| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Volume LIV - July and October, 1871
Author: Various
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Volume LIV - July and October, 1871" ***
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Page 7: Treves possibly should be Trèves
Page 22: First Clause possibly should be First Cause
Page 95: tôi eterôi tanantia possibly should be tôi heterôi tanantia
THE
BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
JULY AND OCTOBER, 1871.
VOL LIV.
AMERICAN EDITION.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE LEONARD SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY.
140 FULTON STREET, BETWEEN BROADWAY AND NASSAU STREET.
1871.
S. W. GREEN,
PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND BINDER,
16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.
THE
BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
JULY, 1871.
ART. I.--_The Roman Empire._
(1.) _Les Césars, par Franz de Champagny._ 3 vols. Paris: Bray.
(2.) _Les Antonines, par le Comte de Champagny._ 3 vols. Paris: Bray.
The history of the Roman Empire must ever have an interest peculiar to
itself. It stands alone. Nothing in the past has been, nothing in the
future can be, like it. It was the whole civilized world. It gathered
into itself the traditions of all that had ever been great and
illustrious in the human race, Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Hebrew,
Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, as well as those of the multitudinous
western tribes--Italian, Gallic, Iberian or Teutonic, which had only
made themselves known as warriors. The civilization, the arts and
sciences, the laws and institutions, the poetry and philosophy, the
whole accumulated literary treasures of all past generations were
risked on a single venture. Rome had no rival on earth, and could have
no successor. She was the ark in which were preserved all the riches
of the past, all the hopes of the future. For many centuries the most
gifted races of men had been toiling and suffering, and there was no
reason to suppose that man was capable of doing more than had been
effected by their united efforts. If that was lost, all was lost. It
was no idle boast, then, when men said, 'When Rome shall fall, the
world will fall with her.' In those ages no man looked forward to
anything greater or better. The idea that 'progress' is the natural
law and condition of the world, is one quite characteristic of modern
times. The ancient notion was that its law was that of decay and
corruption. The utmost that anyone dared to hope was that things might
not change for the worse.
And so far as appears, their judgment was well founded. Man had done
all he could. The Roman Empire exhibited the highest state of society,
which, without some supernatural interference of a higher power in the
affairs of the world, he was able to develope. Viewed in this light,
as the last act of a vast drama which had been going on for ages, it
must ever be most worthy of study. And in truth there was in it very
much that was really great and noble. The impression left on the mind
by ordinary histories, which is little more than a vague idea of mad
and grotesque tyranny on the one side, and abject servitude on the
other, is very far from doing it justice. If, as we know, there has in
fact arisen out of its ashes a new world, on the whole vastly superior
to the old, this is because, by the mercy of his Creator, man has no
longer been left to find his way without light and guidance from on
high; because after having, in the old world, left man to work out to
the end all that he could do by himself, God Himself has been pleased,
in the new world, to stretch out His own right hand and His holy arm,
and to work in man and by him. Here, then, is the striking contrast
between ancient and modern history. The one shows man working without
God, the other God working by man; and man, alas! but too often,
crossing, interfering with, and maiming His work.
But this was not all; for although, while the Empire of Rome still
lasted, the kingdom of God was not as yet visibly set up among men,
yet, almost from its very foundation, the germs of that future kingdom
were working in it. It was under the reign of the first heathen
emperor that the Prince of Peace was born into the world. The grain of
mustard-seed was already sown, and through all the centuries occupied
by the heathen empire it was growing night and day, at first
unobserved by men, in later times forcing itself on their notice,
until it became a tree whose branches overshadowed the whole earth.
There are, then, two subjects which must attract attention in any
worthy description of the Roman Empire; first, the political, social,
moral, and religious condition of the heathen world, both in itself
and in comparison with that of Christian nations, and next the effect
produced on the heathen themselves by the gradual growth and
development of Christianity in the midst of them. The internal history
of Christianity, indeed, belongs in strictness to ecclesiastical
history, but no subject has a more direct claim upon the general
historian than that of its effects upon the political, moral, and
social standard, and upon the religious opinions of those who were not
Christians.
We know, however, no English book which throws light upon either of
these two subjects. Indeed, we doubt whether there is any which ever
attempted to do so. The greatest English writer who has described
those times, was made incapable of it by his hatred of Christianity,
and by his low standard of moral feeling. In our own times, no doubt,
we have had an interesting history of the 'Romans under the Empire'
from a writer whom it would be most unjust to compare to Gibbon; but
this has not been continued so far as the period when Christianity
would have forced itself on the writer's attention. And so far as
appears, his thoughts have not been sufficiently turned to the subject
to lead him to detect its influence, where it is quite as
unquestionable if not as prominent. The result is, that although Mr.
Merivale no doubt fully believes and admits the truth and importance
of Christianity, he has given us a history of the Romans under the
Empire, in which, except in one or two short recognitions of its
truth, there is nothing to remind the reader that the old world was
ignorant of the fact that God had been manifested in the flesh, while
all that is specially worth notice in the new world that has succeeded
it, is founded upon that fact.
Mr. Merivale, of course, would reply to this criticism that he
undertook to relate the history of the Romans as it had been recorded
by Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion, and others; and that if there was nothing
in Christianity which arrested their attention, and which they have
thought worthy of record, there could be nothing which came into his
subject. This, however, implies a total mistake as to the duty of an
historian. He has to tell us, of course, what really happened, and
nothing else. But it is certain that events, in their consequences of
the greatest importance, are often so much undervalued by those who
see them in progress, that they pass them over unmentioned, devoting
their attention to things which at the moment seem more important, but
which after-times see to have been of little interest. It is Arnold's
remark, that Phillip de Comines,[1] whose memoirs 'terminate about
twenty years before the Reformation, and six years after the first
voyage of Columbus,' writes without the least notion of the momentous
character of the times which he was describing. His 'memoirs are
striking, from their perfect unconsciousness. The knell of the middle
ages had already sounded, yet Comines had no other notions than such
as they had tended to foster; he describes their events, their
characters, their relations, as if they were to continue for
centuries.' And he justly blames Barante, because, while fully able to
analyze history philosophically, 'he has chosen, in his history of the
Dukes of Burgundy, to forfeit the benefits of his own wisdom, and has
described the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries no otherwise than
might have been done by their own simple chroniclers.' What else has
Merivale done in describing, for instance, the times of the Antonines
as they appeared to contemporary heathen writers, not as we know them
really to have been, who have the means of estimating the effects even
then produced upon heathen society by the influence of the Christians,
already so numerous in the midst of it, and of comparing them with
periods in the history of many Christian nations in many respects
similar.
In contrast with the deficiencies of histories in our own language, we
would call special attention to the historical works of M. de
Champagny. We have been surprised to find how little they are known in
England, not merely by men of general culture and intelligence, but by
many whose studies have been especially directed to the history of the
Roman Empire. In France they are not only well known, but so highly
appreciated that they have won for their author a seat in the Academy,
the great object of literary ambition; and this, although the tone of
religious earnestness which runs through them, if it did not hinder,
assuredly in no degree tended to promote their popularity. At
different periods during the last forty years, M. de Champagny has
published four works on Roman history, the first two of which we have
placed at the head of this article. None of these works are called by
the author, or are exactly entitled to be called histories. They
contain, indeed, a narrative strictly confined to the facts recorded
by ancient authors, and full of life and interest; yet the narrative
is the least valuable part of the work. They are _études_, a term
which, for want of one more exactly expressing it, we may render
essays. This character pervades even the narrative: but less than half
the three volumes of 'the Cæsars' is narrative even in form. It
contains a 'picture of the Roman Empire,' giving innumerable details,
full of life and reality, of the provinces, the capital, the daily
life of the Romans, their worship, their family and social life, their
morals, their literary habits, their public amusements, and ending
with an account of the Neo-stoic philosophy which filled (so far as it
was filled at all) the place of a religion, as that word is understood
among ourselves. And throughout the whole, the comparison of the old
world and the new is kept in view. We know no work in the English
language, as we have already said, which supplies what we have here.
In 'the Antonines,' the proportion devoted to similar pictures,
especially to the estimate of the indirect influence of Christianity,
is equally large and equally important.
It would be impossible within the limits of an article, to give any
idea of the contents of essays in which our author presents, in the
lucid epigrammatic form peculiar to his country and language, the
results of a life of study and thought. What we specially desire is,
that our readers should consider for themselves whether it is not the
fact, that great as is the proportion of time and attention devoted to
the classics, in English education, the Roman Empire has been far too
much overlooked, especially in comparison with the Republic. For this
it is very easy to account. It is the natural result, not of any love
for a republic, but of that too exclusive love for the writers of the
Augustan age, which has long formed a characteristic feature in the
cultivated Englishman. The historians of the Empire, and even those
who, like Pliny, Seneca, &c., reflect its manners in contemporary
writings not professedly historical, but often of even more historical
value, are wanting in the especial charm which attracts a fastidious
scholar to the earlier history. And hence we greatly doubt whether
ninety out of one hundred boys educated at a classical school do not
practically think of Roman history, as if its interest ended with
Augustus. Before Gibbon turned attention to the 'Decline and Fall of
the Empire' this must have been still more the case. Account for this
as we may, we are sure that it is greatly to be regretted. For,
beautiful as is 'Livy's pictured page,' the state of society which it
presents--(that of a simple people, denizens of a single city,
retaining many of the virtues and faults of a rude age, esteeming
courage in the field as for all citizens the first and most necessary
of virtues, and valuing temperance, a life of labour, &c., chiefly, as
conducing to it)--has so little in common with our daily life and
habits, that the practical lessons impressed upon us are hardly more
than if we read as many pages of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' In
saying this, we by no means desire to discourage the study of writers
whom we heartily love and admire. It is a great thing to store the
mind (especially in the plastic season of youth) with images of
beauty; nor do we believe that the peculiar refinement of taste formed
by such an education is attainable by any other means. The first
decade of Livy, for instance, ranks high in that class of books, at
the top of which stand the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey.' Still, history
has an importance of its own, and it seems to us indisputable that the
strictly historical value of later Roman times is (at least in the
present age of the world) far greater than that of the golden age of
the Republic. Allowing for the immense difference between a heathen
and a Christian society, the world ruled by Marcus Aurelius is one in
which we can easily imagine ourselves to be living. We are sure that
no thoughtful man can read many pages of M. de Champagny's works
without finding his mind filled with thoughts and lessons which bear
immediately on the state of society in which our lot is cast. The
evils and corruptions which were undermining the Roman world were, in
many respects, those against which we are called to guard or contend.
Where there is a contrast, it is one which it is well for us to
observe; for it may easily be traced to the special blessings which
the indirect action of Christianity has conferred upon every class of
modern society, even upon those who have, more or less wilfully,
rejected it.
One fact which we think will strike every reader is that the state of
things under the Empire, as compared with that under the Republic, was
far better than ordinary histories would lead us to suppose. They
detail the mad and sanguinary tyranny of Caligula and Nero, but give
us little means of estimating the peace and prosperity which, for more
than two centuries after Augustus, prevailed, almost without
interruption, through the vast extent of his empire. Nothing could be
stronger than the practical appreciation of this by the generations
who lived under it. Pliny speaks of 'the immense majesty of the Roman
peace;' and these words 'Pax Romana' seem to have been almost as much
household words in his day as the phrase 'Our glorious constitution in
Church and State' in those of George III. To say that the heathen
world had never seen anything like it would greatly understate the
fact. There has been nothing like it since, any more than there had
been before. During several centuries, peace reigned almost
uninterrupted through the vast regions which extend from the Euphrates
to the Western shores of France and Portugal, from the slopes of the
Cheviots to the slopes of the Atlas. Passing over the very brief civil
contest which followed the death of Nero, the only exception was the
Jewish rebellion. The regions most favoured by nature of any that
earth holds--those which on every side surround the Mediterranean Sea,
Spain, the South of France, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt,
the Northern coasts of Africa--were full of rich and highly-civilized
cities, which, undisturbed by wars or rumours of wars, freely
exchanged the productions of their various climates and their
different industries. Many of them, among which we may name Athens,
Alexandria, and Carthage, were the chosen seats of learning and
philosophy. Men thought little of crossing the sea one way or the
other between Africa and Italy, France or Spain, as they might be
tempted by facilities for study or business, or even by curiosity.
When all formed part of one great empire, trade had no impediments
from laws of protection, or from the jealousy of rival nations or
governments.
Neither must it be supposed that the peace which afforded these
advantages was purchased at the cost of subjection to a great military
tyranny. Nothing is more remarkable, yet nothing more certain, than
the fact that Rome, which made herself mistress of the world by
military force, ruled and maintained her dominion over the world she
had conquered, by the superiority of her purely civil administration.
Throughout these immense regions, the Roman military establishment
consisted, under Tiberius, of between 160,000 and 180,000 men under
arms; and even these were not kept in the great cities or the interior
of the provinces to preserve order. They were stationed on the
frontiers, to guard the unarmed population of those huge countries
from the predatory invasions of the surrounding barbarians. Four
legions kept watch on the Euphrates, three (or perhaps five) on the
Danube, eight on the Rhine, and three on the Northern border of the
British province. In the whole interior of Gaul, that is to say, in
the districts which are now France, Belgium, and Germany west of the
Rhine, there were (see 'Les Césars,' vol. ii. 304) only 1,200 men
under arms. The naval force, which maintained the peace of the
Mediterranean, checking the plague of piracy which had been so
prevalent in earlier times, as it has been almost to the present day,
consisted of three fleets, stationed at Ravenna, at Misenum, and at
Forum Julii (now Frejus); the three together consisted of 15,000 men.
There were also twenty-four vessels employed in the defence of the
Rhine, and as many on the Danube. Italy and Spain were without
soldiers, except about 9,000 pretorians in the immediate neighbourhood
of Rome. Asia Minor, abounding in wealth and population, with princely
cities enjoying the civilization of a thousand years and all the
treasures of art and industry in undisturbed repose, was administered
by unarmed governors. 'Beyond the Black Sea there were 3,000 men to
guard that inhospitable coast, and retain in obedience to Rome the
kings of the Bosphorus. The other kings were responsible to Rome for
the tranquillity of their kingdoms, and exercised the police over them
at their own cost, with the aid of such troops as Rome permitted them
to levy.'
Well may M. de Champagny exclaim--
'These feeble material forces in an empire which was never
without some war seem marvellous when we compare them with
the burdensome armaments of modern powers, and the enormous
sacrifices imposed upon them in time of profound peace,
merely to maintain their position with regard to foreign
countries, and assure the tranquillity of their
States.'--('Les Césars,' vol. ii. 305.)
The contrast is, indeed, remarkable. A very large portion of the old
Roman Empire no longer forms part of the modern civilised world. The
remainder probably maintained, before the outbreak of the present war,
about 3,000,000 of men under arms, none of whom were employed (like
the armies of ancient Rome) in defending the frontier of a civilised
land against the incursions of warlike barbarous neighbours, but all
in jealously watching the power of neighbouring States and maintaining
a balance--how effectually the events of the last year have but too
plainly shown--or in holding down the struggles of revolutionary
parties at home.
To point the contrast, M. de Champagny shows that the army which
guarded each province of the Empire was composed of natives of the
country in which it was stationed. Roman citizens they no doubt were,
but citizens of provincial extraction, posted to defend in arms on
behalf of Rome the very land which their fathers, only a few
generations back, had defended against her. To this very day neither
France nor England has ventured to imitate this liberal policy.
Ireland is garrisoned by soldiers of English birth, and Breton
conscripts, in times of profound peace, were sent to fulfil their time
of service at Lyons and Paris.
It need hardly be said that the rule which was thus maintained, cannot
have been felt to be severe or oppressive by the subjugated people.
Our author traces the institutions by which the people in the
conquered provinces were gradually assimilated to the conquerors. We
have no space to follow him in detail. The principle was to leave each
nation in possession of its own laws and institutions, and to preserve
to the cities the right of self-government. The degrees of liberty
were different in different cases. In many cases the only restriction
was that they abandoned the right of making war and peace, engaging to
hold as their friends and enemies all whom Rome so held.
'No doubt when Rome was a party this liberty shrank into
small dimensions. The ancient institutions of the peoples
were reduced to the dimensions of municipal charters, their
magistrates became lieutenants of police, their areopagus
an _hôtel de ville_. But still, conquered Athens retained
its areopagus, the Greek cities had still their senates,
their popular assemblies, Marseilles retained that
constitution which had been so much admired by Cicero. Some
cities, such as Marseilles, Nismes, and Sparta, were not
merely free, but sovereign; others remained under their own
laws. Leagues which really meant anything, powerful
confederations, had been dissolved, but when Greece, in
memory of its ancient amphictyonic councils, met at Elis or
Olympia to hold dances in honour of her gods, when all the
Ionian peoples gathered in the Temple of the Panionium for
sacrifices and games, these innocent memorials of a common
origin or of hereditary alliances mattered nothing to Rome.
More than this, the towns of Caria, or the three and twenty
cities of Lycia, assembled their deputies not only for
feasts and games, but to deliberate upon their affairs,
and, provided they did not discuss peace or war, these
traces of political liberty gave no offence to the
liberalism of Rome. Rome had a marvellous power of
perceiving how much of independence would suffice to
content nations without being dangerous; and I doubt
whether any free and sovereign city of our modern Europe,
Cracow for instance [a note added here gives the date of
the first publication of the passage, 1842], is so
completely mistress at home, as Rhodes and Cizicus were
allowed to be under Augustus; whether there is any senate
so much respected as the curia of Tarragona or the council
of six hundred at Marseilles; or a burgomaster whose powers
of police are so sovereign as those of the suffete at
Carthage or the archion at Athens were allowed to be.'
('Les Césars,' vol. ii. 338.)
But while leaving the conquered cities in possession of their ancient
laws and government, Rome introduced in the midst of every province
Latin and Roman franchises, which were given sometimes to old,
sometimes to newly-founded cities. Each of these colonies afforded
many steps, by which the members of the conquered countries might
ascend, more or less completely, to the privileges of the Roman
citizen, and thus the ambition of becoming Romans quickly supplanted
the aspirations after political independence, which could hardly fail
to remain among a newly-conquered people. While enlarging upon this
remarkable characteristic of the Roman system of government over
conquered nations, M. de Champagny introduces a curious episode, into
which we may venture to follow him, and in which he contrasts the
French and English systems in the government of foreign dependencies.
He says:--
'The Frenchman is a contrast to the Roman; his conquests
are merely military, and are therefore transient in
comparison with those of the Roman, which were always
political. The Frenchman is a much better master, because
more sociable, more humane, but he always wishes to show
that he is master, officially, prominently, forcibly. There
is wanting to him a sort of reserve, both towards others
and himself. Instead of disguising his power he makes a
point of letting it be seen, felt, touched, and thus he
makes it annoying or compromises it. He never understands
the importance of some things which appear very small, but
which touch the heart of a foreigner; he laughs at him as
he does at himself; he insists that people should be like
him. He wishes to enforce on them his own laws, his
manners, his language, nay, his vices. He wants them all to
be adopted at once, not gradually, but by force, openly,
without delay. All this of course as a benefit--but what
insults people more than anything else, is a benefit
imposed by force. He is unpopular without being the least
conscious of it, having no suspicion that he has been
tyrannical, and sincerely believes that he is securing the
happiness of the people whom he is deeply irritating, till
all of a sudden his power is overthrown by a storm which he
never thought of expecting. It was thus that India slipped
out of our hands in a few years. In a few months all
Germany roused herself for the great contest of 1813. In a
single day the bells of Palermo gave freedom to Sicily. No
French conquest has ever been lasting.
'On the other hand we are reminded by this Roman invasion
and colonization, so active, so obstinate, so universal, of
the incessant and indefatigable advance of English
colonization.'
He attributes this to the manner in which the English have allowed
the conquered to retain their own institutions, customs, practices,
and religion, thus making the fact of conquest as little evident as
possible.
'England, like Rome, does not pride itself on making its
own language and its own laws universal. The _Prætor
peregrinus_ at Rome judged all peoples according to their
national laws. The Lord Chancellor in London judges the
Canadian according to French law, the inhabitant of Jersey
according to the customs of Normandy, of the Isle of France
(Mauritius) according to the Code Napoleon, the Indian
according to the law of Manou. The social system of England
is no more forced on strangers than the social system of
Rome; the Mussulman is not obliged to drink its ale, nor
the Hindoo to attend its church. All it demands is the
right of introducing itself, and introduce itself it does,
whole and entire, without modifying or conforming itself,
retaining its proud isolation and disdainful peculiarity.
This is the course of nations endowed alike with the spirit
of conquest and of conservatism. Rome and England have kept
their conquests, because their conquest has always been
intelligent and politic, because among them the statesman
has always been master of the warrior, when it has not
happened that the warrior himself was a statesman.' ('Les
Césars,' vol. ii. 333.)
Our first impression in reading this passage was that the author had
done more than justice to the wisdom of the English people. On second
thoughts, however, we believe what he says to be substantially true.
There are obvious exceptions on both sides. For instance, nothing can
be more remarkable than the manner in which France has succeeded in
attaching to herself the German provinces, stolen by Louis XIV. less
than two centuries ago; while, on the other hand, England has held
Ireland at least since the accession of James I., partially since
Henry II., and has never managed for a single day to attach it to
herself. The last case is explained, because England, however it may
be accounted for, adopted in Ireland exactly the opposite course to
that described by M. de Champagny, and forced her own institutions
upon a people for whom they were quite unfit. Mr. Gladstone evidently
hopes that it is not too late to reconcile Ireland, by allowing it (as
the Romans certainly would have done) to be governed by Irish ideas.
The loss of the English colonies in America is another instance, for
which M. de Champagny, we think, imperfectly accounts. The other
instances he mentions seem in point. We do not believe that Frenchmen
would have allowed the people of India to retain their institutions,
manners, &c., as they have actually done under English government. As
for Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comté, it is to be observed that
they were not held as dependencies, but were at once made an integral
part of France: and we believe that M. de Montalembert was right in
the opinion he expressed, that they had remained intensely
anti-French, until after the great Revolution, which for the first
time melted down the whole of France into one nationality. This may
easily be accounted for. Englishmen who think of that revolution are
apt to remember only the hideous crimes by which it was sullied. To
the French peasants, and perhaps more especially in the German
provinces, the revolution meant the abolition of the feudal system; a
system always oppressive to all classes, and most of all to those
lower classes on whom the whole weight of the enormous structure
rested and pressed.
But we must return to the Roman Empire. By the system we have
described it avoided what is ever the most grinding of tyrannies, the
domination of race over race. The conquered races, while retaining
their national institutions, very easily attained a place among the
Romans themselves, and before long, felt that the Empire and all it
contained was their own. Before the fall of the Republic, all Italians
either enjoyed the full privileges of Romans or knew that they could
very easily obtain them. Julius Cæsar had no sooner conquered Gaul
than he admitted some Gauls to the senate. This seems to have been
premature, and they are said to have been excluded from it by
Augustus. But the policy was steadily continued. Claudius, who was an
antiquarian, made a well-known speech on the occasion of admitting
more Gauls to the honour. Later we find men of almost every province
in the highest offices, and even attaining the imperial dignity.
The great proof of the wisdom of this system was in its working. The
civilized world was under the dominion of a single city; and yet there
was no example of any national revolt, except in the one instance of
Judæa; nay, conquered countries deprecated as the greatest of evils
separation from the Roman Empire. The 'groans of Britain' when the
Romans withdrew from her are well known. But the Gauls afforded a
still stronger example. They were among the most warlike and restless
of all ancient nations. Their very name had been the greatest terror
Rome ever knew. They were made subjects of Rome, after an heroic and
desperate resistance, in which a million of them perished, only fifty
years before the Christian era. How soon they were left without the
presence of any controlling Roman force we are not informed. Such,
unquestionably, must have been their ordinary position, to say the
least, long before the death of Nero, only one hundred and eighteen
years later (A.D. 68). In the civil commotions which followed, almost
the whole Roman force (itself, as we have already seen, composed of
natives, and employed not to enforce obedience, but to protect the
frontier against invasion) was withdrawn into Italy. A small number of
enterprising Gauls thought this a favourable opportunity for restoring
the national independence. What, however, is most remarkable is, that
it does not seem for one moment to have suggested itself, even to
them, to abolish the Roman or restore the ancient national
institutions. Their hope was to separate themselves from Italy, and
set up a Roman Empire, whose seat should be in Gaul. It seems to have
been owing to this circumstance, that the small remains of the
legionary soldiers still left in the country joined in the
movement--an event quite without example. For several months Gaul was
to all intents and purposes independent, yet its internal affairs and
government seem to have gone on without the least change. The
provincials, left wholly to themselves, convened at Treves a general
assembly of all the Gallic nations, and this assembly determined,
after full discussion, that Gaul should remain a province of the Roman
Empire.
And this was the voluntary resolution of a nation celebrated all over
the world for its warlike courage, and which had been conquered by
Rome less than one hundred and twenty years before. It seems
impossible that anything could more clearly have demonstrated that the
Empire of Rome over the conquered provinces was maintained, not by
force, but by the free will of the provincials.
M. de Champagny gives it as his deliberate opinion that the Roman
Empire, during the first two centuries, is to be regarded as 'a
federation of free nations under an absolute monarch.' He has a most
interesting chapter ('Antonines,' book iv. ch. 11) on the liberties of
the Roman Empire, in which he especially compares them with those of
the nations of modern Europe. It was published under the reign of
Louis Philippe, and is doubly interesting to English readers, both for
the contrast which it establishes between the Roman Empire and the
most free Continental States; and also because it throws much
undesigned light upon the immense difference between the meaning
attached to the word liberty in France and in England. He deliberately
declares, and, we think, proves, that a subject had much greater
personal freedom under the Antonines than under any of the most free
Continental kingdoms. Of political liberty, he says the moderns have
much more--the free press, the right of voting, the tribune (_i.e._,
the power of addressing a public legislative assembly), charters,
constitutions, _habeas corpus_.
