. 

"Charles has received L30 for his share of the privateer, and expectsL10 more; but of what avail is it to take prizes if he lays out theproduce in presents to his sisters? He has been buying gold chains andtopaz crosses for us. He must be well scolded. "

"Poor Mrs. Stent! It has been her lot to be always in the way; but wemust be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs. Stentsourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody. "

"We (herself and Miss A. ) afterwards walked together for an hour on theCobb; she is very conversable in a common way; I do not perceive wit orgenius, but she has sense and some degree of taste, and her manners arevery engaging. _She seems to like people rather too easily. "_

Of her own works, or rather of the characters of her own creation, herElizabeths and Emmas, Jane speaks literally as a parent. They are her"dear children. " "I must confess that I think her (Elizabeth) asdelightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be ableto tolerate those who do not like _her_ at least I do not know. "This is said in pure playfulness; there is nothing in the letters likereal egotism or impatience of censure. 

At the age of forty-two, in the prime of intellectual life, with "Emma"just out and "Northanger Abbey" coming, and in the midst of domesticaffection and happiness, life must have been sweet to Jane Austen. Sheresigned it, nevertheless, with touching tranquillity and meekness. In1816, it appears, she felt her inward malady, and began to go round herold haunts in a manner which seemed to indicate that she was biddingthem farewell. In the next year, she was brought for medical advice to ahouse in the Close of Winchester, and there, surrounded to the last byaffection and to the last ardently returning it, she died. Her lastwords were her answer to the question whether there was anything shewanted--_"Nothing but death. "_ Those who expect religious languagein season and out of season have inferred from the absence of it in JaneAusten's novels that she was indifferent to religion. The testimony ofher nephew is positive to the contrary; and he is a man whose word maybe believed. 

Those who died in the Close were buried in the cathedral. It istherefore by mere accident that Jane Austen rests among princes andprincely prelates in that glorious and historic fane. But she deservesat least her slab of black marble in the pavement there. She possessed areal and rare gift, and she rendered a good account of it. If the censerwhich she held among the priests of art was not of the costliest, theincense was of the purest. If she cannot be ranked with the verygreatest masters of fiction, she has delighted many, and none can drawfrom her any but innocent delight. 

PATTISON'S MILTON

[Footnote: "English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley Milton. ByMark Pattison B. D. , Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. " London, Macmillan, New York: Harper & Bros. , 1879]

John Bright once asked a friend who was the greatest of Englishmen andthe friend hesitating answered his own question by saying, "Milton, because he above all others, combined the greatness of the writer withthe greatness of the citizen. " Professor Masson in his Life and Times ofMilton, has embodied the conception of the character indicated by thisremark, but he has run into the extreme of incorporating a completenarrative of the Revolution with the biography of Milton, so that thehistorical portion of the work overlays instead of illuminating thebiographical, and the chapters devoted specially to the life seem to thereader interpolations, and not always welcome interpolations, in anintensely interesting history of the times. But now comes a biographerin whose eyes the life of Milton the citizen is a mere episode, and notonly a mere episode but a lamentable and humiliating episode, in thelife of Milton the poet. Milton's life, says Mr. Pattison "is a drama inthree acts. The first discovers him in the calm and peaceful retirementof Horton, of which 'L'Allegro, ' 'Il Penseroso, ' and 'Lycidas' are theexpression. In the second act he is breathing the foul and heatedatmosphere of party passion and religious hate, generating the luridfires which glare in the battailous canticles of his prose pamphlets. The three great poems--'Paradise Lost, ' 'Paradise Regained, ' and'Samson Agonistes'--are the utterance of his final period of solitaryand Promethean grandeur, when, blind, destitute, friendless, hetestified of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, alonebefore a fallen world. " As to the struggle to which Milton, withCromwell, Vane Pym, Hampden, Selden, and Chillingworth, gave his life, it is in the eyes of his present biographer, an ignoble "fray, " a"biblical brawl, " and its fruits in the way of theological discussionare nothing but "garbage. " To write his Defence of the English PeopleMilton deliberately sacrificed his eyesight, his doctor having warnedhim that he would lose his one remaining eye if he persisted in using itfor book work. "The choice lay before me, " he says, "between derelictionof a supreme duty and loss of eyesight. In such a case I could notlisten to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from hissanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from Heaven. I considered with myself that many hadpurchased less good with worse ill, as they who gave their lives to reaponly glory, and I thereupon concluded to employ the little remainingeyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to thecommon weal it was in my power to render. " Mr. Pattison has quoted thispassage, and no doubt he silently appreciates the heroism which breathesthrough it; but the "supreme duty" of which it speaks appears to himonly a "prostitution of faculties" and a "poor delusion. " Milton, hethinks, ought to have kept entirely aloof from the brawl and remainedquiet either in the intellectual circles of Italy or in the deliciousseclusion of his library at Horton, leaving liberty, truth, andrighteousness to drown or to be saved from drowning by other hands thanhis. In "plunging into the fray" the poet miserably derogated from hissuperior position as a literary man, and the result was a dead loss tohim and to the world. We are sure that we do not state Mr. Pattison'sview more strongly than it is stated in his own pages. 

