Essays on History and Literature

By James Anthony Froude

London: J. M. Dent & Co. , 1906____

Contents

Arnold's Poems (Westminster Review, 1854)

Words about Oxford (Fraser's Magazine, 1850)

England's Forgotten Worthies (Westminster Review, 1852)

The Book of Job (Westminster Review, 1853)

The Lives of the Saints (Eclectic Review, 1852)

The Dissolution of the Monasteries (Fraser's Magazine, 1857)

The Philosophy of Christianity (The Leader, 1851)

A Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological Difficulties(Fraser's Magazine, 1863)

Spinoza (Westminster Review, 1855)

Reynard the Fox (Fraser's Magazine, 1852)

The Commonplace Book of Richard Hilles (Fraser's Magazine, 1858)____

INTRODUCTION

Froude had this merit--a merit he shared with Huxley alone ofHis contemporaries--that he imposed his convictions. He foughtagainst resistance. He excited (and still excites) a violentanimosity. He exasperated the surface of his time and was yettoo strong for that surface to reject him. This combative andaggressive quality in him, which was successful in that it waspermanent and never suffered a final defeat should arrest anyone who may make a general survey of the last generation in letters. 

It was a period with a vice of its own which yet remains to bedetected and chastised. In one epoch lubricity, in anotherfanaticism, in a third dulness and a dead-alive copying of thepast, are the faults which criticism finds to attack. None ofthese affected the Victorian era. It was pure--though taintedwith a profound hypocrisy; it was singularly free from violencein its judgments; it was certainly alive and new: but it had thisgrievous defect (a defect under which we still labour heavily)that thought was restrained upon every side. Never in the historyof European letters was it so difficult for a man to saywhat he would and to be heard. A sort of cohesive public spirit(which was but one aspect of the admirable homogeneity of thenation) glued and immobilised all individual expression. Onecould float imprisoned as in a stream of thick substance: onecould not swim against it. 

It is to be carefully discerned how many apparent exceptions tothis truth are, if they be closely examined, no exceptions atall. A whole series of national defects were exposed andridiculed in the literature as in the oratory of that day; butthey were defects which the mass of men secretly delighted tohear denounced and of which each believed himself to be free. 

They loved to be told that they were of a gross taste in art, for they connected such a taste vaguely with high morals andwith successful commerce. There was no surer way to a largesale than to start a revolution in appreciation every five years, and from Ruskin to Oscar Wilde a whole series of Prophetsattained eminence and fortune by telling men how something newand as yet unknown was Beauty and something just past was to berejected, and how they alone saw truth while the herd around themwere blind. But no one showed us how to model, nor did any oneremark that we alone of all Europe had preserved a school ofwater-colour. 

So in politics our blunders were a constant theme; but no onemarked with citation, document, and proof the glaring progressof corruption, or that, for all our enthusiasm, we never oncein that generation defended the oppressed against the oppressor. There was a vast if unrecognised conspiracy, by which whatevermight have prevented those extreme evils from which we now sufferwas destroyed as it appeared. Efforts at a thorough purge weredull, were libellous, were not of the "form" which the Universitiesand the public schools taught to be sacred. They were rejected asunreadable, or if printed, were unread. The results are with us to-day. 

In such a time Froude maintained an opposing force, which wasnot reforming nor constructive in any way, but which will obtainthe attention of the future historian, simply because it was anopposition. 

It was an opposition of manner rather than of matter. The matterof it was common enough even in Froude's chief decade of power. The cause to which he gave allegiance was already winning when heproceeded to champion it, and many a better man, one or two greatermen, were saying the same things as he; but they said such thingsin a fashion that suggested no violent effort nor any demand forresistance: it was the peculiar virtue of Froude that he touchednothing without the virile note of a challenge sounding throughouthis prose. On this account, though he will convince our posterityeven less than he does ourselves, the words of persuasion, thewritings themselves will remain: for he chose the hardest wood inwhich to chisel, knowing the strength of his hand. 

What was it in him which gave him that strength, andwhich permitted him, in an age that would tolerate no formativegrasp upon itself, to achieve a permanent fame? I will notreply to this question by pointing to the popularityof his History of England; the essays that follow willafford sufficient material to answer it. He produced theeffect he did and remained in the eminence to which hehad climbed, first because his manner of thought was rigidand of a hard edge; secondly, because he could use thatsteel tool of a brain in a fashion that was general; he coulduse it upon subjects and with a handling that wascomprehensible to great masses of his fellow-countrymen. 

It is not certain that such a man with such interests wouldhave made his voice heard in any other society. It isdoubtful whether he will be translated with profit. His fieldwas very small, the points of his attack might all be foundcontained in one suburban villa. But in our society hisgrip and his intensity did fall, and fall of choice, upon suchmatters as his contemporaries either debated or were readyto debate. He therefore did the considerable thing weknow him to have done. 

I say that his mind was rigid and of a close fibre: it wasa mind (to repeat the metaphor) out of which a stronggraying-tool could be forged. Its blade would not beblunted: it could deal with its material. Of this character, which I take to be the first essential in his achievement, thefew essays before us preserve an ample evidence. 

Thus you will find throughout their pages the presence ofthat dogmatic assertion which invariably proceeds from sucha mind, and coupled with such assertion is a continualconsciousness that his dogmas are dogmas: that he is assertingunprovable things and laying down his axioms before hebegins his process of reasoning. 

The contrary might be objected by some foreign observer, or by some one who had a larger acquaintance with Europeanhistory than had he. I can imagine a French or an Irishcritic pointing to a mass of assertion with no correspondingadmission that it is assertion only: such a critic might quoteeven from these few pages phrase after phrase in whichFroude poses as certain what are still largely matters ofdebate. Thus upon page 144 he takes it for granted thatno miracles have been worked by contact with the bodiesof saints. He takes it for granted on page 161 that thechecking of monastic disorders, and the use of stronglanguage in connection with them, was peculiar to thegeneration which saw at its close the dissolution of themonasteries. He takes it for granted on page 125 that whatwe call "manifestations" or what not, --spirit rappings, table-turnings, and the rest--are deceptions of the senses towhich superstition alone would give credence. 

He ridicules (upon p. 128) the tradition of St. Patrick whichall modern research has come to accept. He says downright(upon pp. 186-187) that the Ancient world did not inquireinto the problem of evil. On p. 214 he will have it that theordinary man rejects, "without hesitation, " the interferenceof will with material causes. In other words, he asserts thatthe ordinary man is a fatalist--for Froude knew very wellthat between the fatalist and the believer in a possibility ofmiracle there is no conceivable position. He will have it (onp. 216) that a modern doctor always regards a "vision" asan hallucination. On p. 217 he denies by implication thestigmata of St. Francis--and so forth--one might multiplythe instances indefinitely. All Froude's works are full ofthem, they are part and parcel of his method--but theirnumber is to no purport. One example may stand for all, and their special value to our purpose is not that they aremere assertions, but that they are assertions which Froudemust have known to be personal, disputable, and dogmatic. 

He knew very well that the vast majority of mankindaccepted the virtue of relics, that intellects the equals of hisown rejected that determinism to which he was bound, andthat the Pagan world might be presented in a fashion verydifferent from his own. And in that perpetual--often gratuitous--affirmation you have no sign of limitation in him butrather of eagerness for battle. 

It is an admirable fault or perhaps no fault at all, or if afault an appendage to the most considerable virtue a writerof his day could have had: the virtue of courage. 

See how he thrusts when he comes to lay down the law, not upon what the narrow experience of readers understandsand agrees with him about, but upon some matter which heknows them to have decided in a manner opposed to his own. See how definite, how downright, and how clean are thesentences in which he asserts that Christianity is Catholicor nothing:--

". . . This was the body of death which philosophy detectedbut could not explain, and from which Catholicism nowcame forward with its magnificent promise of deliverance. 

"The carnal doctrine of the sacraments, which they arecompelled to acknowledge to have been taught as fully inthe early Church as it is now taught by the Roman Catholics, has long been the stumbling-block to Protestants. It wasthe very essence of Christianity itself. Unless the body couldbe purified, the soul could not be saved; or, rather, as fromthe beginning, soul and flesh were one man and inseparable, without his flesh, man was lost, or would cease to be. Butthe natural organization of the flesh was infected, and unlessorganization could begin again from a new original, no purematerial substance could exist at all. He, therefore, by whomGod had first made the world, entered into the womb of theVirgin in the form (so to speak) of a new organic cell, andaround it, through the virtue of His creative energy, amaterial body grew again of the substance of His mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man whenit passed out under His hand in the beginning of all things. "

Throughout his essay on the Philosophy of Christianity, where he was maintaining a thesis odious to the majority ofhis readers, he rings as hard as ever. The philosophy ofChristianity is frankly declared to be Catholicism andCatholicism alone; the truth of Christianity is denied. It is calleda thing "worn and old" even in Luther's time (upon page 194), and he definitely prophesies a period when "our posterity"shall learn "to despise the miserable fabric which Lutherstitched together out of its tatters. "

His judgments are short, violent, compressed. They arenot the judgments of balance. They are final not as a goalreached is final, but as a death-wound delivered. He throwsout sentences which all the world can see to be insufficientand thin, but whose sharpness is the sharpness of convictionand of a striving determination to achieve conviction in others---or if he fails in that, at least to leave an enemy smarting. Everywhere you have up and down his prose those shortparentheses, those side sentences, which are strokes of offence. Thus on page 199, "We hear---or we used to hear when theHigh Church party were more formidable than they are, " &c. ;or again, on page 210, "The Bishop of Natal" (Colenso)has done such and such things, "coupled with certainarithmetical calculations far which he has a special aptitude. "There are dozens of these in every book he wrote. Theywounded, and were intended to wound. 

His intellect may therefore be compared, as I have comparedit, to an instrument or a weapon of steel, to a chiselor a sword. It was hard, polished, keen, stronger than whatit bit into, and of its nature enduring. This was the first ofthe characters that gave him his secure place in Englishletters. 

The second is his universality--the word is not over-exact, but I can find no other. I mean that Froude was the exactopposite of the sciolist and was even other than the student. He was kneaded right into his own time and his own people. The arena in which he fought was small, the ideas he combatedwere few. He was not universal as those are universalwho appeal to any man in any country. But he was eagerupon these problems which his contemporaries wrangled over. He was in tune with, even when he directly opposed, theclass from which he sprang, the mass of well-to-do ProtestantEnglishmen of Queen Victoria's reign. Their furniture hadnothing shocking for him nor their steel engravings. Hetook for granted their probity, their common sense, and theirreading. He knew what they were thinking about andtherefore all he did to praise or blame their convictions, to soothe or to exasperate them, told. He could see thetarget. 

Perpetually this looking at the world from the standpointof the men around him makes him say things that irritatemore particular and more acute minds than his own, but Iwill maintain that in his case the fault was a necessary faultand went with a power which permitted him to achieve thesympathy which he did achieve. He talks of the "Celt"and the "Saxon, " and ascribes what he calls "our failuresin Ireland" to the "incongruity of character" between thesetwo imaginaries. He takes it for granted that "we aresomething which divides us from mediaeval Christianity byan impassable gulf. " When he speaks of asceticism he mustquote "the hair shirt of Thomas a Becket. " If he is speakingof Oxford undergraduates one has "pleasant faces, cheerfulvoices, and animal spirits, " and at the end of the fine butpartial essay on Spinoza we have six lines which might comebodily from a leader in the Daily Telegraph, or from anycopy of the Spectator picked up at random. 

These are grave faults, but, I repeat, they are the faults ofthose great qualities which gave him his position. 

And side by side with such faults go an exceptionallucidity, a good order within the paragraph and in thesuccession of the paragraphs. A choice of subject suited tohis audience, an excision of that which would have bored orbewildered it, a vividness of description wherewith to amuseand a directness of conclusion wherewith to arrest his readers--all these he had, beyond perhaps any of his contemporaries. 

Occasionally that brotherhood in him leads him to faultsmore serious. You get gross commonplace and utterly falsecommonplace, of which when he came back to them (ifindeed he was a man who read his own works) he musthave been ashamed:--

"Persecutions come, and martyrdoms, and religious wars;and, at last, the old faith, like the phoenix, expires upon itsaltar, and the new rises out of the ashes. 

"Such, in briefest outline, has been the history of religions, natural and moral. "

Or again, of poor old Oxford:--

"The increase of knowledge, and consequently of morality, is the great aim of such a noble establishment as this; andthe rewards and honours dispensed there are bestowed inproportion to the industry and good conduct of those whoreceive them. "

But the interesting point about these very lapses is thatthey remain purely exceptional. They do not affect eitherthe tone of his writing or the value and intricacy of hisargument. They may be compared to those undignifiedand valueless chips of conversational English that pop upin the best rhetoric if it be the rhetoric of an enthusiasticand wide man. 

While, however, one is in the mood of criticism it is notunjust to show what other lapses in him are connectedwith this common sympathy of his and this very comprehensionof his class to which he owed his opportunity andhis effect. 

Thus he is either so careless or so hurried as to use--much too commonly--words which have lost all vitality, and which are for the most part meaningless, but which gothe rounds still like shining flat sixpences worn smooth. The word "practical" drops from his pen; he quotes "in aglass darkly, " and speaks of "a picture of human life"; thewalls of Oxford are "time-hallowed"; he enters a churchand finds in it "a dim religious light"; a man of Froude'scapacity has no right to find such a thing there. If he writesthe word "sin" the word "shame" comes tripping after. It may be that he was a man readily caught by fatigue, orit may bet it is more probable, that he thought it smallmillinery to "travailler le verbe" At any rate the resultas a whole hangs to his identity of spirit with the thousandsfor whom he wrote. 

To this character of universality attach also faults not onlyin his occasional choice of words but in his general style. 

The word "style" has been so grossly abused during thelast thirty years that one mentions it with diffidence. MatthewArnold well said that when people came to him and askedto be told how to write a good style he was unable to reply;for indeed it is not a thing to be taught. It is a by-product, though a necessary by-product, of good thinking. But whenMatthew Arnold went on to say that there was no such thingas style except knowing clearly what you wanted to say, andsaying it as clearly as you could, he was talking nonsense. There is such a thing as style. It is that combination ofrhythm, lucidity, and emphasis, which certainly must notbe consciously produced, but which if it arise naturally froma man's pen and from his method of thought makes all thedifference between what is readable and what is not readable. If any one doubt this let him compare the French Biblewith the English--both literal and lucid translations of thesame original; or again let him contrast the prose phrases ofMilton when he is dealing with the claims of the Churchin the Middle Ages with those of Mr. Bryce in the sameconnection. 

Now I say that just as the excellences of Froude's proseproceeded from this universality of his so did the errors intowhich that prose fell, and it is remarkable that these errorsare slips of detail. They proceed undoubtedly from rapidwriting and from coupling his scholarship with a very generaland ephemeral reading. 

A few examples drawn from these essays will prove whatI mean. On the very first page, in the first line of thesecond paragraph we have the word "often" coming after theword "experience, " instead of before it. He had written"experience, " he desired to qualify it, and he did not go backto do what should always be done in plain English, and whatindeed distinguishes plain English from almost every otherlanguage--to put the qualification before the thing qualified;a peculiarly English mark in this, that it presupposes one'shaving thought the whole thing out before writing it down. 

On page 3 we have exactly the same thing; "A legendnot known unfortunately to general English readers. " Hemeans of course, "unfortunately not known, " but as thesentence stands it reads as though he had meant to say, somewhat clumsily, that the method in which English readersknew the legend was not unfortunate. 

He is again careless in the matter of repetitions, both ofthe same word, and (what is a better test of ear) of rhymeswithin the sentence: we have in one place "which seemed togive a soul to those splendid donations to learning, " andfurther on in the same page "a priority in mortality. "

On pages 34 and 35 you have "an intensely real conviction. "You are then told that "the most lawless men didthen really believe. " Then that the American tribes werein the eyes of the colonists "real worshippers" of the Devil, and a few lines later we hear of "the real awfulness of theworld. "

The position of the relative is often as slipshod as theposition of the qualicative; thus you will find upon page 37that the pioneers "grayed out the channels, and at last pavedthem with their bones, through which the commerce andenterprise of England has flowed out of all the world. " Thissentence is quite deplorable; it has a singular verb after twonominatives, and is so framed that one might imagine thecommerce and enterprise of our beloved country to have flownthrough those hollow interior channels, with which, I believe, our larger bones are provided, and in which is to be discoveredthat very excellent substance, marrow. 

It is singular that, while these obvious errors have excitedso little comment, Froude should have been blamed so oftenand by such different authorities for weaknesses of the penfrom which he did not suffer, or which, if he did suffer fromthem, at least he had in common with every other writerof our time and perhaps less than most. 

Thus, as an historian he has been accused of two faultswhich have been supposed by those who are ill acquaintedwith the history of letters to be correlative: a strainingfor effect and an inaccuracy of detail. There is not one ofhis contemporaries who less forced himself in descriptionthan Froude. Often in Green, very often in Freeman andalways in Carlyle you feel that your author is deliberatelyexciting his mind and your own. Violent colours are chosenand peculiar emphasis--from this Froude was free. He wasan historian. 

To the end Froude remained an historian, and an historianhe was born. If we regret that his history was not general, and that he turned his powers upon such a restricted set ofphenomena, still we must rejoice that there was once inmodern England a man who could sum up the nature ofa great movement. He lacked the power of integration. 

He was not an artist. But he possessed to an extraordinarydegree the power of synthesis. He was a craftsman, as themodern jargon goes. There is not in the whole range ofEnglish literature as excellent a summary of the way inwhich the Divinity of our Lord fought its way into theleading brains of Europe, as appears upon page 192 of thisbook. It is as good as Boissier; there runs all through itknowledge, proportion, and something which, had he beengranted a little more light, or been nurtured in an intellectualclimate a little more sunny, would have been vision itself:--

"The being who accomplished a work so vast, a workcompared to which the first creation appears but a triflingdifficulty, what could He be but God? Who but God couldhave wrested His prize from a power which half the thinkingworld believed to be His coequal and co-eternal adversary?He was God. He was man also, for He was the secondAdam--the second starting-point of human growth. He wasvirgin born, that no original impurity might infect thesubstance which He assumed; and being Himself sinless, Heshowed in the nature of His person after His resurrection, what the material body would have been in all of us exceptfor sin, and what it will be when, after feeding on it in itspurity, the bodies of each of us are transfigured after itslikeness. "

There's a piece of historical prose which summarises, teaches, and stamps itself finally upon the mind! Froudesaw that the Faith was the summit and the completion ofRome. Had he written us a summary of the fourth andfifth centuries--and had he written it just after reading somedull fellow on the other side--what books we should havehad to show to the rival schools of the Continent!

Consider the sharp and almost unique judgment passedupon Tacitus at the bottom of page 133 and the top ofpage 134, or again, the excellent sub-ironic passages in whichhe expresses the vast advantage of metaphysical debate:which has all these qualities, that it is true, sober, exact, and yet a piece of laughter and a contradiction of itself. Itis prose in three dimensions. 

That pedantic charge of inaccuracy, with which I havealready dealt in another place, in connection with anotherand perhaps a greater man, is not applicable to Froude. Hewas hasty, and in his historical work the result certainly wasthat he put down things upon insufficient evidence, or uponevidence but half read; but even in his historical work (whichdeals remember, with the most highly controversial part ofEnglish history) he is as accurate as anybody else, exceptperhaps Lingard. That the man was by nature accurate, well read and of a good memory, appears continually throughoutthis book, and the more widely one has read one's self, the more one appreciates this truth. 

For instance, there is often set down to Disraeli the remarkthat his religion was "the religion of all sensible men. " andupon being asked what this religion might be, that Orientalis said to have replied, "All sensible men keep that tothemselves. " Now Disraeli could no more have made such awitticism than he could have flown through the air; hismind was far too extravagant for such pointed phrases. Froude quotes the story (page 205 of this book) but rightlyascribes it to Rogers, a very different man from Disraeli--an Englishman with a mastery of the English language. 

Look again at this remark upon page 20, "The happy allusionof Quevedo to the Tiber was not out of place here:--thefugitive is alone permanent. '" How many Englishmen knowthat Du Bellay's immortal sonnet was but a translation ofQuevedo? You could drag all Oxford and Cambridge to-dayand not find a single man who knew it. 

Note the care he has shown in quoting one of those hackneyedphrases which almost all the world misquotes, "Quemon nom soit fletri, pourvu que la France soit libre. " Of ahundred times that you may see those words of Danton'swritten down, you will perhaps not see them once writtendown exactly as they were said. 

So it is throughout his work. Men still living in theUniversities accuse him vaguely of inexactitude as they willaccuse Jowett of ignorance, and these men, when one examinesthem closely, are found to be ignorant of the Frenchlanguage, to have read no philosophy between Aristotle andHobbes, and to issue above their signatures such errors ofplain dates and names as make one blush for Englishscholarship and be glad that no foreigner takes our historicalschool seriously. 

There is always left to any man who deals with the writingsof Froude, a task impossible to complete but necessarily to beattempted. He put himself forward, in a set attitude, tocombat and to destroy what he conceived to be--in themoment of his attack--the creed of his countrymen. He wasso literary a man that he did this as much by accepting as bydenying, as much by dating from Elizabeth all we are as byaffirming unalterable material sequence and the falsity ofevery transcendental acceptation. His time smelt him outeven when he flattered it most. Even when he wrote of theRevenge the England of his day--luckily for him--thoughthim an enemy. 

Upon the main discussion of his life it is impossible topass a judgment, for the elements of that discussion are nowdestroyed; the universities no longer pretend to believe. And "free discussion" has become so free that the maindoctrines he assailed are no longer presented or read withoutweariness in the class to which he appealed and from whichhe sprang. 

The sects, then, against which he set himself are dead:but upon a much larger question which is permanent, andwhich in a sort of groping way he sometimes handled, something should be said here, which I think has never beensaid before. He was perpetually upon the borderland of theCatholic Church. 

Between him and the Faith there stood no distance of space, but rather a high thin wall; the high thin wall of his owndesperate conviction. If you will turn to page 209 of thisbook you will see it said of the denial of the Sacramentby the Reformers and of Ridley's dogma that it was breadonly "the commonsense of the country was of the sameopinion, and illusion was at an end. " Froude knew thatthe illusion was not at an end. He probably knew (for wemust continue to repeat that he was a most excellent historian)that the "commonsense of the country" was, by the timeRidley and the New English Church began denying the realpresence, and turning that denial into a dogma, profoundlyindifferent to all dogmas whatsoever. What "the common-senseof the country" wanted was to keep out swarthy men, chivalrous indeed but imperialists full of gold who ownednearly all the earth, but who, they were determined, shouldnot own England. 

Froude was fond of such assertions, his book is full of them, and they are more than mere violence framed for combat;they are in their curious way definite expressions of the man'ssoul; for Froude was fond of that high thin wall, and likedto build it higher. He was a dogmatic rationalist--onehesitates to use a word which has been so portentouslymisused. Renan before dying came out with one of his lastdogmas; it was to this effect, that there was not in theUniverse an intelligent power higher than the human mind. Froude, had he lived in an atmosphere of perfectly freediscussion as Renan did, would have heartily subscribed to thatdogma. 

Why then do I say that he was perpetually on the borderlandof the Catholic Church? Because when he leaves for amoment the phraseology and the material of his youth and ofhis neighbourhood, he is perpetually striking that note ofinterest, of wonder, and of intellectual freedom which is thenote of Catholicism. 

Let any man who knows what Catholicism may be readcarefully the Essay on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the Essay on the Philosophy of Christianity which succeedsit in this book, but which was written six years before. Let him remember that nothing Froude ever wrote waswritten without the desire to combat some enemy, and, havingmade allowance for that desire, let him decide whether oneshock, one experience, one revelation would not have whirledhim into the Church. He was, I think, like a man who hasfelt the hands of a woman and heard her voice, who knowsthem so thoroughly well that he can love, criticise, or despiseaccording to his mood; but who has never seen her face. 

And he was especially near to the Church in this: thathaving discussed a truth he was compelled to fight for it andto wound actively in fighting, He was an agent, He did, He saw that the mass of stuff clinging round the mindof wealthy England was decaying, He turned with regrettowards the healthy visions of Europe and called themillusions because they were not provable, and because allprovable things showed a flee other than that of the creedand were true in another manner. He despised the cowardice--for it is cowardice--that pretends to intellectual convictionand to temporal evidence of the things of the soul. He sawand said, and he was right in saying, that the City of God isbuilt upon things incredible. 

"Incredibilia nec crederim, nisi me compelleret ecclesiae auctoritas"

H. BELLOC. 

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The following is a list of the published works of J. A. Froude. "Life of St. Neot" ("Lives of the English Saints, " editedby J. H. Newman), 1844. "Shadows of the Clouds" (Tales), by Zeta (pseud. ), 1847. "A Sermon (on 2 Cor. Vii. 10) preachedat St. Mary's Church on the Death of the Rev. George MayColeridge, " 1847. Article on "Spinoza" (Oxford and CambridgeReview), 1847. "The Nemesis of Faith" (Tale), 1849. "England's Forgotten Worthies" (Westminster Review), 1852. "Book of Job" (Westminster Review), 1853. "Poems ofMatthew Arnold" (Westminster Review), 1854. "Suggestionson the Best Means of Teaching English History"("Oxford Essays, " &c. ), 1855. "History of England, " 12vols. , 1856-1870 "The Influence of the Reformation on theScottish Character, " 1865. "Inaugural Address delivered tothe University of St. Andrews, March 19, 1869, " 1869. "ShortStudies on Great Subjects, " 1867, 2 vols. , series 2-4, 1872-83(articles from Fraser's Magazine, Westminster Review, &c. ). "The Cat's Pilgrimage, " 1870 "Calvinism: Address atSt. Andrews, " 1871. "The English in Ireland, " 3 vols. , 1872-74. "Bunyan" ("English Men of Letters"), 1878. "Caesar:a Sketch, " 1879. "Two Lectures on South Africa, " 1880. "Thomas Carlyle" (a history of the first forty years of hislife, &c. ), 2 vols. , 1882. "Luther: a Short Biography, " 1883. "Thomas Carlyle" (a history of his life in London, 1834-80, 2 vols. , 1884. "Oceana, " 1886. "The English in the WestIndies, " 1888. "Liberty and Property: an Address" [1888. ]"The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, " 1889. "Lord Beaconsfield"(a Biography), 1890. "The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, "1891. "The Spanish Story of the Armada, " 1892. "Lifeand Letters of Erasmus, " 1894. "English Seamen in theSixteenth Century, " 1895. "Lectures on the Council of Trent, "1896. "My Relations with Carlyle, " 1903. 

Edited--"Carlyle's Reminiscences, " 1882. "Mrs. Carlyle'sLetters, " 1883. 

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ARNOLD'S POEMS

Five years ago there appeared a small volume entitled"The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, by A. " (The StrayedReveller, and other Poems. By A. London: 1849) Itwas received we believe with general indifference. Thepublic are seldom sanguine with new poets; the exceptionsto the rule having been for the most part signalmistakes; while in the case of "A. " the inequality ofmerit in his poems was so striking that even personswho were satisfied that qualities were displayed in themof the very highest kind, were yet unable to feel confidencein the future of an author so unusually incapable, as it appeared, of knowing when he was doing well andwhen he was failing. 

Young men of talent experience often certain musicalsensations, which are related to poetry as the fancy of aboy for a pretty face is related to love; and the counterfeitwhile it lasts is so like the reality as to deceive notonly themselves but even experienced lookers-on whoare not on their guard against the phenomenon. Timein either case is requisite to test the quality both of thesubstance and of the feeling, and we desired somefurther evidence of A. 's powers before we could granthim his rank as a poet; or even feel assured that hecould ultimately obtain it. There was passion, as in alittle poem called "Stagyrus, " deep and searching; therewas unaffected natural feeling, expressed sweetly andmusically; in "The Sick King of Bokhara, " in severalof the Sonnets and other fragmentary pieces, there wasgenuine insight into life and whatever is best and noblestin it;--but along with this, there was often an elaborateobscurity, one of the worst faults which poetry can have;and indications that the intellectual struggles which, like all young men in our times, he was passing through, were likely to issue in an indifferentism neither pleasingnor promising. 

The inequality in substance was not more remarkablethan the inequality in the mechanical expression of it. "The Forsaken Merman" is perhaps as beautifullyfinished as anything of the kind in the English language. The story is exquisitely told, and word and metre socarefully chosen that the harmony of sound and meaningis perfect. The legend itself we believe is Norwegan. It is of a King of the Sea who had married an earthlymaiden; and was at last deserted by her from somescruples of conscience. The original features of it arestrictly preserved, and it is told indirectly by the oldSea King to his children in a wild, irregular melody, ofwhich the following extract will convey but an imperfectidea. It is Easter time, and the mother has left her seapalace for the church on the hill side, with a promise toreturn--

"She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. 'Children, dear, was it yesterday?Children, dear, were we long alone?''The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan. Long prayers, ' I said, 'in the world they say. Come' I said, 'and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down, Where the sea-stocks bloom to the white-walled town, Through the narrow paved streets where all was still, To the little gray church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers;But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. 

We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn withrains, And we gazed up the aisle, through the small leadedpanes. She sate by the pillar, we saw her clear. 'Margaret! hist! come, quick, we are here!''Dear heart, ' I said, 'we are long alone. ''The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan. ''But, ah, she gave me never a look, For her eyes were sealed to the holy book. Loud prays the priest, shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more. Come away, come down, call no more. 'Down, down, down, Down to the depths of the sea. She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings: 'Oh, joy! oh, joy!For the humming street, and the child with its toy;For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;For the wheel where I spun, And the blessed light of the sun. 'And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the shuttle falls from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, And over the sand at the sea, And her eyes are set in a stare, And anon there breaks a sigh, And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow-clouded eye, And a heart sorrow-laden, A long, long sigh, For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden, And the gleam of her golden hair. "

Not less excellent, in a style wholly different, was A. 'streatment (and there was this high element of promisein A. That, with a given story to work upon, he wasalways successful) of the AEgyptian legend of Mycerinus, a legend not known unfortunately to general Englishreaders, who are therefore unable to appreciate the skilldisplayed in dealing with it. We must make room forone extract, however, in explanation of which it is onlynecessary to say that Mycerinus, having learnt from theoracle that being too just a king for the purposes of thegods, who desired to afflict the AEgyptians, he was todie after six more years, made the six years into twelveby lighting his gardens all night with torches, andrevelled out what remained to him of life. We can giveno idea of the general conception of the poem, but as amere piece of description this is very beautiful. 

"There by the river bank he wandered on, From palm grove on to palm grove, happy trees, Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneathBurying their unsunned stems in grass and flowers;Where in one dream the feverish time of youthMight fade in slumber, and the feet of joyMight wander all day long, and never tire:Here came the king, holding high feast at morn, Rose-crowned: and even when the sun went down, A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom, From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove, Revealing all the tumult of the feast, Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine, While the deep burnished foliage overheadSplintered the silver arrows of the moon. "

Containing as it did poems of merit so high as these, it may seem strange that this volume should not havereceived a more ready recognition; for there is noexcellence which the writer of the passages which we havequoted could hereafter attain, the promise of whichwould not be at once perceived in them. But thepublic are apt to judge of books of poetry by the ruleof mechanism, and try them not by their strongest partsbut by their weakest; and in the present instance (tomention nothing else) the stress of weight in the titlewhich was given to the collection was laid upon whatwas by no means adequate to bearing it. Whatever bethe merits of the "Strayed Reveller" as poetry, it iscertainly not a poem in the sense which English peoplegenerally attach to the word, looking as they do notonly for imaginative composition but for verse;--andas certainly if the following passage had been printedmerely as prose, in a book which professed to be nothingelse, no one would have suspected that it was composedof an agglutination of lines. 

"The gods are happy; they turn on all sides their shiningeyes, and see below them earth and men. They see Tiresiassitting staff in hand on the warm grassy Asopus bank, hisrobe drawn over his old, sightless head, revolving inly thedoom of Thebes. They see the Centaurs in the upper glensof Pelion, on the streams where the red-berried ashes fringethe clear brown shallow pools; with streaming flanks andheads reared proudly, snuffing the mountain wind. Theysee the Scythian on the wide steppe, unharnessing hiswheeled house at noon; he tethers his beast down andmakes his meal, mare's milk and bread baked on theembers; all around the boundless waving grass plainsstretch, thick starred with saffron and the yellow hollyhockand flag-leaved isis flowers. "

No one will deny that this is fine imaginative painting, and as such poetical, --but it is the poetry of wellwritten, elegant prose. Instead of the recurring sounds, whether of rhyme or similarly weighted syllables, whichconstitute the outward form of what we call verse, wehave the careless grace of uneven, undulating sentences, flowing on with a rhythmic cadence indeed, but freefrom all constraint of metre or exactitude of form. Itmay be difficult, perhaps it is impossible, to fix themeasure of license which a poet may allow himselfin such matters, but it is at least certain that thegreatest poets are those who have allowed themselvesthe fewest of such liberties: in art as in morals, and as in everything which man undertakes, truegreatness is the most ready to recognize and mostwilling to obey those simple outward laws which havebeen sanctioned by the experience of mankind, andwe suspect the originality which cannot move excepton novel paths. 

This is but one of several reasons which explain theapathy of the public on A. 's first appearance. Therewas large promise, but the public require performance;and in poetry a single failure overweighs a hundredsuccesses. It was possible that his mistakes were themistakes of a man whose face was in the right direction--who was feeling his way, and who would ultimatelyfind it; but only time could decide if this were so; andin the interval, the coldness of his reception would serveto test the nature of his faculty. 

So far we have spoken with reserve, for we havesimply stated the feelings with which we regarded thislittle volume on first reading it; but the reserve is nolonger necessary, and the misgivings which we experiencedhave not been justified. At the close oflast year another volume was published, again ofmiscellaneous poems, which went beyond the most sanguinehopes of A. 's warmest admirers. As before with "TheStrayed Revellers, " so again with "Empedocles onAEtna, " (Empedocles on AEtna, and other Poems. By A. London:1852) the piece de resistance was not the happiest selection. But of the remaining pieces, and of all thosewhich he has more recently added, it is difficult tospeak in too warm praise. In the unknown A. , we arenow to recognize a son of the late Master of Rugby, Dr. Arnold. Like a good knight, we suppose he thought itbetter to win his spurs before appearing in public withso honoured a name; but the associations which belongto it will suffer no alloy from him who now wears it. Not only is the advance in art remarkable, in greaterclearness of effect, and in the mechanical handling ofwords, but far more in simplicity and healthfulnessof moral feeling. There is no more obscurity, and nomysticism; and we see everywhere the working of amind bent earnestly on cultivating whatever is highestand worthiest in itself; of a person who is endeavouring, without affectation, to follow the best things, to seeclearly what is good, and right, and true, and to fastenhis heart upon these. There is usually a period in thegrowth of poets in which, like coarser people, theymistake the voluptuous for the beautiful; but in Mr. Arnold there is no trace of any such tendency; pure, without effort, he feels no enjoyment and sees no beautyin the atmosphere of the common passions; and innobleness of purpose, in a certain loftiness of mindsingularly tempered with modesty, he continually remindsus of his father. There is an absence, perhaps, of colour; it is natural that it should be so in theearlier poems of a writer who proposes aims such asthese to himself; his poetry is addressed to theintellectual, and not to the animal emotions; and to persons. Of animal taste, the flavour will no doubt be oversimple;but it is true poetry--a true representation oftrue human feeling. It may not be immediately popular, but it will win its way in the long run, and has elementsof endurance in it which enable it to wait withoutanxiety for recognition. 

Among the best of the new poems is "Tristram andIseult. " It is unlucky that so many of the subjectsshould be so unfamiliar to English readers, but it istheir own fault if they do not know the "Mort d'Arthur. "We must not calculate, however, on too much knowledgein such unpractical matters; and as the story is toolong to tell in this place, we take an extract which willnot require any. It is a picture of sleeping children asbeautiful as Sir Francis Chantrey's. 

But they sleep in sheltered rest, Like helpless birds in the warm nestOn the castle's southern side, Where feebly comes the mournful roarOf buffeting wind and surging tide, Through many a room and corridor. Full on the window the moon's rayMakes their chamber as bright as day. It shines upon the blank white walis, And on the snowy pillow falls. And on two angel heads doth play, Turn'd to each other: the eyes closed, The lashes on the cheek reposed. Round each sweet brow the cap close setHardly lets peep the golden hair;Through the soft opened lips the airScarcely moves the coverlet. One little wandering arm is thrownAt random on the counterpane, And often the fingers close in haste, As if their baby owner chasedThe butterflies again. This stir they have and this alone, But else they are so still--Ah, you tired madcaps, you lie still;But were you at the window now, To look forth on the fairy sightOf your illumined haunts by night, To see the park glades where you playFar lovelier than they are by day, To see the sparkle on the eaves, And upon every giant boughOf those old oaks whose wan red leavesAre jewelled with bright drops of rain--How would your voices run again!And far beyond the sparkling trees, Of the castle park, one seesThe bare heath spreading clear as day, Moor behind moor, far far away, Into the heart of Brittany. And here and there locked by the landLong inlets of smooth glittering sea, And many a stretch of watery sand, All shining in the white moonbeams;But you see fairer in your dreams. "

This is very beautiful; a beautiful description of oneof the most beautiful objects in nature; but it is adescription which could never have been composed except bya person whose mind was in tune with all innocentloveliness, and who found in the contemplation of suchthings not merely a passing emotion of pleasure but thedeepest and most exquisite enjoyment. 

Besides "Tristram and Iseult, " we select for especialmention out of this second volume, "A Farewell, ""Self-Dependence, " "Morality "; two very highly-finishedpieces called "The Youth of Nature, " and "The Youthof Man, " expressing two opposite states of feeling, which we all of us recognize, and yet which, as far aswe know, have never before found their way into language;and "A Summer Night, " a small meditativepoem, containing one passage, which, although notperfect--for, if the metre had been more exact, theeffect would, in our opinion, have been very muchenhanced--is, nevertheless, the finest that Mr. Arnoldhas yet written. 

And I. I know not if to prayStill to be what I am, or yield and beLike all the other men I see. For most men in a brazen prison live, Where in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidlyTheir minds to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall;And as, year after year, Fresh products of their barren labour fallFrom their tired hands, and restNever yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast, And while they try to stemThe waves of mournful thought by which theyare prest, Death in their prison reaches themUnfreed, having seen nothing still unblest. 

And the rest, a few, Escape their prison, and departOn the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where'er his heartListeth, will sail;Nor does he know how there prevail, Despotic on life's sea, Trade winds that cross it from eternity. Awhile he holds some false way, undebarredBy thwarting signs, and bravesThe freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him, and betweenThe lightning bursts is seenOnly a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deckWith anguished face and flying hair, Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false impossible shore. And sterner comes the roarOf sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom, Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom. "

In these lines, in powerful and highly-sustainedmetaphor, lies the full tragedy of modern life. 

"Is there no life but these alone, Madman or slave, must man be one?"

We disguise the alternative under more fairly-soundingnames, but we cannot escape the reality; and we knownot, after all, whether there is deeper sadness in abroken Mirabeau or Byron, or in the contented prosperityof a people who once knew something of nobleaspirations, but have submitted to learn from a practicalage that the business of life is to make money, and theenjoyments of it what money can buy. A few areignobly successful; the many fail, and are miserable;and the subtle anarchy of selfishness finds its issue inmadness and revolution. But we need not open thispainful subject. Mr. Arnold is concerned with theeffect of the system on individual persons; with theappearance which it wears to young highly sensitivemen on their entry upon the world, with the choice ofa life before them; and it is happy for the world thatsuch men are comparatively rare, or the mad sort wouldbe more abundant than they are. 

We cannot but think it unfortunate that this poem, with several others of the highest merit, have beenomitted in the last edition, while others find a placethere, for which comparatively we care little. Uniformityof excellence has been sacrificed to uniformityof character, a subsidiary matter which in itself is ofslight importance, and which the public would neverquarrel for if they were treated with an ever pleasingvariety. As it is, we have still to search three volumesfor the best specimens of Mr. Arnold's powers, andopportunities are still left for illmatured critics to makeextracts of an apparently inferior kind. There is aremedy for this, however, in the future, and the necessarysifting will no doubt get itself duly accomplished atlast. In the meantime, before noticing the late edition, we have a few words to say about Empedocles, theground of objection to which we cannot think Mr. Arnoldadequately understands, although he has omitted it inhis present edition, and has given us his reasons fordoing so. Empedocles, as we all know, was a Sicilianphilosopher, who, out of discontent with life, or fromother cause, flung himself into the crater of MountAEtna. A discontent of this kind, Mr. Arnold tellsus, unrelieved by incident, hope, or resistance, is nota fit subject for poetry. The object of poetry is toplease, and the spectacle of a man too weak to bear histrials, and breaking under them, cannot be anything butpainful. The correctness of the portrait he defends;and the fault, as he thinks, is not in the treatment, butin the subject itself. Now it is true that as a rule poetryis better employed in exhibiting the conquest overtemptations than the fall under them, and some escapeof this kind for the feelings must be provided intragedies, by the introduction of some powerful cause, either of temptation acting on the will or of an externalforce controlling the action, in order to explain andreconcile us to the catastrophe. A mere picture ofimbecility is revolting simply; we cannot conceive ourselvesacting in the same way under the same circumstances, and we can therefore feel neither sympathy withthe actor nor interest in his fate. But we must becareful how we narrow our theories in such matters. In Werther we have an instance of the same trial, withthe same issue as Mr. Arnold has described in Empedocles, and to say that Werther was a mistake, is tocircumscribe the sphere of art by a definition which thepublic taste will refuse to recognize. Nor is it true, inspite of Schiller's authority, that "all art is dedicated toenjoyment. " Tragedy has other objects, the katharsisor purifying of the emotions for instance, which, if weare to continue to use words in their ordinary sense, issomething distinct from enjoyment, and not always reconcilablewith it. Whatever will excite interest in ahealthy, vigorous mind, that is a fair object of poetry, and there is a painful as well as a pleasant interest; itis an abuse of language to describe the sensations whichwe experience on reading "Philoctetes" or "Hamlet" aspleasant. They are not unmixedly painful, but surelynot pleasant. 

It is not therefore the actual fate of Empedocleswhich fails to interest us, but we are unable to feel thatMr. Arnold's account of him is the true account. Inthe absence of authentic material, the artist who hopesto interest us in his fate must at least make the storyprobable as he tells it; consistent in itself, with causesclearly drawn out proportioned to the effects resultingfrom them. And this it cannot be said that Mr. Arnoldhas done. Powerful as is much of the language whichhe places in the mouth of Empedocles, he has failedto represent him as in a condition in which suicideis the natural result. His trials, his disgusts, as faras he exhibits them, are not more than man maynaturally be supposed able to bear, while of the impulsesof a more definite character there is no traceat all. But a more grave deficiency still is, that amongall the motives introduced, there is not one to make theclimb of AEtna necessary or intelligible. Empedocleson AEtna might have been Empedocles in his roomat Catana, and a dagger or a cup of hemlock wouldhave answered all purposes equally well with a plungein the burning crater. If the tradition of Empedoclesis a real story of a thing which really happened, wemay feel sure that some peculiar feeling connectedwith the mountain itself, some mystical theory or localtradition, led such a man as he was to such a means ofself-immolation. 

We turn from Empedocles, which perhaps it is scarcelyfair to have criticised, to the first poem in the latestedition, "Sohrab and Rustum, " (Poems. By Matthew Arnold. A New Edition, London: 1853. ) a poem which alone would havesettled the position which Mr. Arnold has a right to claimas a poet, and which is remarkable forits success in every point in which Empedocles appearsdeficient. The story comes down out of remote Persianantiquity; it is as old, perhaps it is older, than the taleof Troy; and, like all old stories which have survivedthe changes of so long a time, is in itself of singularinterest. Rustum, the Hercules of the East, fell inwith and loved a beautiful Tartar woman. He left her, and she saw him no more; but in time a child wasborn, who grew up with the princes of his mother'stribe, and became in early youth distinguished in allmanly graces and noblenesses. Learning that he was theson of the great Rustum, his object is to find his father, and induce him, by some gallant action, to acknowledgeand receive him. War breaks out between the Tartarsand the Persians. The two armies come down uponthe Oxus, and Sohrab having heard that Rustum hadremained behind in the mountains, and was not present, challenges the Persian chief. Rustum, unknown toSohrab, had in the meantime joined the army, andagainst a warrior of Sohrab's reputation, no one couldbe trusted to maintain the Persian cause except the oldhero. So by a sad perversity of fate, and led to it bytheir very greatness, the father and the son meet inbattle, and only recognize each other when Sohrab islying mortally wounded. It is one of those terriblesituations which only the very highest power of poetrycan dwell upon successfully. If the right chord be nottouched to the exactest nicety, if the shock of theincident in itself be not melted into pathos, and thenobleness of soul in the two sufferers be not made torise above the cruel accident which crushes them, wecannot listen to the poet. The story overwhelms andabsorbs us; we desire to be left alone with it and withour own feelings, and his words about it become officiousand intrusive. Homer has furnished Mr. Arnold withhis model, and has taught him the great lesson that thelanguage on such occasions cannot be too simple and thestyle too little ornamented. Perhaps it may be thoughtthat he has followed Homer's manner even too closely. No one who has read "Mycerinus" and the "ForsakenMetman" can doubt that Mr. Arnold can write richlyif he pleases. It is a little startling, therefore, to findthe opening of this poem simpler than one would makeit, even if telling it in prose to a child. As in the"Iliad, " the same words are repeated over and overagain for the same idea, without variation or attemptat it; and although it may easily be that our taste isspoiled by the high seasoning of the modern style, theresult is that it strikes the attention to an extent whichwould have been better avoided. A perfect style doesnot strike at all, and it is a matter in which the readerought to be considered even more than the abstractright. We have soon, however, ceased to think of that;the peculiarity which we have mentioned is confined tothe beginning, and the success of the treatment is bestproved by our forgetfulness, as we read on, of art andartist language and manner, in the overpowering interestof the story as it is drawn out before us. Extracts willconvey a poor idea of a poem in which the parts are sowholly subordinate to the effect of the whole, and yet, in spite of this disadvantage, we can justify at leastpartially to our readers the opinions which we havegenerally expressed. 

We will take the scene of the recognition, whenSohrab, lying wounded, and as yet ignorant of the nameof his adversary, has declared himself Rustum's son. The father, at first incredulous and scornful, is led stepby step, through the mention of old names and times, towards the anaguorisis, and after the most delicatelytraced alternations of feeling, all doubt is ended by themark of the seal on Sohrab's arm which Rustum hadgiven to his mother. 

"How say'st thou? [Sohrab says. ] Is that sign the propersignOf Rustum's son, or of some other man's?He spoke: but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stoodSpeechless; and then he uttered one sharp cry, Oh, boy, thy father!"

This is the first hint to Sohrab who has been his foe. 

"And his voice choked there, And then a dark cloud pass'd before his eyes, And his head swam, and he sank down to earth. But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and castHis arms about his neck, and kiss'd his lips, And with fond faltering fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life: and lifeCame back to Rustum; and he op'd his eyes;And they stood wide with horrour: and he seizedIn both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his face, and smirched his hair, His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms:And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him, and he clutched his swordTo draw it, and for ever let life out. But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hand, And with a soothing voice he spoke, and said'Father, forbear, for I but meet to-dayThe doom that at my birth was written downIn Heaven, and thou art Heaven's unconscious hand. Surely my heart cried out that it was thou, When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too, I know it; but Fate trod those promptings downUnder its iron heel; Fate, Fate engagedThe strife, and hurled me on my father's spear. But let us speak no more of this: I findMy father: let me feel that I have found. Come, sit beside me on this sand, and takeMy head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say "My son!"Quick: quick! for numbered are my sands of life, And swift; for like the lightning to this fieldI came, and like the wind I go away. Sudden and swift, and like a passing wind:But it was writ in Heaven that this should be. 'So said he: and his voice released the heartOf Rustum; and his tears broke forth: he castHis arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud, And kiss'd him; and awe fell on both the hostsWhen they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh, thehorse, With his head bowing to the ground and maneSweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woeFirst to the one, then to the other mov'dHis head, as if enquiring what their griefMight mean; and from his dark compassionateeyesThe big warm tears roll'd down and caked thesand. "

As a picture of human life in Homer's manner, wecannot see why this passage, and indeed the whole poem, should not be thought as good as any one of theepisodes in the "AEneid. " We are not comparing Mr. Arnold with Virgil: for it is one thing to have writtenan epic and another to have written a small fragment;but as a working up of a single incident it may rankby the side of Nisus and Euryalus, and deeper chordsof feeling are touched in it than Virgil has evertouched. 

And this leads us to Mr Arnold's preface, and to theaccount which he gives us of the object which heproposes to himself in poetry: and our notice of thismust be brief, as our space is running to its conclusion. He tells us, in a manner most feelingly instructive, something of the difficulties which lie round a youngpoet of the present day who desires to follow his art tosome genuine purpose; and what he says will remindreaders of Wordsworth of Professor Wilson's beautifulletter to him on a very similar subject. Unhappily thequestion is not one of poetry merely, but of far widersignificance. Not the poet only, but every one of uswho cannot be satisfied to tread with the crowd alongthe broad road which leads--we used to know whither, but desires "to cultivate, " as Mr. Arnold says, "what isbest and noblest" in ourselves, are as sorely at a lossas he is with his art. To find the best models, --thatindeed is the one thing for him and for us. But whatare they and where? and the answer to the aestheticdifficulty lies as we believe in the solution of the moralone. To say this, however, is of infinitely little servicefor the practical direction of a living poet; and we arehere advised (and for present purposes no doubt wisely)to fall back on the artists of classic antiquity. Fromthem better than from the best of the moderns, theyoung poet will learn what art really is. He will learnthat before beginning to sing it is necessary to havesomething to sing of, and that a poem is something elsethan a collection of sweet musical sentences strungtogether like beads or even jewels in a necklace. Hewill learn that the subject is greater than the manner;that the first is the one essential without a worthychoice of which nothing can prosper. Above all, hewill learn that the restless craving after novelty, socharacteristic of all modern writing, the craving afternew plots, new stories, new ideas, is mere disease, and that the true original genius displays itself not inthe fabrication of what has no existence, but in thestrength and power with which facts of history, orstories existing so fixedly in the popular belief as tohave acquired so to say the character of facts, shall beexhibited and delineated. 

But while we allow with Mr. Arnold that the theorywill best be learnt from the ancients, we cannot allow, as he seems to desire us to allow, that the practice of itwas confined to them, or recommend as he does thedisproportionate study, still less the disproportionateimitation of them. All great artists at all times have followedthe same method, for greatness is impossible without it. The Italian painters are never weary of the HolyFamily. The matter of Dante's poem lay before himin the creed of the whole of Europe. Shakespeare hasnot invented the substance of any one of his plays. And the "weighty experience" and "composure ofjudgment" with which the study of the ancients nodoubt does furnish "those who habitually practise it, "may be obtained we believe by the study of the thoughtsof all great men of all ages; by the study of life in anyage, so that our scope be broad enough. 

It is indeed idle nonsense to speak, as some criticsspeak, of the "present" as alone having claims uponthe poet. Whatever is great, or good, or pathetic, orterrible, in any age past or present, belongs to him, andis within his proper province; but most especially, if heis wise, he will select his subjects out of those whichtime has sealed as permanently significant. It is noteasy in our own age to distinguish what has theelements in it of enduring importance; and time iswiser than we. But why dwell with such apparentexclusiveness on classic antiquity, as if there wasno antiquity except the classic, and as if time weredivided into the eras of Greece and Rome and thenineteenth century? The Hellenic poet sang of theHellenes, why should not the Teutonic poet sing ofthe Teutons?

"Vixere fortes post Agamemnona. "

And grand as are Achilles and Clytemnestra, they arenot grander than their parallels in the German epicCriemhilda and Von Tronje Hagen. We do notdream of prescribing to Mr. Arnold what subject heshould choose. Let him choose what interests himselfif he will interest his readers; and if he choose what isreally human, let it come from what age it will, humanhearts will answer to it. And yet it seems as if Teutonictradition, Teutonic feeling, and Teutonic thought hadthe first claim on English and German poets. Andthose among them will deserve best of the modernworld, and will receive the warmest welcome from it, who will follow Shakespeare in modelling into forms ofbeauty the inheritance which has come down to themof the actions of their own race. So most faithfully, if least directly, they will be treading in the stepsof those great poets of Greece whom they desire toimitate. Homer and Sophocles did not look beyondtheir own traditions and their own beliefs; theyfound in these and these only their exclusive andabundant material. Have the Gothic annals suddenlybecome poor, and our own quarries become exhaustedand worthless?

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WORDS ABOUT OXFORD

Many long years had passed since I visited Oxford, --some twenty-eight or more. I had friends among theresident members of that venerable domicile of learning. Pleasant had been the time that I had spent there, ofwhich intervening years had not diminished the remembrance--perhaps heightened the tone of its colouring. On many accounts I regarded that beautiful city withaffectionate veneration. There were more than localattractions to render it interesting. There were therecollections of those who ceased in the interval to bedenizens of this world. These could not but breathesadness over the noble edifices that recalled men, conversations, and convivialities which, however longdeparted, shadowed upon the mind its own inevitabledestiny. Again were those venerable buildings beforeme in their architectural richness. There were tower, and roof, and gateway, in all their variety of outline, defined with the sharp light and shade peculiar toecclesiastical architecture. There were tufted grovesovershadowing the haunts of learning; and there, too, was old Magdalen, which used to greet our sight sopleasantly upon our approach to the city. I beganto fancy I had leaped no gulf of time since, for theCherwell ran on as of old. I felt that the happy allusionof Quevedo to the Tiber was not out of place here, "The fugitive is alone permanent. " The same river ranon as it had run on before, but the cheerful faces thathad been once reflected in its stream had passed away. I saw things once familiar as I saw them before; but"the fathers, where were they ?" I was in this respectlike one awaked from the slumber of an age, who foundhimself a stranger in his own land. 

I walked through High Street. I entered All Souls'and came out quickly, for the quadrangle, or rather oneglance round it, was sufficient to put "the past to pain. "I went over the different sites, and even paced ChristChurch meadows. But I could not deceive myself fora moment. There was an indescribable vacuum somewherethat indicated there was no mode of making thepast the present. What had become of the pleasantfaces, the cheerful voices, the animal spirits, whichseemed in my eyes to give a soul to those splendiddonations of our forefathers to learning in years goneby? That instinct--soul, spirit, whatever it be--whichanimates and vivifies everything, and without which thepalace is not comparable to the hovel possessing it, --that instinct or spirit was absent for me, at least. Atlength I adjourned to the Star, somewhat moody, morethan half wishing I had not entered the city. I orderedmy solitary meal, and began ruminating, as we all do, over the thousandth-time told tale of human destiny bygeneration after generation. I am not sure I did notgreet with sullen pleasure a heavy, dark, dense mass ofcloud that at that moment canopied the city. Themind finds all kinds of congenialities grateful at suchmoments. Some drops of rain fell; then a shower, tolerably heavy. I could not go out again as I intendeddoing. I sat and sipped my wine, thinking of the fateof cities, --of Nineveh the renowned, of the marbleslately recovered from thence with the mysterious arrowheadedcharacters. I thought that some future Layardmight exhume the cornices of the Oxford temples. Thedeaths of cities were as inevitable as those of men. Ifelt that my missing friends had only a priority inmortality, and that the law of the Supreme existed tobe obeyed without man's questionings. 

But a sun-burst took place, the shower ceased, allbecame fresh and clear. I saw several gownsmen passdown the street, and I sallied forth again. Several whowere in front of me, so full was I of old imaginings, I thought might be old friends whom I should recognize. How idle! I strolled to the Isis. It was all glitter andgaiety. The sun shone out warmly and covered thesurface of the river with gold. Numerous skiffs of theuniversity-men were alive on the water, realizing thelines, --

"Some lightly o'er the current swim, Some show their gaily gilded trimQuick glancing to the sun. "

Here was the repetition of an old performance, butthe actors were new. I too had once floated over thatglittering water, or lain up by the bank in conversation, or reciting verses, or, perhaps, in that silent, dreamyvacancy, in which the mind ruminates or rests foldedup within itself in the consciousness of its own immortality. 

Here I must place a word or two in regard to thecensures cast upon this magnificent foundation of learningrelative to the extravagances of young collegians. Let it be granted, as it is asserted by some, that thereis too much exclusiveness, and that there are improvementsto be recommended in some of the details of anorganization so ancient. It may be true to a certainextent, for what under heaven is perfect? But a vastmass of good is to be brought to bear on the otherhand. I cannot, therefore, agree in those censureswhich journalism has cast upon the officers of theuniversity, as if they encouraged, or, at all events, did notcontrol, the vicious extravagance of young men. I amexpressing only an individual opinion, it is true; andthis may be a reason why it may be undervalued, whenthe justice of a question is not the criterion by whichit is judged. All that such a foundation can be expectedto do is to render the advantages of learningas accessible as possible, upon reasonable terms, thatgenius, not wealth alone, may be able to avail itself ofits advantages. If the present sum be too high, let itsreduction be considered with a view to any practicablechange. The pecuniary resources of the collegian itbecomes no part of the duty of the university to control, beyond the demands necessary for the main objectof instruction. As the circumstances of parents vary, so will the pecuniary allowance made to their offspring. It would be a task neither practicable nor justifiablefor the university to regulate the outlay of the collegian, or, in fact, become the paymaster of his menus plaisirs. Only let such a task be imagined in its enormity ofcontrol, from the son of the nobleman with an allowanceof a thousand a year to one of a hundred andfifty pounds. It is not in the college, but prior to thearrival there of the youth, that he should be instructedin the views his relations have in sending him, and betaught that he must not ape the outlay and show ofthose who have larger means. If a youth orders adozen coats within a time for which one only wouldbe found adequate, I do not see what his college hasto do with it. Youths entering the navy and armyare left in a much more extended field of temptation. No time-hallowed walls shelter them. No salutarycollege rules remind them of their moral duties, dailyand almost hourly. They go up and down the worldunder their own guardianship, exposed to every sinisterinfluence, and with inclinations only restrained by theirown monitorship. The college discipline, even if itextend not beyond college duties, is a perpetualremembrancer of the high moral end for which the student isplaced within its precincts. His only allurement toextravagance is the desire of vying with those who makea greater display than himself, or else it arises from, if possible, a less defensible motive, namely, that ofbecoming himself an object of emulation to others. Itis not the duty of the college authorities to compensateby their watchfulness the effects of a weak understanding, or that lax principle, or the want of self-command, of which the neglect of the parent or guardian hasbeen the cause. If the freshman is destitute ofself-dependence and self-restraint he must suffer fromthe consequences. Not only in the navy and army is youthexposed to temptations very far beyond the collegian, but in the inns of court young men are left to take careof themselves, in the midst of a great capital, withoutany surveillance whatever. From these youths ariseexcellent men of business. Most assuredly under thesurveillance of a college in smaller cities, and wheremany heads of expense are from the nature of theirposition wholly out of the question, it does seem singularthat such complaints should arise. It is true, display is the vice of modern society among the old aswell as the young, and in both cases most dishonestmeans are had recourse to sustain those appearances, which are all the world looks to. It is possible, therefore, that little efforts have been made to initiate youth, prior to entering the universities, in that path ofself-denial and high-mindedness which are the safeguardfrom vicious prodigality. They bring with them thevices of their caste, whatever that caste may be. Youthis imitative, and seldom a clumsy copyist, of the faultsof its elders, provided those faults are fashionable faults, however unprincipled. However this may be, I mustprotest against the universities being made answerablefor these doings. Attempts have been made, and failed, in respect to manners and to credit; and have failedclearly because they were impracticable, and, more thanthat, better left alone. The university ought not to beanswerable in such cases, any more than the benchersfor the Temple students. It cannot be expected thatthe noble quadrangles of our colleges are to becomesomething like poor-law prisons, and the regulations ofthe night be extended over the day. The very existenceof the collegian, as such, implies something likefreedom, both mental and bodily. Learning that isconverted into a tyranny will never bring forth goodfruit. It is the duty of parents and schoolmasters toimpress upon the mind of youth that a seat of learningis the home of an easy frugality rather than of prodigalrivalry; that the university will only give degrees andhonours where there is industry and good moral conduct. It is to be feared that youth, quitting the disciplineof the school, looks upon the university as theplace where he may indulge in his own wayward will, and be as idle and indolent as he please. If this bethe case the university is not to blame for such lapses, but a bad prior apprehension of duty, and a defective, ill-directed education. 

It is impossible to read the biographies of some ofour most celebrated men, and not to see that withmeans scanty enough they were enabled to keep theirterms with honour, and in the end confer additionalcelebrity upon the noble foundations where they hadstudied. If such be the case, we have only the resultof personal good or ill conduct to explain the whole ofthe affair. But enough on this subject. 

But it is not the venerable appearance of UniversityCollege, hallowed by the associations of so manycenturies in age, nor Queen's opposite, nor All Souls', nor any other of the colleges as mere buildings, that soconnect them with our feelings. We must turn themind from stone and wood to the humanity in connectionwith them. It is that which casts over themthe "religious light, " speaking so sadly and sweetly tothe heart. In University College we see the gloriousname of Alfred, and nearly a thousand years, with theirperished annals, point to it as the witness of theirdeparted successions. Who on seeing New Collegedoes not recall William of Wykeham? and then, whata roll of proud names own this renowned universityfor their Alma Mater. The very stones "prate of thewhereabout" of things connected with the developmentof great minds, and while we look without fatigue atthe gorgeous mass of buildings in this university, wefeel we are contemplating what carries an intimateconnexion, in object at least, with that all of man whichmarches in the track of eternity. It is not mere antiquity, therefore, on which our reverence for a greatseminary of learning is founded. Priority of existencehas no solid claims to our regard, except for that verdeantique which covers it, as it covers all things past. Good or indifferent; it is the connexion of the foundationwith the history of man--with the names that, likethe flowers called "immortals, " bloom amid the wrecksand desolateness with which the flood of ages strew therearway of humankind. 

Of late there has been small response to feelingssuch as these in the great world, for we have not beenlooking much toward what is above us, nor discriminatingfrom meaner things those which approach toheroic natures. We must abandon Mammon, politics, and polemics, when we would approach the thresholdof elevated meditation--when we dwell on the illustriousnames of the past, and tread over the stones which theytrod. I never wandered along the banks of the sedgyCam, at that lone, twilight hour, when the dimness ofexternal objects tends most to concentrate the facultiesupon the immediate object of contemplation, but Ihave fancied the shades of Bacon, Milton, or Locke, to be near me, as the Indian fancies the shades of hisfathers haunt the old hunting-grounds of his race. Iknow that these are heterodox feelings in the presentday. I know that he who speaks of Homer or Milton, for example, is continually answered by the question, "Who reads them now?" The truth being, perhaps, that we are getting too far below them to relish theirsuperior standard in sterling merit. But there are stillin our universities, if not elsewhere, some who arecontent to be the last of the Goths in the estimationof the multitude, who cannot see the Isis, or Cherwell, or the reedy Cam, without feelings of which the crowdknows nothing; who can dream away an hour in theavenue of Christ Church, and almost conjure spiritsfrom the depths of the grave to realize the pictures ofimagination, which are there always invested with purityand holiness, so much do external things impress theircharacter on our imaginings. This is the true poetryof life, neither found in the haunts of fashion, noramong the denizens of Cornhill or St. Giles'. The goodand deep things of the mind, the search into the secretsof nature, the sublimest truth, the purest philosophy ofwhich man has to boast, has proceeded from those whowere inhabitants of such seats of learning. It isimpossible to state the precise amount of assistance whichgenius and learning may derive from the ease and peaceenjoyed in such a university. They are inestimable tothe student from association, tranquillity, and convenience. The very "dim religious light" of college roomsare solicitations to reflection. Then there are theconveniences of first-rate professors, and access to thewritings of the learned in all ages. Thus some whoprofessed a distaste for a university life, have returnedto it again, and made it the arena where they have conquereda lasting reputation--such, for example, was thecase with Gray the poet. 

The increase of knowledge, and consequently ofmorality, is the great aim of such a noble establishmentas this; and the rewards and honours dispensed thereare bestowed in proportion to the industry and goodconduct of those who receive them. If the offences offreshmen outside the walls be unvisited by the universityfrom wariness in the offenders, or the impossibility ofcontrolling them, they are certain to meet with a justestimation of their demerit here; and, as before noticed, this is perhaps the best mode of repressing them. Theassistance derived by the industrious student from theuniversity itself is invaluable. The very locality is anaid to progress. Where can there be places morefavourable for thought than those noble buildings, ancient halls, and delightful walks? Everything invitesto contemplation. Magdalen always seemed to me asif soliciting the student's presence in a peculiar manner. A favourite resort of mine, at certain times, was the roadpassing the Observatory, leading to Woodstock. Butof all the college walks, those of Magdalen were themore impressive and attractive. It appeared to embodythe whole of the noble city in its own personification, as a single word will sometimes express the pith of anentire sentence. The "Mighty Tom" in the oldentime, even of Walter de Mapes, if its metal was thenout of the ore, never sounded (then perhaps not nine)but the midnight hour, to that worthy archdeacon, withmore of the character of its locality, than the visualaspect of Magdalen represents the beautiful city to onein its entirety. It seems a sort of metonymy; Maudlinput for Oxford. The walk is, after all, but a sober path, worthy by association with one of the walks of Eden. Yet it shows no gay foliage, nor "shade above shadea woody theatre, " such as is seen on a mountaindeclivity. It is a simple shadowy walk--shadowy torichness, cool, tranquil, redolent of freshness. Therethe soul feels "private, inactive, calm, contemplative, "linked to things that were and are not. The mellowhue of time, not yet stricken by decay, clothes thebuildings of this college, which, compared with otheredifices more steeped in maturity of years, occupies, as it were, a middle term in existence. 