'And yet I venture to doubt whether Europe in the
nineteenth century, at the present moment, is much more
free than the ancient world, even under the Roman Empire
(of course I do not include the slaves).... We, the proud
citizens of a Parliamentary monarchy, who have made
revolutions when we were called _subjects_--subjects
nevertheless we were and still are, every day of our lives.
We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or to
dine more than twenty together; or to have in our
portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or to lend a
book to a friend; or to put a patch of mortar on our own
house, if it stands in a street; or to kill a partridge, or
to plant a tree near a roadside; or to dig coal out of our
own land; or to teach three or four children to read; or to
gather our neighbours for prayer; or to have an oratory in
our house (what is it that constitutes an oratory?); or to
bleed a sick man; or to sell him a medicine; or (in some
countries) to be married; or to do any one of a thousand
other things, which it would fill volumes to enumerate;
without permission from the Government, which permission,
we are carefully told, is always, and in its very nature,
subject to be recalled. In three cases out of four, indeed,
the Government does not either authorise or forbid; it
tolerates. We live by toleration. We are born, we have a
home, a family, we bring up our children, we have a God, we
have a religion, all by the indulgent and merciful, but
always revocable, toleration of the ruling power. Of all
things that man does there is only one over which the
Government has no authority. We are allowed to die without
its permission. Still, we do need it in order to allow us
to be buried. At certain moments we have sovereign power
over great and public matters, but in small matters of
private life we are subjects, nay, inferior to subjects.
Unluckily, these small matters make up our life, and these
private matters are just the things important in
life.'--('Antonines,' vol. ii. 182.)
This passage brings out in strong light the substantial difference
between our own system and that of the Continental nations. In France,
notwithstanding the passionate demand for liberty which has been
uttered from time to time, we sincerely believe there neither now is
nor ever has been any party which has ever desired what we mean by
liberty, or even understood what it is; and hence, numerous as have
been its revolutions, there is one point on which every government in
France, at least since the days of Richelieu, has been of one mind.
No one of them has respected what we mean by 'personal liberty.' No
one has seriously thought of leaving men to do what they like, as long
as they do not interfere with the liberty and rights of their
neighbour. In this there has been no substantial difference between
the _ancien régime_, the republic, the first empire, the monarchy of
the restoration, the monarchy of July, the second republic, the second
empire, the government of defence. We see no reason to hope that the
system to be authorised by the Assembly just elected will, in this
respect, differ from any of its predecessors. But this is not a thing
peculiar to France. We doubt whether it is not carried even farther in
Germany. We believe the Continental State which, in this respect, is
most like England, to be Switzerland. If Englishmen are wise they will
be on the watch to prevent the gradual introduction of this
Continental system. It is evil, not merely because it needlessly
limits and interferes with the liberty which is the choicest of the
natural gifts of God to man, but because by accustoming men to walk in
leading strings it gradually makes them incapable of walking without
them. A Prussian in England last winter expressed strong misgivings
whether it would be right to skate, because the Government had not yet
authorised it. We have known a Roman gentleman of our own day complain
of the Pope's Government, because he had never been taught to swim.
These things, ludicrous as they are, are symptoms of a very serious
evil, they show that men have been treated like children until their
minds have become childish. Mr. Göschen, some years back, said that he
saw great danger of the same system gradually creeping in among
ourselves. It was likely to come, he said, not because the Government
is anxious to interfere, but because there is a continual tendency on
the part of the people to call for its interference. We shall do well
to sacrifice something of uniformity and energy in many departments,
if they can only be obtained by the sacrifice of liberty. The very
fact that political power has lately been extended so much more widely
among us increases instead of diminishing the danger. Classes long
shut out from political power naturally feel much more eager for
equality than for liberty. In France it is this passion for equality
that makes personal liberty almost hopeless. Under the Roman Empire
equality was never dreamed of. The cities of the same province might
be divided into half a dozen classes, each of which had different
degrees of self-government. But there was none in which a man could so
little do what he liked as in modern Paris. M. de Champagny accounts
for this:--
'The liberties of the Roman Empire consisted not in its
laws, but in something greater or less than laws--in facts,
and these facts may be summed up in one. The art of
government was not then brought to perfection as it is now.
There was more freedom because there was less civilization.
Not to say that Cæsar had neither telegraphs nor railroads,
he had not even any system of administration. This was his
first want. He had no hierarchy of functionaries, depending
upon each other, each subject to be promoted or dismissed
by some other, or by the common master.... Then (a second
want), he neither had nor could have a police; all he had
was a set of volunteer spies, called _delators_,
inconvenient and even dangerous instruments. The heart of
Tiberius would have bounded at the very idea of a great
system of administrative _délation_ and _espionage_ [thank
God English writers are compelled to use Latin or French
words to express a thought so foreign to our manners]
organised from above, and extending its branches everywhere
below, such as that for which I believe we are indebted to
M. de Sartines.[2] His heart would have bounded, but his
purse would have failed, for (his third want) Cæsar had no
budget. The art of finance was in its infancy. Those vast
regions, on an average as rich as they are now, and which
now pay to their actual sovereigns, without much complaint,
at least two hundred millions sterling, did not produce to
Cæsar sixteen millions sterling, and inasmuch as the
contributions which produced these sixteen millions had to
pass through the hands of some fifty thousand publicans and
agents of finance, the contributors, who paid perhaps twice
as much as the Emperor received, cried out fearfully.
Lastly, if Cæsar, wishing to compel his people, had brought
on any serious rising, he would have had no means of
putting it down, for (a fourth want) Cæsar, having no
budget, had no army. Those countries, which now furnish not
less than three millions of soldiers, in those days,
without being much less populous than they are now, did not
furnish more than 300,000 men, and these 300,000 were
absorbed by the guard on the frontiers. There were whole
provinces without a single soldier. This Empire, without
administration, without police, without budget, without
army, would make the lowest clerk in the prefecture of
police, the prefecture of the Seine, the offices of the
Minister of War, or the Minister of Finance, shrug his
shoulders at its poverty--military, fiscal, and
administrative--I know that. But what would have been
thought of our monarchies, so well constituted, so
vigilant, so rich, so powerfully armed, I do not say by the
clerks, but by the subjects of the Roman
Empire?'--('Anton.,' vol. ii. p. 185.)
We heartily wish we had space to give the whole of the chapter from
which we have made these extracts. The author proves in detail that
under the Empire there was liberty of property, municipal liberty,
liberty of association, liberty of worship (except for the
Christians), liberty of education, liberty of speech. This last, M. de
Champagny most truly says, was far more general at Rome under Trajan
than under Louis Philippe at Paris. 'That liberty of the tongue was
the liberty of every man: what is our liberty of the press than the
liberty of two hundred journalists?' It was this that made Tacitus
exclaim, 'Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ
sentias licet dicere.' The effect of this was that
'A modern European, as soon as he goes out of his own door
and begins to act, to think, to live, among his fellows,
must take for granted that everything is forbidden except
what is expressly authorized. Under the Roman Empire,
everything not expressly forbidden was understood to be
authorized. Above all, intellectual liberty was complete.
Every one talked, listened, gave and received information
publicly as he pleased. Doctrines spread. Schools of
thought raised themselves without interference of authority
until it felt itself in danger, not from the general
independence of thought (that misgiving had not yet come
into anyone's mind), but from the special character of some
teaching which arrested its attention. Even when the
Imperial Government made up its mind to be severe, its
rigour might often be averted, sometimes even paralyzed, by
the municipal authority, which alone was on the spot and in
activity in the interior of each great city. It was thus
that the Christian teachers and apologists presented
themselves as "philosophers," for, as a general rule,
philosophers were at liberty to teach what they thought
fit.'
No wonder that centuries of peace, free government of each city and
nation under its own immemorial laws and customs, and taxation little
more than nominal, led to the mighty public works, the very ruins of
which are still the wonders of the world--the roads, 'massy causeways,
whose foundations were beneath the surface, their surface many feet
above it'--the system of navigable rivers and canals which made
communication through the whole world (as it then was) easier and
swifter than it ever was in England before the time of the generation
not yet passed away. M. de Champagny quotes the words of Tertullian:--
'The world itself is opened up, and becomes from day to day
more civilized, and increases the sum of human enjoyment.
Every place is reached, has been made known, is full of
business. Solitudes, famous of old, have changed their
aspects under the richest cultivation. The plough has
levelled forests, and the beasts that prey on man have
given place to those that serve him. Corn waves on the
sea-shores; rocks are opened out into roads, marshes are
drained, cities are more numerous now than villages in
former times. The island has lost its savageness, and the
cliff its desolation. Houses spring up everywhere, and men
to dwell in them. On all sides are government and life.
What better proof can we have of the multiplication of our
race than that man has become a drug, while the very
elements scarcely meet our needs; our wants outrun the
supplies; and the complaint is general that we have
exhausted Nature herself.'[3]
Again, he quotes Pliny:--
'Rome has united the scattered empires. She has given
softness to manners; she has made the industry of all
peoples, the productiveness of all climates, a common
possession. She has given a common language to nations
separated by the discordance and the rudeness of their
dialects. She has civilized the most savage and most
distant tribes. She has taught man humanity.'
'War,' says another writer, 'is now nothing more than a
tale of ancient days, which our age refuses to believe; or,
if it does chance that we learn that some Moorish or
Getulean clan has presumed to provoke the arms of Rome, we
seem to dream, as we hear of these distant combats. The
world seems to keep perpetual holiday. It has laid aside
the sword, and thinks only of rejoicings and feasts. There
is no rivalry between cities except in magnificence and
luxury; they are made up of porticoes, aqueducts, temples,
and colleges. Not cities only, but the earth itself puts on
gay attire and cultivation, like that of a sumptuous
garden. Rome, in one word, has given to the world something
like a new life.'
M. de Champagny thinks that our present civilization would 'seem mean
and poor to one of the contemporaries of Cicero, or even to one of the
subjects of Nero.' ('Les Césars,' vol. ii. 397.) He shows how this
would be felt, both as to public and private life, and especially
refers to Pompeii. In proof of his assertion we must refer our readers
to a passage, much too long to quote, as to the daily life of Rome
itself. He follows a Roman, 'not opulent, but merely well off' through
his day:--
The sun has no sooner risen than his house is thronged by
clients (_manè salutantes_). This is a hasty _levée_. Then
the patron, surrounded by his followers, goes down to the
forum; if he likes, he is carried in a litter by his
slaves. There the serious business of the day is
conducted--causes, money payments, and arrangements; "all
is activity, chatter, noise." But, at noon, all ceases; the
audience breaks up, the shops are deserted, the streets are
soon silent, and during the artificial night of the
_siesta_ no one is to be seen but stragglers returning to
their houses, or lovers, who come, as if it were really
night, to sigh beneath the balcony of their ladies.
Business to-morrow. For the rest of the day Rome was free;
Rome was asleep. The poor man lay down to sleep in the
portico; the rich on the ground-floor of his house, in the
silence and darkness of a room without windows, and to the
sound of the fountains in the _cavædium_, slept, mused, or
dreamed. Later than four o'clock, no business might be
proposed in the Senate, and there were Romans who after
that hour would not open a letter.
'About two the streets began to fill again. The crowd
flowed towards the Campus Martius. There was a vast meadow,
where the young men practised athletics, ran, and threw the
javelin. The elders sat, talked, and looked on. Sometimes
they had exercises of their own; often they walked in the
sun. The exposure of the naked body to its life-giving
action served them instead of the gymnasium. The women had
their walks under the porticoes. This, too, was an hour of
activity, but of merry, gay, satisfied activity.
'At three a bell sounded, and the baths were opened. The
bath combined business, medical treatment, and pleasure.
The poor enjoyed them in the public baths, the voluptuous
rich, in their palaces.... The bath was a place of
assembly, with a degree of boyish freedom. There was
laughing, talk, gaming, even dancing.... There, too, the
great affair of the day was arranged--the supper--almost
the only social meal of a Roman. As evening came on, the
party stretched themselves, leaning on their elbows, round
the hospitable table, and had before them for the meal and
for society all the hours till night. It commonly consisted
of six or seven (never more than the Muses, said the
proverb, or less than the Graces), stretched on couches of
purple and gold, round a table of precious wood. A large
band of servants was employed in the service of the feast;
the _maître d'hôtel_ provided it, the _structor_ placed the
dishes in symmetrical order, the _scissor_ carved. Young
slaves, in short tunics, placed on the table the huge
silver salver, changed for each course, upon which the
dishes were tastefully arranged. Children kept, what
Indians in our day call punkahs, in motion over the heads
of the company, to drive away the flies, and to cool them.
Young and beautiful cup-bearers, with long robes and
flowing hair, filled the cups with wine, others sprinkled
on the floor an infusion of vervain and Venus-hair, which
was supposed to promote cheerfulness. Round the table are
songs, dances, and symphonies, tricks of buffoons, or
discussions of philosophers. In the midst of all this
merry-making the king of the feast gives the toasts, counts
the cups, and crowns the guests with short-lived flowers.
"Let us lose no time to live," he said, "for death is
drawing near; let us crown our heads before we go down to
Pluto." In fact, the dominant thought of ancient society
was to live, to enjoy, to shut out from life as much as
possible everything of suffering, care, toil, and
duty.'--('Les Césars,' vol. ii. p. 388.)[4]
One essential feature of the Roman world, as compared with ours,
judging alike by the remains which still exist, and by the hints of
ancient authors, was the far greater extent and magnificence of the
public buildings of all kinds, and the comparatively confined size of
ordinary private houses. This our author especially points out at
Pompeii, a country town of the third or fourth class, the public
buildings of which, as far as they have hitherto been uncovered,
astonish modern visitors by their extent and magnificence. Such was
the natural tendency of a society in which men spent little time in
their own houses, and mixed much with their fellows. Many a Roman in
easy circumstances seems to have used his house chiefly for sleeping
and meals. It mattered little, with such habits, how contracted might
be the other parts, if the public banqueting room was spacious and
highly ornamented; and such was the character of the houses at
Pompeii. The extreme magnificence of the baths, porticoes, theatres,
&c., at Rome, all the world knows. Our author enlarges on this part of
the subject. But we will quote a few words upon it from a living
English writer:--
'What was the life that Rome bestowed upon her inhabitants?
Judge of it by the gift of an emperor to his people; of
such gifts there were many in Rome. A vast square, of more
than a thousand feet, comprehended within its various
courts three great divisions. One contained libraries,
picture and sculpture galleries, music halls, and every
need for the cultivation of the mind. A second, courts for
gymnastics, riding, wrestling, and every bodily exercise. A
third, the baths; but how little the word, associated with
modern poverty conveys a notion of the thing! There were
tepid, vapour, and swimming baths, accompanied with
perfumes and frictions, giving to the body an elastic
suppleness. [We believe the author has omitted the chief
thing conveyed to a Roman by the term, viz., what we now
call the Turkish bath, dry heat, producing perspiration.]
Then, as to their material: alabaster vied with marble;
mosaic pavements, with ceilings painted in fresco; walls
were encrusted with ivory, and a softened daylight
reflected from mirrors; while on all sides a host of
servants were engaged in the various offices of the bath.
The afternoon _siesta_ is over; a bell sounds, the _thermæ_
open. There all Rome assembles, to chat, to criticise, to
declaim. There is the coffee-house, theatre, exchange,
palace, school, museum, parliament, and drawing-room, in
one. There is food for the mind, exercise and refreshment
for the body. There, if anywhere, the eye can be satisfied
with seeing, and the ear with hearing; and every sense and
every taste find but a too ready gratification. This feast
of intellect, this palace of ancient power and art is open
daily, without cost, or for the smallest sum, to every
Roman citizen. Private wealth in modern times bestows a few
of these gifts on a select number; but poor as well as rich
could revel in them, without fear of exhaustion, in this
treasure-house of material civilization.'
We have enlarged on the material blessings enjoyed under the Roman
Empire, because, as we began by saying, we are convinced that the
mass, even of those who have received a classical education, have
never sufficiently estimated them. But it is curious, on the other
hand, to observe how much the judgment even of the most learned and
thoughtful men, whose standard of excellence was merely earthly, has
been dazzled when they have allowed themselves seriously to consider
them. Gibbon goes so far as to say, 'If a man were called upon to fix
the period in the history of the world during which the condition of
the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without
hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the
accession of Commodus.'
The great poet of the last generation mourns over the fall of Rome--
'Alas! the golden city, and alas!
The trebly kindred triumphs.'
He laments over fallen earthly greatness:
'Dost thou flow,
Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?
Rise with thy yellow waves and mantle her distress.'
So laments the world over fallen worldly greatness and glory. Our own
estimate of the matter is the very opposite. We know, indeed, that the
time was coming, and coming apace, in which not only the great city
and its empire, but all the greatness and glory of the old heathen
world was to be so utterly swept away, that for weeks together the
very spot where Rome had once stood remained untrodden by any human
foot, and abandoned to the birds of the air and the beasts of the
field. But in all this we see nothing over which any man need lament,
unless, indeed, he esteems mere material prosperity above all that is
truly noble and exalted in man. Rather are we disposed to cry out with
exultation--
'Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become the
habitation of devils, and hold of every foul spirit, and a
cage of every unclean and hateful bird.--The kings of the
earth shall bewail over her, and lament for her, when they
shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for
the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas! that great
city Babylon, that mighty city,... which was clothed in
fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold
and precious stones and pearls.--Rejoice over her, thou
heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath
avenged you on her!'
For, in truth, all this splendour and luxury was not merely
associated, but inseparably one with a moral system, by far the most
execrable, the most indescribable, the most inconceivable, under which
God's earth ever groaned. The morals of the accursed race were far too
foul to be described here. They became the wonder and loathing, the
byword of contempt even of the heathen barbarians by whom they were
surrounded.[5] Lust, not merely unbridled, but wearing out and jading
itself to invent new ways of pollution; and cruelty, shedding man's
blood like water--these were the very foundations of the gorgeous
fabric. Any cure for these evils, except in the total sweeping away of
the whole order of society, was, as we shall soon see, utterly
hopeless.
First of all, the prosperity which we have described was only the
privilege of a favoured class. The mass of the population derived from
it no benefit. The whole social system was founded on slavery. The
whole domestic service, nay, the manufacturing, and what is to modern
ideas far more marvellous, even the intellectual labour, was performed
by slaves. It is calculated that in Rome itself the slave population
was twice or three times as numerous as the free. These slaves were
drawn from races fully equal to their masters in natural gifts, they
were often their equals even in culture; and every one of these slaves
was by Roman law not a person, but a thing. The male slave was not a
man, the female slave not a woman. 'The slave is without rights,
without a family, without a God.'[6] The hideous moral pollution which
this state of law not merely rendered possible, but consecrated, is
defended from exposure in the language of a Christian country by its
unutterable, inconceivable foulness; and of the moral system of
heathen Rome, as a whole, the same must be said. It is like the beast
of the American prairies, which no hunter dare touch because it emits
a stench which none can endure. We are well aware that this of
necessity prevents our exhibiting this side of the question with
anything like justice. Let us thank God that, far as our age has
fallen beneath the standard of Christianity, it is still so much
pervaded by Christian instincts that no writer, not even the most
utterly abandoned in his personal character, would dare to publish to
the world what was practised without shame or concealment by men who
were esteemed free from reproach and models of virtue. 'It is a shame
even to speak of the things that are done of them in secret.' Thus
much, however, we may say, that the men whom the heathen Romans
honoured, not merely for greatness, but especially for virtue, lived
without shame in all the horrors described by St. Paul in that
terrible first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; and poets, as
deeply pervaded as man ever was with a sense of the beautiful, nay,
who undertook to be the moral reformers of their age, introduced into
the midst of their most delicious strains not mention merely, but
praises of things which the moral standard of our age forbids us to
mention--even for execration; for these are they of whom the Apostles
testifies that 'they not only do such things, but have pleasure in
them that do them.'
Neither must we look upon slavery, and the indescribable system of
pollution which it sprang from, as an evil accidentally attached to
heathen society. It was intimately and essentially mixed with its very
life. It is important to observe that, so far as we know, there has
never existed upon earth any purely heathen civilized society of which
slavery has not been the basis. There is no reason to suppose that if
the Roman Empire had continued in all its greatness to the present
day, and had continued heathen, slavery would at this hour have been a
less essential part of its social and moral system than it was in the
days of Nero. Before it could have been abandoned, the whole habits of
life of all the free population of the Empire, and especially of Rome,
must have been fundamentally changed; and the change must have been
such that we can hardly imagine any nation to have been reconciled to
it except by some superhuman power; for it would have implied the
sacrifice of all the habits of self-indulgence and luxury upon which
Roman society was built. It is impossible to suppose that such a
change could have been effected, especially because, as far as
experience teaches, there never has been any instance of a heathen
nation which has begun to fall into decay and has been raised in any
degree to a new life. Such a national resurrection is one of the
miracles which nothing except Christianity has ever worked.
As to the barbarity of which the slave at Rome was the victim, we
might speak with less reserve if our space allowed. But we can devote
only a few words to a subject which would fill volumes. We will, then,
confine ourselves to suggesting two subjects for the consideration of
our readers,--first, the wholesale slaughter, merely for amusement,
which was one of the most cherished and universally diffused
institutions of Roman society, and was the delight of women as well as
men; next the state of the law with regard to slaves, and the manner
in which it was administered. The life of a Roman was of course always
held subject to the despair of his slaves, and hence it was the law,
that if a master was killed by his slave, under whatever
circumstances, or for whatever cause, every one of his slaves, male
and female, old and young, however manifestly innocent of all
complicity in the murder, however without power to have prevented it,
was to die upon the cross.[7] Tacitus tells how, in the reign of Nero,
even the populace of Rome was horrified at the execution of this law
in the case of the 'family,' as it was called, of a man of consular
dignity murdered by one of his slaves, it was reported, in consequence
of rivalry in a matter of infamous passion, or because the master had
received the price of his slave's freedom and then refused to fulfil
his engagement by giving him his liberty. His slaves were four hundred
in number; among them were not only men and women, but little
children, and the matter was brought before the Senate by some who
wished to temper in this instance the severity of the law. But the
proposal was indignantly rejected by Cassius, a Roman of noble family,
and whom the philosophic historian Tacitus expressly praises for his
knowledge of the laws of Rome. He argued that although in this case
the innocent would perish with the guilty, this must happen even when
a legion was punished by decimation, and that if some injustice was
committed, it would be outweighed by the public benefit. But his chief
argument was the authority of ancestral law:
'Our ancestors were wiser than we. I have often abstained
from resisting proposals to dispense with their laws, when
I felt that the change would be for the worse, lest I
should seem to be carried away by love of my profession.
To-day I cannot abstain. They suspected the disposition of
their slaves, even when they had been born in the same
lands and houses, and bred up in affection for their lords.
But since we have begun to have in our families whole
nations who have different customs, different religious
rites, or none at all, this confused sediment of all
peoples can be mastered only by terror.'
His arguments prevailed, and the whole four hundred, men, women, and
children, were sent to execution. The indignation of the populace was
overawed by soldiers supplied by the Emperor.
We have only indicated, not described the hideous state of Roman
society; what is really important is to observe, that man being what
he is, this monstrous system of blood and pollution must not be
regarded as any accidental evil; it was the natural, we do not
hesitate to say, the certain consequence of a high state of wealth,
civilization, and refinement in a heathen society. So far as we are
aware, there is no record of any heathen nation which has ever
attained to such a condition, in which moral corruption has not
overflowed all bounds, and in the end destroyed the nation itself.
Wealth, leisure, luxury, are of necessity temptations to an easy,
indulgent life. To this the experience of Christian nations forbids us
to shut our eyes. But in them, however far they may have fallen below
the practical standard of Christianity, unless all faith in the
supernatural, in the unseen world, in God, and in Christ is wholly
extinct, there are always fixed recognised principles upon which to
fall back; and there is a part at least of every nation resolved to
act on these principles, at all cost and all sacrifice. These are they
to whom our blessed Lord said, 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' In a
heathen society, on the contrary, when corruption once breaks loose,
where is the salt? There may be men like Cato the censor, who believe
that the fall of states is usually to be traced, not so much to
political as to moral and social causes, and foresee in the decay of
morals the ruin of their country. But what are they to do? They may
remonstrate, they may argue; but the evil they have to encounter is
not in the intellect, but in the will; and the will is exactly that
which they have no means of affecting. At Rome, for instance, the
danger and evil was not that men denied or doubted that it was only by
the stern and self-denying virtues that a State could be preserved, it
was that each man for himself preferred indulgence and ease, and
despaired of doing anything effectual for the public good, for he
felt, very truly, that even if he were, in his own person, to revive
all the simplicity and hardness of life of Cincinnatus or Fabricius,
he would not be able to change the national habits, or restore to the
standard of times gone by. Each, therefore, preferred to praise the
rigid virtues of former ages, and to practise the laxity of his own.