The views of all of us, including Professor Masson, on such a questionare sure to be more or less idiosyncratic, and those of the presentbiographer have not escaped the general liability. They seem, at least, aptly to represent a mood prevalent just now among eminent men of theliterary class in England, particularly at the universities. These menhave been tossed on the waves of Ritualism, tossed on the waves of thereaction from Ritualism; some of them have been personally battered inboth controversies; they have attained no certainty, but rather arrivedat the conclusion that no certainty is attainable; they are weary anddisgusted; such of them as have been enthusiasts in politics have beenstripped of their illusions in that line also, and have fallen back onthe conviction that everything must be left to evolve itself, and thatthere is nothing to be done. They have withdrawn into the sanctuary ofcritical learning and serene art, abjuring all theology and politics, and, above all, abjuring controversy of all kinds as utterly vulgar anddegrading, though, as might be expected, they are sometimescontroversial and even rather tart in an indirect way, and without beingconscious of it themselves. Mr. Pattison's air when he comes intocontact with the politics or theology of Milton's days is like that of avery seasick passenger at the sight of a pork chop. Nor does he fail toreflect the Necessarianism of the circle. "That in selecting ascriptural subject, " he says, "Milton was not, in fact, exercising anychoice, but was determined by his circumstances, is only what must besaid of all choosing. " Criticism fastidiously erudite, a study of artreligiously and almost mystically profound, are fruits of thisintellectual seclusion of chosen spirits from the coarse and rufflingworld for which that world has reason to be grateful. It is not likelyMilton would have chosen a writer of this school as his biographer, butfew men would choose their own biographers well. 

Milton has at all events found in Mr. Pattison a biographer whosenarrative is throughout extremely pleasant, interesting and piquant, thepiquancy being enhanced for those who have the key to certain sly hits, such as that at "the peculiar form of credulity which makes perverts (toRoman Catholicism) think that everyone is about to follow theirexample, " which carries us back to the time when the head ofTractarianism having gone over to Rome, was waiting anxiously, but invain, for the tail to join it. The facts had already been collected bythe diligence of Professor Masson, but Mr. Pattison uses them in a stylewhich places beyond a doubt his own familiarity with the subject. Through the moral judgments there runs, as we think, and as we shouldhave expected, a somewhat lofty conception of the privileges ofintellect and of the value of literary objects compared with others, butwith this qualification the reflections will probably be deemed sensibleand sound. The unfortunate relations between Milton and his first wifeare treated as we think all readers will say, at once with delicacy andjustice. The literary criticisms are of a high order and such as onlycomprehensive learning combined with trained taste could produce, whether you entirely enter into all of them or not (and criticism hasnot yet been reduced to a certain rule) you cannot fail to gain fromthem increase of insight and enjoyment. They are often expressed inlanguage of great beauty:

"The rapid purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived bycomparing 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' of uncertain date but writtenafter 1632 with the 'Ode on the Nativity, ' written 1629. The Ode, notwithstanding its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigidconceits, from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written in winter within the four walls of a college-chamber. The twoidyls breathe the free air of spring and summer and of the fields aroundHorton. They are thoroughly naturalistic; the choicest expression ourlanguage has yet found of the first charm of country life, not as thatlife is lived by the peasant, but as it is felt by a young and letteredstudent, issuing at early dawn or at sunset into the fields from hischamber and his books. All rural sights and sounds and smells are hereblended in that ineffable combination which once or twice perhaps in ourlives has saluted our young senses, before their perceptions wereblunted by alcohol, by lust or ambition, or diluted by the socialdistractions of great cities. "

This will not be found to be a _purpureus pannus_. Nor does it muchdetract from the grace of the work that of the "asyntactic disorder" ofwhich Mr. Pattison accuses Milton's prose, some examples may be found inhis own. Grammatical irregularities in a really good writer, as Mr. Pattison undoubtedly is, often prove merely that his mind is more intenton the matter than on the form. 