The variety of building in this city is amazing, andwould occupy a very considerable time to study evenimperfectly. At a little distance no place impresses themind more justly with its own lofty pretensions. Thetowers, steeples, and domes, rising over the masses offoliage beneath, which conceal the bodies of the edifices, seen at the break of morning or at sunset, appearin great beauty. Bathed in light, although not the"alabaster tipped with golden spires" of the poet, foreven the climate of Oxford is no exception to thedefacement of nature's colouring, everywhere that coalsmoke ascends; but the tout ensemble is truly poeticaland magnificent. 

Oriel still, they say, maintains its precedency ofteaching its students how to conduct themselves with aview to university honours, and to the world's respect. The preliminary examinations there have proved atouchstone of merit, and elevated Oriel College intosomething near the envy of every other in this country. Worthy Oriel, the star of Oxford. "I don't know howit is, " said the Rev. C. C. , walking down High Street oneday, "but Oriel College is all I envy Oxford. It is therichest gem in the ephod of the high-priest (vice-chancellor)of this university. I should like to stealand transplant it to my Alma Mater among the fens. "

There was formerly a Welsh harper in Oxford, whomthe collegians sometimes denominated King David. He was the first of the Cymri brotherhood I ever heardperform. Since that distant day I have often heardthose minstrels in their native land, particularly inNorth Wales, at Bedd Gelert, Caernarvon, and otherplaces, but I confess I never was so much struck as bythis Oxford harper. He often played at the Angel, where the university men used to group round him, forhe excited general admiration. His music was not of soplaintive a character as that in his own land, or else thescenery of the latter had some effect in saddening themusic there through association--perhaps this differencewas, after all, only in fancy. 

Christchurch, the noblest of the churches! Howhave I heard with delight its merry peal of bells, and thedeep resonance of the "Mighty Tom, " that sounds withno "friendly voice" the call home of the students still, I presume, as it did so many years ago! There is along list of names, of no mean reputation, educatedhere, since the rapacious Henry VIII. Seized thefoundations, which had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey. Thegratitude of posterity, never very strong, has in thepresent case preserved the remembrance of Wolsey, if I recollect aright, by a statue of the proud man inhis cardinal's robes. The grove of trees belonging toChristchurch, and the scenery accompanying the entirebuildings, are eminently impressive. Here, when divineservice is celebrating, there is a peculiar propriety, orrather adaptation of the architecture to the feeling; thetrees, and every accompaniment, are suitable to the end. There is religion or its sentiment addressing the mindhere through every sense. All that can raise devotionin external appliances, combines in a wonderful manner;and when the sound of the organ is reverberated deeplyalong the vaulted roofs and walls, the effect wasindescribably fine. Christchurch walk or meadow is anadjunct to this college, such as few places possess. Ihave trod it with those who will never tread it again. Ihave skimmed over its smooth shaven surface when lifeseemed a vista of unmeasured years. Its very beautytouches upon a melancholy chord, since it vibrates thesound of time passed away with those who lie in dust indistant climates, of whom memory alone is now the onlyrecord that they were and are not. 

I remember being told by an eminent, but ageddoctor in divinity, who had been the better part of hislife employed in the education of youth, that he hadkept an account of the history of all his pupils as far ashe could obtain it, and they were very numerous. Fromhis own tuition--and there were some celebrated namesamongst them--he traced them to the university, or toprofessions of a more active nature than a sojournat the university would allow. To Oxford he hadsent the larger number of his pupils. "And afterwards, doctor?" "Some came off nobly there: othersI heard of in distant parts of the globe in their country'sservice: but it is the common tale with nearly all ofthem--they are dead. " What hosts, I often thought, who had moved among, the deep shades of this universityuntil it became entwined with their earliest affections--who had studied within those embattled walls untilthe sight of them became almost a part of his existence--what hosts of such have but served to swell thewaters of oblivion, and press the associations of acommon mortality upon the mind in the reflection onthis very truism! The late Sir Egerton Brydges--awriter whose talents, though admitted, were neverreceived as they merited to have been by the world, owing, perhaps, to an untoward disposition in otherrespects--was of opinion that the calmness andseclusion of a university were not best adapted for callingforth the efforts of genius; but that adversity and somestruggling were necessary to bring out greatness ofcharacter. He thought that praise enervated the mind, and that to bear it required a much greater degree offortitude than to withstand censure. The consequenceof this would be, that the honours decreed in auniversity must be pernicious to youth. This cannot beconceded. Sir Egerton's notion may be just in relation tohimself, or to one or two temperaments irregularly constituted;but a university exists not for the exceptions, but for themany. How numerous is the list of those who, but for thefostering care of Oxford or Cambridge, would have never beenknown as the ornament and delight of their fellow-men!How much more numerous is the list of those, whose abilitiesnot rising beyond the circle of social usefulness have lived"obscure to fame, " yet owe the pleasure they impartedto their friends, and the beguilement of many troublesinseparable from mortality, to the fruits of their universitystudies, and to a partial unrolling before them of thatmap of knowledge, which before those of loftier claimsand some hold upon fame had been more amply displayed!In this view of the matter, the justness ofwhich cannot be contested, the utility of such foundationsis boundless. The effect upon the social body. --I do not speak of polemics, but of the sound instructionthus made available--cannot be estimated. In the midstof fluctuating systems of instruction, it is something tohave a standard by which to test the measure ofknowledge imparted to youth. If accused of beingrestricted in variety of knowledge, the perfection andmastery in what is taught must be conceded to Oxfordand Cambridge. Perhaps there is too much reason tofear, that without these foundations we should speedilyfall into a very superficial knowledge, indeed, of theclassical languages of antiquity. This would be toexclude ourselves from an acquaintance with all past time, except in monkish fiction and the feudal barbarism ofthe Goths of the north. 

There are, I verily believe, or I should rather saythere were, imbibed at the university so many attachmentsat one time to words in place of things, that thecollegian in after life became liable to reproach uponthis head. Pedants are bred everywhere out of literature, and the variety in verbiage once exhibited by someuniversity men has been justly condemned. But whilesuch word-worms were crawling here and there out ofthe porches of our colleges, giants in acquirement werestriding over them in their petty convolutions. Theirintertwinings attracted the attention of the mere gazer, who is always more stricken with any microcosmicobject that comes casually in the way and is embracedat a glance, than with objects the magnitude of whichdemand repeated examinations. But all this while thegreat and glorious spring of knowledge was unpolluted. The reign of mere verbiage passed away; the benefitsof the universities had never ceased to be impartedthe whole time. The key to the better stores ofknowledge was placed in the hands of every one who choseto avail himself of its advantages. The minds of thecollegians were filled with an affection for the works ofthe writers of antiquity, which have been the guide, solace, and pleasure of the greatest and most accomplishedmen since the Christian era commenced. Studieswill teach their own use in after life "by the wisdomthat is about them and above them, won by observation, "as a great writer observes; but then there must be thestudies. 

There seems of late years much less of that feelingfor poetry than once existed; the same may be observedin respect to classical learning. Few now regard howperished nations lived and passed away, --how menthought, acted, and were moved, for example, in thetime of Pericles or the Roman Augustus. What arethey to us? What is blind Meonides to us, or thatRoman who wrote odes so beautifully--who understoodso well the philosophy of life and the poetry of lifeat the spring of Bardusia? In the past generation, apart of the adolescent being and of manhood extendeda kindly feeling towards them. We hear no admirationof those immortal strains now. We must turn forthem to our universities. People are getting shy of them, as rich men shirk poor friends. Are we in the decliningstate, that of "mechanical arts and merchandize, "to use Lord Bacon's phrase, and is our middle age oflearning past? Even then, thank Heaven, we have ouruniversities still, where we may, for a time at least, enter and converse with the spirits of the good, that"sit in the clouds and mock" the rest of the greedyworld. They will last our time--glorious mementos ofthe anxiety of our forefathers for the preservation oflearning; hallowed by grateful recollections, by time, renown, virtue, conquests over ignorance, imperishablegratitude, a proud roll of mighty names in their sons, and the prospect of continuing to be monuments ofglory to unborn generations. Long may Oxford andCambridge stand and brighten with years, though tosome they may not, as they do to me, exhibit a title tothe gratitude and admiration of Old England, to whichit would be difficult to point out worthy rivals. 

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ENGLAND'S FORGOTTEN WORTHIES

The Reformation, the Antipodes, the American Continent, the Planetary system, and the Infinite deep ofthe Heavens have now become common and familiarfacts to us. Globes and orreries are the playthings ofour school-days; we inhale the spirit of Protestantismwith our earliest breath of consciousness; it is all butimpossible to throw back our imagination into the timewhen, as new grand discoveries, they stirred every mindwhich they touched with awe and wonder at the revelationwhich God had sent down among mankind. Vastspiritual and material continents lay for the first timedisplayed, opening fields of thought and fields ofenterprise of which none could conjecture the limit. Oldroutine was broken up. Men were thrown back ontheir own strength and their own power, unshackledto accomplish whatever they might dare. And althoughwe do not speak of these discoveries as the cause ofthat enormous force of heart and intellect whichaccompanied them (for they were as much the effectas the cause, and one reacted on the other), yet atany rate they afforded scope and room for the playof powers which, without such scope, let them havebeen as transcendent as they would, must have passedaway unproductive and blighted. 

An earnest faith in the supernatural, an intenselyreal conviction of the divine and devilish forces bywhich the universe was guided and misguided, wasthe inheritance of the Elizabethan age from CatholicChristianity. The fiercest and most lawless men didthen really and truly believe in the actual personalpresence of God or the devil in every accident, or scene, or action. They brought to the contemplation of thenew heaven and the new earth an imagination saturatedwith the spiritual convictions of the old era, whichwere not lost, but only infinitely expanded. Theplanets whose vastness they now learnt to recognizewere, therefore, only the more powerful for evil or forgood; the tides were the breathing of Demogorgon;and the idolatrous American tribes were real worshippersof the real devil, and were assisted with thefull power of his evil army. 

It is a form of thought which, however in a vagueand general way we may continue to use its phraseology, has become, in its detailed application to life, utterlystrange to us. We congratulate ourselves on theenlargement of our understanding when we read thedecisions of grave law-courts in cases of supposedwitchcraft; we smile complacently over Raleigh's storyof the island of the Amazons, and rejoice that we arenot such as he--entangled in the cobwebs of effeteand foolish superstition. The true conclusion is theopposite of the conclusion which we draw. ThatRaleigh and Bacon could believe what they believed, and could be what they were notwithstanding, is tous a proof that the injury which such mistakes caninflict is unspeakably insignificant: and arising, as theyarose, from a never-failing sense of the real awfulnessand mystery of the world, and of the life of humansouls upon it, they witness to the presence in suchminds of a spirit, the loss of which not the most perfectacquaintance with every law by which the whole creationmoves can compensate. We wonder at the grandeur, the moral majesty, of some of Shakespeare's characters, so far beyond what the noblest among ourselves canimitate, and at first thought we attribute it to thegenius of the poet who has outstripped nature in hiscreations; but we are misunderstanding the powerand the meaning of poetry in attributing creativenessto it in any such sense; Shakespeare created, but onlyas the spirit of nature created around him, workingin him as it worked abroad in those among whom helived. The men whom he draws were such men as hesaw and knew; the words they utter were such as heheard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, andat a thousand un-named English firesides, he foundthe living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closerpersonal acquaintance which we can form with theEnglish of the age of Elizabeth, the more we aresatisfied that Shakespeare's great poetry is no morethan the rhythmic echo of the life which it depicts. 

It was, therefore, with no little interest that weheard of the formation of a society which was to employitself, as we understood, in republishing in accessibleform some, if not all, of the invaluable records compiledor composed by Richard Hakluyt. Books, like everythingelse, have their appointed death-day; the soulsof them, unless they be found worthy of a second birthin a new body, perish with the paper in which theylived, and the early folio Hakluyts, not from theirown want of merit, but from our neglect of them, wereexpiring of old age. The five-volume quarto edition, published in 1811, so little people then cared for theexploits of their ancestors, was but of 270 copies;it was intended for no more than for curious antiquaries, or for the great libraries, where it could beconsulted as a book of reference; and among a people, the greater part of whom had never heard Hakluyt'sname, the editors are scarcely to be blamed if it neverso much as occurred to them that general readers wouldever come to care to have it within their reach. 

And yet those five volumes may be called the ProseEpic of the modern English nation. They contain theheroic tales of the exploits of the great men in whomthe new era was inaugurated; not mythic, like theIliads and the Eddas, but plain broad narratives ofsubstantial facts, which rival them in interest andgrandeur. What the old epics were to the royally ornobly born, this modern epic is to the common people. We have no longer kings or princes for chief actors, towhom the heroism, like the dominion, of the world hadin time past been confined. But, as it was in the daysof the apostles, when a few poor fishermen from anobscure lake in Palestine assumed, under the divinemission, the spiritual authority over mankind, so, inthe days of our own Elizabeth, the seamen from thebanks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym and theDart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse butwhat was beating in their own royal hearts, went outacross the unknown seas fighting, discovering, colonizing, and grayed out the channels, and at last paved themwith their bones, through which the commerce andenterprise of England has flowed out over all theworld. We can conceive nothing, not the songs ofHomer himself, which would be read, among us atleast, with more enthusiastic interest than these plainmassive tales; and a people's edition of them in thesedays, when the writings of Ainsworth and Eugene Suecirculate in tens of thousands, would perhaps be themost blessed antidote which could be bestowed uponus. The heroes themselves were the men of the people--the Joneses, the Smiths, the Davises, the Drakes;and no courtly pen, with the one exception of Raleigh, lent its polish or its varnish to set them off. In mostcases the captain himself, or his clerk or servant, orsome unknown gentleman volunteer, sat down andchronicled the voyage which he had shared, and thusinorganically arose a collection of writings which, withall their simplicity, are for nothing more striking thanfor the high moral beauty, warmed with natural feeling, which displays itself through all their pages. With us, the sailor is scarcely himself beyond his quarter-deck. If he is distinguished in his profession, he is professionalmerely; or if he is more than that, he owes it not tohis work as a sailor, but to independent domesticculture. With them their profession was the schoolof their nature, a high moral education which mostbrought out what was most nobly human in them; andthe wonders of earth, and air, and sea, and sky, were areal intelligible language in which they heard AlmightyGod speaking to them. 

That such hopes of what might be accomplished bythe Hakluyt Society should in some measure be disappointed, is only what might naturally be anticipatedof all very sanguine expectation. Cheap editions areexpensive editions to the publisher, and historicalsocieties, from a necessity which appears to encumberall corporate English action, rarely fail to do their workexpensively and infelicitously; yet, after all allowancesand deductions, we cannot reconcile ourselves to themortification of having found but one volume in theseries to be even tolerably edited, and that one to beedited by a gentleman to whom England is but anadopted country--Sir Robert Schomburgk. Raleigh's"Conquest of Guiana, " with Sir Robert's sketch ofRaleigh's history and character, form in everything butits cost a very model of an excellent volume. Forevery one of the rest we are obliged to say of them, that they have left little undone to paralyze whateverinterest was reviving in Hakluyt, and to consign theirown volumes to the same obscurity to which time andaccident were consigning the earlier editions. Verylittle which was really noteworthy escaped the industryof Hakiuyt himself, and we looked to find reprints ofthe most remarkable of the stories which were to befound in his collection. They began unfortunatelywith proposing to continue the work where he hadleft it, and produce narratives hitherto unpublishedof other voyages of inferior interest, or not of Englishorigin. Better thoughts appear to have occurredto them in the course of the work; but their evildestiny overtook them before their thoughts could getthemselves executed. We opened one volume witheagerness, bearing the title of "Voyages to the Northwest, "in hope of finding our old friends Davis andFrobisher, and we found a vast unnecessary Editor'sPreface; and instead of the voyages themselves, whichwith their picturesqueness and moral beauty shineamong the fairest jewels in the diamond mine ofHakluyt, an analysis and digest of their results, which Milton was called in to justify in an inappropriatequotation. It is much as if they had undertaken toedit "Bacon's Essays, " and had retailedwhat they conceived to be the substance of them intheir own language; strangely failing to see that thereal value of the actions or the thought of remarkablemen does not lie in the material result which can begathered from them, but in the heart and soul of thosewho do or utter them. Consider what Homer's"Odyssey" would be, reduced into an analysis. 

The editor of the "Letters of Columbus" apologizesfor the rudeness of their phraseology. Columbus, hetells us, was not so great a master of the pen as of theart of navigation. We are to make excuses for him. We are put on our guard, and warned not to beoffended, before we are introduced to the sublime recordof sufferings under which his great soul was staggeringtowards the end of its earthly calamities, where theinarticulate fragments in which his thought breaks outfrom him, are strokes of natural art by the side ofwhich the highest literary pathos is poor and meaningless. 

And even in the subjects which they select they arepursued by the same curious fatality. Why is Draketo be best known, or to be only known, in his lastvoyage? Why pass over the success, and endeavour toimmortalize the failure? When Drake climbed the treein Panama, and saw both oceans, and vowed that hewould sail a ship in the Pacific; when he crawled outupon the cliffs of Terra del Fuego, and leaned his headover the southernmost angle of the world; when hescored a furrow round the globe with his keel, andreceived the homage of the barbarians of the antipodesin the name of the Virgin Queen; he was another manfrom what he had become after twenty years of courtlife and intrigue, and Spanish fighting, and gold-hunting. There is a tragic solemnity in his end, if we take it asthe last act of his career; but it is his life, not his death, which we desire--not what he failed to do, but whathe did. 

But every bad has a worse below it, and more offensivethan all these is the editor of Hawkins's "Voyage tothe South Sea. " The book is striking in itself; it isnot one of the best, but it is very good; and as it isrepublished complete, if we read it through, carefullyshutting off Captain Bethune's notes with one hand, we shall then find in it the same beauty which breathesin the tone of all the writings of the period. 

It is a record of misfortune, but of misfortune whichdid no dishonour to him who sunk under it; and thereis a melancholy dignity in the style in which Hawkinstells his story, which seems to say, that though he hadbeen defeated, and had never again an opportunity ofwinning back his lost laurels, he respects himself stillfor the heart with which he endured a shame whichwould have broken a smaller man. It would haverequired no large exertion of editorial self-denial tohave abstained from marring the pages with puns ofwhich Punch would be ashamed, and with the vulgaraffectation of patronage with which the sea captain ofthe nineteenth century condescends to criticize andapprove of his half-barbarous precursor; but it musthave been a defect in his heart, rather than in hisunderstanding, which betrayed him into such an offenceas this which follows. The war of freedom of theAraucan Indians is the most gallant episode in thehistory of the New World. The Spaniards themselveswere not behindhand in acknowledging the chivalry beforewhich they quailed, and, after many years of ineffectualattempts to crush them, they gave up a conflict which theynever afterwards resumed; leaving the Araucans alone, of all the American races with which they came incontact, a liberty which they were unable to tear fromthem. It is a subject for an epic poem, and whateveradmiration is due to the heroism of a brave peoplewhom no inequality of strength could appal and nodefeats could crush, these poor Indians have a right todemand of us. The story of the war was well known inEurope: and Hawkins, in coasting the western shores ofSouth America, fell in with them, and the finest passagein his book is the relation of one of the incidents ofthe war. 

"An Indian captain was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and for that he was of name, and known to have donehis devoir against them, they cut off his hands, therebyintending to disenable him to fight any more against them. But he, returning home, desirous to revenge this injury, to maintain his liberty, with the reputation of his nation, and to help to banish the Spaniard, with his tongue intreatedand incited them to persevere in their accustomedvalour and reputation, abasing the enemy and advancinghis nation; condemning their contraries of cowardliness. And confirming it by the cruelty used with him and otherhis companions in their mishaps; showing them his armswithout hands, and naming his brethren whose half feetthey had cut off, because they might be unable to sit onhorseback: with force arguing that if they feared them not. They would not have used so great inhumanity--for fearproduceth cruelty, the companion of cowardice. Thusencouraged he them to fight for their lives, limbs, andliberty, choosing rather to die an honourable death fighting, than to live in servitude as fruitless members of thecommonwealth. Thus using the office of a sergeant-major, andhaving loaden his two stumps with bundles of arrows, hesuccoured them who, in the succeeding battle, had theirstore wasted; and changing himself from place to place, animated and encouraged his countrymen with such comfortablepersuasions, as it is reported and credibly believed, that he did more good with his words and presence, without striking a stroke, than a great part of the armydid with fighting to the utmost. "

It is an action which may take its place by the sideof the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit ofthat brother of the poet AEschylus, who, when the Persianswere flying from Marathon, clung to a ship tillboth his hands were hewn away, and then seized itwith his teeth, leaving his name as a portent even inthe splendid calendar of Athenian heroes. CaptainBethune, without call or need, making his notes merely, as he tells us, from the suggestions of his own mind ashe revised the proof-sheets, informs us, at the bottomof the page, that "it reminds him of the familiarlines, --

"For Widdrington I needs must wail, As one in doleful dumps;For, when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon his stumps. "

It must not avail him, that he has but quoted from theballad of Chevy Chase. It is the most deformed stanza *of the modern deformed version which was composedin the eclipse of heart and taste, on the restoration ofthe Stuarts; and if such verses could then pass forserious poetry, they have ceased to sound in any ear asother than a burlesque; the associations which theyarouse are only absurd, and they could only havecontinued to ring in his memory through their ludicrousdoggerel. ____* Here is the old stanza. Let whoever is disposed to think ustoo hard on Captain Bethune compare them. 

"For Wetharrington my harte was wo, That even he slayne sholde be;For when both his leggis were hewen in to, He knyied and fought on his knee. "

Even Percy, who, on the whole, thinks well of the modern ballad, gives up this stanza as hopeless. ____

When to these offences of the Society we add, thatin the long laboured appendices and introductions, which fill up valuable space, which increase theexpense of the edition, and into reading which manyreaders are, no doubt, betrayed, we have found nothingwhich assists the understanding of the stories whichthey are supposed to illustrate, when we have found whatis most uncommon passed without notice, and what ismost trite and familiar encumbered with comment: wehave unpacked our hearts of the bitterness which thesevolumes have aroused in us, and can now take our leaveof them and go on with our own more grateful subject. 

Elizabeth, whose despotism was as peremptory as thatof the Plantagenets, and whose ideas of the Englishconstitution were limited in the highest degree, was, notwithstanding, more beloved by her subjects thanany sovereign before or since. It was because, substantially, she was the people's sovereign; because itwas given to her to conduct the outgrowth of thenational life through its crisis of change, and the weightof her great mind and her great place were thrown onthe people's side. She was able to paralyze the dyingefforts with which, if a Stuart had been on the throne, the representatives of an effete system might have madethe struggle a deadly one; and the history of Englandis not the history of France, because the inflexible willof one person held the Reformation firm till it hadrooted itself in the heart of the nation, and could notbe again overthrown. The Catholic faith was no longerable to furnish standing ground on which the Englishor any other nation could live a manly and a godlylife. Feudalism, as a social organization, was not anymore a system under which their energies could havescope to move. Thenceforward not the Catholic Church, but any man to whom God had given a heart to feeland a voice to speak, was to be the teacher to whommen were to listen; and great actions were not toremain the privilege of the families of the Normannobles, but were to be laid within the reach of thepoorest plebeian who had the stuff in him to performthem. Alone, of all the sovereigns in Europe, Elizabethsaw the change which had passed over the world. Shesaw it, and saw it in faith, and accepted it. TheEngland of the Catholic Hierarchy and the Norman Baron, was to cast its shell and to become the England of freethought and commerce and manufacture, which was toplough the ocean with its navies, and sow its coloniesover the globe; and the first thunder birth of theseenormous forces and the flash of the earliest achievements ofthe new era roll and glitter through the forty years of thereign of Elizabeth with a grandeur which, when once itshistory is written, will be seen to be among the mostsublime phenomena which the earth as yet has witnessed. The work was not of her creation; the heart of thewhole English nation was stirred to its depths; andElizabeth's place was to recognize, to love, to foster, and to guide. The government originated nothing;at such a time it was neither necessary nor desirablethat it should do so; but wherever expensive enterpriseswere on foot which promised ultimate good, but noimmediate profit, we never fail to find among the listsof contributors the Queen's Majesty, Burleigh, Leicester, Walsingham. Never chary of her presence, for Elizabethcould afford to condescend, when ships were fitting fordistant voyages in the river, the Queen would go downin her barge and inspect. Frobisher, who was but apoor sailor adventurer, sees her wave her handkerchiefto him from the Greenwich Palace windows, and hebrings her home a narwhal's horn for a present. Shehonoured her people, and her people loved her; andthe result was that, with no cost to the government, she saw them scattering the fleets of the Spaniards, planting America with colonies, and exploring the mostdistant seas. Either for honour or for expectation ofprofit, or from that unconscious necessity by which agreat people, like a great man, will do what is right, andmust do it at the right time, whoever had the means tofurnish a ship, and whoever had the talent to commandone, laid their abilities together and went out to pioneer, and to conquer, and take possession, in the name ofthe Queen of the Sea. There was no nation so remotebut what some one or other was found ready to undertakean expedition there, in the hope of opening a trade;and let them go where they would, they were sure ofElizabeth's countenance. We find letters written byher, for the benefit of nameless adventurers, to everypotentate of whom she had ever heard, to the Emperorsof China, Japan, and India, the Grand Duke of Russia, the Grand Turk, the Persian Sofee, and other unheardofAsiatic and African princes; whatever was to bedone in England, or by Englishmen, Elizabeth assistedwhen she could, and admired when she could not. Thesprings of great actions are always difficult to analyze--impossible to analyze perfectly--possible to analyzeonly very proximately, and the force by which a manthrows a good action out of himself is invisible andmystical, like that which brings out the blossom andthe fruit upon the tree. The motives which we findmen urging for their enterprises seem often insufficientto have prompted them to so large a daring. They didwhat they did from the great unrest in them whichmade them do it, and what it was may be best measuredby the results, by the present England and America. Nevertheless, there was enough in the state of theworld, and in the position of England, to have furnishedabundance of conscious motive, and to have stirred thedrowsiest routinier statesman. 

Among material occasions for exertion, the populationbegan to outgrow the employment, and therewas a necessity for plantations to serve as an outlet. Men who, under happier circumstances, might haveled decent lives, and done good service, were nowdriven by want to desperate courses--"witness, " asRichard Hakluyt says, "twenty tall fellows hanged lastRochester assizes for small robberies;" and there is anadmirable paper addressed to the Privy Council byChristopher Carlile, Walsingham's son-in-law, pointingout the possible openings to be made in or through. Such plantations for home produce and manufacture. 

Far below all such prudential economics and mercantileambitions, however, lay a noble enthusiasm whichin these dull days we can hardly, without an effort, realize. The life-and-death wrestle between the Reformationand the old religion had settled in the last quarterof the sixteenth century into a permanent strugglebetween England and Spain. France was disabled. All the help which Elizabeth could spare barely enabledthe Netherlands to defend themselves. Protestantism, if it conquered, must conquer on another field; and bythe circumstances of the time the championship of theReformed faith fell to the English sailors. The swordof Spain was forged in the gold-mines of Peru; thelegions of Alva were only to be disarmed by interceptingthe gold ships on their passage; and, inspired by anenthusiasm like that which four centuries before hadprecipitated the chivalry of Europe upon the East, thesame spirit which in its present degeneracy covers ourbays and rivers with pleasure yachts then fitted outarmed privateers, to sweep the Atlantic, and plunderand destroy Spanish ships wherever they could meetthem. 

Thus, from a combination of causes, the whole forceand energy of the age was directed towards the sea. The wide excitement and the greatness of the interestsat stake, raised even common men above themselves;and people who in ordinary times would have been nomore than mere seamen, or mere money-making merchants, appear before us with a largeness and greatnessof heart and mind in which their duties to God andtheir country are alike clearly and broadly seen and feltto be paramount to every other. 

Ordinary English traders we find fighting Spanish warships in behalf of the Protestant faith; the cruisers ofthe Spanish main were full of generous eagerness for theconversion of the savage nations to Christianity; andwhat is even more surprising, sites for colonization wereexamined and scrutinized by such men in a lofty statesmanlikespirit, and a ready insight was displayed bythem into the indirect effects of a wisely-extendedcommerce on every highest human interest. 

Again, in the conflict with the Spaniards, there was afurther feeling, a feeling of genuine chivalry, which wasspurring on the English, and one which must be wellunderstood and well remembered, if men like Drake, and Hawkins, and Raleigh, are to be tolerably understood. One of the English Reviews, a short time ago, was much amused with a story of Drake having excommunicateda petty officer as a punishment for somemoral offence; the reviewer not being able to see inDrake, as a man, anything more than; a highly braveand successful buccaneer, whose pretences to religionmight rank with the devotion of an Italian bandit to theMadonna. And so Hawkins, and even Raleigh, areregarded by superficial persons, who see only such outwardcircumstances of their history as correspond withtheir own impressions. The high nature of these men, and the high objects which they pursued, will only riseout and become visible to us as we can throw ourselvesback into their times and teach our hearts to feel asthey felt. We do not find in the language of thevoyagers themselves, or of those who lent them theirhelp at home, any of that weak watery talk of "protectionof aborigines, " which as soon as it is translatedinto fact becomes the most active policy for theirdestruction, soul and body. But the stories of thedealings of the Spaniards with the conquered Indians, which were widely known in England, seem to haveaffected all classes of people, not with pious passivehorror, but with a genuine human indignation. Athousand anecdotes in detail we find scattered up anddown the pages of Hakluyt, who, with a view to makethem known, translated Peter Martyr's letters; andeach commonest sailor-boy who had heard them fromhis childhood among the tales of his father's fire-side, had longed to be a man, that he might go out andbecome the avenger of a gallant and suffering people. A high mission, undertaken with a generous heart;seldom fails to make those worthy of it to whom it isgiven; and it was a point of honour, if of nothing more, among the English sailors, to do no discredit by theirconduct to the greatness of their cause. The highcourtesy, the chivalry of the Spanish nobles, soconspicuous in their dealings with their European rivals, eitherfailed to touch them in their dealings with uncultivatedidolaters, or the high temper of the aristocracy wasunable to restrain or to influence the masses of thesoldiers. It would be as ungenerous as it would be untrue, to charge upon their religion the grievous actionsof men who called themselves the armed missionaries ofCatholicism, when the Catholic priests and bishopswere the loudest in the indignation with which theydenounced them. But we are obliged to charge uponit that slow and subtle influence so inevitably exercisedby any religion which is divorced from life, and convertedinto a thing of form, or creed, or ceremony, or system, which could permit the same men to be extravagant ina sincere devotion to the Queen of Heaven, whoseentire lower nature, unsubdued and unaffected, wasgiven up to thirst of gold, and plunder, and sensuality. If religion does not make men more humane than theywould be without it, it makes them fatally less so; andit is to be feared that the spirit of the pilgrim fathers, which had oscillated to the other extreme, and hadagain crystallized into a formal antinomian fanaticism, reproduced the same fatal results as those in which theSpaniards had set them their unworthy precedent. Butthe Elizabethan navigators, full without exception oflarge kindness, wisdom, gentleness, and beauty, bearnames untainted, as far as we know, with a single crimeagainst the savages; and the name of England was asfamous in the Indian seas as that of Spain wasinfamous. On the banks of the Oronooko there wasremembered for a hundred years the noble captain whohad come there from the great Queen beyond the seas;and Raleigh speaks the language of the heart of hiscountry, when he urges the English statesmen to colonizeGuiana, and exults in the glorious hope of drivingthe white marauder into the Pacific, and restoring theIncas to the throne of Peru. 

"Who will not be persuaded, " he says, "that now at lengththe great Judge of the world hath heard the sighs, groans, and lamentations, hath seen the tears and blood of so manymillions of innocent men, women, and children, afflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot irons, roasted, dismembered, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked, scalded with hotoil, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, famished, devoured bymastiffs, burned, and by infinite cruelties consumed, andpurposeth to scourge and plague that cursed nation, and totake the yoke of servitude from that distressed people, asfree by nature as any Christian. "

Poor Raleigh! if peace and comfort in this worldwere of much importance to him, it was in an ill daythat he provoked the revenge of Spain. The strengthof England was needed at the moment at its own door;the Armada came, and there was no means of executingsuch an enterprise. And afterwards the throne ofElizabeth was filled by a Stuart, and Guiana was to beno scene of glory for Raleigh; but, as later historiansare pleased to think, it was the grave of his reputation. 

But the hope burned clear in him through all theweary years of unjust imprisonment; and when he wasa grey-headed old man, the base son of a bad motherused it to betray him. The success of his last enterprisewas made the condition under which he was to bepardoned for a crime which he had not committed; andits success depended, as he knew, on its being keptsecret from the Spaniards. James required of him onhis allegiance a detail of what he proposed, giving himat the same time his word as a king that the secret shouldbe safe with him, and the next day it was sweeping outof the port of London in the swiftest of the Spanishships, with private orders to the Governor of St. Thomasto provoke a collision when Raleigh should arrive there, which should afterwards cost him his heart's blood. 

We modern readers may run rapidly over the series ofepithets under which he has catalogued the Indiansufferings, hoping that they are exaggerated, seeing thatthey are horrible, and closing our eyes against them withswiftest haste; but it was not so when every epithetsuggested a hundred familiar facts; and some of these (notresting on English prejudice, but on sad Spanish evidence, which is too full of shame and sorrow to besuspected) shall be given in this place, however old astory it may be thought; because, as we said above, itis impossible to understand the actions of these men, unless we are familiar with the feelings of which theirhearts were full. 

The massacres under Cortez and Pizarro, terrible asthey were, were not the occasion which stirred thedeepest indignation. They had the excuse of whatmight be called, for want of a better word, necessity, and of the desperate position of small bands of men inthe midst of enemies who might be counted by millions. And in De Soto, when he burnt his guides in Florida(it was his practice when there was danger of treachery, that those who were left alive might take warning); orin Vasco Nunnez, praying to the Virgin on the mountainsof Darien, and going down from off them into thevalleys to hunt the Indian caciques, and fling them aliveto his bloodhounds; there was, at least, with all thisfierceness and cruelty, a desperate courage which wecannot refuse to admire, and which mingles with andcorrects our horror. It is the refinement of the Spaniards'cruelty in the settled and conquered provinces, excusedby no danger and provoked by no resistance, the detailsof which witness to the infernal coolness with which itwas perpetrated; and the great bearing of the Indiansthemselves under an oppression which they despaired ofresisting, which raises the whole history to the rank of aworld-wide tragedy, in which the nobler but weakernature was crushed under a malignant force which wasstronger and yet meaner than itself. Gold huntingand lust were the two passions for which the Spaniardscared; and the fate of the Indian women was only moredreadful than that of the men, who were ganged andchained to a labour in the mines which was only to ceasewith their lives, in a land where but a little before theyhad lived a free contented people, more innocent ofcrime than perhaps any people upon earth. If we canconceive what our own feelings would be, if, in the"development of the mammalia" some baser but morepowerful race than man were to appear upon this planet, and we and our wives and children at our own happyfiresides were degraded from our freedom, and becameto them what the lower animals are to us, we canperhaps realize the feelings of the enslaved nations ofHispaniola. 

As a harsh justification of slavery, it is sometimesurged, that men who do not deserve to be slaves willprefer death to the endurance of it; and that if theyprize their liberty, it is always in their power to assertit in the old Roman fashion. Tried even by so hard arule, the Indians vindicated their right, and beforethe close of the sixteenth century, the entire group ofthe Western Islands in the hands of the Spaniards, containing, when Columbus discovered them, manymillions of inhabitants, were left literally desolate fromsuicide. Of the anecdotes of this terrible self-immolation, as they were then known in England, here are afew out of many. 

The first is simple, and a specimen of the ordinarymethod. A Yucaian cacique, who was forced with hisold subjects to labour in the mines, at last "callingthose miners into an house, to the number of ninety-five, he thus debateth with them:"--

"'My worthy companions and friends, why desire we tolive any longer under so cruel a servitude? Let us now gounto the perpetual seat of our ancestors, for we shall therehave rest from these intolerable cares and grievances whichwe endure under the subjection of the unthankful. Go yebefore, I will presently follow you. ' Having so spoken, heheld out whole handfuls of those leaves which take away life, prepared for the purpose, and giving every one part thereof, being kindled to suck up the fume; who obeyed his command, the king and his chief kinsmen reserving the lastplace for themselves. "

We speak of the crime of suicide, but few personswill see a crime in this sad and stately leave-taking ofa life which it was no longer possible to bear withunbroken hearts. We do not envy the Indian, who, with Spaniards before him as an evidence of the fruitswhich their creed brought forth, deliberately exchangedfor it the old religion of his country, which could sustainhim in an action of such melancholy grandeur. Butthe Indians did not always reply to their oppressorswith escaping passively beyond their hands. Here is astory with matter in it for as rich a tragedy as OEdipusor Agamemnon; and in its stern and tremendousfeatures, more nearly resembling them than any whichwere conceived even by Shakespeare. 

An officer named Orlando had taken the daughterof a Cuban cacique to be his mistress. She was withchild by him, but, suspecting her of being engaged insome other intrigue, he had her fastened to two woodenspits, not intending to kill her, but to terrify her; andsetting her before the fire, he ordered that she shouldbe turned by the servants of the kitchen. 

"The maiden, stricken with fear through the crueltythereof, and strange kind of torment, presently gave up theghost. The cacique her father, understanding the matter, took thirty of his men and went to the house of the captain, who was then absent, and slew his wife, whom he hadmarried after that wicked act committed, and the womenwho were companions of the wife, and her servants everyone. Then shutting the door of the house, and putting fireunder it, he burnt himself and all his companions thatassisted him, together with the captain's dead family andgoods. "

This is no fiction or poet's romance. It is a taleof wrath and revenge, which in sober dreadful truthenacted itself upon this earth, and remains among theeternal records of the doings of mankind upon it. Assome relief to its most terrible features, we follow it witha story which has a touch in it of diabolical humour. 

The slave-owners finding their slaves escaping thusunprosperously out of their grasp, set themselves tofind a remedy for so desperate a disease, and wereswift to avail themselves of any weakness, mental orbodily, through which to retain them in life. One ofthese proprietors being informed that a number of hispeople intended to kill themselves on a certain day, at a particular spot, and knowing by experience thatthey were too likely to do it, presented himself thereat the time which had been fixed upon, and tellingthe Indians when they arrived, that he knew theirintention, and that it was vain for them to attempt tokeep anything a secret from him, he ended with saying, that he had come there to kill himself with them; thatas he had used them ill in this world, he might usethem worse in the next; "with which he did dissuadethem presently from their purpose. " With what efficacysuch believers in the immortality of the soul were likelyto recommend either their faith or their God; rather, how terribly all the devotion and all the earnestnesswith which the poor priests who followed in the wakeof the conquerors laboured to recommend it wereshamed and paralyzed, they themselves too bitterlylament. It was idle to send out governor after governorwith orders to stay such practices. They had but toarrive on the scenes to become infected with the samefever, or if any remnant of Castilian honour, or anyfaintest echoes of the faith which they professed, stillflickered in a few of the best and noblest, they couldbut look on with folded hands in ineffectual mourning;they could do nothing without soldiers, and the soldierswere the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a meredesert; the gold was in the mines, and there were nopoor slaves left remaining to extract it. One meanswhich the Spaniards dared to employ to supply thevacancy, brought about an incident which in its piteouspathos exceeds any story we have ever heard. Crimesand criminals are swept away by time, nature finds anantidote for their poison, and they and their illconsequences alike are blotted out and perish. If we donot forgive them, at least we cease to hate them, as itgrows more clear to us that they injured none so deeplyas themselves. But the Theriodes kakia, the enormouswickedness by which humanity itself has been outragedand disgraced, we cannot forgive, we cannot cease tohate that; the years roll away, but the tints of it remainon the pages of history, deep and horrible as the dayon which they were entered there. 

"When the Spaniards understood the simple opinionof the Yucaian islanders concerning the souls of theirdeparted, which, after their sins purged in the cold northernmountains should pass into the south, to the intent that, leaving their own country of their own accord, they mightsuffer themselves to be brought to Hispaniola, they didpersuade those poor wretches, that they came from thoseplaces where they should see their parents and children, and all their kindred and friends that were dead, andshould enjoy all kinds of delights with the embracementsand fruition of all beloved beings. And they, being infectedand possessed with these crafty and subtle imaginations, singing and rejoicing left their country, and followed vainand idle hope. But when they saw that they were deceived, and neither met their parents nor any that they desired, but were compelled to undergo grievous sovereignty andcommand, and to endure cruel and extreme labour, theyeither slew themselves, or, choosing to famish, gave uptheir fair spirits, being persuaded by no reason or violenceto take food. So these miserable Yucaians came to theirend. "

It was once more as it was in the days of theapostles. The New World was first offered to theholders of the old traditions. They were the husbandmenfirst chosen for the new vineyard, and blood anddesolation were the only fruits which they reared uponit. In their hands it was becoming a kingdom not ofGod, but of the devil, and a sentence of blight wentout against them and against their works. How fatallyit has worked, let modern Spain and Spanish Americabear witness. We need not follow further the historyof their dealings with the Indians. For their colonies, a fatality appears to have followed all attempts atCatholic colonization. Like shoots from an old decayingtree which no skill and no care can rear, they wereplanted, and for a while they might seem to grow; buttheir life was never more than a lingering death, afailure, which to a thinking person would outweigh inthe arguments against Catholicism whole libraries offaultless calenas, and a consensus patrum unbrokenthrough fifteen centuries for the supremacy of St. Peter. 

There is no occasion to look for superstitious causesto explain it. The Catholic faith had ceased to be thefaith of the large mass of earnest thinking capablepersons; and to those who can best do the work, allwork in this world sooner or later is committed. America was the natural home for Protestants; persecutedat home, they sought a place where they mightworship God in their own way, without danger ofstake or gibbet, and the French Huguenots, asafterwards the English Puritans, early found their waythere. The fate of a party of Coligny's people, whohad gone out as settlers, shall be the last of thesestories, illustrating, as it does in the highest degree, the wrath and fury with which the passions on bothsides were boiling. A certain John Ribauk, with about400 companions, had emigrated to Florida. They werequiet inoffensive people, and lived in peace there severalyears, cultivating the soil, building villages, and on thebest possible terms with the natives. Spain was atthe time at peace with France; we are, therefore, tosuppose that it was in pursuance of the great crusade, in which they might feel secure of the secret, if notthe confessed, sympathy of the Guises, that a powerfulSpanish fleet bore down upon this settlement. TheFrench made no resistance, and they were seized andflayed alive, and their bodies hung out upon the trees, with an inscription suspended over them, "Not asFrenchmen, but as heretics. " At Paris all was sweetnessand silence. The settlement was tranquillysurrendered to the same men who had made it thescene of their atrocity; and two years later, 500 ofthe very Spaniards who had been most active in themurder were living there in peaceable possession, intwo forts which their relation with the natives hadobliged them to build. It was well that there wereother Frenchmen living, of whose consciences the Courthad not the keeping, and who were able on emergenciesto do what was right without consulting it. A certainprivateer named Dominique de Gourges, secretly armedand equipped a vessel at Rochelle, and, stealing acrossthe Atlantic and in two days collecting a strong partyof Indians, he came down suddenly upon the forts, and, taking them by storm, slew or afterwards hangedevery man he found there, leaving their bodies on thetrees on which they had hanged the Huguenots, withtheir own inscription reversed against them, --"Not asSpaniards, but as murderers. " For which exploit, welldeserving of all honest men's praise, Dominique deGourges had to fly his country for his life; and, comingto England, was received with honourable welcome byElizabeth. 

It was at such a time, and to take their part amidstsuch scenes as these, that the English navigatorsappeared along the shores of South America, as the armedsoldiers of the Reformation, and as the avengers ofhumanity; as their enterprise was grand and lofty, sowas the manner in which they bore themselves in allways worthy of it. They were no nation of saints, in the modern sentimental sense of that word; theywere prompt, stern men--more ready ever to strikean enemy than to parley with him; and, privateadventurers as they all were, it was natural enoughthat private foolishness and private badness should befound among them as among other mortals. EveryEnglishman who had the means was at liberty to fitout a ship or ships, and if he could produce tolerablevouchers for himself, received at once a commissionfrom the Court. The battles of England were foughtby her children, at their own risk and cost, and theywere at liberty to repay themselves the expense of theirexpeditions by plundering at the cost of the nationalenemy. Thus, of course, in a mixed world, there werefound mixed marauding crews of scoundrels, who playedthe game which a century later was played with sucheffect by the pirates of Tortuga. But we have toremark, first, that such stories are singularly rare; andthen, that the victims are never the Indians, never anybut the Spaniards or the French, when the English wereat war with them; and, on the whole, the conduct andcharacter of the English sailors, considering what theywere and the work which they were sent to do, presentus all through that age with such a picture of gallantry, disinterestedness, and high heroic energy, as has neverbeen overmatched; the more remarkable, as it wasthe fruit of no drill or discipline, no tradition, nosystem, no organized training, but was the free nativegrowth of a noble virgin soil. 

Before starting on an expedition, it was usual for thecrew and the officers to meet and arrange among themselvesa series of articles of conduct, to which theybound themselves by a formal agreement, the entirebody itself undertaking to see to their observance. Itis quite possible that strong religious profession, andeven sincere profession, might be accompanied, as itwas in the Spaniards, with everything most detestable. It is not sufficient of itself to prove that their actionswould correspond with it, but it is one among a numberof evidences; and, coming, as they come before us, with hands clear of any blood but of fair and openenemies, their articles may pass at least as indicationsof what they were. 

Here we have a few instances:--

Hawkins's ship's company was, as he himself informsus, an unusually loose one. Nevertheless, we find them"gathered together every morning and evening to serveGod;" and a fire on board which only Hawkins's presenceof mind prevented from destroying ship and crewtogether, was made use of by the men as an occasion tobanish swearing out of the ship. 

"With a general consent of all our company, it wasordained that there should be a palmer or ferula which shouldbe in the keeping of him who was taken with an oath; andthat he who had the palmer should give to every one thathe took swearing, a palmads with it and the femla; andwhosoever at the time of evening or morning prayer wasfound to have the palmer, should have three blows givenhim by the captain or the master; and that he should stillbe bound to free himself by taking another, or else to runin danger of continuing the penalty, which, being executeda few days, reformed the vice, so that in three days togetherwas not one oath heard to be sworn. "

The regulations for Luke Fox's voyage commencedthus:--

"For as much as the good success and prosperity of everyaction doth consist in the due service and glorifying of God, knowing that not only our being and preservation, but theprosperity of all our actions and enterprises do immediatelydepend on His Almighty goodness and mercy; it isprovided-

"First, that all the company, as well officers as others, shall duly repair every day twice at the call of the bell tohear public prayers to be read, such as are authorized by thechurch, and that in a godly and devout manner, as goodChristians ought. 

"Secondly, that no man shall swear by the name of God, or use any profane oath, or blaspheme His holy name. "

To symptoms such as these, we cannot but attach avery different value when they are the spontaneous growthof common minds, unstimulated by sense of proprietyor rules of the service, or other official influence lay orecclesiastic, from what we attach to the somewhat similarceremonials in which, among persons whose position isconspicuous, important enterprises are now and theninaugurated. 

We have said as much as we intend to say of thetreatment by the Spaniards of the Indian women. SirWalter Raleigh is commonly represented by historiansas rather defective, if he was remarkable at all, on themoral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declareproudly, that all the time he was on the Oronooko, "neither by force nor other means had any of his menintercourse with any woman there;" and the narrator ofthe incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints hiscorrespondent "with some particulars touching thegovernment of the fleet, which, although other men intheir voyages doubtless in some measure observed, yetin all the great volumes which have been writtentouching voyages, there is no precedent of so godlysevere and martial government, which not only in itselfis laudable and worthy of imitation, but is also fit to bewritten and engraven on every man's soul that covetethto do honour to his country. "

Once more, the modern theory of Drake is, as wesaid above, that he was a gentleman-like pirate on alarge scale, who is indebted for the place which he fillsin history to the indistinct ideas of right and wrongprevailing in the unenlightened age in which he lived. And who therefore demands all the toleration of ourown enlarged humanity to allow him to remain there. Let us see how the following incident can be made tocoincide with this hypothesis:--

A few days after clearing the channel on his first greatvoyage, he fell in with a small Spanish ship, which hetook for a prize. He committed the care of it to acertain Mr. Doughtie, a person much trusted by, andpersonally very dear to him, and this second vessel wasto follow him as a tender. 

In dangerous expeditions into unknown seas, a secondsmaller ship was often indispensable to success; butmany finely-intended enterprises were ruined by thecowardice of the officers to whom such ships wereentrusted; who shrank as danger thickened, and againand again took advantage of darkness or heavy weatherto make sail for England and forsake their commander. Hawkins twice suffered in this way; so did Sir HumfreyGilbert; and, although Drake's own kind feeling forhis old friend has prevented him from leaving an exactaccount of his offence, we gather from the scattered hintswhich are let fall, that he, too, was meditating a similarpiece of treason. However, it may or may not havebeen thus. But when at Port St Julien, "our General, "says one of the crew, --

"Began to inquire diligently of the actions of Mr. ThomasDoughtie, and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutiny, or some otherdisorder, whereby, without redresse, the success of thevoyage might greatly have been hazarded. Whereupon thecompany was called together and made acquainted withthe particulars of the cause, which were found, partly by Mr. Doughtie's own confession, and partly by the evidence ofthe fact, to be true, which, when our General saw, althoughhis private affection to Mr. Doughtie (as he then, in thepresence of us all, sacredly protested) was great, yet thecare which he had of the state of the voyage, of theexpectation of Her Majesty, and of the honour of his country, did more touch him, as indeed it ought, than the private respectof one man; so that the cause being thoroughly heard, andall things done in good order as near as might be to thecourse of our law in England, it was concluded that Mr. Doughtie should receive punishment according to thequality of the offence. And he, seeing no remedy butpatience for himself, desired before his death to receive thecommunion, which he did at the hands of Mr. Fletcher, ourminister, and our General himself accompanied him in thatholy action, which, being done, and the place of executionmade ready, he, having embraced our General, and takenleave of all the company, with prayers for the Queen'sMajesty and our realm, in quiet sort laid his head to theblock, where he ended his life. This being done, ourGeneral made divers speeches to the whole company, persuading us to unity, obedience, love, and regard of ourvoyage, and for the better confirmation thereof, willed everyman the next Sunday following to prepare himself to receivethe communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought todo, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with goodcontentment every man went about his business. "

The simple majesty of this anecdote can gain nothingfrom any comment which we might offer upon it. Thecrew of a common English ship organizing, of their ownfree motion, on that wild shore, a judgment hall moregrand and awful than any most elaborate law court, with its ermine and black cap, and robes of ceremonyfor mind as well as body, is not to be reconciled withthe pirate theory, which we may as well henceforth putaway from us. 

Of such stuff were the early English navigators; weare reaping the magnificent harvest of their greatheroism; and we may see once more in their historyand in what has arisen out of it, that on these deepmoral foundations, and on none others, enduringprosperities, of what kind so-ever, politic or religious, material or spiritual, are alone in this divinely-governedworld permitted to base themselves and grow. Whereeverwe find them they are still the same. In the courtsof Japan or of China, fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, or prisoners among the Algerines, founding colonieswhich by and by were to grow into enormous transatlanticrepublics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces thefierce latitudes of the Polar seas, they are the sameindomitable God-fearing men whose life was one greatliturgy. "The ice was strong, but God was stronger, "says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night anda day among the icebergs, not waiting for God to comedown and split them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and the rest fending off the vessel with polesand planks, with death glaring at them out of the icerocks, and so saving themselves and it. Icebergs werestrong, Spaniards were strong, and storms, and corsairs, and rocks, and reefs, which no chart had then noted--they were all strong, but God was stronger, and that wasall which they cared to know. 

Out of the vast number it is difficult to make wiseselections, but the attention floats loosely overgeneralities, and only individual men can seize it and holdit fast. We shall attempt to bring our readers face toface with some of these men; not, of course, to writetheir biographies, but to sketch the details of a fewscenes, in the hope that they may tempt those underwhose eyes they may fall to look for themselves tocomplete the perfect figure. 

Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, onceamong the most important harbours in England, on aprojecting angle of land which runs out into the riverat the head of one of its most beautiful reaches, therehas stood for some centuries the Manor House ofGreenaway. The water runs deep all the way to it fromthe sea, and the largest vessels may ride with safetywithin a stone's throw of the windows. In the latterhalf of the sixteenth century there must have met, inthe hall of this mansion, a party as remarkable as couldhave been found anywhere in England. Humfrey andAdrian Gilbert, with their half-brother, Walter Raleigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches ofLong Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowingdown with the tide to the port, and wondering at thequaint figure-heads and carved prows of the ships whichthronged it; or climbing on board, and listening, withhearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earthbeyond the sunset; and here in later life, matured men, whose boyish dreams had become heroic action, theyused again to meet in the intervals of quiet, and therock is shown underneath the house where Raleighsmoked the first tobacco. Another remarkable man, ofwhom we shall presently speak more closely, could notfail to have made a fourth at these meetings. A sailorboy of Sandwich, the adjoining parish, John Davis, showed early a genius which could not have escapedthe eye of such neighbours, and in the atmosphere ofGreenaway he learned to be as noble as the Gilberts, and as tender and delicate as Raleigh. Of this party, for the present we confine ourselves to the host andowner, Humfrey Gilbert, knighted afterwards by Elizabeth. Led by the scenes of his childhood to the seaand to sea adventures, and afterwards, as his mindunfolded, to study his profession scientifically, we findhim as soon as he was old enough to think for himself, or make others listen to him, "amending the greaterrors of naval sea cards, whose common fault is tomake the degree of longitude in every latitude of onecommon bigness;" inventing instruments for takingobservations, studying the form of the earth, andconvincing himself that there was a north-west passage, andstudying the necessities of his country, and discoveringthe remedies for them in colonization and extendedmarkets for home manufactures, and insisting with somuch loudness on these important matters that theyreached the all-attentive ears of Walsingham, andthrough Walsingham were conveyed to the Queen. Gilbert was examined before the Queen's Majesty andthe Privy Council, the record of which examination hehas himself left to us in a paper which he afterwardsdrew up, and strange enough reading it is. The mostadmirable conclusions stand side by side with thewildest conjectures; and invaluable practical discoveries, among imaginations at which all our love for him cannothinder us from smiling; the whole of it from first to lastsaturated through and through with his inborn nobilityof nature. 

Homer and Aristotle are pressed into service to provethat the ocean runs round the three old continents, andAmerica therefore is necessarily an island. The gulfstream which he had carefully observed, eked outby a theory of the primum mobile, is made to demonstratea channel to the north, corresponding to Magellan'sStraits in the south, he believing, in common withalmost every one of his day, that these straits werethe only opening into the Pacific, the land to thesouth being unbroken to the Pole. He prophecies amarket in the East for our manufactured linen andcalicoes:--

"The Easterns greatly prizing the same, as appearethin Hester where the pomp is expressed of the greatKing of India, Ahasuerus, who matched the colouredclothes wherewith his houses and tents were apparelled, with gold and silver, as part of his greatest treasure. "

These and other such arguments were the bestanalysis which Sir Humfrey had to offer of the spiritwhich he felt to be working in him. We may thinkwhat we please of them. But we can have but onethought of the great grand words with which thememorial concludes, and they alone would explain thelove which Elizabeth bore him:--

"Never, therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand anylaudable and honest enterprise, for if through pleasureor idleness we purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame abideth for ever. 

"Give me leave, therefore, without offence, always tolive and die in this mind: that he is not worthy to liveat all that, for fear or danger of death, shunneth hiscountry's service and his own honour, seeing that deathis inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal, whereforein this behalf routare vel lintere sperno. "

Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost, which shattered his fortune, and failed, as they naturallymight, since inefficient help or mutiny of subordinates, or other disorders, are inevitable conditions under whichmore or less great men must be content to see their greatthoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments, did not dishearten him, and in June, 1583, a lastfleet of five ships sailed from the port of Dartmouth, with commission from the Queen to discover and takepossession from latitude 45^0 to 50^0 north--a voyage nota little noteworthy, there being planted in the course ofit the first English colony west of the Atlantic. Elizabethhad a foreboding that she would never see him again. She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favour, andshe desired Raleigh to have his picture taken before hewent. 

The history of the voyage was written by a Mr. Edward Hayes, of Dartmouth, one of the principalactors in it, and as a composition it is more remarkablefor fine writing than any very commendable thought inthe author. But Sir Humfrey's nature shines through theinfirmity of his chronicler; and in the end, indeed, Mr. Hayes himself is subdued into a better mind. He hadlost money by the voyage, and we will hope his highernature was only under a temporary eclipse. The fleetconsisted (it is well to observe the ships and the size ofthem) of the Delight, 120 tons; the barque Raleigh, 200tons (this ship deserted off the Land's End); the GoldenHinde and the Swallow, 40 tons each; and the Squirrel, which was called the frigate, 10 tons. For the uninitiatedin such matters, we may add, that if in a vesselthe size of the last, a member of the Yacht Club wouldconsider that he had earned a dub-room immortality ifhe had ventured a run in the depth of summer fromCowes to the Channel Islands. 

"We were in all, " says Mr. Hayes, "260 men, amongwhom we had of every faculty good choice. Besides, for solace of our own people, and allurement of the savages, we were provided of music in good variety, not omittingthe least toys, as morris dancers, hobby horses, andMay-like conceits to delight the savage people. "

The expedition reached Newfoundland without accident. St. John's was taken possession of, and a colonyleft there, and Sir Humfrey then set out exploring alongthe American coast to the south; he himself doing allthe work in his little 10-ton cutter, the service being toodangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. One ofthese had remained at St. John's. He was now accompaniedonly by the Delight and the Golden Hinde, andthese two keeping as near the shore as they dared, hespent what remained of the summer, examining everycreek and bay, marking the soundings, taking the bearingsof the possible harbours, and risking his life, asevery hour he was obliged to risk it in such a service, inthus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in the conquestof the New World. How dangerous it was we shallpresently see. It was towards the end of August. 

"The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not withouttoken of storm to ensue, and most part of this Wednesdaynight, like the swan that singeth before her death, they inthe Delight continued in sounding of drums and trumpetsand fifes, also winding the cornets and haughtboys, andin the end of their jollity left with the battell and ringingof doleful knells. "

Two days after came the storm; the Delight struckupon a bank, and went down in sight of the other vessels, which were unable to render her any help. Sir Humfrey'spapers, among other things, were all lost in her; at thetime considered by him an irreparable misfortune. Butit was little matter; he was never to need them. TheGolden Hinde and the Squirrel were now left alone of thefive ships. The provisions were running short, and thesummer season was closing. Both crews were on shortallowance; and with much difficulty Sir Humfrey wasprevailed upon to be satisfied for the present with whathe had done, and to lay off for England. 

"So upon Saturday, in the afternoon, the 31st ofAugust, we changed our course, and returned back forEngland, at which very instant, even in winding about, there passed along between us and the land, which wenow forsook, a very lion, to our seeming, in shape, hair, and colour; not swimming after the manner of a beastby moving of his feet, but rather sliding upon the waterwith his whole body, except his legs, in sight, neither yetdiving under and again rising as the manner is of whales, porpoises, and other fish, but confidently showing himselfwithout hiding, notwithstanding that we presentedourselves in open view and gesture to amaze him. Thushe passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawningand gaping wide, with ougly demonstration of long teethand glaring eyes; and to bidde us farewell, coming fightagainst the Hinde, he sent forth a horrible voice, roaringand bellowing as doth a lion, which spectacle we all beheldso far as we were able to discern the same, as men proneto wonder at every strange thing. What opinion othershad thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear todeliver. But he took it for Bonum Omen, rejoicing that hewas to war against such an enemy if it were the devil. "

We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil;men in those days believing really that evil was morethan a principle or a necessary accident, and that in alltheir labour for God and for right, they must make theiraccount to have to fight with the devil in his proper person. But if we are to call it superstition, and if this wereno devil in the form of a roaring lion, but a mere greatseal or sea-lion, it is a more innocent superstition toimpersonate so real a power, and it requires a bolderheart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror, than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forget to battle with it in speculating on its originand nature. But to follow the brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was now over, andwho was passing to his reward. The 2nd of Septemberthe General came on board the Golden Hinde "to makemerry with us. " He greatly deplored the loss of hisbooks and papers; and Mr. Hayes considered that theloss of manuscripts could not be so very distressing, and that there must have been something behind, certaingold ore, for instance, which had perished also--considerations not perhaps of particular value. He wasfull of confidence from what he had seen, and talkedwith all eagerness and warmth of the new expeditionfor the following spring. Apocryphal gold-mines stilloccupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, who werepersuaded that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself somesuch discovery which he had secretly made, and theytried hard to extract it from him. They could makenothing, however, of his odd ironical answers, and theirsorrow at the catastrophe which followed is sadly blendedwith disappointment that such a secret should haveperished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America withother eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer thanCalifornia in its huge rivers and savannahs. 

"Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold), "continues Mr. Hayes, "to God, who only knoweth the truththereof, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which mustbe knit up in the person of our General, and as it was God'sordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion ofhis friends could nothing avail to divert him from his wilfulresolution of going in his frigate; and when he wasentreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishersin the Hinde, not to venture, this was his answer--'I willnot forsake my little company going homewards, with whomI have passed so many storms and perils. '"

Albeit, thinks the writer, who is unable to comprehendsuch high gallantry, there must have been something onhis mind of what the world would say of him, "and itwas rather rashness than advised resolution to preferthe wind of a vain report to the weight of his own life, "for the writing of which sentence we will trust theauthor, either in this world or the other, has before thisdone due penance and repented of it. 

Two-thirds of the way home they met foul weatherand terrible seas, "breaking short and pyramid-wise. "Men who had all their lives "occupied the sea" hadnever seen it more outrageous. "We had also uponour mainyard an apparition of a little fire by night, which seamen do call Castor and Pollux. "

"Monday, the ninth of September, in the afternoon, thefrigate was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at thattime recovered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried unto us in theHinde so often as we did approach within hearing, 'Weare as near to heaven by sea as by land, ' reiterating thesame speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in JesusChrist, as I can testify that he was. The same Mondaynight, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigatebeing a-head of us in the Golden Hinde, suddenly her lightswere out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight;and withal our watch cried, 'The General was cast away, 'which was too true. "

So stirbt ein Held. It was a fine end for a mortalman. We will not call it sad or tragic, but heroic andsublime; and if our eyes water as we write it down, it is not with sorrow, but with joy and pride. 

"Thus faithfully, " concludes Mr. Hayes (in some degreerising above himself), "I have related this story, whereinsome spark of the knight's virtues, though he beextinguished, may happily appear; he remaining resolute to apurpose honest and godly as was this, to discover, possess, and reduce unto the service of God and Christian piety, those remote and heathen countries of America. Such isthe infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good, that fruit may grow in time of our travelling in theseNorth-Western lands (as has it not grown?), and the crosses, turmoils, and afflictions, both in the preparation andexecution of the voyage, did correct the intemperate humourswhich before we noted to be in this gentleman, and madeunsavoury and less delightful his other manifold virtues. 

"Thus as he was refined and made nearer unto the imageof God, so it pleased the Divine will to resume him untoHimself, whither both his and every other high and noblemind have always aspired. "

Such was Sir Humfrey Gilbert; we know but littlemore of him, and we can only conjecture that hewas still in the prime of his years when the Atlanticswallowed him. Like the gleam of a landscape litsuddenly for a moment by the lightning, these fewscenes flash down to us across the centuries; but whata life must that have been of which this was theconclusion! He was one of a race which have ceased tobe. We look round for them, and we can hardlybelieve that the same blood is flowing in our veins. Brave we may still be, and strong perhaps as they, but the high moral grace which made bravery andstrength so beautiful is departed from us for ever. 

Our space is sadly limited for historical portraitpainting; but we must find room for another of thatGreenaway party whose nature was as fine as that ofGilbert, and who intellectually was more largely gifted. The latter was drowned in 1583. In 1585 John Davisleft Dartmouth on his first voyage into the Polar seas;and twice subsequently he went again, venturing insmall ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into themost dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkablefor their success as for the daring with which theywere accomplished, and Davis's epitaph is written on themap of the world, where his name still remains tocommemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he isdistinguished by a peculiar and exquisite sweetness ofnature, which, from many little facts of his life, seems tohave affected every one with whom he came in contactin a remarkable degree. We find men, for the love ofMaster Davis, leaving their firesides to sail with him, without other hope or motion; and silver bullets werecast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard rude natures ofthe mutineers being awed by something in his carriagewhich was not like that of a common man. He haswritten the account of one of his northern voyageshimself; one of those, by the by, which the HakluytSociety have mutilated; and there is an imaginativebeauty in it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which isa true natural poetry, called out in him by the first sightof strange lands and things and people. 

To show what he was, we should have preferred, ifpossible, to have taken the story of his expedition intothe South Seas, in which, under circumstances of singulardifficulty, he was deserted by Candish, under whomhe had sailed; and after inconceivable trials, from famine, mutiny, and storm, ultimately saved himself and hisship, and such of the crew as had chosen to submit tohis orders. But it is a long history, and will not admitof being mutilated. As an instance of the stuff of whichit was composed, he ran back in the black night in agale of wind through the Straits of Magellan, by a chartwhich he had made with the eye in passing up. Hisanchors were lost or broken; the cables were parted. He could not bring up the ship; there was nothing forit but to run, and he carried her safe through alonga channel often not three miles broad, sixty milesfrom end, and twisting like the reaches of a river. For the present, however, we are forced to contentourselves with a few sketches out of the north-westvoyages. Here is one, for instance, which shows howan Englishman could deal with the Indians. Davis hadlanded at Gilbert's Sound, and gone up the countryexploring. On his return, he found his crew loud incomplaints of the thievish propensities of the natives, and urgent to have an example made of some of them. On the next occasion he fired a gun at them with blankcartridge; but their nature was still too strong for them. 