No man wrote more strongly or more eloquently in praise of ancient
manners and in condemnation of modern corruption than Sallust, the
historian. Yet no Roman palace equalled in luxury the gardens of
Sallust, the man. Nor was any Roman less scrupulous either in getting
money or in spending it. What, then, was to be done? The power of
passion was real and overpowering; virtue could only oppose to it
common-places and fine words, without being able to appeal to any
fixed principles or practical sanctions. It was a lamentable state of
things, but, as the ancients themselves believed, one which, in the
heathen world, followed by a necessary law, whenever any brave, hardy,
self-denying, and virtuous race of men, by the natural operation of
these virtues, rose to empire, and attained wealth, and the means of
luxury. The later Romans held up their own ancestors of early days as
the brightest example of virtue. Among them the gods were honoured and
worshipped, and the rules which had come down from their fathers were
strictly observed. Men were frugal, laborious, content with little,
valuing right and honour far above wealth and pleasure, and ever ready
to suffer or die for their country; women were chaste, modest,
retiring, preferring their honour to their life. That the men and
women of their own day were in all respects the opposite, was
self-evident; but it is to be observed, that they were so far from
considering this to be any special fault or misery of Rome, that even
those who most bitterly complained of the change were wont to boast
that no other nation had so long resisted the universal law, by which
wealth generated luxury, and luxury the desire of increased gain; and
this again made money, not honour and virtue, the national standard of
right and wrong, until at last, things getting ever worse and worse,
society itself was dissolved, and the national life perished. This
they considered to be the natural, nay inevitable course of things.[8]
This was a melancholy view of human affairs, but it seems certain that
with regard to a heathen state (and they knew of no other) it was
true. For to take the case of Rome itself, what sanction was there
even in the purest times of the Republic for those rules of right and
wrong--those great moral principles, which to a very considerable
extent were actually preserved; although, no doubt, men in later times
dreamed of a golden age which had never really existed. The only
religion they knew was silent about moral virtues. It taught men to
honour and worship the gods of their fathers, and to ask and hope from
them such worldly blessings as long life, health, &c. But that a man
of moral purity, justice, and mercy was a more acceptable worshipper
than one who was impure, unjust, and cruel, they never imagined, and
indeed, as long as they in any degree believed the traditions which
they had received as to the character of the gods they worshipped, it
was simply impossible that they should imagine it. There was nothing
contrary to the national religion, however men's consciences might
tell them that there was something immoral, in the prayer which Horace
attributes to one of his contemporaries--'Grant that I may succeed in
wearing a mask, that I may be supposed to be just and good. Throw a
cloud and darkness over my cheats and frauds.'
Religion, then, gave no moral rule, or at least none to individuals.
M. de Champagny ('Les Césars,' iii. p. 4) remarks, with great truth,
that so far as it had a moral code at all, that code and its sanctions
touched, not the individual man, but the State. Its morality was that
of the family, and through the family that of the city. Its object was
the prosperity, the glory, the aggrandisement of the public welfare.
The Roman virtues--courage in war, moderation in peace, economy in
private life, fidelity in marriage, these were patriotic virtues,
taught and practised as such.' What, then, was the moral code of the
early Romans? It was, as this passage suggests, the fundamental and
original law of the Roman people. Arnold well points out[9] that this
and this alone was the real moral law of the heathen nations in
general. In this sense their only standard of right and wrong was
human law; but not exactly what we mean when we speak of human law,
because we live in a state of society in which new laws are
continually passed; and to imagine that the 'statutes at large' could
be the real rule and measure of right and wrong, would go beyond the
possible limits of human credulity. But among the ancient nations new
laws were comparatively very rare. The Romans themselves had a great
system of what Jeremy Bentham used to call 'judge-made law.' This grew
to its perfection at rather a late period of the Empire, and still
forms the foundation of most of the systems of law existing in
Europe. It is not of this, however, that we are speaking. Of what we
should call statutes, there were passed in the whole of their history
very few. Only 207 in all are recorded as having been enacted in the
whole period of the Republic, and of these no less than 133 were
passed just at the latest period of its decay.[10] Their greater
frequency at this period was considered one of the signs of national
degeneracy, for it was a proverb, _corruptissimâ republicâ plurimæ
leges_. In fact, at Rome in its best days there can hardly be said to
have existed any machinery for making new statutes. There was, as we
understand the word, no legislative assembly. The judicial system out
of which grew the code of law to which we have referred already
existed; and when it was necessary, one of those grave changes which
are known among our kindred on the other side of the Atlantic as
'amendments of the constitution,' could be made by a vote of the whole
Roman people. To get one of these passed was often, during the best
periods of the Republic, a matter requiring years of furious struggle.
It is not, then, of statutes such as are passed year by year in our
Parliament that we are speaking, when we say that the law of the land
was the chief code of morals existing in heathen States. Quite
distinct from anything of this kind, and more answering to our 'common
law,' there were certain great principles of the constitution which
had come down to the Romans of the historical period by an immemorial
tradition, and which all men believed to have in them something
sacred. To touch them was to touch the very life of the Roman people.
Such principles there were in all the ancient heathen States, and
their sacredness was in each State a fundamental principle as long as
it retained any fundamental principles at all. This was, in fact, a
necessary part of heathenism itself; for the very essence of
polytheism is the belief that each people has its own gods, and,
therefore, springing from them, its own traditions of right and wrong.
From its own gods each people hoped for blessings and prosperity in
its national and corporate capacity. To offend or alienate them was to
risk the existence of the civil community, and what was the will of
the gods of any particular nation was to be learned from the primitive
original tradition of that nation.
Thus, the great principles of the ancient Roman morality, such for
instance as the sanctity of marriage, parental authority, and the
like, were, in the earlier days of the Republic, so mingled in the
notions of a Roman with patriotism, that it was impossible to separate
them. Adultery in a Roman matron, incontinence in a vestal virgin, was
an act of high treason against the common weal of the Roman people. As
such, it was monstrous and terrible to the whole people. Every man,
every woman, every child, felt it as much a personal injury, as each
would have felt the violation of the temples of their country's gods,
or the taking away of the palladium or the ancilia. The instance we
have selected was that upon which the Romans themselves felt that the
whole stability of their country rested. The sanctity of marriage was
the principle of the life of the Roman State. In the worst times a
poet, himself licentious, recognised corruption on that point as the
main cause of the ruin of the country--
'Fecunda culpæ sæcula nuptias
Primùm inquinavere, et genus, et domos
Hoc fonte derivata clades
In patriam populumque fluxit.'
But it would have been easy to mention other moral offences which in
their judgment directly threatened the safety of the common country.
Such, for instance, was the breach of a treaty, any outrage offered to
the sacred person of an ambassador, or even the removal of ancient
landmarks.
Thus it was that, in the earlier state of Roman society, the most
important moral principles--not to add that, from their nature,
conscience confirmed and enforced the national law and feeling--really
had an authority as strong as any human sanction can give. To violate
them involved loss of caste, and a great deal more. The offenders were
regarded as traitors against their country; the very mention of their
names would be the most deadly insult to those who had the misfortune
to be allied to them by blood or marriage. They became a proverb of
reproach. So terrible was this punishment that the law which gave to a
husband power of life or death over a guilty wife, and the feeling of
the nation which not only justified him in executing it, but required
it of him, hardly added to its severity. The virtues which tends to
success in war were also enforced by the circumstances of Rome. A
State contained within the walls of a single city and surrounded by
cities, many of which were as powerful as itself, and with each of
which it was liable to be at war, depended for its very existence upon
the courage, bodily strength, and military training of all its
citizens; and if the city was overcome in war, each of them was likely
enough to be sold as a slave, or at the very best to be reduced to a
position something like that of a serf. No wonder that under such
circumstances consuls and dictators were content to hold the plough,
and esteemed the success and victory of their country far more
important to each of them than their possessions or their life.
But when Rome became the head of a widespread empire, the preservation
of her early traditions became simply impossible. The contemporaries
of Augustus well knew that from war (except, indeed, civil war) they
had nothing to fear. The men of a generation earlier were no doubt
vexed and provoked by the disastrous defeat of Crassus and the
destruction of his army; but their personal comfort, nay, their very
pride of superiority to all the world, was no way affected by it. How
was it possible that they should really feel like their forefathers,
'When Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old?'
And, as for the more strictly moral traditions of the early
Republicans, they were, from their nature, from the very first, of
very limited application. Men who had never learned those glorious
truths,
'Which sages would have died to learn,
Now taught by cottage dames,'
that 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men on the face of the
whole earth,' and (as the corollary from this) that 'God is no
respecter of persons, but that in every nation, he that feareth Him
and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him,' were by no means
offended at the supposition that there was a different rule of
morality for men of different nations. Why not, as they had different
gods? The virtues, then, on which they insisted, were duties, not of
man as man to his Creator, but of Romans to Rome. They prized, not the
virtue of chastity, but the honour of the Roman matron; not truth and
good faith, but the oath to which the gods of Rome were invoked as
witnesses. The chastity of a slave or a freedwoman or even a
foreigner, was of no value. Men, to whom the Roman was not bound by an
oath taken before the gods of his country, had no rights. It was an
essential part of this system that men could not, if they would,
transplant themselves at will from the allegiance of the gods and of
the moral traditions of their fathers to those of another nation. It
was on this principle that in the earliest times marriages between
citizens of different cities were forbidden, and for the same reason
even those between a patrician of Rome and a plebeian.
Now, when many nations were welded together into a single empire, the
whole of this tradition broke down. Arnold remarks it as one great
political benefit of Christianity, that by 'providing a fixed moral
standard independent of human law, it allows human law to be altered,
as circumstances may require, without destroying thereby the greatest
sanction of human conduct.' What, then, was the situation of a Roman,
when the mingling together of all nations had effectually destroyed
all idea of the sanctity of the original traditions of any--his own
included--and yet he had found no 'moral standard independent' of
them. It is not too much to say that he was left without moral
standard at all. Patriotism and the tradition of their fathers had
become a name to men who could hardly be said to have any
'fatherland,' and whose country was the civilized world, and they had
no higher principle to supply their place.
In this utter break-down of all fixed principles which, in a heathen
age, necessarily resulted from the substitution of one great empire
for a multitude of minute republics; and in the complete isolation in
which it left every individual, when he lost the idea of that duty to
his country and his country's traditions which had been the moral law
of his ancestors, M. de Champagny sees the explanation of the fact, so
hard to account for, that men whose fathers had been proud nobles of
free and lordly Rome should have submitted as they did to such a
tyranny as that of Tiberius. For his was not one of those which are
supported by the sword. In Italy he had only about 9,000 men under
arms, and even they were scattered in the neighbourhood of the city.
Yet the Senate allowed itself to be decimated, its chief members cut
off day by day. It seems as if each man thought only of himself, and
calculated that although, of course, none could be safe, he was safer
by remaining quiet, and taking his chance, than he would be by boldly
appealing to the Senate and people to put an end to the protracted
massacre, by depriving the tyrant of his power.
The circumstance which, perhaps, is most revolting to our feelings as
Englishmen in the tyranny of the bad Emperor is, that it was hardly
possible to draw a line between an execution and an assassination. A
great man, untried, nay, so far as he knew, unaccused, was suddenly
roused from his sleep by the arrival of half a dozen soldiers, who
came to put him to death on the spot, or, perhaps, as a great favour,
to bring him the commands of the Emperor that he should kill himself.
How does this differ from an assassination, except in the assured
impunity of the murderers? Yet, so common was it, that when the
Emperor Pertinax was suddenly awakened on the night in which Commodus
had been slain, by those who brought him the offer of the purple, he
took for granted that he was to die. The feelings with which we regard
such proceedings have been formed by the immemorial law of our country
(which not even Henry VIII., in his wildest excess of tyranny, ever
dared to violate, except in a few cases, in which he obtained an Act
of Parliament, to authorize its violation)--that no man can be
condemned without trial. The Roman law, during the best days of the
Republic, carried the notion of 'strong government' farther than even
our neighbours in France would like. Within the walls of Rome there
was an appeal to the people from the sentence of any magistrate;
everywhere else, a consul or other officer holding the 'imperium'
might order whom he pleased to be beheaded by his lictors, without
trial. This, no doubt, was because, outside the city, the office of a
Roman consul was purely military. But this 'martial law' prepared
men's minds for the abuse of the same discretion within the city
itself by the Cæsars, whose position, as everybody knows, was,
legally, only that they were servants of the Republic, privileged to
hold a number of offices at the same time, and for years together.
They, therefore, naturally inherited and abused the discretion of the
old magistrates.
When such power fell into the hands of a Caligula or a Commodus, who
would not take the trouble of governing, it was really little more
than an entire exemption of the Cæsars from all law and all
restraints. The government seems to have gone on throughout the Roman
Empire much as usual. But there was in Rome itself one miserable
youth, mad with absolute licence, who could with impunity order the
murder of any one whom it struck his fancy to destroy, for any cause,
or for no cause, or because he was in want of money, and might take
the property of any one he was pleased to murder.
It was but for a time comparatively short that this state of things
lasted. Still, under the best reigns, one can hardly doubt, that there
must have been an uneasy feeling in the mind of the Emperor, as well
as of his subjects, that his successor might renew the times of
Caligula or Nero. Under the Antonines, perhaps, when there was a long
succession of good governors for more than eighty years without
interruption, men may have learned to look back on such things as
belonging exclusively to a by-gone age. But they were too soon
undeceived, after the death of Marcus Aurelius had left the succession
open to his unworthy son. Yet the crimes even of the worst of the
Cæsars affected Rome, not the world, and, indeed, in Rome itself,
almost exclusively a single class--the senators and the rich. They
seem, therefore, hardly to have been considered as an interruption of
the general felicity of the Pax Romana; any more than an epidemic of
cholera in our own days, which for a moment strikes terror upon the
city which it attacks, but is forgotten almost as soon as it passes
away.
Nothing so effectually blinds even the naturally clearest sight as
moral perversion. Over the very soul of Gibbon, strange to say, this
Egyptian darkness brooded so thick, that after intelligently studying
this vast, pathetic, and most instructive history, the only practical
lesson he drew from it was, that the great corruptor of human society
is--_Peace_. He says, 'It was scarcely possible that the eyes of
contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent
causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform
government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the
vitals of the Empire,' and the effects of this poison he traces in the
'decline of courage and genius, and in general degeneracy.' Strange
that he could imagine that war and bloodshed are the only conceivable
prophylactics against self-indulgence, luxury, and unmanly sloth.
Within the last few months we have had a remarkable proof of the
contrary. For fifty years after Waterloo, Prussia enjoyed profound
peace. France, to mention no other wars, had a continual school of war
in Algeria. Yet, though the French are as brave as the Germans, they
have been unable to stand against them for an hour in the present war;
because the tone of the governing class and of the army had been
undermined by the moral corruption of the Second Empire. Even if war
was indispensable, no man knew better than Gibbon that the Roman
frontiers were always in a chronic state of war. The lessons really
taught by the history of the Roman Empire during the first century and
a half, are so plain that one would hardly have thought they could be
missed. Here was a great Empire upon which all the best gifts of God,
in the purely natural order, had been poured with a lavish hand. It
occupied all the fairest, most fruitful, and most illustrious regions
of the globe, to which the climate and situation can never fail to
attract intelligent travellers from all less favoured countries. The
presiding races of that Empire, which gave their character to all the
rest, were those whom God had made His instruments to convey to all
nations the best gifts of Nature--the Greek, in whom were stored and
preserved the richest powers of genius, art, eloquence and philosophy;
the Roman, who has been the example and teacher of all nations, in the
great principles of stability, law, and order. For the use and
enjoyment of this Empire were stored all the accumulated wealth of
literature, poetry, learning, philosophy and art, which all ages of
the world had produced and treasured up. To complete the whole, it was
exempted for generations together from the scourge of war. In one
word, it had everything that God could give to man, except the
supernatural gifts of Faith, Hope, and Charity. And the result showed,
that, without these, all gifts of the natural order, however precious,
were unavailing to preserve human society from utter decay and
dissolution. It was not broken in pieces by the blows of foreign
enemies, but died of its own inherent corruption. The most prominent
visible effect of this corruption, which struck the eyes even of
heathens, was that man's vices made void the primeval blessing, 'Be
fruitful and multiply.' Plutarch, a Greek of the age of Trajan,
lamented that all Greece in his day could not supply as many men as
one of its smaller cities sent out to war four hundred years earlier.
The decline of population in Rome itself was no less rapid and steady.
And men died out, not because they were wasted by war, by pestilence,
by famine, or by grinding tyranny, but because unrestrained
self-indulgence dried up the very sources of increase. If there had
been no barbarians to rush in and fill up the void, the Empire would
have fallen in pieces for want of life enough to hold it together. Its
history proved that the real causes of the ruin of States are not
political, but moral and social, and that in nations, as in
individuals, the words of the poet are most strictly fulfilled:--
'Thou art the source and centre of all minds,
Their only point of rest, Eternal Word.
From Thee departing they are lost, and rove
At random, without honour, hope, or peace;
From Thee is all that soothes the life of man--
His high endeavour, and his glad success,
His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.
But oh! Thou bounteous Giver of all good,
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor,
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.'
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'Lectures on Modern History.'
[2] A native of Barcelona, who was made head of the French police in
1759, and retired in 1780.
[3] Vol. iii., p. 196. We borrow the translation of a living author.
[4] Details are necessarily omitted, for want of space, in this
extract, as well as in the last, the loss of which weakens its force.
[5] See Salvian 'De Gubernatione Dei.'
[6] See a curious collection of passages in the notes to M. de
Champagny's chapter on Slavery. ('Les Césars,' vol. iii.)
[7] See Champagny's 'Cæsars,' vol. iii. p. 122.
[8] Thus Livy: 'Ad illa mihi pro se quisque intendat animum, quæ vita
qui mores fuerint; per quos viros, quibusque artibus, domi militiæque,
et partum et auctum imperium sit. Labente deinde paullatim disciplinâ,
velut desidentes primo mores sequatur animo, deinde ut magis magisque
lapsi sint; tum ire coeperint præcipites; donec ad hæc tempora,
quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus perventum est;' and
yet he is so far from considering this an evil peculiar to Rome, that
he adds, 'Nulla unquam respublica nec major nec sanctior nec bonis
exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam civitatem tam seræ avaritia
luxuriaque immigraverint, nec ubi tantus et tam diu paupertati ac
parsimoniæ honos fuerit.'--(_Præfatio._)
[9] 'Roman History,' vol. ii. chap. xxvi.
[10] See Champagny, Appendix, 'Les Césars,' vol. i.
ART. II.--_Theism_--_Desiderata in the Theistic Argument._
It is a philosophical commonplace that all human questioning leads
back to ultimate truths which cannot be further analysed, and of which
no other explanation can be given than that _they exist_. Every
explanation of the universe rests and must rest on the inexplicable.
The borders of the known and the knowable are fringed with mystery,
and all the data of knowledge recede into it by longer or shorter
pathways. Thus, while it is the very mystery of the universe that has
given rise to human knowledge, by quickening the curiosity of man, it
is the same mystery which prescribes a limit to his insight, which
continues to overshadow him in his researches, and to girdle him, in
his latest discoveries, with its veil. In wonder all philosophy is
born; in wonder it always ends: and, to adopt a well-known
illustration, our human knowledge is a stream of which the source is
hid, and the destination unknown, although we may surmise regarding
both.
But the mystery which thus envelopes the origin and the destination of
the universe is not absolutely overpowering; nor does it lay an arrest
on the human faculties in their efforts to understand that universe as
a whole. Man strives to penetrate farther and farther into the shrine
of nature, and records in the several sciences the stages of his
progress. These sciences are of necessity inter-related and dependent.
Each section of human knowledge has a doorway leading into these on
either side, and one which opens behind into the region of first
principles. Separate inquirers may content themselves with their
special region of phenomena and its laws, which they seek to
understand more perfectly and to interpret more clearly, and never so
beyond their own domain. It is by such division of labour and
concentration of aim that the achievements of modern science have been
won. But it is only by forsaking the narrow region, and, without
entering the borderland of some new science, receding behind it, and
contemplating it from a distance, that its value as a contribution to
our knowledge of the universe can be discerned. Each of the sciences
has its own ideal, but the goal of universal science is the discovery
of one ultimate principle which will be explanatory of all observed
phenomenon.
And the speculative thinker has a similar aim. The perennial question
of philosophy is the discovery of the central principle of Existence,
its haunting problem is the ultimate explanation of the universe of
being. The universe--what is it? whence is it? whither is it tending?
can we know anything beyond the fleeting phenomena of its ever
unfolding and ever varying history? Is its source, and therefore its
central principle, accessible to our faculties of knowledge?
And this is the distinctive problem of rational theology. Philosophy
and science both lead up to theology as the apex of human knowledge.
The latter may be fitly called the _scientia scientiarum_. Questions
as to the nature and origin of Life upon our planet, the nature of
Force or energy, the problems of Substance and of Cause, the questions
of the Absolute and Infinite, all centre in this, are all the several
ways of expressing it from the point of view which the questioner
occupies, 'What is the ultimate principle of the universe, the ἀρχὴ
of all existence?' Speculative philosophy and science deal
proximately, it is true, with the problems of finite existence,
existence as presented to us in the surrounding universe, and the laws
which regulate it; but they covertly imply and remotely lead up to the
question we have stated. They are the several approaches to that
science which sits enthroned on the very summit of human knowledge.
Nevertheless, the science of speculative theology is as yet lamentably
incomplete. We have scores of treatises devoted to the subject, and
numerous professed solutions of the problem. But we have not, in the
English language, a single treatise which even contemplates a
philosophical arrangement and classification of the various theories,
actual and possible, upon the subject. It is otherwise with the great
questions of intellectual and ethical philosophy. We have elaborate
and almost exhaustive schemes of theories on the nature of perception,
or our knowledge of the external world, the laws of association, the
problem of causality, and the nature of conscience. But we look in
vain for any similar attempt to classify the several lines of
argument, or possible modes of theistic proof, so as to present a
tabular view of the various doctrines on this subject. We are limited
to the well-known but precarious scheme of proofs _à priori_ and _à
posteriori_,[11] and to the more accurate classification of Kant, the
ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological proofs,
with his own argument from the moral faculty or practical reason. In
addition, we are not aware of any English treatise specially devoted
to the history of this branch of philosophical literature, with the
exception of a brief essay by Dr. Waterland, in which he traverses a
small section of the whole area; and that not as the historian of
philosophical opinion, but in the interest of a special theory.[12]
The present condition of 'natural theology' in England is scarcely
creditable to the critical insight of the British mind. There has been
little earnest grappling with the problem in the light of the past
history of opinions; and traditionary stock-proofs have been relied
upon with a perilous complacency. The majority of theologians trust to
an utterly futile and treacherous argument, from what has long been
termed 'final causes,' and when beaten from that field, at once by the
rigour of speculative thought and the march of the inductive sciences,
the refuge that is taken in the region of our moral nature is scarcely
less secure, while the character of the theistic argument from
conscience is suffered to remain in the obscurity which still shrouds
it.
In the following pages we propose to show the invalidity of some of
the popular modes of proof, and to suggest a few desiderata in the
future working out of the problem.
It may be useful to preface our criticism by a classification of the
various theistic theories, rather as a provisional chart of opinion,
than as an exhaustive summary of all the arguments which have been
advanced, or of all possible varieties in the mode of proof. Many
thinkers, perhaps the majority, and notably the mediæval schoolmen,
have combined several distinct lines of evidence; and have
occasionally borrowed from a doctrine which they explicitly reject
some of the very elements of their argument. They have often forsaken
their own theory at a crisis, and not observed their departure from
the data on which they profess exclusively to build.
The first class of theories are strictly _ontological_ or
_ontotheological_. They attempt to prove the objective existence of
Deity from the subjective notion of necessary existence in the human
mind, or from the assumed objectivity of space and time which they
interpret as the attributes of a necessary substance.
The second are the _cosmological_ or _cosmo-theological_ proofs. They
essay to prove the existence of a supreme self-existent cause from the
mere fact of the existence of the world, by the application of the
principle of causality. Starting with the postulate of any single
existence whatsoever, the world or anything in the world, and
proceeding to argue backwards or upwards, the existence of one supreme
cause is held to be 'a regressive inference' from the existence of
these effects. As there cannot be, it is alleged, an infinite series
of derived or dependent effects, we at length reach the infinite or
uncaused cause. This has been termed the proof from contingency, as it
rises from the contingent to the necessary, from the relative to the
absolute. But the cosmological proof may have a threefold character,
according as it is argued: 1. That the necessary is the antithesis of
the contingent; or, 2. That because some being now exists, some being
must have always existed; or, 3. That because we now exist and have
not caused ourselves, some cause adequate to produce us, must also now
exist.
A third class of proofs are somewhat inaccurately termed
_physico-theological_, a phrase equally descriptive of them and of
those last mentioned. They are rather _teleological_ or
_teleotheological_. The former proof started from any finite
existence. It did not scrutinise its character, but rose from it to an
absolute cause, by a direct mental leap or inference. This scrutinises
the effect, and finds traces of intelligence within it. It detects the
presence or the vestiges of mind in the particular effect it examines,
viz., the phenomena of the world, and from them it infers the
existence of Deity. One branch of it is the popular argument from
design, or adaptation in nature, the fitness of means to ends
implying, it is said, an architect or designer. It may be called
_techno-theology_, and is variously treated according as the
technologist (α) starts from human contrivance and reasons to nature,
or (β) starts from nature's products and reasons toward man. Another
branch is the argument from the order of the universe, from the types
or laws of nature, indicating, it is said, an orderer or law-giver,
whose intelligence we thus discern. It is not, in this case, that the
adjustment of means to ends proves the presence of a mind that has
adjusted these. But the law itself, in its regularity and continuity,
implies a mind behind it, an intelligence animating the otherwise
soulless universe. It might be termed _nomo-theology_ or
_typo-theology_. Under the same general category may be placed the
argument from animal instinct, which is distinct at once from the
evidence of design and that of law or typical order. To take one
instance: The bee forms its cells, following unconsciously, and by
what we term 'instinct,' the most intricate, mathematical, laws. There
is mind, there is thought in the process; but whose mind, whose
thought? Not the animal's, because it is not guided by experience. The
result arrived at is a result which could be attained by man only
through the exercise of reason of the very highest order. And the
question arises, are we not warranted in supposing that a hidden pilot
guides the bee, concealed behind what we call its instinct. We do not,
meanwhile, discuss the merit of this argument; but merely indicate the
difference between it and the argument from design, and that from law
and order. It is not a question of the adjustment of phenomena. It is
the demand of the intellect for a cause adequate to account for a
unique phenomenon. It approaches the cosmo-theological argument as
closely as it approaches the techno-theological one; yet it is
different from both. The cosmo-theological rises from any particular
effect, and by a backward mental bound reaches an infinite first
cause. The techno-theological attempts to rise from the adjustment of
means to ends, to an adjuster or contriver. This simply asks, whence
comes the mind that is here in operation, perceived by its effects?
The next class of arguments are based upon the moral nature of man.