"Paradise Lost" is the subject of a learned, luminous, and to us veryinstructive dissertation. It is truly said that of the adverse criticismwhich we meet with on the poem "much resolves itself into a refusal onthe part of the critic to make that initial abandonment to theconditions which the poet demands: a determination to insist that hisheaven, peopled with deities, dominations, principalities, and powers, shall have the same material laws which govern our planetary system. "There is one criticism, however, which cannot be so resolved, and onwhich, as it appears to us the most serious of all, we should have likedvery much to hear Mr. Pattison. It is said that Lord Thurlow and anotherlawyer were crossing Hounslow Heath in a post-chaise when a tremendousthunder-storm came on; that the other lawyer said that it reminded himof the battle in "Paradise Lost" between the devil and the angels, andthat Thurlow roared, with a blasphemous oath, "Yes, and I wish the devilhad won. " Persons desirous of sustaining the religious reputation of thelegal profession add that his companion jumped out of the chaise in therain and ran away over the heath. For our part, we have never foundnearly so much difficulty in any of the incongruities connected with therelations between spirit and matter, or in any confusion of theCopernican with the Ptolemaic system, as in the constant wrenching ofour moral sympathies, which the poet demands for the Powers of Good, butwhich his own delineation of Satan, as a hero waging a Promethean waragainst Omnipotence, compels us to give to the Powers of Evil. Perhaps aword or two might have been said about the relations of "Paradise Lost"to other "epics. " It manifestly belongs not to the same class of poemsas the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey, " or even the "AEneid. " Dobson's Latintranslation of it is about the greatest feat ever performed in modernLatin verse, and it shows by a crucial experiment how little Miltonreally has in common with Virgil. "Paradise Lost" seems to us far moreakin to the Greek tragedy than to the Homeric poems or the "AEneid. " Inthe form of a Greek drama it was first conceived. Its verse is thecounterpart of the Greek iambic, not of the Greek or Latin hexameter. Had the laborious Dobson turned it into Greek iambics instead of turningit into Latin hexameters, we suspect the real affinity would haveappeared. 

Looking upon the life of Milton the politician merely as a sad andignominious interlude in the life of Milton the poet, Mr. Pattisoncannot be expected to entertain the idea that the poem is in any sensethe work of the politician. Yet we cannot help thinking that the tensionand elevation which Milton's nature had undergone in the mightystruggle, together with the heroic dedication of his faculties to themost serious objects, must have had not a little to do both with thefinal choice of his subject and with the tone of his poem. "The greatPuritan epic" could hardly have been written by any one but a militantPuritan. Had Milton abjured the service of his cause, as his biographerwould have had him do, he might have given us an Arthurian romance orsome other poem of amusement. We even think it not impossible that hemight have never produced a great poem at all, but have let life slipaway in elaborate preparation without being able to fix upon a theme orbrace himself to the effort of composition. If Milton's participation ina political battle fought to save at once the political and spirituallife of England was degrading, Dante's participation in the factionfight between the Guelphs and Ghibellines must have been still more so;yet if Dante had been a mere man of leisure would he have written the"Divina Commedia"? Who are these sublime artists in poetry that arepinnacled so high above the "frays" and "brawls" of vulgar humanity? Thebest of them, we suppose (writers for the stage being out of thequestion) is Goethe. Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron were all distinctlypoets of the Revolution, or of the Counter-Revolution, and if you couldremove from them the political element, you would rob them of half theirforce and interest. The great growths of poetry have coincided with thegreat bursts of national life, and the great bursts of national lifehave hitherto been generally periods of controversy and struggle. 

Art itself, in its highest forms, has been the expression of faith. Wehave now people who profess to cultivate art as art for its own sake;but they have hardly produced anything which the world accepts as great, though they have supplied some subjects for _Punch_. "He thatloseth his life shall preserve it. " Milton was ready to lose hisliterary life by sacrificing the remains of his eyesight to a causewhich, upon the whole, humanity has accepted as its own; and it waspreserved to him in a work which will never die. Mr. Pattison points toa short poem written by Milton when his pen was chiefly employed inserving the Commonwealth as indication that Milton "did not inwardlyforfeit the peace which passeth all understanding. " Why should a manforfeit that peace when he is doing with his whole soul that which heconscientiously believes to be his highest duty?