"Seeing iron, " he says, "they could in no case forbearstealing; which, when I perceived, it did but ministerto me occasion of laughter to see their simplicity, and Iwilled that they should not be hardly used, but that ourcompany should be more diligent to keep their things, supposing it to be very hard in so short a time to makethem know their evils. "

In his own way, however, he took an opportunity ofadministering a lesson to them of a more wholesomekind than could be given with gunpowder and bulletsLike the rest of his countrymen, he believed the savageIndians in their idolatries to be worshippers of the devil. "They are witches, " he says; "they have images ingreat store, and use many kinds of enchantments. "And these enchantments they tried on one occasion toput in force against himself and his crew. 

"Being on shore on the 4th day of July, one of themmade a long oration, and then kindled a fire, into whichwith many strange words and gestures he put divers things, which we supposed to be a sacrifice. Myself and certainof my company standing by, they desired us to go intothe smoke. I desired them to go into the smoke, whichthey would by no means do. I then took one of themand thrust him into the smoke, and willed one of mycompany to tread out the fire, and spurn it into the sea, which was done to show them that we did contemn theirsorceries. "

It is a very English story--exactly what a modernEnglishman would do; only, perhaps, not believing thatthere was any real devil in the case, which makes adifference. However, real or not real, after seeing himpatiently put up with such an injury, we will hope thepoor Greenlander had less respect for the devil thanformerly. 

Leaving Gilbert's Sound, Davis went on to the north-west, and in lat. 63^0 fell in with a barrier of ice, whichhe coasted for thirteen days without finding an opening. The very sight of an iceberg was new to all his crew;and the ropes and shrouds, though it was midsummer, becoming compassed with ice, --

"The people began to fall sick and faint-hearted--whereupon, very orderly, with good discretion, theyentreated me to regard the safety of mine own life, as wellas the preservation of theirs; and that I should not, through overbouldness, leave their widows and fatherlesschildren to give me bitter curses. 

"Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased HisDivine Majesty to move my heart to prosecute that whichI hope shall be to His glory, and to the contentation ofevery Christian mind. "

He had two vessels, one of some burthen, the other apinnace of thirty tons. The result of the counsel whichhe had sought was, that he made over his own largevessel to such as wished to return, and himself "thinkingit better to die with honour than to return withinfamy, " went on, with such volunteers as would followhim, in a poor leaky cutter, up the sea now calledDavis's Straits, in commemoration of that adventure, 4^0 north of the furthest known point, among storms andicebergs, by which the long days and twilight nightsalone saved him from being destroyed, and, coastingback along the American shore, discovered Hudson'sStraits, supposed then to be the long-desired entranceinto the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention ofWalsingham, and by him Davis was presented toBurleigh, "who was also pleased to show him greatencouragement. " If either these statesmen or Elizabethhad been twenty years younger, his name would havefilled a larger space in history than a small corner of themap of the world; but if he was employed at all in thelast years of the century, no vales sacer has been foundto celebrate his work, and no clue is left to guide us. He disappears; a cloud falls over him. He is knownto have commanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas, and to have returned five times from India. But thedetails are all lost, and accident has only parted theclouds for a moment to show us the mournful settingwith which he, too, went down upon the sea. 

In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in1604, he fell in with a crew of Japanese, whose shiphad been burnt, drifting at sea, without provisions, ina leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but hedid not choose to leave them to so wretched a death, and took them on board, and in a few hours, watchingtheir opportunity, they murdered him. 

As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is nodifference; it was the chance of the sea, and the illreward of a humane action--a melancholy end for sucha man--like the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas-likeon the field of victory, but cut off in some poorbrawl or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in the flower of their days, and fewindeed of them laid their bones in the sepulchres of theirfathers. They knew the service which they had chosen, and they did not ask the wages for which they had notlaboured. Life with them was no summer holyday, buta holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and what theirMaster sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age--beautifulas the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorioussummer. In the old man, nature has fulfilled her work;she loads him with her blessings; she fills him withthe fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by hischildren and his children's children, she rocks himsoftly away to a grave, to which he is followed withblessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There isanother life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden withbleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which thecross is the symbol; a battle which no peace follows, this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish, before the victory is won; and--strange that it shouldbe so--this is the highest life of man. Look backalong the great names of history; there is none whoselife has been other than this. They to whom it hasbeen given to do the really highest work in this earth--whoever they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves--one and all, their fate has been the same--thesame bitter cup has been given to them to drink; andso it was with the servants of England in the sixteenthcentury. Their life was a long battle, either with theelements or with men, and it was enough for them tofulfil their work, and to pass away in the hour whenGod had nothing more to bid them do. They did notcomplain, and why should we complain for them?Peaceful life was not what they desired, and anhonourable death had no terrors for them. Theirs wasthe old Grecian spirit, and the great heart of theTheban poet lived again in them:--

thanein d' oisin anagkati ke tis ananumon geras en skotokathemenos epsoi matan, apantonkalon ammoros

"Seeing" in Gilbert's own brave words, "that deathis inevitable, and the fame of virtue is immortal;wherefore in this behalf mutare vel timere sperno. "

In the conclusion of these light sketches we passinto an element different from that in which we havebeen lately dwelling. The scenes in which Gilbert andDavis played out their high natures were of the kindwhich we call peaceful, and the enemies with whichthey contended were principally the ice and the wind, and the stormy seas and the dangers of unknown andsavage lands; we shall close amidst the roar of cannon, and the wrath and rage of battle. Hume, who alludesto the engagement which we are going to describe, speaks of it in a tone which shows that he looked at itas something portentous and prodigious; as a thing towonder at--but scarcely as deserving the admirationwhich we pay to actions properly within the scope ofhumanity--and as if the energy which was displayed init was like the unnatural strength of madness. Hedoes not say this, but he appears to feel it; and hescarcely would have felt it, if he had cared more deeplyto saturate himself with the temper of the age of whichhe was writing. At the time all England and all theworld rang with the story. It struck a deeper terror, though it was but the action of a single ship, into thehearts of the Spanish people--it dealt a more deadlyblow upon their fame and moral strength, than thedestruction of the Armada itself; and in the directresults which arose from it, it was scarcely lessdisastrous to them. Hardly, as it seems to us, if the mostglorious actions which are set like jewels in the historyof mankind are weighed one against the other in thebalance, hardly will those 300 Spartans who in thesummer morning sate "combing their long hair--fordeath" in the passes of Thermopylae, have earned amore lofty estimate for themselves than this one crewof modern Englishmen. 

In August, 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with sixEnglish line-of-battle ships, six victuallers, and two orthree pinnaces, were lying at anchor under the Islandof Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, withhalf their men disabled by sickness, they were unableto pursue the aggressive purpose on which they had beensent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore:the ships themselves "all pestered and rommaging, "with everything out of order. In this condition theywere surprised by a Spanish fleet consisting of 53men-of-war. Eleven out of the twelve English ships obeyedthe signal of the Admiral, to cut or weigh their anchorsand escape as they might. The twelfth, the Revenge, was unable for the moment to follow; of her crew of190, 90 being sick on shore, and, from the positionof the ship, there was some delay and difficulty ingetting them on board. The Revenge was commandedby Sir Richard Grenville, of Bideford, a man wellknown in the Spanish seas, and the terror of the Spanishsailors; so fierce he was said to be, that mythicstories passed from lip to lip about him, and, like EarlTalbot or Coeur de Lion, the nurses at the Azoresfrightened children with the sound of his name. "Hewas of great revenues, " they said, "of his own inheritance, but of unquiet mind, and greatly affected towars, " and from his uncontrollable propensities forblood-eating, he had volunteered his services to theQueen; "of so hard a complexion was he, that I (JohnHuighen von Linschoten, who is our authority here, and who was with the Spanish fleet after the action)have been told by divers credible persons who stoodand beheld him, that he would carouse three or fourglasses of wine, and take the glasses between his teethand crush them in pieces and swallow them down. "Such he was to the Spaniard. To the English he was agoodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned hisback upon an enemy, and was remarkable in thatremarkable time for his constancy and daring. In thissurprise at Florez he was in no haste to fly. He firstsaw all his sick on board and stowed away on theballast, and then, with no more than 100 men left himto fight and work the ship, he deliberately weighed, uncertain, as it seemed at first, what he intended to do. The Spanish fleet were by this time on his weather bow, and he was persuaded (we here take his cousin Raleigh'sbeautiful narrative and follow it in his words) "to cuthis mainsail and cast about, and trust to the sailing ofthe ship. "

"But Sir Richard utterly refused to turn from the enemy, alledging that he would rather choose to die than todishonour himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship, persuading his company that he would pass through their twosquadrons in spite of them, and enforce those of Seville togive him way, which he performed upon diverse of the foremost, who, as the mariners term it, sprang their luff, and fellunder the lee of the Revenge. But the other course hadbeen the better: and might right well have been answered inso great an impossibility of prevailing: notwithstanding, outof the greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded. "

The wind was light; the San Philip, "a huge highcargedship" of 1500 tons, came up to windward ofhim, and, taking the wind out of his sails, ran aboardhim. 

"After the Revenge was entangled with the San Philip, four others boarded her, two on her larboard and two onher starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock inthe afternoon continued very terrible all that evening. Butthe great San Philip, having received the lower tier of theRevenge, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. The Spanish shipswere filled with soldiers, in some 200, besides the mariners, in some 500, in others 800. In ours there were none at all, besides the mariners, but the servants of the commanderand some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchangedvollies of great ordnance and small shot, theSpaniards deliberated to enter the Revenge, and madedivers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitude oftheir armed soldiers and musketeers; but were still repulsedagain and again, and at all times beaten back into their ownship or into the sea. In the beginning of the fight theGeorge Noble, of London, having received some shot throughher by the Armadas, fell under the lee of the Revenge, andasked Sir Richard what he would command him; but beingone of the victuallers, and of small force, Sir Richard badehim save himself and leave him to his fortune. "

A little touch of gallantry, which we should beglad to remember with the honour due to the braveEnglish heart who commanded the George Noble; buthis name has passed away, and his action is an inmemoriam, on which time has effaced the writing. All that August night the fight continued, the starsrolling over in their sad majesty, but unseen through thesulphur clouds which hung over the scene. Shipafter ship of the Spaniards came on upon the Revenge, "so that never less than two mighty galleons were ather side and aboard her, " washing up like waves upon arock, and failing foiled and shattered back amidst theroar of the artillery. Before morning fifteen severalarmadas had assailed her, and all in vain; some hadbeen sunk at her side; and the rest, "so ill approvingof their entertainment, that at break of day theywere far more willing to hearken to a composition, thanhastily to make more assaults or entries. " "But as theday increased so our men decreased, and as the lightgrew more and more, by so much the more grew ourdiscomfort, for none appeared in sight but enemies, save one small ship called the Pilgrim, commandedby Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see thesuccess, but in the morning bearing with the Revengewas hunted like a hare among many ravenous hounds--but escaped. "

All the powder in the Revenge was now spent, allher pikes were broken, 40 out of her 100 men killed, and a great number of the rest wounded. Sir Richard, though badly hurt early in the battle, never forsookthe deck till an hour before midnight; and was thenshot through the body while his wounds were beingdressed, and again in the head; and his surgeon waskilled while attending on him. The masts were lyingover the side, the rigging cut or broken, the upperworks all shot in pieces, and the ship herself, unable tomove, was settling slowly in the sea; the vast fleet ofSpaniards lying round her in a ring like dogs round adying lion, and wary of approaching him in his lastagony. Sir Richard seeing that it was past hope, having fought for fifteen hours, and "having byestimation eight hundred shot of great artillery throughhim, " "commanded the master gunner, whom he knewto be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victoryto the Spaniards; seeing in so many hours they werenot able to take her, having had above fifteen hourstime, above ten thousand men, and fifty-three men-of-warto perform it withal; and persuaded the company, or as many as he could induce, to yield themselvesunto God and to the mercy of none else; but as theyhad, like valiant resolute men, repulsed so manyenemies, they should not now shorten the honour oftheir nation by prolonging their own lives for a fewhours or a few days. "

The gunner and a few others consented. But suchdaimonie arete was more than could be expected ofordinary seamen. They had dared do all which didbecome men, and they were not more than men, atleast than men were then. Two Spanish ships hadgone down, above 1500 men were killed, and theSpanish Admiral could not induce any one of therest of his fleet to board the Revenge again, "doubting lest Sir Richard would have blown up himselfand them knowing his dangerous disposition. " Sir Richardlying disabled below, the captain finding the Spaniardsas ready to entertain a composition as they could beto offer it, gained over the majority of the survivingcrew; and the remainder then drawing back fromthe master gunner, they all, without further consultingtheir dying commander, surrendered on honourableterms. If unequal to the English in action, theSpaniards were at least as courteous in victory. It isdue to them to say, that the conditions were faithfullyobserved. And "the ship being marvellous unsavourie, "Alonzo de Bacon, the Spanish Admiral, sent his boatto bring Sir Richard on board his own vessel. 

Sir Richard, whose life was fast ebbing away, replied, that "he might do with his body what he list, for thathe esteemed it not; and as he was carried out of theship he swooned, and reviving again, desired the companyto pray for him. "

The Admiral used him with all humanity, "commendinghis valour and worthiness, being unto them arare spectacle and a resolution seldom approved. " Theofficers of the rest of the fleet, too, John Higgins tellsus, crowded round to look at him, and a new fighthad almost broken out between the Biscayans and the"Portugals, " each claiming the honour of having boardedthe Revenge. 

"In a few hours Sir Richard, feeling his end approaching, showed not any sign of faintness, but spake these wordsin Spanish, and said, 'Here die I, Richard Grenville, witha joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my lifeas a true soldier ought to do that hath fought for hiscountry, queen, religion, and honour. Whereby my soulmost joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall alwaysleave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and truesoldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do. 'When he had finished these or other such like words, he gave up the ghost with great and stout courage, andno man could perceive any sign of heaviness in him. "

Such was the fight at Florez, in that August of 1591, without its equal in such of the annals of mankind asthe thing which we call history has preserved to us;scarcely equalled by the most glorious fate which theimagination of Barrere could invent for the Vengeur;nor did it end without a sequel awful as itself. Sea battles have been often followed by storms, andwithout a miracle; but with a miracle, as the Spaniardsand the English alike believed, or without one, as wemoderns would prefer believing, "there ensued on thisaction a tempest so terrible as was never seen or heardthe like before. " A fleet of merchantmen joined thearmada immediately after the battle, forming in all 140sail; and of these 140, only 32 ever saw Spanish harbour. The rest all foundered, or were lost on the Azores. The men-of-war had been so shattered by shot as to beunable to carry sail, and the Revenge herself, disdainingto survive her commander, or as if to complete his ownlast baffled purpose, like Samson, buried herself andher 200 prize crew under the rocks of St. Michael's. 

"And it my well be thought and presumed, " says JohnHuyghen, "that it was no other than a just plague purposelysent upon the Spaniards; and that it might be truly said, the taking of the Revenge was justly revenged on them;and not by the might of force of man, but by the powerof God. As some of them openly said in the Isle ofTerceira, that they believed verily God would consumethem, and that he took part with the Lutherans and heretics. .. Saying further, that so soon as they had thrownthe dead body of the Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Grenvilleoverboard, they verily thought that as he had a devilishfaith and religion, and therefore the devil loved him, sohe presently sunk into the bottom of the sea and downinto hell, where he raised up all the devils to the revengeof his death, and that they brought so great a storm andtorments upon the Spaniards, because they only maintainedthe Catholic and Romish religion. Such and the likeblasphemies against God they ceased not openly to utter. "____

THE BOOK OF JOB

The question will one day be asked, how it has beenthat, in spite of the high pretensions of us English to asuperior reverence for the Bible, we have done so littlein comparison with our continental contemporariestowards arriving at a proper understanding of it? Thebooks named below * form but a section of a long listwhich has appeared in the last few years on the Book ofJob alone; and this book has not received any largershare of attention than the others, either of the Old orthe New Testament. Whatever be the nature or theorigin of these books, (and on this point there is muchdifference of opinion among the Germans as amongourselves, ) they are all agreed, orthodox and unorthodox, that at least we should endeavour to understand them;and that no efforts can be too great, either of researchor criticism, to discover their history, or elucidate theirmeaning. ____* I. Die poetischen Bucher des Alten Bundes. Erklart vonHeinrich Ewald. Gottingen: bei Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht. 1836. 2. Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuck zum Alten Testament. Zweite Lieferund. Hiob Von Ludwig Hirzel. Zweite Auflage, durchgesehen von Dr. Justus Olshausen. Leipzig. 1852. 3. Quaestionum in Jobeidos locos vexatos Specimen. Von D. Hermannus Hupfeld. Halis Saxonum. 1853. ____

We shall assent, doubtless, eagerly, perhaps noisilyand indignantly, to so obvious a truism; but our ownefforts in the same direction will not bear us out. Theable men in England employ themselves in matters of amore practical character; and while we refuse to availourselves of what has been done elsewhere, no book, or books, which we produce on the interpretation ofScripture acquire more than a partial or an ephemeralreputation. The most important contribution to ourknowledge on this subject which has been made inthese recent years, is the translation of the "Libraryof the Fathers, " by which it is about as rational tosuppose that the analytical criticism of modern timescan be superseded, as that the place of Herman andDindoff could be supplied by an edition of the oldscholiasts. 

It is, indeed, reasonable that, as long as we arepersuaded that our English theory of the Bible, as a whole, is the right one, we should shrink from contact withinvestigations, which, however ingenious in themselves, are based on what we know to be a false foundation. But there are some learned Germans whose orthodoxywould pass examination at Exeter Hail; and there aremany subjects, such, for instance, as the present, onwhich all their able men are agreed in conclusions thatcannot rationally give offence to any one. For theBook of Job, analytical criticism has only served to clearup the uncertainties which have hitherto always hungabout it. It is now considered to be, beyond all doubt, a genuine Hebrew-original, completed by its writeralmost in the form in which it now remains to us. Thequestions on the authenticity of the Prologue andEpilogue, which once were thought important, have givenway before a more sound conception of the dramaticunity of the entire poem; and the volumes before uscontain merely an inquiry into its meaning, bringing, atthe same time, all the resources of modern scholarshipand historical and mythological research to bear uponthe obscurity of separate passages. It is the most difficultof all the Hebrew compositions--many words occurringin it, and many thoughts, not to be found elsewhere inthe Bible. How difficult our translators found it may beseen by the number of words which they were obligedto insert in italics, and the doubtful renderings whichthey have suggested in the margin. One instance ofthis, in passing, we will notice in this place--it will befamiliar to everyone as the passage quoted at the openingof the English burial service, and adduced as one ofthe doctrinal proofs of the resurrection of the body: "Iknow that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall standat the latter day upon the earth; and though, after myskin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall seeGod. " So this passage stands in the ordinary version. But the words in italics have nothing answering tothem in the original--they were all added by thetranslators to fill out their interpretation; and for inmy flesh, they tell us themselves in the margin that wemay read (and, in fact, we ought to read, and must read)"out of, " or "without" my flesh. It is but to writeout the verses omitting the conjectural additions, andmaking that one small, but vital correction, to see howfrail a support is there for so large a conclusion; "Iknow that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at thelatter. .. Upon the earth; and after my skin. .. Destroy this. .. ; yet without my flesh I shall seeGod. " If there is any doctrine of a resurrection here, it is a resurrection precisely not of the body, but of thespirit. And now let us only add that the word translatedRedeemer is the technical expression for the"avenger of blood"; and that the second paragraphought to be rendered--"and one to come after me (mynext of kin, to whom the avenging my injuries belongs)shall stand upon my dust, " and we shall see how muchwas to be done towards the mere exegesis of the text. This is an extreme instance, and no one will questionthe general beauty and majesty of our translation; butthere are many mythical and physical allusions scatteredover the poem, which, in the sixteenth century, therewere positively no means of understanding; and perhaps, too, there were mental tendencies in the translatorsthemselves which prevented them from adequatelyapprehending even the drift and spirit of it. The formof the story was too stringent to allow such tendenciesany latitude; but they appear, from time to time, sufficiently to produce serious confusion. With theserecent assistances, therefore, we propose to say somethingof the nature of this extraordinary book--abook of which it is to say little to call it unequalledof its kind, and which will, one day, perhaps, when itis allowed to stand on its own merits, be seen toweringup alone, far away above all the poetry of theworld. How it found its way into the Canon, smiting asit does through and through the most deeply-seatedJewish prejudices, is the chief difficulty about it now;to be explained only by a traditional acceptance amongthe sacred books, dating back from the old times of thenational greatness, when the minds of the people werehewn in a larger type than was to be found amongthe pharisees of the great synagogue. But its authorship, its date, and its history, are alike a mystery tous; it existed at the time when the Canon was composed;and this is all that we know beyond what wecan gather out of the language and the contents of thepoem itself. 

Before going further, however, we must make roomfor a few remarks of a very general kind. Let it havebeen written when it would, it marks a period in whichthe religious convictions of thinking men were passingthrough a vast crisis; and we shall not understand itwithout having before us clearly something of theconditions which periods of such a kind always andnecessarily exhibit. 

The history of religious speculation appears in extremeoutline to have been of the following kind. Wemay conceive mankind to have been originally launchedinto the universe with no knowledge either of themselvesor of the scene in which they were placed; withno actual knowledge, but distinguished from the restof the creation by a faculty of gaining knowledge;and first unconsciously, and afterwards consciously andlaboriously, to have commenced that long series ofexperience and observation which has accumulated inthousands of years to what we now see around us. Limited on all sides by conditions which they musthave felt to be none of their own imposing, and findingeverywhere forces working, over which they had nocontrol, the fear which they would naturally entertainof these invisible and mighty agents, assumed, underthe direction of an idea which we may perhaps callinborn and inherent in human nature, a more generouscharacter of reverence and awe. The laws of the outerworld, as they discovered them, they regarded as thedecrees, or as the immediate energies of personal beings;and as knowledge grew up among them, they lookedupon it not as knowledge of nature, but of God, or thegods. All early paganism appears, on careful examination, to have arisen out of a consecration of the firstrudiments of physical or speculative science. Thetwelve labours of Hercules are the labours of the sun, of which Hercules is an old name, through the twelvesigns. Chronos, or time, being measured by the apparentmotion of the heavens, is figured as their child;Time, the universal parent, devours its own offspring, yet is again itself in the high faith of a human soul, conscious of its power and its endurance, supposed tobe baffled and dethroned by Zeus, or life; and so onthrough all the elaborate theogonies of Greece andEgypt. They are no more than real insight into realphenomena, allegorized as time went on, elaborated byfancy, or idealized by imagination, but never losingtheir original character. 

Thus paganism, in its very nature, was expansive, self-developing, and, as Mr. Hume observed, tolerant;a new god was welcomed to the Pantheon as a newscientific discovery is welcomed by the Royal Society;and the various nations found no difficulty in interchangingtheir divinities--a new god either representinga new power not hitherto discovered, or one with whichthey were already familiar under a new name. Withsuch a power of adaptation and enlargement, if there hadbeen nothing more in it than this, such a system mighthave gone on accommodating itself to the change oftimes, and keeping pace with the growth of humancharacter. Already in its later forms, as the unity ofnature was more clearly observed, and the identity ofit throughout the known world, the separate powerswere subordinating themselves to a single supremeking; and, as the poets had originally personified theelemental forces, the thinkers were reversing the earlierprocess, and discovering the law under the person. Happily or unhappily, however, what they could dofor themselves they could not do for the multitude. Phoebus and Aphrodite had been made too human tobe allegorized. Humanized, and yet, we may say, only half-humanized, retaining their purely physicalnature, and without any proper moral attribute atall, these gods and goddesses remained, to the many, examples of sensuality made beautiful; and, as soonas right and wrong came to have a meaning, it wasimpossible to worship any more these idealizeddespisers of it. The human caprices and passionswhich served at first to deepen the illusion, justlyrevenged themselves. Paganism became a lie, andperished. 

In the meantime, the Jews (and perhaps some othernations, but the Jews chiefly and principally) had beenmoving forward along a road wholly different. Breakingearly away from the gods of nature, they advanced alongthe line of their moral consciousness; and leaving thenations to study physics, philosophy, and art, theyconfined themselves to man and to human life. Theirtheology grew up round the knowledge of good andevil, and God, with them, was the supreme Lord of theworld, who stood towards man in the relation of a rulerand a judge. Holding such a faith, to them the tolerationof paganism was an impossibility; the laws ofnature might be many, but the law of conduct was one;there was one law and one king; and the conditionsunder which He governed the world, as embodied in theDecalogue or other similar code, were looked upon asiron and inflexible certainties, unalterable revelationsof the will of an unalterable Being. So far there waslittle in common between this process and the other;but it was identical with it in this one importantfeature, that moral knowledge, like physical, admittedof degrees; and the successive steps of it were onlypurchaseable by experience. The dispensation of thelaw, in the language of modern theology, was not thedispensation of grace, and the nature of good and evildisclosed itself slowly as men were able to comprehendit. Thus, no system of law or articles of belief were orcould be complete and exhaustive for all time. Experienceaccumulates; new facts are observed, new forcesdisplay themselves, and all such formulae must necessarilybe from period to period broken up and mouldedafresh. And yet the steps already gained are a treasureso sacred, so liable are they at all times to be attackedby those lower and baser elements in our nature whichit is their business to hold in check, that the better panof mankind have at all times practically regarded theircreed as a sacred total to which nothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken away; the suggestionof a new idea is resented as an encroachment, punished as an insidious piece of treason, and resistedby the combined forces of all common practical understandings, which know too well the value of what theyhave, to risk the venture upon untried change. Periodsof religious transition, therefore, when the advance hasbeen a real one, always have been violent, and probablywill always continue to be so. They to whom the preciousgift of fresh light has been given are called uponto exhibit their credentials as teachers in suffering for it. They, and those who oppose them, have alike a sacredcause; and the fearful spectacle arises of earnest, vehement men, contending against each other as for theirown souls, in fiery struggle. Persecutions come, andmartyrdoms, and religious wars; and, at last, the oldfaith, like the phoenix, expires upon its altar, and thenew rises out of the ashes. 

Such, in briefest outline, has been the history ofreligions, natural and moral; the first, indeed, being inno proper sense a religion at all, as we understandreligion; and only assuming the character of it in theminds of great men whose moral sense had raised thembeyond their time and country, and who, feeling thenecessity of a real creed, with an effort and withindifferent success, endeavoured to express, under thesystems which they found, emotions which had noproper place there. 

Of the transition periods which we have describedas taking place under the religion which we call moral, the first known to us is marked at its opening by theappearance of the Book of Job, the first fierce collisionof the new fact with the formula which will not stretchto cover it. 

The earliest phenomenon likely to be observed connectedwith the moral government of the world is thegeneral one, that on the whole, as things are constituted, good men prosper and are happy, bad men fail and aremiserable. The cause of such a condition is no mystery, and lies very near the surface. As soon as men combinein society, they are forced to obey certain laws underwhich alone society is possible, and these laws, even intheir rudest form, approach the laws of conscience. Toa certain extent, every one is obliged to sacrifice hisprivate inclinations; and those who refuse to do so arepunished, or are crushed. If society were perfect, theimperfect tendency would carry itself out till the twosets of laws were identical; but perfection so far hasbeen only in Utopia, and as far as we can judge byexperience hitherto, they have approximated mostnearly in the simplest and most rudimentary forms oflife. Under the systems which we call patriarchal, themodern distinctions between sins and crimes had noexistence. All gross sins were offences against society, as it then was constituted, and, wherever it was possible, were punished as being so; chicanery and those subtleadvantages which the acute and unscrupulous can takeover the simple, without open breach of enacted statutes, were only possible under the complications of moreartificial polities; and the oppression or injury of manby man was open, violent, obvious, and therefore easilyunderstood. Doubtless, therefore, in such a state ofthings, it would, on the whole, be true to experience, that, judging merely by outward prosperity or thereverse, good and bad men would be rewarded andpunished as such in this actual world; so far, that is, as the administration of such rewards and punishmentswas left in the power of mankind. But theology couldnot content itself with general tendencies. Theologicalpropositions then, as much as now, were held to beabsolute, universal, admitting of no exceptions, andexplaining every phenomenon. Superficial generalizationswere construed into immutable decrees; the Godof this world was just and righteous, and temporalprosperity or wretchedness were dealt out by himimmediately by his own will to his subjects, accordingto their behaviour. Thus the same disposition towardscompleteness which was the ruin of paganism, here, too, was found generating the same evils; the half truthrounding itself out with falsehoods. Not only theconsequence of ill actions which followed throughthemselves, but the accidents, as we call them, of nature, earthquakes, storms, and pestilences, were the ministersof God's justice, and struck sinners only withdiscriminating accuracy. That the sun should shine alikeon the evil and the good was a creed too high for theearly divines, or that the victims of a fallen tower wereno greater offenders than their neighbours. Theconceptions of such men could not pass beyond theoutward temporal consequence; and, if God's hand was notthere it was nowhere. We might have expected thatsuch a theory of things could not long resist theaccumulated contradictions of experience; but the sameexperience shows also what a marvellous power is in usof thrusting aside phenomena which interfere with ourcherished convictions; and when such convictions areconsecrated into a creed which it is a sacred duty tobelieve, experience is but like water dropping upon arock, which wears it away, indeed, at last, but only inthousands of years. This theory was and is the centralidea of the Jewish polity, the obstinate toughness ofwhich has been the perplexity of Gentiles and Christiansfrom the first dawn of its existence; it lingers amongourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; andin spite of the emphatic censure of Him after whosename we call ourselves, is still the instant interpreterfor us of any unusual calamity, a potato blight, a famine, or an epidemic: such vitality is there in a moral faith, though now, at any rate, contradicted by the experienceof all mankind, and at issue even with Christianityitself. 

At what period in the world's history misgivings aboutit began to show themselves it is now impossible tosay; it was at the close, probably, of the patriarchalperiod, when men who really thought must have foundit palpably shaking under them. Indications of suchmisgivings are to be found in the Psalms, those especiallypassing under the name of Asaph; and all throughEcclesiastes there breathes a spirit of deepest andsaddest scepticism. But Asaph thrusts his doubts aside, and forces himself back into his old position; and thescepticism of Ecclesiastes is confessedly that of a manwho had gone wandering after enjoyment; searchingafter pleasures--pleasures of sense and pleasures ofintellect--and who, at last, bears reluctant testimonythat, by such methods, no pleasures can be found whichwill endure; that he had squandered the power whichmight have been used for better things, and had onlystrength remaining to tell his own sad tale as a warningto mankind. There is nothing in Ecclesiastes like themisgivings of a noble nature. The writer's own personalhappiness had been all for which he had cared; he hadfailed, as all men gifted as he was gifted are sure tofail, and the lights of heaven had been extinguishedby the disappointment with which his own spirit wasclouded. 

Utterly different from these, both in character andin the lesson which it teaches, is the Book of Job. Ofunknown date, as we said, and unknown authorship, thelanguage impregnated with strange idioms and strangeallusions, unjewish in form, and in fiercest hostility withJudaism, it hovers like a meteor over the old Hebrewliterature, in it, but not of it, compelling theacknowledgment of itself by its own internal majesty, yetexerting no influence over the minds of the people, never alluded to, and scarcely ever quoted, till at lastthe light which it had heralded rose up full over theworld in Christianity. 

The conjectures which have been formed upon thedate of it are so various, that they show of themselveson how slight a foundation the best of them mustrest. The language is no guide, for although unquestionablyof Hebrew origin, it bears no analogy to any of theother books in the Bible; while, of its external history, nothing is known at all, except that it was received intothe Canon at the time of the great synagogue. Ewalddecides, with some confidence, that it belongs to thegreat prophetic period, and that the writer was acontemporary of Jeremiah. Ewald is a high authorityin these matters, and this opinion is the one whichwe believe is now commonly received among biblicalscholars. In the absence of proof, however, (and thereasons which he brings forward are really no more thanconjectures) these opposite considerations may be ofmoment. It is only natural that at first thought weshould ascribe the grandest poem in a literature to thetime at which the poetry of the nation to which itbelongs was generally at its best: but, on reflection, the time when the poetry of prophecy is the richest, isnot likely to be favourable to compositions of anotherkind. The prophets wrote in an era of decrepitude, dissolution, sin, and shame, when the glory of Israelwas filling round them into ruin, and their mission, glowing as they were with the ancient spirit, was torebuke, to warn, to threaten, and to promise. Findingthemselves too late to save, and only, like Cassandra, despised and disregarded, their voices rise up singingthe swan song of a dying people, now falling away inthe wild wailing of despondency over the shameful anddesperate present, now swelling in triumphant hopethat God will not leave them forever, and in his owntime will take his chosen to himself again. But such aperiod is an ill-occasion for searching into the broadproblems of human destiny; the present is all-importantand all-absorbing; and such a book as that of Jobcould have arisen only out of an isolation of mind, andlife, and interest, which we cannot conceive of aspossible. 

The more it is studied, the more the conclusionforces itself upon us that, let the writer have lived whenhe would, in his struggle with the central falsehood ofhis own people's creed, he must have divorced himselffrom them outwardly as well as inwardly; that hetravelled away into the world, and lived long, perhapsall his matured life, in exile. Everything about thebook speaks of a person who had broken free fromthe narrow littleness of "the peculiar people. " Thelanguage, as we said, is full of strange words. Thehero of the poem is of strange land and parentage, aGentile certainly, not a Jew. The life, the manners, the customs, are of all varieties and places--Egypt, with its river and its pyramids, is there; the descriptionof mining points to Phoenicia; the settled life in cities, the nomad Arabs, the wandering caravans, the heat ofthe tropics, and the ice of the north, all are foreign toCanaan, speaking of foreign things and foreign people. No mention, or hint of mention, is there throughoutthe poem, of Jewish traditions or Jewish certainties. We look to find the three friends vindicate themselves, as they so well might have done, by appeals to thefertile annals of Israel, to the Flood, to the cities of theplain, to the plagues of Egypt, or the thunders of Sinai. But of all this there is not a word; they are passed byas if they had no existence; and instead of them, whenwitnesses are required for the power of God, we havestrange un-Hebrew stories of the eastern astronomicmythology, the old wars of the giants, the imprisonedOrion, the wounded dragon, "the sweet influences ofthe seven stars, " and the glittering fragments of thesea-snake Rahab trailing across the northern sky. Again, God is not the God of Israel, but the father ofmankind; we hear nothing of a chosen people, nothingof a special revelation, nothing of peculiar privileges;and in the court of heaven there is a Satan, not theprince of this world and the enemy of God, but theangel of judgment, the accusing spirit whose missionwas to walk to and fro over the earth, and carry up toheaven an account of the sins of mankind. We cannotbelieve that thoughts of this kind arose out of Jerusalemin the days of Josiah. In this book, if anywhere, wehave the record of some aner polutropos who, like theold hero of Ithaca, pollon anthropon iden astea kai voon egnopolla d' hog'en tonto tathen algea hon kata thumon, arnumenos psuchen

but the scenes, the names, and the incidents, are allcontrived as if to baffle curiosity, as if, in the very formof the poem, to teach us that it is no story of a singlething which happened once, but that it belongs tohumanity itself, and is the drama of the trial of man, with Almighty God and the angels as the spectatorsof it. 

No reader can have failed to have been struck withthe simplicity of the opening. Still, calm, and mostmajestic, it tells us everything which is necessary to beknown in the fewest possible words. The history ofJob was probably a tradition in the east; his name, likethat of Priam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness, and his misfortunes the problem of philosophers. Inkeeping with the current belief, he is described as amodel of excellence, the most perfect and upright manupon the earth, "and the same was the greatest man inall the east. " So far, greatness and goodness had gonehand in hand together, as the popular theory required. The details of his character are brought out in theprogress of the poem. He was "the father of theoppressed, and of those who had none to help them. "When he sat as a judge in the market-places, "righteousness clothed him" there, and "his justice wasa robe and a diadem. " He "broke the jaws of thewicked and plucked the spoil out of his teeth;" and, humble in the midst of his power, he "did not despisethe cause of his manservant, or his maidservant, whenthey contended with him, " knowing (and amidst thoseold people where the multitude of mankind wereregarded as the born slaves of the powerful, to be carvedinto eunuchs or polluted into concubines at theirmaster's pleasure, it was no easy matter to know it)knowing "that He who had made him had madethem, " and one "had fashioned them both in thewomb. " Above all, he was the friend of the poor, "the blessing of him that was ready to perish cameupon him, " and he "made the widow's heart to singfor joy. "

Setting these characteristics of his daily life by theside of his unaffected piety, as it is described in the firstchapter, we have a picture of the best man who couldthen be conceived; not a hard ascetic, living in haughtyor cowardly isolation, but a warm figure of flesh andblood, a man full of all human loveliness, and to whom, that no room might be left for any possible Calvinisticfalsehood, God himself bears the emphatic testimony, "that there was none like him upon the earth, a perfectand upright man, who feared God and eschewed evil. "If such a person as this, therefore, could be mademiserable, necessarily the current belief of the Jewswas false to the root; and tradition furnished the factthat he had been visited by every worst calamity. How was it then to be accounted for? Out of a thousandpossible explanations, the poet introduces a singleone. He admits us behind the veil which covers theways of Providence, and we hear the accusing angelcharging Job with an interested piety, and of beingobedient because it was his policy. "Job does notserve God for nought, " he says; "strip him of hissplendour, and see if he will care for God then. Humble him into poverty and wretchedness, so onlywe shall know what is in his heart. " The cause thusintroduced is itself a rebuke to the belief which, withits "rewards and punishments, " immediately fosteredselfishness; and the poem opens with a double action, on one side to try the question whether it is possible forman to love God disinterestedly--the issue of whichtrial is not foreseen or even foretold, and we watch theprogress of it with an anxious and fearful interest--onthe other side, to bring out in contrast to the truthwhich we already know, the cruel falsehood of thepopular faith, to show how, instead of leading men tomercy and affection, it hardens their heart, narrows theirsympathies, and enhances the trials of the sufferer, byrefinements which even Satan had not anticipated. Thecombination of evils, as blow falls on blow, suddenly, swiftly, and terribly, has all the appearance of a purposedvisitation (as indeed it was;) if ever outward incidentsmight with justice be interpreted as the immediateaction of Providence, those which fell on Job might beso interpreted. The world turns disdainfully from thefallen in the world's way; but far worse than this, hischosen friends, wise, good, pious men, as wisdom andpiety were then, without one glimpse of the true causeof his sufferings, see in them a judgment upon his secretsins. He becomes to them an illustration, and even(such are the paralogisms of men of this description) aproof of their theory "that the prosperity of the wickedis but for a while;" and instead of the comfort and helpwhich they might have brought him, and which in theend they were made to bring him, he is to them nomore than a text for the enunciation of solemn falsehood. And even worse again, the sufferer himself had beeneducated in the same creed; he, too, had been taughtto see the hand of God in the outward dispensation;and feeling from the bottom of his heart, that he, inhis own case, was a sure contradiction of what he hadlearnt to believe, he himself finds his very faith in Godshaken from its foundation. The worst evils whichSatan had devised were distanced far by those whichhad been created by human folly. 

The creed in which Job had believed was tried andfound wanting, and, as it ever will be when the facts ofexperience come in contact with the inadequate formula, the true is found so mingled with the false, that theycan hardly be disentangled, and are in danger of beingswept away together. 

A studied respect is shown, however, to this orthodoxy;even while it is arraigned for judgment. It may bedoubtful whether the writer purposely intended it. Heprobably cared only to tell the real truth; to say forit the best which could be said, and to produce as itsdefenders the best and wisest men whom in his experiencehe had known to believe and defend it. At anyrate, he represents the three friends, not as a weakerperson would have represented them, as foolish, obstinatebigots, but as wise, humane, and almost great men, who, at the outset, at least, are animated only by thekindest feelings, and speak what they have to say withthe most earnest conviction that it is true. Job isvehement, desperate, reckless. His language is thewild, natural outpouring of suffering. The friends, trueto the eternal nature of man, are grave, solemn, andindignant, preaching their half truth, and mistaken onlyin supposing that it is the whole; speaking, as all suchpersons would speak, and still do speak, in defendingwhat they consider sacred truth, against the assaultsof folly and scepticism. How beautiful is their firstintroduction:--

"Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evilwhich was come upon him, they came every one from hisown place, Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, for they had made an appointmenttogether to come to mourn with him and to comforthim. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off and knewhim not, they lifted up their voices and wept, and theyrent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon theirheads towards heaven. So they sate down with him uponthe ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake aword unto him, for they saw that his grief was very great. "

What a picture is there! What majestic tenderness!His wife had scoffed at his faith, bidding him leave"God and die. " His acquaintance had turned fromhim. He "had called his servant, and he had given himno answer. " Even the children in their unconsciouscruelty had gathered round and mocked him, as he layamong the ashes. But "his friends sprinkle dust towardsheaven, and sit silently by him, and weep for him sevendays and seven nights upon the ground. " That is, theywere true hearted, truly loving, devout, religious men, and yet they with their religion, were to become theinstruments of the most poignant sufferings, and thesharpest temptations, which he had to endure. So itwas, and is, and will be, --of such materials is this humanlife of ours composed. 

And now, remembering the double action of thedrama, the actual trial of Job, the result of which isuncertain, and the delusion of these men which is, atthe outset, certain, let us go rapidly through the dialogue. Satan's share in the temptation had already been overcome. Lying sick in the loathsome disease which hadbeen sent upon him, his wife, in Satan's own words, hadtempted Job, to say, "Farewell to God, " think no moreof God or goodness, since this was all which came of it;and Job had told her, that she spoke as one of thefoolish women. He "had received good at the hand ofthe Lord, and should he not receive evil?" But now, when real love and real affection appear, his heart meltsin him; he loses his forced self-composure, and burstsinto a passionate regret that he had ever been born. In the agony of his sufferings, hope of better things haddied away. He does not complain of injustice; as yet, and before his friends have stung and wounded him, hemakes no questioning of Providence, --but why was lifegiven to him at all, if only for this? And sick in mindand sick in body, but one wish remains to him, thatdeath will come quickly and end all. It is a cry fromthe very depths of a single and simple heart. But forsuch simplicity and singleness his friends could not givehim credit; possessed beforehand with their idea, theysee in his misery only a fatal witness against him; suchcalamities could not have befallen a man, the justice ofGod would not have permitted it, unless they had beendeserved. Job had sinned and he had suffered, andthis wild passion was but impenitence and rebellion. 

Being as certain that they were right in this opinionas they were that God Himself existed, that they shouldspeak what they felt was only natural and necessary;and their language at the outset is all which would bedictated by the tenderest sympathy. Eliphaz opens, the oldest and most important of the three, in a soft, subdued, suggestive strain, contriving in every way tospare the feelings of the sufferer, to the extreme, towhich his real love will allow him. All is general, impersonal, indirect, the rule of the world, the order ofProvidence. He does not accuse Job, but he describeshis calamities, and leaves him to gather for himself theoccasion which had produced them, and then passesoff, as if further to soften the blow, to the mysteriousvision in which the infirmity of mortal nature had beenrevealed to him, the universal weakness which involvedboth the certainty that Job had shared in it, and theexcuse for him, if he would confess and humble himself:the blessed virtue of repentance follows, and thepromise that all shall be well. 

This is the note on which each of the friends strikessuccessively, in the first of the three divisions intowhich the dialogue divides itself, but each withincreasing peremptoriness and confidence, as Job, so far fromaccepting their interpretation of what had befallen him, hurls it from him in anger and disdain. Let us observe(what the Calvinists make of it they have given us nomeans of knowing, ) he will hear as little of the chargesagainst mankind, as of charges against himself. He willnot listen to the "corruption of humanity, " because inthe consciousness of his own innocency, he knows thatit is not corrupt: he knows it, and we know it, thedivine sentence upon him having been already passed. He will not acknowledge his sin, he cannot repent, forhe knows not of what to repent. If he could havereflected calmly, he might have foreseen what theywould say. He knew all that as well as they: it wasthe old story which he had learnt, and could repeat, ifnecessary, as well as any one: and if it had been nomore than a philosophical discussion, touching himselfno more nearly than it touched his friends, he mighthave allowed for the tenacity of opinion in such matters, and listened to it and replied to it with equanimity. But as the proverb says, "it is ill-talking between a fullman and a fasting:" and in him such equanimity wouldhave been but Stoicism or the affectation of it, andunreal as the others' theories. Possessed with thecertainty that he had not deserved what had befallenhim, harassed with doubt, and worn out with pain andunkindness, he had assumed (and how natural that heshould assume it), that those who loved him would nothave been hasty to believe evil of him, that he hadbeen safe in speaking to them as he really felt, and thathe might look to them for something warmer and moresympathizing than such dreary eloquence. So when therevelation comes upon him of what was passing in them, he attributes it (and now he is unjust to them) to afalsehood of heart, and not to a blindness of under-standing. Their sermons, so kindly intended, roll pasthim as a dismal mockery. They had been shocked(and how true again is this to nature) at his passionatecry for death. "Do ye reprove words?" he says, "and the speeches of one that is desperate, whichare as wind?" It was but poor friendship and narrowwisdom. He had looked to them for pity, for comfort, and love. He had longed for it as the parched caravansin the desert for the water-streams, and "his brethrenhad dealt deceitfully with him, " as the brooks, whichin the cool winter roll in a full turbid stream; "whattime it waxes warm they vanish, when it is hot they areconsumed out of their place. The caravans of Temalooked for them, the companies of Sheba waited forthem. They were confounded because they had hoped. They came thither and there was nothing. " If for oncethese poor men could have trusted their hearts, if foronce they could have believed that there might be"more things in heaven and earth" than were dreamtof in their philosophy--but this is the one thing whichthey could not do, which the theologian proper neverhas done or will do. And thus whatever of calmness orendurance, Job alone, on his ash-heap, might haveconquered for himself, is all scattered away; and as thestrong gusts of passion sweep to and fro across his heart, he pours himself out in wild fitful music, so beautifulbecause so true, not answering them or their speeches, but now flinging them from him in scorn, now appealingto their mercy, or turning indignantly to God; nowpraying for death; now in perplexity doubting whether, in some mystic way which he cannot understand, hemay not, perhaps after all, really have sinned, andpraying to be shown it; and, then, staggering further intothe darkness, and breaking out into upbraidings of thePower which has become so dreadful an enigma to him. "Thou inquirest after my iniquity, thou searchest aftermy sin, and thou knowest that I am not wicked. Whydidst thou bring me forth out of the womb? Oh, thatI had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me. Cease, let me alone. It is but a little while that I haveto live. Let me alone, that I may take comfort a littlebefore I go, whence I shall not return to the land ofdarkness and the shadow of death. " In what otherpoem in the world is there pathos so deep as this?With experience so stern as his, it was not for Job tobe calm, and self-possessed, and delicate in his words. He speaks not what he knows, but what he feels; andwithout fear the writer allows him to throw it out allgenuine as it rises, not overmuch caring how nice earsmight be offended, but contented to be true to the realemotion of a genuine human heart. So the poem runson to the end of the first answer to Zophar. 

But now with admirable fitness, as the contest goesforward, the relative position of the speakers begins tochange. Hitherto Job only had been passionate; andhis friends temperate and collected. Now, however, shocked at his obstinacy, and disappointed wholly inthe result of their homilies, they stray still further fromthe truth in an endeavour to strengthen their position, and, as a natural consequence, visibly grow angry. Tothem Job's vehement and desperate speeches aredamning evidence of the truth of their suspicion. Impietyis added to his first sin, and they begin to see in hima rebel against God. At first they had been contentedto speak generally; and much which they had urgedwas partially true: now they step forward to a directapplication, and formally and personally accuse himself. Here their ground is positively false; and withdelicate art it is they who are now growing passionate, and wounded self-love begins to show behind their zealFor God; while in contrast to them, as there is lessand less truth in what they say, Job grows more andmore collected. For a time it had seemed doubtfulhow he would endure his trial. The light of his faithwas burning feebly and unsteadily; a little more andit seemed as if it might have utterly gone out; but atlast the storm was lulling; as the charges are broughtpersonally home to him, the confidence in his own realinnocence rises against them. He had before knownthat he was innocent, now he feels the strength whichlies in it, as if God were beginning to reveal Himselfwithin him, to prepare the way for the after outwardmanifestation of Himself. 

The friends, as before, repeat one another with butlittle difference; the sameness being of courseintentional, as showing that they were not speaking forthemselves, but as representatives of a prevailing opinion. Eliphaz, again, gives the note which the others follow. Hear this Calvinist of the old world. "Thy own mouthcondemneth thee, and thine own lips testify against thee. What is man that he should be clean, and he that isborn of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints. Yea, the heavens arenot clean in his sight; how much more abominableand filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?"Strange, that after all these thousands of years, weshould still persist in this degrading confession, as athing which it is impious to deny, and impious toattempt to render otherwise, when scripture itself, inlanguage so emphatic, declares that it is a lie. Job isinnocent, perfect, righteous. God Himself bears witnessto it. It is Job who is found at last to have spokentruth, and the friends to have sinned in denying it. And he holds fast by his innocency, and with a generousconfidence puts away the misgivings which had begunto cling to him. Among his complainings he hadexclaimed, that God was remembering upon him thesins of his youth--not denying them--knowing well, that he, like others, had gone astray before he hadlearnt to control himself, but feeling that at least in anearthly father it is unjust to visit the faults of childhoodon the matured man; feeling that he had long, longshaken them off from him, and they did not evenimpair the probity of his after life. But now thesedoubts, too, pass away in the brave certainty that Godis not less just than man. As the denouncings growlouder and darker, he appeals from his narrow judges tothe Supreme Tribunal, calls on God to hear him and totry his cause--and, then, in the strength of this appealhis eye grows clearer still. His sickness is mortal: hehas no hope in life, and death is near, but the intensefeeling that justice must and will be done, holds to himcloser and closer. God may appear on earth for him;or if that be too bold a hope, and death finds him as heis--what is death, then? God will clear his memoryin the place where he lived; his injuries will be rightedover his grave; while for himself, like a sudden gleam ofsunlight between clouds, a clear, bright hope beams up, that he too, then, in another life, if not in this, when hisskin is wasted off his bones, and the worms have donetheir work on the prison of his spirit, he, too, at lastmay then see God; may see Him, and have his pleadings heard. 

With such a hope, or even the shadow of one, heturns back to the world again to look at it. Factsagainst which he had before closed his eyes he allowsand confronts, and he sees that his own little experienceis but the reflection of a law. You tell me, he seems tosay, that the good are rewarded, and that the wickedare punished, that God is just, and that this is alwaysso. Perhaps it is, or will be, but not in the way whichyou imagine. You have known me, you have knownwhat my life has been; you see what I am, and it is nodifficulty to you. You prefer believing that I, whomyou call your friend, am a deceiver or a pretender, to admitting the possibility of the falsehood of yourhypothesis. You will not listen to my assurance, andyou are angry with me because I will not lie againstmy own soul, and acknowledge sins which I have notcommitted. You appeal to the course of the world inproof of your faith, and challenge me to answer you. Well, then, I accept your challenge. The world is notwhat you say. You have told me what you have seenof it. I will tell you what I have seen. 

"Even while I remember I am afraid, and tremblingtaketh hold upon my flesh. Wherefore do the wickedbecome old, yea, and are mighty in power. Their seedis established in their sight with them, and their offspringbefore their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neitheris the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth andfaileth not; their cow calveth and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and theirchildren dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoiceat the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down into the grave. Therefore theysay unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledgeof thy ways. What is the Almighty that we shouldserve him? and what profit should we have if we pray tohim?"

Will you quote the weary proverb? Will you saythat "God layeth up his iniquity for his children?"(our translators have wholly lost the sense of thispassage, and endeavour to make Job acknowledgewhat he is steadfastly denying). Well, and whatthen? What will he care? "Will his own eye seehis own fall? Will he drink the wrath of theAlmighty? What are the fortunes of his house tohim if the number of his own months is fulfilled?"One man is good and another wicked, one is happyand another is miserable. In the great indifference ofnature they share alike in the common lot. "Theylie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them. "Ewald, and many other critics, suppose that Job washurried away by his feelings to say all this; and thatin his calmer moments he must have felt that it wasuntrue. It is a point on which we must declineaccepting even Ewald's high authority. Even thenin those old times it was beginning to be terribly true. Even then the current theory was obliged to bend tolarge exceptions; and what Job saw as exceptions wesee round us everywhere. It was true then, it isinfinitely more true now, that what is called virtue inthe common sense of the word, still more that nobleness, godliness, or heroism of character in any formwhatsoever, have nothing to do with this or that man'sprosperity, or even happiness. The thoroughly viciousman is no doubt wretched enough; but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his five senses, which he understands how to gratify with temperedindulgence, with a conscience satisfied with the hackroutine of what is called respectability, such a manfeels no wretchedness; no inward uneasiness disturbshim, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this thoughhe be the basest and most contemptible slave of hisown selfishness. Providence will not interfere to punishhim. Let him obey the laws under which prosperityis obtainable, and he will obtain it; let him never fearHe will obtain it, be he base or noble. Nature isindifferent; the famine, and the earthquake, and theblight, or the accident, will not discriminate to strikehim. He may insure himself against those in thesedays of ours: with the money perhaps which a betterman would have given away, and he will have hisreward. He need not doubt it. 

And again, it is not true, as optimists would persuadeus, that such prosperity brings no real pleasure. A man with no high aspirations who thrives and makesmoney, and envelops himself in comforts, is as happyas such a nature can be. If unbroken satisfactionbe the most blessed state for a man (and this certainlyis the practical notion of happiness) he is the happiestof men. Nor are those idle phrases any truer, thatthe good man's goodness is a never-ceasing sunshine;that virtue is its own reward. &c. &c. If men trulyvirtuous care to be rewarded for it, their virtue is buta poor investment of their moral capital. Was Jobso happy then on that ash-heap of his, the mark of theworld's scorn, and the butt for the spiritual archeryof the theologian, alone in his forlorn nakedness, likesome old dreary stump which the lightning has scathed, rotting away in the wind and the rain? Happy! ifhappiness be indeed what we men are sent into thisworld to seek for, those hitherto thought the noblestamong us were the pitifullest and wretchedest. Surelyit was no error in Job. It was that real insight whichonce was given to all the world in Christianity;however we have forgotten it now. He was learning tosee that it was not in the possession of enjoyment, no, nor of happiness itself, that the difference liesbetween the good and the bad. True, it might bethat God sometimes, even generally, gives such happinessin, gives it as what Aristotle calls an epigignomenontelos, but it is no part of the terms on which He admitsus to His service, still less is it the end which we maypropose to ourselves on entering His service. HappinessHe gives to whom He will, or leaves to the angelof nature to distribute among those who fulfil the lawsupon which it depends. But to serve God and tolove Him is higher and better than happiness, thoughit be with wounded feet, and bleeding brow, and heartsloaded with sorrow. Into this high faith Job is rising, treading his temptations under his feet, and findingin them a ladder on which his spirit rises. Thus heis passing further and ever further from his friends, soaring where their imaginations cannot follow him. To them he is a blasphemer whom they gaze at withawe and terror. They had charged him with sinning, on the strength of their hypothesis, and he has answeredwith a deliberate denial of it. Losing now all masteryover themselves, they pour out a torrent of mereextravagant invective and baseless falsehoods, whichin the calmer outset they would have blushed to thinkof. They know no evil of Job, but they do not hesitatenow to convert conjecture into certainty, and specifyin detail the particular crimes which he must havecommitted. He ought to have committed them, andso he had; the old argument then as now. --"Is notthy wickedness great?" says Eliphaz. "Thou hasttaken a pledge from thy brother for nought, andstripped the naked of their clothing; thou hast notgiven water to the weary, and thou hast withholdenbread from the hungry;" and so on through a seriesof mere distracted lies. But the time was past whenwords like these could make Job angry. Bildad followsthem up with an attempt to frighten him by a pictureof the power of that God whom he was blaspheming;but Job cuts short his harangue, and ends it for himin a spirit of loftiness which Bildad could not haveapproached; and then proudly and calmly rebukesthem all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in hightranquil self-possession. "God forbid that I shouldjustify you, " he says; "till I die I will not remove myintegrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, andwill not let it go. My heart shall not reproach meso long as I live. "

So far all has been clear, each party, with increasingconfidence, having insisted on their own position, anddenounced their adversaries. A difficulty now rises, which, at first sight, appears insurmountable. As thechapters are at present printed, the entire of thetwenty-seventh is assigned to Job, and the verses from theeleventh to the twenty-third are in direct contradictionto all which he has maintained before, are, in fact, aconcession of having been wrong from the beginning. Ewald, who, as we said above, himself refuses to allowthe truth of Job's last and highest position, supposesthat he is here receding from it, and confessing what anover precipitate passion had betrayed him into denying. For many reasons, principally because we are satisfiedthat Job said then no more than the real fact, we cannotthink Ewald right; and the concessions are too largeand too inconsistent to be reconciled even with his owngeneral theory of the poem. Another solution of thedifficulty is very simple, although, it is to be admitted, that it rather cuts the knot than unties it. Eliphaz andBildad have each spoken a third time; the symmetryof the general form requires that now Zophar shouldspeak; and the suggestion, we believe, was first made byDr. Kennicott, that he did speak, and that the versesin question belong to him. Any one who is accustomedto MSS. Will understand easily how such a mistake, --if it be one, --might have arisen. Even in Shakespeare, the speeches in the early editions are, in many instances, wrongly divided, and assigned to the wrong persons. It might have arisen from inadvertence; it might havearisen from the foolishness of some Jewish transcriber, who resolved, at all costs, to drag the book into harmonywith Judaism, and make Job unsay his heresy. This view has the merit of fully clearing up the obscurity;another, however, has been suggested by Eichorn, whooriginally followed Kennicott, but discovered, as hesupposed, a less violent hypothesis, which was equallysatisfactory. He imagines the verses to be a summaryby Job of his adversaries' opinions, as if he said--"Listen now; you know what the facts are as well asI, and yet you maintain this;" and then passed on withhis indirect reply to it. It is possible that Eichornmay be right--at any rate, either he is right, or elseDr. Kennicott is. Certainly, Ewald is not. Taken asan account of Job's own conviction, the passagecontradicts the burden of the whole poem. Passing it by, therefore, and going to what immediately follows, wearrive at what, in a human sense, is the final climax--Job's victory and triumph. He had appealed to God, and God had not appeared; he had doubted and foughtagainst his doubts, and, at last, had crushed them down. He, too, had been taught to look for God in outwardjudgments; and when his own experience had shownhim his mistake, he knew not where to turn. He hadbeen leaning on a braised reed, and it had run into hishand, and pierced him. But as soon as in the speechesof his friends he saw it all laid down in its weakness andits false conclusions--when he saw the defenders of itwandering further and further from what he knew tobe true, growing every moment, as if from a consciousnessof the unsoundness of their standing ground, moreviolent, obstinate, and unreasonable, the scales fell moreand more from his eyes--he had seen the fact that thewicked might prosper, and in learning to depend uponhis innocency he had felt that the good man's supportwas there, if it was anywhere; and at last, with all hisheart, was reconciled to it. The mystery of the outerworld becomes deeper to him, but he does not anymore try to understand it. The wisdom which cancompass that, he knows, is not in man; though mansearch for it deeper and harder than the miner searchesfor the hidden treasures of the earth; and the wisdomwhich alone is possible to him, is resignation toGod. 

"Where, he cries, shall wisdom be found, and where isthe place of understanding. Man knoweth not the pricethereof, neither is it found in the land of the living. Thedepth said, it is not with me; and the sea said, it is not inme. It is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close fromthe fowls of the air. * God understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof [He, not man, understandsthe mysteries of the world which He has made]. And unto man He said, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is understanding. "____

* An allusion, perhaps, to the old bird auguries. The birds, as theinhabitants of the air, were supposed to be the messengers betweenheaven and earth. ____

Here, therefore, it might seem as if all was over. There is no clearer or purer faith possible for man; andJob had achieved it. His evil had turned to good;and sorrow had severed for him the last links whichbound him to lower things. He had felt that he coulddo without happiness, that it was no longer essential, and that he could live on, and still love God, and clingto Him. But he is not described as of preternatural, orat all Titanic nature, but as very man, full of all humantenderness and susceptibility. His old life was stillbeautiful to him. He does not hate it, because he canrenounce it; and now that the struggle is over, thebattle fought and won, and his heart has flowed over inthat magnificent song of victory, the note once morechanges: he turns back to earth, to linger over thoseold departed days, with which the present is so hard acontrast; and his parable dies away in a strain ofplaintive, but resigned melancholy. Once more hethrows himself on God, no longer in passionateexpostulation, but in pleading humility. + And then comes(perhaps, as Ewald says, it could not have come before)the answer out of the whirlwind. Job had called onHim had prayed that He might appear, that he mightplead his cause with Him; and now He comes, andwhat will Job do? He comes not as the healingspirit in the heart of man; but, as Job had at firstdemanded, the outward God, the Almighty Creator ofthe universe, and clad in the terrors and the glory of it. Job, in his first precipitancy, had desired to reason withHim on His government. The poet, in gleaming lines, describes for an answer the universe as it then wasknown, the majesty and awfulness of it; and then askswhether it is this which he requires to have explained tohim, or which he believes himself capable of conducting. The revelation acts on Job as the sign of the Macrocosmoson the modern Faust; but when he sinkscrushed, it is not as the rebellious upstart, struck downin his pride--for he had himself, partially at least, subdued his own presumption--but as a humble penitent, struggling to overcome his weakness. He abhorshimself for his murmurs, and "repents in dust andashes. " It will have occurred to every one that thesecret which has been revealed to the reader is not, afterall, revealed to Job or to his friends, and for this plainreason: the burden of the drama is not that we do, butthat we do not, and cannot, know the mystery of thegovernment of the world, that it is not for man to seekit, or for God to reveal it. We, the readers, are, in thisone instance, admitted behind the scenes--for once, inthis single case because it was necessary to meet thereceived theory by a positive fact, which contradicted it. But the explanation of one case need not be the explanationof another; our business is to do what we knowto be right, and ask no questions. The veil which in theEgyptian legend lay before the face of Isis, is not to beraised; and we are not to seek to penetrate secretswhich are not ours. ____

+ The speech of Elihu, which lies between Job's last words andGod's appearance, is now decisively pronounced by Hebrew scholarsnot to be genuine. The most superficial reader will have beenperplexed by the introduction of a speaker to whom no allusion ismade, either in the prologue or the epilogue; by a long dissertation, which adds nothing to the progress of the argument; proceedingevidently on the false hypothesis of the three friends, andbetraying not the faintest conception of the real cause of Job'ssuffering. And the suspicions which such an anomaly would naturallysuggest are now made certainties, by a fuller knowledge of thelanguage, and the detection of a different hand. The interpolatorhas unconsciously confessed the feeling which allowed him to takeso great a liberty. He, too, possessed with the old Jew theory, wasunable to accept in its fulness so great a contradiction to it; and, missing the spirit of the poem, he believed that God's honour couldstill be vindicated in the old way. "His wrath was kindled" againstthe friends, because they could not answer Job; and against Jobbecause he would not be answered; and conceiving himself "fullof matter, " and "ready to burst like new bottles, " he could notcontain himself, and delivered into the text a sermon on the Theodice, such, we suppose, as formed the current doctrine of the time inwhich he lived. ____

While, however, God does not condescend to justifyHis ways to man, He gives judgment on the pastcontroversy. The self-constituted pleaders for Him, theacceptors of His person, were all wrong; and Job, thepassionate, vehement, scornful, misbelieving Job, hehad spoken the truth; he at least had spoken facts, andthey had been defending a transient theory as aneverlasting truth. 

"And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken thesewords to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, mywrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends;for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as myservant Job hath. Therefore take unto you now sevenbullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job; andoffer for yourselves a burnt-offering. And my servant Jobshall pray for you, and him will I accept. Lest I deal withyou after your folly, for that ye have not spoken of me thething which is right, like my servant Job. "

One act of justice remains. Knowing as we do, thecause of Job's sufferings, and that as soon as his trialwas over, it was no longer operative, our sense of fitnesscould not be satisfied unless he were indemnified outwardlyfor his outward sufferings. Satan is defeated, and his integrity proved; and there is no reason whythe general law should be interfered with, which makesgood men happy; or why obvious calamities, obviouslyundeserved, should remain any more unremoved. Perhaps, too, a deeper lesson still lies below his restoration--something perhaps of this kind. Prosperity, enjoyment, happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the nameby which we designate that state in which life is to ourown selves pleasant and delightful, as long as they aresought or prized as things essential, so far have atendency to disennoble our nature, and are a sign thatwe are still in servitude and selfishness. Only whenthey lie outside us, as ornaments merely to be worn orlaid aside as God pleases, only then may such thingsbe possessed with impunity. Job's heart in early timeshad clung to them more than he knew, but now he waspurged clean, and they were restored because he hadceased to need them. 

Such in outline is this wonderful poem. With thematerial of which it is woven we have not here beenconcerned, although it is so rich and pregnant, that wemight with little difficulty construct out of it acomplete picture of the world as then it was: its life, knowledge, arts, habits, superstitions, hopes, and fears. The subject is the problem of all mankind, and thecomposition embraces no less wide a range. But what we arehere most interested upon, is the epoch which it marksin the progress of mankind, as the first recorded struggleof a new experience with an established orthodoxbelief. True, for hundreds of years, perhaps for athousand, the superstition against which it was directedcontinued; when Christ came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as we saw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day. But even those whoretained their imperfect belief had received into theircanon a book which treated it with contumely andscorn, so irresistible was the lofty majesty of truth. 