They may be termed in general _ethico-theological_; and there are, at
least, two main branches in this line of proof. The former is the
argument from conscience as a moral law, pointing to Another above it;
the law that is 'in us, yet not of us'--not the 'autonomy' of Kant,
but a _theonomy_--bearing witness to a legislator above. It is the
moral echo within the soul of a Voice louder and vaster without. And,
as evidence, it is direct and intuitive, not inferential. The latter
is the argument of Kant, (in which he was anticipated by several,
notably by Raimund of Sabunde.) It is indirect and inferential, based
upon the present phenomena of our moral nature. The moral law declares
that evil is punishable and to be punished, that virtue is rewardable
and to be rewarded; but in this life they are not so: therefore, said
Kant, there must be a futurity in which the rectification will take
place, and a moral arbiter by whom it will be effected.
Finally, there is the argument, which, when philosophically unfolded,
is the only unassailable stronghold of theism, its impregnable
fortress, that of _intuition_. As it is simply the utterance or
attestation of the soul in the presence of the Object which it does
not so much discover by searching, as _apprehend in the art of
revealing itself_, it may be called (keeping to the analogy of our
former terms) _eso-theological_ or _esoterico-theological_. It is not
an argument, an inference, a conclusion. It is an attestation, the
glimpse of a reality which is apprehended by the instinct of the
worshipper, and through the poet's vision, as much as by the gaze of
the speculative reason. It is not the verdict of one part of human
nature, of reason, or the conscience, the feelings, or the affections;
but of the whole being, when thrown into the poise or attitude of
recognition, before the presence of the self-revealing object. There
are several phases of this, which we term the eso-theological proof.
We see its most rudimental traces in the polytheism of the savage
mind, and its unconscious _personification_ of nature's forces. When
this crude conception of diverse powers in partial antagonism gives
place to the notion of one central power, the instinct asserts itself
in the common verdict of the common mind as to One above, yet kindred
to it. It is attested by the feeling of dependence, and by the
instinct of worship, which witnesses to some outward object
corresponding to the inward impulse, in analogy with all the other
instincts of our nature. It is farther attested by the poet's
interpretation of nature, the verdict of the great seers, that the
universe is pervaded by a supreme Spirit, 'haunted for ever by the
eternal mind.' We find its highest attestation in that consciousness
of the Infinite itself which is man's highest prerogative as a
rational creature. We have thus the following chart of theistic
theories.
I. Onto-theological--
1. From necessary notion to reality.
(α) Anselm's proof.
(β) Descartes' first argument.
2. From space and time, as attributes to their substance.
II. Cosmo-theological--
1. Antithetic.
2. Causal.
3. 'Sufficient reason.' (Leibnitz.)
III. Teleo-theological--
1. Techno-theology.
2. Typo-theology.
3. (Animal instinct.)
IV. Ethico-theological--
1. Deonto-theological. (direct.)
2. Indirect and inferential. (Kant.)
V. Eso-theological--
1. The infinite. (Fenelon. Cousin.)
2. The world soul.
3. The instinct of worship.
In addition, we might mention several subsidiary or sporadic proofs
which have little or no philosophical relevancy, but which have some
theological suggestiveness, viz., 1. The historical consensus. 2. The
felicity of the theist. 3. The testimony of revelation.
It is unnecessary to discuss all these alleged proofs at length; but
the powerlessness of the most of them to establish the transcendent
fact they profess to reach, demands much more serious thought than it
has yet received.
The ontological proof has always possessed a singular fascination for
the speculative mind. It promises, and would accomplish so much, if
only it were valid. It would be so powerful, if only it were
conclusive. But had demonstration been possible, the theistic
argument, like the proofs of mathematics, would have carried
conviction to the majority of thinkers long ago. The historical
failure is signal. Whether in the form in which it was originally cast
by Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, or in the more elaborate theory of
Descartes, or as presented by the ponderous English minds of Cudworth,
Henry More, and Dr. Samuel Clarke, it is altogether a _petitio
principii_. Under all its modifications, it reasons from the necessary
notion of God, to his necessary existence; or from the necessary
existence of space and time, which are assumed to be the properties or
attributes of a substance, to the necessary existence of that
substance. A purely subjective necessity of the reason is carried from
within, and held conclusive in the realm of objective reality. But the
very essence of the problem is the discovery of a valid pathway by
which to pass from the notions of the intellect to the realities of
the universe beyond it; we may not, therefore, summarily identify the
two, and at the outset take the existence of the one as demonstrative
of the other. In the affirmation of real existence we pass from the
notion that has entered the mind (or is innate), to the realm of
objective being, which exists independently of us who affirm it; and
how to pass warrantably from the ideal world within to the real world
without is the very problem to be solved. To be valid at its
starting-point, the ontological argument ought to prove that the
notion of God is so fixed in the very root of our intelligent nature
that it cannot be dislodged from the mind; and this some thinkers,
such as Clark, have had the hardihood to affirm. To be valid as it
proceeds, it ought to prove that the notion thus necessary in thought,
has a real counterpart in the realm of things, in order to vindicate
the step it so quietly takes from the ideal notion to the world of
real existence. It passes from thought to things, as it passes from
logical premiss to conclusion. But to be logical, it must rest
contented with an ideal conclusion deduced from its ideal premises.
And thus, the only valid issue of the ontological argument is a system
of absolute idealism, of which the theological corollary is pantheism.
But as this is not the Deity the argument essays to reach, it must be
pronounced illogical throughout.
Thus the ontological argument identifies the logical and the real. But
the illicit procedure in which it indulges would be more apparent than
it is to _à priori_ theorists, if the object they imagine they have
reached were visible in nature, and apprehensible by the senses. To
pass from the ideal to the real sphere by a transcendant act of
thought is seen at once to be unwarrantable in the case of
sense-perception. In this case, it is the presence of the object that
alone warrants the transition, else we should have as much right to
believe in the real existence of the hippogriff as in the reality of
the horse. But when the object is invisible, and is at the same time
the supreme being in the universe, the speculative thinker is more
easily deceived. We must, therefore, in every instance ask him, where
is the bridge from the notion to the reality? What is the plank thrown
across the chasm which separates these two regions, (to use an old
philosophical phrase) 'by the whole diameter of being?' We can never,
by any vault of logic pass from the one to the other. We are
imprisoned within the region of mere subjectivity in all _à priori_
demonstration, and how to escape from it, is (as we said before) the
very problem to be solved.
Anselm, who was the first to formulate the ontological proof, argued
that our idea of God is the idea of a being than whom we can conceive
nothing greater. But inasmuch as real existence is greater than mere
thought, the existence of God is guaranteed in the very idea of the
most perfect being; otherwise the contradiction of one still more
perfect would emerge. The error of Anselm was the error of his age,
the main blot in the whole mediæval philosophy. It first seemed to him
that reason and instinctive faith were separated by a wide interval.
He then wished to have a reason for his faith, cast in the form of a
syllogism. And he failed to see, or adequately to understand, that all
demonstrative reasoning hangs upon axiomatic truths which cannot be
demonstrated, not because they are inferior to reason, but because
they are superior to reasoning--the pillars upon which all
ratiocination rests. This was his first mistake. Dissatisfied with the
data upon which all reasoning hangs, he preferred the stream to the
fountain-head, while he thought (contradictory as it is) that _by
going down the stream_ he could reach the fountain! But his second
mistake was the greater of the two. He confounded the necessities of
thought with the necessities of the universe. He passed _without a
warrant_ from his own subjective thought to the region of objective
reality. And it has been the same with all who have since followed him
in this ambitious path. But after witnessing the elaborate tortures to
which the mediæval theologians subjected their intellects in the
process, we see their powers fail, and the chasm still yawning between
the abstract notions of the mind and the concrete facts of the
universe. It is remarkable that any of them were satisfied with the
accuracy of their reasonings. We can explain it only by the
intellectual habit of the age, and the (misread) traditions of the
Stagyrite. They made use, unconsciously, of that intuition which
carries us across the gulf, and they misread the process by which they
reached the other side. They set down to the credit of their intellect
what was due to the necessities of the moral nature, and the voice of
the heart.
Descartes was the most illustrious thinker, who, at the dawn of modern
philosophy, developed the scholastic theism. While inaugurating a new
method of experimental research, he nevertheless retained the most
characteristic doctrine of mediæval ontology. He argues that necessary
existence is as essential to the idea of an all-perfect being, as the
equality of its three angles to two right angles is essential to the
idea of a triangle. But though he admits that his 'thought imposes no
necessity on things,' he contradicts his own admission by adding, 'I
cannot conceive God except as existing, and hence it follows that
existence is inseparable from him.' In his 'Principles of Philosophy'
we find the following argument:--
'As the equality of its three angles to two right angles is
necessarily comprised in the idea of the triangle, the mind
is firmly persuaded that the three angles of a triangle
_are_ equal to two right angles; _so_ from its perceiving
necessary and external existence to be comprised in the
idea which it has of an all-perfect being, it ought
manifestly to conclude that this all-perfect being
exists.'--(Pt. i. sec. 14.)
This argument is more formally expounded in his 'Reply to Objections
to the Meditations,' thus:--
'Proposition I. The existence of God is known from the
consideration of His nature alone. Demonstration: To say
that an attribute is contained in the nature or in the
concept of a thing, is the same as to say that this
attribute is true of this thing, and that it may be
affirmed to be in it. But necessary existence is contained
in the nature or the concept of God. Hence, it may be with
truth affirmed that necessary existence is in God, or that
God exists.'
A slight amount of thought will suffice to show that in this elaborate
array of argumentation, Descartes is the victim of a subtle fallacy.
Our conception of necessary existence cannot include the fact of
necessary existence, for (to repeat what we have already said) the one
is an ideal concept of the mind, the other is a fact of real
existence. The one demands an object beyond the mind conceiving it,
the other does not. All that the Cartesian argument could prove would
be that the mental concept was necessary, not that the concept had a
counterpart in the outer universe. It is, indeed, a necessary judgment
that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles,
because this is _an identical proposition_; the subject and the
predicate are the same, the one being only an expansion of the other.
We cannot, therefore, destroy the predicate and leave the subject
intact. But it is otherwise when we affirm that any triangular object
_exists_, we may then destroy the predicate 'existence,' and yet leave
the subject (the notion of the triangle) intact in the mind.
It is true that Descartes has not limited himself to this futile _à
priori_ demonstration. He has buttressed his formal ontology by a much
more suggestive though logically as inconclusive an argument. He again
reasons thus in his 'Principles:' We have the idea of an all-perfect
being in the mind, but whence do we derive it? It is impossible that
we can have an idea of anything, unless there be an original somewhere
in the universe whence we derive it, as the shadow is the sign of a
substance that casts it. But it is manifest that the more perfect
cannot arise from the less perfect, and that which knows something
more perfect than itself is not the cause of its own being. Since,
therefore, we ourselves are not so perfect as the idea of perfection
which we find within us, we are forced to believe that this idea in us
is derived from a more perfect being above us, and consequently that
such a being exists.
It will be observed that this second argument of Descartes is partly
cosmological,--though ultimately it merges in the ontological, and
falls back upon it for support. Hence, Descartes himself called it an
_à posteriori_ argument. And it may therefore serve as a link of
connection and transition to the second class of arguments.
But before passing to these, we may observe that all the _à priori_
theorists, professing to conduct us to the desired conclusion on the
level road of demonstration (while they all contradict their own
principles, and furtively introduce the contingent facts of
experience), have but a faint conception of the magnitude of the
question at issue. To work out a demonstration as with algebraic
formulæ, to contemplate the problem as one of mathematical science,
under the light and guidance of the reason alone, and unaided by the
moral intuitions, betokens a lack of insight into the very problem in
question. The object of which we are in search is not a blank
colourless abstraction, or necessary entity. Suppose that a supreme
existence were demonstrable, that bare entity is not the God of
theism, the infinite Intelligence and Personality, of whose existence
the human spirit desires some assurance, if it can be had. And a
formal demonstration of a primitive source of existence (_more
geometrico_) is of no theological value. It is an absolute zero,
inaccessible alike to the reason and to the heart, before which the
human spirit freezes; and as a mere _ultimatum_ its existence is
conceded by every philosophic school.
The germs of the cosmological argument (as of the ontological) are
found in the scholastic philosophy, though its elaboration was left to
the first and second periods of the modern era. Diodorus of Tarsus,
John Damascenus, Hugo of St. Victor, and Peter of Poitiers, have each
contributed to the development of this mode of proof. It is the
argument _à contingentia mundi_, or _ex rerum mutabilitate_; and may
be briefly stated thus: If the contingent exists, the necessary also
exists. I myself, the world, the objects of sense, are contingent
existences, and there must be a cause of these, which cause must be
also an effect. Go back, therefore, to the cause of that cause, and to
its cause again, and you must at length pause in the regress; and by
rising to a First Clause, you escape from the contingent and reach the
necessary. From the observation of the manifold sequences of nature
you rise to the causal fountain-head, as you cannot travel backwards
for ever along an infinite line of dependent sequences.
But this argument is as illusory as the ontological one, from which,
indeed, it borrows its strength, and of which it shares the weakness.
For why should we ever pause in the regressive study of the phenomena
of the universe, of which we only observe the slow evolution through
immeasurable time? How do we reach a fountain-head at all? We are not
warranted in saying that because we cannot think out an endless
regress of infinite antecedents, _therefore_ we must assume a first
cause. For that assumption of the ἀρχὴ, of an uncaused cause, when we
have wearied ourselves in mounting the steps of the ladder of finite
agency, is to the speculative reason equally illicit as is its
assumption while we are standing on the first round of the ladder. Why
should we not assume it, step over to it at the first, if we may do
so, or are compelled to do so, at the last? The argument starts from
the concrete and works its way backward along the channel of the
concrete, till it turns round, bolts up, takes wing, and 'suddenly
scales the height.' The speculative reason at length essays to cross
over the chasm between the long series of dependent sequences, and the
original or uncreated cause; but it does so furtively. It crosses over
by an unknown path to an unknown source, supposed to be necessary.
But again, what light is cast by this ambitious regress on the nature
of the fountain-head. How is the being we are supposed to have reached
at length, the source of that series of effects which are supposed to
have sprung from his creative fiat? If we experienced a difficulty in
our regress in connecting the last link of the chain with the _causa
causans_, we experience the same or a counter-difficulty in our
descent, in connecting the first link of the chain with the creative
energy. And how, it may be asked, do we connect that supreme cause
with intelligence, or with personality? We have called the assumption
of this ἀρχὴ a leap in the dark, and we ask how can we ever
escape from the phenomenal series of effects which we perceive in
nature, to the noumenal source of which we are in search? By the
observation of what is or what has been, we merely ascend backwards in
time, through the ever-changing forms of phenomenal energy (our
effects being but developed causes, and our causes potential effects),
but we never reach a noumenal source. That is reserved for the flight
of the speculative reason vainly soaring into the empyrean, beyond the
very atmosphere of thought.
The admission that _some kind_ of being or substance must have always
existed in the universe, is the common property of all the systems of
philosophy. Materialist and idealist, theist and atheist, alike admit
it, but its admission is _theologically worthless_. 'The notion of a
God,' says Sir William Hamilton, in his admirable manner, 'is not
contained in the notion of a mere first cause; for, in the admission
of a first cause, atheist and theist are as one.' The being that is
assumed to exist is, therefore, a mere blank essence, a zero, an
'everything = nothing,' so far as this argument can carry us. Nature
remains a fathomless abyss, telling us nothing of its whence and
whither. It is still the fountain-head of inscrutable mystery, which
overshadows and overmasters us. The _natura naturata_ casts no light
on the _natura naturans_. The systole and diastole of the universe
goes on; the flux and reflux of its phenomena are endless. That
something always was, every one admits. The question between the rival
philosophic schools is as to what that something was and is. We may
choose to call it 'the first cause,' (an explanation which implies
that our notion of endless regression has broken down) and we may say
that we have reached the notion of an uncaused cause. But is that a
notion at all? Is it intelligible, conceivable? Do we not, in the very
assumption, bid farewell to reason, and fall back on some form of
faith?
Finally, the moment that supposed cause is reached, does not the
principle that was supposed to bring us to it break down? And by thus
destroying the bridge behind us, the very principle of casuality which
was valid in our progress and ascent, valid in the limited area of
experience--now emptied of all philosophical meaning when we desert
experience and rise to the transcendental--invalidates the whole
series of effects which are supposed to have sprung from it? We need
not rise above any single event, contingent and finite, to any other
event as the proximate cause of it; if, when we have essayed to carry
out the regress, we stop short, and, crying εὕρηκα, congratulate
ourselves that we have at length reached an uncaused cause.
Thus when the cosmological theorist asks: Does the universe contain
its own cause within itself? and answering in the negative, asserts
that it must therefore have sprung from a supra-mundane source, we may
validly reply, may it not have been eternal? May not its history be
but the ceaseless evolution, the endless transformation of unknown
primeval forces? So far as this argument conducts us, we affirm that
it may. And to pass from the present contingent state of the universe
to its originating source, the theorist must make use of the
ontological inference, of which we have already indicated the double
flaw. There is one point of affinity between all forms of the
cosmological and ontological arguments. They all profess to reach a
necessary conclusion. They are not satisfied with the contingent or
the probable. But the notion of necessity is a logical notion of the
intellect. It exists in thought alone. Whoever, therefore, would
escape from that ideal sphere must forego the evidence of necessity.
Real existence is not and never can be synonymous with necessary
existence. For necessary existence is always ideal. It is reached by
a formal process. It is the product of pure thought.
But the _teleological_ argument is that which has been most popular in
England. It has carried (apparent) conviction to many minds that have
seen the futility of the _à priori_ processes of proof. It is the
stock argument of British 'natural theology;' in explanation and
defence of which volume upon volume has been written. It is, as Kant
remarked, 'the oldest, the clearest, and the most adapted to the
ordinary human reason.' Nevertheless, its failure is the more signal,
considering that its reputation has been so great, and its claim so
vast. The argument has at least three branches, to which we have
already referred. We confine ourselves meanwhile to the first of the
three, the techno-theological argument, or that which reasons from the
phenomena of design.
Stated in brief compass, that argument amounts to the following
inference. We see marks of adaptation, of purpose, or of foresight in
the objects which, as we learn from experience, proceed from the
contrivance of man. We see similar marks of design or adaptation in
nature. We are therefore warranted in inferring a world-designer; and
from the indefinite number of these an infinite designer; and from
their harmony His unity. Or thus,--we see the traces of wise and
various purpose everywhere in nature. But nature could not of herself
have fortuitously produced this arrangement. It could not have fallen
into such harmony by accident. Therefore the cause of this wise order
cannot be a blind, unintelligent principle, but must be a free and
rational mind. The argument is based upon analogy (and might be termed
analogical as strictly as technological). It asserts that because mind
is concerned in the production of those objects of art which bear the
traces of design, therefore a resembling mind was concerned in the
production of nature.
The objections to this mode of proof are indeed 'legion.' In the
_first_ place, admitting its validity so far, it falls short of the
conclusion it attempts and professes to reach. For,
1. The effects it examines, and from which it infers a cause, are
finite, while the cause it assumes is infinite; but the infinity of
the cause can be no valid inference, from an indefinite number of
finite effects. The indefinite is still the finite; and we can never
perform the intellectual feat of educing the infinite from the finite
by any multiplication of the latter. It has been said by an acute
defender of the teleological argument, that the number of designed
phenomena (indefinitely vast) with which the universe is filled, is
sufficient to suggest the infinity of the designing cause. And it may
be admitted that it is by the ladder of finite designs that we rise to
some of our grandest conceptions of divine agency; but this ascent and
survey are only possible after we have discovered from some other
source that a divine being _exists_. The vastest range of design is of
no greater validity than one attested instance of it, so far as proof
is concerned. It is not accumulation, but relevancy of data that we
need. But,
2. At the most we only reach an artificer or protoplast, not a
creator,--one who arranged the phenomena of the world, not the
originator of its _substance_,--the architect of the cosmos, not the
maker of the universe. Traces of mind discoverable amid the phenomena
of the world cast no light upon the fact of its creation, or the
nature of its source. There is no analogy between a human artificer
arranging a finite mechanism, and a divine creator originating a world;
nor is there a parallel between the order, the method, and the plan of
nature, and what we see when we watch a mechanician working according
to a plan to produce a designed result. The only real parallel would
be our perception by sense of a world slowly evolving from chaos
according to a plan previously foreseen. From the product you are at
liberty to infer a producer only after having seen a similar product
formerly produced. But the product which supplies the basis of this
argument is unique and unparalleled, 'a singular effect,' in the
language of Hume, whose reasoning on this point has never been
successfully assailed. And the main difficulty which confronts the
theist, and which theism essays to remove, is precisely that which the
consideration of design does not touch, viz., the _origin_ and not the
arrangements of the universe. The teleological analogy is therefore
worthless. There is no parallel, we repeat, between the process of
manufacture, and the product of creation, between the act of a
carpenter working with his tools to construct a cabinet, and the
evolution of life in nature. On the contrary, there are many marked
and sharply defined contrasts between them. In the latter case there
is fixed and ordered regularity, no deviation from law; in the former
contingency enters, and often alters and mars the work. Again, the
artificer simply uses the materials, which he finds lying ready to
hand in nature. He _detaches_ them from their 'natural' connections.
He arranges them in a special fashion. But in nature, in the successive
evolution of her organisms there is no detachment, no displacement,
no interference or isolation. All things are linked together. Every
atom is dependent on every other atom, while the organisms seem to
grow and develop 'after their kind' by some vital force, but by no
manipulation similar to the architect's or builder's work. And yet
again, in the one case, the purpose is comprehensible--the end is
foreseen from the beginning. We know what the mechanician desires to
effect; but in the other case we have no clue to the 'thought' of the
architect. Who will presume to say that he has adequately fathomed the
purposes of nature in the adjustment of one of her phenomena to
another? But,
3. The only valid inference from the phenomena of design would be that
of a _phenomenal_ first cause. The inference of a personal Divine
Agent or substance from the observation of the mechanism of the
universe is invalid. What link connects the traces of mind which are
discerned in nature (those _vestigia animi_) with an agent who
produced them? There is no such link. And thus the divine personality
remains unattested. The same may be said of the divine _unity_. Why
should we rest in our inductive inference of one designer from the
phenomena of design, when these are so varied and complex? Or grant
that in all that we observe a subtle and pervading 'unity' is found,
and as a consequence all existing arrangements point to one designer,
why may not that Demiurgos have been at some remote period himself
designed? And so on _ad infinitum_.
But, in the _second_ place, not only is the argument defective
(admitting its validity so far as it goes), even partial validity
cannot be conceded to it. The phenomena of design not only limit us to
a finite designer, not only fail to lead us to the originator of the
world, or to a personal first cause, but they confine us within the
network of observed designs, and do not warrant faith in a being
detached from or independent of these designs, and therefore able to
modify them with a boundless reserve of power. These designs only
suggest mechanical agency, working in fixed forms, according to
prescribed law. In other words, the phenomena of the universe which
distantly resemble the operations of man, do not in the least suggest
an agent exterior to themselves. We are not intellectually constrained
to ascribe the arrangement of means to ends in nature to anything
supra-mundane. Such constraint would proceed from our projecting the
shadow of ourselves within the realm of nature, and investing _it_
with human characteristics, a procedure for which we have no warrant.
Why may not the arrangements of nature be due to a principle of life
imminent in nature, the mere endless evolution and development of the
world itself? We observe that phenomenon A fits into phenomena B, C,
and D, and we therefore infer that A was fitted to its place by an
intelligent mind. But suppose that A did not fit into B, C, or D, it
might in some way unknown fit into X, Y, or Z,--it would in any case
be related to its antecedent and consequent phenomena. But our
perception of the fitness or relationship gives us no information
beyond the _fact of fitness_. Any other (larger) conclusion is
illegitimate.
It is often asserted that the phenomenal changes which we observe in
nature, bear witness to their being _effects_. But what are effects?
Transformed causes, modified by the transformation--mere changed
appearances. We see the effects of volitional energy in the phenomena
which our consciousness forces us to trace back to our own personality
as the producing cause. But where do we see in nature, in the
universe, phenomena which we are similarly warranted in construing as
the effects of volitional energy, or of constructive intelligence? We
are not conscious of the power of creation, nor do we perceive it. We
have never witnessed the construction of a world. We only perceive the
everlasting flux and reflux of phenomena, the ceaseless pulsation of
nature's life,--evolution, transformation, birth, death, and birth
again. But nature is herself dumb as to her whence or whither. And, as
we have already hinted, could we detect a real analogy between the
two, we are not warranted in saying that the constructive intelligence
which explains the one class of phenomena is the only possible
explanation of the other.[13]
And thus it is that no study of the arrangements and disposition of
the mechanism can carry us beyond the mechanism itself. The
teleological argument professes to carry us above the chain of natural
sequence. It proclaims that those traces of intelligence everywhere
visible hint that long ago _mind_ was engaged in the construction of
the universe. It is not that the phenomena 'give forth at times a
little flash, a mystic hint' of a living will within or behind the
mechanism, a personality kindred to that of the artificer who observes
it. With that we should have no quarrel. But the teleological argument
is said to bring us authentic tidings of the origin of the universe.
If it does not carry us beyond the chain of dependent sequence it is
of no value. Its advocates are aware of this, and assert that it can
thus carry us beyond the adamantine links. But this is precisely what
it fails to do. It can never assure us that those traces of
intelligence to which it invites our study, proceeded from a
constructive mind detached from the universe; or that, if they did,
another mind did not fashion that mind, and so on _ad infinitum_. And
thus the perplexing puzzle of the origin of all things remains as
insoluble as before.