Over Milton's pamphlets Mr. Pattison can of course only wring his hands. He is at liberty to wring his hands as much as he pleases over thepersonalities which sullied the controversy with Salmasius; but theseare a small part of the matter, particularly when they are viewed inconnection with the habits of a time which was at once much rougher inphrase, though perhaps not more malicious, than ours, and given toservile imitation of Greek and Latin oratory. To point his moral morekeenly, Mr. Pattison denies that Milton was ever effective as apolitical writer. Yet the Council of State, who can have looked tonothing but effectiveness, and were pretty good judges of it, speciallyinvited Milton to answer "Eikon Basilike" and to plead the cause of theRegicide Republic against Salmasius in the court of European opinion. Mr. Pattison himself (p. 135) allows that on the Continent Milton wasrenowned as the answerer of Salmasius and the vindicator of liberty; andhe proceeds to quote the statement of Milton's nephew that learnedforeigners could not leave London without seeing his uncle. But thebiographer has evidently laid down beforehand in his own mind generallaws which are fatal to all pamphlets as pamphlets, withoutconsideration of their particular merits. "There are, " he says, "examples of thought having been influenced by books. But such bookshave been scientific, not rhetorical. " If it were not rude tocontradict, we should have said that the influence exercised in politicsby scientific treatises had been as nothing in the aggregate comparedwith that exercised by pamphlets, speeches, and, in later times, by thenewspaper press. What does Mr. Pattison say to Burke's "Reflections onthe French Revolution, " to Paine's "Common Sense, " to the tracts writtenby Halifax and Defoe at the time of the Revolution? Neither thought noraction is his epigrammatic condemnation of Milton's political writings, but an appeal which stirs men to action is surely both. Again of"Eikonoklastes" we are told that "it is like _all answers_, worthless as a book. " Bentley's "Phalaris" is an answer, Demosthenes'"De Corona" is an answer. As a rule no doubt the form is a bad one, butan answer may embody principles and knowledge as well as show literaryskill, reasoning power, and courteous self-control, which after all arenot worthless though they are worth far less than some other things. These discussions so odious and contemptible in Mr. Pattison's eyes, what are they but the processes of thought through which a nation orhumanity works its way to political truth? Even books scientific in formsuch as Hobbes's "Leviathan" or Harrington's "Oceana" are but registeredresults of a long discussion. "Eikon Basilike" was doing infinitemischief to the cause of the Commonwealth, and how could it have beenmet except by a critical reply? "Eikonoklastes" was thought, though itwas not exact science, and so far as it told it was action, though itwas not a pike or a musket. 

This portion of Mr. Pattison's work is thickly sown with aphorisms towhich no one who does not share his special mood can withoutqualification assent. No good man can with impunity addict himself toparty, and the best men will suffer most because their conviction of thegoodness of their cause is deeper. But when one with the sensibility ofa poet throws himself into the excitements of a struggle he is certainto lose his balance. The endowment of feeling and imagination whichqualifies him to be the ideal interpreter of life unfits him forparticipation in that real life through the manoeuvres and compromisesof which reason is the only guide and where imagination is as muchmisplaced as it would be in a game of chess. In this there is an elementof truth but there is also something to which we are inclined to demur. If by party is meant mere faction, plainly no man can addict himself toit with impunity. But when the English nation was struggling in thegrasp of a court and a prelacy which sought to reduce it to the level ofSpain, no Englishman as it seems to us could with impunity perch himselfaloft in a palace of art while peasants were shedding their blood tomake him free. Especially do we question the soundness of the sentimentexpressed in the last clause. Why is real life to be abandoned by everyman of feeling and imagination and given over to the men of manoeuvre andcompromise? Is not this the sentiment of the monkish ascetic coming backto us in another form and enjoining us to make ourselves eunuchs for theKingdom of Art's sake? Cromwell, Vane, Hampden, and Pym were not men ofmanoeuvre and compromise, they had plenty of feeling and imagination, though in them these qualities gave birth not to poetry, but to highpolitical or religious aspirations and grand social ideals. The theoryof Milton's biographer is that an active interest in public affairs isfatal to excellence in literature or in art; and this theory seems to beconfuted as signally as possible by the facts of Milton's life. 

It is curious to see how completely at variance Milton's own sentimentis with that of his biographer and how little he foresaw what Mr. Pattison would say about him. In the _Defensio Secunda_ he defendshimself against the charge not of over activity but of inaction. "I caneasily repel, " he says, "any imputation of want of courage or of want ofzeal. For though I did not share the toils or perils of the war I wasengaged in a service not less hazardous to myself and more beneficial tomy fellow citizens; nor in the adverse turns of our affairs, did I everbetray any symptoms of pusillanimity and dejection; or show myself moreafraid than became me of malice or of death: For since from my youth Iwas devoted to the pursuits of literature, and my mind has always beenstronger than my body, I did not court the labours of a camp, in whichany common person would have been of more service than myself, butresorted to that employment in which my exertions were likely to be ofmost avail. Thus, with the better part of my frame I contributed as muchas possible to the good of my country, and to the success of theglorious cause in which we were engaged; and I thought that if Godwilled the success of such glorious achievements, it was equallyagreeable to his will that there should be others by whom thoseachievements should be recorded with dignity and elegance; and that thetruth, which had been defended by arms, should also be defended byreason; which is the best and only legitimate means of defending it. Hence, while I applaud those who were victorious in the field, I willnot complain of the province which was assigned me; but rathercongratulate myself upon it, and thank the author of all good for havingplaced me in a station, which may be an object of envy to others ratherthan of regret to myself. " Here is a culprit who entirely mistakes thenature of his offence and instead of apologizing for what he has doneapologizes for not having done more. Nor so far as we are aware is therein Milton's writings the slightest trace of sorrow for the misemploymentof his best years or consciousness of the ruin which it had wrought inhis genius as a poet. 