In days like these, when we hear so much of progress, it is worth while to ask ourselves, what advanceswe have made further in the same direction? and oncemore, at the risk of some repetition, let us look at theposition in which this book leaves us. It had beenassumed, that man if he lived a just and upright life, had a right to expect to be happy. Happiness, "hisbeing's end and aim, " was his legitimate and covenantedreward. If God therefore was just, such a man wouldbe happy; and inasmuch as God was just, the man whowas not happy had not deserved to be. There is noflaw in this argument; and if it is unsound, the fallacycan only lie in the supposed right to happiness. It isidle to talk of inward consolations. Job felt them, butthey were not everything. They did not relieve theanguish of his wounds; they did not make the loss ofhis children, or his friends' unkindness, any the lesspainful to him. 

The poet, indeed, restores him in the book; but inlife it need not have been so. He might have died uponhis ash-heap as thousands of good men have died, andwill die again in misery. Happiness, therefore, is notwhat we are to look for. Our place is to be true to thebest which we know, to seek that and do that; and ifby "virtue its own reward" he meant that the goodman cares only to continue good, desiring nothing more;then it is true and noble. But if virtue be valued, because it is politic, because in pursuit of it will befound most enjoyment and fewest sufferings, then it isnot noble any more, and it is turning the truth of Godinto a lie. Let us do right, and whether happiness comeor unhappiness is no very mighty matter. If it come, life will be sweet; if it do not come, life will be bitter--bitter, not sweet, and yet to be borne. On such atheory alone is the government of this world intelligiblyjust. The well-being of our souls depends only onwhat we are, and nobleness of character is nothingelse but steady love of good, and steady scorn of evil. The government of the world is a problem while thedesire of selfish enjoyment survives, and when justiceis not done according to such standard (which will notbe till the day after doomsday, and not then), self-lovingmen will still ask, why? and find no answer. Only tothose who have the heart to say, we can do withoutthat, it is not what we ask or desire, is there no secret. Man will have what he deserves, and will find what isreally best for him, exactly as he honestly seeks for it. Happiness may fly away, pleasure pall or cease to beobtainable, wealth decay, friends fail or prove unkind, and fame turn to infamy; but the power to serve Godnever fails, and the love of Him is never rejected. 

Most of us, at one time or other of our lives, haveknown something of love--of that only pure love inwhich no self is left remaining. We have loved aschildren, we have loved as lovers; some of us havelearnt to love a cause, a faith, a country; and what lovewould that be which existed only with a prudent viewto after-interests. Surely, there is a love which exultsin the power of self-abandonment, and can glory in theprivilege of suffering for what is good. Que mon nomsoit fletri, pourvu que la France soit libre, said Danton;and those wild patriots who had trampled into scornthe faith in an immortal life in which they would berewarded for what they were suffering, went to theirgraves as beds, for the dream of a people's liberty. Shall we, who would be thought reasonable men, lovethe living God with less heart than these poor menloved their phantom? Justice is done; the balance isnot deranged. It only seems deranged, as long as wehave not learnt to serve without looking to be paidfor it. 

Such is the theory of life which is to be found in theBook of Job; a faith which has flashed up in all timesand all lands, wherever noble men were to be found, and which passed in Christianity into the acknowledgedcreed of half the world. The cross was the new symbol, the divine sufferer the great example, and mankindanswered to the call, because the appeal was not towhat was poor and selfish in them, but to whatever ofbest and bravest was in their nature. The law ofreward and punishment was superseded by the law of love. Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love man; and thatwas not love--man knew it once--which was bought bythe prospect of reward. Times are changed with usnow. Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love man, inthe hands of a poor Paley, are found to mean no morethan, Thou shalt love thyself after an enlightenedmanner. And the same base tone has saturated notonly our common feelings, but our Christian theologiesand our Antichristian philosophies. A prudent regardto our future interests, an abstinence from presentunlawful pleasures, because they will entail the loss ofgreater pleasure by-and-by, or perhaps be paid for withpain, this is called virtue now; and the belief that suchbeings as men can be influenced by any feelings nobleror better, is smiled at as the dream of enthusiastswhose hearts have outrun their understandings. Indeed, he were but a poor lover whose devotion to his mistresslay resting on the feeling that a marriage with her wouldconduce to 'his own after comforts. That were a poorpatriot who served his country for the hire which hiscountry would give to him. And we should think butpoorly of a son who thus addressed his earthly father:"Father, on whom my fortunes depend, teach me todo what pleases thee, that I, obeying thee in all thingsmay obtain those good things which thou hast promisedto give to thy obedient children. " If any of us who havelived in so poor a faith venture, by-and-by, to put inour claims, Satan will be likely to say of us (with betterreason than he did of Job) "Did they serve God fornought, then? Take their reward from them, and theywill curse Him to His face. " If Christianity had neverborne itself more nobly than this, do we suppose thatthose fierce Norsemen who had learnt, in the fierywarsongs of the Edda, of what stuff the hearts of heroes arecomposed, would have fashioned their sword-hilts intocrosses, and themselves into a crusading chivalry? Letus not dishonour our great fathers with the dream of it. The Christians, like the stoics and the epicureans, wouldhave lived their little day among the ignoble sects of aneffete civilization, and would have passed off and beenheard of no more. It was in another spirit that thosefirst preachers of righteousness went out upon theirwarfare with evil. They preached, not enlightenedprudence, but purity, justice, goodness; holding out nopromises in this world except of suffering as their greatmaster had suffered, and rejoicing that they were countedworthy to suffer for His sake. And that crown of glorywhich they did believe to await them in a life beyondthe grave, was no enjoyment of what they had surrenderedin life, was not enjoyment at all in any sensewhich human thought or language can attach to thewords; as little like it as the crown of love is like it, which the true lover looks for when at last he obtainshis mistress. It was to be with Christ--to losethemselves in Him. 

How all this nobleness ebbed away, and Christianitybecame what we know it, we are partially beginning tosee. The living spirit organized for itself a body ofperishable flesh: not only the real gains of realexperience, but mere conjectural hypotheses current at theday for the solution of unexplained phenomena, becameformulae and articles of faith; again, as before, the livingand the dead were bound together, and the seeds ofdecay were already planted on the birth of a constructedpolity. But there was another cause allied to this, andyet different from it, which, though a law of humannature itself, seems now-a-days altogether forgotten. Inthe rapid and steady advance of our knowledge ofmaterial things, we are apt to believe that all ourknowledge follows the same law, that it is merely generalizedexperience, that experience accumulates daily, and, therefore, that "progress of the species, " in all senses, is anobvious and necessary fact. There is something whichis true in this view mixed with a great deal which isfalse. Material knowledge, the physical and mechanicalsciences, make their way from step to step, from experimentto experiment, and each advance is secured andmade good, and cannot again be lost; one generationtakes up the general sum of experience where the lastlaid it down, adds to it what it has the opportunity ofadding, and leaves it with interest to the next. Thesuccessive positions, as they are gained, require nothingfor the apprehension of them but an understandingordinarily cultivated. Prejudices have to be encountered, but prejudices of opinion merely, not prejudices ofconscience or prejudices of self-love, like those whichbeset our progress in the science of morality, Here weenter upon conditions wholly different, conditions inwhich age differs from age, man differs from man, andeven from himself, at different moments. We all haveexperienced times when, as we say, we should not knowourselves; some, when we fall below our average level;some, when we are lifted above it, and put on, as it were, a higher nature. At such intervals as these last, (unfortunately, with most of us, of rare occurrence, ) manythings become clear to us, which before were hardsayings; propositions become alive which, usually, arebut dry words. Our hearts seem purer, our motivesloftier; our purposes, what we are proud to acknowledgeto ourselves. And, as man is unequal to himself, sois man to his neighbour, and period to period. Theentire method of action, the theories of human life whichin one area prevail universally, to the next areunpractical and insane, as those of this next would have seemedmere baseness to the first, if the first could haveanticipated them. One, we may suppose, holds some "greatestnobleness principle, " the other some "greatest happinessprinciple;" and then their very systems of axiomswill contradict one another; their general conceptionsand their detailed interpretations, their rules, judgments, opinions, practices, will be in perpetual and endlesscontradiction. Our minds take shape from our hearts, and the facts of moral experience do not teach their ownmeaning, but submit to many readings, according to thepower of eye which we bring with us. 

The want of a clear perception of so important afeature about us, leads to many singular contradictions. A believer in popular Protestantism, who is also abeliever in progress, ought, if he were consistent, toregard mankind as growing every day in a moreand more advantageous position with respect to thetrials of life; and yet if he were asked whether it iseasier for him to "save his soul" in the nineteenthcentury than it would have been in the first or second, or whether the said soul is necessarily better worthsaving, he would be perplexed for an answer. Thereis hardly one of us who, in childhood, has not felt likethe Jews to whom Christ spoke, that if he had "livedin the days of the fathers, " if he had had theiradvantages, he would have found duty a much easier matter;and some of us in mature life have felt that, in oldAthens, or old republican Rome, in the first ages ofChristianity, in the Crusades or at the Reformation, there was a contagious atmosphere of general nobleness, in which we should have been less troubled with thelittle feelings which cling about us now. At any rate, it is at these rare epochs only that real additions aremade to our moral knowledge. At such times, newtruths are, indeed, sent down among us, and, for periodslonger or shorter, may be seen to exercise an ennoblinginfluence on mankind. Perhaps what is gained onthese occasions is never entirely lost. The historicalmonuments of their effects are at least indestructible;and, when the spirit which gave them birth reappears, their dormant energy awakens again. 

But it seems from our present experience of what, in some at least of its modern forms, Christianity hasbeen capable of becoming, that there is no doctrine initself so pure, but what the poorer nature which is inus can disarm and distort it, and adapt it to its ownlittleness. The once living spirit dries up into formulae, and formula whether of mass-sacrifice or vicariousrighteousness, or "reward and punishment, " arecontrived ever so as to escape making over high demandson men. Some aim at dispensing with obediencealtogether, and those which insist on obedience restthe obligations of it on the poorest of motives. Sothings go on till there is no life left at all; till, fromall higher aspirations we are lowered down to the loveof self after an enlightened manner; and then nothingremains but to fight the battle over again. The oncebeneficial truth has become, as in Job's case, a crueland mischievous deception, and the whole question oflife and its obligations must again be opened. 

It is now some three centuries since the last of suchreopenings. If we ask ourselves how much duringthis time has been actually added to the sum of ourknowledge in these matters, what--in all the thousandsupon thousands of sermons and theologies, and philosophieswith which Europe has been deluged--has beengained for mankind beyond what we have found in thisvery book of Job for instance; how far all this hasadvanced us in the "progress of humanity, " it werehard, or rather it is easy to answer. How far we havefallen below, let Paley and the rest bear witness; butwhat moral question can be asked which admits nowof a nobler solution than was offered two, perhaps threethousand years ago? The world has not been standingstill, experience of man and life has increased, questionshave multiplied on questions, while the answers of theestablished teachers to them have been growing everyday more and more incredible. What other answershave there been? Of all the countless books whichhave appeared, there has been only one of enduringimportance, in which an attempt is made to carry onthe solution of the great problem. Job is given overinto Satan's hand to be tempted; and though he shakeshe does not fall. Taking the temptation of Job for hismodel, Goethe has similarly exposed his Faust to trial, and with him the tempter succeeds. His hero fallsfrom sin to sin, from crime to crime; he becomes aseducer, a murderer, a betrayer, following recklesslyhis evil angel wherever he chooses to lead him; andyet, with all this, he never wholly forfeits our sympathy. In spite of his weakness his heart is still true to hishigher nature; sick and restless, even in the deliriumof enjoyment, he always longs for something better, andhe never can be brought to say of evil that it is good. And, therefore, after all, the devil is balked of his prey;in virtue of this one fact, that the evil in which hesteeped himself remained to the last hateful to him, Faust is saved by the angels . .. And this indeed, though Goethe has scarcely dealt with it satisfactorily, is a vast subject. It will be eagerly answered for theestablished belief, that such cases are its especialprovince. All men are sinners, and it possesses theblessed remedy for sin. But, among the countlessnumbers of those characters so strangely mixed amongus, in which the dark and the bright fibres cross likea meshwork; characters at one moment capable ofacts of heroic nobleness, at another, hurried bytemptation into actions which even common men may deplore, how many are there who have never availed themselvesof the conditions of reconciliation as orthodoxy proffersthem, and of such men what is to be said? It wassaid once of a sinner that to her "much was forgivenfor she loved much. " But this is language whichtheology has as little appropriated as the Jews couldappropriate the language of Job. It cannot recognisethe nobleness of the human heart. It has no balancein which to weigh the good against the evil; and whena great Burns, or a Mirabeau comes before it, it canbut tremblingly count up the offences committed, andthen, looking to the end, and finding its own termsnot to have been complied with, it faintly mutters itsanathema. Sin only it can apprehend and judge; andfor the poor acts of struggling heroism, "Forasmuch asthey were not done, &c. , &c. , it doubts not but theyhave the nature of sin. " [See the Thirteenth Article. ]

Something of the difficulty has been met by Goethe, but it cannot be said that he has resolved it; or atleast that he has furnished others with a solution whichmay guide their judgment. In the writer of the Bookof Job there is an awful moral earnestness before whichwe bend as in the presence of a superior being. Theorthodoxy against which he contended is not set asideor denied; he sees what truth is in it; only he seesmore than it, and over it, and through it. But inGoethe, who needed it more, inasmuch as his problemwas more delicate and difficult, the moral earnestness isnot awful, is not even high. We cannot feel that indealing with sin he entertains any great horror of it;he looks on it as a mistake, as undesirable, but scarcelyas more. Goethe's great powers are of another kind;and this particular question, though in appearance theprimary subject of the poem, is really only secondary. In substance Faust is more like Ecclesiastes than itis like Job, and describes rather the restlessness of alargely-gifted nature which, missing the guidance ofthe heart, plays experiments with life, trying knowledge, pleasure, dissipation, one after another, and hating themall; and then hating life itself as a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable mockery. The temper exhibited here willprobably be perennial in the world. But the remedyfor it will scarcely be more clear under other circumstancesthan it is at present, and lies in the dispositionof the heart, and not in any propositions which canbe addressed to the understanding. For that otherquestion how rightly to estimate a human being; whatconstitutes a real vitiation of character, and how todistinguish, without either denying the good or makinglight of the evil; how to be just to the popular theories. And yet not to blind ourselves to their shallowness andinjustice-that is a problem for us, for the solution ofwhich we are at present left to our ordinary instinct, without any recognized guidance whatsoever. 

Nor is this the only problem which is in the samesituation. There can scarcely be a more startlingcontrast between fact and theory, than the conditions underwhich practically positions of power and influence aredistributed among us, the theory of human worth whichthe necessities of life oblige us to act upon and thetheory which we believe that we believe. As we lookaround among our leading men, our statesmen, ourlegislators, the judges on our bench, the commanders ofour armies, the men to whom this English nation commitsthe conduct of its best interests, profane andsacred, what do we see to be the principles which guideour selection? How entirely do they lie beside andbeyond the negative tests? and how little respect do wepay to the breach of this or that commandment in comparisonwith ability? So wholly impossible is it toapply the received opinions on such matters to practice, to treat men known to be guilty of what theology callsdeadly sins, as really guilty of them, that it wouldalmost seem we had fallen into a moral anarchy; thatability alone is what we regard, without any referenceat all, except in glaring and outrageous cases, to moraldisqualifications. It is invidious to mention names ofliving men; it is worse than invidious to drag out oftheir graves men who have gone down into them withhonour, to make a point for an argument. But weknow, all of us, that among the best servants of ourcountry, there have been, and there are many, whoselives will not stand scrutiny by the negative tests, andwho do not appear very greatly to repent, or to haverepented of their sins according to recognized methods. 

Once more, among our daily or weekly confessions, which we are supposed to repeat as if we were all of usat all times in precisely the same moral condition, weare made to say that we have done those things whichwe ought not to have done, and to have left undonethose things which we ought to have done. An earthlyfather to whom his children were day after day tomake this acknowledgment would be apt to inquirewhether they were trying to do better, whether at anyrate they were endeavouring to learn; and if he weretold that although they had made some faint attemptsto understand the negative part of their duty, yet thatof the positive part, of those things which they oughtto do, they had no notions at all, and had no idea thatthey were under obligation to form any, he would cometo rather strange conclusions about them. But reallyand truly, what practical notions of duty have webeyond that of abstaining from committing sins? Notto commit sin, we suppose, covers but a small part ofwhat is expected of us. Through the entire tissue ofour employments there runs a good and a bad. BishopButler tells us, for instance, that even of our time thereis a portion which is ours, and a portion which is ourneighbour's; and if we spend more of it on personalinterests than our own share, we are stealing. Thissounds strange doctrine; we prefer rather making vagueacknowledgments, and shrink from pursuing them intodetail. We say vaguely, that in all we do we shouldconsecrate ourselves to God, and our own lips condemnus; for which among us cares to learn the way to do it. The devoir of a knight was understood in the courts ofchivalry, the lives of heroic men, pagan and Christian, were once held up before the world as patternsof detailed imitation; and now, when such ideals arewanted more than ever, Protestantism unhappily standswith a drawn sword on the threshold of the inquiry, and tells us that it is impious. The law has been fulfilledfor us in condescension to our inherent worthlessness, and our business is to appropriate another's righteousness, and not, like Titans, to be scaling Heavenby profane efforts of our own. Protestants, we knowvery well, will cry out in tones loud enough at such arepresentation of their doctrines. But we know also, that unless men may feel a cheerful conviction that theycan do right if they try, that they can purify themselves, can live noble and worthy lives, unless this is set beforethem as the thing which they are to do, and can succeedin doing, they will not waste their energies on what theyknow beforehand will end in failure, and if they maynot live for God they will live for themselves. 

And all this while the whole complex frame of societyis a meshwork of duty woven of living fibre, and thecondition of its remaining sound is, that every thread ofit of its own free energy shall do what it ought. Thepenalties of duties neglected are to the full as terribleas those of sins committed; more terrible perhaps, because more palpable and sure. A lord of the land, or an employer of labour, supposes that he has no dutyexcept to keep what he calls the commandments in hisown person, to go to church, and to do what he willwith his own, --and Irish famines follow, and tradestrikes, and chartisms, and Paris revolutions. We lookfor a remedy in impossible legislative enactments, andthere is but one remedy which will avail, that the thingwhich we call public opinion learn something of themeaning of human nobleness, and demand some approximationto it. As things are we have no idea ofwhat a human being ought to be. After the firstrudimental conditions we pass at once into meaninglessgeneralities; and with no knowledge to guide ourjudgment, we allow it to be guided by meaner principles;we respect money, we respect rank, we respect ability--character is as if it had no existence. 

In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the common meeting point ofall the thousand sects into which we are split, it iswith saddened feelings that we see so little of it inso large a matter. Progress there is in knowledge;and science has enabled the number of humanbeings capable of existing upon this earth to be indefinitelymultiplied. But this is but a small triumphif the ratio of the good and bad, the wise and thefoolish, the full and the hungry remains unaffected. And we cheat ourselves with words when we concludeout of our material splendour an advance of the race. One fruit only our mother earth offers up with prideto her maker--her human children made noble by theirlife upon her; and how wildly on such matters we noware wandering let this one instance serve to show. Atthe moment at which we write, a series of letters areappearing in the Times newspaper, letters evidently ofa man of ability, and endorsed in large type by theauthorities of Printing House Square, advocating theestablishment of a free Greek state with its centre atConstantinople, on the ground that the Greek characterhas at last achieved the qualities essential for theformation of a great people, and that endued as it is withthe practical commercial spirit, and taking everywhererational views of life, there is no fear of a repetitionfrom it of the follies of the age of Pericles. We shouldrather think there was not: and yet the writer speakswithout any appearance of irony, and is saying whathe obviously means. 

In two things there is progress--progress in knowledgeof the outward world, and progress in materialwealth. This last, for the present, creates, perhaps, more evils than it relieves; but suppose this difficultysolved, suppose the wealth distributed, and everypeasant living like a peer--what then? If this is all, one noble soul outweighs the whole of it. Let us followknowledge to the outer circle of the universe, the eyewill not be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. Let us build our streets of gold, and they will hide asmany aching hearts as hovels of straw. The well-beingof mankind is not advanced a single step. Knowledgeis power, and wealth is power; and harnessed, as inPlato's fable, to the chariot of the soul, and guidedby wisdom, they may bear it through the circle of thestars. But left to their own guidance, or reined by afool's hand, they may bring the poor fool to Phaeton'send, and set a world on fire. One real service, andperhaps only one, knowledge alone and by itself willdo for us--it can explode existing superstitions. Everythinghas its appointed time, superstition like the rest;and theologies, that they may not overlive the periodin which they can be of advantage to mankind, arecondemned, by the conditions of their being, to weavea body for themselves out of the ideas of the ageof their birth; ideas which, by the advance of knowledge, are seen to be imperfect or false. We cannotany longer be told that there must be four inspiredgospels--neither more nor less--because there arefour winds and four elements. The chemists nowcount some sixty elements, ultimately, as some ofthem think, reducible into one; and the gospel, likethe wind, may blow from every point under heaven. But effectual to destroy old superstitions, whetherit is equally successful in preventing others fromgrowing in their place, is less certain and obvious. . In these days of table-turnings, mesmerisms, spirit-rappings, odyle fluids, and millenarian pamphlets selling80, 000 copies among our best-educated classes, wemust be allowed to doubt. 

Our one efficient political science hinges on selfinterest, and the uniform action of motives among themasses of mankind--of selfish motives reducible tosystem. Such philosophies and such sciences wouldbut poorly explain the rise of Christianity, ofMahometanism, or of the Reformation. They belong to agesof comparative poverty of heart, when the desires ofmen are limited to material things; when men arecontented to labour, and eat the fruit of their labour, andthen lie down and die. While such symptoms remainamong us, our faith in progress may remain unshaken;but it will be a faith which, as of old, is the substanceof things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ____

THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS

If the enormous undertaking of the Bollandist editorshad been completed, it would have contained thehistories of 25, 000 saints. So many the catholicchurch acknowledged and accepted as her ideals; asmen, who had not only done her honour by theeminence of their sanctity, but who had received whileon earth an openly divine recognition of it in gifts ofsupernatural power. And this vast number is but aselection; the editors chose only out of the mass beforethem what was most noteworthy and trustworthy, andwhat was of catholic rather than of national interest. It is no more than a fraction of that singular mythologywhich for so many ages delighted the Christian world, which is still held in external reverence among theRomanists, and of which the modern historians, provoked by its feeble supernaturalism, and by the entireabsence of critical ability among its writers to distinguishbetween fact and fable, have hitherto failed to speak areasonable word. Of the attempt in our own day torevive an interest in them we shall say little in thisplace. They have no form or beauty to give themattraction in themselves; and for their human interest, the broad atmosphere of the world suited ill with thesedelicate plants which had grown up under the shadowof the convent wall; they were exotics, not fromanother climate, but from another age; the breath ofscorn fell on them, and having no root in the heartsand beliefs of men any more, but only in thesentimentalities and make-beliefs, they withered and sank. Andyet, in their place as historical phenomena they are asremarkable as any of the pagan mythologies; to thefull as remarkable, perhaps far more so, if the lengthand firmness of hold they once exercised on theconviction of mankind is to pass for anything in theestimate--and to ourselves they have a near andpeculiar interest, as spiritual facts in the growth of thecatholic faith. 

Philosophy has rescued the old theogonies fromridicule; their extravagancies, even the most grotesqueof them, can be now seen to have their root in an idea, often a deep one, representing features of natural historyor of metaphysical speculation--and we do not laughat them any more. In their origin, they were theconsecration of the first-fruits of knowledge; theexpression of a real reverential belief. Then time did itswork on them; knowledge grew and they could notgrow; they became monstrous and mischievous, andwere driven out by Christianity with scorn and indignation. But it is with human institutions, as it is withmen themselves; we are tender with the dead whentheir power to hurt us has passed away; and as Paganismcan never more be dangerous, we have been able tocommand a calmer attitude towards it, and to detectunder its most repulsive features sufficient latentelements of genuine thought to satisfy us that evenin their darkest aberrations men are never wholly givenover to falsehood and absurdity. When philosophy hasdone for mediaeval mythology what it has done forHesiod and for the Edda, we shall find in it at leastas deep a sense of the awfulness and mystery of life, and we shall find also a moral element there which attheir best they never had. The lives of the saintsare always simple, often childish, seldom beautiful;yet, as Goethe observed, if without beauty they arealways good. 

And as a phenomenon, let us not deceive ourselveson its magnitude. The Bollandists were restricted onmany sides. They took only what was in Latin--whileevery country in Europe had its own home-growth in itsown language--and thus many of the most characteristicof the lives are not to be found at all in their collection. And again, they took but one life of each saint, composedin all cases late, and compiled out of the mass ofvarious shorter lives which had grown up in differentlocalities out of popular tradition; so that many of theirlonger productions have an elaborate literary character, with an appearance of artifice which, till we know howthey came into existence, might blind us to the vastwidth and variety of the traditionary sources from whichthey are drawn. In the twelfth century there weresixty-six lives extant of St. Patrick alone; and that in acountry where every parish had its own special saint andspecial legend of him. These sixty-six lives may havecontained (Mr. Gibbon says must have contained) atleast as many thousand lies. Perhaps so. To severecriticism, even the existence of a single apostle, St. Patrick, appears problematical. But at least there isthe historical fact, about which admits of no mistake, that they did grow up in some way or other, that theywere repeated, sung, listened to, written, and read; thatthese lives in Ireland, and all over Europe and overthe earth, wherever the catholic faith was preached, stories like these sprang out of the heart of the people, and grew and shadowed over the entire believing mindof the catholic world. Wherever church was founded, or soil was consecrated for the long resting-place ofthose who had died in the faith; wherever the sweetbells of convent or of monastery were heard in theevening air, charming the unquiet world to rest andremembrance of God, there rested the memory of someapostle who had laid the first stone, there was thesepulchre of some martyr whose relics reposed beneaththe altar, of some confessor who had suffered there forhis Master's sake, of some holy ascetic who in silentself-chosen austerity had woven a ladder there of prayerand penance, on which the angels were believed to haveascended and descended. It is not a phenomenon ofan age or of a century; it is characteristic of the historyof Christianity. From the time when the first preachersof the faith passed out from their homes by that quietGalilean lake, to go to and fro over the earth, anddid their mighty work, and at last disappeared andwere not any more seen, these sacred legends beganto grow. Those who had once known them, who haddrawn from their lips the blessed message of light andlife, one and all would gather together what fragmentsthey could find of their stories. Rumours blew in fromall the winds. They had been seen here, had beenseen there, in the farthest corners of the earth, preaching, contending, suffering, prevailing. Affection did notstay to scrutinize. As when some member of a familyamong ourselves is absent in some far place from whichsure news of him comes slowly and uncertainly; if hehas been in the army, on some dangerous expedition, or at sea, or anywhere where real or imaginary dangersstimulate anxiety; or when one is gone away from usaltogether--fallen perhaps in battle--and when the storyof his end can be collected but fitfully from strangerswho only knew his name, but had heard him noblyspoken of; the faintest threads are caught at; reports, the vagueness of which might be evident to indifference, are to love strong grounds of confidence, and "trifleslight as air" establish themselves as certainties;--so, in those first Christian communities, travellers camethrough from east and west; legions on the march, orcaravans of wandering merchants; and one had beenin Rome and seen Peter disputing with Simon Magus;another in India, where he had heard St. Thomaspreaching to the Brahmins; a third brought with himfrom the wilds of Britain, a staff which he had cut, ashe said, from a thorn tree, the seed of which St. Josephhad sown there, and which had grown to its full size ina single night, making merchandize of the preciousrelic out of the credulity of the believers. So thelegends grew, and were treasured up, and loved, andtrusted; and alas! all which we have been able to dowith them is to call them lies, and to point a shallowmoral on the impostures and credulities of the earlycatholic. An atheist could not wish us to say more;if we can really believe that the Christian church wasmade over, in its very cradle to lies and to the father oflies, and was allowed to remain in his keeping, so tosay, till yesterday, he will not much trouble himselfwith any faith which after such an admission we mayprofess to entertain. For as this spirit began in thefirst age in which the church began to have a history;so it continued so long as the church as an integralbody retained its vitality; and only died out in thedegeneracy which preceded, and which brought on theReformation. For fourteen hundred years these storiesheld their place, and rang on from age to age, fromcentury to century; as the new faith widened itsboundaries and numbered ever more and more greatnames of men and women who had fought and died forit, so long their histories living in the hearts of those forwhom they laboured, laid hold of them and filled them, and the devout imagination, possessed with what wasoften no more than the rumour of a name, bodied it outinto life, and form, and reality. And doubtless, if wetry them by any historical canon, we have to say thatquite endless untruths grew in this way to be believedamong men; and not believed only, but held sacred, passionately and devotedly; not filling the historybooks only, not only serving to amuse and edify therefectory, or to furnish matter for meditation in thecell, but claiming days for themselves of specialremembrance, entering into liturgies and inspiring prayers, forming the spiritual nucleus of the hopes and fears ofmillions of human souls. 

From the hard barren standing ground of the factidolater, what a strange sight must be that still mountainpeak on the wild west Irish shore, where for morethan ten centuries, a rude old bell and a carved chipof oak have witnessed, or seemed to witness, to thepresence long ago there of the Irish apostle; and in thesharp crystals of the trap rock a path has been wornsmooth by the bare feet and bleeding knees of thepilgrims, who still, in the August weather, drag theirpainful way along it as they have done for a thousandyears. Doubtless the "Lives of the Saints" are full oflies. Are then none in the Iliad? in the legendsof AEneas? Were the stories sung in the liturgy ofEleusis all so true? so true as fact? Are the songs ofthe Cid or of Siegfried? We say nothing of the liesin these, but why? Oh, it will be said, but they arefictions, they were never supposed to be true. Butthey were supposed to be true, to the full as true as theLegenda Aurea. Oh then, they are poetry; and besides, they have nothing to do with Christianity. Yes, that isit; they have nothing to do with Christianity. It hasgrown such a solemn business with us, and we bringsuch long faces to it, that we cannot admit or conceiveto be at all naturally admissible such a light companionas the imagination. The distinction between secularand religious has been extended even to the faculties;and we cannot tolerate in others the fulness and freedomwhich we have lost or rejected for ourselves. Yet it hasbeen a fatal mistake with the critics. They foundthemselves off the recognized ground of Romance andPaganism, and they failed to see the same principlesat work, though at work with new materials. In therecords of all human affairs, it cannot be too ofteninsisted on that two kinds of truth run for ever side byside, or rather, crossing in and out with each other, formthe warp and the woof of the coloured web which wecall history. The one, the literal and external truthscorresponding to the eternal and as yet undiscoveredlaws of fact: the other, the truth of feeling and ofthought, which embody themselves either in distortedpictures of the external, or in some entirely new creation;sometimes moulding and shaping real history, sometimestaking the form of heroic biography, of tradition, orpopular legend; sometimes appearing as recognizedfiction in the epic, the drama, or the novel. It isuseless to tell us that this is to confuse truth andfalsehood. We are stating a fact, not a theory, and if itmakes truth and falsehood difficult to distinguish, thatis nature's fault, not ours. Fiction is only false, whenit is false, not to fact, else how could it be fiction? butwhen it is--to law. To try it by its correspondence tothe real is wretched pedantry; we create as naturecreates, by the force which is in us, which refuses tobe restrained; we cannot help it, and we are only falsewhen we make monsters, or when we pretend that ourinventions are fact, when we substitute truths of one kindfor truths of another; when we substitute, --and again wemust say when we intentionally substitute;--wheneverpersons, and whenever facts seize strongly hold of theimagination, (and of course when there is anythingremarkable in them they must and will do so, ) inventionglides into the images as they form in us; it must, as itever has, from the first legends of a cosmogony, to thewritten life of the great man who died last year or century, or to the latest scientific magazine. We cannot relatefacts as they are, they must first pass through ourselves, and we are more or less than mortal if they gather nothingin the transit. The great outlines alone lie around usas imperative and constraining; the detail we each fillup variously according to the turn of our sympathies, the extent of our knowledge, or our general theories ofthings, and therefore it may be said that the onlyliterally true history possible, is the history which mindhas left of itself in all the changes through which it haspassed. 

Suetonius is to the full as extravagant and superstitiousas Surius, and Suetonius was most laboriousand careful, and was the friend of Tacitus and Pliny;Suetonius gives us prodigies, when Surius has miracles, but that is all the difference; each follows the form ofthe supernatural which belonged to the genius of hisage. Plutarch writes a life of Lycurgus with details ofhis childhood, and of the trials and vicissitudes of hisage; and the existence of Lycurgus is now quite asquestionable as that of St. Patrick or of St. George ofEngland. 

No rectitude of intention will save us from mistakes. Sympathies and antipathies are but synonyms of prejudice, and indifference is impossible. Love is blind, and so is every other passion; love believes eagerly whatit desires; it excuses or passes lightly over blemishes, itdwells on what is beautiful, while dislike sees a tarnishon what is brightest, and deepens faults into vices. Dowe believe that all this is a disease of unenlightenedtimes, and that in our strong sunlight only truth canget received: then let us contrast the portrait forinstance of Sir Robert Peel as it is drawn in the FreeTrade Hall, at Manchester, at the county meeting, andin the Oxford Common Room. It is not so. Faithfuland literal history is possible only to an impassive spirit;it is impossible to man, until perfect knowledge andperfect faith in God shall enable him to see and endureevery fact in its reality; until perfect love shall kindlein him under its touch the one just emotion whichis in harmony with the eternal order of all things. 

How far we are in these days from approximatingto such a combination we need not here insist. Criticismin the hands of men like Niebuhr seems to haveaccomplished great intellectual triumphs: and inGermany and France and among ourselves we have ournew schools of the philosophy of history; yet their realsuccesses have hitherto only been destructive; whenphilosophy reconstructs, it does nothing but project itsown idea; when it throws off tradition, it cannot workwithout a theory, and what is a theory but an imperfectgeneralization caught up by a predisposition? whatis Comte's great division of the eras, but a theory, andfacts but as day in his hands which he can mould toillustrate it, as every clever man will find facts to be, let his theory be what it will. Intellect can destroy butit cannot make alive again, --call in the creative faculties, call in Love, Idea, Imagination, and we have livingfigures, but we cannot tell whether they are figures whichever lived before. Alas, the high faith in which Loveand Intellect can alone unite in their fulness, has notyet found utterance in modern historians. 

The greatest man who has as yet given himself tothe recording of human affairs is, beyond question, Cornelius Tacitus. Alone in Tacitus a serene calmnessof insight was compatible with intensity of feeling; hetook no side; he may have been Imperialist, he mayhave been Republican, but he has left no sign whetherhe was either: he appears to have sifted facts withscrupulous integrity; to administer his love, his scorn, his hatred, according only to individual merit, and theseare rather felt by the reader in the life-like clearness ofhis portraits than expressed in words by himself. Yetsuch a power of seeing into things was only possible tohim, because there was no party left with which hecould determinedly side, and no wide spirit alive inRome through which he could feel; the spirit of Rome, the spirit of life had gone away to seek other forms, andthe world of Tacitus was a heap of decaying institutions;a stage where men and women, as they themselves wereindividually base or noble, played over theirlittle parts. Life indeed was come into the world, wasworking in it, and silently shaping the old dead corpseinto fresh and beautiful being; Tacitus alludes to itonce only in one brief scornful chapter; and the mostpoorly gifted of those forlorn biographers whoseunreasoning credulity was piling up the legends of St. Maryand the Apostles which now drive the ecclesiasticalhistorian to despair, knew more, in his divine hope andfaith, of the real spirit which had gone out amongmankind, than the keenest and gravest intellect whichever set itself to contemplate them. 

And now having in some degree cleared the groundof difficulties, let us go back to the Lives of the Saints. If Bede tells us lies about St. Cuthbert, we will disbelievehis stories, but we will not call Bede a liar, eventhough he prefaces his life with a declaration that he hasset down nothing but what he has ascertained on theclearest evidence. We are driven to no such alternative;our canons of criticism are different from Bede's, andso are our notions of probability. Bede would expecta priori, and would therefore consider as sufficientlyattested by a consent of popular tradition, what theoaths of living witnesses would fail to make credible toa modern English jury. We will call Bede a liar onlyif he put forward his picture of St. Cuthbert, as apicture of a life which he considered admirable andexcellent, as one after which he was endeavouring tomodel his own, and which he held up as a pattern ofimitation, when in his heart he did not consider itadmirable at all, when he was making no effort at theausterities which he was lauding. The histories of theSaints are written as ideals of a Christian life; theyhave no elaborate and beautiful forms; single andstraightforward as they are, --if they are not this theyare nothing. For fourteen centuries the religious mindof the catholic world threw them out as its form ofhero worship, as the heroic patterns of a form of humanlife which each Christian within his own limits wasendeavouring to realize. The first martyrs andconfessors were to those poor monks what the first Dorianconquerors were in the war songs of Tyrtaeus, whatAchilles and Ajax and Agamemnon and Diomed werewherever Homer was sung or read; or in more moderntimes what Turpin was in the court of Charlemagne orthe Knights of the Round Table in the halls of theNorman castles. This is what they were; and theresult is that immense and elaborate hagiology. Aswith the battle heroes too, the inspiration lies in theuniversal idea; the varieties of character (with here andthere an exception) are slight and unimportant; asexamples they were for universal human imitation. Lancelot or Tristram were equally true to the spirit ofchivalry; and Patrick on the mountain or Antony inthe desert are equal models of patient austerity. Theknights fight with giants, enchanters, robbers, unknightlynobles, or furious wild beasts; the Christians fight withthe world, the flesh, and the devil. The knight leavesthe comforts of home in quest of adventures, the saintin quest of penance, and on the bare rocks or indesolate wildernesses subdues the devil in his flesh withprayers and sufferings, and so alien is it all to the wholethought and system of the modern Christian, that heeither rejects such stories altogether as monks' impostures, or receives them with disdainful wonder, as onemore shameful form of superstition with which humannature has insulted heaven and disgraced itself. 

Leaving, however, for the present, the meaning ofmonastic asceticism, it seems necessary to insist thatthere really was such a thing; there is no doubt aboutit. If the particular actions told of each saint are notliterally true, as belonging to him, abundance of mendid for many centuries lead the sort of life which theyare said to have led. We have got a notion that thefriars were a snug, comfortable set, after all; and thelife in a monastery pretty much like that in a modernuniversity, where the old monks' language and affectationof unworldliness does somehow contrive to co-existwith as large a mass of bodily enjoyment as man'snature can well appropriate; and very likely this wasthe state into which many of the monasteries had fallenin the fifteenth century. It had begun to be, and itwas a symptom of a very rapid disorder in them, promptly terminating in dissolution; but long, long ageslay behind the fifteenth century, in which wisely orfoolishly these old monks and hermits did make themselvesa very hard life of it; and the legend only exceededthe reality, in being a very slightly idealizedportrait of it. We are not speaking of the miracles; thatis a wholly different question. When men knew littleof the order of nature, whatever came to pass withoutan obvious cause was at once set down to influencesbeyond nature and above it; and so long as there werewitches and enchanters, strong with the help of the badpowers, of course the especial servants of God wouldnot be left without graces to outmatch and overcomethe devil. And there were many other reasons why thesaints should work miracles. They had done so underthe old dispensation, and there was no obvious reasonwhy Christians should be worse off than Jews. Andagain, although it be true, in the modern phrase, whichis beginning to savour a little of cant, that the highestnatural is the highest supernatural, it is not everybodythat is able to see that; natural facts permit us to beso easily familiar with them, that they have an air ofcommonness; and when we have a vast idea to express, there is always a disposition to the extraordinary. Butthe miracles are not the chief thing; nor ever were theyso. Men did not become saints by working miracles, but they worked miracles because they had becomesaints; and the instructiveness and value of their liveslay in the means which they had used to make themselveswhat they were: and as we said, in this part ofthe business there is unquestionable basis of truth--scarcely even exaggeration. We have documentary evidence, which has been passed through the sharp ordealof party hatred, of the way some men (and those, men of vast mind and vast influence in their day, notmere ignorant fanatics, ) conducted themselves, wheremyth has no room to enter. We know something ofthe hair-shirt of Thomas a Becket, and other uneasypenances of his; and there was another poor monk, whose asceticism imagination could not easily outrun:that was he who, when the earth's mighty ones werebanded together to crush him under their armed heels, spoke but one little word; and it fell among them likethe spear of Cadmus; the strong ones turned their handsagainst each other, and the armies melted away; andthe proudest monarch of the earth lay at that monk'sthreshold three winter nights in the scanty clothing ofpenance, suing miserably for forgiveness. Or again, to take a fairer figure: there is a poem extant, thegenuineness of which we believe has not been challenged, composed by Columbkill, commonly called St. Columba. He was a hermit in Aran, a rocky island inthe Atlantic, outside Galway Bay; from which he wassummoned, we do not know how, but in a mannerwhich appeared to him to be a divine call, to go awayand be bishop of Iona. The poem is a "Farewell toAran, " which he wrote on leaving it; and he lets ussee something of a hermit's life there. "Farewell, " hebegins (we are obliged to quote from memory), "a longfarewell to thee, Aran of my heart. Paradise is withthee, the garden of God within the sound of thy bells. The angels love Aran. Each day an angel comes thereto join in its services. " And then he goes on todescribe his "dear cell, " and the holy happy hourswhich he had spent there, "with the wind whistlingthrough the loose stones, and the sea spray hanging onhis hair. " Aran is no better than a wild rock. It isstrewed over with the ruins which may still be seen ofthe old hermitages; and at their best they could havebeen but such places as sheep would huddle under ina storm, and shiver in the cold and wet which wouldpierce through to them. 

Or, if written evidence be too untrustworthy, thereare silent witnesses which cannot lie, that tell the sametouching story. Whoever loiters among the ruins of amonastery will see, commonly leading out of the cloisters, rows of cellars half under-ground, low, damp, andwretched-looking; an earthen floor, bearing no trace ofpavement; a roof from which the mortar and the dampkeep up (and always must have kept up) a perpetualooze: for a window a narrow slip in the wall, throughwhich the cold and the wind find as free an access asthe light. Such as they are, a well-kept dog wouldobject to accept a night's lodging in them; and if theyhad been prison cells, thousands of philanthropic tongueswould have trumpeted out their horrors. The strangerperhaps supposes that they were the very dungeons ofwhich he has heard such terrible things. He asks hisguide, and his guide tells him they were the monks'dormitories. Yes; there on that wet soil, with thatdripping roof above them, was the self-chosen home ofthose poor men. Through winter frost, through rainand storm, through summer sunshine, generation aftergeneration of them, there they lived and prayed, and atlast lay down and died. 

It is all gone now--gone as if it had never been; andit was as foolish as, if the attempt had succeeded, itwould have been mischievous, to revive a devotionalinterest in the Lives of the Saints. It would haveproduced but one more unreality in an age already too fullof such. No one supposes we should have set to workto live as they lived; that any man, however earnest inhis religion, would have gone looking for earth floorsand wet dungeons, or wild islands to live in, when hecould get anything better. Either we are wiser, or morehumane, or more self-indulgent; at any rate we aresomething which divides us from mediaeval Christianity by animpassable gulf which this age or this epoch will not seebridged over. Nevertheless, these modern hagiologists, however wrongly they went to work at it, had detected, and were endeavouring to fill, a very serious blank inour educational system; a very serious blank indeed, and one which, somehow, we must contrive to get filledif the education of character is ever to be more than aname with us. To try and teach people how to livewithout giving them examples in which our rules areillustrated, is like teaching them to draw by the rules ofperspective, and of light and shade, without designs tostudy them in; or to write verse by the laws of rhymeand metre without song or poem in which rhyme andmetre are seen in their effects. It is a principlewhich we have forgotten, and it is one which the oldCatholics did not forget. We do not mean that theyset out with saying to themselves "we must haveexamples, we must have ideals;" very likely they neverthought about it at all; love for their holy men, and athirst to know about them, produced the histories; andlove unconsciously working gave them the best forwhich they could have wished. The boy at school atthe monastery, the young monk disciplining himself asyet with difficulty under the austerities to which he haddevoted himself, the old halting on toward the close ofhis pilgrimage, all of them had before their eyes, in thelegend of the patron saint, a personal realization of allthey were trying after; leading them on, beckoning tothem, and pointing, as they stumbled among theirdifficulties, to the marks which his own footsteps hadleft, as he had trod that hard path before them. It wasas if the church was for ever saying to them:--"Youhave doubts and fears, and trials and temptationsoutward and inward; you have sinned, perhaps, andfeel the burden of your sin. Here was one who, likeyou, in this very spat, under the same sky, treading thesame soil, among the same hills and woods and rocksand riven, was tried like you, tempted like you, sinnedlike you; but here he prayed, and persevered, and didpenance, and washed out his sins; he fought the fight, he vanquished the evil one, he triumphed, and now hereigns a saint with Christ in heaven. The same groundwhich yields you your food, once supplied him; hebreathed and lived, and felt, and died here; and now, from his throne in the sky, he is still looking downlovingly on his children, making intercession for youthat you may have grace to follow him, that by-and-byhe may himself offer you at God's throne as his own. "It is impossible to measure the influence which apersonal reality of this kind must have exercised on themind, thus daily and hourly impressed upon it througha life; there is nothing vague any more, no abstractexcellences to strain after; all is distinct, personal, palpable. It is no dream. The saint's bones areunder the altar; nay, perhaps, his very form and featuresundissolved. Under some late abbot the coffin may havebeen opened and the body seen without mark or taintof decay. Such things have been, and the emaciationof a saint will account for it without a miracle. Dailysome incident of his story is read aloud, or spoken of, or preached upon. In quaint beautiful forms it lives inlight in the long chapel windows; and in the summermatins his figure, lighted up in splendour, gleams downon them as they pray, or streams in mysterious shadowytints along the pavement, clad, as it seems, in softcelestial glory, and shining as he shines in heaven. Alas, alas, where is it all gone?

We are going to venture a few thoughts on the widequestion, what possibly may have been the meaning ofso large a portion of the human race and so manycenturies of Christianity having been surrendered andseemingly sacrificed to the working out this drearyasceticism. If right once, then it is right now; if nowworthless, then it could never have been more thanworthless; and the energies which spent themselves onit were like corn sown upon the rock, or substance givenfor that which is not bread. We supposed ourselveschallenged recently for our facts. Here is an enormousfact which there is no evading. It is not to be slurredover with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk ofsuperstition, of the twilight of the understanding, ofbarbarism, and of nursery credulity; it is matter for thephilosophy of history, if the philosophy has yet beenborn which can deal with it; one of the solid, experienced facts in the story of mankind which must beaccepted and considered with that respectful deferencewhich all facts claim of their several sciences, andwhich will certainly not disclose its meaning (supposingit to have a meaning) except to reverence, to sympathy, to love. We must remember that the men who wrotethese stories, and who practised these austerities, werethe same men who composed our liturgies, who builtour churches and our cathedrals--and the gothic cathedralis, perhaps, on the whole, the most magnificentcreation which the mind of man has as yet thrown outof itself. If there be any such thing as a philosophyof history, real or possible, it is in virtue of there beingcertain progressive organizing laws in which the fretfullives of each of us are gathered into and subordinated insome larger unity. Thus age is linked on to age, as weare moving forward, with an horizon for ever expandingand advancing. And if this is true, the magnitude ofany human phenomenon is a criterion of its importance, and definite forms of thought working through longhistoric periods imply an effect of one of these vast laws. --imply a distinct step in human progress; somethingpreviously unrealized is being lived out, and rooted intothe heart of mankind. Nature never half does herwork. She goes over it, and over it, to make assurancesure, and makes good her ground with wearyingrepetition. A single section of a short paper is but asmall space to enter on so vast an enterprise, nevertheless, a few very general words shall be ventured as asuggestion of what this monastic or saintly spirit maypossibly have meant. 

First, as the spirit of Christianity is antagonistic tothe world whatever form the spirit of the world assumes, the ideals of Christianity will of course be their opposite;as one verges into one extreme the other willverge into the contrary. In those rough times the lawwas the sword; animal might of arm, and the stronganimal heart which guided it, were the excellenceswhich the world rewarded, and monasticism, therefore, in its position of protest, would be the destruction andabnegation of the animal. The war hero in thebattle or the tourney yard might be taken as the apotheosisof the fleshly man, the saint in the desert of thespiritual. But this is slight, imperfect, and if true at allonly partially so. The animal and the spiritual are notcontradictories; they are the complements in the perfectcharacter; and in the middle ages, as in all ages ofgenuine earnestness, interfused and penetrated eachother. There were warrior saints and saintly warriors;and those grand old figures which sleep cross-legged inthe cathedral aisles were something higher than onlyone more form of the beast of prey. Monasticismrepresented something more positive than a protest againstthe world. We believe it to have been the realizationof the infinite loveliness and beauty of personal purity. 

In the earlier civilization, the Greeks, howevergenuine their reverence for the gods, do not seem tohave supposed any part of their duty to the gods toconsist in keeping their bodies untainted. Exquisite aswas their sense of beauty, of beauty of mind as well asbeauty of form, with all their loftiness and their nobleness, with their ready love of moral excellence in someof its manifestations, as fortitude, or devotion to libertyand to home, they had little or no idea of what wemean by morality. With a few rare exceptions, pollution, too detestable to be even named among ourselves, was of familiar and daily occurrence among theirgreatest men; was no reproach to philosopher or to statesman;and was not supposed to be incompatible, andwas not, in fact, incompatible with any of those especialexcellences which we so admire in the Greeks. 

Among the Romans (that is, the early Romans ofthe republic), there was a sufficiently austere morality. A public officer of state, whose business was to inquireinto the private lives of the citizens, and to punishoffences against morals, is a phenomenon which wehave seen only once on this planet. There was nevera people before, and there has been none since, withsufficient virtue to endure it. But the Roman moralityis not lovely for its own sake, nor excellent in itself. It is obedience to law, practised and valued, lovedfor what resulted from it, for the strength and rigidendurance which it gave, but not loved for itself. TheRoman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal; andit submitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long asthe energy of the old spirit endured. But as soon asthe energy grew slack, when the religion was nolonger believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more danger to face, and the worldwas at their feet, all was swept away as before a whirlwind;there was no loveliness in virtue to make itdesired, and the Rome of the Censors presents, in itslater age, a picture of enormous sensuality, of thecoarsest animal desire, with means unlimited to gratifyit. In Latin literature, as little as in the Greek, isthere any sense of the beauty of purity. Moral essayson temperance we may find, and praise enough of thewise man whose passions and whose appetites aretrained into obedience to reason. But this is no morethan the philosophy of the old Roman life, which gotitself expressed in words when men were tired of thereality; it involves no sense of sin. If sin could beindulged without weakening our self-command, or withouthurting other people, Roman philosophy would havenothing to say against it. 

The Christians stepped far out beyond philosophy;without speculating on the why, they felt that indulgenceof animal passion did, in fact, pollute them, and so much the more, the more it was deliberate. Philosophy, gliding into Manicheism, divided the forcesof the universe, giving the spirit to God, but declaringmatter to be eternally and incurably evil; and lookingforward to the time when the spirit should be emancipatedfrom the body, as the beginning of, or as thereturn to, its proper existence, took no especial carewhat became the meanwhile of its evil tenement offlesh. If it sinned, sin was its element; it couldnot do other than sin; purity of conduct could notmake the body clean, and no amount of bodilyindulgence could shed a taint upon the spirit--a verycomfortable doctrine, and one which, under variousdisguises, has appeared a good many times on theearth. But Christianity, shaking it all off, wouldpresent the body to God as a pure and holy sacrifice, as so much of the material world conquered from theappetites and lusts, and from the devil whose abodethey were. This was the meaning of the fastings andscourgings, the penances and night-watchings; it wasthis which sent St. Anthony to the tombs and setSimeon on his pillar, to conquer the devil in the flesh, and keep themselves, if possible, undefiled by so muchas one corrupt thought. 

And they may have been absurd and extravagant;when the feeling is stronger than the judgment, menare very apt to be so. If, in the recoil fromManicheism, they conceived that a body of a saintthus purified had contracted supernatural virtue andcould work miracles, they had not sufficiently attendedto the facts, and so far are not unexceptionable witnessesto them. Nevertheless they did their work, and invirtue of it we are raised to a higher stage, we are liftedforward a mighty step which we can never again retrace. Personal purity is not the whole for which we have tocare, it is but one feature in the ideal character of man. The monks may have thought it was all, or more nearlyall than it is; and therefore their lives may seem to uspoor, mean, and emasculate. Yet it is with life as it iswith science; generations of men have given themselvesexclusively to single branches, which, when mastered, form but a little section in a cosmic philosophy; and inlife, so slow is progress, it may take a thousand yearsto make good a single step. Weary and tedious enoughit seems when we cease to speak in large language, andremember the numbers of individual souls who havebeen at work at it; but who knows whereabouts weare in the duration of the race? Are we crawling outof the cradle, or are we tottering into the gave?In nursery, in schoolroom, or in opening manhood?Who knows? It is enough for us to be sure of oursteps when we have taken them, and thankfully toaccept what has been done for us. Henceforth it isimpossible for us to give our unmixed admiration toany character which moral shadows overhang. Henceforthwe require not greatness only, but goodness; andnot that goodness only which begins and ends in conductcorrectly regulated, but that love of goodness, thatkeen pure feeling for it, which resides in a conscienceas sensitive and susceptible as woman's modesty. 

So much for what seems to us the philosophy of thismatter. If we are right, it is no more than a firstfurrow in the crust of a soil, which hitherto thehistorians have been contented to leave in its barrenness. If they are conscientious enough not to triflewith the facts, as they look back on them from theeasiness of modern Christianity which has ceased todemand any heavy effort of self-sacrifice, they eitherrevile the superstition or pity the ignorance which madesuch large mistakes on the nature of religion--and, loudin their denunciations of priestcraft and of lying wonders, they point their moral with pictures of the ambition ofmediaeval prelacy or the scandals of the annals of thepapacy. For the inner life of all those millions ofimmortal souls who were struggling, with such good orbad success as was given them, to carry Christ's crossalong their journey in this earth of ours, they set it by, pass it over, dismiss it out of history, with some poorcommon-place simper of sorrow or of scorn. It willnot do. Mankind have not been so long on this planetaltogether, that we can allow so large a chasm to bescooped out of their spiritual existence. 

We intended to leave our readers with somethinglighter than all this in the shape of literary criticismand a few specimen extracts; both of which must now, however, be necessarily brief--we are running out ourspace. Whoever is curious to study the lives of thesaints in their originals, should rather go anywhere thanto the Bollandists, and universally never read a late lifewhen he can command an early one, for the genius inthem is in the ratio of their antiquity, and, like riverwater, is most pure nearest to the fountain head. Weare lucky in possessing several specimens of the modeof their growth in late and early lives of the same saints, and the process in all is similar. Out of the lives ofSt. Bride three are left; out of the sixty-six ofSt. Patrick, there are eight; the first of each belongingto the sixth century, the latest to the thirteenth. Thefirst are in verse; they belong to a time when therewas no one to write such things, and were popular inform and popular in their origin--the flow is easy, thestyle graceful and natural; but the step from poetry toprose is substantial as well as formal; the imagination isossified, and the exuberance of legendary creativenesswe exchange for the hard dogmatic record of fact withoutreality, and fiction without grace. The marvellousin the poetical lives is comparatively slight; the aftermiracles being composed frequently out of a mistake ofpoets' metaphors for literal truth. There is often real, genial, human beauty in the old verse. The first twostanzas, for instance, of St. Bride's Hymn are of highmerit, as may, perhaps, be imperfectly seen in atranslation:--

"Bride the queen, she loved not the world;She floated on the waves of the worldAs the sea-bird floats upon the billow. 

Such sleep she slept as the mother sleepsIn the far land of her captivity, Mourning for her child at home. "

What a picture is there of the strangeness and yearningof the poor human soul in this earthly pilgrimage. The poetical "Life of St. Patrick, " too, is full of fine, wild, natural imagery. The boy is described as ashepherd on the hills of Down, and there is a legend, well told, of the angel Victor coming to him, and leavinga gigantic foot-print on a rock from which hesprang into heaven. The legend, of course, rose fromsome remarkable natural feature of the spot; but, asit is told here, a shadowy unreality hangs over it, andit is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of theboy. But in the prose all is crystalline; the storyis drawn out, with a barren prolixity of detail, into aseries of angelic visitations. And again, when Patrickis described, as the after apostle, raising the dead Celtsto life, the metaphor cannot be left in its natural force, and we have a long weary list of literal deaths andliteral raisings. And so in many ways the freshnessand individuality is lost with time. The larger saintsswallowed up the smaller and appropriated their exploits;chasms were supplied by an ever ready imagination;and, like the stock of good works laid up forgeneral use, there was a stock of miracles ever readywhen any defect was to be supplied. So it was that, after the first impulse, the progressive fire of a saintrolled on like a snow-ball down a mountain-side, gatheringup into itself whatever lay in its path, fact or legend, appropriate or inappropriate, sometimes real jewels ofgenuine old tradition, sometimes the debris of the oldcreeds and legends of heathenism; and on, and on, tillat length it reached the bottom, and was dashed inpieces on the Reformation. 

One more illustration--one which shall serve as evidenceof what the really greatest, most vigorous, mindsin the twelfth century could accept as possible or probable, and which they could relate (on what evidence wedo not know) as really ascertained facts. We remembersomething of St. Artselm: both as a statesman and asa theologian, he was unquestionably the ablest man ofhis time alive in Europe. Here is a story which hetells of a certain Cornish St. Kieran. The saint withthirty of his companions, was preaching within thefrontiers of a lawless pagan prince; and, disregardingall orders to be quiet or to leave the country, continuedto agitate, to threaten, and to thunder even in the earsof the prince himself. Things took their natural course. Disobedience provoked punishment. A guard of soldierswas sent, and the saint and his little band were decapitated. The scene of the execution was a wood, and theheads and trunks were left lying there for the wolvesand the wild birds. 

"But now a miracle, such as was once heard of before inthe church in the person of the holy Denis, was againwrought by divine providence to preserve the bodies ofhis saints from profanation. The trunk of Kieran rosefrom the ground, and selecting first his own head, andcarrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, andafterwards performing the same sacred office for each ofhis companions, giving each body its own head, he duggraves for them and buried them, and last of all buriedhimself. "

It is even so. So it stands written in a life claimingAnselm's authorship; and there is no reason why theauthorship should not be his. Out of the heart comethe issues of evil and of good, and not out of theintellect or the understanding. Men are not good or bad, noble or base--thank God for it!--as they judge wellor ill of the probabilities of nature, but as they loveGod and hate the devil. And yet it is instructive. We have heard grave good men--men of intellect andinfluence--with all the advantages of modern science, learning, experience; men who would regard Anselmwith sad and serious pity; yet tell us stories, as havingfallen within their own experience, of the marvels ofmesmerism, to the full as ridiculous (if anything is ridiculous)as this of the poor decapitated Kieran. 

"Mutato nomine de teFabula narratur. "

We see our natural faces in the glass of history, andturn away and straightway forget what manner of menwe are. The superstition of science scoffs at thesuperstition of faith. ____

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is notdifficult--it is impossible. Even what is passing inour presence we see but through a glass darkly. Themind as well as the eye adds something of its own, before an image, even of the clearest object, can bepainted upon it, And in historical inquiries, the most instructedthinkers have but a limited advantage over the mostilliterate. Those who know the most, approach leastto agreement. The most careful investigations arediverging roads--the further men travel upon them, thegreater the interval by which they are divided. Inthe eyes of David Hume, the history of the SaxonPrinces is "the scuffling of kites and crows. " FatherNewman would mortify the conceit of a degenerateEngland by pointing to the sixty saints and the hundredconfessors who were trained in her royal palaces for theCalendar of the Blessed. How vast a chasm yawnsbetween these two conceptions of the same era!Through what common term can the student pass fromone into the other?

Or, to take an instance yet more noticeable. Thehistory of England scarcely interests Mr. Macaulaybefore the Revolution of the seventeenth century. ToLord John Russell, the Reformation was the first outcomefrom centuries of folly and ferocity; and Mr. Hallam's more temperate language softens, withoutconcealing, a similar conclusion. These writers have allstudied what they describe. Mr. Carlyle has studied thesame subject with power at least equal to theirs, and tohim the greatness of English character was waning withthe dawn of English literature; the race of heroes wasalready failing. The era of action was yielding beforethe era of speech. 

All these views may seem to ourselves exaggerated;we may have settled into some moderate via media, or have carved out our own ground on an originalpattern; but if we are wise, the differences in othermen's judgments will teach us to be diffident. Themore distinctly we have made history bear witnessin favour of our particular opinions, the more wehave multiplied the chances against the truth of ourown theory. 

Again, supposing that we have made a truce with"opinions, " properly so called; supposing we havesatisfied ourselves that it is idle to quarrel upon pointson which good men differ, and that it is better to attendrather to what we certainly know; supposing that, eitherfrom superior wisdom, or from the conceit of superiorwisdom, we have resolved that we will look for humanperfection neither exclusively in the Old World norexclusively in the New--neither among Catholics norProtestants, among Whigs or Tories, heathens orChristians--that we have laid aside accidental differencesand determined to recognize only moral distinctions, tolove moral worth, and to hate moral evil, wherever wefind them;--even supposing all this, we have not muchimproved our position--we cannot leap from ourshadow. 

Eras, like individuals, differ from one another inthe species of virtue which they encourage. In oneage, we find the virtues of the warrior, in the next ofthe saint. The ascetic and the soldier in their turndisappear; an industrial era succeeds, bringing with itthe virtues of common sense, of grace, and refinement. There is the virtue of energy and command, there isthe virtue of humility and patient suffering. All theseare different, and all are, or may be, of equal moralvalue; yet, from the constitution of our minds, we areso framed that we cannot equally appreciate all; wesympathize instinctively with the person who mosthave been especially cultivated. Further, if we leaveout of sight these refinements, and content ourselveswith the most popular conceptions of morality, there isthis immeasurable difficulty--so great, yet so littleconsidered, --that goodness is positive as well as negative, and consists in the active accomplishment of certainthings which we are bound to do, as well as in theabstaining from things which we are bound not to do. And here the warp and woof vary in shade and pattern. Many a man, with the help of circumstances may pickhis way clear through life, never having violated oneprohibitive commandment, and yet at last be fit onlyfor the place of the unprofitable servant--he may nothave committed either sin or crime, yet never have feltthe pulsation of a single unselfish emotion. Another, meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impulsivenature into fault after fault, shall have been reckless, improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after allfor the kingdom of Heaven than the Pharisee--fitter, because against the catalogue of faults there couldperhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparativegenerosity and self-forgetfulness--fitter, because to thosewho love much, much is forgiven. Fielding had nooccasion to make Blifil, behind his decent coat, a traitorand a hypocrite. It would have been enough to havecoloured him in and out alike in the steady hues ofselfishness, afraid of offending the upper powers as hewas afraid of offending Allworthy, --not from any lovefor what was good, but solely because it would beimprudent--because the pleasure to be gained was notworth the risk of consequences. Such a Blifil wouldhave answered the novelist's purpose--he would stillhave been a worse man in the estimation of some of usthan Tom Jones. 

So the truth is; but unfortunately it is only whereaccurate knowledge is stimulated by affection, that weare able to feel it. Persons who live beyond our owncircle, and still more persons who have lived in anotherage, receive what is called justice, not charity; andjustice is supposed to consist in due allotments of censurefor each special act of misconduct, leaving meritunrecognized. There are many reasons for this harshmethod of judging. We must decide of men by whatwe know, and it is easier to know faults than to knowvirtues. Faults are specific, easily described, easilyappreciated, easily remembered. And again, there is, or may be, hypocrisy in virtue; but no one pretends tovice who is not vicious. The bad things which can beproved of a man we know to be genuine. He was aspendthrift, he was an adulterer, he gambled, he foughta duel. These are blots positive, unless untrue, andwhen uncorrected tinge the whole character. 

This also is to be observed in historical criticism. All men feel a necessity of being on some terms withtheir conscience, at their own expense, or at another's. If they cannot part with their faults, they will at leastcall them by their right name when they meet with suchfaults elsewhere; and thus, when they find accounts ofdeeds of violence or sensuality, of tyranny, of injusticeof man to man, of great and extensive suffering, or anyof those other misfortunes which the selfishness of menhas at various times occasioned, they will vituperate thedoers of such things, and the age which has permittedthem to be done, with the full emphasis of virtuousindignation, while all the time they are themselvesdoing things which will be described, with no lessjustice, in the same colour, by an equally virtuousposterity. 

Historians are fond of recording the supposed sufferingsof the poor in the days of serfdom and villanage;yet the records of the strikes of the last ten years, whentold by the sufferers, contain pictures no less fertilein tragedy. We speak of famines and plagues underthe Tudors and Stuarts; but the Irish famine, andthe Irish plague of 1847, the last page of such horrorswhich has yet been turned over, is the most horribleof all We can conceive a description of Englandduring the year which has just closed over us, true inall its details, containing no one statement which canbe challenged, no single exaggeration which can beproved. And this description, if given without thecorrecting traits, shall make ages to come marvel whythe Cities of the Plain were destroyed, and Englandwas allowed to survive. The frauds of trusted men, high in power and high in supposed religion; the whole-salepoisonings; the robberies; the adulteration of food--nay, of almost everything exposed for sale--the cruelusage of women--children murdered for the burial fees--life and property insecure in open day in the openstreets--splendour such as the world never saw beforeupon earth, with vice and squalor crouching under itswalls--let all this be written down by an enemy, orlet it be ascertained hereafter by the investigation ofa posterity which desires to judge us as we generallyhave judged our forefathers, and few years will showdarker in the English annals than the year which hasso lately closed behind us. Yet we know, in the honestyof our hearts, how unjust such a picture would be. Ourfuture advocate, if we are so happy as to find one, may not be able to disprove a single article in theindictment--and yet we know that, as the world goes, he will be right if he marks the year with a white stroke--as one in which, on the whole, the moral harvestwas better than an average. 