But farther, the validity of the teleological argument depends upon
the accuracy of our interpretation of those 'signs of intelligence' of
which it makes so much, and which it interprets analogically in the
light of human nature. But the 'interpreter' is ever 'one among a
thousand.' Who is to guarantee to us that we have not erred as to the
meaning of Nature's secret tracery? Who is to secure us against
inerrancy in this? Before we deduce so weighty a conclusion from data
so peculiar, we must obtain some assurance that no further insight
will disallow the interpretation we have given. But is not this
presumptuous in those who are acquainted in a very partial manner with
the significance of a few of nature's laws? Who will presume to say
that he has penetrated to the meaning of any one of these laws? And,
if he has not done so, can he validly single out a few resemblances he
has detected, and explain the nature of the infinite, by a sample of
the finite? Nature is so inscrutable that, even when a law is
discerned, the scientific explorer will not venture to say that he has
read its character, so as to be sure that the law reflects the
ultimate meaning of the several phenomena it explains. Nay, is he not
convinced that other and deeper meanings must lie within them? A law
of nature is but the generalized expression of the extent to which our
human insight has as yet extended into the secret laboratory of her
powers. But as that insight deepens, our explanations change. We say
the lower law is resolved back into a higher one, the more detailed
into the more comprehensive. But if our scientific conceptions
themselves are thus constantly changing, progressing, enlarging, how
can we venture to erect our natural theology on the surface
interpretation of the fleeting phenomena of the universe? 'Lo, these
are a part of His ways, but how little a portion is known of Him!'
And this conclusion we advance against those who as dogmatically deny
that there can be _any_ resemblance between the forces of nature as a
revelation of the Infinite, and the volitional energy of man. Both
assumptions are equally arbitrary and illegitimate. We shall shortly
endeavour to show on what grounds (remote from teleology) we are
warranted in believing that a resemblance does exist.
But, to return, if the inference from design is valid at all, it must
be valid everywhere--all the phenomena of the world must yield it
equally. No part of the universe is better made than any other part.
Every phenomenon is adjusted to every other phenomenon nearly or
remotely as means to ends. Therefore, if the few phenomena which our
teleologists single out from the many are a valid index to the
character of the source whence they have proceeded, everything that
exists must find its counterpart in the divine nature. If we are at
liberty to infer an Archetype above from the traces of mind beneath,
must not the phenomena of moral evil, malevolence, and sin be on the
same principle carried upwards by analogy?--a procedure which would
destroy the notion of Deity which the teleologists advocate. If we are
at liberty to conclude that a few phenomena which seem to us designed,
proceed from and find their counterpart in God, reason must be shown
why we should select a few and pass over other phenomena of the
universe. In other words, if the constructor of the universe designed
one result from the agency which he has established, must he not have
designed all the results that actually emerge; and if the character of
the architect be legitimately deduced from one or a few designs, must
we not take all the phenomena which exist _to help out our idea of his
character_? Look, then, at these phenomena as a whole. Consider the
elaborate contrivances for inflicting pain, and the apparatus so
exquisitely adjusted to produce a wholesale carnage of the animal
tribes. They have existed from the very dawn of geologic time. The
whole world teems with the proofs of such intended carnage. Every
organism has parasites which prey upon it; and not only do the
superior tribes feed upon the inferior (the less yielding to the
greater), but the inferior prey at the very same time no less
remorselessly upon the superior. If, therefore, the inference of
benevolence be valid, the inference of malevolence is at least equally
valid: and as equal and opposite, the one notion destroys the other.
But lastly, while we are philosophically impelled to consider all
events as designed, if we interpret one as such, nay, to believe that
the exact relation of every atom to every other atom in the universe
has been adjusted in 'a pre-established harmony,' the moment we do
thus universalize design, that moment the notion escapes us, is
emptied of all philosophical meaning or theological relevancy. Let it
be granted that phenomenon A is related to phenomenon B, as means to
an end. Carry out the principle (as philosophy and science alike
compel us to do), and consider A as related by remoter adaptation to
all the other phenomena of the universe; in short, regard every atom
as interrelated to every other atom, every change as co-related to
every other change; then the notion of design breaks down, from the
very width of the area it covers. We can understand a finite
mechanician planning that a finite phenomenon shall be related to
another finite phenomenon so as to produce a desired result; but if
the mechanician himself be a designed phenomenon, and all that he
works upon be equally so, every single atom and every individual
change being subtilly interlaced and all reciprocally dependent, then
the very notion of design vanishes. Seemingly valid on the limited
area of finite observation and of human agency, it disappears when the
whole universe is seen to be one vast network of interconnected law
and order.
Combining this objection with what may seem to be its opposite, but is
really a supplement to it, we may again say, that we, who are a part
of the universal order, cannot pronounce a verdict as to the intended
design of the parts, till able to see the whole. If elevated to a
station whence we could look down on the entire mechanism, if
_outside_ of the universe (a sheer impossibility to the creature), we
might see the exact bearing of part to part, and of link with link, so
as to pronounce with confidence as to the intention of the contriver.
If, like the wisdom of which Solomon writes, any creature had been
with the Almighty 'in the beginning of His way, before His works of
old, set up from everlasting, or even the earth was;' had a creature
been with Him 'when as yet He had not made the world, when He prepared
the heavens, and gave His decree' to the inanimate and animated worlds
as they severally arose, he might be able to understand the meaning of
their creation. And yet the moment this knowledge was gained, the
value of the perception would disappear; because 'being as God,' he
should no longer require the circuitous report or inference.
Thus the teleological argument must be pronounced fallacious. It is
illusive as well as incomplete: and were we to admit its relevancy, it
would afford no basis for worship, or the recognition of the object it
infers. The conception of deity as a workman, laying stress upon the
notion of cleverness in contrivance, and subordinating moral character
to skill, would never lead to reverence, or the adoration of the
architect.
It must be conceded, however, that there is a subsidiary value in this
as in all the other arguments, even while their failure is most
conspicuous. They prove (as Kant has shown) that if they cannot lead
us to the reality we are in search of, the phenomena of nature cannot
_discredit_ its existence. They do not turn the argument the other
way, or weight the scales on the opposite side. They are merely
negative, and indeed clear the ground for other and more valid modes
of proof.
They are of farther use (as Kant has also shown) in correcting our
conceptions of the Divine Being, when from other sources we have
learned his existence, in defining and enlarging our notions of his
attributes. They discourage and disallow some unworthy conceptions,
and enlarge the scope of others. But to leave those celebrated lines
of argument which have gathered around them so much of the
intellectual strife of rival philosophies, it is needful now to tread
warily when we are forced to come to so decided a conclusion against
them.
We do not deny that the idea of God exists in the human mind as one of
its ultimate and ineradicable notions: we only dispute the inference
which ontology has deduced from its existence there. We do not deny
that by regressive ascent from finite sequences we are at length
constrained to rest in some causal fountain-head; we only dispute the
validity of the process by which that fountain-head is identified with
the absolute source of existence, and that source of existence with a
personal God. We do not deny the presence of design in nature when by
that term is meant the signs or indices of mind in the relation of
phenomena to phenomena as means to ends; we only assert that these
designs have no theistic value, and are only intelligible after we
have discovered the existence of a supreme mind within the universe,
from another and independent source. Till then the book of nature
presents us only with blank, unilluminated pages. Thereafter it is
radiant with the light of design, full of that mystic tracery which
proclaims the presence of a living will behind it. To a mind that has
attained to the knowledge or belief in God, it becomes the 'garment it
thereafter sees Him by,' as one might see a pattern issuing from a
loom while the weaver was concealed, and infer some of the designs of
the workman from the characteristics of his work.
The remaining lines of proof, followed, though not worked out in the
past, are the _intuitional_ and the _moral_. And it is by a
combination of the data from which they spring and a readjustment of
their respective parts and harmonies, that the foundations of theism
can alone be securely laid. As the evidence of intuition is of
greatest value, and is also most generally disesteemed, we shall take
its testimony first, and examine the moral evidence of conscience
afterwards.
The modern spirit is suspicious of the evidence of intuition. It is
loudly proclaimed on all sides by the teachers of positive science
that instinct is a dubious guide, liable to the accidents of chance
interpretation, variously understood by various minds; that in
following it we may be pursuing an _ignis fatuus_; that it is at best
only valid for the individual who may happen to feel its force; that
it is not a universal endowment (as it should be if trustworthy), but
often altogether wanting; and that it can never yield us _certainty_,
because its root is a subjective feeling or conviction, which cannot
be verified by external test. These charges cannot be ignored, or
lightly passed over. And for the theist merely to proclaim, as an
ultimate fact, that the human soul has an intuition of God, that we
are endowed with a faculty of apprehension of which the correlative
object is divine, will carry no conviction to the atheist. Suppose
that he replies, 'This intuition may be valid evidence for you, but I
have no such irrepressible instinct; I see no evidence in favour of
innate ideas in the soul, or of a substance underneath the phenomena
of nature of which we can have any adequate knowledge;' we may close
the argument by simple re-assertion, and vindicate our procedure on
the ground that in the region of first principles there can be no
farther proof. We may also affirm that the instinct being a sacred
endowment, and delicate in proportion to the stupendous nature of the
object it attests, it may, like every other function of the human
spirit, collapse from mere disuse. But if we are to succeed in even
suggesting a doubt in the mind of our opponent as to the accuracy of
his analysis, we must verify our primary belief, and exhibit its
credentials so far as that is possible. We must show why we cannot
trace its genealogy farther back, or resolve it into simpler elements,
and we must not keep its nature shrouded in darkness, but disclose it
so far as may be. This, then, is our task.
The instinct to which we make our ultimate appeal is in its first rise
in the soul, crude, dim, and inarticulate. Gradually it shapes itself
into greater clearness, aided, in the case of most men, by the myriad
influences of religious thought and of historical tradition,--heightening
and refining it when educed, but not creating it; separating the real
gold from any spurious alloy it may have contracted. Like all our
innate instincts this one is at first infantile, and, when it begins
to assert itself, it prattles rather than speaks coherently. We do not
here raise the general question of the existence of _à priori_
principles. We assume that the mind is not originally an _abrasa
tabula_, but the endowments with which it starts are all gifts in
embryo. They are not full-formed powers, so much as the capacities and
potentialities of mental life. Their growth to maturity is most
gradual, and the difference between their adult and their rudimentary
phases is as wide as is the interval between a mature organization and
the egg from which it springs. It is therefore no evidence against the
reality or the trustworthiness of the intuition to which we appeal,
that its manifestations are not uniform, or that it sometimes seems
absent in the abnormal states of consciousness, or among the ruder
civilizations of the world. We admit that it is difficult for the
uninitiated to trace any affinity between its normal and its abnormal
manifestations, when it is modified by circumstances to any extent. We
farther admit that while never entirely absent, it may sometimes seem
to slumber not only in stray individuals, but in a race or an era, and
be transmitted from generation to generation in a latent state. It may
hybernate, and then awake as from the sleep of years, arising against
the will of its possessor and refusing to be silenced. Almost any
phenomenon may call it forth, and no single phenomenon can quench it.
It is the spontaneous utterance of the soul in presence of the object
whose existence it attests, and as such it is necessarily prior to any
act of reflection upon its character, validity, or significance.
Reflex thought, which is the product of experience, cannot in any case
originate an intuition, or account for those phenomena which we may
call by that name, supposing them to be delusive. Nothing in us, from
the simplest instinct to the loftiest intuition, could in any sense
create the object it attests, or after which it seeks and feels. And
all our ultimate principles, irreducible by analysis, simply attest
and assert.
The very existence of the intuition of which we now speak is itself a
revelation, because pointing to a Revealer within or behind itself.
And however crude in its elementary forms, it manifests itself in its
highest and purest state at once as an act of intelligence and of
faith. It may be most fitly described as a direct gaze by the inner
eye of the spirit, into a region over which mists usually brood. The
great and transcendant Reality it apprehends lies evermore behind the
veil of phenomena. It does not see far into that reality, yet it
grasps it, and recognises in it 'the open secret' of the universe.
This, then, is the main characteristic of the theistic intuition. It
proclaims a supreme Existence without and beyond the mind, which it
apprehends _in the act of revealing itself_. It perceives through the
vistas of phenomenal sequence, as through breaks in the cloud, the
glimpses of a _Presence_ which it can know only in part, but which it
does not follow in the dark, or merely infer from its obscure and
vanishing footprints. Unlike the 'necessary notion' of the Cartesian
school, unlike the space and time which are but subjective forms of
thought, unlike the 'regressive inference' from the phenomena of the
world, the conclusion it reaches is not the creation of its own
subjectivity. The God of the logical understanding, whose existence is
supposed to be attested by the necessary laws of the mind, is the mere
projected shadow of self. It has no more than an ideal significance.
The same may be said, with some abatements, of the being whose
existence is inferred from the phenomena of design. The ontologist and
the teleologist unconsciously draw their own portrait, and by an
effort of thought project it outwards on the canvass of infinity. The
intuitionalist, on the other hand, perceives that a revelation has
been made to him, descending as through an opened cloud, which closes
again. It is 'a moment seen, then gone;' for while we are always
conscious of our contact with the natural, we are less frequently
aware of the presence of the supernatural.
The difference between the evidence of intuition and the supposed
warrant of the other proofs we have reviewed is apparent. It is one
thing to create or evolve (even unconsciously) a mental image of
ourselves which we vainly attempt to magnify to infinity, and
thereafter worship the image that our minds have framed; it is another
to discern for a moment an august Presence, _other than the human_,
through a break in the clouds which usually veil Him from our eyes.
And it is to the inward recognition of this self-revealing object that
the theist makes appeal. What he discerns is at least not a 'form of
his mind's own throwing;' while his knowledge is due not to the
penetration of his own finite spirit, but to the condescension of the
infinite.
But we admit that this intuition is _not naturally luminous_. It is
the presence of the transcendant Object which makes it luminous.[14]
Its light is therefore fitful. It is itself rather an eye than a
light; (a passive organ, rather than an active power); and when not
lit up by light strictly supra-natural,--because emanating from the
object it discerns,--it is dull and lustreless. The varying
intelligence it reports of that object, corresponds to the changing
perceptions of the human eye in a day of alternate gloom and sunlight.
It is itself a human trust which ripens gradually into a matured
belief, rather than a clear perception, self-luminous from the first.
It may be needful, however, as the evidence of our intuitions is so
generally suspected, to examine a little more fully into the
credentials of this one, in common with all its allies.
Our knowledge of the object which intuition discloses is at first, in
all cases, necessarily unreflective. In the presence of that object,
the mind does not double back upon itself, to scrutinise the origin
and test the accuracy of the report that has reached it. And thus the
truth which it apprehends is at first only presumptive. It remains to
be afterwards tested by reflection, that no illusion be mistaken for
reality. What, then, are the tests of our intuitions?[15]
The following seem sufficient criteria of their validity and
truthworthiness. 1. The persistence with which they appear and
reappear after experimental reflection upon them, the obstinacy with
which they reassert themselves when silenced, the tenacity with which
they cling to us. 2. Their historical permanence; the confirmation of
ages and of generations. The hold they have upon the general mind of
the race is the sign of some 'root of endurance' planted firmly in the
soil of human nature. If 'deep in the general heart of men, their
power survives,' we may accept them as true, or interpret them as a
phase of some deeper yet kindred truth, of which they are the popular
distortion. 3. The interior harmony which they exhibit with each
other, and with the rest of our psychological nature; each of the
intuitions being in harmony with the entire circle, and with the
whole realm of knowledge. If any alleged intuition should come into
collision with any other and disturb it, there would be good reason
for suspecting its genuineness; and in that case the lower and less
authenticated must always yield to the higher and better attested. But
if the critical intellect carrying our intuition (if we may so speak
in a figure) round the circle of our nature, and in turn placing it in
juxtaposition with the rest, finds that no collision ensues, we may
safely conclude that the witness of that intuition is true. 4. If the
results of its action and influence are such as to elevate and
etherealize our nature, its validity may be assumed. This is no test
by itself, for an erroneous belief might for a time even elevate the
mind that held it; as the intellectual life evoked by many of the
erroneous theories and exploded hypotheses of the past has been great.
But no error could do so permanently. No illusion could survive as an
educative and elevating power over humanity; and no alleged instinct
could sustain its claim, and vindicate its presumptive title, if it
could not stand the test we mention. A theoretic error is seen to be
such when we attempt to reduce it to practice; as a hidden crack or
fissure in a metal becomes visible when a strain is applied, or the
folly of an ideal Utopia is seen in the actual life of a mixed
commonwealth. Many of those scientific guesses which have served as
good provisional hypotheses, have been abandoned in the actual working
of them out, and so the flaw that lurks within an alleged intuition,
(if there be a flaw) will become apparent when we try to apply it in
actual life, and take it as a regulative principle in action. Thus,
take the belief in the Divine existence, attested, as we affirm, by
intuition, and apply it in the act of worship or adoration. Does that
belief (which fulfils the conditions of our previous tests,--for it
appears everywhere and clings tenaciously to man, and comes into
collision with no other normal tendency of our nature, or defrauds any
instinct of its due) does it elevate the nature of him who holds it?
The reply of history is conclusive, and its attestation is abundantly
clear. The power of the theistic faith over the rest of human nature
is such that it has quickened the other faculties into a more vigorous
life. Its moral leverage has been vast, while it has sharpened the
æsthetic sense to some of its most delicate perceptions, and in some
instances brought a new accession of intellectual power. The intuition
which men trust in the dark, gradually leads the whole nature towards
the light. Its dimness and its dumbness are exchanged for clearness
and an intelligible voice; and while it thus grows luminous, it gains
new power, and our confidence in its verdict strengthens.
We have now stated what seems to us the general nature of the theistic
intuition, and added one or two criteria by which all intuitions must
be tested. It remains that we indicate more precisely the phases which
it assumes; and the channels in which it works. Though ultimate and
insusceptible of analysis, it has a triple character. It manifests
itself in the consciousness which the human mind has of the Infinite
(an intellectual phase); in its perception of the world-soul, which is
Nature's 'open secret' revealed to the poet (an æsthetic phase); and
in the act of worship, in which an object correlative to the
worshipper is revealed in his very sense of dependence (a moral and
religious phase).
It is not only essential to the validity of the theistic intuition
that the human mind has a positive though imperfect knowledge of the
infinite, but the assertion of this is involved in the very intuition
itself. If we had no positive knowledge of the source it seeks to
reach, the instinct, benumbed as by an intellectual frost, and unable
to rise, would be fatally paralysed; or if it could move along its
finite area, it would wander helplessly, feeling after its object, 'if
haply it might find it.' And it will be found that all who deny the
validity of our intuition, either limit us to the knowledge of
phenomena, or while admitting that we have a certain knowledge of
finite substance adopt the cold theory of nescience. From the earliest
Greek schools, or from the earlier speculation of the Chinese mind, a
powerful band of thinkers have denied to man the knowledge of aught
beyond phenomena, and from Confucius to Comte the list is an ample
one. In our own day this school includes some of the clearest and
subtilest minds devoted to philosophy. Comte, Lewes, Mill, Mr. Bain,
Herbert Spencer, and the majority of our best scientific guides
(however they differ in detail) agree in the common postulate that all
that man can know, and intelligibly reason about, are phenomena, and
the laws of these phenomena, 'that which doth appear.' There is,
however, a positivist 'religion,' which consists now in the worship of
phenomena, and again in homage paid to mystery, to the unknown and the
unknowable which lies beyond the known. Comte deified man and nature,
in their phenomenal aspects, without becoming pantheist; and the
instinct of worship though outlawed from his philosophy (which denies
the existence of its object), asserted itself within his nature--at
least in the second period of his intellectual career--and led him
not only to deify humanity, but to prescribe a minute and cumbrous
ritual, as puerile as it is inconsistent. It is true that worship is
philosophically an excrescence on his system. The advanced secularist
who disowns it is logically more consistent with the first principle
of positivism. To adore the _grande être_ as personified in woman is
as great a mimicry of worship as to offer homage to the law of
gravitation. Comte, says his acutest critic, 'forgot that the wine of
the real Presence was poured out, and adored the empty cup.' But we
may note in this latter graft upon his earlier system a testimony to
the operation of that very intuition which positivism disowns; its
uncouth form, when distorted by an alien philosophy, being a more
expressive witness to its irrepressible character.
Mr. Spencer, on the other hand, with some of our scientific teachers,
bids us bow down before the unknown and unknowable power which
subsists in the universe. The highest triumph of the human spirit,
according to him, is to ascertain the laws of phenomena, and then to
worship the dark abyss of the inscrutable beyond them. But there is
surely neither humility nor sanity in worshipping darkness, any more
than there would be in erecting an altar to chaos: and the advice
seems strange coming from those who claim to be the special teachers
of clear knowledge and comprehensible law. If we must at length erect
an altar at all, we must have some knowledge of the existence to whom
it is erected, and have some better reason for doing so than the blank
and bland confession that we have not the smallest idea of its nature!
Mr. Spencer undertakes to 'reconcile' the claims of science and
religion; and he finds the rallying-point to be the recognition of
mystery, into which all knowledge recedes. But if religion has any
function, and a reconciliation between her and science be possible,
the harmony cannot be effected by first denying the postulate from
which religion starts, and quietly sweeping her into the background of
the inconceivable, consigning her to the realm of the unknowable, and
then proclaiming that the conciliation is complete. This is to silence
or annihilate one of the two powers which the philosopher undertook to
reconcile. It is annexation accomplished by conquest, the cessation of
strife, effected by the destruction of one opposing force, not by an
armistice, or the ratification of articles of peace. Mr. Spencer does
not come between two combatants who are wounding each other
needlessly, and bid each put his sword into its sheath, for they are
brethren; but he turns round and (to his own satisfaction) slays one
of them, and then informs the other that the reconciliation is
effected.
We must therefore ask the positivist for his warrant, on the one hand,
in denying the existence of a world of substance, underneath the
fleeting phenomena of being, _out of which a revelation may emerge_,
apprehensible by man; and on the other, in denying to man positive
knowledge of the infinite as a substance. We must remind him that
infinite and finite, absolute and relative, substance and phenomena,
are terms of a relation: while we ask him for his warrant in
differentiating these terms, and proclaiming that the one set are
knowable and known, the others unknown and unknowable. He arbitrarily
singles out one of the two factors which together constitute a
relation, and are only known as complementary terms, and he bestows
upon it a spurious honour, by proclaiming that it alone is
intelligible, while he relegates the other term to the region of
darkness. We ask him on what ground he does so? and whether the law of
contrast does not render phenomena as unintelligible, without
substance, as substance without phenomena? Can we pronounce the one to
be known and the other unknown, merely because the former reaches us
through the five gateways of sense, and the latter through the avenue
of intuition? Now, no wise theist ever asserted that God was
phenomenally known. God is no phenomenon, but the noumenal essence
underlying all phenomena. We have admitted and contended that no study
of the laws of the universe can give us direct information as to the
first cause; for a first cause could never be revealed to the senses,
nor be an inference deduced from the data which sense supplies. The
assertion therefore, that nature (of which the physical sciences are
the interpretation) does not reveal God by its phenomena, is as
strongly asserted by the theist as by the positivist. It may reveal
his footprints, but we only know whose foot has left its mark on
nature when we have learned _from another source_ that He _is_. As
little, however, can the laws of nature discredit faith in a first
cause, which springs from a region at once beneath, above, and beyond
phenomena. And our theistic faith is not an _inference_; it is a
_postulate_: an axiomatic truth, affirmed on the report of that
intuition, of which the root is planted so firmly in the soil of
consciousness, that no form of the positivist philosophy can tear it
thence. Let science, therefore, march as it will, and where it will,
being hemmed in by the very laws of the universe which give rise to
it, and of which it is the exposition, it cannot interfere with or
encroach upon the theistic intuition. If there be a region behind
phenomena and their laws, accessible to knowledge or to philosophic
faith, no conclusion gathered from the scientific survey can touch it,
whether to discredit or attest.
The fundamental doctrine of both the schools of nescience is the
relativity of human knowledge, and that doctrine as taught by the
Scottish psychologists (and notably by Scotland's greatest
metaphysician since Hume, Sir William Hamilton) has been wrested out
of their hands, and turned against the theism they also advocate. Mr.
Spencer would exhibit them all as 'hoist with their own petard.' It is
necessary, therefore, to enquire whether this doctrine of relativity
favours a theory of nescience, or warrants a counter-doctrine of the
knowledge of the infinite, or is indifferent to both.
With us the relativity of knowledge is a first principle in
philosophy. But to affirm it, is merely to assert that all that is
known occupies a fixed relation to the knower. It is to affirm nothing
as to the character or contents of his knowledge. As regards the
objects known we further maintain that they are apprehended only in
their differences and contrasts. We know self only in its contrast
with what is not self, a particular portion of matter only in its
relation to other portions which surround and transcend it. So also
and for the same reason, with the finite and the infinite. The one is
not a positive notion, and the other negative; the one clear, and the
other obscure. Both are equally clear, both sharply defined, so far as
they are given us in relation. If the one notion suffers, the other
suffers with it. In short, if we discharge any notion from all
relation with its opposite or contrary, it ceases to be a notion at
all. The finite, if we take it alone, is as inconceivable as the
infinite, if we take it alone; phenomena by themselves are as
incogitable as substance by itself: and the relative as a notion cut
off from the absolute which antithetically bounds it, is not more
intelligible than the absolute as an essence absolved from all
relations. And thus the entire fabric of our knowledge being founded
on contrasts, and arising out of differences, involving in its every
datum another element hidden in the background, may be said to be a
vast double chain of relatives mutually complementary. It looks ever
in two directions, without and within, above and beneath, before and
after.
We maintain, therefore, that we have positive knowledge of the
infinite. Whosoever says that the infinite cannot be known contradicts
himself. For he must possess a notion of it before he can deny that he
has a positive knowledge of it, before he can predict aught regarding
it. And so he says he cannot know what he says, though in another
fashion, that he does know. It could never have come within the
horizon of hypothetical knowledge, never have become the subject of
discussion, unless positively (though inadequately) known; and thus
the infinite stands as the antithetic background of the finite. Sir
William Hamilton's and Dr. Mansel's doctrine of nescience, no less
than Mr. Spencer's, we regard as absolute intellectual suicide. It
implies that we have no knowledge of that which we are compelled to
conceive in order to know that it is unknowable. We could not compare
the two notions, if the one were unthinkable. For if all knowledge is
a relation, in each act of knowing I must know both the terms related.