In the same spirit Mr. Pattison continually represents the end ofMilton's public life as "the irretrievable discomfiture of all hishopes, aims, and aspirations, " his labour as "being swept away without atrace of it being left, " and the latter part of his life as utter"wretchedness. " The failure of selfish schemes often makes men wretched. The failure of unselfish aspirations may make a man sad, but can nevermake him wretched, and Milton was not wretched when he was writing"Paradise Lost. " He would not have been wretched even if thediscomfiture of his hopes for the Commonwealth had been as final and asirretrievable as his biographer supposes. But Milton knew that thoughdisastrous it was not final or irretrievable. He had implicit confidencein the indestructibility of moral force, and he "bated no jot of heartor hope. " He could see the limits of the reaction and he knew that, though great and calamitous in proportion to the errors of theRepublican party, it had not changed in a day the character andfundamental tendencies of the nation. He would note that the StarChamber, the Court of High Commission, the Council of the North, thelegislative functions once usurped by the Privy Council, were notrestored, and that no attempt was made to govern without a parliament. He found himself the defender of regicide, not free from peril, indeed, yet protected by public opinion, while, in general, narrow bounds wereset to the bloodthirsty vengeance of the Cavaliers. He lived to witnessthe actual turn of the tide. Six years before his death the TripleAlliance was formed, and in the year of his death the Cabal Ministryfell. At worst, his case would have been that of a soldier killed in anunfortunate crisis of a battle which in the end was won, but he fell, ifnot with the shout of victory in his ears, with the inspiring signs of ageneral advance around him. If we take remoter ages into our view, thetriumph of Milton is still more manifest. The cause to which he gave hislife and his genius is forever exalted and dignified by his name. Thenotion that the Cavaliers were the men of culture and that the Puritanswere the uncultivated has been a hundred times confuted, though itreappears in the discourses of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and, what is muchmore astonishing, in this work of Mr. Pattison. But in a party of actiongreat defect of culture would be amply redeemed by the possession of aMilton. 

COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. 

[Footnote: A Memoir of the Rev. J. Keble, M. A. , late Vicar of Hursley, by the Right Hon. Sir J. T. Coleridge, D. C. L. , Oxford and London: JamesParker & Co. , 1869. ]

SIR JOHN COLERIDGE, the writer of this "Life of Keble, " was for manyyears one of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench, is now a PrivyCouncillor, and may be regarded almost as the lay head of the HighChurch party in England. Sharing Keble's opinions, and entering into allhis feelings, he is at the same time himself always a man of the worldand a man of sense. Add to these qualifications his intimate andlifelong friendship with the subject of his work, and we have reason toexpect a biography at once appreciative and judicial. Such a biography, in fact, we have; one full of sympathy, yet free from exaggeration, anda good lesson to biographers in general. The intimacy of the friendshipbetween the writer and his subject might have interfered with hisimpartiality and repelled our confidence if the case had been morecomplex and had made greater demands on the inflexibility of the judge. But in the case of a character and a life so perfectly simple, pure, andtransparent as the character and the life of Keble, there was but onething to be said. 