Once more: our knowledge of any man is alwaysinadequate--even of the unit which each of us callshimself; and the first condition under which we canknow a man at all is, that he be in essentials somethinglike ourselves; that our own experience be an interpreterwhich shall open the secrets of his experience;and it often happens, even among our contemporaries, that we are altogether baffled. The Englishman andthe Italian may understand each other's speech, butthe language of each other's ideas has still to be learnt. Our long failures in Ireland have risen from a radicalincongruity of character which has divided the Celtfrom the Saxon. And again, in the same country, the Catholic will be a mystery to the Protestant, and theProtestant to the Catholic. Their intellects have beenshaped in opposite moulds; they are like instrumentswhich cannot be played in concert. In the same way, but in a far higher degree, we are divided from thegenerations which have preceded us in this planet--wetry to comprehend a Pericles or a Caesar--an image risesbefore us which we seem to recognize as belonging toour common humanity. There is this feature whichis familiar to us--and this--and this. We are full ofhope; the lineaments, one by one, pass into clearness;when suddenly the figure becomes enveloped in acloud--some perplexity crosses our analysis, baffling itutterly; the phantom which we have evoked dies awaybefore our eyes, scornfully mocking our incapacity tomaster it. 

The English antecedent to the Reformation are nearerto us than Greeks or Romans; and yet there is a largeinterval between the baron who fought at Barnet field, and his polished descendant at a modern levee. Thescale of appreciation and the rule of judgment--thehabits, the hopes, the fears, the emotions--have utterlychanged. 

In perusing modern histories, the present writer hasbeen struck dumb with wonder at the facility withwhich men will fill in chasms in their information withconjecture; will guess at the motives which haveprompted actions; will pass their censures, as if allsecrets of the past lay out on an open scroll beforethem. He is obliged to say for himself that, whereverhe has been fortunate enough to discover authenticexplanations of English historical difficulties, it is rareindeed that he has found any conjecture, either of hisown or of any other modern writer, confirmed. Thetrue motive has almost invariably been of a kind whichno modern experience could have suggested. 

Thoughts such as these form a hesitating prelude toan expression of opinion on a controverted question. They will serve, however, to indicate the limits withinwhich the said opinion is supposed to be hazarded. And in fact, neither in this nor in any historicalsubject is the conclusion so clear that it can beenunciated in a definite form. The utmost which canbe safely hazarded with history is to relate honestlyascertained facts, with only such indications of a judicialsentence upon them as may be suggested in the form inwhich the story is arranged. 

Whether the monastic bodies of England, at the timeof their dissolution, were really in that condition of moralcorruption which is laid to their charge in the Act ofParliament by which they were dissolved, is a pointwhich it seems hopeless to argue. Roman Catholic, and indeed almost all English, writers who are notcommitted to an unfavourable opinion by the ultra-Protestantism of their doctrines--seem to have agreedof late years that the accusations, if not false, wereenormously exaggerated. The dissolution, we are told, was a predetermined act of violence and rapacity; andwhen the reports and the letters of the visitors arequoted in justification of the Government, the discussionis closed with the dismissal of every unfavourablewitness from the court, as venal, corrupt, calumnious--in fact, as a suborned liar. Upon these terms theargument is easily disposed of; and if it were not thattruth is in all matters better than falsehood, it wouldbe idle to reopen a question which cannot be justlydealt with. No evidence can affect convictions whichhave been arrived at without evidence--and why shouldwe attempt a task which it is hopeless to accomplish?It seems necessary, however, to reassert the actual stateof the surviving testimony from time to time, if it beonly to sustain the links of the old traditions; and thepresent paper will contain one or two pictures of apeculiar kind, exhibiting the life and habits of thoseinstitutions, which have been lately met with chieflyamong the unprinted Records. In anticipation of anypossible charge of unfairness in judging from isolatedinstances, we disclaim simply all desire to judge--allwish to do anything beyond relating certain ascertainedstories. Let it remain, to those who are perverseenough to insist upon it, an open question whetherthe monasteries were more corrupt under Henry VIII. Than they had been four hundred years earlier. Thedissolution would have been equally a necessity; for noreasonable person would desire that bodies of menshould have been maintained for the only business ofsinging masses, when the efficacy of masses was nolonger believed. Our present desire is merely this--tosatisfy ourselves whether the Government, in discharginga duty which could not be dispensed with, condescendedto falsehood in seeking a vindication forthemselves which they did not require; or whetherthey had cause really to believe the majority of themonastic bodies to be as they affirmed--whether, thatis to say, there really were such cases either of flagrantimmorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste andprodigality, as to justify the general censure which waspronounced against the system by the Parliament andthe Privy Council. 

Secure in the supposed completeness with whichQueen Mary's agents destroyed the Records of thevisitation under her father, Roman-catholic writers havetaken refuge in a disdainful denial; and the Anglicans, who for the most part (while contented to enjoy thefruits of the Reformation) detest the means by whichit was brought about, have taken the same view. Bishop Latimer tells us that, when the Report of thevisitors of the abbeys was read in the CommonsHouse, there rose from all sides one long cry of "Downwith them. " But Bishop Latimer, in the opinion ofHigh Churchmen, is not to be believed. Do we produceletters of the visitors themselves, we are told thatthey are the slanders prepared to justify a preconceivedpurpose of spoliation. No witness, it seems, will beadmitted unless it be the witness of a friend. Unlesssome enemy of the Reformation can be found to confessthe crimes which made the Reformation necessary, thecrimes themselves are to be regarded as unproved. This is a hard condition. We appeal to Wolsey. 

Wolsey commenced the suppression. Wolsey firstmade public the infamies which disgraced the Church;while, notwithstanding, he died the devoted servant ofthe Church. This evidence is surely admissible? Butno: Wolsey, too, must be put out of court. Wolsey wasa courtier and a timeserver. Wolsey was a tyrant'sminion. Wolsey was--in short, we know not whatWolsey was--or what he was not. Who can put confidencein a charlatan? Behind the bulwarks of suchobjections, the champion of the abbeys may well believehimself secure. 

And yet, unreasonable though these demands may be, it happens, after all, that we are able partially to gratifythem. It is strange that of all extant accusationsagainst any one of the abbeys, the heaviest is from aquarter which even Lingard himself would scarcely callsuspicious. No picture left us by Henry's visitorssurpasses, even if it equals, a description of the conditionof the Abbey of St. Albans, in the last quarter ofthe fifteenth century, drawn by Morton, Henry VII. 'sMinister, Cardinal Archbishop, Legate of the ApostolicSee, in a letter addressed by him to the Abbot of St. Albans himself. 

We must request our reader's special attention forthe next two pages. 

In the year 1489, Pope Innocent VIII. --moved withthe enormous stories which reached his ear of thecorruption of the houses of religion in England--granted acommission to the Archbishop of Canterbury to makeinquiries whether these stories were true, and to proceedto correct and reform as might seem good to him. Theregular clergy were exempt from episcopal visitation, except under especial directions from Rome. Theoccasion had appeared so serious as to make extraordinaryinterference necessary. 

On the receipt of the Papal commission, CardinalMorton, among other letters, wrote the following:--

"John, by Divine permission. Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the ApostolicSee, to William, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Albans, greeting. 

"We have received certain letters under lead, the copieswhereof we herewith send you, from our most holy Lordand Father in Christ, Innocent, by Divine ProvidencePope, the eighth of that name. We therefore, John, theArchbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor, and judgetherein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See, have taken upon ourselves the burden of enforcing thesaid commission; and have determined that we willproceed by, and according to, the full force, tenour, andeffect of the same. 

"And it has come to our ears, being at once publiclynotorious and brought before us upon the testimony ofmany witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbotafore-mentioned, have been of long time noted anddiffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, ofusury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certainother enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you areso remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas thesaid monastery was of old times founded and endowedby the pious devotion of illustrious princes of famousmemory, heretofore kings of this land, the most nobleprogenitors of our most serene Lord and Kingthat now is, in order that true religion might flourishthere, that the name of the Most High, in whose honourand glory it was instituted, might be duly celebratedthere;

"And whereas, in days heretofore the regular observanceof the said rule was greatly regarded, and hospitalitywas diligently kept;

"Nevertheless, for no little time, during which youhave presided in the same monastery, you and certainof your fellow monks and brethren (whose blood, it isfeared, through your neglect, a severe Judge will requireat your hand) have relaxed the measure and form ofreligious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke ofcontemplation, and all regular observances; hospitality, alms, and those other offices of piety which of old timewere exercised and ministered therein have decreased, and by your faults, your carelessness, your neglect anddeed, do daily decrease more and more, and ceaseto be regarded--the pious vows of the founders aredefrauded of their just intent; the antient rule of yourorder is deserted; and not a few of your fellow monksand brethren, as we most deeply grieve to learn, givingthemselves over to a reprobate mind, laying aside thefear of God, do lead only a life of lasciviousness--nay, as is horrible to relate, be not afraid to defile the holyplaces, even the very churches of God, by infamousintercourse with nuns, &c. 

"You yourself, moreover, among other grave enormitiesand abominable crimes whereof you are guilty, and forwhich you are noted and diffamed, have, in the firstplace, admitted a certain married woman, namedElena Germyn, who has separated herself without justcause from her husband, and for some time past haslived in adultery with another man, to be a nun or sisterin the house or Priory of Pray, lying, as you pretend, within your jurisdiction. You have next appointed thesame woman to be prioress of the said house, notwithstanding that her said husband was living at the time, and is still alive. And finally, Father Thomas Sudbury, one of your brother monks, publicly, notoriously, and without interference or punishment from you, hasassociated, and still associates, with this woman as anadulterer with his harlot. 

"Moreover, divers other of your brethren and fellowmonks have resorted, and do resort, continually to herand other women at the same place, as to a publicbrothel or receiving house, and have received nocorrection therefore. 

"Nor is Pray the only house into which you haveintroduced disorder. At the nunnery of Sapwell, whichyou also contend to be under your jurisdiction, youchange the prioresses and superiors again and again atyour own will and caprice. Here, as well as at Pray, you depose those who are good and religious; youpromote to the highest dignities the worthless and thevicious. The duties of the order are cast aside, virtueis neglected; and by these means so much cost andextravagance has been caused, that to provide means foryour indulgence you have introduced certain of yourbrethren to preside in their houses under the nameof guardians, when in fact they are no guardians, butthieves and notorious villains; and with their help youhave caused and permitted the goods of the same prioriesto be dispensed, or to speak more truly to be dissipated, in the above-described corruptions and other enormousand accursed offences. Those places once religious arerendered and reputed as it were profane and impious;and by your own and your creatures' conduct are soimpoverished as to be reduced to the verge of ruin. 

"In like manner, also, you have dealt with certain othercells of monks, which you say are subject to you, evenwithin the monastery of the glorious proto-martyr, Albanhimself. You have dilapidated the common property;you have made away with the jewels; the copses, thewoods, the underwood, almost all the oaks and otherforest trees, to the value of eight thousand marks andmore, you have made to be cut down without distinction, and they have by you been sold and alienated. Thebrethren of the abbey, some of whom, as is reported, are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglectthe service of God altogether. They live with harlotsand mistresses publicly and continuously, within theprecincts of the monastery and without. Some of them, who are covetous of honour and promotion, and desiroustherefore of pleasing your cupidity, have stolen andmade away with the chalices and other jewels of thechurch. They have even sacrilegiously extracted theprecious stones from the very shrine of St. Alban; andyou have not punished these men, but have ratherknowingly supported and maintained them. If any ofyour brethren be living justly and religiously, if any bewise and virtuous, these you straightway depress andhold in hatred . .. You . .. "

But we need not transcribe further this overwhelmingdocument. It pursues its way through mire and filthto its most lame and impotent conclusion. After allthis, the abbot was not deposed; he was invited merelyto reconsider his doings, and if possible amend them. Such was Church discipline, even under an extraordinarycommission from Rome. But the most incorrigibleAnglican will scarcely question the truth of a picturedrawn by such a hand; and it must be added that thisone unexceptionable indictment lends at once assuredcredibility to the reports which were presented fiftyyears later, on the general visitation. There is nolonger room for the presumptive objection that chargesso revolting could not be true. We see that in theirworst form they could be true, and the evidence ofLegh and Leghton, of Rice and Bedyll, as it remainsin their letters to Cromwell, must be shaken in detail, or else it must be accepted as correct. We cannotdream that Archbishop Morton was mistaken, or wasmisled by false information. St. Albans was no obscurepriory in a remote and thinly-peopled county. TheAbbot of St. Albans was a peer of the realm, takingprecedence of bishops, living in the full glare of notoriety, within a few miles of London. The archbishop hadample means of ascertaining the truth; and, we may besure, had taken care to examine his ground before heleft on record so tremendous an accusation. This storyis true--as true as it is piteous. We will pause amoment over it before we pass from this, once more toask our passionate Church friends whether still they willpersist that the abbeys were no worse under the Tudorsthan they had been in their origin, under the Saxons, or under the first Norman and Plantagenet kings. No, indeed, it was not so. The abbeys which towered inthe midst of the English towns, the houses clustered attheir feet like subjects round some majestic queen, wereimages indeed of the civil supremacy which the Churchof the Middle Ages had asserted for itself; but theywere images also of an inner spiritual sublimity, whichhad won the homage of grateful and admiring nations. 

The heavenly graces had once descended upon themonastic orders, making them ministers of mercy, patterns of celestial life, breathing witnesses of thepower of the Spirit in renewing and sanctifying theheart. And then it was that art and wealth and geniuspoured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles forthe dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the villageand the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowlyroofs which closed in the humble dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and ofhis especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. Andever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relieffrom a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering;ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy menwere pealing heavenwards in intercession for the sins ofmankind; and such blessed influences were thought toexhale around those mysterious precincts, that even thepoor outcasts of society--the debtor, the felon, and theoutlaw--gathered round the walls as the sick mensought the shadow of the apostle, and lay there shelteredfrom the avenging hand, till their sins were washed fromoff their souls. The abbeys of the middle ages floatedthrough the storms of war and conquest, like the arkupon the waves of the flood, in the midst of violenceremaining inviolate, through the awful reverence whichsurrounded them. The abbeys, as Henry's visitorsfound them, were as little like what they once had been, as the living man in the pride of his growth is like thecorpse which the earth makes haste to hide for ever. 

The official letters which reveal the condition intowhich the monastic establishments had degenerated, arechiefly in the Cotton Library, and a large number ofthem have been published by the Camden Society. Besides these, however, there are in the Rolls Housemany other documents which confirm and complete thestatements of the writers of those letters. There is apart of what seems to have been a digest of the BlackBook--an epitome of iniquities, under the title of theCompendium Compertorum. There are also reportsfrom private persons, private entreaties for inquiry, depositions of monks in official examinations, and othersimilar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensiveto be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unlesscontentious persons compel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curious light on thehabits of the time, and on the collateral disorders whichaccompanied the more gross enormities. They showus, too, that although the dark tints predominate, thepicture was not wholly black; that as just Lot was inthe midst of Sodom, yet was unable by his single presenceto save the guilty city from destruction, so in thelatest era of monasticism, there were types yet lingeringof an older and fairer age, who, nevertheless, were notdelivered, like the patriarch, but perished most of themwith the institution to which they belonged. Thehideous exposure is not untinted with fairer lines; andwe see traits here and there of true devotion, mistakenbut heroic. 

Of these documents two specimens shall be givenin this place, one of either kind; and both, so far aswe know, new to modern history. The first is sosingular, that we print it as it is found--a genuineantique, fished up, in perfect preservation, out of thewreck of the old world. 

About eight miles from Ludlow, in the county ofHerefordshire, once stood the Abbey of Wigmore. There was Wigmore Castle, a stronghold of the WelshMarches, now, we believe, a modern, well-conditionedmansion; and Wigmore Abbey, of which we do nothear that there are any remaining traces. Though nowvanished, however, like so many of its kind, threehundred years ago the house was in vigorous existence;and when the stir commenced for an inquiry, theproceedings of the abbot of this place gave occasion toa memorial which stands in the Rolls collection asfollows*:--____

*Rolls House MS. , Miscellaneous Papers, First Series. 356. ____

"Articles to be objected against John Smart, Abbotof the Monastery of Wigmore, in the county of Hereford, to be exhibited to the Right Honourable Lord ThomasCromwell, the Lord Privy Seal and Vicegerent to theKing's Majesty. 

"1. The said abbot is to be accused of simony, as wellfor taking money for advocation and putations of benefices, as for giving of orders, or, more truly, sellingthem, and that to such persons which have beenrejected elsewhere, and of little learning and lightconsideration. 

"2. The said abbot hath promoted to orders manyscholars, when all other bishops did refrain to give anyfor certain good ordinances devised by the King's Majestyand his Council for the common weal of this realm. Then resorted to the said abbot, scholars out of allparts, whom he would promote to orders by sixty at atime, and sometimes more, and otherwhiles less. Andsometimes the said abbot would give orders by nightwithin his chamber; and otherwise in the church earlyin the morning, and now and then at a chapel out ofthe abbey. So that there be many unlearned and lightpriests made by the said abbot, and in the diocese ofLlandaff, and in the places afore named--a thousand, as it is esteemed, by the space of this seven years hehath made priests, and received not so little money ofthem as a thousand pounds for their orders. 

"3. Item, that the said abbot now of late, when hecould not be suffered to give general orders, weekly forthe most part doth give orders by pretence ofdispensation; and by that colour he promoteth them to ordersby two and three, and takes much money of them, both for their orders and for to purchase theirdispensations after the time he hath promoted them totheir orders. 

"4. Item, the said abbot hath hurt and dismayed histenants by putting them from their leases, and byenclosing their commons from them, and selling and utterwasting of the woods that were wont to relieve andsuccour them. 

"5. Item, the said abbot hath sold corradyes, to thedamage of the said monastery. 

"6. Item, the said abbot hath alienate and sold thejewels and plate of the monastery, to the value of fivehundred marks, to purchase of the Bishop of Rome hisbulls to be a bishop, and to annex the said abbey to hisbishopric, to that intent that he should not for hismisdeeds be punished, or deprived from his said abbey. 

"7. Item, that the said abbot, long after that otherbishops had renounced the Bishop of Rome, and professedthem to the King's Majesty, did use, but moreverily usurped, the office of a bishop by virtue of hisfirst bulls purchased from Rome, till now of late, as itwill appear by the date of his confirmation, if he haveany. 

"8. Item, that he the said abbot hath lived viciously, and kept to concubines divers and many women thatis openly known. 

"9. Item, that the said abbot doth yet continue hisvicious living, as it is known, openly. 

"10. Item, that the said abbot hath spent and wastedmuch of the goods of the said monastery upon theforesaid women. 

"11. Item, that the said abbot is malicious and verywrathful, not regarding what he saith or doeth in hisfury or anger. 

"12. Item, that one Richard Gyles bought of the abbotand convent of Wigmore a corradye, and a chamber forhim and his wife for term of their lives; and when thesaid Richard Gyles was aged and was very weak, hedisposed his goods, and made executors to execute hiswill. And when the said abbot now being perceivedthat the said Richard Gyles was rich, and had notbequested so much of his goods to him as he would havehad, the said abbot then came to the chamber of thesaid Richard Gyles, and put out thence all his friendsand kinsfolk that kept him in his sickness; and thenthe said abbot set his brother and other of his servantsto keep the sick man; and the night next coming afterthe said Richard Gyles's coffer was broken, and thencetaken all that was in the same, to the value of fortymarks; and long after the said abbot confessed, beforethe executors of the said Richard Gyles, that it was hisdeed. 

"13. Item, that the said abbot, after he had takenaway the goods of the said Richard Gyles, used dailyto reprove and check the said Richard Gyles, andinquire of him where was more of his coin and money;and at the last the said abbot thought he lived too long, and made the sick man, after much sorry keeping, tobe taken from his feather-bed, and laid upon a coldmattress, and kept his friends from him to his death. 

"15. Item, that the said abbot consented to the deathand murdering of one John Tichhill, that was slain athis procuring, at the said monastery, by Sir RichardCubley, canon and chaplain to the said abbot; whichcanon is and ever hath been since that time chief ofthe said abbot's council; and is supported to carrycrossbowes, and to go whither he lusteth at any time, to fishing and hunting in the king's forests, parks, andchases; but little or nothing serving the quire, as otherbrethren do, neither corrected of the abbot for anytrespass he doth commit. 

"16. Item, that the said abbot hath been perjured oft, as is to be proved, and is proved; and as it is supposed, did not make a true inventory of the goods, chattels, and jewels of his monastery to the King's Majesty andhis council. 

"17. Item, that the said abbot hath infringed all theking's injunctions which were given him by DoctorCave to observe and keep; and when he was denouncedin pleno capilula to have broken the same, he wouldhave put in prison the brother as did denounce him tohave broken the same injunctions, save that he was letby the convent there. 

"18. Item, that the said abbot hath openly preachedagainst the doctrine of Christ, saying he ought not tolove his enemy, but as he loves the devil; and that heshould love his enemy's soul, but not his body. 

"19. Item, that the said abbot hath taken but smallregard to the good-living of his household. 

"20. Item, that the said abbot hath had and hath yeta special favour to misdoers and manquellers, thieves, deceivers of their neighbours, and by them [is] mostruled and counselled. 

"21. Item, that the said abbot hath granted leases offarms and advocations first to one man, and took hisfine, and also hath granted the same lease to anotherman for more money; and then would make to the lasttaker a lease or writing, with an antedate of the firstlease, which hath bred great dissension among gentlemen--as Master Blunt and Master Moysey, and other takersof such leases--and that often. 

"22. Item, the said abbot having the contrepaynes ofleases in his keeping, hath, for money, raised out thenumber of years mentioned in the said leases, and writa fresh number in the former taker's lease, and in thecontrepayne thereof, to the intent to defraud the takeror buyer of the residue of such leases, of whom he hathreceived the money. 

"23. Item, the said abbot hath not, according to thefoundation of his monastery, admitted freely tenantsinto certain alms-houses belonging to the said monastery;but of them he hath taken large fines, and some ofthem he hath put away that would not give him fines:whither poor, aged, and impotent people were wont tobe freely admitted, and [to] receive the founder's almsthat of the old customs [were] limited to the same--which alms is also diminished by the said abbot. 

"24. Item, that the said abbot did not deliver thebulls of his bishopric, that he purchased from Rome, to our sovereign lord the king's council till long afterthe time he had delivered and exhibited the bulls ofhis monastery to them. 

"25. Item, that the said abbot hath detained and yetdoth detain servants' wages; and often when the saidservants hath asked their wages, the said abbot hathput them into the stocks, and beat them. 

"26. Item, the said abbot, in times past, hath had agreat devotion to ride to Llangarvan, in Wales, uponLammas-day, to receive pardon there; and on the evenhe would visit one Mary Hawle, an old acquaintanceof his, at the Welsh Poole; and on the morrow ride tothe foresaid Llangarvan, to be confessed and absolved, and the same night return to company with the saidMary Hawle, at the Welsh Poole aforesaid, and Kateryn, the said Mary Hawle her first daughter, whom the saidabbot long hath kept to concubine, and had childrenby her, that he lately married at Ludlow. And [therebe] others that have been taken out of his chamber andput in the stocks within the said abbey, and others thathave complained upon him to the king's council of theMarches of Wales; and the woman that dashed outhis teeth, that he would have had by violence, I will notname now, nor other men's wives, lest it would offendyour good lordship to read or hear the same. 

"27. Item, the said abbot doth daily embezzle, sell, and convey the goods, and chattels, and jewels of thesaid monastery, having no need so to do; for it isthought that he hath a thousand marks or two thousandlying by him that he hath gotten by selling of orders, and the jewels and plate of the monastery and corradyes;and it is to be feared that he will alienate all the rest, unless your good lordship speedily make redress andprovision to let the same. 

"28. Item, the said abbot was accustomed yearly topreach at Leyntwarden on the Festival of the Nativityof the Virgin Mary, where and when the people werewont to offer to an image there, and to the same thesaid abbot in his sermons would exhort them andencourage them. But now the oblations be decayed, the abbot, espying the image then to have a cote ofsilver plate and gilt, hath taken away of his ownauthority the said image, and the plate turned to hisown use; and left his preaching there, saying it is nomanner profit to any man, and the plate that wasabout the said image was named to be worth fortypounds. 

"29. Item, the said abbot hath ever nourished enmityand discord among his brethren; and hath notencouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery ofChrist. But he that least knew was most cherishedby him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath]disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God'sprecept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before yourceremonies and vain constitutions. ' This saying washigh disobedient, and should be grievously punished;when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, fraud, superstition, deceit, conspiracy to wrong theirneighbour, and other of that kind, was had in specialfavour and regard. Laud and praise be to God thathath sent us the true knowledge. Honour and longprosperity to our sovereign lord, and his noble councilthat teaches to advance the same. Amen. 

"By John Lee, your faithful bedeman, and canon ofthe said monastery of Wigmore. 

"Postscript. My good lord, there is in the said abbeya cross of fine gold and precious stones, whereof onediamond was esteemed by Doctor Booth, Bishop ofHereford, worth a hundred marks. In that cross isenclosed a piece of wood, named to be of the crossthat Christ died upon, and to the same hath beenoffering. And when it should be brought down to thechurch from the treasury, it was brought down withlights, and like reverence as should have been doneto Christ Himself. I fear lest the abbot upon Sundaynext, when he may enter the treasury, will take awaythe said cross and break it, or turn it to his own use, with many other precious jewels that be there. 

"All these articles afore written be true as to thesubstance and true meaning of them, though peradventurefor haste and lack of counsel some words beset amiss or out of their place. That I will be readyto prove forasmuch as lies in me, when it shall like yourhonourable lordship to direct your commission to men(or any man) that will be indifferent and not corruptto sit upon the same, at the said abbey, where thewitnesses and proofs be most ready and the truth isbest known, or at any other place where it shall bethought most convenient by your high discretion andauthority. "

The statutes of Provisors, commonly called Premunirestatutes, which forbade all purchases of bullsfrom Rome under penalty of outlawry, have beenusually considered in the highest degree oppressive;and more particularly the public censure has fallenupon the last application of those statutes, when, onWolsey's fall, the whole body of the clergy were laidunder a premunire, and only obtained pardon on paymentof a serious fine. Let no one regret that he haslearnt to be tolerant to Roman Catholics as the nineteenthcentury knows them. But it is a spuriouscharity, which, to remedy a modern injustice, hastens toits opposite; and when philosophic historians indulgein loose invective against the statesmen of the Reformation, they show themselves unfit to be trusted with thecustody of our national annals. The Acts of Parliamentspeak plainly of the enormous abuses which hadgrown up under these bulls. Yet even the emphaticlanguage of the statutes scarcely prepares us to find anabbot able to purchase with jewels stolen from his ownconvent a faculty to confer holy orders, though he hadnever been consecrated bishop, and to make a thousandpounds by selling the exercise of his privileges. Thisis the most flagrant case which has fallen under the eyesof the present writer. Yet it is but a choice specimenout of many. He was taught to believe, like othermodern students of history, that the papal dispensationsfor immorality, of which we read in Fox and otherProtestant writers, were calumnies, but he has beenforced against his will to perceive that the supposedcalumnies were but the plain truth; he has foundamong the records--for one thing, a list of more thantwenty clergy in one diocese who had obtained licencesto keep concubines [Tanner MS. 105, Bodleian Library, Oxford]. After some experience, he advisesall persons who are anxious to understand the EnglishReformation to place implicit confidence in the StatuteBook. Every fresh record which is brought to lightis a fresh evidence in its favour. In the fluctuations ofthe conflict there were parliaments, as there wereprinces, of opposing sentiments; and measures werepassed, amended, repealed, or censured, as Protestantsand Catholics came alternately into power. But whateverwere the differences of opinion, the facts on eitherside which are stated in an Act of Parliament may beuniformly trusted. Even in the attainders for treasonand heresy we admire the truthfulness of the detailsof the indictments, although we deplore the prejudicewhich at times could make a crime of virtue. 

We pass on to the next picture. Equal justice, orsome attempt at it, was promised, and we shall perhapspart from the friends of the monasteries on better termsthan they believe. At least, we shall add to our ownhistory and to the Catholic martyrology a story ofgenuine interest. 

We have many accounts of the abbeys at the timeof their actual dissolution. The resistance or acquiescenceof superiors, the dismissals of the brethren, thesale of the property, the destruction of relics, &c. , areall described. We know how the windows were takenout, how the glass appropriated, how the "melter"accompanied the visitors to run the lead upon the roofs, and the metal of the bells into portable forms. Wesee the pensioned regulars filing out reluctantly, orexulting in their deliverance, discharged from their vows, furnished each with his "secular apparel, " and his purseof money, to begin the world as he might. Thesescenes have long been partially known, and they wererarely attended with anything remarkable. At thetime of the suppression, the discipline of several yearshad broken down opposition, and prepared the way forthe catastrophe. The end came at last, but as an issuewhich had been long foreseen. 

We have sought in vain, however, for a glimpseinto the interior of the houses at the first intimationof what was coming--more especially when the greatblow was struck which severed England from obedienceto Rome, and asserted the independence of the AnglicanChurch. Then, virtually, the fate of the monasteries wasdecided. As soon as the supremacy was vested in thecrown, inquiry into their condition could no longer beescaped or delayed; and then, through the length andbreadth of the country, there must have been rare dismay. The account of the London Carthusians is indeedknown to us, because they chose to die rather thanyield submission where their consciences forbade them;and their isolated heroism has served to distinguishtheir memories. The Pope, as head of the UniversalChurch, claimed the power of absolving subjects fromtheir allegiance to their king. He deposed Henry. He called on foreign princes to enforce his sentence;and, on pain of excommunication, commanded thenative English to rise in rebellion. The king, inselfdefence, was compelled to require his subjects todisclaim all sympathy with these pretensions, and torecognize no higher authority, spiritual or secular, than himself within his own dominions. The regularclergy throughout the country were on the Pope's side, secretly or openly. The Charter-house monks, however, alone of all the order had the courage to declare theirconvictions, and to suffer for them. Of the rest, weonly perceive that they at last submitted; and sincethere was no uncertainty as to their real feelings, wehave been disposed to judge them hardly as cowards. Yet we who have never been tried, should perhaps becautious in our censures. It is possible to hold anopinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dyingfor it. We consider ourselves, at the present day, persuaded honestly of many things; yet which of themshould we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold were thealternative, or at least seem to relinquish, under silentprotest?

And yet, in the details of the struggle at theCharterhouse, we see the forms of mental trial which must haverepeated themselves among all bodies of the clergywherever there was seriousness of conviction. If themajority of the monks were vicious and sensual, therewas still a large minority labouring to be true to theirvows; and when one entire convent was capable ofsustained resistance, there must have been many wherethere was only just too little virtue for the emergency, where the conflict between interest and conscience wasequally genuine, though it ended the other way. Scenesof bitter misery there must have been--of passionateemotion wrestling ineffectually with the iron resolutionof the Government: and the faults of the Catholic partyweigh so heavily against them in the course and progressof the Reformation, that we cannot willingly lose thefew countervailing tints which soften the darkness of thecase against them. 

Nevertheless, for any authentic account of the abbeysat this crisis, we have hitherto been left to ourimagination. A stern and busy Administration had little leisureto preserve records of sentimental struggles which led tonothing. The Catholics did not care to keep alive therecollection of a conflict in which, even though withdifficulty, the Church was defeated. A rare accidentonly could have brought down to us any fragment of atransaction which no one had an interest in remembering. That such an accident has really occurred, wemay consider as unusually fortunate. The story inquestion concerns the abbey of Woburn, and is asfollows:-

At Woburn, as in many other religious houses, therewere representatives of both the factions which dividedthe country; perhaps we should say of three--thesincere Catholics, the Indifferentists, and the Protestants. These last, so long as Wolsey was in power, had beenfrightened into silence, and with difficulty had been ableto save themselves from extreme penalties. No sooner, however, had Wolsey fallen, and the battle commencedwith the Papacy, than the tables turned, the persecutedbecame persecutors--or at least threw off their disguise, and were strengthened with the support of the largeclass who cared only to keep on the winning side. Themysteries of the faith came to be disputed at thepublic tables; the refectories rang with polemics; thesacred silence of the dormitories was broken for the firsttime by lawless speculation. The orthodox might haveappealed to the Government: heresy was still forbiddenby law, and if detected, was still punished by the stake. But the orthodox among the regular clergy adheredto the Pope as well as to the faith, and abhorred thesacrilege of the Parliament as deeply as the new opinionsof the Reformers. Instead of calling in the help of thelaw, they muttered treason in secret; and the Reformers, confident in the necessities of the times, sent reports toLondon of their arguments and conversations. Theauthorities in the abbey were accused of disaffection;and a commission of inquiry was sent down towards theend of the spring of 1536, to investigate. Thedepositions taken on this occasion are still preserved; andwith the help of them, we can leap over three centuriesof time, and hear the last echoes of the old monasticlife in Woburn Abbey dying away in discord. 

Where party feeling was running so high, there wereof course passionate arguments. The Act of Supremacy, the spread of Protestantism, the power of the Pope, thestate of England--all were discussed; and the possibilitiesof the future, as each party painted it in thecolours of his hopes. The brethren, we find, spoketheir minds in plain language, sometimes condescendingto a joke. 

Brother Sherborne deposes that the sub-prior "onCandlemas-day last past (February 2, 1536), asked himwhether he longed not to be at Rome where all hisbulls were?" Brother Sherborne answered that "hisbulls had made so many calves, that he had burnedthem. Whereunto the sub-prior said he thought therewere more calves now than there were then. "

Then there were long and furious quarrels about "myLord Privy Seal" (Cromwell), to one party the incarnationof Satan, to the other the delivering angel. Nor didmatters mend when from the minister they passed to themaster. 

Dan John Croxton being in "the shaving-house" oneday with certain of the brethren having their tonsureslooked to, and gossiping, as men do on such occasions, one "Friar Lawrence did say that the King was dead. "Then said Croxton, "thanks be to God, his Grace is ingood health, and I pray God so continue him;" andsaid further to the said Lawrence, "I advise thee toleave thy babbling. " Croxton, it seems, had been amongthe suspected in earlier times. Lawrence said to him, "Croxton, it maketh no matter what thou sayest, forthou art one of the new world. " Whereupon hotter stillthe conversation proceeded. "Thy babbling tongue, "Croxton said, "will turn us all to displeasure at length. ""Then, " quoth Lawrence, "neither thou nor yet anyof us all shall do well as long as we forsake our head ofthe Church, the Pope. " "By the mass!" quoth Croxton, "I would thy Pope Roger were in thy belly, or thou inhis, for thou art a false perjured knave to thy Prince. "Whereunto the said Lawrence answered, saying, "By themass, thou liest! I was never sworn to forsake the Popeto be our head, and never will be. " "Then, " quothCroxton, "thou shall be sworn spite of thine heart oneday, or I will know why nay. "

These and similar wranglings may be taken asspecimens of the daily conversation at Woburn, and wecan perceive how an abbot with the best intentionswould have found it difficult to keep the peace. Thereare instances of superiors in other houses throwing downtheir command in the midst of the crisis in flat despair, protesting that their subject brethren were no longergovernable. Abbots who were inclined to the Reformationcould not manage the Catholics; Catholic abbotscould not manage the Protestants; indifferent abbotscould not manage either the one or the other. It wouldhave been well for the Abbot of Woburn--or well as faras this world is concerned--if he, like one of these, hadacknowledged his incapacity, and had fled from hischarge. 

His name was Robert Hobbes. Of his age andfamily, history is silent. We know only that he held hisplace when the storm rose against the Pope; that, likethe rest of the clergy, he bent before the blast, takingthe oath to the King, and submitting to the royalsupremacy, but swearing under protest, as the phrase went, with the outward, and not with the inward man--in fact, perjuring himself. Though infirm, so far, however, hewas too honest to be a successful counterfeit, and fromthe jealous eyes of the Neologians of the abbey he couldnot conceal his tendencies. We have significant evidenceof the espionage which was established, over allsuspected quarters, in the conversations and triflingdetails of conduct on the part of the abbot, which werereported to the Government. 

In the summer of 1534, orders came that the Pope'sname should be rased out wherever it was mentionedin the Mass books. A malcontent, by nameRobert Salford, deposed that "he was singing massbefore the abbot at St. Thomas's altar within themonastery, at which time he rased out with his knife thesaid name out of the canon. " The abbot told him to"take a pen and strike or cross him out. " The saucymonk said those were not the orders. They were torase him out. "Well, well, " the abbot said, "it willcome again one day. " "Come again, will it?" was theanswer. "If it do, then we will put him in again; butI trust I shall never see that day. " The mild abbotcould remonstrate, but could not any more command;and the proofs of his malignant inclinations wereremembered against him for the ear of Cromwell. 

In the general injunctions, too, he was directed topreach against the Pope, and to expose his usurpation;but he could not bring himself to obey. He shrankfrom the pulpit; he preached but twice after the visitation, and then on other subjects, while in the prayerbefore the sermon he refused, as we find, to use theprescribed form. He only said, "You shall pray forthe spirituality, the temporality, and the souls that bein the pains of purgatory; and did not name the Kingto be supreme head of the Church in neither of thesaid sermons, nor speak against the pretended authorityof the Bishop of Rome. "

Again, when Paul the Third, shortly after his election, proposed to call a general council at Mantua, againstwhich, by advice of Henry the Eighth, the Germansprotested, we have a glimpse how eagerly anxiousEnglish eyes were watching for a turning tide. "Hearyou, " said the abbot one day, "of the Pope's holinessand the congregation of bishops, abbots, and princesgathered to the council at Mantua? They be gatheredfor the reformation of the universal Church; and herenow we have a book of the excuse of the Germans, by which we may know what heretics they be, for ifthey were Catholics and true men as they pretend to be, they would never have refused to come to a generalcouncil. "

So matters went with the abbot for some monthsafter he had sworn obedience to the King. Lulling hisconscience with such opiates as the casuists could providefor him, he watched anxiously for a change, andlaboured with but little reserve to hold his brethren totheir true allegiance. 

In the summer of 1535, however, a change came overthe scene, very different from the outward reaction forwhich he was looking: a better mind woke in theabbot; he learnt that in swearing what he did notmean with reservations and nice distinctions, he hadlied to Heaven and lied to man: that to save hismiserable life he had perilled his soul. When the oathof supremacy was required of the nation, Sir ThomasMore, Bishop Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse, mistaken, as we believe, in judgment, but trueto their consciences, and disdaining evasion or subterfuge, chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to die thanto perjure themselves. This is no place to enter onthe great question of the justice or necessity of thoseexecutions; but the story of the so-called martyrdomsconvulsed the Catholic world. The Pope shook uponhis throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stoodstill; diplomatists who had lived so long in lies thatthe whole life of man seemed but a stage pageant, athing of show and tinsel, stood aghast at the revelationof English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ranthrough Europe. The fury of party leaves little roomfor generous emotion, and no pity was felt for thesemen by the English Protestants. The Protestants knewwell that if these same sufferers could have had theirway, they would themselves have been sacrificed byhecatombs; and as they had never experienced mercy, so they were in turn without mercy. But to theEnglish Catholics, who believed as Fisher believed, but who had not dared to suffer as Fisher suffered, hisdeath and the death of the rest acted as a glimpse ofthe judgment day. Their safety became their shameand terror: and in the radiant example before them oftrue faithfulness, they saw their own falsehood and theirown disgrace. So it was with Father Forest, who hadtaught his penitents in confession that they might perjurethemselves, and who now sought a cruel death involuntary expiation; so it was with Whiting, the Abbotof Glastonbury; so with others whose names should bemore familiar to us than they are; and here in Woburnwe are to see the feeble but genuine penitence of AbbotHobbes. He was still unequal to immediate martyrdom, but he did what he knew might drag his death uponhim if disclosed to the Government, and surrounded byspies he could have had no hope of concealment. 

"At the time, " deposed Robert Salford, "that themonks of the Charter-house, with other traitors, didsuffer death, the abbot did call us into the Chapterhouse, and said these words:--'Brethren, this is aperilous time, such a scourge was never heard sinceChrist's passion. Ye hear how good men suffer thedeath. Brethren, this is undoubted for our offences. Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept thecommandments of God, so long their enemies had nopower over them, but God took vengeance of theirenemies. But when they broke God's commandments, then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we. Therefore let us be sorry for our offences. UndoubtedHe will take vengeance of our enemies; I mean thoseheretics that causeth so many good men to suffer thus. Alas, it is a piteous case that so much Christian bloodshould be shed. Therefore, good brethren, for thereverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, andsay this Psalm, "O God, the heathen are come intothine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodiesof thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowlsof the air, and the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts ofthe field. Their blood have they shed like water onevery side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to burythem. We are become an open scorn unto our enemies, a very scorn and derision unto them that are roundabout us. Oh, remember not our old sins, but havemercy upon us, and that soon, for we are come to greatmisery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the gloryof thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thyname's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where isnow their God?" Ye shall say this Psalm, ' repeatedthe abbot, 'every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly Godwill cease this extreme scourge. ' And so, " continuesSalford, significantly, "the convent did say this aforesaidPsalm until there were certain that did murmur atthe saying of it, and so it was left. "

The abbot, it seems, either stood alone, or found butlanguid support; even his own familiar friends whomhe trusted, those with whom he had walked in thehouse of God, had turned against him; the harsh air ofthe dawn of a new world choked him; what was therefor him but to die. But his conscience still hauntedhim: while he lived he must fight on, and so, ifpossible, find pardon for his perjury. The blows inthose years fell upon the Church thick and fast. InFebruary, 1536, the Bill passed for the dissolution ofthe smaller monasteries; and now we find the sub-priorwith the whole fraternity united to accuse him, so thatthe abbot had no one friend remaining. 

"He did again call us together, " says the next deposition, "and lamentably mourning for the dissolvingthe said houses, he enjoined us to sing 'Salvator mundi, salva nos omnes, ' every day after lauds; and we murmuredat it, and were not content to sing it for suchcause; and so we did omit it divers days, for whichthe abbot came unto the chapter, and did in mannerrebuke us, and said we were bound to obey hiscommandment by our profession, and so did command us tosing it again with the versicle 'Let God arise, and lethis enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate himflee before him. ' Also he enjoined us at every massthat every priest did sing, to say the collect, 'Oh God, who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart. 'And he said if we did this with good and true devotion, God would so handle the matter, that it should be tothe comfort of all England, and so show us mercy ashe showed unto the children of Israel. And surely, brethren, there will come to us a good man that willrectify these monasteries again that be now supprest, because 'God can of these stones raise up children toAbraham. '"

"Of these stones, " perhaps, but less easily of the stonyheartedmonks, who with pitiless smiles watched theabbot's sorrow, which should soon bring him to hisruin. 

Time passed on, and as the world grew worse, so theabbot grew more lonely. Lonely and unsupported, hewas unequal to the last effort of repentance, but heslowly strengthened himself for the trial. As Lentcame on, the season brought with it a more special callto effort, which he did not fail to recognize. Theconduct of the fraternity sorely disturbed him. Theypreached against all which he most loved and valued, in language purposely coarse; and the mild sweetnessof the rebukes which he administered, showed plainlyon which side lay, in the abbey of Woburn, the largerportion of the spirit of his Master and theirs. Now, when the passions of those times have died away, andwe can look back with more indifferent eyes, howtouching is the following. There was one Sir William, curate of Woburn chapel, whose tongue, it seems, was rough beyond the rest. The abbot met himone day, and spoke to him. "Sir William, " he said, "I hear tell ye be a great railer. I marvel that ye railso. I pray you teach my cure the scripture of God, andthat may be to edification. I pray you leave such railing. Ye call the pope a bear and a banson. Either heis a good man or an ill. Domino suo stat aut cadit. The office of a bishop is honourable. What edifying isthis to rail? Let him alone. "

But they would not let him alone, nor would theylet the abbot alone. He grew "somewhat acrased, " theysaid, vexed with feelings of which they had no experience. He fell sick, sorrow and the Lent disciplineweighing upon him. The brethren went to see him inhis room, Brother Dan Woburn among the rest, whosaid that he asked him how he did, and received foranswer, "I would that I had died with the good menthat died for holding with the pope. My conscience, my conscience doth grudge me every day for it. " Lifewas fast losing its value for him. What was life to himor any man when bought with a sin against his soul?"If he be disposed to die, for that matter, " theinsolent Croxton said, "he may die as soon as he will. "

All Lent he fasted and prayed; and his illness grewupon him; and at length in Passion week he thoughtall was over, and that he was going away. On PassionSunday he called the brethren about him, and as theystood round his bed, with their cold, hard eyes, "heexhorted them all to charity, " he implored them "neverto consent to go out of their monastery; and if itchanced them to be put from it, they should in nowise forsake their habit. " After these words, "being ina great agony, he rose out of his bed, and cried out andsaid, 'I would to God, it would please him to take meout of this wretched world; and I would I had diedwith the good men that have suffered death heretofore, for they were quickly out of their pain. '" * Then, halfwandering, he began to mutter to himself aloud thethoughts which had been working in him in hisstruggles; and quoting St. Bernard's words about thepope, he exclaimed, "Tu quis es. Primatu Abel, gubernatione Noah, auctoritate Moses, judicatu Samuelpotestate Petrus, unctione Christus. Aliae ecclesiaehabent super se pastores. Tu pastor pastorum es. "____

* Meaning, as he afterwards said, More and Fisher and theCarthusians. ____

Let it be remembered that this is no sentimentalfiction begotten out of the brain of some ingeniousnovelist, but the record of the true words and sufferingsof a genuine child of Adam, labouring in a trial toohard for him. 

He prayed to die, and in good time death was tocome to him; but not, after all, in the sick bed, withhis expiation but half completed. A year before, hehad thrown down the cross, when it was offered him. He was to take it again; the very cross which he hadrefused. He recovered. He was brought before thecouncil; with what result, there are no means of knowing. To admit the papal supremacy when officiallyquestioned was high treason. Whether he was constant, and received some conditional pardon, or whether hisheart again for the moment failed him--whichever hedid--the records are silent. This only we ascertain ofhim: that he was not put to death under the statute ofsupremacy. But two years later, when the official listwas presented to the parliament of those who hadsuffered for their share in "the Pilgrimage of Grace, "among the rest we find the name of Robert Hobbes, late Abbot of Woburn. To this solitary fact we canadd nothing. The rebellion was put down, and in thepunishment of the offenders there was unusual leniency;not more than thirty persons were executed, althoughforty thousand had been in arms. Those only wereselected who had been most signally implicated. Butthey were all leaders in the movement; the men ofhighest rank, and therefore greatest guilt. They diedfor what they believed their duty; and the king andcouncil did their duty in enforcing the laws againstarmed insurgents. He for whose cause each supposedthemselves to be contending, has long since judgedbetween them; and both parties perhaps now see allthings with clearer eyes than was permitted to themon earth. 

We too can see more distinctly in a slight degree. At least we will not refuse the Abbot Hobbes somememorial, brief though it be. And although twelvegenerations of Russells--all loyal to the Protestantascendancy--have swept Woburn clear of Catholicassociations, they, too, in these later days, will not regretto see revived the authentic story of its last abbot. ____

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIANITY

"We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful, for theUseful encourages itself. "--GOETHE. 

A Moss rose-bud hiding her face among the leaves onehot summer morning, for fear the sun should injure hercomplexion, happened to let fall a glance towards herroots, and to see the bed in which she was growing. What a filthy place! she cried. What a home theyhave chosen for me! I, the most beautiful of flowers, fastened down into so detestable a neighbourhood! Shethrew her face into the air; thrust herself into thehands of the first passer-by who stopped to look at her, and escaped in triumph, as she thought, into the centreof a nosegay. But her triumph was short-lived: in afew hours she withered and died. 

I was reminded of this story when hearing a livingthinker of some eminence once say that he consideredChristianity to have been a misfortune. Intellectually itwas absurd, and practically an offence, over which hestumbled; and it would have been far better for mankind, he thought, if they could have kept clear of superstition, and followed on upon the track of the Grecianphilosophy, so little do men care to understand theconditions which have made them what they are, and whichhas created for them that very wisdom in which theythemselves are so contented. But it is strange, indeed, thata person who could deliberately adopt such a conclusionshould trouble himself any more to look for truth. Ifa mere absurdity could make its way out of a littlefishing village in Galilee, and spread through the wholecivilized world; if men are so pitiably silly, that in anage of great mental activity their strongest thinkersshould have sunk under an absorption of fear and folly, should have allowed it to absorb into itself whatever ofheroism, of devotion, self-sacrifice, and moral noblenessthere was among them; surely there were nothing betterfor a wise man than to make the best of his time, andto crowd what enjoyment he can find into it, shelteringhimself in a very disdainful Pyrrhonism from all care formankind or for their opinions. For what better test oftruth have we than the ablest men's acceptance of it;and if the ablest men eighteen centuries ago deliberatelyaccepted what is now too absurd to reason upon, whatright have we to hope that with the same natures, thesame passions, the same understandings, no better proofagainst deception, we, like they, are not entangled inwhat, at the close of another era, shall seem againridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liberand Ceres (bread and wine) may be translated literally bythe modern Protestant; and the sarcasms which Clementand Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed, the modernsceptic returns upon their own. Of what use is it todestroy an idol when another, or the same in anotherform takes immediate possession of the vacant pedestal?

But it is not so. Ptolemy was not perfect, butNewton had been a fool if he had scoffed at Ptolemy. Newton could not have been without Ptolemy, norPtolemy without the Chaldees; and as it is with theminor sciences, so far more is it with the science ofsciences--the science of life, which has grown throughall the ages from the beginning of time. We speak ofthe errors of the past. We, with this glorious presentwhich is opening on us, we shall never enter on it, we shall never understand it, till we have learnt to seein that past, not error but instalment of truth, hardfought-for truth, wrung out with painful and heroiceffort. The promised land is smiling before us, butwe may not pass over into possession of it while thebones of our fathers who laboured through thewilderness lie bleaching on the sands, or a prey to theunclean birds; we must gather them and bury them, and sum up their labours, and inscribe the record oftheir actions on their tombs as an honourable epitaph. If Christianity really is passing away, if it has done itswork, and if what is left of it is now holding us backfrom better things, it is not for our bitterness but forour affectionate acknowledgment, not for our heapingcontempt on what it is, but for our reverent and patientexamination of what it has been, that it will be contentto bid us farewell, and give us God speed on ourfurther journey. 

In the Natural History of Religions certain broadphenomena perpetually repeat themselves; they rise inthe highest thought extant at the time of their origin;the conclusions of philosophy settle into a creed; artornaments it, devotion consecrates it, time elaborates it. It grows through a long series of generations into theheart and habits of the people; and so long as nodisturbing cause interferes, or so long as the idea at thecentre of it survives; a healthy, vigorous, natural lifeshoots beautifully up out of it. But at last the ideabecomes obsolete; the numbing influence of habitpetrifies the spirit in the outside ceremonial, while quitenew questions rise among the thinkers, and ideas enterinto new and unexplained relations. The old formulawill not serve; but new formulae are tardy in appearing;and habit and superstition cling to the past, and policyvindicates it, and statecraft upholds it forcibly asserviceable to order, till, from the combined action of folly, and worldliness, and ignorance, the once beautifulsymbolism becomes at last no better than "a whitedsepulchre full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. "So it is now. So it was in the era of the Caesars, out ofwhich Christianity arose; and Christianity, in the formwhich it assumed at the close of the Arian controversy, was the deliberate solution which the most powerfulintellects of that day could offer of the questions whichhad grown out with the growth of mankind, and onwhich Paganism had suffered shipwreck. 

Paganism, as a creed, was entirely physical. WhenPaganism rose men had not begun to reflect uponthemselves, or the infirmities of their own nature. Thebad man was a bad man--the coward a coward--theliar a liar--individually hateful and despicable. But inhating and despising such unfortunates, the old Greekswere satisfied to have felt all that was necessary aboutthem; and how such a phenomenon as a bad man cameto exist in this world, they scarcely cared to inquire. There is no evil spirit in the mythology as an antagonistof the gods. There is the Erinnys as the avenger ofmonstrous villanies; a Tartarus where the darkestcriminals suffer eternal tortures. But Tantalus andIxion are suffering for enormous crimes, to which thesmall wickedness of common men offers no analogy. Moreover, these and other such stories are but curiouslyornamented myths, representing physical phenomena. But with Socrates a change came over philosophy; asign--perhaps a cause--of the decline of the existingreligion. The study of man superseded the study ofnature: a purer Theism came in with the higher idealof perfection, and sin and depravity at once assumed animportance the intensity of which made every otherquestion insignificant. How man could know the goodand yet choose the evil; how God could be all pure andalmighty, and yet evil have broken into his creation, these were the questions which thenceforth were theperplexity of every thinker. Whatever difficulty theremight be in discovering how evil came to be, the leadersof all the sects agreed at last upon the seat of it--whethermatter was eternal, as Aristotle thought, or created, asPlato thought, both Plato and Aristotle were equallysatisfied that the secret of all the shortcomings in thisworld lay in the imperfection, reluctancy, or inherentgrossness of this impracticable substance. God wouldhave everything perfect, but the nature of the elementin which He worked in some way defeated His purpose. Death, disease, decay, clung necessarily to everythingwhich was created out of it; and pain, and want, andhunger, and suffering. Worse than all, the spirit in itsmaterial body was opposed and borne down, its aspirationscrushed, its purity tainted by the passions andappetites of its companion, the fleshly lusts which wagedperpetual war against it. 

Matter was the cause of evil, and thenceforth thequestion was how to conquer it, or at least how to setfree the spirit from its control. 

The Greek language and the Greek literature spreadbehind the march of Alexander: but as his generalscould only make their conquests permanent by largelyaccepting the Eastern manner, so philosophy could onlymake good its ground by becoming itself Orientalised. 

The one pure and holy God whom Plato had painfullyreasoned out for himself had existed from immemorialtime in the traditions of the Jews, while the Persianswho had before taught the Jews at Babylon the existenceof an independent evil being now had him tooffer to the Greeks as their account of the difficultieswhich had perplexed Socrates. Seven centuries ofstruggle, and many hundred thousand folios were theresults of the remarkable fusion which followed. Outof these elements, united in various proportions, rosesuccessively the Alexandrian philosophy, the Hellenists, the Therapeute, those strange Essene communists, withthe innumerable sects of Gnostic or Christian heretics. Finally, the battle was limited to the two great rivals, under one or other of which the best of the remainderhad ranged themselves m Manicheism and CatholicChristianity: Manicheism in which the Persian, Catholicismin which the Jewish element most preponderated. It did not end till the close of the fifth century, and itended then rather by arbitration than by a decidedvictory which either side could claim. The Churchhas yet to acknowledge how large a portion of itsenemy's doctrines it incorporated through the mediationof Augustine before the field was surrendered to it. Letus trace something of the real bearings of this sectionof the world's oriental history, which to so manymoderns seems no better than an idle fighting overwords and straws. 

Facts witnessing so clearly that the especial strengthof evil lay, as the philosophers had seen, in matter, sofar it was a conclusion which both Jew and Persianwere ready to accept. The naked Aristotelic view ofit being most acceptable to the Persian, the Platonic tothe Hellenistic Jew. But the purer theology of the Jewforced him to look for a solution of the question whichPlato had left doubtful, and to explain how evilcrept into matter. He could not allow that what Godhad created could be of its own nature imperfect. Godmade it very good; some other cause had broken in tospoil it. Accordingly, as before he had reduced theindependent Arimanes, whose existence he had learntat Babylon, into a subordinate spirit; so now, notquestioning the facts of disease, of death, of pain, ofthe infirmity of the flesh which the natural strength ofthe spirit was unable to resist, he accounted for themunder the supposition that the first man had deliberatelysinned, and by his sin had brought a curse upon thewhole material earth, and upon all which was fashionedout of it. The earth was created pure and lovely--agarden of delight of its own free accord, loading itselfwith fruit and flower, and everything most exquisiteand beautiful. No bird or beast of prey broke theeternal peace which reigned over its hospitable surface. In calm and quiet intercourse, the leopard lay down bythe kid, the lion browsed beside the ox, and thecorporeal frame of man, knowing neither decay, nor death, nor unruly appetite, nor any change or infirmity, waspure as the pure immortal substance of the unfallenangels. But with the fatal apple all this fair scenepassed away, and creation as it seemed was hopelesslyand irretrievably ruined. Adam sinned--no matterhow--he sinned; the sin was the one terrible fact:moral evil was brought into the world by the onlycreature who was capable of committing it. Sin enteredin, and death by sin; death and disease, storm andpestilence, earthquake and famine. The imprisonedpassions of the wild animals were let loose, and earthand air became full of carnage; worst of all, mawsanimal nature came out in gigantic strength, the carnallusts, unruly appetites, jealousies, hatred, rapine, andmurder; and then the law, and with it, of course, breaches of the law, and sin on sin. The seed of Adamwas infected in the animal change which had passedover his person, and every child, therefore, thenceforthnaturally engendered in his posterity, was infected withthe curse which he had incurred. Every materialorganization thenceforward contained in itself theelements of its own destruction, and the philosophicconclusions of Aristotle were accepted and explained bytheology. Already, in the popular histories, those whowere infected by disease were said to be bound bySatan; madness was a "possession" by his spirit, andthe whole creation from Adam till Christ groaned andtravailed under Satan's power. The nobler nature inman still made itself felt; but it was a slave when itought to command. It might will to obey the higherlaw, but the law in the members was over strong for itand bore it down. This was the body of death whichphilosophy detected but could not explain, and fromwhich Christianity now came forward with its magnificentpromise of deliverance. 

The carnal doctrine of the sacraments which theyare compelled to acknowledge to have been taught asfully in the early Church as it is now taught by theRoman Catholics, has long been the stumbling-blockto Protestants. It was the very essence of Christianityitself. Unless the body could be purified, the soulcould not be saved; or, rather, as from the beginning, soul and flesh were one man and inseparable, withouthis flesh, man was lost, or would cease to be. But thenatural organization of the flesh was infected, and unlessorganization could begin again from a new original, nopure material substance could exist at all. He, therefore, by whom God had first made the world, enteredinto the womb of the Virgin in the form (so to speak)of a new organic cell, and around it, through the virtueof His creative energy, a material body grew again ofthe substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean asthe first body of the first man when it passed out underHis hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thuswonderfully born was the virtue which was to restorethe lost power of mankind. He came to redeem man;and, therefore, he took a human body, and he kept itpure through a human life, till the time came when itcould be applied to its marvellous purpose. He died, and then appeared what was the nature of a materialhuman body when freed from the limitations of sin. The grave could not hold it, neither was it possiblethat it should see corruption. It was real, for thedisciples were allowed to feel and handle it. He ate anddrank with them to assure their senses. But space hadno power over it, nor any of the material obstacleswhich limit an ordinary power. He willed and hisbody obeyed. He was here, He was there. He wasvisible, He was invisible. He was in the midst of hisdisciples and they saw Him, and then He was gone, whither who could tell? At last He passed away toheaven; but while in heaven, He was still on earth. His body became the body of His Church on earth, notin metaphor, but in fact. His very material body, inwhich and by which the faithful would be saved. Hisflesh and blood were thenceforth to be their food. They were to eat it as they would eat ordinary meat. They were to take it into their system, a pure materialsubstance, to leaven the old natural substance andassimilate it to itself. As they fed upon it it wouldgrow into them, and it would become their own realbody. Flesh grown in the old way was the body ofdeath, but the flesh of Christ was the life of the world, over which death had no power. Circumcision availednothing, nor uncircumcision--but a new creature--thisnew creature, which the child first put on in baptism, being born again into Christ of water and the spirit. In the Eucharist he was fed and sustained and goingon from strength to strength, and ever as the nature ofhis body changed, being able to render a more completeobedience, he would at last pass away to God throughthe gate of the grave, and stand holy and perfect in thepresence of Christ. Christ had indeed been ever presentwith him; but because while life lasted someparticles of the old Adam would necessarily cling tohim, the Christian's mortal eye on earth cannot seeHim. Hedged in by "his muddy vesture of decay, "his eyes, like the eyes of the disciples of Emmaus, areholden, and only in faith he feels Him. But death, which till Christ had died had been the last victory ofevil, in virtue of His submission to it, became its owndestroyer, for it had power only over the taintedparticles of the old substance, and there was nothingneeded but that these should be washed away and theelect would stand out at once pure and holy, clothedin immortal bodies, like refined gold, the redeemedof God. 

The being who accomplished a work so vast, a workcompared to which the first creation appears but atrifling difficulty, what could He be but God? GodHimself! Who but God could have wrested His prizefrom a power which half the thinking world believed tobe His coequal and coeternal adversary. He was God. He was man also, for He was the second Adam--thesecond starting point of human growth. He was virginborn, that no original impurity might infect the substancewhich He assumed; and being Himself sinless, Heshowed in the nature of His person, after His resurrection, what the material body would have been in all ofus except for sin, and what it will be when, after feedingon it in its purity, the bodies of each of us aretransfigured after its likeness. Here was the secret of thespirit which set St. Simeon on his pillar and sent St. Anthony to the tombs--of the night watches, the wearyfasts, the penitential scourgings, and life-long austeritieswhich have been alternately the glory and the reproachof the mediaeval saints. They would overcome theiranimal bodies, and anticipate in life the work of deathin uniting themselves more completely to Christ bythe destruction of the flesh which lay as a veil betweenthemselves and Him. 

And such, I believe, to have been the central idea ofthe beautiful creed which, for 1800 years, has tuned theheart and formed the mind of the noblest of mankind. From this centre it radiated out and spread, as timewent on, into the full circle of human activity, flingingits own philosophy and its own peculiar grace over thecommon detail of the common life of all of us. Likethe seven lamps before the Throne of God, the sevenmighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacramentsshed over us a never ceasing stream of blessed influence. First there are the priests, a holy order setapart and endowed with mysterious power, representingChrist and administering his gifts. Christ, in histwelfth year, was presented in the temple, and firstentered on His father's business; and the baptizedchild, when it has grown to an age to become consciousof its vow and of its privilege, again renews it in fullknowledge of what it undertakes, and receives againsacramentally a fresh gift of grace to assist it forward onits way. In maturity it seeks a companion to share itspains and pleasures; and, again, Christ is present toconsecrate the union. Marriage, which outside thechurch only serves to perpetuate the curse and bringfresh inheritors of misery into the world, He made holyby His presence at Cana, and chose it as the symbol torepresent His own mystic union with His church. 

Even saints cannot live without at times some spotadhering to them. The atmosphere in which we breatheand move is soiled, and Christ has anticipated our wants. Christ did penance forty days in the wilderness, not tosubdue His own flesh, for that which was already perfectdid not need subduing, but to give to penance a cleansingvirtue to serve for our daily or our hourly ablution. 

Christ consecrates our birth; Christ throws over usour baptismal robe of pure unsullied innocence. Hestrengthens us as we go forward. He raises us whenwe fall. He feeds us with the substance of His ownmost precious body. In the person of His minister hedoes all this for us, in virtue of that which in His ownperson he actually performed when a man living onthis earth. Last of all, when all is drawing to its closewith us, when life is past, when the work is done, andthe dark gate is near, beyond which the garden of aneternal home is waiting to receive us, His tender carehas not forsaken us. He has taken away the sting ofdeath, but its appearance is still terrible; and He willnot leave us without special help at our last need. Hetried the agony of the moment; and He sweetens thecup for us before we drink it. We are dismissed to thegrave with our bodies anointed with oil, which He madeholy in His last anointing before his passion, and thenall is over. We lie down and seem to decay--to decay--but not all. Our natural body decays, the lastremains of which we have inherited from Adam, butthe spiritual body, that glorified substance which hasmade our life, and is our real body as we are in Christ, that can never decay, but passes off into the kingdomwhich is prepared for it; that other world where thereis no sin, and God is all in all! Such is the Philosophyof Christianity. It was worn and old when Lutherfound it. Our posterity will care less to respect Lutherfor rending it in pieces, when it has learnt to despisethe miserable fabric which he stitched together out ofits tatters. 

____

PLEA FOR THE FREE DISCUSSION OF THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES

In the ordinary branches of human knowledge or inquiry, the judicious questioning of received opinions has beenthe sign of scientific vitality, the principle of scientificadvancement, the very source and root of healthy progressand growth. If medicine had been regulatedthree hundred years ago by Act of Parliament; if therehad been Thirty-nine Articles of Physic, and everylicensed practitioner had been compelled, under painsand penalties, to compound his drugs by the prescriptionsof Henry the Eighth's physician, Doctor Butts, itis easy to conjecture in what state of health the peopleof this country would at present be found. Constitutionshave changed with habits of life, and the treatment ofdisorders has changed to meet the new conditions. New diseases have shown themselves of which DoctorButts had no cognizance; new continents have givenus plants with medicinal virtues previously unknown;new sciences, and even the mere increase of recordedexperience, have added a thousand remedies to thoseknown to the age of the Tudors. If the College ofPhysicians had been organized into a board of orthodoxy. And every novelty of treatment had been regarded as acrime against society, which a law had been establishedto punish, the hundreds who die annually from preventiblecauses would have been thousands and tens of thousands. 

Astronomy is the most perfect of the sciences. Theaccuracy of the present theory of the planetary movemerits is tested daily and hourly by the most delicateexperiments, and the legislature, if it so pleased, mightenact the first principles of these movements into astatute, without danger of committing the law ofEngland to falsehood. Yet, if the legislature were toventure on any such paternal procedure, in a few yearsgravitation itself would be called in question, and thewhole science would wither under the fatal shadow. There are many phenomena still unexplained to giveplausibility to scepticism; there are others more easilyformularized for working purposes in the language ofPtolemy; and there would be reactionists who wouldinvite us to return to the safe convictions of ourforefathers. What the world has seen the world maysee again; and were it once granted that astronomywere something to be ruled by authority, new Popeswould imprison new Galileos; the knowledge alreadyacquired would be strangled in the cords which wereintended to keep it safe from harm, and deprived ofthe free air on which its life depends it would dwindleand die. 