The one term causes us no difficulty, being admitted on both sides.
But the other which so perplexes our teachers of nescience, is, it
must be owned, as to its contents a somewhat vague residuum. It is
without an outline. It is not given us with the luminous clearness
that its correlative is given. Nevertheless, it is a real term in a
real relation. The moment we proceed to analyse our consciousness of
the relative, we find it as the penumbra of the notion, its shadowy
complement. We may never obtain more than a vague, and what we might
call a moonlight view of it: nevertheless behold it we do; apprehend
it we must.
But it is objected that as human knowledge is always finite, we can
never have a positive apprehension of an infinite object; that as the
subject of knowledge is necessarily finite, its object must be the
same. Let us sift this objection.
I may know an object in itself as related to me the knower, or I may
know it in its relation to other objects also known by me the knower.
But in both and in all cases, knowledge is limited by the power of the
knower, therefore it is always finite knowledge. But it may be finite
knowledge of an infinite object, incomplete knowledge of a complete
object, partial knowledge of a transcendent object. The boundary or
fence may be within the faculty of the knower, while the object he
imperfectly grasps may not only be infinite, but be known to transcend
his faculties in the very act of conscious knowledge. For example, I
may know that a line is infinite while I have only a finite knowledge
of the points along which that line extends. And similarly my
knowledge of the Infinite Mind is partial and incomplete, but it is
clear and defined. It is definite knowledge of an indefinite object.
We may have a partial knowledge not only of a part, but of the whole.
Thus, I have a partial knowledge of a circle, because I know only a
few of its properties; but it is not to a part of the circle that my
partial knowledge extends, but to the whole which I know in part. In
like manner as the Infinite Object has no parts, it is not of a
portion of His being that we possess a partial knowledge, but of the
whole. We know Him as we know the circle, inadequately yet directly,
immediately, though in part. He is dark to us by excess of light.
Thus, although our knowledge of the infinite may be _vivified_, it is
not really _enlarged_ by goading our thought to wider and wider
imaginings, or spurring our faculties onwards over areas of space, or
intervals of time. That knowledge is directly revealed while we are
apprehending any finite object, as its correlative and complementary
antithesis.
Again it is said that to know the infinite is to know the sum of all
reality, and as that would include the universe and its source
together, it must necessarily include on the one hand the knower along
with his knowledge, and on the other all the possibilities of
existence. The possibility of our knowing the Infinite Being as
distinct from the universe is denied, since infinite existence is said
to be coextensive with the whole universe of things. But that the
source of the universe must necessarily exhaust existence and contain
within himself all actual being is a mere theoretic assumption. The
presence of the finite does not limit the infinite as if the area of
the latter were contracted by so much of the former as exists within
it. For the relation of the infinite being to the finite is not
similar to the relation between infinite space and a segment of it. It
is true that so much of finite space is so much cut out of the whole
area of infinite space--though, if the remainder is infinite, the
portion removed will not really limit it. But as our intuition of the
infinite has no resemblance to our knowledge of space, we believe that
the relations which their respective objects sustain have no affinity
with each other. The intuition of God is a purely spiritual
revelation, informing us not of the quantity but of the quality of the
supreme being in the universe. And to affirm that the finite spirit of
man standing in a fixed relation to the infinite spirit of God limits
it, by virtue of that relation, is covertly to introduce a spatial
concept into a region to which it is utterly foreign, and which it has
no right to enter.[16]
We therefore maintain, in opposition to the teachers of nescience,
that a positive knowledge of the Infinite is competent to man, because
involved in his very consciousness of the finite. And when
psychologically analysed, this intuition explains and vindicates
itself.
But there is another aspect, no less important, in which it may be
regarded. To say that the infinite is wholly inscrutable by man, is to
limit not man's faculty only, but the possibilities of the divine
nature itself. If God cannot unveil himself to man through the
openings of those clouds which ordinarily conceal His presence, can
His resources be illimitable, can He be the infinitely perfect? It is
said, on the one hand, that the unknown Force reveals itself in the
laws of nature, but cannot disclose its essence; and, on the other,
that the infinite being reveals His handiwork, from which He permits
us to infer His existence, but cannot reveal Himself. Such assertions
are either subtle instances of verbal jugglery or manifest
contradictions in terms. All revelation of whatever kind, presupposes
some knowledge of the revealer. That knowledge may be imparted the
moment the revelation is made, or prior to it, and from an independent
source; but no revelation could be made, were the being to whom it was
addressed ignorant of the source whence it came. Is there really any
special difficulty in supposing that the infinite intelligence can
directly disclose His nature to a creature fashioned in His image, the
disclosure quickening the latent power of intuition, which, thus
touched from above, springs forth to meet its source and object?
The question between the theist and the positivist is brought to its
real issue when the latter is forced to recognise that the God of
theism is no inference from phenomena, but if we may so speak, a
_postulate of intuition_. And hence it is so necessary to concede
frankly the failure of the teleological argument from final causes, as
well as the ontological argument from the necessary notions of the
intellect. We not only admit, we are forward to proclaim that by
inductive science we can never rise higher than phenomena; and hence
at the end of our researches we should be no nearer God than at the
outset. But though we cannot reach Him by induction, we may do so
before we begin our induction, by simply giving the intuition of the
soul free scope to rise towards its source. And to dislodge the theist
from his position, his opponent must succeed in proving that this
intuition, whose root springs from a region beneath phenomena, and
which in its flight outsoars phenomena, is as baseless and
unauthenticated as a dream.
There are two principles, one of them metaphysical, and the other
scientific, which are helpful at this point in our inquiry. These are
the principle of causality, and the doctrine of the correlation of
forces, or the conservation of energy. We cannot discuss them at any
length, but we shall briefly state their nature, and their relation to
the theistic intuition.
The phenomena of nature (using that term in its widest sense) are not
only a series of sequences, they are also the revelation of a
mysterious Power or living Force. All that we perceive by the senses,
and, inductively register in nature, is a series of phenomena, of
which the laws of nature are the generalized expression and
interpretation. But every change is a revelation not only of
succession, but of causal power. No matter where we take our stand
along the line of sequence, mental or material, always and at every
point this conviction is flashed in upon the mind, 'there is a hidden
Power behind.' But we instinctively ask, 'what is this power or force
determining the changes of the universe?' Is it material or spiritual?
Can the force which moves the particles of matter be material? We do
not perceive it by the senses, which take note only of the modified
phenomena of matter. It is neither visible, nor audible, nor tangible.
It is invisible; must we not therefore believe it to be incorporeal?
We cannot reach it by analysis. We conclude that it is not physical
but hyper-physical, not natural but supranatural. We have an
intellectual intuition of it. It announces its presence in every
change that occurs, but it nowhere shows its face as a material
entity. It is a mystic agency endlessly revealing its existence,
everywhere concealing its source. We watch its evolutions, but it
escapes our scrutiny; we try to detain it, and we find that it is
gone; yet it reappears in the next thing we examine, and in the very
phenomena of our search for it; the agency is manifest, but it is the
Agent we wish to discover. Must it be, like the sangreal of mediæval
legend, sought for in many lands, but nowhere found by any wanderer in
quest of it?
Before attempting an answer, we shall state the scientific principle
referred to, which is entitled to rank as one of the greatest of
modern discoveries. All the forms of force are convertible amongst
themselves. They are all ultimately identical, and are endlessly
passing and repassing into each other: the mechanical, the chemical,
the vital, are all one. 'The many' _are_ 'the one,' its varying
phrases, its protean raiment. In short, there is but a single supreme
force, ubiquitous and plastic, the fountain of all change. It now
evolves itself in heat, now masks itself in light, reveals itself in
electricity, or sleeps in the law of gravitation: one solitary pulse
within Nature's vast machine, and behind the barrier of her laws. This
force, thus endlessly changing, is neither diminished nor replenished;
it is not added to, nor subtracted from; it is perennial, and is its
own conservator. It is not synthesis, but analysis that has resolved
it into unity. But can synthesis combine its manifold phases under one
regulative notion? In realizing its general character we cannot
discharge from our minds in turn all the known features of particular
forces, so as to leave a vague resultant common to all, yet especially
identified with none. The diverse types must have an _archetype_. What
is that archetype?
It seems to us self-evident that we must seek for it, not in nature,
but in man; not in the lower plane of the cosmical forces, but in the
human _will_, the root of our personality. Comte begins with the
lowermost grade of force (to wit, the mechanical), and ascends with
it, bringing all the finer and more subtle forms under its sway, and
interpreting the higher by the lower. We, on the contrary, begin with
the highest known type, that which lies nearest ourselves, with which
we are earliest acquainted, and whence we derive our notion of force
beyond ourselves; and we descend with it as a light to guide our
footsteps amongst the lower. This we hold to be the correct, to be
indeed the only admissible philosophical procedure. If it is only
through the consciousness of force within ourselves that we have any
intelligible notion of it in nature (and are thus first initiated into
the idea), we must come back to the will for an explanation of what
the one force external to us is. Our own personality supplies us with
the archetype of which we are in search. We thus throw the plank
across the chasm between man and nature; we interpret the latter by
the former (not the reverse); and the discovery of the correlation of
forces, and the conservation of energy, becomes the scientific
equivalent of the doctrine of philosophical theology, that one supreme
Will pervades the universe, that in nature lives and moves and has
its being.
If we can vindicate this procedure, and prove our right to interpret
the forces, if not the phenomena of nature, as the outcome of a living
will, the energy of a nature like our own, our goal is reached. But,
say the Comtists, that is a mere imagination of theology, the creation
of a superstitious mind, 'transcendant audacity,' 'a form of the
mind's own throwing,' just as much as the teleological explanation of
nature. It has been spoken of as presumptuous, as well as fanciful,
betokening a lack of humility and philosophic caution; it being sheer
egotism to interpret nature by what we are, and a return to the
Protagorean doctrine that 'man is the measure of all things.' In
reply, we give only hints and suggestions, for the region is high, and
the atmosphere rarefied.
In the first place, it is to be observed that we do not take one class
of phenomena to explain the inner nature of another class; the
phenomena of will to explain, say those of electricity, in outward
nature; for in that case we might as well, with just as much reason
and plausibility, with just as much authority, take the latter class
of phenomena to explain the former; and we should learn quite as much,
that is to say, we should learn nothing at all. But we take a certain
special _noumenal_ force, one that is transcendant but revealed in our
innermost life and consciousness, in the will's _autocracy_, and by
the help and suggestion of this known force we explain (not the
phenomena of Nature nor her laws), but the darker, the unknown
noumenal Force, the pulse of nature.
In the next place, it is also to be observed that as the human will,
while noumenally free, is phenomenally under law and governed most
rigidly by motives, so the force which we interpret as the expression
of personal will in nature, acts in perfect conformity to law. The
laws of nature are the expression of its bondage. The minor scattered
forces, which may be spoken of as the messengers and servitors of the
supreme will, are no more fitful but no less capricious than is the
human will, in which the causal nexus is not broken while it remains
free. The supernatural reveals itself in an orderly fashion through
the natural. Its will is expressed by law.
In the third place, so far as bridging the chasm between the two
orders of phenomena, it is not accomplished by the poetic intuition (to
which we shall immediately refer), but by the human intellect, it
seems legitimated by _analogy_. In our inductive interpretation of
nature we perceive resemblances, and infer a likeness. 'Analogy is the
soul of induction.' If, therefore, it be an illicit act of the reason
which ventures to trace a parallel between nature and man, and
interpret the former by the latter, how fares it with the foundations
of human knowledge, and with the pillars of science herself? Is not
all physical science the rational interpretation of nature? If we may
not read the meaning of the great central force in the light of that
force which we carry in the will, how can we warrantably interpret the
laws of nature, in the light of that which we carry in the intellect?
Are we not left in uncertainty as to the character of the entire
fabric of our knowledge? The oracle is altogether dumb. If the way
which seems to lead from the interior of the human will into the
temple of outward nature be really a _cul-de-sac_, what warrant have
we for opening a door on the other side, and walking down the avenues
of positive science, imagining that in these pathways we shall find
the only key to nature? To bring the analogy into effect, let us take
two instances: the force with which I discharge a projectile and the
force of gravitation. The former proceeds from the will, which is the
originating power, though mechanical and physiological causes
intervene. Since, therefore, similar effects have similar or
resembling causes, it is a strictly analogical inference that as the
effects correspond, the causes will resemble each other, and the
essential part of the correspondence will not consist in the apparatus
used (the phenomena), but in the will underlying, which is
noumenal.[17]
In the fourth place, as the force of the will is both higher and
better known than the mechanical, chemical, and vital forces of
nature, we are warranted in interpreting the lower by the higher, and
not in reducing the higher to the level of the lower. As we ascend in
nature from the lowest vital forms to the highest type of
organization, we find that the higher is not only an advance upon the
lower, but that it _includes_ it; and no naturalist would describe a
vertebrated animal by that which it held in common with the mollusca.
That in which it differs from the types beneath it is held to be its
distinctive and descriptive feature. When, therefore, we reach man at
the top of the scale, separated by a distinct endowment from the
classes beneath him, yet conserving all their main characteristics in
his nature, and describe him not by what he has in common with the
lower animals, but by that in which he differs from them, we act on
the principle of selecting the highest feature we can find, and taking
it as our guide. And similarly when we are in search of the Supreme
Principle of the universe, the _causa causarum_, we interpret it by
the highest features in human nature, because that nature is the
highest with which we are experimentally acquainted. And we may
validly throw the burden of proof upon the positivist, and ask why the
great cosmical force that rules in nature should be radically
different from the volitional force which is the root of our
personality? Reverting again to the force of gravitation, why should
it not be the outcome in nature of a Will vaster than man's,
resembling, yet transcending it? To what does that force amount? The
phenomenalist cannot arrest our inquiry by simply drawing the veil of
nescience over it. He cannot slip a lid over the end of our telescope
turned skyward by merely exclaiming 'mystery of mysteries, all is
mystery.' And it seems to us that we must either divest the word
gravitation of all intelligible meaning, or while perceiving the
unlikeness at a glance, we must 'invest it with a human or
_quasi-human_ vitality.'
_Quasi_, for again in the fifth place, this all-pervasive protean
force assumes many a phase which is exceedingly unlike the operations
of a personal power. In many of her moods, Nature has the countenance
of the sphinx. She is sublimely silent as to her inmost essence. Cold,
stern, inflexible, neutral, taciturn, apathetic--all these terms seem
applicable to her at times, as we gaze across the chasm between man
and the universe. But the regulative idea, which we find in the
analogy of the human will, is not to be regarded as exhaustive or
exclusive of other notions which may unite with it. The personal force
may at the same time be more than personal. Its highest quality
becomes to us what we have called its regulative idea; but it contains
elements within the infinite compass of its nature, different from
those features of which we find the mirror in ourselves.[18] It is
sufficient if we know that the _causa causarum_, the all-pervading
life of the universe, can in any sense be described as personal, that
we can speak of 'the soul of nature,' without being the dupes of a
fanciful analogy, dealing merely with figure and hyperbole. Be it
admitted by every theist that there are myriad facets which the subtle
life of nature may present to the beholder. We not only may, we must
think of it as
'He, they, one, all, within, without,
The power in darkness which we guess.'
It reveals itself to us now as personal, awakening and responding to
the instinct of worship, calling forth our wonder and reverence, with
the hunger and the thirst of the human spirit in rising to its source;
now it turns its cold, impassive, silent face towards us; and as we
feel its immeasurable transcendency we are warned against the error of
construing it into a mere exaggeration of ourselves. We thus learn on
the one hand, the indefinite unlikeness between man and the Supreme
Spirit of the universe, and on the other their positive likeness or
kindredness. We escape the prevailing error of mediævalism, and the
equally fatal error of the modern scientific spirit. The tendency of
the schoolmen was to interpret all the laws of nature in the light of
_à priori_ notions of the mind. They did not search laboriously for
her own meaning, and wait patiently for her revelations; but distorted
nature by _outré_ hypotheses fetched altogether from within. It is,
however, an equal if not a greater onesidedness to do exactly the
reverse; to interpret the human spirit in the light of external nature
and organic law. The apotheosis of man was at least no worse--(we
think it rather better)--than making a fetish of nature, and
explaining the sublime mysteries of the human will by the phenomena of
molecular action. We therefore maintain that amid the many possible
manifestations of the infinite Life, they may be reduced to two
primary forms, the one impersonal and the other personal. God is
infinitely unlike the creature. He is also the archetype of which we
are the type. And we have less need to be philosophically warned
against the possible caricature of the latter doctrine (of which the
teachers of nescience remind us), than to be cautioned against the
partial truth of the former, which, in isolation, may so easily drift
into exaggeration and a lie.
The intellectual intuition of the infinite, which we have endeavoured
to vindicate, so far attests this correspondence; but the inspired
utterance of the Poet in reference to the soul of nature, no less
bears it witness. The identity or affinity of the force within him and
the forces without, is felt by the poet when the speculative thinker
perceives it not. He cannot analyse into its constituent elements the
mystic meaning of the universe which is flashed into his soul in
moments of glowing inspiration, as the chemist analyses his earths in
a crucible. But he is the
'Mighty prophet, seer blest,
With whom these truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our years to find
In darkness lost.'
And he may be able to help the merely scientific explorer out of that
abyss of mystery in which he is speculatively lost, and to save him
from erecting an altar to 'the unknown God.' While his soul, in 'a
wise passiveness,' lies open to the visitations of the supernatural,
he sees a vision, and he hears a voice, of which he can give no
scientific explanation, but which announces to him the 'open secret.'
Perhaps the finest description of the characteristics of the soul's
intuitions is that given by Lowell, 'the prevailing poet' of America.
He writes--
'As blind nestlings, unafraid,
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade,
By which their downy dream is stirred,
Taking it for the mother-bird;
So, when God's shadow, which is light,
My wakening instincts falls across,
Silent as sunbeams over moss,
_In my heart's-nest half-conscious things
Stir with a helpless sense of wings,
Lift themselves up_, and tremble long
With premonitions sweet of song.'
The poet may thus throw the plank for us where the psychologist or
metaphysician fails. He 'sees into the life of things.' His insight,
which comes and goes in flashes marvellous but fugitive, which dart
across the world and bring back this report of correspondence,
illumines every realm of nature. He tells us that it is 'haunted for
ever by the Eternal Mind.' He finds the whole temple of nature
exquisitely filled with symbols of his own deepest thought. She is a
storehouse of imagery expressing the subtlest gradations of his
feeling. Wherever he moves he finds that the forms and the forces
around him are an interpretation of what he _is_. They are the
symbolic language of his deepest thoughts and highest aspirations,
while his innermost life again interprets them. He explains the inner
world in terms of the outer, and the outward in terms of the inward.
In the grand vocation of the poet, we know of nothing grander than his
function to mediate between the baffled ontologist and the man of
science. He is a reconciler who presents a common truth which those
on either side may recognise, and the recognition of which may draw
them together.
This vast and varied region of our complex nature, the æsthetic or
poetic, thus comes to the aid of our theology. The great imaginative
poets, in their delineations of man and nature, do not idealise; they
_see_: or they see before they idealise. Who will affirm that
Wordsworth's 'inward eye'--by the use and cultivation of which he
became the greatest of all interpreters of the symbolism of nature--in
seeing visions, saw but the ghostly forms of his own imagination, and
was not in contact with _real existence_? Are his 'spiritual
presences' as unreal as the fawns and dryads of polytheistic legend?
And was not even the early personification of nature a cruder
testimony in the same direction,--the belief in these deities of the
wood and hill and stream being a dumb homage by the savage mind to a
divinity in nature kindred to man? Is the poet, then, _a seer_,[19] or
only the elaborator of fancies?--the mere creator of ideal shapes, or
the discerner of real existence? He tells us that nature is a luminous
veil, behind which visions are to be seen, and voices heard; that
sometimes, in a moment, he has come upon the footprints of the
supernatural; and that, in such moments, he is in contact with a
reality, which he calls 'the soul of the world.' Why should he call it
a _soul_, if he has no intuition of its analogy and correspondence
with his own nature? And what though he speaks continually in the
plural, and tells us of the myriad 'presences,' as the scientific
explorer speaks of manifold 'forces?' What though he lapses into a
semipolytheist interpretation of nature? It is but the sign of a
weight of inspiration too vast for one utterance. It indicates that
his feeling of the central life has broken up the diversity; that
nature's great soul--_the_ Presence--cannot reveal itself at once as
all-in-all and all inclusive; within the boundaries of the finite
mind. In its very wealth it reveals itself as manifold. But as the
poet and the philosopher may combine the manifold in the unity of
their own mind, why not also in the unity of the object revealing
itself to them?
It is to be observed, however, that the object which the poet's
insight attests and reveals, is not phenomenal, but substantial.
Hence no question arises as to its origin. It is only that which
enters on the theatre of phenomenal existence that demands a further
explanation. The entrance and the exit of phenomena are explained,
when we refer them to the substance out of which they have emerged,
and to which they return. But we do not ask for the origin of
substance, any more than for the origin of space, time, or number.
There is still another branch of the theistic evidence from intuition.
It is the instinct of worship. Our space admits of but a sentence
regarding it. It is seen in the mere uprise of the soul, spontaneously
doing homage to a higher than itself; in the sense of dependence, felt
by all men who 'know themselves;' in the need which the worshipper
feels of approaching One who is higher and holier than himself, and in
whom all perfection resides, who is recognisable by him, and is
interested in his state; in the workings of the filial instinct
seeking its source, and, as said St. Augustine, 'restless till it
rests in Thee;' in the suffrage of the heart rising amid the miseries
of its lot, and even against the surmises of the intellect, to the
'Rock that is higher than it;' in the soul's aspirations--its thirst
for the ideal, while it feels the necessity of an absolute centre or
ultimate standard of truth, beauty, and goodness; and even in the
passionate longings of the mystic to reach an utterly transcendent
good. All these things bear witness to an _instinct_, working often in
the dark, but always seeking its source. They are almost universal,
and they are certainly ineradicable. They show how deeply the roots of
the theistic faith are planted in the soil of the moral consciousness.
We cannot, however, pursue these several lines of proof in detail.
They form a fitting link of connection with the more strictly ethical
evidence, on which we must add a few paragraphs.
The Kantian argument is more intricate and much less satisfactory than
the common evidence from the phenomena of conscience itself. It is
founded on the moral law, with its 'categorical imperative,' asserting
that certain actions are right and others wrong, in a world in which
the right is often defrauded of its legitimate awards, and the wrong
is temporarily successful. This, however, says Kant, points to a
future; in which the irregularity will be redressed, and _therefore_
to a Supreme Moral Power, able to effect it. The argument is
altogether inferential. It is circuitous, its conclusion being in a
sense an appendix to the doctrine of immortality; and it has only a
secondary connection with the data of the moral law itself. But the
phenomena of conscience afford the data of theism directly. We do not
raise the question of the nature or the origin of the moral faculty.
We assume its existence, as an _à priori_ principle, carrying with it
not a contingent but an absolute and unconditional authority. But this
moral law within us is the index of another power, a higher
personality whence it emanates, and of whose character it is the
expression. The law carries in its very heart or centre the evidence
of a moral law-giver, his existence not being an inference _from_, but
a postulate _of_ this law. It is given with the direct and antithetic
clearness with which the infinite is given as the correlative of the
finite; and the ascent from the law to the supreme legislator is not
greater than is the ascent from space and time, revealed in limited
areas and intervals, to immensity and eternity. The two data are the
terms of relation. And thus we do not rise to the divine existence by
any 'regressive inference,' as the Kantian argument reaches it; we
find God _in_ conscience. Moral analysis reveals _Another_, within and
yet above our own personality: and if we _reject that implicate_ which
is folded within the very idea of conscience, it ceases to be
authoritative; and, divested of all ethical significance, it sinks to
the level of expediency.
Thus the moral part of our nature rests upon the background of another
and a divine personality. Let us analyse the notion of duty, the idea
of obligation contained in the word '_ought_.' If it resolves itself
into this, 'it is expedient to act in a certain manner, because, if we
do not, we injure the balance of our faculties, promote a schism
amongst the several powers, and put the machinery of human nature out
of working gear:' then it does not point to one behind it, any more
than the phenomenal sequences and designs in nature point in that
direction. But if we 'ought _simply because we ought_,' _i.e._,
because the law which we find within us, but did not produce, controls
us, haunts us, and claims supremacy over us, then we find in such a
fact the revelation of One from whom the law has emanated. As Fenelon
says in reference to the idea of the infinite, breathing the spirit of
St. Augustine--
'Where have I obtained this idea, which is so much above
me, which infinitely surpasses me, which astonishes me,
which makes me disappear in my own eyes, which renders the
infinite present to me. It is in me; it is more than
myself. It seems to me everything, and myself nothing. I
can neither efface, obscure, diminish, nor contradict it.
It is in me; I have not put it there, I have found it
there: and I have found it there only because it was
already there before I sought it. It remains there
invariable even if I do not think of it, when I think of
something else. I find it wherever I seek it, and it often
presents itself when I am not seeking it. It does not
depend upon me. I depend upon it.'[20]
Similarly Newman writes of conscience,--
'A voice within forbids, and summons us to refrain;
And if we bid it to be silent, it yet is not still: it is
not in our control,
It acts without our order, without our asking, against our will.
It is _in_ us, it belongs to us, but it is not _of_ us: it
is _above_ us.