The author of "The Christian Year" was the son of a country clergyman ofthe Church of England, and was educated at home by his father, so thathe missed, or, as he would probably have said himself, escaped, theknowledge of minds differently trained from his own which a boy cannothelp picking up at an English public school. At a very early age hebecame a scholar of Corpus Christi, a very small and secluded college ofthe High Church and High Tory University of Oxford. As the scholarshipsled to fellowships--the holders of which were required to be in holyorders--and to church preferment, almost all the scholars were destinedfor the clerical profession. Of Keble's student friendships one onlyseems to have been formed outside the walls of his own college, and thiswas with Miller, a student of Worcester College, who afterwards became aHigh Church clergyman. Among the students destined for the Anglicanpriesthood in the Junior Common Room of Corpus Christi College, therewas indeed one whose presence strikes us like the apparition of Turnusin the camp of AEneas--Thomas Arnold. Arnold was already Arnold, and hesucceeded in drawing the young champions of the divine right of kingsand priests into a struggle against the divine right of tutors which'secured the liberty of the subject' at Corpus--the question at issuebetween the subject and the ruler being by which of two clocks, one ofwhich was always five minutes before the other, the recitations shouldbegin. The friendship between Arnold and Keble, however, was merelypersonal, Arnold evidently never exercised the slightest influence overKeble's mind, and even in this 'great rebellion'--the only rebellion, great or small, of his life--Keble was induced to take part, as he hasexpressly recorded, at the instigation of Coleridge, a middle termbetween Arnold and himself. The college teachers were all clergymen andthe university curriculum in their days was regulated and limited byclerical ascendancy, and consisted of the Aristotelian and Butlerianphilosophy, classics, and pure mathematics, without modern history orphysical science. The remarkable precocity of Keble's intellect enabledhim to graduate with the highest honours both in classics andmathematics at an age almost miraculously early even when allowance ismade for the comparative youthfulness of students in general in thosedays. He was at once elected a Fellow of Oriel, and translated to theSenior Common Room of the College--another clerical society consistingof men for the most part considerably his seniors, among whom, in spiteof the presence of Whately, High Church principles probably predominatedalready, and were destined soon to predominate in the most extremesense, for the college presently became the focus of the Ritualistic andRomanizing movement. Thus, up to twenty-three, Keble's life had beenthat of a sort of acolyte, and though not ascetic (for his natureappears to have been always genial and mirthful), entirely clerical inits environments and its aspirations. At twenty-three he took orders, and put round his neck, with the white tie of Anglican priesthood, theThirty-nine Articles, the whole contents of the Anglican Prayer Book andall the contradictions between those two standards of belief. For sometime he held a tutorship in his college then he went down to a countryliving in the neighbourhood of a cathedral city, where he spent the restof his days. His character was so sweet and gentle that he could notfail to be naturally disposed to toleration. He even goes the length ofsaying that some profane libellers whom his friend Coleridge was goingto prosecute, were not half so dangerous enemies to religion as somewicked worldly-minded Christians. But it is no wonder, and implies noderogation from his charity, that he should have regarded the progressof opinions different from his own as a mediaeval monk would haveregarded the progress of an army of Saracens or a horde of Avars. Hispoetic sympathies could not hinder him from disliking the rebel andPuritan Milton. 

Thus it was impossible that he should be in a very broad sense a poet ofhumanity. His fundamental conception of the world was essentiallymediaeval, his ideal was that of cloistered innocence or, still better, the innocence of untempted and untried infancy. For such perfection hisLyra Innocentium was strung. When his friend is thinking of theprofession of the law, he conjures him to forego the brilliant visionswhich tempted him in that direction for "visions far more brilliant andmore certain too, more brilliant in their results, inasmuch as thesalvation of one soul is worth more than the framing the Magna Charta ofa thousand worlds, more certain to take place since temptations arefewer and opportunities everywhere to be found. These words remind us ofa passage in one of Massillon's sermons, preached on the delivery ofcolours to a regiment, in which the bishop after dwelling on thehardships and sufferings which soldiers are called upon to endure, intimates that a small part of those hardships and sufferings, undergonein performance of a monastic vow, would merit the kingdom of heaven. Ifsouls are to be saved by real moral influences, Sir John Coleridge hasprobably saved a good many more souls as a religious judge and man ofthe world than he would have saved as the rector of a country parish, and if character is formed by moral effort, he has probably formed amuch higher character by facing temptation than he would have done byflying from it. Keble himself, in his Morning Hymn, has a passage in adifferent strain, but the sentiment which really prevailed with him wasprobably that embodied in his advice to his friend. 

Whatever of grace, worth, or beneficence there could be in the halfcloistered life of an Oxford fellow of those days or in the rural andsacerdotal life of a High Church rector, there was in the life of Kebleat Oriel, and afterwards at Hursley. The best spirit of such a lifetogether with the image of a character rivalling in spiritual beauty, after its kind that of Ken or Leighton, is found in Keble's poetry, andfor this we may be, as hundreds of thousands have been, thankful. 

The biographer declines to enter into a critical examination of the"Christian Year, " but he confidently predicts its indefinite reign, founding his prediction on the causes of its original success. He justlydescribes it, in effect as rather a poetical manual of devotion than abook of poetry for continuous reading It is in truth, so completely outof the category of ordinary poetry that to estimate its poetic meritswould be a very difficult task. Sir John Coleridge indicates this, whenhe cites as an appropriate tribute to the excellence of the book thepractice of the clergyman who used, every Sunday afternoon instead of asermon to read and interpret to his congregation the poem of theChristian Year for the day. The object of the present publication saysthe Preface will be attained if any person find assistance from it inbringing his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison withthose recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book. This connectionwith the Prayer Book and with the Anglican Calendar, while it has giventhe book an immense circulation necessarily limits its range andinterest. Yet those who care least for being brought into unison withthe Prayer Book fully admit that the "Christian Year" gives proof ofreal poetic power. Keble himself, as his biographer attests, had a veryhumble opinion of his own work, seldom read it hated to hear it praisedconsented with great difficulty to its glorification by sumptuouseditions. It was his saintly humility suggests the biographer which madehim feel that the book which flowed from his own heart would inevitablybe taken for a faithful likeness of himself, that he would thus beexhibiting himself in favourable colours and be in danger of incurringthe woe pronounced on those who win the good opinion of the world. Ifthis account be true it is another proof of the mediaeval and halfmonastic mould in which Keble's religious character was cast. 