A few years ago, an Inspector of Schools--a Mr. Jellinger Symonds--opening, perhaps for the first time, an elementary book on astronomy, came on somethingwhich he conceived to be a difficulty in the theory oflunar motion. His objection was on the face of itplausible. The true motions of the heavenly bodies areuniversally the opposite of the apparent motions. Mr. Symonds conceived that the moon could not revolve onits axis, because the same side of it was continuallyturned towards the earth; and if it were connected withthe earth by a rigid bar--which, as he thought, woulddeprive it of power of rotation--the relative aspects ofthe two bodies would remain unchanged. He senthis views to the Times. He appealed to the commonsense of the world, and common sense seemed to beon his side. The men of science were of course right;but a phenomenon, not entirely obvious, had beenhitherto explained in language which the general readercould not readily comprehend. A few words of elucidationcleared up the confusion: we do not recollect whetherMr. Symonds was satisfied or not; but most of us whohad before received what the men of science told uswith an unintelligent and languid assent, wereset thinking for ourselves, and as a result of thediscussion, exchanged a confused idea for a clear one. 

It was an excellent illustration of the true claimsof authority and of the value of open inquiry. Theignorant man has not as good a right to his own opinionas the instructed man. The instructed man, howeverright he may be, must not deliver his conclusions asaxioms, and merely insist that they are true. The oneasks a question, the other answers it, and all of us arethe better for the business. 

Now let us suppose the same thing to have happened, when the only reply to a difficulty was an appeal to theAstronomer Royal, where the rotation of the moon wasan article of salvation decreed by the law of the land, and where all persons admitted to hold office under theState were required to subscribe to it. The AstronomerRoyal--as it was, if we remember right, he was a littlecross about it--would have brought an action againstMr. Symonds in the Court of Arches; Mr. Symondswould have been deprived of his inspectorship--for, ofcourse, he would have been obstinate in his heresy;the world outside would have had an antecedent presumptionthat truth lay with the man who was makingsacrifices for it, and that there was little to be said inthe way of argument for what could not stand withoutthe help of the law. Everybody could understand thedifficulty; not everybody would have taken the troubleto attend to the answer. Mr. Symonds would havebeen a Colenso, and a good many of us would havebeen convinced in our secret hearts that the moon aslittle turned on its axis as the drawing-room table. 

As it is in idea essential to a reverence for truth tobelieve in its capacity for self-defence, so practically inevery subject except one, errors are allowed free roomto express themselves, and that liberty of opinion whichis the life of knowledge, as surely becomes the death offalsehood. A method--the soundness of which is soevident that to argue in favour of it is almost absurd--might be expected to have been applied as a matter ofcourse to the one subject on which mistake is supposedto be fatal, where to come to wrong conclusions is heldto be a crime for which the Maker of the universe hasneither pardon nor pity. Yet many reasons, not difficultto understand, have long continued to excludetheology from the region where free discussion issupposed to be applicable. That so many persons have apersonal interest in the maintenance of particular views, would of itself be fatal to fair argument. Though theyknow themselves to be right, yet right is not enough forthem unless there is might to support it, and those whotalk most of faith show least that they possess it. Butthere are deeper and more subtle objections. Thetheologian requires absolute certainty, and there are noabsolute certainties in science. The conclusions ofscience are never more than in a high degree probable;they are no more than the best explanations of phenomenawhich are attainable in the existing state ofknowledge. The most elementary laws are called lawsonly in courtesy. They are generalizations which arenot considered likely to require modification, but whichno one pretends to be in the nature of the causeexhaustively and ultimately true. As phenomena becomemore complicated, and the data for the interpretationof them more inadequate, the explanations offered areput forward hypothetically, and are graduated by thenature of the evidence. Such modest hesitation isaltogether unsuited to the theologian, whose certaintyincreases with the mystery and obscurity of his matter;his convictions admit of no qualification; his truth issure as the axioms of geometry; he knows what hebelieves, for he has the evidence in his heart; if heinquire, it is with a foregone conclusion, and seriousdoubt with him is sin. It is in vain to point out to himthe thousand forms of opinions for each of which thesame internal witness is affirmed. The Mayo peasant, crawling with bare knees over the flint points on CroaghPatrick, the nun prostrate before the image of St. Mary, the Methodist in the spasmodic extasy of a revival, alikeare conscious of emotions in themselves which correspondto their creed: the more passionate--or, as some wouldsay--the more unreasoning the piety, the louder andmore clear is the voice within. But these varieties areno embarrassment to the theologian. He finds no faultwith the method which is identical in them all. Whateverthe party to which he himself belongs, he is equallysatisfied that he alone has the truth; the rest are underillusions of Satan. 

Again, we hear--or we used to hear when the HighChurch party were more formidable than they are atpresent--much about "the right of private judgment. "Why, the eloquent Protestant would say, should I pinmy faith upon the Church? the Church is but acongregation of fallible men, no better able to judgethan I am. I have a right to my own opinion. Itsounds like a paradox to say that free discussion isinterfered with by a cause which, above all others, would have been expected to further it; but this infact has been the effect, because it tends to remove thegrounds of theological belief beyond the province ofargument. No one talks of "a right of private judgment. "in anything but religion; no one but a foolinsists on his "right to his own opinion" with hislawyer or his doctor. Able men who have given theirtime to special subjects, are authorities upon it to belistened to with deference, and the ultimate authorityat any given time is the collective general sense. Of thewisest men living in the department to which theybelong. The utmost "right of private judgment" whichanybody claims in such cases, is the choice of thephysician to whom he will trust his body, or ofcounsel to whom he will commit the conduct of hiscause. The expression, as it is commonly used, impliesa belief that in matters of religion, the criteria of truthare different in kind from what prevail elsewhere, andthe efforts which have been made to bring the notioninto harmony with common sense and common subjects, have not been very successful. The High Churchparty used to say, as a point against the Evangelicals, that either "the right of private judgment" meantnothing, or it meant that a man had a right to be in thewrong. "No, " said a writer in the Edinburgh Review"it means only that if a man chooses to be in the wrong, no one else has a right to interfere with him. A manhas no right to get drunk in his own house, but thepoliceman may not force a way into his house andprevent him. " The illustration fails of its purpose. Inthe first place, the Evangelicals never contemplated awrong use of the thing; they meant merely that theyhad a right to their own opinions as against the Church. They did not indeed put forward their claim quite sonakedly; they made it general, as sounding less invidious;but nobody ever heard an Evangelical admit a High Churchmanor a Catholic's right to be a Catholic. 

But, secondly, society has a most absolute right toprevent all manner of evil--drunkenness, and the restof it, if it can--only in doing so, society must not usemeans which would create a greater evil than it wouldremedy. As a man can by no possibility be doinganything but most foul wrong to himself in gettingdrunk, society does him no wrong, but rather does himthe greatest benefit if it can possibly keep him sober;and in the same way, as a false belief in seriousmatters is among the greatest of misfortunes, so to driveit out of a man, by the whip, if it cannot be managed bypersuasion, is an act of brotherly love and affection, provided the belief really and truly is false, and youhave a better to give him in the place of it. Thequestion is not what to do, but merely "how to do it;"although Mr. Mill, in his love of "liberty, " thinksotherwise. Mr. Mill demands for every man a right to sayout his convictions in plain language, whatever theymay be; and so far as he means that there should be noAct of Parliament to prevent him, he is perfectly justin what he says. But when Mr. Mill goes from Parliamentto public opinion, when he lays down as a generalprinciple that the free play of thought is unwholesomelyinterfered with by society, he would take away the soleprotection which we possess from the inroads of anykind of folly. His dread of tyranny is so great, thathe thinks a man better off with a false opinion of hisown than with a right opinion inflicted upon him fromwithout; while for our own part we should be gratefulfor tyranny or for anything else which would performso useful an office for us. 

Public opinion may be unjust at particular timesand on particular subjects; we believe it to be bothunjust and unwise on the matter of which we are atpresent speaking: But on the whole, it is like theventilation of a house, which keeps the air pure; muchin this world has to be taken for granted, and we cannotbe for ever arguing over our first principles. If a manpersists in talking of what he does not understand, heis put down; if he sports loose views on morals at adecent dinner party, the better sort of people fight shyof him, and he is not invited again; if he profess himselfa Buddhist, a Mahometan, it is assumed that he has notadopted those beliefs on serious conviction butrather in wilful levity and eccentricity which does notdeserve to be tolerated. Men have no right to makethemselves bores and nuisances; and the common senseof mankind inflicts wholesome inconveniences on thosewho carry their "right of private judgment" to anysuch extremities. It is a check, the same in kind asthat which operates so wholesomely in the Sciences. Mere folly is extinguished in contempt; objectionsreasonably urged obtain a hearing and are reasonablymet. New truths, after encountering sufficient oppositionto test their value, make their way into general reception. 

A further cause which has operated to prevent theologyfrom obtaining the benefit of free discussion is theinterpretation popularly placed upon the constitution ofthe Church Establishment. For fifteen centuries of itsexistence, the Christian Church was supposed to beunder the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit, whichmiraculously controlled its decisions, and precluded thepossibility of error. This theory broke down at theReformation, but it left behind it a confused sense thattheological truth was in some way different from othertruth; and partly on grounds of public policy, partlybecause it was supposed to have succeeded to the obligationsand the rights of the Papacy, the State took uponitself to fix by statute the doctrines which should betaught to the people. The distractions created bydivided opinions were then dangerous. Individuals didnot hesitate to ascribe to themselves the infallibilitywhich they denied to the Church. Everybody wasintolerant upon principle, and was ready to cut the throatof an opponent whom his arguments had failed toconvince. The State, while it made no pretensionsto Divine guidance, was compelled to interfere inself-protection; and to keep the peace of the realm, andto prevent the nation from tearing itself in pieces, abody of formulas was enacted, for the time broad andcomprehensive, within which opinion might be allowedconvenient latitude, while forbidden to pass beyond theborder. 

It might have been thought that in abandoning foritself, and formally denying to the Church its pretensionsto immunity from error, the State could not haveintended to bind the conscience. When this or thatlaw is passed, the subject is required to obey it, but heis not required to approve of the law as just. ThePrayer-Book and the Thirty-nine Articles, so far asthey are made obligatory by Act of Parliament, are asmuch laws as any other statute. They are a rule toconduct; it is not easy to see why they should bemore; it is not easy to see why they should have beensupposed to deprive clergymen of a right to theiropinions, or to forbid discussion of their contents. Thejudge is not forbidden to ameliorate the law which headministers. If in discharge of his duty he has topronounce a sentence which he declares at the same timethat he thinks unjust, no indignant public accuses himof dishonesty, or requires him to resign his office. Thesoldier is asked no questions as to the legitimacy of thewar on which he is sent to fight; nor need he throwup his commission if he think the quarrel a bad one. Doubtless, if a law was utterly iniquitous--if a warwas unmistakably wicked--honourable men might feeluncertain what to do, and would seek some otherprofession rather than continue instruments of evil. Butwithin limits, and in questions of detail, where theservice is generally good and honourable, we leaveopinion its free play, and exaggerated scrupulousnesswould be folly or something worse. Somehow or other, however, this wholesome freedom is not allowed to theclergyman. The idea of absolute inward belief hasbeen substituted for that of obedience; and the manwho, in taking orders, signs the Articles and acceptsthe Prayer-Book, does not merely undertake to use theservices in the one, and abstain from contradicting tohis congregation the doctrines contained in the other;but he is held to promise what no honest man, withoutpresumption, can undertake to promise, that he willcontinue to think to the end of his life as he thinkswhen he makes his engagement. 

It is said that if his opinions change, he may resign, and retire into lay communion. We are not preparedto say that either the Convocation of 1562, or theParliament which afterwards endorsed its proceedings, knewexactly what they meant, or did not mean; but it isquite clear that they did not contemplate the alternativeof a clergyman's retirement. If they had, they wouldhave provided means by which he could have abandonedhis orders, and not have remained committed for life toa profession from which he could not escape. If thepopular theory of subscription be true, and the Articlesare articles of belief, a reasonable human being, whenlittle more than a boy, pledges himself to a long seriesof intricate and highly-difficult propositions of abstrusedivinity. He undertakes never to waver or doubt, never to allow his mind to be shaken, whatever theweight of argument or evidence brought to bear uponhim. That is to say, he promises to do what no manliving has a right to promise to do. He is doing, onthe authority of Parliament, precisely what the Churchof Rome required him to do on the authority of aCouncil. 

If a clergyman--in trouble amidst the abstruse subjectswith which he has to deal, or unable to reconcilesome new-discovered truth of science with the establishedformulas--puts forward his perplexities; if heventures a doubt of the omniscience of the statesmenand divines of the sixteenth century, which they themselvesdisowned, there is an instant cry to have himstifled, silenced, or trampled down; and if no longerpunished in life and limb, to have him deprived of themeans on which life and limb can be supported, whilewith ingenious tyranny he is forbidden to maintainhimself by any other occupation. 

So far have we gone in this direction, that whenthe Essays and Reviews appeared, it was gravely said--and said by men who had no professional antipathyto them--that the writers had broken their faith. Laymen were free to say what they pleased on suchsubjects; clergymen were the hired exponents of theestablished opinions, and were committed to them inthought and word. It was one more anomaly wherethere were enough already. To say that the clergy, who are set apart to study a particular subject, are tobe the only persons unpermitted to have an independentopinion upon it, is like saying that lawyers must takeno part in the amendment of the statute-book, thatengineers must be silent upon mechanism, and if animprovement is wanted in the art of medicine, physiciansmay have nothing to say to it. 

These causes would perhaps have been insufficientto repress free inquiry, if there had been on the partof the really able men among us a determination tobreak the ice; in other words, if theology had preservedthe same commanding interest for the more powerfulminds with which it affected them three hundred yearsago. But on the one hand, a sense, half serious, haftlanguid, of the hopelessness of the subject has producedan indisposition to meddle with it; on the other, therehas been a creditable reluctance to disturb by discussionthe minds of the uneducated or half-educated, to whomthe established religion is simply an expression of theobedience which they owe to Almighty God, on thedetails of which they think little, and are thereforeunconscious of its difficulties, while in general it is thesource of all that is best and noblest in their lives andactions. 

This last motive no doubt deserves respect, but theforce which it once possessed it possesses no longer. The uncertainty which once affected only the moreinstructed extends now to all classes of society. Asuperficial crust of agreement, wearing thinner day byday, is undermined everywhere by a vague misgiving;and there is an unrest which will be satisfied only whenthe sources of it are probed to the core. The Churchauthorities repeat a series of phrases which they arepleased to call answers to objections; they treat themost serious grounds of perplexity as if they werepuerile and trifling; while it is notorious that for acentury past extremely able men have either not knownwhat to say about them, or have not said what theythought. On the Continent the peculiar English viewhas scarcely a single educated defender. Even inEngland the laity keep their judgment in suspense, or remain warily silent. 

"What religion are you, Mr. Rogers?" said a lady once. 

"What religion, madam? I am of the religion ofall sensible men. "

"And what is that?" she asked. 

"All sensible men, madam, keep that to themselves. "

If Mr. Rogers had gone on to explain himself, hewould have said perhaps that when the opinions ofthose best able to judge are divided, the questions atissue are doubtful. Reasonable men who are unable togive them special attention withhold their judgment, while those who are able, form their conclusions withdiffidence and modesty. But theologians will nottolerate diffidence; they demand absolute assent, and willtake nothing short of it; and they affect therefore todrown in foolish ridicule whatever troubles or displeasesthem. The Bishop of Oxford talks in the old style ofpunishment. The Archbishop of Canterbury refers usto Usher as our guide in Hebrew chronology. Theobjections of the present generation of "infidels, " hesays, are the same which have been refuted again andagain, and are such as a child might answer. Theyoung man just entering upon the possession of hisintellect, with a sense of responsibility for his belief, and more anxious for truth than for success in life, finds when he looks into the matter that the Archbishophas altogether misrepresented it; that in fact, like other official persons, he had been using merely astereotyped form of words, to which he attached nodefinite meaning. The words are repeated year afteryear, but the enemies refuse to be exorcised. Theycome and come again from Spinoza and Lessing toStrauss and Renan. The theologians have resolved nosingle difficulty; they convince no one who is notconvinced already; and a Colenso coming fresh to thesubject, with no more than a year's study, throws theChurch of England into convulsions. 

If there were any real danger that Christianity wouldcease to be believed, it would be no more than afulfilment of prophecy. The state in which the Son ofMan would find the world at his coming he did not saywould be a state of faith. But if that dark time is everliterally to come upon the earth, there are no presentsigns of it. The creed of eighteen centuries is notabout to fade away like an exhalation, nor are the newlights of science so exhilarating that serious personscan look with comfort to exchanging one for the other. Christianity has abler advocates than its professeddefenders, in those many quiet and humble men andwomen who in the light of it and the strength of itlive holy, beautiful, and self-denying lives. The Godthat answer by fire is the God whom mankind willacknowledge; and so long as the fruits of the Spiritcontinue to be visible in charity, in self-sacrifice, inthose graces which raise human creatures abovethemselves, and invest them with that beauty of holinesswhich only religion confers, thoughtful persons willremain convinced that with them in some form or otheris the secret of truth. The body will not thrive onpoison, or the soul on falsehood; and as the vitalprocesses of health are too subtle for science to follow;as we choose our food, not by the most careful chemicalanalysis, but by the experience of its effects upon thesystem; so when a particular belief is fruitful innobleness of character, we need trouble ourselves very littlewith scientific demonstrations that it is false. Themost deadly poison may be chemically undistinguishablefrom substances which are perfectly innocent. Prussicacid, we are told, is formed of the same elements, combined in the same proportions, as gum-arabic. 

What that belief is for which the fruits speak thusso positively, it is less easy to divine. Religion fromthe beginning of time has expanded and changed withthe growth of knowledge. The religion of the prophetswas not the religion which was adapted to the hardnessof heart of the Israelites of the Exodus. The Gospelset aside the Law; the creed of the early Church wasnot the creed of the middle ages, any more than thecreed of Luther and Cranmer was the creed of St. Bernard and Aquinas. Old things pass away, newthings come in their place; and they in their turn growold, and give place to others; yet in each of the manyforms which Christianity has assumed in the world, holy men have lived and died, and have had the witnessof the Spirit that they were not far from the truth. Itmay be that the faith which saves is the something heldin common by all sincere Christians, and by thoseas well who should come from the east and the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, when the childrenof the covenant would be cast out. It may be that thetrue teaching of our Lord is overlaid with doctrines;and theology, when insisting on the reception of itshuge catena of formulas, may be binding a yoke uponour necks which neither we nor our fathers were ableto bear. 

But it is not the object of this article to put forwardeither this or any other particular opinion. The writeris conscious only that he is passing fast towards the darkgate which soon will close behind him. He believesthat some kind of sincere and firm conviction on thesethings is of infinite moment to him, and, entirelydiffident of his own power to find his way towards sucha conviction, he is both ready and anxious to disclaim"all right of private judgment" in the matter. He wishesonly to learn from those who are able to teach him. The learned prelates talk of the presumptuousness ofhuman reason; they tell us that doubts arise from theconsciousness of sin and the pride of the unregenerateheart. The present writer, while he believes generallythat reason, however inadequate, is the best faculty towhich we have to trust, yet is most painfully consciousof the weakness of his own reason; and once let thereal judgment of the best and wisest men be declared;let those who are most capable of forming a soundopinion, after reviewing the whole relations of science, history, and what is now received as revelation, tell usfairly how much of the doctrines popularly taught theyconceive to be adequately established, how much to beuncertain, and how much, if anything, to be mistaken;there is scarcely perhaps a single serious inquirer whowould not submit with delight to a court which is thehighest on earth. 

Mr. Mansell tells us that in the things of God reasonis beyond its depth, that the wise and the unwise are onthe same level of incapacity, and that we must acceptwhat we find established, or we must believe nothing. We presume that this dilemma itself is a conclusion ofreason. Do what we will, reason is and must be ourultimate authority; and were the collective sense ofmankind to declare Mr. Mansell right, we should submitto that opinion as readily as to another. But thecollective sense of mankind is less acquiescent. Hehas been compared to a man sitting on the end of aplank and deliberately sawing off his seat. It seemsnever to have occurred to him that, if he is right, he hasno business to be a Protestant. What Mr. Mansell saysto Professor Jowett, Bishop Gardiner in effect repliedto Frith and Ridley. Frith and Ridley said thattransubstantiation was unreasonable; Gardiner answeredthat there was the letter of Scripture of it, and that thehuman intellect was no measure of the power of God. Yet the Reformers somehow believed, and Mr. Mansellby his place in the Church of England seems to agreewith them, that the human intellect was not so whollyincompetent. It might be a weak guide, but it wasbetter than none; and they declared on grounds of merereason, that Christ being in heaven and not on earth, 'it was contrary to the truth for a natural body to be intwo places at once. ' The common sense of the countrywas of the same opinion, and the illusion was at anend. 

There have been "Aids to Faitti" produced lately, and"Replies to the Seven Essayists, " "Answers to Colenso, "and much else of the kind. We regret to say that theyhave done little for us. The very life of our souls is atissue in the questions which have been raised, and weare fed with the professional commonplaces of themembers of a close guild, men holding high office inthe Church, or expecting to hold high office there; ineither case with a strong temporal interest in the defenceof the institution which they represent. We desire toknow what those of the clergy think whose love of truthis unconnected with their prospects in life; we desireto know what the educated laymen, the lawyers, thehistorians, the men of science, the statesmen think; andthese are for the most part silent, or confess themselvesmodestly uncertain. The professional theologians aloneare loud and confident; but they speak in the old angrytone which rarely accompanies deep and wise convictions. They do not meet the real difficulties; theymistake them, misrepresent them, claim victories overadversaries with whom they have never even crossedswords, and leap to conclusions with a precipitancy atwhich we can only smile. It has been the unhappymanner of their class from immemorial time; they callit zeal for the Lord, as if it were beyond all doubt thatthey were on God's side, as if serious inquiry after truthwas something which they were entitled to resent. Theytreat intellectual difficulties as if they deserved ratherto be condemned and punished than considered andweighed, and rather stop their ears and run with oneaccord upon any one who disagrees with them thanlisten patiently to what he has to say. 

We do not propose to enter in detail upon theparticular points which demand re-discussion. It isenough that the more exact habit of thought whichscience has engendered, and the closer knowledge ofthe value and nature of evidence, has notoriously madeit necessary that the grounds should be reconsideredon which we are to believe that one country and onepeople was governed for sixteen centuries on principlesdifferent from those which we now find to prevailuniversally. One of many questions, however, shallbe briefly glanced at, on which the real issue seemshabitually to be evaded. 

Much has been lately said and written on the authenticityof the Pentateuch and the other historical booksof the Old Testament. The Bishop of Natal has thrownout in a crude form the critical results of the inquiriesof the Germans, coupled with certain arithmeticalcalculations, for which he has a special aptitude. Hesupposes himself to have proved that the first five booksof the Bible are a compilation of uncertain date, full ofinconsistencies and impossibilities. The apologists havereplied that the objections are not absolutely conclusive, that the events described in the book of Exodus mightpossibly, under certain combinations of circumstances, have actually taken place; and they then pass to theassumption that because a story is not necessarily false, therefore it is necessarily true. We have no intention ofvindicating Dr. Colenso. His theological training makeshis arguments very like those of his opponents, and he andDr. M'Call may settle their differences between themselves. The question is at once wider and simpler thanany which has been raised in that controversy. Were itproved beyond possibility of error that the Pentateuch waswritten by Moses, that those and all the books of the 01dand New Testaments were really the work of the writerswhose names they bear; were the Mosaic cosmogony inharmony with physical discoveries; and were the supposedinconsistencies and contradictions shown to have noexistence except in Dr. Colenso's imagination--we shouldnot have advanced a single step towards making good theclaim put forward for the Bible, that it is absolutely andunexceptionably true in all its parts. The "genuinenessand authenticity" argument is irrelevant and needless. The clearest demonstration of the human authorship ofthe Pentateuch proves nothing about its immunity fromerrors. If there are no mistakes in it, it was not theworkmanship of man; and if it was inspired by theHoly Spirit, there is no occasion to show that the handof Moses was the instrument made use of. To themost excellent of contemporary histories, to historieswritten by eye-witnesses of the facts which they describe, we accord but a limited confidence. The highestintellectual competence, the most admitted truthfulness, immunity from prejudice, and the absence of temptationto mis-state the truth; these things may secure generalcredibility, but they are no guarantee for minute andcircumstantial exactness. Two historians, though withequal gifts and equal opportunities, never describe eventsin exactly the same way. Two witnesses in a court oflaw, while they agree in the main, invariably differ insome particulars. It appears as if men could not relatefacts precisely as they saw or as they heard them. Thedifferent parts of a story strike different imaginationsunequally; and the mind, as the circumstances passthrough it, alters their proportions unconsciously, orshifts the perspective. The credit which we give tothe most authentic work of a man has no resemblanceto that universal acceptance which is demanded forthe Bible. It is not a difference of degree: it is adifference in kind; and we desire to know on whatground this infallibility, which we do not question, butwhich is not proved, demands our belief. Very likelythe Bible is thus infallible. Unless it is, there can beno moral obligation to accept the facts which it records:and though there may be intellectual error in denyingthem, there can be no moral sin. Facts may be betteror worse authenticated; but all the proofs in the worldof the genuineness and authenticity of the human handiworkcannot establish a claim upon the conscience. Itmight be foolish to question Thucydides' account ofPericles, but no one would call it sinful. Men part withall sobriety of judgment when they come on ground ofthis kind. When Sir Henry Rawlinson read the nameof Sennacherib on the Assyrian marbles, and foundallusions there to the Israelites in Palestine, we were toldthat a triumphant answer had been found to the cavilsof sceptics, and a convincing proof of the inspired truthof the Divine Oracles. Bad arguments in a good causeare a sure way to bring distrust upon it. The DivineOracles may be true, and may be inspired; but thediscoveries at Nineveh certainly do not prove them so. No one supposes that the Books of Kings or theprophesies of Isaiah and Ezekiel were the work of menwho had no knowledge of Assyria or the AssyrianPrinces. It is possible that in the excavations atCarthage some Punic inscription may be foundconfirming Livy's account of the battle of Cannae; butwe shall not be obliged to believe therefore in theinspiration of Livy, or rather (for the argumentcomes to that) in the inspiration of the whole Latinliterature. 

We are not questioning the fact that the Bible isinfallible; we desire only to be told on what evidencethat great and awful fact concerning it properly rests. It would seem, indeed, as if instinct had been wiserthan argument--as if it had been felt that nothingshort of this literal and close inspiration could preservethe facts on which Christianity depends. The historyof the early world is a history everywhere of marvels. The legendary literature of every nation upon earthtells the same stories of prodigies and wonders, of theappearances of the gods upon earth, and of their intercoursewith men. The lives of the saints of theCatholic Church, from the time of the Apostles till thepresent day, are a complete tissue of miraclesresembling and rivalling those of the Gospels. Some ofthese stories are romantic and imaginative; some clear, literal, and prosaic: some rest on mere tradition; someon the sworn testimony of eye-witnesses; some areobvious fables; some are as well authenticated as factsof such a kind can be authenticated at all. TheProtestant Christian rejects every one of them--rejectsthem without inquiry--involves those for which thereis good authority and those for which there is noneor little in one absolute, contemptuous, and sweepingdenial. The Protestant Christian feels it more likely, in the words of Hume, that men should deceive orbe deceived, than that the laws of nature should beviolated. At this moment we are beset with reports ofconversations with spirits, of tables miraculously lifted, of hands projected out of the world of shadows intothis mortal life. An unusually able, accomplishedperson, accustomed to deal with common-sense facts, acelebrated political economist, and notorious forbusiness-like habits, assured this writer that a certainmesmerist, who was my informant's intimate friend, had raised a dead girl to life. We should believe thepeople who tell us these things in any ordinary matter:they would be admitted in a court of justice as goodwitnesses in a criminal case, and a jury would hang aman on their word. The person just now alluded to isincapable of telling a wilful lie; yet our experience ofthe regularity of nature on one side is so uniform, andour experience of the capacities of human folly on theother is so large, that when they tell us these wonderfulstories, most of us are contented to smile; wedo not care so much as to turn out of our way toexamine them. 

The Bible is equally a record of miracles; but asfrom other histories we reject miracles without hesitation, so of those in the Bible we insist on the universalacceptance: the former are all false, the latter are alltrue. It is evident that, in forming conclusions sosweeping as these, we cannot even suppose that we arebeing guided by what is called historical evidence. Were it admitted that as a whole the miracles of theBible are better authenticated than the miracles of thesaints, we should be far removed still from any largeinference, that in the one set there is no room forfalsehood, in the other no room for truth. The writer orwriters of the Books of Kings are not known. Thebooks themselves are in fact confessedly taken from olderwritings which are lost; and the accounts of the greatprophets of Israel are a counterpart, curiously like, ofthose of the mediaeval saints. In many instances theauthors of the lives of these saints were theircompanions and friends. Why do we feel so sure that whatwe are told of Elijah or Elisha took place exactly as weread it? Why do we reject the account of St. Columbaor St. Martin as a tissue of idle fable? Why shouldnot God give a power to the saint which he had givento the prophet? We can produce no reason from thenature of things, for we know not what the nature ofthings is; and if down to the death of the Apostles theministers of religion were allowed to prove theircommission by working miracles, what right have we, ongrounds either of history or philosophy, to draw a clearline at the death of St. John, to say that before thattime all such stories were true, and after it all werefalse?

There is no point on which Protestant controversialistsevade the real question more habitually than onthat of miracles. They accuse those who withhold thatunreserved and absolute belief which they require forall which they accept themselves, of denying thatmiracles are possible. That they assume to be theposition taken up by the objector, and proceed easily toargue that man is no judge of the power of God. Ofcourse he is not. No sane man ever raised his narrowunderstanding into a measure of the possibilities of theuniverse; nor does any person with any pretensions toreligion disbelieve in miracles of some kind. To prayis to expect a miracle. When we pray for the recoveryof a sick friend, for the gift of any blessing, or theremoval of any calamity, we expect that God will dosomething by an act of his personal will which otherwisewould not have been done--that he will suspendthe ordinary relations of natural cause and effect; andthis is the very idea of a miracle. The thing we prayfor may be given us, and no miracle may have takenplace. It may be given to us by natural causes, andwould have occurred whether we had prayed or not. But prayer itself in its very essence implies a belief inthe possible intervention of a power which is abovenature. The question about miracles is simply one ofevidence--whether in any given case the proof is sostrong that no room is left for mistake, exaggeration, or illusion, while more evidence is required to establisha fact antecedently improbable than is sufficient for acommon occurrence. 

It has been said recently by "A Layman, " in a letterto Mr. Maurice, that the resurrection of our Lord is aswell authenticated as the death of Julius Caesar. It isfar better authenticated, unless we are mistaken insupposing the Bible inspired; or if we admit as evidencethat inward assurance of the Christian, which wouldmake him rather die than disbelieve a truth so dear tohim. But if the layman meant that there was as muchproof of it, in the sense in which proof is understood ina court of justice, he could scarcely have consideredwhat he was saying. Julius Caesar was killed in apublic place, in the presence of friend and foe, in aremarkable but still perfectly natural manner. Thecircumstances were minutely known to all the world, andwere never denied or doubted by any one. Our Lord, however, seems purposely to have withheld such publicproof of his resurrection as would have left no room forunbelief. He showed himself, "not to all the people"--not to his enemies, whom his appearance would haveoverwhelmed--but "to witnesses chosen before;" tothe circle of his own friends. There is no evidencewhich a jury could admit that he was ever actually dead. So unusual was it for persons crucified to die so soon, that Pilate, we are told, "marvelled. " The subsequentappearances were strange, and scarcely intelligible. Those who saw him did not recognize him till he wasmade known to them in the breaking of bread. Hewas visible and invisible. He was mistaken by thosewho were most intimate with him for another person;nor do the accounts agree which are given by thedifferent Evangelists. Of investigation in the modernsense (except in the one instance of St. Thomas, andSt. Thomas was rather rebuked than praised, ) therewas none, and could be none. The evidence offeredwas different in kind, and the blessing was not to thosewho satisfied themselves of the truth of the fact by asearching inquiry, but who gave their assent with theunhesitating confidence of love. 

St. Paul's account of his own conversion is aninstance of the kind of testimony which then workedthe strongest conviction. St. Paul, a fiery fanatic on amission of persecution, with the midday Syrian sunstreaming down upon his head, was struck to theground, and saw in a vision our Lord in the air. Ifsuch a thing were to occur at the present day, and if amodern physician were consulted about it, he wouldsay without hesitation, that it was an effect of anover-heated brain, and that there was nothing in itextraordinary or unusual. If the impression left by theappearance had been too strong for such an explanationto be satisfactory, the person to whom it occurred, especially if he was a man of St. Paul's intellectualstature, would have at once examined into the factsotherwise known, connected with the subject of whathe had seen. St. Paul had evidently before disbelievedour Lord's resurrection, had disbelieved it fiercely andpassionately; we should have expected that he would atonce have sought for those who could best have toldhim the details of the truth. St. Paul, however, didnothing of the kind. He went for a year into Arabia, and when at last he returned to Jerusalem, he ratherheld aloof from those who had been our Lord'scompanions, and who had witnessed his ascension. He saw Peter, he saw James; "of the rest of theapostles saw he none. " To him evidently the proof ofthe resurrection was the vision which he had himselfseen. It was to that which he always referred whencalled on for a defence of his faith. 

Of evidence for the resurrection in the commonsense of the word there may be enough to show thatsomething extraordinary occurred; but not enough, unless we assume the fact to be true on far othergrounds, to produce any absolute and unhesitatingconviction; and inasmuch as the resurrection is thekeystone of Christianity, the belief in it must be somethingfar different from that suspended judgment in whichhistory alone would leave us. 

Human testimony, we repeat, under the mostfavourable circumstances imaginable, knows nothing of"absolute certainty;" and if historical facts are boundup with the creed, and if they are to be received withthe same completeness as the laws of conscience, theyrest, and must rest, either on the divine truth ofScripture, or on the divine witness in ourselves. On humanevidence, the miracles of St. Teresa and St. Francis ofAssisi are as well established as those of the NewTestament. 

M. Ernest Renan has recently produced an accountof the Gospel story which, written as it is by a man ofpiety, intellect, and imagination, is spreading rapidlythrough the educated world. Carrying out the principleswith which Protestants have swept modernhistory clear of miracles to their natural conclusions, he dismisses all that is miraculous from the life of ourLord, and endeavours to reproduce the original Galileanyouth who lived, and taught, and died in Palestineeighteen hundred years ago. We have no intention ofreviewing M. Renan. He will be read soon enough bymany who would better consider their peace of mindby leaving him alone. For ourselves we are unableto see by what right, if he rejects the miraculous partof the narrative, he retains the rest; the imaginationand the credulity which invent extraordinary incidentsinvent ordinary incidents also; and if the divineelement in the life is legendary, the human may belegendary also. But there is one lucid passage in theintroduction which we commend to the perusal ofcontroversial theologians:--

No miracle such as those of which early histories are fullhas taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occuronly in times and in countries in which miracles are believedin, and in the presence of persons who are disposed tobelieve them. No miracle has ever been performed beforean assemblage of spectators capable of testing its reality. Neither uneducated people, nor even men of the world, have the requisite capacity; great precautions are needed, and a long habit of scientific research. Have we not seenmen of the world in our own time become the dupes of themost childish and absurd illusions? And if it be certainthat no contemporary miracles will bear investigation, is itnot possible that the miracles of the past, were we able toexamine into them in detail, would be found equally tocontain an element of error? It is not in the name of thisor that philosophy, it is in the name of an experience whichnever varies that we banish miracles from history. We donot say a miracle is impossible, we say only that no miraclehas ever yet been proved. Let a worker of miracles comeforward to-morrow with pretensions serious enough todeserve examination. Let us suppose him to announcethat he is able to raise a dead man to life. What would bedone? A committee would be appointed, composed ofphysiologists, physicians, chemists, and persons accustomedto exact investigation; a body would then be selected whichthe committee would assure itself was really dead; and aplace would be chosen where the experiment was to takeplace. Every precaution would be taken to leave noopening for uncertainty; and if, under those conditions, therestoration to life was effected, a probability would bearrived at which would be almost equal to certainty. Anexperiment, however, should always admit of being repeated. What a man has done once he should be able to do again, and in miracles there can be no question of ease or difficulty. The performer would be requested to repeat the operationunder other circumstances upon other bodies; and if hesucceeded on every occasion, two points would be established:first, that there may be in this world such things assupernatural operations; and, secondly, that the power toperform them is delegated to, or belongs to, particularpersons. 

But who does not perceive that no miracle was everperformed under such conditions as these?

We have quoted this passage because it expresseswith extreme precision and clearness the common-senseprinciple which we apply to all supernatural stories ofour own time, which Protestant theologians employagainst the whole cycle of Catholic miracles, and whichM. Renan is only carrying to its logical conclusions inapplying to the history of our Lord, if the Gospels aretried by the mere tests of historical criticism. TheGospels themselves tell us why M. Renan's conditionswere never satisfied. Miracles were not displayed inthe presence of sceptics to establish scientific truths, When the adulterous generation sought after a sign, the sign was not given; nay, it is even said that in thepresence of unbelief our Lord was not able to workmiracles. But science has less respect for thatundoubting and submissive willingness to believe; and itis quite certain that if we attempt to establish the truthof the New Testament on the principles of Paley, ifwith Professor Jowett "we interpret the Bible as anyother book, " the element of miracle which hasevaporated from the entire surface of human history willnot maintain itself in the sacred ground of the Gospels, and the facts of Christianity will melt in our hands likea snow-ball. 

Nothing less than a miraculous history can sustainthe credibility of miracles, and nothing could be morelikely if revelation be a reality and not a dream thanthat the history containing it should be saved in itscomposition from the intermixture of human infirmity. This is the position in which instinct long ago taughtProtestants to entrench themselves, and where alonethey can hope to hold their ground: once establishedin these lines, they were safe and unassailable, unless itcould be demonstrated that any fact or facts related inthe Bible were certainly untrue. 

Nor would it be necessary to say any more upon thesubject. Those who believed Christianity would admitthe assumption; those who disbelieved Christianitywould repudiate it. The argument would be narrowedto that plain and single issue, and the elaboratetreatises upon external evidence would cease to bringdiscredit upon the cause by their feebleness. Unfortunately--and this is the true secret of our present distractions--itseems certain that in some way or otherthis belief in inspiration itself requires to be revised. We are compelled to examine more precisely what wemean by the word. The account of the creation ofman and the world which is given in Genesis, andwhich is made by St. Paul the basis of his theology, has not yet been reconciled with facts which scienceknows to be true. Death was in the world beforeAdam's sin, and unless Adam's age be thrust back to adistance which no ingenuity can torture the letter ofScripture into recognizing, men and women lived anddied upon the earth whole millenniums before the Eveof Sacred History listened to the temptation of thesnake. Neither has any such deluge as that from which, according to the received interpretation, the ark savedNoah, swept over the globe within the human period. We are told that it was not God's purpose to anticipatethe natural course of discovery: as the story of thecreation was written in human language, so the detailsof it may have been adapted to the existing state ofhuman knowledge. The Bible it is said was not intendedto teach men science, but to teach them whatwas necessary for the moral training of their souls. Itmay be that this is true. Spiritual grace affects themoral character of men, but leaves their intellectunimproved. The most religious men are as liable as atheiststo ignorance of ordinary facts, and inspiration may beonly infallible when it touches on truths necessary tosalvation. But if it be so, there are many things inthe Bible which must become as uncertain as its geologyor its astronomy. There is the long secular history ofthe Jewish people. Let it be once established that thereis room for error anywhere, and we have no security forsecular history. The inspiration of the Bible is thefoundation of our whole belief; and it is a grave matterif we are uncertain to what extent it reaches, or howmuch and what it guarantees to us as true. We cannotlive on probabilities. The faith in which we can livebravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far asit professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing. It maybe that all intellectual efforts to arrive at it are in vain;that it is given to those to whom it is given, and withheldfrom those from whom it is withheld. It may be thatthe existing belief is undergoing a silent modification, like those to which the dispensations of religion havebeen successively subjected; or, again, it may be that tothe creed as it is already established there is nothing tobe added, and nothing any more to be taken from it. At this moment, however, the most vigorous mindsappear least to see their way to a conclusion; andnotwithstanding all the school and church building, theextended episcopate, and the religious newspapers, ageneral doubt is coming up like a thunderstorm againstthe wind, and blackening the sky. Those who clingmost tenaciously to the faith in which they wereeducated yet confess themselves perplexed. They knowwhat they believe; but why they believe it, or why theyshould require others to believe, they cannot tell orcannot agree. Between the authority of the Churchand the authority of the Bible, the testimony of historyand the testimony of the Spirit, the ascertained factsof science and the contradictory facts which seem tobe revealed, the minds of men are tossed to and fro, harassed by the changed attitude in which scientificinvestigation has placed us all towards accounts ofsupernatural occurrences. We thrust the subject aside;we take refuge in practical work; we believe perhapsthat the situation is desperate and hopeless ofimprovement; we refuse to let the question be disturbed. Butwe cannot escape from our shadow, and the spirit ofuncertainty will haunt the world like an uneasy ghost, till we take it by the throat like men. 

We return then to the point from which we set out. The time is past for repression. Despotism has doneits work; but the day of despotism is gone, and theonly remedy is a full and fair investigation. Thingswill never right themselves if they are let alone. Itis idle to say peace when there is no peace; and theconcealed imposthume is more dangerous than an openwound. The law in this country has postponed ourtrial, but cannot save us from it; and the questionswhich have agitated the Continent are agitating us atlast. The student who twenty years ago was contentedwith the Greek and Latin fathers and the Anglicandivines, now reads Ewald and Renan. The Churchauthorities still refuse to look their difficulties in theface: they prescribe for mental troubles the establisheddoses of Paley and Pearson; they refuse dangerousquestions as sinful, and tread the round of commonplacein placid comfort. But it will not avail. Theirpupils grow to manhood, and fight the battle forthemselves, unaided by those who ought to have stood bythem in their trial, and could not or would not; andthe bitterness of those conflicts and the end of most ofthem in heart-broken uncertainty or careless indifference, is too notorious to all who care to know aboutsuch things. 

We cannot afford year after year to be distractedwith the tentative scepticism of essayists and reviewers. In a healthy condition of public opinion such a book asBishop Colenso's would have passed unnoticed, or ratherwould never have been written, for the difficulties withwhich it deals would have been long ago met and disposedof. When questions rose in the early and middleages of the Church, they were decided by councils ofthe wisest: those best able to judge met together, andcompared their thoughts, and conclusions were arrivedat which individuals could accept and act upon. Atthe beginning of the English Reformation, whenProtestant doctrine was struggling for reception, and theold belief was merging in the new, the country wasdeliberately held in formal suspense. Protestants andCatholics were set to preach on alternate Sundays inthe same pulpit; the subject was discussed freely in theears of the people, and at last, when all had been saidon both sides, Convocation and Parliament embodiedthe result in formulas. Councils will no longer answerthe purpose; the clergy have no longer a superiority ofintellect or cultivation; and a conference of prelatesfrom all parts of Christendom, or even from all departmentsof the English Church, would not present anedifying spectacle. Parliament may no longer meddlewith opinions unless it be to untie the chains which itforged three centuries ago. But better than Councils, better than sermons, better than Parliament, is thatfree discussion through a free press which is the bestinstrument for the discovery of truth, and the mosteffectual means for preserving it. 

We shall be told, perhaps, that we are beating theair, that the press is free, and that all men may anddo write what they please. It is not so. Discussionis not free so long as the clergy who take any side butone are liable to be prosecuted and deprived of theirmeans of living; it is not free so long as the expressionof doubt is considered as a sin by public opinion and asa crime by the law. So far are we from free discussionthat the world is not yet agreed that a free discussionis desirable; and till it be so agreed, the substantialintellect of the country will not throw itself into thequestion. The battle will continue to be fought byoutsiders, who suffice to disturb a repose which theycannot restore; and that collective voice of the nationalunderstanding, which alone can give back to us a peacefuland assured conviction, will not be heard. ____

SPINOZA

Benedicti de Spinoza Tractatus de Deo et Homine ejusque FelicitateLineamenta Alque Annotationes ad Traclatum TheologicoPoliticum. Edidit et illustravit EDWARDUS BOEHMER. Halaead Salam. J. F. Lippert. 1852. 

This little volume is one evidence among many of theinterest which continues to be felt by the Germanstudents in Spinoza. The actual merit of the bookitself is little or nothing; but it shows the industrywith which they are gleaning among the libraries ofHolland for any traces of him which they can recover;and the smallest fragments of his writings are acquiringthat factitious importance which attaches to themost insignificant relics of acknowledged greatness. Such industry cannot be otherwise than laudable, butwe do not think it at present altogether wisely directed. Nothing is likely to be brought to light which will muchillustrate Spinoza's philosophy. He himself spent thebetter part of his life in working the language in whichhe expressed it clear of ambiguities; and such earlierdraughts of his system as are supposed still to be extantin MS. , and a specimen of which M. Boehmer believeshimself to have discovered, contribute only obscurityto what is in no need of additional difficulty. OfSpinoza's private history, on the contrary, rich as itmust have been, and abundant traces of it as must beextant somewhere in his own and his friends' correspondence, we know only enough to feel how vast achasm remains to be filled. It is not often that anyman in this world lives a life so well worth writing asSpinoza lived; not for striking incidents or large eventsconnected with it; but because (and no sympathy withhis peculiar opinions disposes us to exaggerate hismerit) he was one of the very best men whom thesemodern times have seen. Excommunicated, disinherited, and thrown upon the world when a mere boyto seek his livelihood, he resisted the inducementswhich on all sides were urged upon him to come forwardin the world; refusing pensions, legacies, moneyin many forms, he maintained himself with grindingglasses for optical instruments, an art which he hadbeen taught in early life, and in which he excelled thebest workmen in Holland; and when he died, whichwas at the early age of forty-four, the affection withwhich he was regarded showed itself singularly in theendorsement of a tradesman's bill which was sent in tohis executors, in which he was described as M. Spinozaof "blessed memory. "

The account which remains of him we owe not toan admiring disciple, but to a clergyman, to whom histheories were detestable; and his biographer allows thatthe most malignant scrutiny had failed to detect ablemish in his character, --that except so far as his opinionswere blameable, he had lived to all outward appearances freefrom fault. We desire, in what we are going to say of him, to avoid offensive collision with even popular prejudices, and still more with the earnest convictionsof serious persons: our business is to relatewhat he was, and leave others to form their own conclusions. But one lesson there does seem to lie in sucha life of such a man, --a lesson deeper than any which isto be found in his philosophy, --that wherever there isgenuine and thorough love for good and goodness, nospeculative superstructure of opinion can be so extravagantas to forfeit those graces which are promisednot to clearness of intellect, but to purity of heart. InSpinoza's own beautiful language, --"justitia et caritasunicum et certissimum verae fidei Catholicae signurn est, et veri Spiritus sancti fructus: et ubicumque haec reperiuntur, ibi Christus re verg est, et ubicumque haecdesunt deest Christus. Solo namque Christi Spiritu ducipossumus in amorem justitiae et caritatis. " We maydeny his conclusions; we may consider his system ofthought preposterous and even pernicious, but wecannot refuse him the respect which is the right ofall sincere and honourable men. We will say, indeed, as much as this, that wherever and on whateverquestions good men are found ranged on opposite sides, one of three alternatives is always true:--either thatthe points of disagreement are purely speculative andof no moral importance, or that there is a misunderstandingof language, and the same thing is meantunder difference of words, or else that the real truth issomething different from what is held by any of thedisputants, and that each is representing some importantelement which the other ignores or forgets. In eithercase, a certain calmness and good temper is necessary, if we would understand what we disagree with, or wouldoppose it with success. Spinoza's influence over Europeanthought is too great to be denied or set aside, andif his doctrines be false in part, or false altogether, wecannot do their work more surely than by calumny ormisrepresentation--a most obvious truism, which noone now living will deny in words, and which a centuryor two hence perhaps will begin to produce some effectsupon the popular judgment. 

Bearing it in mind, then, ourselves, as far as we areable, we propose to examine the Pantheistic philosophyin the first and only logical form which as yet it hasassumed. Whatever may have been the case with hisdisciples, in the author of this system there was nounwillingness to look closely at it, or follow it outto its conclusions; and whatever other merits or demeritsbelong to Spinoza, at least he has done asmuch as with language can be done to make himselfthoroughly understood--a merit in which it cannot besaid that his followers have imitated him--Pantheism, as it is known in England, being a very synonym ofvagueness and mysticism. 

The fact is, that both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance to see Spinoza as he reallywas. The Herder and Schleiermacher school haveclaimed him as a Christian--a position which no littledisguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodoxProtestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist--which is still more extravagant; and even a manlike Novalis, who, it might have been expected, wouldhave had something reasonable to say, could find nobetter name for him than a Colt trunkner Mann--aGod intoxicated man; an expression which has beenquoted by everybody who has since written upon thesubject, and which is about as inapplicable as thoselaboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With dueallowance for exaggeration, such a name would describetolerably the Transcendental mystics, a Toler, aBoehmen, or a Swedenborg; but with what justice canit be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, whocarried his thoughts about with him for twenty years, deliberately shaping them, and who gave them at lastto the world in a form more severe than with suchsubjects had ever been so much as attempted? Withhim, as with all great men, there was no effort aftersublime emotions. A plain, practical person, his objectin philosophy was only to find a rule on which hecould depend to govern his own actions and hisown judgment: and his treatises contain no morethan the conclusions at which he arrived in this purelypersonal search, and the grounds on which he restedthem. 

We cannot do better than follow his own account ofhimself as he has given it in the opening of hisunfinished Tract, "De Emendatione Intellectas. " Hislanguage is very beautiful, but elaborate and full; and, as we have a long journey before us, we must becontent to epitomize it. 

Looking round him on his entrance into life, andasking himself what was his place and business in it, he turned for examples to his fellow-men, and foundlittle that he could venture to imitate. Whatever theyprofessed, they all really guided themselves by theirdifferent notions of what they thought desirable; andthese notions themselves resting on no more securefoundation than a vague, inconsistent experience, theexperience of one not being the experience of another, men were all, so to say, rather playing experiments withlife than living, and the larger portion of them miserablyfailing. Their mistakes arising, as it seemed to Spinoza, from inadequate knowledge, things which at one timelooked desirable disappointing expectation when obtained, and the wiser course concealing itself oftenunder an uninviting exterior, he desired to substitutecertainty for conjecture, and endeavour to find, bysome surer method, where the real good of man lay. All this may sound very Pagan, and perhaps it is so. We must remember that he had been brought up aJew, and had been driven out of the Jews' communion;his mind was therefore in contact with the bare facts oflife, with no creed or system lying between them andhimself as the interpreter of it. Some true account ofthings, however, he thought it likely that there mustbe, and the question was, how to find it. Of all formsof human thought, but one, he reflected, would admitof the certainty which he required--the mathematical;and, therefore, if certain knowledge were attainable atall, it must be looked for under the mathematical ordemonstrative method; by tracing from ideas clearlyconceived the consequences which were formally involvedin them. The question was, therefore, of theseideas, these verae ideae, as he calls them, --what were they, and how were they to be obtained: if they were toserve as the axioms of his system, they must, he felt, be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required;and the illustration which he gives of the character ofsuch ideas is ingenious and Platonic. 

In order to produce any mechanical instrument, hesays, we require others with which to manufacture it;and others again to manufacture those; and it wouldseem thus as if the process must be an infinite one, and as if nothing could ever be made at all. Nature, however, has provided for the difficulty in creating ofher own accord certain rude instruments, with the helpof which we can make others better; and others againwith the help of those. And so he thinks it must bewith the mind, and there must be somewhere similaroriginal instruments provided also as the first outfit ofintellectual enterprise. To discover them, he examinesthe various senses in which men are said to knowanything, and he finds that these senses resolve themselvesinto three, or, as he elsewhere divides it, four:--We know a thing, 1. I. Ex mero auditu: because we have heard it from someperson or persons whose veracity we have no reason to question. Ii. Ab experientia vaga: from general experience: for instance, all facts or phenomena which come to us through our senses asphenomena, but of the causes of which we are ignorant. 

2. These two in Ethics are classed together. 

As we have correctly conceived the laws of suchphenomena, and see them following in their sequencem the order of nature. 

3. Ex scientia intuitiva: which alone is absolutely clearand certain. 

To illustrate these divisions, suppose it be requiredto find a fourth proportional which shall stand to thethird of three numbers as the second does to the first. The merchant's clerk knows his rule; he multiplies thesecond into the third and divides by the first. Heneither knows nor cares to know why the result is thenumber which he seeks, but he has learnt the fact thatit is so, and he remembers it. 

A person a little wiser has tried the experiment ina variety of simple cases; he has discovered the rule byinduction, but still does not understand it. 

A third has mastered the laws of proportion mathematically, as he has found them in Euclid or other geometrical treatise. 

A fourth with the plain numbers of 1, 2, and 3, sees for himself by simple intuitive force that 1:2 = 3:6. 

Of these several kinds of knowledge the third andfourth alone deserve to be called knowledge, the othersbeing no more than opinions more or less justlyfounded. The last is the only real insight, althoughthe third, being exact in its form, may be dependedupon as a basis of certainty. Under this last, asSpinoza allows, nothing except the very simplest truthsnon nisi simplicissimae veritates can be perceived, but, such as they are, they are the foundation of all afterscience; and the true ideas, the verae ideae, which areapprehended by this faculty of intuition, are theprimitive instruments with which nature has furnished us. If we ask for a test by which to distinguish them, hehas none to give us. "Veritas, " he says to his friends, in answer to their question, "veritas index sui est etfalsi. Veritas se ipsam patefacit. " These originaltruths are of such a kind that they cannot withoutabsurdity even be conceived to be false; the oppositesof them are contradictions in terms:--"Ut sciam mescire necessario debeo prius scire. Hinc pater quodcertitudo nihil est praeter ipsam essentiam objectivam. . .. Cum itaque veritas nullo egeat signo, sed sufficiathabere essentiam rerum objectivam, aut quod idemest ideas, ut omne tollatur dubium; hint sequitur quodvera non est methodus, signum veritatis quaerere postacquisitionem idearum; sed quod vera methodus estvia, et ipsa vetitas, aut essentiae objectivae rerum, autideae (omnia illa idem significant) debito ordine quaerantur. "(De Emend. Intell. )

The opinion of this Review on reasonings of sucha kind has been too often expressed to require us nowto say how insecure they appear to us. When we rememberthe thousand conflicting opinions, the truthof which their several advocates have as little doubtedas they have doubted their own existence, we requiresome better evidence than a mere feeling of certainty;and Aristotle's less pretending canon promises a saferroad. Ho pasi dokei, "what all men think, " says Aristotle, touto einai phamen, "this we say is, "--"and if you will nothave this to be a fair ground of conviction, you willscarcely find one which will serve you better. " We areto see, however, what these idete are which Spinozaoffers as self-evident. All will turn upon that; for, ofcourse, if they are self-evident, if they do produceconviction, nothing more is to be said; but it does, indeed, appear strange to us that Spinoza was notstaggered as to the validity of his canon, when hisfriends, every one of them, so floundered and stumbledamong what he regarded as his simplest propositions, requiring endless signa veritalis, and unable for a longtime even to understand their meaning, far less to"recognize them as elementary certainties. " Modernreaders may, perhaps, be more fortunate. We produceat length the definitions and axioms of the first bookof the "Ethica, " and they may judge for themselves:--

DEFINITIONS. 

1. By a thing which is causa sui, its own cause, I mean athing the essence of which involves the existence of it, or athing which cannot be conceived of except as existing. 2. I call a thing finite, suo genere, when it can becircumscribed by another (or others) of the same nature, e. G. A given body is called finite, because we can always conceiveanother body larger than it; but body is not circumscribedby thought, nor thought by body. 3. By substance I mean what exists in itself and is conceivedof by itself; the conception of which, that is, doesnot involve the conception of anything else as the causeof it. 4. By attribute I mean whatever the intellect perceives ofsubstance as constituting the essence of substance. 5. Mode is an affection of substance, or is that which isin something else, by and through which it is conceived. 6. God is a being absolutely infinite; a substance consistingof infinite attributes, each of which expresses Hiseternal and infinite essence. 

EXPLANATION. 

I say absolutely infinite, not infinite suo genere, for ofwhat is infinite sua genere only, the attributes are notinfinite but finite; whereas what is infinite absolutely containsin its own essence everything by which substance can beexpressed and which involves no impossibility. 

7. That thing is "free" which exists by the sole necessityof its own nature, and is determined in its operation byitself only. That is "not free" which is called into existenceby something else, and is determined in its operationaccording to a fixed and definite method. 8. Eternity is existence itself, conceived as followingnecessarily and solely from the definition of the thing whichis eternal. 

EXPLANATION. 

Because existence of this kind is conceived as an eternalverity, and, therefore, cannot be explained by duration, eventhough the duration be without beginning or end. 

So far the definitions; then follow the

AXIOMS. 

1. All things that exist, exist either of themselves or invirtue of something else. 2. What we cannot conceive of as existing in virtue ofsomething else, we must conceive through and in itself. 3. From a given cause an effect necessarily follows, andif there be no given cause no effect can follow. 4. Things which have nothing in common with each othercannot be understood through one another; i. E. Theconception of one does not involve the conception of the other. 5. To understand an effect implies that we understandthe cause of it. 6. A true idea is one which corresponds with its ideate. 7. The essence of anything which can be conceived asnon-existent does not involve existence. 

Such is our metaphysical outfit of simple ideas withwhich to start upon our enterprise of learning, the largernumber of which, so far from being simple, must beabsolutely without meaning to persons whose minds areundisciplined in metaphysical abstraction, and whichbecome only intelligible propositions as we look backupon them after having become acquainted with thesystem which they are supposed to contain. 

Although, however, we may justly quarrel with suchunlooked-for difficulties, the important question, afterall, is not of their obscurity but of their truth. Manythings in all the sciences are obscure to an unpractisedunderstanding, which are true enough and clearenough to people acquainted with the subjects, andmay be fairly laid as foundations of a scientific system, although rudimentary students must be contented toaccept them upon faith. Of course it is entirelycompetent to Spinoza, or to any one, to define the termswhich he intends to use just as he pleases, providedit be understood that any conclusions which he derivesout of them apply only to the ideas so defined, and notto any supposed object existing which corresponds withthem. Euclid defines his triangles and circles, anddiscovers that to figures so described certain propertiespreviously unknown may be proved to belong; but asin nature there are no such things as triangles andcircles exactly answering the definition, his conclusions, as applied to actually existing objects, are either nottrue at all or only proximately so. Whether it bepossible to bridge over the gulf between existing thingsand the abstract conception of them, as Spinoza attemptsto do, we shall presently see. It is a royal road tocertainty if it be a practicable one, but we cannot saythat we ever met any one who could say honestlySpinoza had convinced him; and power of demonstration, like all other powers, can be judged onlyby its effects. Does it prove? does it produce conviction?If not, it is nothing. We need not detainour readers among these abstractions. The real powerof Spinozism does not lie so remote from ordinaryappreciation, or we should long ago have heard the lastof it. Like all other systems which have attractedfollowers, it addresses itself not to the logical intellectbut to the imagination, which it affects to set aside. We refuse to submit to the demonstrations by whichit thrusts itself upon our reception, but regarding itas a whole, as an attempt to explain the nature of theworld, of which we are a part, we can still ask ourselveshow far the attempt is successful. Some account ofthese things we know that there must be, and thecuriosity which asks the question regards itself, ofcourse, as competent in some degree to judge of theanswer to it. Before proceeding, however, to regardthis philosophy in the aspect in which it is reallypowerful, we must clear our way through the fallacyof the method. 

The system is evolved in a series of theorems inseverely demonstrative order out of the definitions andaxioms which we have translated. To propositions 1--6we have nothing to object; they will not, probably, convey any very clear ideas, but they are so far purelyabstract, and seem to follow (as far as we can speakof "following, " in such subjects), by fair reasoning. "Substance is prior in nature to its affections. ""Substances with different attributes have nothing incommon, " and therefore "one cannot be the cause of theother. " "Things really distinct are distinguished bydifference either of attribute or mode (there beingnothing else by which they can be distinguished), andtherefore, because things modally distinguished do notqua substance differ from one another, there cannot bemore than one substance of the same attribute; andtherefore (let us remind our readers that we are amongwhat Spinoza calls notiones simplicissimas), since therecannot be two substances of the same attribute andsubstances of different attributes cannot be the causeone of the other, it follows that no substances can beproduced by another substance. "

The existence of substance, he then concludes, isinvolved in the nature of the thing itself. Substanceexists. It does and must. We ask, why? and weare answered, because there is nothing capable ofproducing it, and therefore it is self-caused; i. E. Bythe first definition the essence of it implies existenceas part of the idea. It is astonishing that Spinozashould not have seen that he assumes the fact thatsubstance does exist in order to prove that it must. Ifit cannot be produced and exists, then, of course, itexists in virtue of its own nature. But supposing itdoes not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the prooffalls to pieces, unless we fall back on the facts ofexperience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty thatthe thing which we call the world, and the personalitieswhich we call ourselves, are a real substantialsomething. Conscious of the infirmity of his demonstration, he winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but never escaping the same vicious circle: substanceexists because it exists, and the ultimate experience ofexistence, so far from being of that clear kind whichcan be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of allour sensations. What is existence? and what is thatsomething which we say exists? Things--essences--existences; these are but the vague names with whichfaculties, constructed only to deal with conditionalphenomena, disguise their incapacity. The worldin the Hindoo legend rested upon the back of thetortoise. It was a step between the world and nothingness, and served to cheat the imagination with ideasof a fictitious resting-place. 

"If any one affirms, " says Spinoza, "that he has a clear, distinct--that is to say, a true idea of substance, but thatnevertheless he is uncertain whether any such substanceexist, it is the same as if he were to affirm that he had atrue idea, but yet was uncertain whether it was not false. Or if he says that substance can be created, it is like sayingthat a false idea can become a true idea--as absurd a thingas it is possible to conceive; and therefore the existenceof substance, as well as the essence of it, must beacknowledged as an eternal verity. "

It is again the same story. He speaks of a clear ideaof substance; but he has not proved that such an ideais within the compass of the mind. A man's ownnotion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he reallysees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition initself is no evidence that it corresponds adequately withthe object of it. No doubt a man who professes tohave an idea of substance as an existing thing, cannotdoubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists. It is merely to say that as long as a man is certain ofthis or that fact, he has no doubt of it. But neitherhis certainty nor Spinoza's will be of any use to a manwho has no such idea, and who cannot recognize thelawfulness of the method by which it is arrived at. 

From the self-existing substance it is a short step tothe existence of God. After a few more propositionsfollowing one another with the same kind of coherence, we arrive successively at the conclusions that there isbut one substance, that this substance being necessarilyexistent, it is also infinite, and that it is thereforeidentical with the Being who had been previously definedas the "Ens absolute perfectum, " consisting of infinite"attributes, each of which expresses His eternal andinfinite essence. " Demonstrations of this kind were thecharacteristics of the period. Des Cartes had set theexample of constructing them, and was followed byCudworth, Clerke, Berkeley, and many others besidesSpinoza. The inconclusiveness of their reasoning mayperhaps be observed most readily in the strangelyopposite conceptions formed by all these writers of thenature of that Being whose existence they neverthelessagreed, by the same method, to gather each out of theirideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully, for it is the very key-stone of the Pantheistic system. As stated by Des Cartes, the argument stands somethingas follows:--God is an all-perfect Being, --perfectionis the idea which we form of him: existence isa mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. Thesophism we are told is only apparent; existence ispart of the idea; it is as much involved in it, as theequality of all lines drawn from the centre to thecircumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle, and a non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivableas a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answeredthat in this way we may prove the existence of anything, --Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian Gods; we havebut to define them as existing, and the proof iscomplete. But in this objection there is really nothing ofweight; none of these beings are by hypothesis absolutelyperfect, and, therefore, of their existence we canconclude nothing. With greater justice, however, wemay say, that of such terms as perfection and existencewe know too little to speculate in this way. Existencemay be an imperfection for all we can tell; we knownothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endlesspetilianes principii, like the self-devouring serpentresolving themselves into nothing. We wander roundand round them, in the hope of finding some tangiblepoint at which we can seize their meaning; but weare presented everywhere with the same impracticablesurface, from which our grasp glides off ineffectual. 

The idea, however, lying at the bottom of the conviction, which obviously Spinoza felt upon the matter, is stated with sufficient distinctness in one of his letters. "Nothing is more clear, " he writes to his pupil DeVries, "than that, on the one hand, everything whichexists is conceived by or under some attribute or other;that the more reality, therefore, a being or thing has, the more attributes must be assigned to it;" "andconversely, " (and this he calls his argumentum palmariumin proof of the existence of God, ) "the moreattributes I assign to a thing, the more I am forced toconceive it as existing. " Arrange the argument how weplease, we shall never get it into a form clearer thanthis:--The more perfect a thing is, the more it mustexist (as if existence could admit of more or less); andtherefore the all-perfect Being must exist absolutely. There is no flaw, we are told, in the reasoning; and ifwe are not convinced, it is solely from the confusedhabits of our own minds. 