It is moral, it is intelligent, it is not _we_, nor at our bidding;
It pervades mankind, as one life pervades the trees.'[21]
Whence then comes this law which is 'in us, yet not of us, but above
us,' which we did not create, and which circumstances do not fashion,
though they modify its action? Is it not the moral echo within of a
Voice louder and vaster without--a voice which legislates, and in its
sanctity commands, issuing imperial edicts for the entire universe of
moral agency? In one sense conscience is the viceroy or representative
of a higher power; in another it is the voice of one crying in the
wilderness of the human spirit, 'Prepare ye the way for the Law.' It
ever speaks 'as one having authority,' and yet its central
characteristic (as pointed out by a living teacher) is not that the
conscience _has_ authority, but that it is 'the consciousness _of_
authority.' It testifies to another: the implanted instinct bearing
witness to its Implanter; and through the hints and intimations of
this master-faculty thus throned amidst the other powers, we are able
to ascend intuitively and directly to God. We are 'constituted to
transcend ourselves,' and conscience becomes a ladder by which we
mount to the supernatural, as well as the voice inarticulate, yet
audible, which speaks to us of God. Thus, to quote the language of one
of the Cambridge Platonists of the 17th century (Dr. John Smith)--
'As Plotinus teaches us, "he who reflects upon himself
reflects upon his own _original_," God has so copied forth
himself into the whole life and energy of man's soul as
that the character of the divinity may be most easily seen
and read of all within themselves. And whenever we look
upon our souls in a right manner we shall find a _Urim_ and
a _Thummim_ there; and though the whole fabric of this
visible universe be whispering out the notion of a Deity,
yet we cannot understand it without _this interpreter
within_.'
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The terms _à priori_ and _à posteriori_ are misleading. Arguments
called _à priori_ are usually mixed, and involve elements strictly _à
posteriori_: experiential facts are inlaid within them. And the proof
_à posteriori_ ascends (if it ascends high enough) by the aid of _à
priori_ principles. In its rise to the supersensible, it makes use of
the noetic principle of the reason.
[12] For other contributions we are indebted to the historians of
philosophy (see especially Buhle) and of Christian doctrine, such as
Neander and Hagenbach, and to one of the cleverest of French thinkers,
Rémusat, who, in his 'Philosophie Religieuse,' has acutely criticised
some of the developments of opinion since the rise of modern
philosophy, and more especially some of the latest phenomena of
British and Continental thought.
[13] And a _possible_ explanation is of no use. It must be the _only
possible_ one, or it has no theistic value. It merely brings the
hypothesis of deity within the limits of the conceivable.
[14] 'I would rather call it,' says John Smith in his 'Select
Discourses,' (1660), alluding to this intuition, 'were I to speak
precisely, I would rather call it ὁρμὴν πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν, than, with
Plutarch, Θεοῦ νόησιν.'
[15] There are sundry elements in every intuition on which we do not
here enlarge, as they are necessary features rather than criteria,
characteristics rather than tests. Two of them may be merely
stated--1. Every intuition is ultimate, and carries its own evidence
within itself: it cannot appeal to any higher witness beyond itself;
and 2. The fact or facts which it proclaims, while irreducible by
analysis, must be incapable of any other explanation.
[16] Similarly with the action of the infinite and absolute _cause_.
The creative energy of that cause is not inconsistent with its
changelessness. To say so, is to introduce a quantitative notion
into a sphere when quality is alone to be considered. A cause in
action is the force which determines the changes which occur in time.
But the _primum mobile_, the first cause, need not be itself changed
by the forthputting of its causal power.
[17] 'I take the notion of a cause,' said Dr. Thomas Reid, in a letter
to Dr. Gregory, 'to be derived from the power I feel in myself to
produce certain effects. _In this sense_ we say that the Deity is the
cause of the universe.'--(Works, Hamilton's Edition, p. 77).
[18] As one who sustains a fatherly relation is at the same time son,
brother, citizen, member of a commonwealth, and member of a
profession; or, as we describe a being of compound nature, such as
man, who is both body and soul, by the higher term of the two.
[19] We use this word according to its ancient meaning, as descriptive
of the way in which the inspired soul of a prophet or a poet 'became
possessed of his truths,' in distinction from his other function as an
'utterer of truths.' And we refer only to those poets who, as
'utterers of truth,' have spoken of the spiritual presences of nature,
amongst whom, Wordsworth is chief.
[20] De l'Existence de Dieu. Part II. ch. i. s. 29.
[21] Theism, pp. 13, 14.
ART. III.--_Hugh Miller._--(1). _Life and Letters of Hugh Miller._ By
PETER BAYNE, A.M. 2 vols. Strahan and Co. (2). _Works of Hugh Miller._
Nimmo.
What strikes us as most admirable in Hugh Miller is, that he was a man
of genius and yet a man of sense. There has been, and will be,
diversity of opinion as to the value or even the existence of his
genius, but there can be no doubt as to the robust and masculine
character of his mind. When we think of him we recall what Macaulay
said of Cromwell, 'He was emphatically a man.' He possessed, in an
eminent degree, that 'equally-diffused intellectual health' which can
no more be acquired by effort or artifice than a sound physical
constitution can be obtained by the use of drugs. So often, of late,
has genius been freakish, whimsical, fantastic--evinced a perverse
contempt for the moderation and equipoise of truth--substituted
feminine vehemence of assertion for clear statement and rational
inference--nay, seemed to hover on the very verge of madness--that we
are disposed to accommodate ourselves to considerable defect in
startling and meteoric qualities on the part of one who, while
veritably possessing genius, was distinguished for sagacity,
manliness, and the avoidance of extremes.
But was Hugh Miller a man of genius? We see not how any but an
affirmative answer can be returned to the question. Metaphysical
people may perplex themselves with attempts to define genius, but no
practical evil can ensue from the application of the word 'genius' to
qualities of mind, unique either in nature or in degree. It is correct
to speak of mathematical genius when we mean an altogether
extraordinary capacity for solving mathematical problems. It is
correct to speak of poetical genius when we mean an inborn tunefulness
of nature which awakens to vocal melody at the sight of beauty or the
touch of pathos. When we say Hugh Miller was a man of genius, we mean
that, take him all in all, in his life, in his character, in his
books, he was unique. In a remote Highland village, one of the
quietest, least important places in the world, amid a simple,
ruminating population, with no Alpine grandeur of surrounding scenery
or stirring memorials of local life, the sea-captain's son is born.
Nothing in the history of his father's house for generations affords
suggestion of an hereditary gift of expression; and though his mother
had a fund of ghost-stories and delighted to tell them, she passed
among her neighbours for an entirely undistinguished, commonplace
woman. And yet, before he was ten years old, the child Hugh would
quit his boyish companions for the sea-shore, and there saunter for
hours, pouring forth blank-verse effusions about sea-fights, ghosts,
and desert islands. A peculiar imaginative susceptibility and a
passion for expression revealed themselves in him from his infancy.
The strong bent of his nature regulated his education. He is
bookish--his fairy tales, voyages, 'Pilgrim's Progress,' Bible
stories, afford him enchanting pleasure--but he will pay no attention
to the books which his schoolmaster puts into his hand. He is the
dunce of the school, yet his class-fellows hang on his lips while he
charms them with extemporised narratives, and in the wood and the
caves he is acknowledged as the leader of them all. His mind is ever
open; at every moment knowledge is streaming in upon him; but the
whole method of his intellectual growth is conditioned from within,
through the peremptory determinations of his inborn spiritual force
and personality. At all hours he is an observer of nature, and
acquires, without knowing it, a perfect familiarity with every living
thing--bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, as well as with every tree,
plant, flower, and stone, which are to be met with from the pine-wood
on the cliff, to the wet sand left by the last wave of the retreating
tide upon the shore. He thus grows up a naturalist. With a mind
opulently furnished, and well acquainted even with books, he
nevertheless finds himself, when his boyhood and early youth are
spent, entirely unqualified to proceed to College. He chooses the
trade of a mason, but the irresistible bent of his nature is obeyed
even in this choice, for he knew that masons in the Highlands of
Scotland did not work in the winter months, and in these he would
betake himself to his beloved pen. For fifteen years he worked as a
mason, earning his bread by steady, effective labour, but aware all
the time of a power within him, a force of giant mould imprisoned
beneath the mountain of adverse circumstance, which, he doubted not,
would one day make itself known to the world. This vague prophecy in
his heart, which surely was the voice of his genius speaking within
him, was fulfilled. Sorcerers in the old time professed to show
visions of the past and future in magic mirrors; but the true magical
mirror is the mind of genius; and when Hugh Miller's contemporaries
beheld, reflected in the mirror of his mind, lifted from the profound
obscurity in which they had formerly slept and set in vivid clearness
before the eyes of the world, the little town he loved, the Sutors,
the bay, the hill, they felt that the one Cromarty man of all
generations who had done this was possessed of genius. With this
decision we rest content.
The true greatness of Hugh Miller lay, however, in his moral
qualities. Here we may give our enthusiasm the rein. There was a rare
nobleness, a rare blending of magnanimity, rectitude and gentleness,
in this man. His affections were at once tender and constant, and when
you search the very deeps of his soul, you find in it no malice, no
guile, no greed, nothing which can be called base or selfish. We are
struck with admiration as we mark the high tones of his mind, his
superiority to all vulgar ambitions. There has probably been some
romancing about the peasant nobles of Scotland, but in Hugh Miller,
the journeyman mason, and in his uncles James and Sandy, the one a
saddler, the other a wood-cutter, we have three men who, so long as
the mind is the standard of the man, will be classed with the finest
type of gentleman. It is greatly to the honour of Scotland, and of the
old evangelical religion of Scotland, that she produced such men. Hugh
Miller's uncles performed for him a father's part, and he learned from
them, not so much through formal instruction as by a certain
contagion--to use the phrase in which the Londoners, a hundred years
ago, in their inscription on Blackfriars Bridge, described with
felicitous precision the manner of Pitt's influence on his
contemporaries--that sensitive uprightness, that manly independence,
and that love of nature, by which he was distinguished. The ambition
of money-making, which as it were naturally and inevitably suggests
itself to a youth of parts in an English village, never seems to have
so much as presented itself to the mind of Hugh Miller. In cultivating
the spiritual faculties of his soul, in adding province after province
to the empire of his mind, lay at once the delight and the ambition of
this young mechanic. He aspired to fame, but his conception of fame
was pure and lofty. Of the vanity which feeds on notoriety he had no
trace, and cared not for reputation if he could not deliberately
accept it as his due. A proud man he was; perhaps, at times, too
sternly proud; but from the myriad pains and pettinesses which have
their root in vanity, he was conspicuously free. Very beautiful also
is the unaffected delight which this rough-handed mason takes in the
aspects of nature. It has none of that sickliness or excess which
strong men admit to have more or less characterised the enthusiasm for
the freshness of spring and the splendour of summer of what has been
called the London school of poetry. In the rapture with which Keats
sang of trees and fields, there is something of the nature of
calenture. Pent in the heart of London, he thought of the crystal
brooks and the wood-hyacinths with a weeping fondness, instinct
indeed with finest melody, but akin to that sick and melancholy joy
with which the sailor in mid-ocean gazes on the waste of billows,
gazes and still gazes until on their broad green sides the little
meadow at his father's cottage door with its grey willows and white
maythorns seems to smile out on his tear-filled eyes. Had Keats run
about the hills and played in the twilight woods as a little boy, he
would not have loved nature less, but his poetical expression of that
love would not have struck masculine intellects as verging on the
lachrymose and the fantastic. Nature to Miller was a constant joy, a
part of the wonted aliment of his soul, an inspiring, elevating
influence, strengthening him for the tasks of life. 'I remember,' he
writes of the days of his youth,
'how my happiness was enhanced by every little bird that
burst out into sudden song among the trees, and then as
suddenly became silent, or by every bright-scaled fish that
went darting through the topaz-coloured depths of the
water, or rose for a moment over its calm surface,--how the
blue sheets of hyacinths that carpeted the openings in the
wood delighted me, and every golden-tinted cloud that
gleamed over the setting sun, and threw its bright flush on
the river, seemed to inform the heart of a heaven beyond.'
The mason lad who could feel thus had little to envy in the gold of
the millionaire or the title of the aristocrat. Well did the ancients
match sound and sense in that phrase, _sancta simplicitas_; such
simplicity of soul is indeed holy and healing.
The sterling worth and fine moral quality of Miller are brought out in
his relations with his friends. Of passion in the common sense he was
singularly void, and there is no evidence that, until he passed his
thirtieth year, female beauty once touched his heart. But his
affection for his friends was ardent to the degree of passion, and
constant as it was ardent. Both autobiographers and biographers are
apt to paint up the youthful friendships of their heroes, and we are
glad that Mr. Bayne has been able to verify, and more than verify, by
infallible documentary evidence, all that, in his 'Schools and
Schoolmasters,' Miller tells us of his relations to his two friends,
William Ross and John Swanson. Ross was perhaps the most finely gifted
of the three, but the circumstances of his birth were hopelessly
depressing. His parents were sunk in the lowest depths of poverty; but
this was not the worst; his constitution was so feeble that sustained
and resolute effort was for him a physical impossibility. Amid the
debility of his bodily energies there burned, with strange, sad,
piercing radiance, the flame of genius. With exquisite accuracy of
discernment he took the measure of Miller, pointing out to him where
his strength lay and where his weakness. He knew his own powers, also,
but saw that Miller had stamina while he had none; and, with tragic
pathos, accused himself of indolence and vacillation, when his only
fault was that he was dying. Delicately organised in all respects, he
displayed a musical faculty more usual among peasant boys in Italy
than in Scotland, made himself a fife and clarionet of elder-shoots,
and became one of the best flute-players in the district. From the
little damp room in which Ross slept during his apprenticeship to a
house-painter, Miller used to hear the sweet sounds on which his soul
rose for the time above all its sorrows. He had a fine appreciation,
too, of the beauty of landscape. 'I have seen him,' says Miller, 'awed
into deep solemnity, in our walks, by the rising moon, as it peered
down upon us over the hill, red and broad and cloud-encircled, through
the interstices of some clump of dark firs; and have observed him
become suddenly silent, as, emerging from the moonlight woods, we
looked into a rugged dell, and saw, far beneath, the slim rippling
streamlet gleaming in the light, like a narrow strip of the _aurora
borealis_ shot athwart a dark sky, when the steep, rough sides of the
ravine, on either hand, were enveloped in gloom.' Ross had educated
his faculty of æsthetic perception and of art-criticism by study of
Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, Fresnoy's Art of Painting, Gessner's
Letters, and Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Miller describes him as
looking constantly on nature with the eye of the artist, signalising
and selecting the characteristic beauties of the landscape. This habit
of imaginative composition would, we believe, have been fixed on by
the most accomplished instructors in the art of painting at this
moment in Europe, as the best proof that could be given by Ross of the
possession of artistic genius. Turner was at all times a composer, and
never painted a leaf with photographic correctness. But the poverty of
William Ross condemned him to the drudgery of a house-painter, and he
had no teaching in the higher departments of art. He proceeded to
Edinburgh, and thence to Glasgow, his fine talent distinguishing him
from ordinary workmen, and enabling him to procure work of such
delicacy that he could continue it when too weak to engage in the
usual tasks of house-painting. Thoughtful and kind, he assisted a
brother-workman who was dying by his side, and having shielded his
friend from want, and soothed his last moments, he followed him
speedily to the grave.
John Swanson was of a different build, physically and intellectually,
from Ross. His characteristic was energy of mind and of body. He was a
distinguished student at the University, an athlete in mathematics, an
acute metaphysician; but the mystic fire of genius, which Miller saw
in the eye of Ross, and which he believed to have fallen on himself,
threw none of its prismatic colouring over the framework of Swanson's
mind. He was the first of the three to come under strong religious
impressions. Abandoning philosophical subtleties, and accepting, with
the whole force of his robust mind, the salvation offered by Christ,
he pressed upon Miller with importunate earnestness the heavenly
treasure which himself had found. He was not at first successful.
Steady labour, indeed, in the quarry, and in the hewing shed, had
chastened the youthful wildness of Miller, and he had become, though
not religious, at least reverent and thoughtful. As Swanson's appeals
took effect, the early religious teaching of his uncles, which had
probably lain dormant in his mind, asserted its influence. He does not
appear to have been conscious of this fact, and indeed it was not the
catechetic instruction, but the personal example of his uncles, that
told upon him. At all events, after hesitating and playing shy, he was
fairly brought to a stand by Swanson; and though he underwent no
paroxysm of religious excitement, a profound change took place in his
character, a change which penetrated to the inmost depths of his
nature, changed the current of his being, and was regarded by himself
as his conversion. He was thus knit in still closer fellowship with
Swanson, and their friendship continued uninterrupted until his death.
Had his opinions not taken this shape, it seems likely that he would
have become daringly sceptical. He had assuredly, to use the words of
Coleridge, skirted the deserts of infidelity. He was familiar with the
writings of Hume, whose argument against miracles defines to this hour
the position taken up by all who, on scientific grounds deny the
supernatural origin of Christianity. There was a time when he fancied
himself an atheist, and the profane affectation might have deepened
into reality. But after his correspondence with Swanson, he never
wavered. The consideration which, from an intellectual point of view,
chiefly influenced him in pronouncing Christianity Divine, was
two-fold. Christianity, he said, was no _cunningly_ devised fable. It
offended man at too many points--it seemed too palpably to contradict
his instincts of justice--to have been invented by man. At the same
time, it was fitted, with exquisite nicety of adaptation, and with
measureless amplitude of comprehension, to meet the wants of man's
spiritual nature. Man neither would nor could have created it, any
more than he could or would have created manna; but when he took of
it, and did eat, he found that it was angels' food, making him, though
his steps were still through the wilderness of this world, the brother
of angels. Miller has not in any of his writings elaborated this idea
with the fulness of exposition, defence and illustration which the
importance of the part it played in his system of thought might render
desirable; but it is obvious that it would, for him, not only silence
the arguments which had previously seemed to tell against
Christianity, but array them on the side of belief. The more offensive
and contradictory Christianity might be to natural reason and
conscience, the stronger would be the logical chain by which he was
drawn to infer its supernatural origin. The courses of the stars might
appear to him a maze of lawless and inadmissible movements, but when
he steered his little boat by them, he was led safely across dark
billows and perilous currents; clearly, therefore, One who understood
the whole matter infinitely better than he had put together the
time-piece of the heavens. Such was his argument, and it is not
without force. Practically his religion consisted in an inexpressible
enthusiasm of devotion to Christ. The term which he uniformly applies
to the Saviour is 'The Adorable,' and he dwelt, with lingering,
wondering, rejoicing affection on the sympathy of the Man Christ Jesus
with human wants and weaknesses. Seldom have the efforts of friendship
been more nobly crowned than were those of John Swanson when this
radical change took place in the spiritual condition of Hugh Miller.
His relations with Swanson and with Ross attest the warmth and
constancy of his affections; but the gentleness of his nature does not
fully dawn upon us until we read his letters to Miss Dunbar, and
understand the friendship which subsisted between him and that lady.
She was many years his senior, and as the sister of a Scottish
Baronet, Sir Alexander Dunbar, of Boath, and a Tory of the old school,
we should have expected her to be shy of poetical masons. Something in
Miller's verses, however, attracted her, and a singularly tender and
romantic friendship sprung up between them. On his side, it was
confined to affectionate appreciation and admiring esteem; but she
wrote to him with the tenderness of a mother, and did not scruple to
tell him that he was the dearest friend she had in the world. His
letters to her are not distinguished by originality or by
extraordinary power; but they abound in delineations of nature, poetic
in their loveliness; they are just in thought, and faultless in
feeling; and in literary style they are perhaps, on the whole, the
most melodious and beautiful of his compositions. Like his other
writings these letters are full of self-portrayal, and the face which,
with pensive, fascinating smile, seems to beam on us from the page, is
that of a right noble and loveable man. We feel that this mason is a
gentleman; a gentleman of the finest strain; one whose gentleness is
of the heart, and manifests itself, not in the polished urbanity of
cities which often hides a bad and cold nature, but in a vigilant
kindness, a manly deference, and above all a delicate sympathy. The
few words of reference to Hugh Miller occurring incidentally in Dr.
McCosh's recollections of Bunsen, and published in the biography of
the latter--which, by the way, seem to us to cast a more vivid light
upon the man than the far lengthier recollections of Miller by Dr.
McCosh, printed in Mr. Bayne's biography--specify the intense
sweetness and fascination belonging to his presence. Despite his
rugged exterior, his shaggy head and rough-hewn features, his mason's
apron, his slowly enunciated speech, and his somewhat heavy manner,
this fascination was felt by all who had an opportunity of
experiencing it.
We hinted that he was singularly devoid of sensibility to the charm of
female beauty. In this respect he presents a marked contrast to Burns,
and indeed to most men of powerful intellect and vivid imagination.
But he loved once, and then he loved with all the intensity of his
nature. At the time when his name was beginning to be known through
the north of Scotland as that of one who had a future, Miss Lydia
Fraser, ten years his junior, arrived in Cromarty. She was possessed
of no small personal beauty, had received a good education, was
addicted to intellectual pursuits, wrote fluently both in prose and
verse, and was gifted with remarkable acuteness and clearness of mind.
Her temperament was more mercurial than Miller's; he was more capable
of patient thought, and, on the whole, more solidly able. It may be
doubted whether a pair thus matched enjoyed the surest prospect of
happiness in the married state, but it is evident that they were
precisely in the position to strike up a romantic friendship. He was
the literary lion of Cromarty, she the gifted beauty of the place;
their friendship and their love were as much in the order of nature
as that of Tenfelsdröckh and Blumine, though happily it had no such
tragic conclusion. The gifted beauty could not help pausing in her
walk to have a few words with the poetic mason as he hewed in the
churchyard, his head sure to be full of some book or subject, his eye
quick to catch every new light of beauty that fell upon the landscape.
They soon found that they were more to each other than friends, and
thereupon difficulties manifold interfered with their meeting. The
young lady's mother was startled at the idea that her daughter should
bestow her affections on a horn-handed mechanic, even though he had
issued a volume of poems, a volume much praised, not so much bought,
and already looked on almost with contempt by its sternly critical
author. Miller, for his own part, had no wish to rise in the world.
With a philosophy antique and astonishing in these restless times, he
had arrived at the conclusion that the world had nothing to offer
which would make him substantially happier than he was while hewing on
the hill of Cromarty. Had he not the skies and the sea, the wood and
the shore, and had not the whole world of literature and science been
thrown open to him when he learned to read? His wants were perfectly
simple, and exceedingly few, and were supplied to the utmost. He could
be quite happy in a cave with a boulder for table, and a stone for
chair, a book to read, and a pot in which to cook his homely fare; he
might well be less happy, he could not be more, in a gilded
drawing-room.
These pleasing but somewhat effeminate dreams were dissipated by his
love for Miss Fraser, as a pretty little garden on the flanks of Etna
might be torn to pieces by the heavings of the volcano. He would marry
her into the rank of a lady, or he would not marry her, in Scotland at
least, at all. If it proved impossible for him to rise in his native
country, the lovers would seek a nook in the backwoods, and place the
Atlantic between them and the conventional notions and estimates of
British society. But the necessity for this step did not occur. Miller
was offered a situation in a branch office of the Commercial Bank,
which was opened in Cromarty in 1835. He laid down the mallet, not
without satisfaction but assuredly with no exultation, and, after a
brief initiation in the mysteries of banking at Linlithgow, entered on
his duties as bank accountant. Too healthful and honest of nature to
trifle in the discharge of any duties which he undertook, he addressed
himself with vigorous application to the business of the bank, and
found his new situation an admirable post for the study of human
nature. It was in conveying the bank's money between Cromarty and
Tain that he first carried firearms, a practice which he seems to have
almost constantly maintained from this time forward. It was at the
time of his joining the bank that his first prose volume, 'Scenes and
Legends of the North of Scotland,' was published. It contains passages
of exquisite beauty, and has since attained to considerable
popularity; but it was not immediately successful, and added little to
the modest income of its author. His marriage took place in the
beginning of 1837; he was then thirty-five years old, and had been
engaged to Miss Fraser for five years.
Miller was a naturalist from his infancy, in the sense of habitually
observing nature and laying up store of natural facts in his memory;
but it was not until he had passed his thirtieth year, and until his
severe self-censure pronounced him to have failed, first in poetry and
secondly in prose literature, that he conscientiously and with the
whole force of his mind devoted himself to science. His mental changes
and processes were never sudden, and there was a transition period,
during which he hesitated between literature and science; but when his
resolution had once been taken, he cast no look behind. With intense,
absorbing, impassioned energy, he gave himself to the pursuit of
science. His experience in the quarry--of quite inestimable value to
him as a geologist--determined his choice of a scientific province for
special culture. His progress was wonderfully rapid. The geological
nomenclature which he found in books served to classify and formalise
knowledge which he had already acquired, and opened his eyes to the
fact that he was a geologist. But for the interruption of his plans,
by the agitation which issued in the disruption of the Scottish State
Church in 1843, and his being summoned to Edinburgh to undertake the
conduct of the _Witness_ newspaper, he would have published a
treatise, on the geology of the Cromarty district at least a year
earlier than the date at which he became known to the public as a man
of science.