The comparative failure of the "Lyra Innocentium" is probably to beattributed not only to its inferiority in intrinsic merit but to thefact that whereas the "Christian Year" has as little of a partycharacter as any work of devotion written by an Anglican and High Churchclergyman could have, the "Lyra Innocentium" was the work of a leadingparty man. The interval between the two publications had been filled bya great reactionary movement among the clergy, one of the back-streamsto that current of Liberalism, which setting in after the termination ofthe great French war, not only swept away the Rotten boroughs and theother political bulwarks of Tory dominion but threatened to sweep awaythe privileges of the Established Church, and compelled Churchmen tolook out for a basis independent of State support. Keble was theassociate of Hurrell Froude, Newman Pusey and the other greatTractarians. A sermon which he preached before the University of Oxfordwas regarded by Newman as the beginning of the movement. He contributedto the Tracts for the Times, though as a controversialist he was neverpowerful, sweetness not strength being the characteristic of his mind. He gradually embraced, as it seems to us, all the principles which senthis fellow Tractarians over to Rome. The posthumous alteration made inthe Christian Year by his direction shows that he held a doctrinerespecting the Eucharist not practically distinguishable from the Romandoctrine of Transubstantiation. A poem intended to appear in the "LyraApostolica" but suppressed at the time in deference to the wishes ofcautious friends and now published by his biographer proves that he was, as a Protestant putting it plainly would say, an advanced Mariolater. Hewas a thoroughgoing sacerdotalist and believer in the authority of theChurch in matters of opinion. He mourned over the abandonment ofauricular confession. He regarded the cessation of prayers for the soulsof dead founders and benefactors as a lamentable concession toProtestant prejudice. Like his associates he repudiated the very name ofProtestant. He deemed the state of the Church of England with regard toorthodoxy most deplorable--two prelates having distinctly denied anarticle of the Apostles Creed and matters going on altogether so that itwas very difficult for a Catholic Christian to remain in that communion. Why then did he not with Newman and the rest accept the logicalconclusions of his premises and go to the place to which his principlesbelonged? His was not a character to be influenced by any worldlymotives or even by that sense of ecclesiastical position which perhapshas sometimes had its influence in making Romanizing leaders of theAnglican clergy unwilling to merge their party and their leadership inthe Church of Rome. There was nothing in his nature which would haverecoiled from any self abnegation or submission. The real answer is webelieve that Keble was a married man. We can hardly imagine him makinglove. His marriage was no doubt one not of passion but of affection, assmall a departure from the sacerdotal ideal as it was possible for amarriage to be. Still, he was married and tenderly attached to his goodwife. Thus it was probably not any subtle distinction between RealPresence and Transubstantiation, not misgivings as to the exact degreeof worship to be paid to the Virgin, not doubts as to the limits of thepersonal infallibility of the Pope or objections to practical abuses inthe Church of Rome--which kept Keble and has kept many a Romanizingclergyman of the Anglican Church from becoming a Roman Catholic. Nor isthe reason when analysed one of which Anglican philosophy need beashamed for to the pretentions of sacerdotal asceticism the best answeris domestic love. 

Keble stopped his ears with wax against the siren appeal of his secedingchief John Henry Newman and refused at first to read the Essay onDevelopment. When at last he was drawn into the controversy heconstructed for his own satisfaction and that of other waverers wholooked up to him for support and guidance an argument founded on theButlerian principle of probability as the guide of life. But Butler, with all deference to his great name be it said, imports into questionsof conscience and into the spiritual domain a principle reallyapplicable only to worldly concerns. A man will invest his money or takeany other step in relation to his worldly affairs as he thinks thechances are in his favour, but he cannot be satisfied with a merepreponderance of chances that he possesses vital truth and that he willescape everlasting condemnation. The analogy drawn by Keble between thelate recognition of the Prayer Book instead of the too ProtestantArticles as the real canon of the Anglican faith and the lateness of theChristian Revelation in the world's history was an application of theanalogical method of reasoning which showed to what strange uses thatmethod might be put. 