It may seem to some persons that all arguments aregood when on the right side, and that it is a gratuitousimpertinence to quarrel with the proofs of a conclusionwhich it is so desirable that all should receive. As yet, however, we are but inadequately acquainted with theidea attached by Spinoza to the word perfection, andif we commit ourselves to this logic, it may lead us outto some unexpected consequences. Obviously all suchreasonings presume, as a first condition, that we menpossess faculties capable of dealing with absolute ideas;that we can understand the nature of things externalto ourselves as they really are in their absolute relationto one another, independent of our own conception. The question immediately before us is one which cannever be determined. The truth which is to be provedis one which we already believe; and if, as we believealso, our conviction of God's existence is, like that ofour own existence, intuitive and immediate, the groundsof it can never adequately be analysed; we cannot sayexactly what they are, and therefore we cannot saywhat they are not; whatever we receive intuitively, wereceive without proof; and stated as a naked proposition, it must involve necessarily a petitio principii. Wehave a right, however, to object at once to anargument in which the conclusion is more obvious than thepremises; and if it lead on to other consequenceswhich we disapprove in themselves, we reject it withoutdifficulty or hesitation. We ourselves believe that Godis, because we experience the control of a "power"which is stronger than we; and our instincts teach usso much of the nature of that power as our ownrelation to it requires us to know. God is the being towhom our obedience is due; and the perfections whichwe attribute to Him are those moral perfections whichare the proper object of our reverence. Strange to say, the perfections of Spinoza, which appear so clear tohim, are without any moral character whatever; andfor men to speak of the justice of God, he tells us, isbut to see in Him a reflection of themselves: as if atriangle were to conceive of Him as eminenter triangularis, or a circle to give Him the property of circularity. 

Having arrived, however, at existence, we soon findourselves among ideas, which at least are intelligible, ifthe character of them is as far removed as before fromthe circle of ordinary thought. Nothing exists exceptsubstance, the attributes under which substance is exexpressed, and the modes or affections of those attributes. There is but one substance self-existent, eternal, necessary, and that is the absolutely Infinite all-perfect Being. Substance cannot produce substance; and, therefore, there is no such thing as creation, and everything whichexists, is either an attribute of Him, or an affection ofsome attribute of Him, modified in this manner or inthat. Beyond Him there is nothing, and nothing likeHim or equal to Him; He therefore alone in Himselfis absolutely free, uninfiuenced by anything, for nothingis except Himself; and from Him and from His supremepower, essence, intelligence (for all these words mean thesame thing) all things have necessarily flowed, and willand must flow on for ever, in the same manner as fromthe nature of a triangle it follows, and has followed, andwill follow from eternity to eternity, that the angles of itare equal to two right angles. It would seem as if theanalogy were but an artificial play upon words, and thatit was only metaphorically that in mathematical demonstrationwe speak of one thing as following from another. The properties of a curve or a triangle are what they areat all times, and the sequence is merely in the order inwhich they are successively known to ourselves. Butaccording to Spinoza, this is the only true sequence;and what we call the universe, and all the series ofincidents upon it, are involved formally and mathematicallyin the definition of God. 

Each attribute is infinite suo genere; and it is timethat we should know distinctly the meaning whichSpinoza attaches to that important word. Out of theinfinite number of the attributes of God two only areknown to us--"extension, " and "thought, " or "mind. "Duration, even though it be without beginning or end, is not an attribute; it is not even a real thing. It hasno relation to being conceived mathematically, in thesame way as it would be absurd to speak of circles ortriangles as any older to-day than they were at thebeginning of the world. These and everything of thesame kind are conceived, as Spinoza rightly says, subquadam specie aeternitatis. But extension, or substanceextended, and thought, or substance perceiving, are real, absolute, and objective. We must not confound extensionwith body, for though body be a mode of extension, there is extension which is not body, and it is infinitebecause we cannot conceive it to be limited exceptby itself---or, in other words, to be limited at all. Andas it is with extension, so it is with mind, which is alsoinfinite with the infinity of its object. Thus there is nosuch thing as creation, and no beginning or end. Allthings of which our faculties are cognizant under one orother of these attributes are produced from God, and inHim they have their being, and without Him they wouldcease to be. 

Proceeding by steps of rigid demonstration in thisstrange logic, (and most admirably indeed is the form ofthe philosophy adapted to the spirit of it, ) we learn thatGod is the only causa libera; that no other thing orbeing has any power of self-determination: all move byfixed laws of causation, motive upon motive, act uponact; there is no free will, and no contingency; andhowever necessary it may be for our incapacity to considerfuture things as in a sense contingent (see Tractat. Theol. Polit. Cap. Iv. Sec. 4), this is but one of thethousand convenient deceptions which we are obligedto employ with ourselves. God is the causa immanensomnium; He is not a personal being existing apart fromthe universe; but Himself in His own reality, He isexpressed in the universe, which is His living garment. Keeping to the philosophical language of the term, Spinoza preserves the distinction between naturanalurans and natura naturala. The first is being initself, the attributes of substance as they are conceivedsimply and alone; the second is the infinite series ofmodifications which follow out of the properties of theseattributes. And thus all which is, is what it is by anabsolute necessity, and could not have been other thanit is. God is free, because no causes external toHimself have power over Him; and as good men aremost free when most a law to themselves, so it is noinfringement on God's freedom to say that He must haveacted as He has acted, but rather He is absolutely freebecause absolutely a law Himself to Himself. 

Here ends the first book of the Ethics, the bookwhich contains, as we said, the nolianes simplicissimas, and the primary and rudimental deductions from them. His Dei naturam, Spinoza says in his lofty confidence, ejusque proprietates explicui. But as if conscious thathis method will never convince, he concludes this portionof his subject with an analytical appendix; not to explainor apologize, but to show us clearly, in practical detail, the position into which he has led us. The root, we aretold, of all philosophical errors, lies in our notion of finalcauses; we invert the order of nature, and interpretGod's action through our own; we speak of His intentions, as if he were a man; we assume that we arecapable of measuring them, and finally erect ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion ofall things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If theuniverse be what this philosophy has described it, theperfection which it assigns to God is extended toeverything, and evil is of course impossible; there is noshortcoming either in nature or in man; each personand each thing is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men imagining that all thingsexist on their account, and perceiving their own interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of being variously affected, have conceived these opposite influences to result fromopposite and contradictory powers, and call what contributesto their advantage good, and whatever obstructsit evil. For our convenience we form generic conceptionsof human excellence, as archetypes after which tostrive, and such of us as approach nearest to sucharchetypes are supposed to be virtuous, and those whoare most remote from them to be wicked. But suchgeneric abstractions are but entia imaginationis, andhave no real existence. In the eyes of God each thingis what it has the means of being. There is no rebellionagainst Him, and no resistance of His will; in truth, therefore, there neither is nor can be such a thing as abad action in the common sense of the word. Actionsare good or bad, not in themselves, but as comparedwith the nature of the agent; what we censure in men, we tolerate and even admire in animals, and as soon aswe are aware of our mistake in assigning to the formera power of free volition, our notion of evil as a positivething will cease to exist. 

"If I am asked, " concludes Spinoza, "why then all mankindwere not created by God, so as to be governed solelyby reason? it was because, I reply, there was to Him nolack of matter to create all things from the highest to thelowest grade of perfection; or, to speak more properly, because the laws of His nature were ample enough tosuffice for the production of all things which can be conceivedby an Infinite Intelligence. "

It is possible that readers who have followed us so farwill now turn away with no disposition to learn morephilosophy which issues in such conclusions; andresentful perhaps that it should have been ever laidbefore them at all, in language so little expressive ofaversion and displeasure. We must claim however, inSpinoza's name, the right which he claims for himself. His system must be judged as a whole; and whatever wemay think ourselves would be the moral effect of it if itwere generally received, in his hands and in his heart itis worked into maxims of the purest and loftiest morality. And at least we are bound to remember that someaccount of this great mystery of evil there must be; andalthough familiarity with commonly-received explanationsmay disguise from us the difficulties with which they too, as well as that of Spinoza, are embarrassed, such difficultiesnone the less exist; the fact is the grand perplexity, and for ourselves we acknowledge that of all theoriesabout it Spinoza's would appear to us the least irrational, if our conscience did not forbid us to listen to it. Theobjections, with the replies to them, are well drawn outin the correspondence with William de Blyenburg; andit will be seen from this with how little justice the denialof evil as a positive thing can be called equivalent todenying it relatively to man, or to confusing the moraldistinctions between virtue and vice. 

"We speak, " writes Spinoza, in answer to Blyenburg, who had urged something of the kind, "we speak of thisor that man having done a wrong thing, when we comparehim with a general standard of humanity; but inasmuchas God neither perceives things in such abstract manner, nor forms to himself such kind of generic definitions, andsince there is no more reality in anything than God hasassigned to it, it follows, surely, that the absence of goodexists only in respect of man's understanding, not in respectof God's. "

"If this be so, " then replies Blyenburg, "bad men fulfilGod's will as well as good. "

"It is true, " Spinoza answers, "they fulfil it, yet not as thegood nor as well as the good, nor are they to be comparedwith them. The better a thing or a person be, the morethere is in him of God's spirit, and the more he expressesGod's will; while the bad, being without that divine lovewhich arises from the knowledge of God, and through whichalone we are called (in respect of our understandings) hisservants, are but as instruments in the hand of the artificer, --they serve unconsciously, and are consumed in theirservice. "

Spinoza, after all, is but stating in philosophicallanguage the extreme doctrine of Grace: and St. Paul, if we interpret his real belief by the one passage sooften quoted, in which he compares us to "clay in thehands of the potter, who maketh one vessel to honourand another to dishonour, " may be accused with justiceof having held the same opinion. If Calvinism bepressed to its logical consequences, it either becomesan intolerable falsehood, or it resolves itself into thephilosophy of Spinoza. It is monstrous to call evila positive thing, and to assert that God haspredetermined it, --to tell us that he has ordained whathe hates, and hates what he has ordained. It isincredible that we should be without power to obeyhim except through his free grace, and yet be heldresponsible for our failures when that grace has beenwithheld. And it is idle to call a philosophersacrilegious who has but systematized the faith which somany believe, and cleared it of its most hideous features. 

At all events, Spinoza flinches from nothing, and disguisesno conclusions either from himself or fromhis readers. We believe that logic has no business withsuch questions; that the answer to themlies in the conscience and not in the intellect, --thatit is practical merely, and not speculative. Spinozathinks otherwise; and he is at least true to theguide which he has chosen. Blyenburg presses himwith instances of horrid crime, such as bring hometo the heart the natural horror of it. He speaks ofNero's murder of Agrippina, and asks if God canbe called the cause of such an act as that. 

"God, " replies Spinoza, calmly, "is the cause of all thingswhich have reality. If you can show that evil, errors, crimes express any real things, I agree readily that God isthe cause of them; but I conceive myself to have provedthat what constitutes the essence of evil is not a real thingat all, and therefore that God cannot be the cause of it. Nero's matricide was not a crime, in so far as it was apositive outward act. Orestes also killed his mother; and wedo not judge Orestes as we judge Nero. The crime of thelatter lay in his being without pity, without obedience, without natural affection, --none of which things express anypositive essence, but the absence of it: and therefore Godwas not the cause of these, although he was the cause ofthe act and the intention. 

"But once for all, " he adds, "this aspect of things willremain intolerable and unintelligible as long as the commonnotions of free will remain unimproved. "

And of course, and we shall all confess it, if thesenotions are as false as he supposes them, and we haveno power to be anything but what we are, there neitheris nor can be such a thing as moral evil; and what wecall crimes will no more involve a violation of the willof God, they will no more impair his moral attributesif we suppose him to have willed them, than the sameactions, whether of lust, ferocity, or cruelty, in theinferior animals. There will be but, as Spinoza says, an infinite gradation in created things, the poorest lifebeing more than none, the meanest active dispositionsomething better than inertia, and the smallest exerciseof reason better than mere ferocity. Moral evil neednot disturb us, if--if we can be nothing but what we are, if we are but as clay. 

The moral aspect of the matter will be more clearas we proceed. We pause, however, to notice onedifficulty of a metaphysical kind, which is best disposedof in passing. Whatever obscurity may lie about thething which we call Time (philosophers not being ableto agree what it is, or whether properly it is anything), the words past, present, future do undoubtedly conveysome definite idea with them: things will be whichare not yet, and have been which are no longer. Nowif everything which exists be a necessary mathematicalconsequence from the nature or definition of the OneBeing, we cannot see how there can be any time butthe present, or how past and future have room for ameaning. God is, and therefore all properties of himare, just as every property of a circle exists in it assoon as the circle exists. We may if we like, forconvenience, throw our theorems into the future, and say, e. G. That if two lines in a circle cut each other, therectangle under the parts of the one will equal thatunder the parts of the other. But we only mean inreality that these rectangles are equal; and the futurerelates only to our knowledge of the fact. Allowing, however, as much as we please, that the condition ofEngland a hundred years hence lies already in embryoin existing causes, it is a paradox to say that suchcondition exists already in the sense in which the propertiesof the circle exist; and yet Spinoza insists onthe illustration. 

It is singular that he should not have noticed thedifficulty; not that either it or the answer to it (whichno doubt would have been ready enough) are likely tointerest any person except metaphysicians, a class ofthinkers, happily, which is rapidly diminishing. 

We proceed to more important matters--to Spinoza'sdetailed theory of Nature chiefly as exhibited in manand in man's mind, a theory which for its bold ingenuityis the most remarkable which on this dark subject hasever been proposed. Whether we can believe it ornot, is another question; yet undoubtedly it providesan answer for every difficulty; it accepts with equalwelcome the extremes of materialism and of spiritualism:and if it be the test of the soundness of a philosophythat it will explain phenomena and reconcile difficulties, it is hard to account for the fact that a systemwhich bears such a test so admirably, should neverthelessbe so incredible as it is. 

Most people have heard of the "Harmonie Pre-etablie"of Leibnitz; it is borrowed without acknowledgmentfrom Spinoza, and adapted to the Leibnitziansystem. "Man, " says Leibnitz, "is composed of mindand body; but what is mind and what is body, andwhat is the nature of their union? Substances soopposite in kind, it is impossible to suppose can affectone another; mind cannot act on matter, or matter uponmind; and the appearance of such mutual action ofthem on each other is an appearance only and a delusion. "A delusion so general, however, required to be accountedfor; and Leibnitz accounted for it by supposing that Godin creating a world, composed of material and spiritualphenomena, ordained from the beginning that theseseveral phenomena should proceed in parallel lines sideby side in a constantly corresponding harmony. The senseof seeing results, it appears to us, from the formation ofa picture upon the retina. The motion of the arm orthe leg appears to result from an act of will; but in eithercase we mistake coincidence for causation. Betweensubstances so wholly alien there can be no intercommunion;and we only suppose that the object seenproduces the idea, and that the desire produces themovement, because the phenomena of matter and thephenomena of spirit are so contrived as to flow alwaysin the same order and sequence. This hypothesis, ascoming from Leibnitz, has been, if not accepted, atleast listened to respectfully; because while taking itout of its proper place, he contrived to graft it uponChristianity; and succeeded, with a sort of speculativelegerdemain, in making it appear to be in harmony withrevealed religion. Disguised as a philosophy of Predestination, and connected with the Christian doctrineof Retribution, it steps forward with an air of unconsciousinnocence, as if interfering with nothingwhich Christians generally believe. And yet, leavingas it does no larger scope for liberty or responsibilitythan when in the hands of Spinoza, * Leibnitz, in ouropinion, has only succeeded in making it infinitely morerevolting. Spinoza could not regard the bad man asan object of Divine anger and a subject of retributorypunishment. He was not a Christian, and made nopretension to be considered such; and it did not occurto him to regard the actions of a being which, bothwith Leibnitz and himself, is (to use his own expression)an automaton spirituale, as deserving a fiery indignationand everlasting vengeance. 

____

* Since these words were written a book [Refutation lneditede Spinoza. Par Leibnitz. Precedee d'une Memoire, par Foucher de Carell. Paris. 1854. ] has appeared in Parisby an able disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not leadus to modify the opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to giveour reasons for speaking as we do. M. De Careil has discoveredin the library at Hanover a MS. In the handwriting of Leibnitz, containing a series of remarks on the book of a certain JohnWachter. It does not appear who this John Wachter was, norby what accident he came to have so distinguished a critic. If wemay judge by the extracts at present before us, he seems to havebeen an absurd and extravagant person, who had attempted tocombine the theology of the Cabbala with the very little whichhe was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza; and, asfar as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflections uponthem are of interest to any human being. The extravagance ofSpinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with anopportunity of noticing the points on which he most disapproved ofSpinoza himself; and these few notices M. De Caroil has nowfor the first time published as "The Refutation of Spinoza. ByLeibnitz. " They are exceedingly brief and scanty; and the writerof them would assuredly have hesitated to describe an imperfectcriticism by so ambitious a title. The modern editor, however, must be allowed the privilege of a worshipper, and we will notquarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his masterhad accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for whatis at least a curious discovery, and we will not qualify the gratitudewhich he has earned by industry and good will. At the sametime, the notes themselves confirm the opinion which we havealways entertained, that Leibnitz did not understand Spinoza. Leibnitz did not understand him, and the followers of Leibnitzdo not understand him now. If he were no more than what heis described in the book before us. --if his metaphysics were"miserable, " if his philosophy was absurd, and he himself nothingmore than a second-rate disciple of Descartes, --we can assureM. De Caroil that we should long ago have heard the last of him. 

There must be something else, something very different fromthis, to explain the position which he holds in Germany, or thefascination which his writings exerted over such minds as thoseof Lessing or of Goethe; and the fact of so enduring an influence ismore than a sufficient answer to mere depreciating criticism. This. However, is not a point which there is any use in pressing. Ourpresent business is to justify the two assertions which we havemade. First, that Leibnitz conceived his "Theory of the HarmonicPre-etablie" from Spinoza, without acknowledgment; and, secondly, that this theory is quite as inconsistent with religion asis that of Spinoza, and only differs from it in disguising its realcharacter. 

First for the "Harmonic Pre-etablie. " Spinoza's "Ethics"appeared in 1677; and we know that they were read by Leibnitz. In 1696, Leibnitz announced as a discovery of his own, a Theoryof "The Communication of Substances, " which he illustrates inthe following manner:--

"Vous ne comprenez pas, dites-vous, comment je pourrois prouverce que j'ai ovance touchant la communication, ou l'harmonie dedeux suhstances aussi differentes que l'ame et le corps? Il estvrai que je crois en avoir trouve le moyen; et voici comment jepretends vous satisfaire. Figurez-vous deux horologes ou montresqui s'accordent parfaitement. Or cela se pent faire de trotsmanieres. La 1^0 consiste dans une influence mutuelle. La 2^0 estd'y artocher un ouvrier hobile qui les redresse, et lea mette d'accorda tous moments. La 3^0 eat de fabriquer ces deux pendules avec tautd'art et de justesse, qu'on se puisse assurer de leur accord danala suite. Menez maintenant l'ame et le corps a la place de cesdeux pendules; leur accord pent arriver par l'une de ces troismanieres. La voye d'influence eat celle de la philosophic vulgaire;mais comme l'on ne sauroit concevoir des particules materiellesqui putssent passer d'une de ces substances dana l'autre, il fautabandonner ce sentiment. La voye de l'assistance continuelle duCreateur est celle du systeme des causes occasionnelles; mais jetiens que c'est fake intervenir Deus ex machina dans une chosenaturelle et ordinaire, ou selon la raison il ne doit concourir, quede la maniere qu'il concourt a toutes les autres choses naturelles. Ainsi il ne reste que mon hypothese; c'est-a-dire que la voye del'harmonie. Dieu a fait des le commencement chacune de cesdeux substances de telle nature, qu'en ne suivant que ces propresloix qu'elle a recues avec son etre, elle s'accorde pourtant avecl'autre tout comme s'il y avoit une influence mutuelle, ou commesi Dieu y mettoit toujours la main au de-la de son coneours general. Apres cela je n'ai pas besoin de rien prouver a moins qu'on neveuille exiger que je prouve que Dieu est assez habile pout se servirde cette artifice, " &c. --leibnitz Opera, p. 133. Berlin edition, 1840. 

Leibnitz, as we have said, attempts to reconcile his system withChristianity, and therefore, of course, this theory of the relation ofmind and body wears a very different aspect under his treatmentfrom what it wears under that of Spinoza. But Spinoza andLeibnitz both agree in this one peculiar conception in which they differfrom all other philosophers before or after them--that mind andbody have no direct communication with each other, and that thephenomena of them merely correspond. M. De Carell says theyboth borrowed it from Descartes; but that is impossible. Descartesheld no such opinion, it was the precise point of disagreement atwhich Spinoza parted from him: and therefore, since in point ofdate Spinoza had the advantage of Leibnitz, and we know thatLeibnitz was acquainted with his writings, we must either supposethat he was directly indebted to Spinoza for an obligation whichhe ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremelyimprobable, that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwardsreoriginated for himself one of the most singular and peculiarnotions which was ever offered to the belief of mankind. 

So much for the first point, which, after all, is but of littlemoment. It is more important to ascertain whether, in the handsof Leibnitz, this theory can be any better reconciled with what iscommonly meant by religion; whether, that is, the ideas ofobedience and disobedience, merit and demerit, judgment and retribution, have any proper place under it. Spinoza makes no pretension toanything of the kind, and openly declares that these ideas areideas merely, and human mistakes. Leibnitz, in opposition tohim, endeavours to re-establish them in the following manner. Itis true he conceives that the system of the universe has beenarranged and predetermined from the moment at which it waslaunched into being; from the moment at which God selected it, with all its details, as the best which could exist; but it iscarried on by the action of individual creatures (monads as he callsthem) which, though necessarily obeying the laws of their existence. Yet obey them with a "character of spontaneity, " which although"automata, " are yet voluntary agents; and therefore, by theconsent of their hearts to their actions, entitle themselves to moralpraise or moral censure. The question is, whether by the mereco-existence of these opposite qualifies in themonad man, he has proved that such qualities can coexist. Inour opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, or of aquadrilateral triangle. There is a plain dilemma in these matters fromwhich no philosophy can extricate itself. If man can incur guilt, their actions might be other than they are. If they cannot actotherwise than they do, they cannot incur guilt. So at least itappears to us; yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we wouldnot complain merely of a theory, and if our earthly life were allin all, and the grave remained the extreme horizon of our hopesand fears, the "Harmonic Pre-etablie, " might be tolerated ascredible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful. It is whenforcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has nonatural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. Theworld may be in the main good; while the good, from theunknown condition of its existence, may be impossible without someintermixture of evil; and although Leibnitz was at times staggeredeven himself by the misery and wickedness which he witnessed, and was driven to comfort himself with the reflection that thisearth might be but one world in the midst of the universe, andperhaps the single chequered exception in an infinity of stainlessglobes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis because it wasimperfect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a dark subject, when nothing better than conjecture was attainable. 

But as soon as we are told that the evil in these "automata"of mankind, being, as it is, a necessary condition of this worldwhich God has called into being, is yet infinitely detestable toGod; that the creatures who suffer under the accursed necessityof committing sin are infinitely guilty in God's eyes, for doingwhat they have no power to avoid, and may therefore be justlypunished in everlasting fire; our hearts recoil against the paradox. 

No disciple of Leibnitz will maintain, that unless he had foundthis belief in an eternity of penal retribution an article of thepopular creed, such a doctrine would have formed a natural appendageof his system; and if M. De Careil desires to know why theinfluence of Spinoza, whose genius he considers so insignificant, has been so deep and so enduring, while Leibnitz has only securedfor himself a mere admiration of his talents, it is because Spinozawas not afraid to be consistent, even at the price of the world'sreprobation, and refused to purchase the applause of his own ageat the sacrifice of the singleness of his heart. ____

"Deus, " according to Spinoza's definition, "est ensconstans infinitis attributis quorum unumquodque aeternam etinfinitam essentiam exprimit. " Under each of these attributesinfinita sequuntur, and everything which an infinite intelligencecan conceive, and an infinite power can produce, --everythingwhich follows as a possibility out of the divine nature, --allthings which have been, and are, and will be, --find expressionand actual existence, not under one attribute only, but under each and every attribute. Language is soill adapted to such a system, that even to stateit accurately is all but impossible, and analogies canonly remotely suggest what such expressions mean. But it is as if it were said that the same thought mightbe expressed in an infinite variety of languages; andnot in words only, but in action, in painting, in sculpture, in music, in any form of any kind which can beemployed as a means of spiritual embodiment. Of allthese infinite attributes two only, as we said, are knownto us, --extension and thought. Material phenomenaare phenomena of extension; and to every modificationof extension an idea corresponds under the attribute ofthought. Out of such a compound as this is formedman, composed of body and mind; two parallel andcorrespondent modifications eternally answering oneanother. And not man only, but all other beings andthings are similarly formed and similarly animated;the anima or mind of each varying according to thecomplicity of the organism of its material counterpart. Although body does not think, nor affect the mind'spower of thinking; and mind does not control body, nor communicate to it either motion or rest or any influencefrom itself, yet body with all its properties is theobject or ideate of mind; whatsoever body does mindperceives, and the greater the energizing power of thefirst, the greater the perceiving power of the second. And this is not because they are adapted one to theother by some inconceivable preordinating power, butbecause mind and body are una et eatlent res, the oneabsolute being affected in one and the same manner, but expressed under several attributes; the modes andaffections of each attribute having that being for theircause, as he exists under that attribute of which theyare modes and no other; idea being caused by idea, and body affected by body; the image on the retinabeing produced by the object reflected upon it, the ideaor image in our minds by the idea of that object, &c. &c. 

A solution so remote from all ordinary ways ofthinking on these matters is so difficult to grasp, thatone can hardly speak of it as being probable, or asbeing improbable. Probability extends only to whatwe can imagine as possible, and Spinoza's theory seemsto lie beyond the range within which our judgment canexercise itself; in our own opinion, indeed, as we havealready said, the entire subject is one with which wehave no business; and the explanation of it, if it isever to be explained to us, is reserved till we are insome other state of existence. We do not disbelieveSpinoza because what he suggests is in itself incredible. The chances may be millions to one against his beingright, yet the real truth, if we knew it, would be probablyat least as strange as his conception of it. But we arefirmly convinced that of these questions, and all likethem, practical answers only lie within the reach ofhuman faculties; and that in all such "researches intothe absolute" we are on the road which ends nowhere. 

Among the difficulties, however, most properly akinto this philosophy itself, there is one most obvious, viz. , that if the attributes of God be infinite, and eachparticular thing is expressed under them all, then mindand body express but an infinitesimal portion of thenature of each of ourselves; and this human natureexists (i. E. , there exists corresponding modes of substance)in the whole infinity of the divine nature underattributes differing each from each, and all from mindand all from body. That this must be so, followsobviously from the definition of the Infinite Being, andthe nature of the distinction between the two attributeswhich are known to us; and if this be so, why doesnot the mind perceive something of all these otherattributes? The objection is well expressed by acorrespondent (Letter 67):--"It follows from what yousay, " he writes to Spinoza, "that the modification whichconstitutes my mind, and that which constitutes mybody, although it be one and the same modification, yetmust be expressed in an infinity of ways; one way bythought, a second way by extension, a third by someattribute unknown to me, and so on to infinity; theattributes being infinite in number, and the order andconnection of modes being the same in them all; why, then, does the mind perceive the modes of but oneattribute only?"

Spinoza's answer is curious: unhappily a fragmentof his letter only is extant, so that it is too brief to besatisfactory. 

"In reply to your difficulty, " he says, "although eachparticular thing be truly in the Infinite mind, conceivedin Infinite modes, the Infinite idea answering to allthese cannot constitute one and the same mind of anysingle being, but must constitute Infinite minds. Noone of all these Infinite ideas has any connection withanother. "

He means, we suppose, that God's mind only perceives, or can perceive, things under their Infinite expression, and that the idea of each several mode, underwhatever attribute, constitutes a separate mind. 

We do not know that we can add anything to thisexplanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweepof the speculation itself; we will however attempt anillustration, although we fear it will be to illustrateobscurum tier obscurius. Let A B C D be four out ofthe Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A theattribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C andD other attributes, the nature of which is not knownto us. Now A, as the attribute of mind, is that whichperceives all which takes place under B C and D, but itis only as it exists in God that it forms the universalconsciousness of an attributes at once. In its modificationsit is combined separately with the modifications ofeach, constituting in combination with the modes ofeach attribute a separate being. As forming the mindof B, A perceives what takes place in B, but not whattakes place in C or D. Combined with B, it forms thesoul of the human body, and generally the soul of allmodifications of extended substance; combined with C, it forms the soul of some other analogous being;combined with D, again of another; but the combinationsare only in pairs, in which A is constant. A and Bmake one being, A and C another, A and D a third;but B will not combine with C, nor C with D; eachattribute being, as it were, conscious only of itself. And therefore, although to those modifications of mindand extension which we call ourselves there arecorresponding modifications under C and D, and generallyunder each of the Infinite attributes of God; each ofourselves being in a sense Infinite, nevertheless weneither have nor can have any knowledge of ourselvesin this Infinite aspect; our actual consciousnessbeing limited to the phenomena of sensible experience. 

English readers, however, are likely to care little forall this; they will look to the general theory, and judgeof it as its aspect affects them. And first, perhaps, they will be tempted to throw aside as absurd thenotion that their bodies go through the many operationswhich they experience them to do, undirected bytheir minds; it is a thing they may say at oncepreposterous and incredible. And no doubt on the firstblush it sounds absurd, and yet, on second thoughts, it is less so than it seems; and though we could notpersuade ourselves to believe it, absurd in the senseof having nothing to be said for it, it certainly is not. It is far easier, for instance, to imagine the humanbody capable by its own virtue, and by the laws ofmaterial organisation, of building a house, than ofthinking; and yet men are allowed to say that thebody thinks, without being regarded as candidates fora lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up intostem and leaf and throw out flowers; we observe itfulfilling processes of chemistry more subtle than wereever executed in Liebig's laboratory, and producingstructures more cunning than man can imitate. Thebird builds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicateweb and stretches it in the path of his prey; directednot by calculating thought, as we conceive ourselvesto be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance ofthe nature of which we disguise from ourselves, andcall it instinct, but which we believe at least to besome property residing in the organisation; and weare not to suppose that the human body, the mostcomplex of all material structures, has slighter powersin it than the bodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect. Let us listen to Spinoza himself:--

"There can be no doubt, " he says, "that this hypothesisis true, but unless I can prove it from experience, menwill not, I fear, be induced even to reflect upon it calmly, so persuaded are they that it is by the mind only that theirbodies are set in motion. And yet what body can or cannotdo no one has yet determined; body, i. E. , by the law of itsown nature, and without assistance from mind. No onehas so probed the human frame as to have detected all itsfunctions and exhausted the list of them: and there arepowers exhibited by animals far exceeding human sagacity;and again, feats are performed by somnambulists on whichin the waking state the same persons would never venture--itself a proof that body is able to accomplish what mindcan only admire. Men say that mind moves body, but howit moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion it canimpart to it; so that, in fact, they do not know what theysay, and are only confessing their own ignorance in speciouslanguage. They will answer me, that whether or not theyunderstand how it can be, yet that they are assured by plainexperience that unless mind could perceive, body would bealtogether inactive; they know that it depends on the mindwhether the tongue speak or not. But do they not equallyexperience that if their bodies are paralysed their mindscannot think? That if their bodies are asleep their mindsare without power? That their minds are not at all timesequally able to exert themselves even on the same subject, but depend on the state of their bodies? And as forexperience proving that the members of the body can becontrolled by the mind, I fear experience proves very muchthe reverse. But it is absurd, they rejoin, to attempt toexplain from the mere laws of body such things as pictures, or palaces, or works of art; the body could not build achurch unless mind directed it. I have shown, however, that we do not vet know what body can or cannot do, orwhat would naturally follow from the structure of it; thatwe experience in the feats of somnambulists somethingwhich antecedently to that experience would have seemedincredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitelyany contrivance of human skill, and an infinity ofthings, as I have already proved, ought to follow from it. "

We are not concerned to answer this reasoning, although if the matter were one the debating of whichcould be of any profit, it would undoubtedly have itsweight, and would require to be patiently considered. Life is too serious, however, to be wasted with impunityover speculations in which certainty is impossible, andin which we are trifling with what is inscrutable. 

Objections of a far graver kind were anticipated bySpinoza himself, when he went on to gather out of hisphilosophy "that the mind of man being part of theInfinite intelligence, when we say that such a mindperceives this thing or that, we are, in fact, saying thatGod perceives it, not that he is Infinite, but as he isrepresented by the nature of this or that idea; andsimilarly, when we say that a man does this or thataction, we say that God does it not qua he is Infinite, but qua he is expressed in that man's nature. " "Here, "he says, "many readers will no doubt hesitate, andmany difficulties will occur to them in the way of sucha supposition. " Undoubtedly there was reason enoughto form, such an anticipation. As long as the Beingwhom he so freely names remains surrounded with theassociations which in this country we bring with us outof our child years, not all the logic in the world wouldmake us listen to language such as this. It is not so--we know it, and it is enough. We are well awareof the phalanx of difficulties which lie about our ordinarytheistic conceptions. They are quite enough, if religiondepended on speculative consistency, and not inobedience of life, to perplex and terrify us. What arewe? what is anything? If it be not divine, what is itthen? If created--out of what is it created? and howcreated--and why? These questions, and others farmore momentous which we do not enter upon here, may be asked and cannot be answered; but we cannotany the more consent to Spinoza on the ground that healone consistently provides an answer; because, as wehave said again and again, we do not care to have themanswered at all. Conscience is the single tribunal towhich we will be referred, and conscience declaresimperatively that what he says is not true. But ofall this it is painful to speak, and as far as possible wedesignedly avoid it. Pantheism is not Atheism, but theInfinite Positive and the Infinite Negative are not soremote from one another in their practical bearings;only let us remember that we are far indeed from thetruth if we think that God to Spinoza was nothing elsebut that world which we experience. It is but one ofinfinite expressions of Him, a conception which makesus giddy in the effort to realize it. 

We have arrived at last at the outwork of the wholematter in its bearings upon life and human duty. Itwas in the search after this last, that Spinoza, as wesaid, travelled over so strange a country, and we nowexpect his conclusions. To discover the true goodof man, to direct his actions to such ends as will secureto him real and lasting felicity, and by a comparison ofhis powers with the objects offered to them, to ascertainhow far they are capable of arriving at these objects, and by what means they can best be trained towardsthem--is the aim which Spinoza assigns to philosophy. "Most people, " he adds, "deride or vilify their nature;it is a better thing to endeavour to understand it; andhowever extravagant it may be thought in me to do so, Ipropose to analyse the properties of that nature as if itwere a mathematical figure. " Mind, being, as we haveseen, nothing else than the idea corresponding to thisor that affection of body; we are not, therefore, tothink of it as a faculty, but simply and merely as an act. There is no general power called intellect, any morethan there is any general abstract volition, but only hicet ille intellectus et haec et illa volitio, and again, bythe word Mind, is understood not merely acts of willor intellect, but all forms also of consciousness ofsensation or emotion. The human body being composedof many small bodies, the mind is similarly composedof many minds, and the unity of body and of minddepends on the relation which the component portionsmaintain towards each other. This is obviously thecase with body, and if we can translate metaphysics intocommon experience, it is equally the case with mind. There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect;a thousand tastes, tendencies, and inclinations form ourmental composition; and evidently since one contradictsanother, and each has a tendency to become dominant, it is only in the harmonious equipoise of their severalactivities, in their due and just subordination, that anyunity of action or consistency of feeling is possible. Aftera masterly analysis of all these tendencies (the mostcomplete by far which has ever been made by any moralphilosopher), Spinoza arrives at the principles underwhich such unity and consistency can be obtained as thecondition upon which a being so composed can look forany sort of happiness. And these principles, arrived atas they are by a route so different, are the same, and areproposed by Spinoza as being the same, as those of theChristian Religion. 

It might seem impossible in a system which bindstogether in so inexorable a sequence the relations ofcause and effect, to make a place for the action of humanself-control; but consideration will show, that howevervast the difference between those who deny and thosewho affirm the liberty of the will (in the sense in which theexpression is usually understood), it is not a differencewhich affects the conduct or alters the practical bearingsof it. It is quite possible that conduct may be determinedby laws; laws as absolute as those of matter;and yet that the one as well as the other may be broughtunder control by a proper understanding of those laws. Now, experience seems plainly to say, that while all ouractions arise out of desire--that whatever we do, we dofor the sake of something which we wish to be or toobtain--we are differently affected towards what isproposed to us as an object of desire, in proportion aswe understand the nature of such object in itself and inits consequences. The better we know the better weact, and the fallacy of all common arguments againstnecessitarianism lies in the assumption that it leavesno room for self-direction; whereas it merely insistsin exact conformity with experience on the conditionsunder which self-determination is possible. Conduct, according to the necessitarian, depends on knowledge. Let a man certainly know that there is poison in thecup of wine before him, and he will not drink it. Bythe law of cause and effect, his desire for the wine isovercome by the fear of the pain or the death which willfollow; and so with everything which comes before him. Let the consequences of any action be clear, definite, and inevitable, and though Spinoza would not say thatthe knowledge of them will be absolutely sufficient todetermine the conduct (because the clearest knowledgemay be overborne by violent passion), yet it is the bestwhich we have to trust to, and will do much if it cannotdo all. On this hypothesis, after a diagnosis of the varioustendencies of human nature, called commonly thepassions and affections, he returns upon the nature ofour ordinary knowledge to derive out of it the means fortheir control: all these tendencies of themselves seektheir own objects--seek them blindly and immoderately;and all the mistakes, and all the unhappinessesof life, arise from the want of due understanding of theseobjects, and a just subordination of the desire for them. His analysis is remarkably clear; but it is too long forus to enter upon it; the important thing being thecharacter of the control which is to be exerted. And toarrive at this, he employs a distinction of great practicalutility, and which is peculiarly his own. Following histripartite division of knowledge, he finds all kinds ofit arrange themselves under one of two classes, and tobe either adequate or inadequate. By adequate knowledgehe means not necessarily what is exhaustive andcomplete, but what, as far as it goes, is distinct andunconfused: by inadequate, what we know merely asfact either derived from our own sensations, or from theauthority of others; but of the connexion of whichwith other facts, of the causes, effects, or meaning ofwhich we know nothing. We may have an adequateidea of a circle, though we are unacquainted with all theproperties which belong to it; we conceive it distinctlyas a figure generated by the rotation of a line, one endof which is stationary. Phenomena, on the otherhand, however made known to us--phenomena of thesenses, and phenomena of experience, as long as theyremain phenomena merely, and unseen in any higherrelation--we can never know except as inadequately. We cannot tell what outward things are, by coming incontact with certain features of them. We have a veryimperfect acquaintance even with our own bodies, andthe sensations which we experience of various kindsrather indicate to us the nature of these bodies themselvesthan of the objects which affect them. Now it isobvious that the greater part of mankind act only uponknowledge of this latter kind. The amusements, eventhe active pursuits of most of us, remain wholly withinthe range of uncertainty; and, therefore, necessarily arefull of hazard and precariousness: little or nothing issuesas we expect; we look for pleasure and we find pain;we shun one pain and find a greater; and thus arises theineffectual character which we so complain of in life--the disappointments, failures, mortifications which formthe material of so much moral meditation on the vanityof the world. Much of all this is inevitable from theconstitution of our nature. The mind is too infirmto be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. Theconditions of life oblige us to act in many cases whichcannot be understood by us except with the utmostinadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which hasdetermined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect inthe best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all; and, although through a large tract of life "there comes oneevent to all, to the wise and to the unwise, " "yetwisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness. "The phenomena of experience by inductive experiment, and just and careful consideration, arrange themselvesunder laws uniform in their operation, and furnishing aguide to the judgment; and over all things, althoughthe interval must remain unexplored for ever, becausewhat we would search into is Infinite, may be seenthe beginning of all things, the absolute eternal God. "Mens humana, " Spinoza continues, "quaedam agit, quaedam vero patitur. " In so far as it is influenced byinadequate ideas, "eatenus patitur"--it is passive andin bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice: in sofar as its ideas are adequate, "eatenus agit"--it isactive, it is itself. While we are governed by outwardtemptations, by the casual pleasures, the fortunes or themisfortunes of life, we are but instruments, yieldingourselves to be acted upon as the animal is acted on byits appetites, or the inanimate matter by the laws whichbind it--we are slaves--instruments, it may be, of somehigher purpose in the order of nature, but in ourselvesnothing; instruments which are employed for a specialwork, and which are consumed in effecting it. So far, on the contrary, as we know clearly what we do, as weunderstand what we are, and direct our conduct not bythe passing emotion of the moment, but by a grave, clear, and constant knowledge of what is really good, sofar we are said to act--we are ourselves the spring ofour own activity--we desire the genuine well-being ofour entire nature, and that we can always find, and itnever disappoints us when found. 

All things desire life, seek for energy, and fuller andampler being. The component parts of man, his variousappetites and passions, are seeking for this whilepursuing each its own immoderate indulgence; and it is theprimary law of every single being that it so follows whatwill give it increased vitality. Whatever will contributeto such increase is the proper good of each; and thegood of man as a united being is measured anddetermined by the effect of it upon his collective powers. The appetites gather power from their several objects ofdesire; but the power of the part is the weakness ofthe whole; and man as a collective person gathers life, being, and self-mastery only from the absolute good, --the source of all real good, and truth, and energy, --that is, God. The love of God is the extinction of allother loves and all other desires; to know God, as faras man can know him, is power, self-government, andpeace. And this is virtue, and this is blessedness. Thus, by a formal process of demonstration, we arebrought round to the old conclusions of theology; andSpinoza protests that it is no new doctrine which he isteaching, but that it is one which in various dialectshas been believed from the beginning of the world. It is a necessary consequence of the simple propositionsthat happiness depends on the consistency andcoherency of character, and that such coherency can onlybe given by the knowledge of the One Being, to knowwhom is to know all things adequately, and to lovewhom is to have conquered every other inclination. The more entirely our minds rest on Him, the moredistinctly we regard all things in their relation to Him, the more we cease to be under the dominion of externalthings; we surrender ourselves consciously to do His will, and as living men and not as passive things we become theinstruments of His power. When the true nature andtrue causes of our affections become clear to us, theyhave no more power to influence us. The more weunderstand, the less can feeling sway us; we know thatall things are what they are, because they are soconstituted that they could not be otherwise, and we ceaseto be angry with our brother, we cease to hate him; weshall not fret at disappointment, nor complain of fortune, because no such thing as fortune exists; and if we aredisappointed it is better than if we had succeeded, notperhaps for ourselves, yet for the universe. We cannotfear, when nothing can befall us except what God, wills, and we shall not violently hope when the future, whatever it be, will be the best which is possible. Seeing all things in their place in the everlasting order, Past and Future will not affect us. The temptation ofpresent pleasure will not overcome the certainty offuture pain, for the pain will be as sure as the pleasure, and we shall see all things under a rule of adamant. The foolish and the ignorant are led astray by the ideaof contingency, and expect to escape the just issues oftheir actions: the wise man will know that each actionbrings with it its inevitable consequences, which evenGod cannot change without ceasing to be Himself. 

In such a manner, through all the conditions oflife, Spinoza pursues the advantages which will accrueto man from the knowledge of God, God and manbeing what his philosophy has described them. Itcannot be denied that it is most beautiful; althoughmuch of its beauty is perhaps due to associations whichhave arisen out of Christianity, and which in thesystem of pantheism have no proper abiding place. Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Christianity, he even seems to have relieved himself of the morefearful features of the general creed. He acknowledgesno hell, no devil, no positive and active agencyat enmity with God; but sees in all things infinitegradations of beings, all in their way obedient, and allfulfilling the part allotted to them. Doubtless a pleasantexchange and a grateful deliverance, if only wecould persuade ourselves that a hundred pages ofjudiciously arranged demonstrations could really andindeed have worked it for us. If we could indeedbelieve that we could have the year without its winter, day without night, sunlight without shadow. Evil isunhappily too real a thing to be so disposed of. 

Yet if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken inits entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselvesto the beauty of his practical rule of life, or thedisinterestedness and calm nobility which pervades it. Hewill not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded. Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and thatis the exhaustive end of all human desire. "Beatitudonon est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus. Nihil aliudest quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei intuitivacognitione oritur. " And the same spirit of generosityexhibits itself in all his conclusions. The ordinaryobjects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that forone man to obtain them is for another to lose them;and this alone would suffice to prove that they are notwhat any man should labour after. But the fullness ofGod suffices for us all, and he who possesses this gooddesires only to communicate it to every one, and tomake all mankind as happy as himself. And again:--"The wise man will not speak in society of his neighbour'sfaults, and sparingly of the infirmity of humannature; but he will speak largely of human virtue andhuman power, and of the means by which that naturecan best be perfected, so to lead men to put away thatfear and aversion with which they look on goodness, and learn with relieved hearts to love and desire it. "And once more:--"He who loves God will not desirethat God should love him in return with any partial orparticular affection, for that is to desire that God for hissake should change his everlasting nature and becomelower than himself. "

One grave element, indeed, of a religious faith wouldseem in such a system to be necessarily wanting. Whereindividual action is resolved into the modified activityof the Universal Being, all absorbing and all evolving, the individuality of the personal man would at bestappear but an evanescent and unreal shadow. Suchindividuality, however, as we now possess, whatever itbe, might continue to exist in a future state as really asit exists in the present, and those to whom it belongsmight be anxious naturally for its persistence. And yetit would seem that if the soul be nothing except the ideaof a body actually existing, when that body is decomposedinto its elements, the soul corresponding to it mustaccompany it into an answering dissolution. And this, indeed, Spinoza in one sense actually affirms, when hedenies to the mind any power of retaining consciousnessof what has befallen it in life, "nisi durante corpore. "But Spinozism is a philosophy full of surprises; and ourcalculations of what must belong to it are perpetuallybaffled. The imagination, the memory, the senses, whatever belongs to inadequate perception, perishnecessarily and eternally; and the man who has beenthe slave of his inclinations, who has no knowledge ofGod, and no active possession of himself, having in lifepossessed no personality, loses in death the appearanceof it with the dissolution of the body. 

Nevertheless, there is in God an idea expressing theessence of the mind, united to the mind as the mind isunited to the body, and thus there is in the soulsomething of an everlasting nature which cannot utterlyperish. And here Spinoza, as he often does in many ofhis most solemn conclusions, deserts for a moment thethread of his demonstrations, and appeals to theconsciousness. In spite of our non-recollection of whatpassed before our birth, in spite of all difficulties fromthe dissolution of the body, "Nihilo minus, " he says, "sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse. Nam mensnon minus res illas sentit quas intelligendo concipit, quam quas in memoria habet. Mentis enim oculi quibusres videt observatque sunt ipsae demonstrationes. "

This perception, immediately revealed to the mind, falls into easy harmony with the rest of the system. Asthe mind is not a faculty, but an act or acts, --not apower of perception, but the perception itself, --in itshigh union with the highest object (to use the metaphysicallanguage which Coleridge has made popular andperhaps partially intelligible), the object and the subjectbecome one; a difficult expression, but the meaning ofwhich (as it bears on our present subject) may besomething of this kind:--If knowledge be followed as it oughtto be followed, and all objects of knowledge be regardedin their relations to the One Absolute Being, the knowledgeof particular outward things, of nature, or life, orhistory, becomes in fact, knowledge of God; and themore complete or adequate such knowledge, the morethe mind is raised above what is perishable in thephenomena to the idea or law which lies beyond them. It learns to dwell exclusively upon the eternal, not uponthe temporary; and being thus occupied with the everlastinglaws, and its activity subsisting in its perfectunion with them, it contracts in itself the character ofthe objects which possess it. Thus we are emancipatedfrom the conditions of duration; we are liable even todeath only quatenus patimur, as we are passive thingsand not active intelligences; and the more we possesssuch knowledge and are possessed by it, the moreentirely the passive is superseded by the active--so thatat last the human soul may "become of such a naturethat the portion of it which will perish with the body inin comparison with that of it which shall endure, shallbe insignificant and nullius momenti. " (Eth v. 38. )

Such are the principal features of a philosophy, theinfluence of which upon Europe, direct and indirect, itis not easy to over-estimate. The account of it is farfrom being an account of the whole of Spinoza's labours;his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" was the forerunnerof German historical criticism; the whole of which hasbeen but the application of principles laid down in thatremarkable work. But this was not a subject on which, upon the present occasion, it was desirable to enter, andwe have designedly confined ourselves to the systemwhich is most associated with the name of its author. It is this which has been really powerful, which hasstolen over the minds even of thinkers who imaginethemselves most opposed to it. It has appeared in theabsolute Pantheism of Schelling and Hegel, in thePantheistic Christianity of Herder and Schleiermacher. Passing into practical life it has formed the strongshrewd judgment of Goethe, while again it has beenable to unite with the theories of the most extremematerialism. 

It lies too, perhaps (and here its influence has beenunmixedly good) at the bottom of that more reverentcontemplation of nature which has caused the success ofour modern landscape painting, which inspiredWordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science isto become an instrument of intellectual education, mustfirst be infused into the lessons of nature; the sense ofthat "something" interfused in the material world--

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;--A motion and a spirit, which impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. "

If we shrink from regarding the extended universe, with Spinoza, as an actual manifestation of AlmightyGod, we are unable to rest in the mere denial that it isthis. We go on to ask what it is, and we are obliged toconclude thus much at least of it, that every smallestbeing was once a thought in his mind; and in the studyof what he has made we are really and truly studyinga revelation of himself. 

It is not here, it is not on the physical, it is rather onthe moral side, that the point of main offence is lying;in that excuse for evil and for evil men which thenecessitarian theory will furnish, disguise it in whatfair-sounding words we will. So plain this is thatcommon-sense people, and especially English people, cannot bring themselves even to consider the questionwithout impatience, and turn disdainfully and angrilyfrom a theory which confuses their plain instincts of rightand wrong. Although, however, error on this side isinfinitely less mischievous than on the other, no vehementerror can exist in this world with impunity; and it doesappear that in our common view of these matters wehave closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and have given the fatalist a vantage groundof real truth which we ought to have considered andallowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enterbriefly into this unpromising ground. Life and thenecessities of life are our best philosophers if we willonly listen honestly to what they say to us; and dislikethe lesson as we may, it is cowardice which refuses tohear it. 

The popular belief is, that right and wrong lies beforeevery man, and that he is free to choose between them, and the responsibility of choice rests with himself. Thefatalist's belief is that every man's actions aredetermined by causes external and internal over which hehas no power, leaving no room for any moral choicewhatever. The first is contradicted by plain facts; thesecond by the instinct of conscience. Even Spinoza allowsthat for practical purposes we are obliged to regard thefuture as contingent, and ourselves as able to influenceit; and it is incredible that both our inward convictionsand our outward conduct should be built together upona falsehood. But if, as Butler says, whatever be thespeculative account of the matter, we are practicallyforced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half thetruth, for it may be equally said that practically we areforced to regard each other as not free; and to makeallowance, every moment, for influences for which wecannot hold each other personally responsible. If not, --if every person of sound mind (in the commonacceptation of the term) be equally able at all times toact right if only he will, --why all the care which wetake of children? why the pains to keep them frombad society? why do we so anxiously watch theirdisposition, to determine the education which will bestanswer to it? Why in cases of guilt do we vary ourmoral censure according to the opportunities of theoffender? Why do we find excuses for youth, forinexperience, for violent natural passion, for badeducation, bad example? Except that we feel that all thesethings do affect the culpability of the guilty person, andthat it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them. Butwhat we act upon in private life we cannot acknowledgein our general ethical theories, and while our conduct indetail is human and just, we have been contented togather our speculative philosophy out of the broad andcoarse generalisations of political necessity. In the swifthaste of social life we must indeed treat men as we findthem. We have no time to make allowances; andthe graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is amere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eyethough he has been trained from his cradle in thekennels of St. Giles's; and definite penalties must beattached to definite acts, the conditions of political lifenot admitting of any other method of dealing with them. But it is absurd to argue from such rude necessity thateach act therefore, by whomsoever committed, is of specificculpability. The act is one thing, the moral guilt isanother. And there are many cases in which, as Butleragain allows, if we trace a sinner's history to the bottom, the guilt attributable to himself appears to vanish altogether. 

This is all plain matter of fact, and as long as wecontinue to deny or ignore it, there will be found men (notbad men, but men who love the truth as much as ourselves), who will see only what we neglect, and willinsist upon it, and build their system upon it. 

And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are thosenatural tendencies which each of us brings with him intothe world, --which we did not make, and yet whichalmost as much determine what we are to be, as theproperties of the seed determine the tree which shallgrow from it. Men are self-willed, or violent, orobstinate, or weak, or generous, or affectionate; there is aslarge difference in their dispositions as in the features oftheir faces; and that by no original act of their own. Duties which are easy to one, another finds difficult orimpossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Twochildren are taught to draw; one learns with ease, theother hardly or never. In vain the master will showhim what to do. It seems so easy: it seems as if hehad only to will and the thing would be done; butit is not so. Between the desire and the execution liesthe incapable organ which only wearily, and after longlabour, imperfectly accomplishes what is required of it. And the same, to a certain extent, unless we will denythe plainest facts of experience, holds true in moralactions. No wonder, therefore, that evaded or thrustaside as these things are in the popular beliefs, as soonas they are recognized in their full reality they shouldbe mistaken for the whole truth, and that the free-willtheory be thrown aside as a chimera. 

It may be said, and it often is said, that all suchreasonings are merely sophistical--that however weentangle ourselves in logic, we are conscious that we arefree; we know--we are as sure as we are of ourexistence that we have power to act this way or thatway, exactly as we choose. But this is less plain thanit seems; and if we grant it, it proves less than it appearsto prove. It may be true that we can act as we choose, but can we choose? Is not our choice determined forus? We cannot determine from the fact, because wealways have chosen as soon as we act, and we cannotreplace the conditions in such a way as to discoverwhether we could have chosen anything else. Thestronger motive may have determined our volitionwithout our perceiving it; and if we desire to proveour independence of motive, by showing that we canchoose something different from that which we shouldnaturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from thecircle, this very desire becoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a motive. Again, consciousness of the possessionof any power may easily be delusive; we can properlyjudge what our powers are only by what they haveactually accomplished; we know what we have done, and we may infer from having done it, that our powerwas equal to what it achieved; but it is easy for us tooverrate ourselves if we try to measure our abilities inthemselves. A man who can leap five yards may thinkthat he can leap six; yet he may try and fail. A manwho can write prose may only learn that he cannotwrite poetry from the badness of the verses which heproduces. To the appeal to consciousness of powerthere is always an answer:--that we may believeourselves to possess it, but that experience proves that wemay be deceived. 

There are, however, another set of feelings whichcannot be set aside in this way, which do prove that, insome sense or other, in some degree or other, we arethe authors of our own actions, --that there is a pointfit which we begin to be responsible for them. It isone of the clearest of all inward phenomena, that, wheretwo or more courses involving moral issues are beforeus, whether we have a consciousness of power to choosebetween them or not, we have a consciousness thatwe ought to choose between them; a sense of dutyhoti dei touto prattein, as Aristotle expresses it, whichwe cannot shake off. Whatever this involves (andsome measure of freedom it must involve or it isnonsense), the feeling exists within us, and refuses to yieldbefore all the batteries of logic. It is not that of thetwo courses we know that one is in the long run thebest, and the other more immediately tempting. Wehave a sense of obligation irrespective of consequence, the violation of which is followed again by a sense ofself-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. In vain willSpinoza tell us that such feelings, incompatible as theyare with the theory of powerlessness, are mere mistakesarising out of a false philosophy. They are primaryfacts of sensation most vivid in minds of most vigoroussensibility; and although they may be extinguished byhabitual profligacy, or possibly, perhaps, destroyed bylogic, the paralysis of the conscience is no more a proofthat it is not a real power of perceiving real things, than blindness is a proof that sight is not a real power. The perceptions of worth and worthlessness are notconclusions of reasoning, but immediate sensations likethose of seeing and hearing; and although, like theother senses, they may be mistaken sometimes in theaccounts they render to us, the fact of the existence ofsuch feelings at all proves that there is somethingwhich corresponds to them. If there be any suchthings as "true ideas, " or clear distinct perceptions atall, this of praise and blame is one of them, and accordingto Spinoza's own rule we must accept what itinvolves. And it involves that somewhere or other theinfluence of causes ceases to operate, and that somedegree of power there is in men of self-determination, by the amount of which, and not by their specificactions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. Speculative difficulties remain in abundance. It willbe said in a case, e. G. Of moral trial, that there mayhave been power; but was there power enough to resistthe temptation? If there was, then it was resisted. Ifthere was not, there was no responsibility. We mustanswer again from a practical instinct. We refuse toallow men to be considered all equally guilty whohave committed the same faults; and we insist thattheir actions must be measured against their opportunities. But a similar conviction assures us that there issomewhere a point of freedom. Where that point is, where other influences terminate, and responsibilitybegins, will always be of intricate and often impossiblesolution. But if there be such a point at all, it is fatal tonecessitarianism, and man is what he has been hithertosupposed to be--an exception in the order of nature, with a power not differing in degree but differing inkind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like alllife, is a mystery; and as to dissect the body will notreveal the secret of animation, so with the actions ofthe moral man. The spiritual life, which alone givesthem meaning and being, glides away before the logicaldissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to workupon. ____

REYNARD THE FOX

In a recent dissatisfied perusal of Mr. Macaulay'scollected articles, we were especially offended by hiscurious and undesirable Essay on Machiavelli. Decliningthe various solutions which have been offeredto explain how a man supposed to be so great couldhave lent his genius to the doctrine of "the Prince, " hehas advanced a hypothesis of his own, which may ormay not be true, as an interpretation of Machiavelli'scharacter, but which, as an exposition of a universalethical theory, is as detestable as what it is broughtforward to explain . .. We will not show Mr. Macaulaythe disrespect of supposing that he has unsuccessfullyattempted an elaborate piece of irony. It is possible thathe may have been exercising his genius with a paradox, but the subject is not of the sort in which we canpatiently permit such exercises. It is hard work withall of us to keep ourselves straight, even when we seethe road with all plainness as it lies out before us; andclever men must be good enough to find something elseto amuse themselves with, instead of dusting our eyeswith sophistry. 

In Mr. Macaulay's conception of human nature, thebasenesses and the excellencies of mankind are no morethan accidents of circumstance, the results of nationalfeeling and national capabilities; and cunning andtreachery, and lying, and such other "natural defencesof the weak against the strong, " are in themselvesneither good nor bad, except as thinking makes themso. They are the virtues of a weak people, and theywill be as much admired, and are as justly admirable;they are to the full as compatible with the highestgraces and most lofty features of the heart and intellect, as any of those opposite so called heroisms which weare generally so unthinking as to allow to monopolizethe name . .. . Cunning is the only resource of thefeeble; and why may we not feel for victorious cunningas strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, openbearing of the strong? . . . That there may be nomistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive thenail home into the English understanding, he takes anillustration which shall be familiar to all of us in thecharacters of Iago and Othello. To our northernthought, the free and noble nature of the Moor iswrecked through a single infirmity, by a fiend in thehuman form. To one of Machiavelli's Italians, Iago'skeen-edged intellect would have appeared as admirableas Othello's daring appears to us, and Othello himselflittle better than a fool and a savage . .. . It is but achange of scene, of climate, of the animal qualities ofthe frame, and evil has become a good, and good hasbecome evil . .. . Now, our displeasure with Mr. Macaulay is, not that he has advanced a novel andmischievous theory: it was elaborated long ago in thefinely-tempered dialectics of the Schools of Rhetoric, atAthens; and so long as such a phenomenon as acultivated rogue remains possible among mankind, itwill reappear in all languages and under any numberof philosophical disguises . .. . Seldom or never, however, has it appeared with so little attempt atdisguise. It has been left for questionable poets andnovelists to idealize the rascal genus; philosophershave escaped into the ambiguities of general propositions, and we do not remember elsewhere to havemet with a serious ethical thinker deliberately layingtwo whole organic characters, with their vices andvirtues in full life and bloom, side by side, askinghimself which is best, and answering gravely that itis a matter of taste. 

Mr. Macaulay has been bolder than his predecessors;he has shrunk from no conclusion, andlooked directly into the very heart of the matter; hehas struck, as we believe, the very lowest stone of ourethical convictions, and declared that the foundationquakes under it. 

For, ultimately, how do we know that right is right, and wrong is wrong? People in general accept it onauthority; but authority itself must repose on someulterior basis; and what is that? . . . Are we to saythat in morals there is a system of primary axioms, outof which we develop our conclusions, and apply them, as they are needed, to life? It does not appear so. The analogy of morals is rather with art than withgeometry. The grace of heaven gives us good men, and gives us beautiful creations; and we, perceiving bythe instincts within ourselves that celestial presence inthe objects on which we gaze, find out for ourselvesthe laws which make them what they are, not by comparingthem with any antecedent theory, but by carefulanalysis of our own impressions, by asking ourselveswhat it is which we admire in them, and calling thatgood, and calling that beautiful. 

So, then, if admiration be the first fact, if the senseof it be the ultimate ground on which the after templeof morality, as a system, upraises itself, if we can bechallenged here on our own ground, and fail to makeit good, what we call the life of the soul becomes adream of a feeble enthusiast, and we moralists a markfor the sceptic's finger to point at with scorn. 

Bold and ably urged arguments against our ownconvictions, if they do not confuse us, will usually sendus back over our ground to re-examine the strength ofour positions: and if we are honest with ourselves, weshall very often find points of some uncertainty leftunguarded, of which the show of the strength of ourenemy will oblige us to see better to the defence . .. . It was not without some shame, and much uneasiness, that, while we were ourselves engaged in this process, full of indignation with Mr. Macaulay, we heard aclear voice ringing in our ear, "Who art thou thatjudgest another?" and warning us of the presence inour own heart of a sympathy, which we could not deny, with the sadly questionable hero of the German epic, Reynard the Fox. With our vulpine friend, we wereon the edge of the very same abyss, if, indeed, wewere not rolling in the depth of it. By what sophistrycould we justify ourselves, if not by the very samewhich we had just been so eagerly condemning? Andour conscience whispered to us that we had been swiftto detect a fault in another, because it was the veryfault to which, in our own heart of hearts, we had alatent leaning. 

Was it so indeed, then? Was Reineke no betterthan Iago? Was the sole difference between them, that the vales sacer who had sung the exploits ofReineke loved the wicked rascal, and entangled us inloving him? It was a question to be asked . .. . Andyet we had faith enough in the straightforwardness ofour own sympathies to feel sure that it must admit ofsome sort of answer. And, indeed, we rapidly foundan answer satisfactory enough to give us time tobreathe, in remembering that Reineke, with all hisroguery, has no malice in him . .. . It is not in hisnature to hate; he could not do it if he tried. Thecharacteristic of Iago is that deep motiveless malignitywhich rejoices in evil as its proper element, which lovesevil as good men love virtue. In his calculations onthe character of the Moor, he despises hisunsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates himas a man because his nature is the perpetual oppositeand perpetual reproach of his own . .. . Now Reinekewould not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that gastros ananke, that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quiteinfinite. It is true that, like Iago, he rejoices in theexercise of his intellect; the sense of his power, and thescientific employment of his time are a real delight tohim; but then, as we said, he does not love evil for itsown sake; he is only somewhat indifferent to it. If theother animals venture to take liberties with him, he willrepay them in their own coin, and get his quiet laughat them at the same time; but the object generally forwhich he lives is the natural one of getting his breadfor himself and his family; and, as the great moralistsays, "It is better to be bad for something than fornothing. " Badness generally is undesirable; but badnessin its essence, which may be called heroic badness, is gratuitous. 

But this first thought served merely to give us amomentary relief from our alarm, and we determinedwe would sift the matter to the bottom, and no moreexpose ourselves to be taken at such disadvantage. We went again to the poem, with our eyes open, andour moral sense as keenly awake as a genuine wish tounderstand our feelings could make it. We determinedthat we would really know what we did feel and whatwe did not. We would not be lightly scared away fromour friend, but neither would we any more allow ourjudgment to be talked down by that fluent tongue ofhis; he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as far as it lay with us to discern justice andto render it. 

And really on this deliberate perusal it did seemlittle less than impossible that we could find anyconceivable attribute illustrated in Reineke's proceedingswhich we could dare to enter in our catalogue ofvirtue, and not blush to read it there. What sin isthere in the Decalogue in which he has not steepedhimself to the lips? To the lips, shall we say? nay, over head and ears--rolling and rollicking in sin. Murder, and theft, and adultery, sacrilege, perjury, lying his very life is made of them. On he goes tothe end, heaping crime on crime, and lie on lie, andat last, when it seems that justice, which has been solong vainly halting after him, has him really in her irongrasp, there is a solemn appeal to heaven, a challenge, a battle ordeal, in which, by means we may not ventureeven to whisper, the villain prospers, and comes outglorious, victorious, amidst the applause of a gazingworld; and, to crown it all, the poet tells us that underthe disguise of the animal name and form the worldof man is represented, and the true course of it; andthe idea of the book is, that we who read it may learntherein to discern between good and evil, and choosethe first and avoid the last. It seemed beyond thepower of sophistry to whitewash Reineke, and theinterest which still continued to cling to him in us seemedtoo nearly to resemble the unwisdom of the multitude, with whom success is the one virtue and failure theonly crime. 

It appeared, too, that although the animal disguiseswere too transparent to endure a moment's reflection, yet that they were so gracefully worn that suchmoment's reflection was not to be come at without aneffort. Our imagination following the costume didimperceptibly betray our judgment; we admired thehuman intellect, the ever ready prompt sagacity andpresence of mind. We delighted in the satire on thefoolishnesses and greedinesses of our own fellowmankind; but in our regard for the hero we forgot hishumanity wherever it was his interest that we shouldforget it, and while we admired him as a man wejudged him only as a fox. We doubt whether it wouldhave been possible if he had been described as an openacknowledged biped in coat and trousers, to haveretained our regard for him. Something or other inus, either real rightmindedness, or humbug, orhypocrisy, would have obliged us to mix more censure withour liking than most of us do in the case as it stands. It may be that the dress of the fox throws us off ourguard, and lets out a secret or two which we commonlyconceal even from ourselves. When we have to passan opinion upon bad people, who at the same time areclever and attractive, we say rather what we thinkwe ought to feel than our real sensations; whilewith Reineke, being but an animal, we forget to makeourselves up, and for once our genuine tastes showthemselves freely . .. . Some degree of truth thereundoubtedly is in this . .. . But making all allowance forit--making all and over allowance for the trick which ispassed upon our senses, there still remained a feelingunresolved. The poem was not solely the apotheosisof a rascal in whom we were betrayed into taking aninterest. And it was not a satire merely on the world, and on the men whom the world delight to honour;there was still something which really deserved to beliked in Reineke, and what it was we had as yet failedto discover. 

"Two are better than one, " and we resolved in ourdifficulty to try what our friends might have to sayabout it; the appearance of the Wurtemburg animalsat the Exhibition came fortunately apropos to ourassistance: a few years ago it was rare to find a personwho had read the Fox Epic; and still more, of course, to find one whose judgment would be worth takingabout it; but now the charming figures of Reinekehimself, and the Lion King, and Isegrim, and Bruin, and Bellyn, and Hintze, and Grimbart, had set all theworld asking who and what they were, and the storybegan to get itself known. The old editions, which hadlong slept unbound in reams upon the shelves, beganto descend and clothe themselves in green and crimson. Mr. Dickens sent a summary of it round the householdsof England. Everybody began to talk of Reineke; andnow, at any rate, we said to ourselves, we shall seewhether we are alone in our liking--whether othersshare in this strange sympathy, or whether it be someunique and monstrous moral obliquity in ourselves. 

We set to work, therefore, with all earnestness, feeling our way first with fear and delicacy, as consciousof our own delinquency, to gather judgments whichshould be wiser than our own, and correct ourselves, ifit proved that we required correction, with whateverseverity might be necessary. The result of which labourof ours was not a little surprising; we found that womeninvariably, with that clear moral instinct of theirs, atonce utterly reprobated and detested our poor Reynard;detested the hero and detested the bard who sang ofhim with so much sympathy; while men we foundalmost invariably feeling just as we felt ourselves, onlywith this difference, that we saw no trace of uneasinessin them about the matter. It was no little comfort to us, moreover, to find that the exceptions were rather amongthe half-men, the would-be extremely good, but whosegoodness was of that dead and passive kind whichspoke to but a small elevation of thought or activity;while just in proportion as a man was strong, and real, and energetic, was his ability to see good in Reineke. It was really most strange, one near friend of ours, aman who, as far as we knew (and we knew him well)had never done a wrong thing, when we ventured tohint something about roguery, replied, "You see, he wassuch a clever rogue, that he had a right. " Another, whom we pressed more closely with that treacherouscannibal feast at Malepartus, on the body of poorLampe, said, off-hand and with much impatience ofsuch questioning, "Such fellows were made to beeaten. " What could we do? It had come to this, --as in the exuberance of our pleasure with some dearchild, no ordinary epithet will sometimes reach toexpress the vehemence of our affection, and borrowinglanguage out of the opposites, we call him little rogueor little villain, so here, reversing the terms of theanalogy, we bestow the fulness of our regard on Reinekebecause of that transcendantly successful roguery. 

When we asked our friends how they came to feelas they did, they had little to say. They were notpersons who could be suspected of any latent dispositiontowards evil doing, and yet though it appeared as ifthey were falling under the description of thoseunhappy ones who, if they did not such things themselves, yet "had pleasure in those who did them, " they did notcare to justify themselves. The fact was so: arche tohoti: it was a fact--what could we want more? Somefew attempted feebly to maintain that the book was asatire. But this only moved the difficulty a singlestep; for the fact of the sympathy remained unimpaired, and if it was a satire we were ourselves the objects of it. Others urged what we said above, that the story wasonly of poor animals that, according to Descartes, notonly had no souls, but scarcely even life in anyoriginal and sufficient sense, and therefore we need nottrouble ourselves. But one of two alternatives itseemed we were bound to choose, either of which wasfatal to the proposed escape. Either there was a manhiding under the fox's skin, or else, if real foxes havesuch brains as Reineke was furnished withal, no honestdoubt could be entertained that some sort of consciencewas not forgotten in the compounding of him, and hemust be held answerable according to his knowledge. 

What would Mr. Carlyle say of it, we thought, withhis might and right? "The just thing in the long runis the strong thing. " But Reineke had a long run outand came in winner. Does he only "seem to succeed?"Who does succeed, then, if he no more thanseems? The vulpine intellect knows where the geeselive, it is elsewhere said; but among Reineke's victimswe do not remember one goose, in the literal sense ofgoose; and as to geese metaphorical, at least the wholevisible world lies down complacently at his feet. Nordoes Mr. Carlyle's expressed language on this very poemserve any better to help us--nay, it seems as if he feelsuneasy in the neighbourhood of so strong a rascal, sobriefly he dismisses him. "Worldly prudence is theonly virtue which is certain of its reward. " Nay, butthere is more in it than that: no worldly prudencewould command the voices which have been given in tous for Reineke. 

Three only possibilities lay now before us: either weshould, on searching, find something solid in this Fox'sdoings to justify success; or else the just thing was notalways the strong thing; or it might be, that such verysemblance of success was itself the most miserablefailure; that the wicked man who was struck down andfoiled, and foiled again, till he unlearnt his wickedness, or till he was disabled from any more attempting it, wasblessed in his disappointment; that to triumph inwickedness, and to continue in it and to prosper to theend, was the last, worst penalty inflicted by the divinevengeance. Hin' athanatos e adikos on--to go on withinjustice through this world and through all eternity, uncleansed by any purgatorial fire, untaught by anyuntoward consequence to open his eyes and to see inits true accursed form the miserable demon to which hehas sold himself, --this, of all catastrophes which couldbefal an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and mostsavouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecianmoralists could reason out for himself, --under whichthird hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanishaway, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism be acceptedby us with thankfulness. 

It appeared, therefore, at any rate, to have come tothis--that if we wanted a solution for our sphinx enigma, no OEdipus was likely to rise and find it for us; andthat if we wanted help, we must make it for ourselves. This only we found, that if we sinned in our regard forthe unworthy animal, we shared our sin with the largestnumber of our own sex; and, comforted with the senseof good fellowship, we went boldly to work upon ourconsciousness; and the imperfect analysis which wesucceeded in accomplishing, we here lay before you, whoever you may be, who have felt, as we have felt, aregard which was a moral disturbance to you, and whichyou will be pleased if we enable you to justify--

Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum. 

Following the clue which was thrust into our handby the marked difference of the feelings of men uponthe subject from those of women, we were at oncesatisfied that Reineke's goodness, if he had any, must layrather in the active than the passive department of life. The negative obedience to prohibitory precepts, underwhich women are bound as well as men, as was alreadytoo clear, we were obliged to surrender as hopeless. But it seemed as if, with respect to men whose businessis to do, and to labour, and to accomplish, this negativetest was a seriously imperfect one; and it was quite aspossible that a man who unhappily had broken manyprohibitions might yet exhibit positive excellencies, asthat he might walk through life picking his way withthe utmost assiduity, risking nothing and doing nothing, not committing a single sin, but keeping his talentcarefully wrapt up in a napkin, and get sent, in the end, toouter darkness for his pains, as an unprofitable servant;and this appeared the more important to us, as it wasvery little dwelt upon by religious or moral teachers;and at the end of six thousand years, the popular notionof virtue, as far as it could get itself expressed, had notrisen beyond the mere abstinence from certain specificbad actions. 

The king of the beasts forgives Reineke on accountof the substantial services which at various times he hasrendered. His counsel was always the wisest, his handthe promptest in cases of difficulty; and all thatdexterity, and politeness, and courtesy, and exquisite culturehad not been learnt without an effort or withoutconquering many undesirable tendencies in himself. Menare not born with any art in its perfection, and hehad made himself valuable by his own sagacity andexertion. Now, on the human stage, a man who hasmade himself valuable is certain to be valued. However we may pretend to estimate men according to thewrong things which they have done, or abstained fromdoing, we in fact follow the example of Nobel, the kingof the beasts, and give them their places among usaccording to the serviceableness and capability whichthey display. We might mention not a few eminentpublic servants, whom the world delights to honour--ministers, statesmen, lawyers, men of science, artists, poets, soldiers, who, if they were tried by the negativetest, would show but a poor figure; yet their value istoo real to be dispensed with; and we tolerateunquestionable wrong to secure the services of eminent ability. The world really does, and it always has really done sofrom the beginning of the human history; and it isonly indolence or cowardice which has left our ethicalteaching halting so far behind the universal andnecessary practice. Even questionable prima donnas, invirtue of their sweet voices, have their praises hymnedin drawing-room and newspaper, and applause rolls overthem, and gold and bouquets shower on them from lipsand hands which, except for those said voices, wouldtreat them to a ruder reward. In real fact, we take ourplaces in this world not according to what we are not, but according to what we are. His Holiness PopeClement, when his audience-room rang with furiousoutcries for justice on Benvenuto Cellini, who, as faras half-a-dozen murders could form a title, was as fair acandidate for the gallows as ever swung from thatunlucky wood, replied, "All this is very well, gentlemen:these murders are bad things, we know that. But wheream I to get another Benvenuto, if you hang this onefor me?"

Or, to take an acknowledged hero, one of the oldGreek sort, the theme of the song of the greatest ofhuman poets, whom it is less easy to refuse to admirethan even our friend Reineke. Take Ulysses. Itcannot be said that he kept his hands from taking whatwas not his, or his tongue from speaking what was nottrue; and if Frau Ermelyn had to complain (as indeedthere was too much reason for her complaining) ofcertain infirmities in her good husband, Penelope, too, might have urged a thing or two, if she had known asmuch about the matter as we know, which the modernmoralist would find it hard to excuse. 

After all is said, the capable man is the man to beadmired. The man who tries and fails, what is theuse of him? We are in this world to do something--not to fail in doing it. Of your bunglers--helpless, inefficient persons, "unfit alike for good or ill, " who tryone thing, and fail because they are not strong enough, and another, because they have not energy enough, anda third, because they have no talent--inconsistent, unstable, and therefore never to excel, what shall wesay of them? what use is there in them? what hope isthere of them? what can we wish for them? to mepot'einai pant' ariston. It were better for them they hadnever been born. To be able to do what a man triesto do, that is the first requisite; and given that, wemay hope all things for him. "Hell is paved withgood intentions, " the proverb says; and the enormousproportion of bad successes in this life lie between thedesire and the execution. Give us a man who is ableto do what he settles that he desires to do, and we havethe one thing indispensable. If he can succeed doingill, much more he can succeed doing well. Show himbetter, and, at any rate, there is a chance that he willdo better. 

We are not concerned here with Benvenuto or withUlysses further than to show, through the positionwhich we all consent to give them, that there is muchunreality, against which we must be on our guard. Andif we fling off an old friend, and take to affecting ahatred of him which we do not feel, we have scarcelygained by the exchange, even though originally ourfriendship may have been misplaced. 

Capability no one will deny to Reineke. That isthe very differentia of him. An "animal capable" wouldbe his sufficient definition. Here is another verygenuinely valuable feature about him--his wonderfulsingleness of character. Lying, treacherous, cunningscoundrel as he is, there is a wholesome absence ofhumbug about him. Cheating all the world, he nevercheats himself; and while he is a hypocrite, he is alwaysa conscious hypocrite--a form of character, howeverparadoxical it may seem, a great deal more accessiblethan the other of the unconscious sort. Ask Reinekefor the principles of his life, and if it suited his purposeto tell you, he could do so with the greatest exactness. There would be no discrepancy between the professionand the practice. He is most truly single-minded, andtherefore stable in his ways, and therefore as the worldgoes, and in the world's sense, successful. Whetherreally successful is a question we do not care here toenter on; but only to say this--that of all unsuccessfulmen in every sense, either divine, or human, or devilish, there is none equal to old Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways--the fellow with one eye on Heaven and one on earth--who sincerely preaches one thing, and sincerely doesanother; and from the intensity of his unreality isunable either to see or feel the contradiction. ServingGod with his lips, and with the half of his mind whichis not bound up in the world; and serving the devil withhis actions, and with the other half, he is substantiallytrying to cheat both God and the devil, and is, in fact, only cheating himself and his neighbours. This, of allcharacters upon the earth, appears to us to be the oneof whom there is no hope at all--a character becoming, in these days, alarmingly abundant; and the abundanceof which makes us find even in a Reineke aninexpressible relief. 

But what we most thoroughly value in him is hiscapacity. He can do what he sets to work to do. Thatblind instinct with which the world shouts and clapsits hand for the successful man, is one of those latentforces in us which are truer than we know; it is theuniversal confessional to which Nature leads us, and, inher intolerance of disguise and hypocrisy, compels usto be our own accusers. Whoever can succeed in agiven condition of society, can succeed only in virtueof fulfilling the terms which society exacts of him; andif he can fulfil them triumphantly, of course it rewardshim and praises him. He is what the rest of the worldwould be, if their powers were equal to their desires. He has accomplished what they all are vaguely, andwith imperfect consistency, struggling to accomplish;and the character of the conqueror--the means andappliances by which he has climbed up that greatpinnacle on which he stands victorious, the observed of allobservers, is no more than a very exact indicator of theamount of real virtue in the age, out of which he standsprominent. 

We are forced to acknowledge that it was not a veryvirtuous age in which Reineke made himself a greatman; but that was the fault of the age as much as thefault of him. His nature is to succeed wherever he is. If the age had required something else of him, then hewould have been something else. Whatever it had saidto him "do, and I will make you my hero, " thatReineke would have done. No appetite makes a slaveof him--no faculty refuses obedience to his will. Hisentire nature is under perfect organic control to the onesupreme authority. And the one object for which helives, and for which, let his lot have been cast inwhatever century it might, he would always have lived, isto rise, to thrive, to prosper, and become great. 

The world as he found it said to him--Prey uponus, we are your oyster; let your wit open us. If youwill only do it cleverly--if you will take care that weshall not close upon your fingers in the process, youmay devour us at your pleasure, and we shall feelourselves highly honoured. Can we wonder at a fox ofReineke's abilities taking such a world at its word?

And let it not be supposed that society in this earthof ours is ever so viciously put together, is ever so totallywithout organic life, that a rogue, unredeemed by anymerit, can prosper in it. There is no strength inrottenness; and when it comes to that, society dies andfalls in pieces. Success, as it is called, even worldlysuccess, is impossible, without some exercise of what iscalled moral virtue, without some portion of it, infinitesimally small, perhaps, but still some. Courage, forinstance, steady self-confidence, self-trust, self-reliance--that only basis and foundation-stone on which a strongcharacter can rear itself--do we not see this in Reineke. While he lives he lives for himself; but if it comesto dying, he can die like his betters; and his wit is notof that effervescent sort which will fly away at the sightof death and leave him panic-stricken. It is true thereis a meaning to that word courage, which was perhapsnot to be found in the dictionary in which Reinekestudied. "I hope I am afraid of nothing, Trim, " saidmy uncle Toby, "except doing a wrong thing. " WithReineke there was no "except. " His digestive powersshrank from no action, good or bad, which would servehis turn. Yet it required no slight measure of courageto treat his fellow-creatures with the steady disrespectwith which Reineke treats them. To walk alongamong them, regardless of any interest but his own;out of mere wantonness to hook them up like so manycock-chafers, and spin them for his pleasure; not likeDomitian, with an imperial army to hold them downduring the operation, but with no other assistance buthis own little body and large wit; it was something toventure upon. And a world which would submit to beso treated, what could he do but despise?

To the animals utterly below ourselves, external toour own species, we hold ourselves bound by no law. 

We say to them, vos non vobis, without any uneasymisgivings. We rob the bees of their honey, the cattleof their lives, the horse and the ass of their liberty. Wekill the wild animals that they may not interfere withour pleasures; and acknowledge ourselves bound tothem by no terms except what are dictated by our ownconvenience. And why should Reineke have acknowledgedan obligation any more than we, to creatures soutterly below himself? He was so clever, as our friendsaid, that he had a right. That he could treat themso, Mr. Carlyle would say, proves that he had a right. 

But it is a mistake to say he is without a conscience. No bold creature is ever totally without one. EvenIago shows some sort of conscience. Respecting nothingelse in heaven or earth, he respects and even reverenceshis own intellect. After one of those sweet interviewswith Roderigo, his, what we must call, conscience takeshim to account for his company; and he pleads to it inhis own justification--

"For I mine own gained knowledge should profaneWere I to waste myself with such a snipeBut for my sport and profit. "

And Reineke, if we take the mass of his misdeeds, preyed chiefly, like our own Robin Hood, on rogues whowere greater rogues than himself. If Bruin chose tosteal Rusteviel's honey, if Hintze trespassed in thepriest's granary, they were but taken in their ownevildoings. And what is Isegim, the worst of Reineke'svictims, but a great heavy, stupid, lawless brute?--fairtype, we will suppose, of not a few Front-de-Boeufs andother so-called nobles of the poet's era, whose will todo mischief was happily limited by their obtuseness; orthat French baron, Sir Gilbert de Retz, we believe, washis name, who, like Isegrim, had studied at the universities, and passed for learned, whose after-dinner pastimefor many years, as it proved at last, was to cut children'sthroats for the pleasure of watching them die--we maywell feel gratitude that a Reineke was provided to bethe scourge of such monsters as they; and we havea thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction in seeing theintellect in that little weak body triumph over them andtrample them down. This, indeed, this victory ofintellect over brute force is one great secret of ourpleasure in the poem, and goes far, in the Carlyledirection to satisfy us that, at any rate, it is not given tomere base physical strength to win in the battle of life, even in times when physical strength is apparently theonly recognised power. 

We are insensibly failing from our self-assumedjudicial office into that of advocacy; and sliding intowhat may be plausibly urged, rather than standing faston what we can surely affirm. Yet there are caseswhen it is fitting for the judge to become the advocateof an undefended prisoner; and advocacy is onlyplausible when a few words of truth are mixed withwhat we say, like the few drops of wine which colourand faintly flavour the large draught of water. Suchfew grains or drops, whatever they may be, we mustleave to the kindness of Reynard's friends to distil forhim, while we continue a little longer in the samestrain. 

After all it may be said, what is it in man's naturewhich is really admirable? It is idle for us to wasteour labour in passing Reineke through the moralcrucible unless we shall recognise the results when weobtain them; and in these moral sciences our analyticaltests can only be obtained by a study of our owninternal experience. If we desire to know what weadmire in Reineke we must look for what we admire inourselves. And what is that? Is it what on Sundaysand on set occasions, and when we are mounted on ourmoral stilts, we are pleased to call goodness, probityobedience, humility? Is it? Is it really? Is it notrather the face and form which Nature made--thestrength which is ours, we know not how--our talents, our rank, our possessions? It appears to us that wemost value in ourselves and most admire in our neighbournot acquisitions, but gifts. A man does not praisehimself for being good. If he praise himself he isnot good. The first condition of goodness is forgetfulnessof self; and where self has entered, under howeverplausible a form, the health is but skin-deep, andunderneath there is corruption--and so through everythingWe value, we are vain of, proud of, or whatever youplease to call it, not what we have done for ourselves, butwhat has been done for us--what has been given to usby the upper powers. We look up to high-born men, to wealthy men, to fortunate men, to clever men. Is itnot so? Who do we choose for the county member, the magistrate, the officer, the minister? The goodman we leave to the humble enjoyment of his goodness, and we look out for the able or the wealthy. Andagain of the wealthy, as if on every side to witness tothe same universal law, the man who with no labourof his own has inherited a fortune, ranks higher in theworld's esteem than his father who made it. We takerank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and are therefore the farthest removed from thefirst who made the fortune and founded the family, weare the noblest. The nearer to the fountain the foulerthe stream; and that first ancestor, who has soiled hisfingers by labour, is no better than a parvenu. 

And as it is with what we value, so it is with whatwe blame. It is an old story, that there is no one whowould not in his heart prefer being a knave to being afool; and when we fail in a piece of attempted roguery, as Coleridge has wisely observed, though reasoningunwisely from it, we lay the blame not on our ownmoral nature, for which we are responsible, but on ourintellectual, for which we are not responsible. We donot say what knaves, we say what fools, we have been;perplexing Coleridge, who regards it as a phenomenonof some deep moral disorder; whereas it is but onemore evidence of the universal fact that gifts are thetrue and proper object of appreciation, and as we admiremen for possessing gifts, so we blame them fortheir absence. The noble man is the gifted man; theignoble is the ungifted; and therefore we have only tostate a simple law in simple language to have a fullsolution of the enigma of Reineke. He has giftsenough: of that, at least, there can be no doubt;and if he lacks the gift to use them in the waywhich we call good, at least he uses them successfully. His victims are less gifted than he, and therefore lessnoble; and therefore he has a right to use them as hepleases. 

And after all, what are these victims? Among theheaviest charges which were urged against him was thekilling and eating of that wretched Scharfenebbe--Sharp-beak--the crow's wife. It is well that there are twosides to every story. A poor weary fox, it seemed, was notto be allowed to enjoy a quiet sleep in the sunshine butwhat an unclean carrion bird must come down and takea peck at him. We can feel no sympathy with theoutcries of the crow husband over the fate of theunfortunate Sharpbeak. Wofully, he says, he flew overthe place where, a few moments before, in the gloryof glossy plumage, a loving wife sate croaking out herpassion for him, and found nothing--nothing but alittle blood and a few torn feathers--all else clean goneand utterly abolished. Well, and if it was so, it wasa blank prospect for him, but the earth was well ridof her: and for herself, it was a higher fate to beassimilated into the body of a Reineke than to remainin a miserable individuality to be a layer of carrioncrows' eggs. 

And then for Bellyn, and for Bruin, and for Hintze, and the rest, who would needs be meddling with whatwas no concern of theirs, what is there in them tochallenge either regret or pity. They made lovetheir occupation. 

'Tis dangerous when the baser nature failsBetween the pass and fell incensed pointsOf mighty opposites:They lie not near our conscience:

Ah! if they were all . .. . But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs all others whatsoever--a crimewhich it is useless to palliate, let our other friend saywhat he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. Itsate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all theactions of his life we are certain that he wished itundone--the death and eating of that poor foolishLampe. It was a paltry revenge in Reineke. Lampehad told tales of him; he had complained that Reinekeunder pretence of teaching him his lesson, had seizedhim, and tried to murder him; and though he provokedhis fate by thrusting himself, after such a warning, intothe jaws of Malepartus, Reineke betrays an uneasinessabout it in confession; and, unlike himself, feels itnecessary to make some sort of an excuse. 

Grimbart had been obliged to speak severely of theseriousness of the offence. "You see, " he answers:--

To help oneself out through the world is a queer sort ofbusiness: one can notKeep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in thecloister. When we are handling honey we now and then lick at ourfingers. Lampe sorely provoked me; he frisked about this way andthat way, Up and down, under my eyes, and he looked so fat and sojolly, Really I could not resist it. I entirely forgot how I lovedhim. And then he was so stupid. 

But even this acknowledgment does not satisfyReineke. His mind is evidently softened, and it ison that occasion that he pours out his patheticlamentation over the sad condition of the world--so fluent, so musical, so touching, that Grimbart listened withwide eyes, unable, till it had run to the length of asermon, to collect himself. It is true that at last hisoffice as ghostly confessor obliged him to put in a slightdemurrer:--

Uncle, the badger replied, why these are the sins of yourneighbours;Yours, I should think, were sufficient, and rather more nowto the purpose. 

But he sighs to think what a preacher Reineke wouldhave made. 

And now, for the present, farewell to Reineke Fuchs, and to the song in which his glory is enshrined--theWelt Bibel, Bible of this world, as Goethe called it, themost exquisite moral satire, as we will call it, which hasever been composed. It is not addressed to a passingmode of folly or of profligacy, but it touches theperennial nature of mankind, laying bare our ownsympathies, and tastes, and weaknesses, with as keen andtrue an edge as when the living world of the old Swabianpoet winced under its earliest utterance. 

Humorous in the high pure sense, every laugh whichit gives may have its echo in a sigh, or may glide intoit as excitement subsides into thought; and yet, forthose who do not care to find matter there eitherfor thought or sadness, may remain innocently as alaugh. 

Too strong for railing, too kindly and loving forthe bitterness of irony, the poem is, as the world itself, a book where each man will find what his natureenables him to see, which gives us back each our ownimage, and teaches us each the lesson which each of usdesires to learn. 

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THE COMMONPLACE BOOK OF RICHARD HILLES

In the Library at Balliol College, Oxford, there is amanuscript which, for want of a better name, I may calla Commonplace Book of an English gentleman wholived in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Itscontents display, beyond any other single volume whichI have met with, the mental furniture of an average-educatedman of the time. There are stories in proseand verse, collections of proverbs, a dissertation onHorticulture, a dissertation on Farriery, a treatise ofConfession, a Book of Education, a Book of Courtesy, aBook of "the Whole Duty" of Man; mercantile entries, discourses of arithmetic, recipes, prescriptions, marvelsof science or pseudo-science, conundrums, tables of theassize of food; the laws respecting the sale of meat, bread, beer, wine, and other necessaries; while aboveand beyond all are a collection in various handwrittenof ballads, songs, hymns, and didactic poems of a religiouskind, some few of which have been met with elsewhere;but of the greater number of them no other copy, Ibelieve, exists. 

The owner and compiler was a certain Richard Hilles. From the entries of the births and deaths of his childrenon a fly-leaf, I gather that in 1518 he lived at a placecalled Hillend, near King's Langley, in Hertfordshire. The year following he had removed to London, wherehe was apparently in business; and among his remarkson the management of vines and fruit trees in his"Discourse on Gardens, " he mentions incidentally that hehad been in Greece and on the coast of Asia Minor. Abrief "Annual Register" is carried down as far as 1535, in which year he perhaps died. One of his latest entriesis the execution of Bishop Fisher and of Sir ThomasMore. Some other facts about him might perhaps becollected; but his personal history could add little tothe interest of his book, which is its own sufficientrecommendation. It will be evident, from the descriptionwhich I have given, that as an antiquarian curiosity thismanuscript is one of the most remarkable of its kindwhich survives. 

The public, who are willing to pay for the productionof thousands of volumes annually, the value of whichis inappreciable from its littleness, may perhaps not beunwilling to encourage, to the extent of the purchase ofa small edition, the preservation in print of a relic which, even in the mere commonplace power of giving amusement, exceeds the majority of circulating novels: whilereaders whose appetites are more discriminating, and thestudents of the past, to whom the productions of theirancestors have a memorial value for themselves, mayfind their taste gratified at least with some fragments ofgenuine beauty equal to the best extant specimens ofearly English poetry. 

In the hope of contributing to such a result, I amgoing to offer to the readers of Fraser a fewmiscellaneous selections from different parts of the volume;and as in the original they are thrown together withoutorder--the sacred side by side with the profane; thedevotional, the humorous, and the practical reposing inplacid juxtaposition--I shall not attempt to remedy adisorder which is itself so characteristic a feature. 

Let us commence, then, as a fitting grace before thebanquet, with a song on the Nativity. The spirit whichappears in many of the most beautiful pictures ofmediaeval art is here found taking the form of words:--

Can I not sing Ut Hoy, When the Jolly shepherd made so much joy. 

The shepherd upon a hill he sat, He had on him his tabard and his hat;His tar-box, his pipe, and his flat hat, His name was called Jolly, Jolly Wat, For he was a good herd's boy, Ut Hoy, For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

The shepherd upon a hill was laid, His dogge to his girdle was tied;He had not slept but a little braydWhen Gloria in Excelsis to him was said. Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

The shepherd upon a hill he stood, Round about him his sheep they yode;He put his hand under his hood, He saw a star as red as blood, Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

Now Farewell, Matt, and also Will, For my love go ye all stillUnto I come again you till, And evermore Will ring well thy bell;Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

Now I must go where Christ was born;Farewell! I come again to morn:Dog keep will my sheep from the corn, And warn well warrock when I blow my horn, Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

When Wat to Bethlehem come was, He swat: he had gone faster than a pace. He found Jesu in a simple place, Between an oxe and an asse;Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

Jesu! I offer to thee here my pipe, My skirt, my tar-box, and my scrip;Home to my fellows now will I skippe, And also look unto my shepe, Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

Now Farewell, myne own Herdsman Watt;Yea, for God, Lady, and even so I had;Lull well Jesu in thy lappe, And farewell, Joseph, with thy gown and cap;Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

Now may I well both hop and sing, For I have been at Christ's bearing;Home to my fellows now will I fling, Christ of Heaven to his bliss us bring. Ut Hoy!For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

Hilles was perhaps himself a poet, or so I gatherfrom the phrase, "Quoth Richard Hilles, " with whichmore than one piece of great merit terminates. Hewould scarcely have added his own name to thecomposition of another person. Elizabeth, queen of HenryVII. , died in childbirth in February, 1502-3. 

The following "Lamentation, " if not written by Hilleshimself, was written in his life-time:--

THE LAMENTATION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

Ye that put your trust and confidenceIn worldly riches and frail prosperity, That so live here as ye should never hence;Remember death, and look here upon me;Insample I think there may no better be:Yourself wot well that in my realm was IYour Queen but late; Lo, here I lie. Was I not born of worthy lineage:Was not my mother Queen, my father King;Was I not a king's fere in marriage;Had I not plenty of every pleasant thing?Merciful God! this is a strange reckoning;Riches, honour, wealth, and ancestry, Hath me forsaken; Lo, here I lie. 

If worship might have kept me I had not go;If wealth might have me served I needed not so;If money might have held I lacked none. But oh, good God, what vaileth all this year!When death cometh, thy mighty messengerObey we must, there is no remedy;He hath me summoned--lo, here I lie. 

Yet was I lately promised otherwiseThis year to live in wealth and in delice, Lo, whereto cometh the blandishing promise?Oh, false astrology diminatriceOf Goddes secrets, making thee so wise!How true is for this year the prophecy;The year yet lasteth, and lo, here I lie. 

Oh, brittle wealth--aye full of bitterness, Thy singular pleasure aye doubled is with pain. Account my sorrow first, and my distressSundry wise, and reckon thee againThe joy that I have had, I dare not feign, For all my honour, endured yet have IMore woe than wealth; Lo, here I lie. 

Where are our castles now, and our towers, Goodly Richmond, soon art thou gone from me;At Westminster, that goodly work of yours, Mine own dear lord, now shall I never see. Almighty God, vouchsafe to grant that ye, Ye and your children, well may edify, My place builded is; Lo, here I lie. 

Adieu, my true spouse, and my worthy lord;The faithful love that did us two combineIn marriage and peaceable concord, Into your hands here do I clean resign, To be bestowed unto your children and mine;Erst were ye father, now must ye supplyThe mother's part also; Lo, here I lie. 

Farewell, my daughter, Lady Margaret, (1)God wot full sore it grieved hath my mindThat ye should go where we should seldommeet;Now am I gone and have you left behind. Oh mortal folk! What be we weary blind!That we least fear full off it is full nigh, Fro you depart I first; Lo, here I lie. 

Farewell, madame, my Lordes worthy mother, (2)Comfort your son and be ye of good cheer. Take all in worth, for it will be none other. Farewell my daughter, (3) late the fereTo Prince Arthur mine own child so dear, It booteth not for me to weep or cry, Pray for my soul, for now lo here I lie. 

Adieu, dear Harry, my lovely son, adieu, Our Lord increase your honour and your estateAdieu, my daughter Mary, (4) bright of hue, God made you virtuous, wise, and fortunate. Adieu sweetheart, my lady daughter Kate, (5)Thou shalt, good babe, such is thy destiny, Thy mother never know; Lo, here I lie. 

Oh Lady Cecil, Anne, and Catherine, Farewell my well-beloved sisters three;Oh Lady bright, dear sister mine;Lo here the end of worldly vanity;Lo well are you that earthly folly flee, And Heavenly things do love and magnify. Farewell and pray for me; Lo, here I lie. 

Adieu my lords and ladies all;Adieu my faithful servants every one;Adieu my commons, whom I never shallSee in this world; Wherefore to thee alone, Immortal God, very three in one, I me commend--thy Infinite mercyShow to thy servant now; Lo, here I lie. ____

(1) Margaret of Scotland, Queen of James IV. (2) The Countess of Richmond. (3) Catherine of Aragon. (4) Queen of France, and afterwards Duchess of Suffolk(5) Died in childhood. ____

--

Here lyeth the fresh flower of Plantagenet;Here lyeth the White Rose in the red set;Here lyeth the noble Queen Elizabeth;Here lyeth the Princess departed by death;Here lyeth the blood of our country Royal;Here lyeth the favour of England immortal:Here lyeth Edward the Fourth in picture;Here lyeth his daughter and pearle pure;Here lyeth the wife of Harry our true King;Here lyeth the heart, the joy, and the gold Ring;Here lyeth the lady so liberal and gracious;Here lyeth the pleasure of thy house;Here lyeth very love of man and child;Here lyeth ensample our minds to bild;Here lyeth all beauty--of living a mirrour;Here lyeth all very good manner and honour;God grant her now Heaven to increase;And our King Harry long life and peace. 

The note changes. We come next to a hunting song:--

As I walked by a forest sideI met with a forester; he bade me abideAt a place where he me set--He bade me what time an hart I metThat I should let slip and say go belt;With Hay go bett, Hay go belt, Hay go bett, Now we shall have game and sport enow. 

I had not stand there but a while, Yea, not the maintenance of a mile, But a great hart came running without any guile;With there he goeth--there he goeth--there he goeth;Now we shall have game and sport enow. 

I had no sooner my hounds let goBut the hart was overthrow;Then every man began to blow, With trororo--trororo--trororo, Now we shall have game and sport enow. 

In honour of good ale we have many Englishballads. Good wine, too, was not without a poet to singits praises, the Scripture allusions and the large infusionof Latin pointing perhaps to the refectory of some genialmonastery. 

A TREATISE OF WINE

The best tree if ye take intent, Inter ligna fructifera, Is the vine tree by good argument, Dulcia ferens pondera. 

Saint Luke saith in his Gospel, Arbor fructu noscitur, The vine beareth wine as I you tell, Hinc aliis praeponitur. 

The first that planted the vineyard, Manet in coeli gaudio, His name was Noe, as I am learned, Genesis testimonio. 

God gave unto him knowledge and witA quo procedunt omnia, First of the grape-wine for to get, Propter magna mysteria. 

Melchisedek made offering, Dando liquorem vineum, Full mightily sacrafyingAltaris sacraficium. 

The first miracle that Jesus did, Erat in vino rubeo, In Cana of Galilee it betide, Testante Evangelio. 

He changed water into wine, Aquae rubescunt hydrim, And bade give it to Archetcline, Ut gustet tunc primarie. 

Like as the rose exceedeth all flowers, Inter cuncta florigera, So doth wine other liquours, Dans multa salutifera. 

David, the prophet, saith that wineLaetificat cor hominis, It maketh men merry if it be fine, Est ergo digni nominis. 

The malicoli fumosetive, Quae generat tristitiam, It causeth from the heart to riseTollens omnem maestitiam. 

The first chapter specified, Libri ecclesiastici, That wine is music of cunning delight, Laetificat cor clerici. 

Sirs, if ye will see Boyce, De disciplina scholarium, There shall ye see without misse, Quod vinum acuit ingenium. 

First, when Ypocras should dispute, Cum viris sapientibus, Good wine before was his pursuit, Acumen praebens sensibus. 

It quickeneth a man's spirit and his mind, Audaciam dat liquentibus, If the wine be good and well fined, Prodest sobrie bibentibus. 

Good wine received moderately, Mox cerebrum laetificat, Natural heat it strengthens pardy, Omne membrum fortificat. 

Drunken also soberly, Digestionem uberans, Health it lengthens of the body, Naturam humanam prosperans. 

Good wine provokes a man to sweat, Et plena lavat viscera, It maketh men to eat their meat, Facitque corda prospera. 

It nourisheth age if it be good, Facit ut esset juvenis, It gendereth in him gentle blood, Nam venas purgat sanguinis. 

Sirs, by all these causes ye should think, Quae sunt rationabiles, That good wine should be best of all drink, Inter potus potabiles. 

Fill the cup well! Bellamye, Potum jam mihi ingere, I have said till my lips be dry, Vellem nunc vinum bibere. 

Wine drinkers all with great honour, Semper laudate Dominum, The which sendeth the good liquour, Propter salutem hominum. 

Plenty to all that love good-wine, Donet Deus largius, And bring them soon when they go hence, Ubi non sitlent amplius. 

The boar's-head catch may be added to this, similar Latin intermixtures. 

Caput apri refero, Resonans laudes Domino, The boar's head in hand I bring, With garlands gay and birds singing, I pray you all help me to singQui estis in convivio. 

The boar's head I understand, Is chief service in all this land, Wheresoever it may be found, Servitur cum sinapio. 

The boar's head, I dare well say, Anon after the Twelfth day. He taketh his leave and goeth away, Exivit tune de patria. 

Four of the following verses are on a tombstone, Ibelieve in Melrose Abbey, and are well known. Fewif any persons will have seen the poem of which theyform a part. So far as I am aware no other copysurvives [Since this was written I have learnedthat a version, with important differences has beenprinted for the Warton Club, from an MS. In the possessionof Mr. Onusby Gore. ]:--

Vado mori Rex sum, quid honor quid gloria mundi, Est vita mors hominum regia--vado mori. Vado mori miles victo certamine belli, Mortem non didici vincere vado mori. Vado mori medicus, medicamine non relevandus, Quicquid agunt medici respuo vado mori. Vado mori logicus, aliis concludere novi, Concludit breviter mors in vado mori. 

Earth out of earth is worldly wrought;Earth hath gotten upon earth a dignity of nought;Earth upon earth has set all his thought, How that earth upon earth might be high brought. 

Earth upon earth would be a king, But how that earth shall to earth he thinketh no thing. When earth biddeth earth his rents home bring, Then shall earth from earth have a hard parting. 

Earth upon earth winneth castles and towers, Then saith earth unto earth this is all ours;But when earth upon earth has builded his bowers, Then shall earth upon earth suffer hard showers. 

Earth upon earth hath wealth upon mould;Earth goeth upon earth glittering all in gold, Like as he unto earth never turn should, And yet shall earth unto earth sooner than he would. Why that earth loveth earth wonder I think, Or why that earth will for earth sweat and swink. For when earth upon earth is brought within the brink, Then shall earth for earth suffer a foul stink, As earth upon earth were the worthies nine, And as earth upon earth in honour did shine;But earth list not to know how they should incline, And their gowns laid in the earth when deathmade his fine. 

As earth upon earth full worthy was Joshua, David, and worthy King Judas Maccabee, They were but earth none of them three;And so from earth unto earth they left their dignity. 

Alisander was but earth that all the world wan, And Hector upon earth was held a worthy man, And Julius Caesar, that the Empire first began;And now as earth within earth they lie pale and wan. 

Arthur was but earth for all his renown, No more was King Charles nor Godfrey of Boulogne;But how earth hath turned their noblenes upside downAnd thus earth goeth to earth by short conclusion. 

Whoso reckons also of William Conqueror, King Henry the First that was of knighthood flower, Earth hath closed them full straitly in his bower, --So the end of worthiness, --here is no more succour. 

Now ye that live upon earth, both young and old, Think how ye shall to earth, be ye never so bold;Ye be unsiker, whether it be in heat or cold, Like as your brethren did before, as I have told. 

Now ye folks that be here ye may not long endure, But that ye shall turn to earth I do you ensure;And if ye list of the truth to see a plain figure, Go to St. Paul's and see the portraiture. 

All is earth and shall to earth as it sheweth there, Therefore ere dreadful death with his dart you dare, And for to turn into earth no man shall it forbear, Wisely purvey you before, and thereof have no leaf. 

Now sith by death we shall all pass, it is to us certain, For of earth we come all, and to the earth shall turnagain;Therefore to strive or grudge it were but vain, For all is earth and shall be earth--nothing morecertain. 

Now earth upon earth consider thou mayHow earth cometh to earth naked alway, Why should earth upon earth go stout alway, Since earth out of earth shall pass in poor array?

I counsel you upon earth that wickedly have wrought, That earth out of earth to bliss may be brought. 

--

Of songs, nursery rhymes, and carols, there are verymany, of which the next three are specimens:--

Lulley, lulley, lulley, lulley, The falcon hath borne my mate away, He bare him up, he bare him down, He bare him into an orchard brown. Lulley, lulley, lulley, lulley, The falcon hath borne my mate away. 

In that orchard there was a hall, That was hanged with purple and pall, And in that hall there was a bedThat was hanged with gold so red, Lulley, lulley, lulley, lulley. 

And in that bed there lyeth a knight, His wounds were bleeding day and night;By the bedside there kneeleth a may, And she weepeth both night and day, Lulley, lulley, lulley, lulley. 

And by the bed side there standeth a stone, Corpus Christi is written thereon. Lulley, lulley, lulley, lulley, The falcon hath borne my mate away. 

I have twelve oxen, and they be fair and brown, And they go a grazing down by the town, With haye, with howe, with hoye!Sawest thou not mine oxen, thou little pretty boy?

I have twelve oxen, and they be fair and white, And they go a grazing down by the dyke, With haye, with howe, with hoye!Sawest thou not mine oxen, thou little pretty boy?

I have twelve oxen, and they be fair and black, And they go a grazing down by the lake, With haye, with howe, with hoye!Sawest thou not mine oxen, thou little pretty boy?

I have twelve oxen, and they be fair and red, And they go a grazing down by the mead, With haye, with howe, with hoye!Sawest thou not mine oxen, thou pretty little boy?

--

Make we merry in hall and bowerThis time was born our Saviour. 

In this time God hath sentHis own Son to be present, To dwell with us in verament, God is our Saviour. 

In this time that is befal, A child was born in an ox stall, And after he died for us all, God is our Saviour. 

In this time an Angel brightMet three shepherds upon a night, He bade them go anon of rightTo God that is our Saviour. 

In this time now pray weTo Him that died for us on tree, On us all to have pitee, God is our Saviour. 

--

And how exquisitely graceful too is this:--

There is a flower sprung of a tree, The root of it is called Jesse, A flower of price, --There is none such in Paradise. 

Of Lily white and Rose of Ryse, Of Primrose and of Flower-de-Lyse, Of all flowers in my devyce, The flower of Jesse beareth the prize, For most of allTo help our souls both great and small. 

I praise the flower of good Jesse, Of all the flowers that ever shall be, Uphold the flower of good Jesse, And worship it for aye beautee;For best of allThat ever was or ever be shall. 

Mr. Hilles was a good Catholic. Amidst a multitudeof religious poems of a Catholic kind, there is not onewhich could be construed as implying a leaning towardsthe Reformers; while under a certain legend of St. Gregory some indignant Protestant of the next generationhas written a passionate anathema calling it lies ofthe devil and other similar hard names. A private diaryof such a person therefore, of the years in which Englandwas separated from the Papacy, is of especial interest:--

"1533. Stephen Peacock, haberdasher, mayor. "This year, the 29th day of May, the Mayor ofLondon, with the aldermen in scarlet gowns, went inbarges to Greenwich, with their banners, as they werewont to bring the Mayor to Westminister; and thebachelor's barge hanged with cloth of gold on theoutside with banners and bells upon them in theirmanner, with a galley to wait upon her, and a foystwith a beast therein which shot many guns. And thenthey fetched Queen Anne up to the Tower of London;and in the way on land about Limehouse there shotmany great chambers of guns, and two of the King'sships which lay by Limehouse shot many great guns, and at the Tower or she came on land was shotinnumerable many guns. 

"And the 31st day of May, which was Whitsun even, she was conveyed in a chariot from the Tower ofLondon to York-place, called Whitehall at Westminster;and at her departing from the Tower therewas shot off guns which was innumerable to men'sthinking; and in London divers pageants, that is tosay, "One at Gracechurch;"One at Leadenhall;"One at the great Conduit;"One at the Standard;"The Crosse in Chepe new trimmed;"At the conduit at Paul's Gate;"At Paul's gate a branch of Roses;"Without at the east end of Paul's;"At the conduit in Fleet Street;"And she was accompanied, first Frenchmen in--coloured velvet and one white sleeve, and the horsestrapped, and white crosses thereon; then rode gentlemen, then knights and lords in their degree, and there was twohats of maintenance, and many chariots, with lords andmany gentlewomen on horseback following the chariots;and all the constables in London were in their best array, with white staves in their hands, to make room and towait upon the Queen as far as -------; and thererode with her sixteen knights of the Bath; and onWhit-Sunday she was crowned at Westminster withgreat solemnity; and jousts at Westminster all theWhitsun holidays, and the feast was kept in WestminsterHall, and jousts afore York Place called Whitehall. 

"This year, in the beginning of September, QueenAnne was delivered of a woman child at Greenwich, which child was named Elizabeth. 

"Item, this year foreign butchers sold flesh atLeadenhall, for the butchers of the city of Londondenied to sell beef for a halfpenny the pound accordingto the Act of Parliament. 

"1534. Christopher Ascue, draper, mayor. "This year, the 23rd day of November, preached atPaul's Cross the Abbot of Hyde, and there stood on ascaffold all the sermon time the Holy Maid of Kent, called [Elizabeth] Barton, and two monks of Canterbury, and two Friars observant, and two priests and two laymen, and after the sermon went to the Tower. Alsothis year, on Palm Sunday even, which was the 28thday of March, was a great sudden tempest of wind, andbroke open two windows at Whitehall at Westminster, and turned up the lead of the King's new Tennis Playat York Place, and broke off the tyles of three goldsmiths'houses in Lombard Street, and folded up thelead at Pewterers' Hall and cast it down into the yard, and blew down many tyles of houses in London, andtrees about Shoreditch. 

"Item, the first day of April, which was tenebreWednesday, Wolf and his wife, that killed the twoLombards in a boat upon Thames, were hanged upontwo gibbets by the water-side between London Bridgeand Westminster; and on the Monday in Easterweek the woman was buried at the Crossed Friars inLondon. 

"Item, the 20th day of April, the parson of Aidmary(sic, but the real person was the priest of Aidington inKent) Church, in London, was drawn on a hurdle fromthe Tower of London to the Tyburn and there hangedand headed. Item, two observant Freers drawn on ahurdle and both hanged and headed. Item, two monksof Canterbury, one was called Dr. Bocking, drawn on ahurdle and hanged and headed. Item, the Holy Maidof Kent was drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn and hangedand headed; and all the heads set upon London Briggeand on the gates of London. Item, the 11th dayof July, the Lord Dacres of the north was conveyedfrom the Tower of London to Westminster to receivejudgement for treason, but there he was quit by a questof Lords. Item, all men, English and others being inEngland, were sworn to be true to the King and hisheirs between Queen Anne and him begotten and for tobe begotten. Item, the Lord Thomas Garrard, ofIreland, beheaded the Bishop of Dublin, called DoctorAlien, as he would come into England. Item, a generalpeace cried between the King of England and theScottish King for their lifetime. Item, there was agreat sudden storm in the Narrow Sea, and two shipsof the Zealand fleet were lost, with cloth and men andall, for they sank in the sea. 

--

"Sir John Champneys, mayor. "This year, in November, came over the high Admiralof France as ambassador from the French King, and hehad great gifts and his costs provided for as long as hewas m the Realm. "1535. Item, the fourth day of May, the Prior of theCharterhouse in London, and two other monks of theCharterhouse in other places, and the father of the Placeat Sion, being in a grey habit, and a priest which was, as men said, the vicar of Thystillworth, were drawnall from the Tower of London to Tyburn and hangedand their bowels burnt, the heads cut off, and quartered, and the heads and quarters some set on London Brigge, and the rest upon all the gates of London and on theCharterhouse gate. 

"Also shortly after the King caused his own headto be knotted and cut short, and his hair was nothalf an inch long, and so were all the lords, and allknights, gentlemen, and serving men that came to thecourt. 

"Item, on Whitsun even was a great thunder inLondon. Item, the fourth day of June, a man andwoman, born in Flanders, were burnt in Smithfield forheresy. Item, the 19th day of June, three monks ofthe order of the Charterhouse were drawn from theTower to Tyburn, and there hanged and headed. Item, the 22nd day of June, the Bishop Rochester wasbeheaded at the Tower Hill, the head set on LondonBrigg and the body buried at Barking Churchyard. Item, the 6th day of July, Sir Thomas More, thatsometime was Chancellor of England, was beheadedat Tower Hill, and his head set on the Brigg and thebody buried in the Tower. Also this year the powerand authority of the Pope was utterly made frustrate andof none effect within the Realm, and the King calledSupreme Head under God of the Church of England;and that was read in the Church every Festival day;and the Pope's name was scraped out of every massbook and other books, and was called Bishop of Rome. 

"1535-6. Sir John Allen, mercer, mayor. "At the beginning of the time the sheriffs put awayeach of them six servants and six yeomen till they werecompelled by the common counsel to take them again. 

"Item, the Kennell Rakers of London had horns toblow to give folks warning' to cast out their dust. Item, every man that had a well within his house to drawit three times in the week to wash the streets. "

--

The murder committed by Wolf and his wife, whichis mentioned in the Diary, created so much sensationthat it was discussed in Parliament, and was made thesubject of a statute. The extraordinary beauty of thewoman was used as a decoy to entice the merchants intoa boat where the husband was concealed. They werekilled and thrown overboard, and the wife, acting muchlike Mrs. Manning, took the keys from the body of oneof them, went to his house and rifled his strong box. The burial of her body, while her husband was left uponthe gibbet, was occasioned by a circumstance toohorrible to be mentioned. 

Next "follow parts of the statutes of Englandevery craftsman victualler shall be ruled":--

"MILLERS. 

"First, the assise of the miller is that he have nomeasure at his mill but it be assised and sealed accordingto the King's standard, and he to have of everybushel of wheat a quart for the grinding: also, if hefetch it, another quart for the fetching; and of everybushel of malt a pint for the grinding, and if he fetch itanother pint for the fetching. Also, that he change norwater no man's corn to give him the worse for thebetter, nor that he have no hogs, geese, nor ducks, norno manner poultry but three hens and a duck; and ifhe do the contrary to any of these points his fine is atevery time three shillings and four pence, and if he willnot beware by two warnings the third time to be judgedto the pillory. 

"BAKERS. 

"Also, the assise of bakers is sixpence highing andsixpence lowing in the price of a quarter of wheat; forif he lack an ounce in the weight of a farthing loaf he tobe amerced at 20d. ; and if he lack an ounce and ahalf he to be amerced at 2s. 6d. , in all bread so baken;and if he bake not after the assise of the statute heto be adjudged to the pillory. 

"BREWERS. 

"Also, the assise of brewers is 12 pence highing and12 pence lowing in the price of a quarter of malt, andevermore shilling to farthing; for when he buyeth aquarter malt for two shillings, then he shall sell a gallonof the best ale for two farthings, and so to make 48gallons of a quarter malt. When he buyeth a quartermalt for three shillings, the gallon three fathings; forfour shillings, the gallon four farthings; and so forth to8 shillings, and no further. And that he set none alea sale till he have sent for the ale taster, and as oft ashe doth the contrary he to be merced at six pence; andthat he sell none but by measure assised and sealed, andthat he sell a quart ale upon his table for a farthing. And as oft as he doth the contrary to sell not after theprice of malt, he to be amerced the first time: 2 pence, the second time 20 pence, the third time three and fourpence; and if he will not beware by these warnings, thenext time to be judged to the cucking stole, and thenext time to the pillory. 

"AN ORDINANCE FOR BAKERS. 

"By the discretion and ordinance of our lord theKing, weights and measures were made. It is to knowthat an English penny, which is called a round sterlingand without clipping shall weigh 32 corns of wheat takenout of the middle of the ear, and twenty pence make anounce, and twelve ounces make a pound, which istwenty shillings sterling; and eight pounds of wheatmaketh a gallon of corn, and eight gallons make aLondon bushel, which is the eighth part of a quarter. 

"When the quarter of wheat is sold for a shilling, then the wastell, well boulted and clean, shall weigh sixpounds sixteen shillings. The loaf of a quarter of thesame corn and the same bultell shall weigh more thanthe said wastell two shillings. The symnell of a quartershall weigh less than the said wastell two shillings, because that it is boyled and clean. The loaf of cleanwheat of a quartern shall weigh a coket and a half, andthe loaf of all corns of a quartern shall weigh two cokets;and it is understood that the baker so may get of everyquarter of wheat as it is proved by the King's bakersfour pence and the bran, and two loaves to furnage ofthe price of two pence; and three servants a pennyfarthing, and two grooms a farthing; in salt a farthing;in yeast a farthing, in candell and in wood three pence, in bultell allowed a farthing. 

"Two or four loaves are made to be sold for a penny:none other kind of bread to be made of great price, butonly two or four loaves to a penny. There is no breadmade to be sold of three quarterns nor of five quarterns;also, there shall be no bread made of corn the whichshall be worse in breaking than it is without. It is toknow that of old custom of the city of London, byauthority of divers Parliaments affirmed for diversweights which the citizens of London suffer in thebakers which they have had and have been wont tohave in every assise of bread, the setting of two pencein a quarter of wheat above all foreign bakers in therealm of England; so that in assise of wheat when aquarter wheat is sold for five shillings, then it shall beset to the bakers of London seven shillings for assise;and so of every other assise two shillings to the increase. 

"The assise of bread after that above contained trulymay be holden after the selling of wheat; that is to say, of the best price, of the second price, and of the third, and as well wastell bread as other bread shall be weighedafter, of what kind so ever it be, as it is above, by amean price of wheat; and then the assise or the weightof bread, shall not be changed but by six pence increasingor distressing in the selling of a quarter of wheat. Also, the baker shall be amerced 2s. 6d. , and his quarternbread may be proved faulty in weight; and if hepass the number he shall go to the pillory, and thejudgment of the trespass shall not be forgiven for goldnor silver; and every baker must have his own mark onevery manner bread; and after eight days bread shouldnot be weighed: and if it be found that the quarternbread of the baker be faulty he shall be amerced 15d. , and unto the number of 2s. 6d. And it is to know thatthe baker ought not to go to the pillory, but if he passthe number of 2s. 6d. Default quartern bread, and heshall not be merced, but if the default of breadpass 15d. 

"The rule set upon White Bakers and Brown Bakers, --The rule is that white bakers should inowe make andbake all manner of bread, and that they can make ofwheat: that is for to say, white loaf bread, wastell buns, and all manner white bread that hath been used of oldtime; and they inowe make wheat bread sometimescalled Crybill bread, and basket bread such as is sold inCheep to poor people. But the white bread baker shallbake no horse bread of any assise, neither of his ownneither of none other men's, to sell. The brown bakershall inowe make and bake wheat bread as it comethground from the mill, without any boulting of the same;also horse bread of clean beans and peason; and alsobread called household bread, for the which they shalltake for every bushel kneading bringing home 1 penny;but they shall bake no white bread of any assise, neitherof their own, neither of none other men's, to sell. Andwhat person of the said bakers offend in any of thearticles above writ, shall as oft as he may be provedguilty pay 6s. 8d. , half to the use of the Chamber ofLondon, and the other half to the use of the master ofthe bakers. 

"THE ASSISE OF BREAD WITHIN LONDON. 

"Mem. --That the farthing loaf of all grains, and thefarthing horse loaf, is of like weight. 

"Mem. --That the halfpenny white loaf of Stratfordmust weigh two ounces more than the halfpenny whiteloaf of London. 

"That the penny wheat loaf of Stratford must weighsix oz. More than the penny wheat loaf of London. 

"The halfpenny wheat loaf of Stratford must weighthree ounces more than the halfpenny wheat loaf ofLondon. 

"Three halfpenny white loaves of Stratford mustweigh as much as the penny wheat loaf. 

"The loaf of all grains: that is, the wheat loaf, mustweigh as much as the penny wheat loaf and the half-pennywhite loaf. 

"The chete white loaf must weigh 12 oz. 

"The chete white brown loaf must weigh 18 oz. "

After so much solid matter, our repast shall be completedwith something of a lighter kind. A list of"Divers good proverbs" is curious, as showing the longgrowth and long endurance of established maxims ofpractical wisdom. They are written in a distinct andsingular hand, not to be traced elsewhere in prose orpoetry:--

When ye proffer the pigge open the poke. Whyle the grasse growyth the hors stervyth. Sone it sherpyth that thorne wyll be. It ys a sotyll mouse that slepyth in the cattys ear. Nede makyth the old wyffe to trotte. A byrde yn honde ys better than three yn the wodeAnd hevyn fell we shall have meny larkys. A short hors ys sone curryed. Though peper be blek yt hath a gode smek. Of a rugged colte cumyth a gode hors. Fayre behestys makyth ffolys fayn. All thyngs hath a begynyng. Wepyn makyth pese dyvers tymes. Wynter etyth that somer getyth. He that ys warnyd beffore ys not begylyd. He that wyll not be warnyd by hys owne faderHe shell be wamyd by hys step fader. Pryde goeth beffore and shame comyth after. Oftyn tymys provyth the fruyght aftore, The stok that hyt comyth off. Hyt ys a febyll tre thet fallyth at the fyrst strok. Hyt fallyth yn a day that fallyth not all the yere afore. Whyle the fote warmyth the shoe harmyth. A softe flyre makyth swete malte. When the stede ys stolen shyt the stabyll dore. Merry hondys makyth lyght werke. When thou hast well done hange up thy hachet. Yt ys not all gold that glowyth. Often tymys the arrow hyttyth the shoter. Yt ys comonly sayd that all men be not trew. That nature gevyth no man can tak away. Thys arrow comyth never owt of thyn ownne bow. Sone crokyth the tre that wyll be. When the hors walowyth some herys be loste. Thys day a man, to-morrow non. Seld sene sone forgotyn. When the bely ys ffull the bonys would have craft. Better yt ys to be unborn than untawght. He that no good can nor non wyll lern, Yf he never thryve, who shall hym werne?He that all covetyth often all lesyth. Never hope, herte wold breste. Hasty man lakkyth never woo. A gode begynnyng makyth a gode endyng. Better yt ys late than never. Poverte partyth felyshype. Brente honde flyre dredyth. Non sygheth so sore as the gloton that may no more. He may lyghtly swym that ys held up by the chyn. Clyme not to hye lest chypys fall yn thyn eie. An skabbyd shepe ynfectyth all the ffolde. All the keys hange not by one manys gyrdyll. Better yt ys to lese cloth than brede. He that hath nede must blowe at the cole. 

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Of all the treasures of the volume, the richest areperhaps the hymns and metrical prayers to the Virgin, of which there are great numbers and every variety. Some are in English, some in English and Latin. Hereare three in different styles:--

Mary mother, thee I pray. To be our help at Domys day;

At Domys day when we shall rise, And come before the high Justice, And give account for our service, What helpeth then our clothing gay?

When we shall come before his doom, What will us help there all and some?We shall stand as sorry grooms, Ycald in a full poor array. 

That ylke day without lesing, Many a man his hands shall wring. And repent him sore for his living, Then it is too late as I you say. 

Therefore I rede ye both day and night, Make ye ready to God Almight;For in this land is king nor knight, That wot when he shall wend away. 

That child that was born on Mary, He glads all this company, And for his love make we merry, That for us died on Good Friday. 

Mater ora filium, Ut post hoc exilium, Nobis donet gaudiumBeatorum omnium. 

Faire maiden, who is this bairnThat thou bearest in thine arm?Sir, it is a Kingis son, That in Heaven above doth wonne. Mater ora filium, etc. 

Man to Father he hath none, But himself God alone;Of a maiden he would be borne, To save mankind that was forlorn. Mater ora filium, etc. 

Three Kings brought him presents, Gold, myrrh, and frankinsense, To my Son full of might, King of Kings and lord of right, Mater ora filium, etc. 

Faire maiden, pray for usUnto thy Son, sweet Jesus, That he will send us of his graceIn Heaven on high to have a place. Mater ora filium, etc. 

--

Ave Maria, now say we so, Maid and mother were never no mo. 

Gaude Maria, Christis moder, Mary mild, of thee I mean, Thou bare my lord, thou bare my brother, Thou bare a lovely child and clean, Thou stoodest full styll withouten blynWhen in thine ear that errand was done. The gracious Lord thee light within, Gabrielis nuntio. 

Gaude Maria, yglent with grace, When Jesus, thy Son, on thee was bore, Full nigh thy breast thou gave him brace, He sucked, he sighed, he wept full sore;Thou feedest the flower that never shall fade, With maiden's milk, and song thereto;Lulley, my sweet, I bare thee, babe, Cum pudoris lillio. 

Oh, Gaude Maria, thy mirth was awayWhen Christ on cross thy Son did dieFull dolefully on Good Friday, That many a mother's son it sye. His blood us brought from care and strife, His watery wounds us wisshe from woe. The third day from death to lifeFulget resurrectio. 

Gaude Maria, thou birde so bright, Brighter than blossom that bloweth on hill, Joyful thou wert to see that sight, When the Apostles so smet (sic) of will, All and some did cry full shrillWhen the fairest of shape went you fro, From earth to Heaven he stayed full still, Motuque fertur proprio. 

Gaude Maria, thou rose of ryse, Maiden and mother, both gentle and free;Precious princess, peerless of price, Thy bower is next the Trinity;Thy Son as lawe asketh a fight, In body and soul thee took him to;Thou reigned in Heaven like as we findIn coeli palacio. 

Now blessed birde, we pray thee abone, Before thy Son for us thou fall, And pray him as he was on the rood done, And for us drank aysell and gall, That we may wonne within that wall, Wherever is well withouten woe, And grant that grace unto us allIn perenni gaudio. 

SEQUUNTUR MIRABILIA. 

Ad fadendum unumquemque hominum duo capita. 

Sume sulphur et argentum vivum, et pone ad lumenlampadis, et unusquisque putabit socium suum habereduo capita. 

Ut homo videatur habere duo capila equina. 

Accipe medullam equi, et ceram virgineam, et faccandelam, et accende. 

Ut omnia instrumenta in damo appareant serpentes. 

Recipe serpentem, et toque, et sume pinguedinemejus, et fac candelam cum alia cera, et iliumina. 

Si vis facere lumen per vim animi. 

Accipe vermes qua lucent de nocte et pone in vasevitreo continente radium solis quousque fiet aqua, ettune pone illam in lampade, et lucet sicut candela, etprobatum est. 

Ut homines ardere appareant. 

Recipe sanguinem leporis, et ceram virgineam, et faccandelam, et illumina. 

Item capiatis argentum vivum, et ponatis ipsum inaliquo vitro, et etiam aquam ardentem, et aquam vitae, et projiciatis tres vel quatuor guttas in igne--si fuerataliqua mulier corrupta statim debet mingere et non aliter. 

"Gossips mine" has been printed from another manuscriptby the Percy Society. To most readers of Fraser, however, it is likely to be new. I select it from thehumorous poems as being capable (which most ofthem are not) of being printed without omissions. Thenecessary discretion, it will be seen, has been suppliedby the author. 

How gossips mine, gossips mine, When shall we go to the wine. 

I shall tell you a good sport, How gossips gather them of a sort, Their sick bodies to comfort, When they meet in land or street. 

But I dare not for your displeasure, Tell of these matters half the substance;But yet somewhat of their governance, So far as I dare I will declare. 

Good gossip mine, where have ye been;It is so long sith I you seen. Where is the best wine, tell you me. Can ye aught tell? Yea, full well. 

I know a draught of merry go down, The best it is in all the town. But yet I would not for my gown, My husband wist. Ye may me trist. 

Call forth our gossips, bye-and-bye, Eleanour, Joan, and Margery, Margaret, Alice, and Cecily;For they will come, both all and some. 

And each of them will something bring, Goose or pig, or capon's wing, Pasties of pigeons, or some such thing. For we must eat some manner meat. 

Go before, between, and tween, Wisely that ye be not seen;For I must home and come again. To wit I wis where my husband is. 

A strype or two God might send me, If my husband might here see me. She is afeared, let her flee, Quoth Alice then, --I dread no men. 

Now be we in the tavern set, A draught of the best let him fet, To bring our husbands out of debt;For we will spend--till God more send. 

Each of them brought forth their dish, Some brought flesh and some brought fish, Quoth Margaret meke--now with a wish, I would Anne were here; she would make uscheer. 

How say ye, gossips, is the wine good ?That is it, quoth Eleanour, by the rood. It cheereth the heart and comforts the blood. Such jonkets among shall make us live long. 

Anne bade fill a pot of muscadell;For of all wines I love it well. Sweet wines keep my body in hell. If I had it not I should take great thought. 

How look ye, gossips, at the board's end. Not merry, gossips? God it amend, All shall be well, else God it defend, Be merry and glad, and sit not so sad. 

Would God I had done after your counsel;For my husband is so fell;He beateth me like the Devil in hell;And the more I cry the less mercy. 

Alice with a loud voice spake then:I wis, she said, little good he can, That beateth or striketh any woman, And specially his wife, God give him short life. 

Margaret meek said, so might I thrive;I know no man that is aliveThat give me two strokes, but he shall have five. I am not afeard though he have a beard. 

One cast down her shot, and went away. Gossip, quoth Eleanour, what did she pay?Not but a penny! So, therefore, I sayShe shall no more be of our lore. 

Such guests we may have enow, That will not for their shot allow. With whom came she? Gossip, with you?Nay, quoth Joan: I came alone. 

Now reckon our shot, and go we home, What cometh to each of us but threepence?Pardye, that is but a small expenseFor such a sort, and all but sport. 

Turn down the street when ye come out, And we will compass around about. Gossip, quoth Anne, what needeth that doubt, Your husbands be pleased when ye be eased. 

Whatsoever any man think, We come for naught but for good drink. Now let us go home and wink, For it may be seen where we have been. 

This is the thought that gossips take. Once in a week merry they will make, And all small drinks they will forsake;But wine of the best shall have no rest. 

Some be at the tavern thrice in the week, And so be some every day eke, Or else they will groan and make them seek, For things used will not be refused. 

We have thrown our net almost at random; yet thereare few palates which will not have found somethingto please them among the specimens which we havebrought together. Let us repeat our hope that theentire collection may before long be committed to themore secure custody, as well as the more accessibleform, of a printed volume. 

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