It is singular but consistent with our theory as to the real nature ofthe tie which prevented Keble from joining the secession that he shouldhave determined if compelled to leave the Church of England (acontingency which from the growth of heresy in that Church he distinctlycontemplated) to go not into the communion of the Church of Rome but outof all communion whatever. He would have gone we suppose into some limbolike the phantom Church of the Nonjurors. It is difficult to see howsuch a course can have logically commended itself to the mind of anymember of the theological school which held that the individual reasonafforded no sort of standing ground and that the one thing indispensableto salvation was visible communion with the true Church. 

Sir John Coleridge deals with the question as to the posthumousalteration in "The Christian Year" the discovery of which caused so muchscandal among its Protestant admirers and brought to a stand, it wassaid, the subscription for a memorial college in honour of its author. It is made clearly to appear that the alteration was in accordance withKeble's expressed desire, and the suspicion which was cast upon hisexecutors and those who were about him in his last moments is proved tobe entirely unfounded. But, on the other hand, we cannot think that thebiographer (or rather Keble, who speaks for himself in this matter) willbe successful in convincing many people that the alteration was merelyverbal. The mental interpolation of "only" after "not" in the words "notin the Hands, " is surely a _tour de force_, and it must beremembered that the passage occurs in the lines on the "GunpowderTreason, " and is evidently pointed against the Roman Catholic doctrineof the Eucharist. The Roman Catholics do not deny that the Eucharist isreceived "in the heart, " but the Protestants deny that it is is received"in the hands" at all, and the vast majority of Keble's readers couldnot fail to construe the passage as an assertion of the Protestantdoctrine. Sir John Coleridge does not confront the real difficulty, because he does not give the two versions side by side, or exhibit thepassage in its context. A more natural account of the matter issuggested by a letter of Keble, written when he was contemplating thepublication of the "Lyra Innocentium, " and included in the presentmemoir. In that letter he says:

"No doubt, there would be the difference in tone which you take noticeof between this and the former book, for when I wrote that, I did notunderstand (to mention no more points) either the doctrine of Repentance_or that of the Holy Eucharist_, as held, _e. G. _, by BishopKen, nor that of Justification, and such points as these must surelymake a great difference. But may it please God to preserve me fromwriting so unreally and deceitfully as I did then, and if I could tellyou the whole of my shameful history, you would join with all your heartin this prayer. "

The biographer, while he proves his integrity by giving us the letter, of course protests against our taking seriously the self accusations ofa saint. We certainly shall not take seriously any charge ofdeceitfulness against Keble, whether made by himself or by any otherhuman being, but he was liable, to a certain extent, like all otherhuman beings, to self-deception. His opinions, like those of hisassociates, on theological questions in general and on the question ofthe Eucharist in particular, had been moving rapidly in a Romanizingdirection during the interval between the publication of "The ChristianYear" and that of the "Lyra Innocentium. " In the passage just quoted, wesee that he was conscious of this, but it was not unnatural that heshould sometimes forget it, and that he should then put upon the wordsin "The Christian Year" a construction in conformity with his opinionsas they were in their most advanced stage. It is strange, however, thathe and the rest of his party, if they were even dimly and at intervalsconscious of the fact that their own creed had undergone so much change, should still have been able to take the ground of immutability andinfallibility in their controversies with other parties and churches. 

It has been almost forgotten that Keble held for ten years a (non-resident) Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. His lectures wereunfortunately written, as the rule of the Chair then was, in Latin. Hethought of translating them, and Sir John Coleridge seems still to holdthat the task would be worth undertaking. For the examples, which aretaken from the Greek and Latin poets, it would be necessary tosubstitute translations or examples taken from the modern poets. Mr. Gladstone chooses, the apt epithet when he calls the lectures "refined. "Refinement rather than vigour or depth was always the attribute ofKeble's productions. His view of poetry, however, as the vent forovercharged feelings or an imagination oppressed by its own fulness--asa _vis medica_, to use his own expression--if it does not cover thewhole ground, well deserves attention among other theories. 

To the discredit, perhaps, rather of the dogmatic spirit than of eitherof the persons concerned, religious differences were allowed tointerfere with he personal friendship formed in youth between Keble andArnold. With this single and slight exception, Keble's character inevery relation--as friend, son, husband, tutor, pastor--seems to havebeen all that the admirers of "The Christian Year" can expect or desire. The current of his life, but for the element of theological controversyand perplexity which slightly disturbed his later days, would have beenlimpid and tranquil as that of any rivulet in the quiet scene where theyears of his Christian ministry were passed. He and his wife, thepartner of all his thoughts and labours, and the mirror and partaker ofthe beauty of his character, died almost on the same day; she dyinglast, and rejoicing that her husband was spared the pain of being thesurvivor. 

 "Within these walls [of the Church] each fluttering guest Is gently lured to one safe nest-- Without 'tis moaning and unrest. "

The writer of those lines perfectly as well as beautifully realized hisideal.