It reminds us how fast and how far the world has travelled in the last
thirty years to note that, in the year 1840, Hugh Miller was an
enthusiast for the State Church of Scotland. There are no enthusiastic
believers in the State Church theory, or what Miller called the
'establishment principle,' now. The most logical and consistent
members of the State Church of England avow that her chance of
vindicating her claim to the name and privilege of a Church depends
upon her ceasing to be a State Church; and the back of the Established
Church of Scotland was broken by the disruption. Sensible men, with
nothing of the revolutionist in their composition, are now generally
of opinion that the days of both our ecclesiastical establishments are
numbered. The opinion, also, would be generally assented to, that it
is when viewed as a contribution to the cause of ecclesiastical
freedom throughout the United Kingdom, that the disruption of the
Scottish Presbyterian Church, in 1843, can be seen to be of historical
importance. Of this Hugh Miller had no idea. He accepted the theory of
a State Church, and he lent his championship to the Majority in the
Scottish Church, when contending against the Court of Session, because
he believed that the compact agreed upon between Church and State in
Scotland, at the time of the union of England and Scotland, had been
infringed. It would occupy too much space to explain fully to English
readers how the State Church of Scotland had become endeared to the
people, and was to them a symbol, not of oppression or of bondage, but
of freedom. Suffice it to say that the Scottish Reformation of the
sixteenth century was thoroughly popular, and essentially
Presbyterian; that, in the seventeenth century, the cause of the
Presbyterian Church was always the cause of civil freedom; and that,
when the Church was finally established, after the expulsion of James
II., she emerged from a long period of persecution, during which she
had been regarded with reverence and affection by the great body of
the Scottish people. Add to this that the lay elders, standing, as
they did, on the same level of authority with the clergy in the Church
courts, prevented the latter from becoming a mere clerical caste. It
was an eminently felicitous circumstance for the Scottish Church, in
the 'ten years' conflict,' that her dispute with the civil authorities
turned on the rights of congregations. Her offence in the eyes of the
Court of Session and the British Parliament, was that she had, in a
manner deemed by them high-handed, asserted the right of congregations
to have no ministers thrust upon them against their will. When we
think of the profound indifference with which State Churchmen, in
England, regard the whole subject of the settlement of ministers--when
we observe the stone-like apathy with which they see dawdling youths
purchase with a bit of money the privilege of consuming a parochial
income and paralysing for, say thirty years, the spiritual life of a
parish--we cannot but contemplate with a mixture of wonder and
admiration the intense excitement which thrilled through Scotland when
the Evangelical majority in the Church Courts stood up to vindicate
the right of the people to be consulted in the choice of their
pastors. It was into the popular side of the controversy that Hugh
Miller threw his force. The right of the Church of Scotland to govern
herself, a right unquestionably conceded to her at the Union, he
distinctly maintained; but his most eloquent and effective pleading
was in defence of the privileges of congregations. He contributed more
perhaps than any other man, to secure for the Church in her struggles
with the Courts, and subsequently for the Free Church, the support of
the people of Scotland. Strange to say, though one of the principal
founders of the Free Church, he had no glimpse of that future of
ecclesiastical freedom of which, as we trust, the Free Church has been
the harbinger. To the last he talked of the 'establishment principle'
and the 'voluntary principle,' and fancied that some ineffable
advantage would be derived by the Church from the State, if only the
State could be induced to make a just league with the Church, and to
stand true to its conditions. This was one of the weakest points in
Hugh Miller's system of thought, and it must be allowed to have been a
very weak one. If the disruption of the Scottish Presbyterian Church
in 1843 proved anything, it proved that, even under the most
favourable circumstances, the State Church principle will not work. If
two ride upon a horse, one must ride behind, and if Scottish
Presbyterians have yet to learn that the State, having established a
Church, will sooner or later thrust it into a position of subservience
and slavery, they may be pronounced unteachable upon that subject.
But it is was our intention to speak of Hugh Miller almost exclusively
as a man of science, and we have lingered too long upon other phases
of his history. His scientific talent was, we think, of a high order.
It consisted mainly in an admirable faculty of observation, keen,
clear, exact, comprehensive. He was habitually, and at all moments, an
observer. Mr. James Robertson, a gentleman who knew him intimately and
walked much with him in 1834, states, in some valuable recollections
of Miller, contributed to Mr. Bayne's biography, that he, Mr. R., soon
remarked how vividly alive he was to the appearances of nature,
darting now at a pebble in the bed of a brook, now, at a plant by the
wayside, never for one moment suspending his inquisition into the
scene of wonders spread around him. Such being his habit of
observation, two conditions only were required in order that he might
become famous as a man of science, first that the district in which he
pursued his researches had not been exhausted by previous explorers;
secondly, that he possessed a literary faculty adequate to the
communication of his knowledge. He was fortunate in both respects. The
Cromarty district afforded extraordinary opportunities of observation
in a department of the geological record until then but partially
known. The Old Red Sandstone system had only begun to attract the
attention of geologists. The Silurian system, below it, had been
successfully explored; the Carboniferous system, above it, had been
penetrated in all directions for its treasures of coal, and geologists
had large acquaintance with its organisms; but the Old Red Sandstone
had been comparatively overlooked. Miller found himself in the
neighbourhood of good sections of the formation, and studied them with
the utmost care and assiduity. His journeyings as a mason had made him
familiar with the rocky framework of the north of Scotland, into which
the Old Red Sandstone largely enters. He was able, therefore, on
claiming recognition as a man of science, to tender a highly important
contribution to the world's knowledge of one of the great geological
systems. His name is imperishably inscribed among the original workers
in the Old Red Sandstone, along with those of Sedgwick, Agassiz, and
Murchison. His specific contribution was connected with the ichthyic
organisms of the system, and no contribution could have been more
important. The Old Red Sandstone system is distinguished,
biologically, as that in which the vertebrate kingdom, in its lowest
or fish division, was first prominently developed; and the most
niggardly estimate of the achievement of Miller, as a geologist, must
recognise that the discoverer of Pterichthys first called the
attention of scientific men to the enormous wealth of the Old Red
Sandstone in fish. If this is so, it will be difficult to refuse the
addition that he determined the character of the formation. There are
fish in the upper beds of the Silurian system, but the characteristic
organisms are molluscan and crustacean; there are traces of reptile
existence in the Old Red, but its characteristic organisms are fish.
Unquestionably, the sudden rise of Miller into eminence and reputation
as a geologist, was due, in some measure, to the exquisite clearness
and picturesqueness of his style. From his boyhood he had made it one
of his chief aims to perfect his literary workmanship. He had striven
to attain skill in writing, as an enthusiastic painter strives to
attain skill in the technical art of realising form and laying on
colour. His descriptions of fossil organisms surprised and delighted
scientific men, while the imaginative boldness and breadth with which
he depicted the landscapes of the remote past fascinated general
readers. After all, it maybe doubted whether the extreme elaboration
and minuteness with which he described individual organisms, such as
the Pterichthys, was not labour lost. A carefully executed wood-cut
conveys a more correct and impressive idea of the creature than any
words which could be devised. At all events, the descriptions of
fossil organisms in the works of Hugh Miller are as exact and vivid as
any in the English language.
We spoke of the sincerity and earnestness of his religion. He had in
fact that quality of the true man, that he could be nothing by halves.
His religion was what genuine religion always is, a fire warming his
whole nature, and mingling with every operation of his mind. He was
thoroughly acquainted with the works of Hume, and had felt their
subtle and searching power. He had skirted, as we said, the howling
solitudes of infidelity, and now having, as he devoutly believed, been
led by a Divine hand to the green pastures and living waters and
healthful, habitable lands of faith, the central ambition of his life,
never asleep in his breast, was to lead others to the refuge which he
had found. He could not read in God's book of nature without thinking
of God, and endeavouring to trace the marks of His finger, and looking
for smooth stones to be put into his sling, and aimed at the foreheads
of the enemies of the faith. He had no sooner mastered the logic of
geology, and formed a conception of the platforms of life which have
been unveiled by the science in the remoteness of the past, than he
began to perceive, or think that he perceived, certain positions
afforded by it, which the defender of revealed religion might take up
with much advantage in carrying on the conflict with infidelity. Of
these, the best known is his scheme for reconciling the Mosaic account
of the creation of the heavens and the earth with the conclusions of
geologic science. This subject is disposed of in the 'Life and
Letters' in a single sentence; we think it deserved, and propose to
devote to it, more space and attention.
Miller frankly avowed that the view which he originally held as to the
scientific interpretation of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis
had been modified. He had believed, with Chalmers and Buckland, that
the six days were natural days of twenty-four hours each; that the
operations performed in them had reference to the world as inhabited
by man; that a 'great chaotic gap' separated the 'latest of the
geologic ages' from the human period; and the Scripture contained no
account whatever of those myriads of ages during which the several
geological formations came into the state in which we now find them.
As his geological knowledge extended, and in particular, when he
engaged in close personal inspection of the Tertiary and Post-tertiary
formations, he perceived that the hypothesis of a chaotic period,
dividing the present from the past, in the history of our planet, was
untenable. 'No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness,' thus he
announces the result of his investigations, 'separated the creation to
which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus,
and hyæna; for familiar animals, such as the red deer, the roe, the
fox, the wild-cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which
connected their times with our own; and so I have been compelled to
hold that the days of creation were not natural, but prophetic days,
and stretched far back into the bygone eternity.'
It was legitimate for theologians, sixty years ago, to put their trust
in the theory of a chaotic state of the planet immediately before the
commencement of the human period, and to allege that Scripture had
folded up all reference to preceeding geological ages, in the words
'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' The
authority of Cuvier was then supreme in the world of science, and
Cuvier held that 'not much earlier than 5,000 or 6,000 years ago' the
surface of the globe underwent a sudden and subversive catastrophe.
But no theologian who now maintains this hypothesis can place his
theology on a level with the scientific acquirement of the day. Dr.
Kurtz is the only theologian of any standing who is known to us as
still holding the view of Chalmers; and if we were asked how a person
accurately acquainted with geological science might best obtain a
conception of the untenability of the theory of a recent chaos, we
should advise him to read Dr. Kurtz's defence of the hypothesis. The
German divine repeatedly specifies 6,000 years as the period during
which man and the existing order of terrestrial beings have occupied
our planet. 'According to the Scriptures,' he says, 'the present order
of things has existed for nearly 6,000 years.' He has a theory of his
own on the subject of fossils. 'The types buried in the rocks were not
destined to continue perpetually, or else have not attained their
destination.' They were mere transient phenomena. It would be
difficult to put into language a proposition more inconsistent with
geological fact. The species of the Silurian mollusca have changed,
but mollusca of Silurian type abound at this hour. Evidence amounting
almost to absolute demonstration identifies the _globigerina_ of the
Atlantic mud of to-day with the _globigerina_ of the Cretaceous
system; and Sir Charles Lyell calculates that the Cretaceous system
came to an end 80,000,000 years ago. Pronouncing the types of the past
evanescent, Dr. Kurtz pronounces the type of the present permanent.
The creatures called into existence on the six days of Genesis, which
last he holds to have been natural days, 'were intended to continue,
and not to perish, and their families were not to be petrified in
strata, but each individual was to decay in the ordinary manner, so
that their bones have mostly passed away without leaving any trace.'
This is a pure imagination. There is no reason to believe that the
petrifactive agencies are less active at present than they were in
by-gone geological epochs. The essential and irreconcilable
discrepancy, however, between the views of Dr. Kurtz and the
conclusions of geology, consists in his assumption of a universal
deluge, sweeping away all life, and leaving the surface of the world a
_tabula rasa_, immediately before the appearance of man. He speaks of
'a flood, which destroyed and prevented all life, and after the
removal of which the present state of the earth, with its plants,
animals, and man, was immediately restored.' With marvellous
simplicity he declares that 'the only thing' he 'demands,' 'and which
no geological theory _can_ or _will_ deny,' is that 'the globe was
covered with water' before the appearance of man 'and the present
plants and animals.' There is no geologist deserving the name at
present alive who would admit this proposition; and we suppose that a
large majority of living geologists would maintain that the earth has
certainly not been covered with water since the time of those forests
whose remains are preserved for us in Devonian strata. To name one
among many proofs, the state of the fauna of the Atlantic islands,
Madeira and the Desertas, demonstrates that the earth has not been
enveloped by the ocean for a period compared with which Dr. Kurtz's
6,000 years dwindle into insignificance. Geology pronounces as
decisively against the occurrence of a universal chaos upon earth
6,000 years ago as against the accumulation of all the strata of the
earth's crust in six natural days. There is no sense recognisable by
geological science in which the word 'beginning' can be applied to the
condition presented by the surface of the earth at any period nearly
so recent as 6,000 years ago.
According to the theory of Mosaic geology ultimately adopted by Hugh
Miller, the 'beginning' spoken of in the first verse of the Bible
corresponds to that period when the planet, wrapt in primeval fires,
was about to enter upon the series of changes which is inscribed in
the geologic record. The chaos, dark and formless, which preceded the
dawn of organic existence upon earth, was no temporary inundation, no
miraculous catastrophe, but an actual state of things of which the
evidence still exists in the rocks. Strictly speaking, indeed, the
term 'chaos' has no scientific meaning. Science is acquainted with no
period in time, no locality in space, where there has been a general
suspension of law; and it may be worthy of remark that, although
Scripture speaks of the original state of things as without form and
void, there is no hint that it was beyond control of Divine and
natural ordinance. Relatively to man, however, and to those changes in
the structure and organisms of the planet which the geologist
chronicles, the fiery vesture, in which advocates of the Age theory of
reconciliation between Genesis and geology allege the earth to have
been at one time enveloped, constitutes an interruption to all
research, a commencement of all that can be called scientific
discovery. If it could be shown that the first chapter of Genesis
contains an intelligible and accurate account of the changes which
have taken place in the crust of the earth from the time when form
first rose out of formlessness, and light sprang from darkness, to the
time when man began to build his cities and till his fields, no candid
judge would refuse to admit that the problem presented by the chapter
had been satisfactorily solved, and that the chapter itself formed a
sublimely appropriate vestibule to the temple of Revelation.
Let us state Miller's conception of the meaning and scientific purport
of the first chapter of Genesis in his own words:--
'What may be termed,' we quote from the _Testimony of the
Rocks_, 'the three geologic days--the third, fifth, and
sixth--may be held to have extended over those
Carboniferous periods during which the great plants were
created--over those Oolitic and Cretaceous periods during
which the great sea-monsters and birds were created--and
over those Tertiary periods during which the great
terrestrial mammals were created. For the intervening, or
fourth day, we have that wide space represented by the
Permian and Triassic periods, which, less conspicuous in
their floras than the periods that went immediately before,
and less conspicuous in their faunas than the periods that
came immediately after, were marked by the decline and
ultimate extinction of the Palæozoic forms, and the first
partially developed beginnings of the secondary ones. And
for the first and second days there remains the great Azoic
period, during which the immensely developed gneisses,
mica-schists, and primary clay-slates were deposited, and
the two extended periods represented by the Silurian and
Old Red Sandstone system. These, taken together, exhaust
the geological scale, and may be named in their order as,
first, the Azoic day or period; second, the Silurian, or
Old Red Sandstone day, or period; third, the Carboniferous
day, or period; fourth, the Permian or Triassic day, or
period; and sixth, the Tertiary day, or period.'
It is important to observe that Miller here expressly fits into his
scheme the work of the six days. In another passage he remarks that it
is specifically his task, as a geologist, to account for the
operations of the third, fifth, and sixth days, and this circumstance
has occasioned the mistake, which has crept into so respectable a work
as Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible,' that he did not profess to
explain the creative proceedings of the first, second, and fourth
days. In the passage we have quoted he assigns to each successive day
its distinctive character and work. The entire scheme, then, may be
thrown into a single sentence. A beginning of formlessness and fire,
indefinite in duration; a first and second day, not discriminated by
Miller from each other, during which light, though created, did not
reach, the surface of our planet, but gradually struggled through the
thick enveloping canopy of steam rising from a boiling ocean; a third
day, in which an enormous development of vegetable life took place, a
development due in part to the warm and humid atmosphere, which no
clear sunbeam could as yet penetrate; a fourth day, marked by the
emergence of sun, moon, and stars in unclouded splendour, but by no
striking phenomena of organic life; a fifth day, in which the most
imposing features in the creative procession were sea-monsters and
birds; and a sixth day, in which huge mammals crowded the stage of
existence, and man appeared. Each of these days is, of course,
supposed to have occupied an indefinite number of years.
It is obviously the principle or method of this scheme of
reconciliation between Genesis and geology to look for points in the
Mosaic narrative which correspond with the facts revealed by geology.
The words in the Scriptural account are few; are they so express,
vivid, and characteristic that they epitomise, as in a Divine
telegram, the geological history of millions of years? A consummate
artist looks upon a face and throws a few strokes, quick as
lightning, upon his canvas. The countenance seems to live. Revealings
of character, which we might have required years to trace, flash on us
from the eye, and chronicles of passion are written in a speck of
crimson on the lip. The portrait is only a sketch; weeks or months
might be spent in elaborating its colour, and perfecting its gradation
of light and shade; but not less on this account, does it accurately
correspond with the original, and show the man to those who knew him.
The advocates of the Age theory of Mosaic geology maintain that, few
as are the touches in the pictured history of the world in the first
chapter of Genesis, the geologist can recognise them as unmistakeably
true to the facts of the past. The correspondence alleged to exist has
been illustrated in yet another fashion. Look upon a mountainous
horizon, in the far distance, on a clear day, and you perceive a
delicate film of blue or pearly grey, relieved against the sky. The
outline of that film, faint though it be, is, for every kind of
mountain range, more or less characteristic. The horizon line of the
primaries will be serrated, peaked, and jagged. The horizon line of
the metamorphic hills, though fantastic, will have more of curve and
undulation. The horizon of the tertiaries will be in long sweeps, and
tenderly modulated, far-stretching lines. Those minute jags and points
of the primaries are dizzy precipices and towering peaks. The glacier
is creeping on under that filmy blue; the avalanche is thundering in
that intense silence. Rivers that will channel continents and separate
nation from nation, bound along in foaming cataracts, where you
perceive only that the tender amethyst of the sky has taken a deeper
tinge. That undulating line of the crystalline hills tells of broad,
dreary moors, dark, sullen streams, sparse fields of stunted corn.
That sweeping, melting, waving line of the tertiaries tells of stately
forest and gardened plain, of lordly mansions and bustling villages.
The Mosaic record, as interpreted by the advocates of the Age theory,
gives the _horizon lines_ of successive geological eras. Its
descriptions, they maintain, are correct, viewed as horizon lines.
They convey the largest amount of knowledge concerning the several
periods which could possibly be conveyed under the given conditions.
Such is the method or logic of the Age theory of Mosaic geology; and
it is manifest that, whatever may be its scientific value, it is no
more to be refuted by the mention of geological facts which the Mosaic
record, does not specify, than the accuracy of a map, constructed on
the scale of half an inch to the hundred miles, would be impugned by
proving that it omitted a particular wood, rock, hill, or village.
It is indispensable to the establishment of this theory, that the
geological changes which the earth has undergone, shall admit of being
arranged in certain divisions. The lines of demarcation between these
may be drawn within wide limits of variation; but should it become an
unquestioned truth of geologic science that absolute uniformity of
phenomena has reigned in our world so long as the geologist traces its
history, the Age theory would be untenable. The theory does not
require that the 'solutions of continuity' should be abrupt or
catastrophic. On the contrary, the 'morning' and' evening' of the
Mosaic record suggest gradation; and the pause of night, with its
silence, its slumber, its gathering up of force for new outgoings of
the creative energy, by no means suggests cataclysm or revolution. But
the days or periods, though they may melt into each other with the
tender modulation of broad billows on a calming sea, must possess a
true differentiation, and cannot be accepted by those who believe in
absolute geological uniformitarianism. We are not sure, however, that
any geologists profess this creed, and the views propounded by very
eminent geologists on the nature of the changes which have taken place
on the earth appear to us to satisfy the requirements of the Age
theory, in respect of division and succession. In the sixth edition of
his 'Elements of Geology' Sir Charles Lyell writes thus:--'Geology,
although it cannot prove that other planets are peopled with
appropriate races of living beings, has demonstrated the truth of
conclusions scarcely less wonderful--the existence on our planet of so
many habitable surfaces, or worlds as they have been called, each
distinct in time, and peopled with its peculiar races of aquatic and
terrestrial beings.' He proceeds to state that living nature, with its
inexhaustible variety, displaying 'infinite wisdom and power,' is 'but
the last of a great series of pre-existing creations.' Mr. Darwin, in
the fourth edition of his 'Origin of Species,' makes the weighty
remark that 'scarcely any palæontological discovery is more striking
than the fact, that the forms of life change almost simultaneously
throughout the world.' Qualifying his words by the statement that they
apply chiefly to marine forms of life, and that the simultaneity
referred to, does not necessarily fall within 'the same thousandth or
hundred-thousandth year,' he writes as follows:--
'The fact of the forms of life changing simultaneously, in
the above large sense, at distant parts of the world, has
greatly struck those admirable observers, MM. de Verneuil
and d'Archiac. After referring to the parallelism of the
palæozoic forms of life in various parts of Europe, they
add, "If struck by this strange sequence, we turn our
attention to North America, and there discover a series of
analogous phenomena, it will appear certain that all these
modifications of species, their extinction, and the
introduction of new ones, cannot be owing to mere changes
in marine currents, or other causes more or less local and
temporary, but depend on general laws which govern the
whole animal kingdom." M. Barrande has made forcible
remarks to precisely the same effect. It is indeed quite
futile to look to changes of currents, climate, or physical
conditions, as the cause of these great mutations in the
forms of life throughout the world, under the most
different climates.'
Mr. Darwin holds that 'looking to a remotely future epoch,' the later
tertiaries, namely, 'the upper pliocene, the pleistocene and strictly
modern beds of Europe, North and South America, and Australia, from
containing fossil remains, in some degree allied, from not including
those forms which are only found in the older under-lying deposits,
would be correctly ranked as simultaneous, in a geological sense.'
These statements afford, we think, a sufficient basis for the general
scheme of Mosaic geology which we are considering; and it may be
remarked that the latest of the geological epochs of simultaneity, as
defined by Mr. Darwin, would agree indifferently well with the last of
the Mosaic days or periods, as defined by Hugh Miller.
There is yet another proposition which must be established if the Age
theory of Mosaic geology is to be maintained. The scheme depends
essentially on the theory of central heat. We saw that Miller
undertakes to account for each of the six Mosaic days or periods. As a
geologist, indeed, he felt himself to be under a special obligation to
explain the creative operations of the third, fifth, and sixth days,
that is to say, the day on which vegetable life was created and the
successive days on which different orders of vertebrate animals were
introduced into the world; but he gives delineations of the prophetic
vision of the first two days, and he assigns the occurrences of the
fourth day, namely, the appearance of the sun and moon, to the Permian
and Triassic periods. In one word, he accepted the responsibility of
adapting his scheme of reconciliation to all the day-periods of
Genesis, and he was perfectly aware that the hypothesis would require
to be rejected if the theory of central heat were invalidated. His
geological explanation of the first four days depends explicitly upon
the opinion that, at the time when the earth entered upon those
changes which are chronicled by geological science, it was under the
influence of intense heat, and gradually cooling and solidifying. In
the first day thick darkness lay upon the surface of the earth, owing
to the canopy of steam, impermeable by light, under which it lay
shrouded. During the second day the light began to penetrate the
vapoury veil, and dim curtains of clouds raised themselves from the
sea. On the third day the forests, which were heaped up for us into
treasuries of coal, came into existence, and Miller accounts for their
luxuriance by supposing that the heated and humid state of the
atmosphere of the planet, still dependent upon the central fires,
favoured their growth. It was not until the fourth day that the
blanket of the ancient night was rent asunder, that sun, moon, and
stars beamed out, and that a state of the atmosphere and a succession
of summer and winter, day and night, identical with those we now
witness, began. Possibly enough, had Miller found himself ultimately
forced to abandon the theory of central heat, he would have entrenched
himself, as in a second line of defence, in the three specially
geological day-periods. But he never contemplated an abandonment of
the doctrine of central heat. He held that the earth was once a molten
mass, and that the series of changes through which it has passed arose
naturally out of this fact. The crust of granite he believed to have
been enveloped, in the process of cooling, by a heated ocean whose
waters held in solution the ingredients of gneiss, mica-schist,
hornblende-schist, and clay-slate. The planet gradually matured 'from
ages in which its surface was a thin earthquake-shaken crust, subject
to continual sinkings, and to fiery outbursts of the Plutonic matter,
to ages in which it is the very nature of its noblest inhabitant to
calculate on its stability as the surest and most certain of all
things.' In short, he maintained that 'there existed long periods in
the history of the earth, in which there obtained conditions of things
entirely different from any which obtain now--periods during which
life, either animal or vegetable, could not have existed on our
planet; and further, that the sedimentary rocks of this early age may
have derived, even in the forming, a constitution and texture which,
in present circumstances, sedimentary rocks cannot receive.'
Sir Charles Lyell rejects absolutely the theory of central heat as a
mode of accounting for these changes on the terrestrial surface, which
are classified by geologists. He declares that no kind of rocks known
to us can be proved to belong to 'a nascent state of the planet.'
Disclaiming the opinion 'that there never was a beginning to the
present order of things,' he nevertheless holds that geologists have
found 'no decided evidence of a commencement.' Granite, gneiss,
hornblende-schist, and the rest of the crystalline rocks, 'belong not
to an order of things which has passed away; they are not the
monuments of the primeval period, bearing inscribed upon them in
obsolete characters the words and phrases of a dead language; but they
teach us that part of the living language of nature, which we cannot
learn by our daily intercourse with what passes on the habitable
surface.'
From the phenomena of precession and nutation, Mr. Hopkins, reasoning
mathematically, inferred that the minimum present thickness of the
crust of the earth is from 800 to 1,000 miles. This conclusion is the
basis of Sir Charles Lyell's opinion respecting the Plutonic agencies
which take part, or have taken part, in the formation of rocks. He
shows by diagram that, if even 200 miles are allowed for the thickness
of the crust, seas or oceans of lava five miles deep and 5,000 miles
long might be represented by lines which, in relation to the mass of
the earth, would be extremely unimportant. 'The expansion, melting,
solidification, and shrinking of such subterranean seas of lava at
various depths, might,' he contends, 'suffice to cause great movements
or earthquakes at the surface, and even great rents in the earth's
crust several thousand miles long, such as may be implied by the
linearly-arranged cones of the Andes, or mountain-chains like the
Alps.' To invoke the igneous fusion of the whole planet, to account
for phenomena like these is, therefore, he concludes, to have recourse
to a machinery 'utterly disproportionate to the effects which it is
required to explain.'
Sir Charles Lyell derives an argument against the theory of central
heat, from the consideration that it would, in his opinion, involve
the existence of tides in the internal fire-ocean, which tides would
register themselves in the swellings and subsidences of volcanoes.
'May we not ask,' he says, 'whether, in every volcano during an
eruption, the lava which is supposed to communicate with a great
central ocean, would not rise and fall sensibly; or whether, in a
crater like Stromboli, where there is always melted matter in a state
of ebullition, the ebbing and flowing of the liquid would not be
constant?' We venture to remark that this argument does not seem
unanswerable. No one denies that the crust is at present consolidated
to the depth of at least from thirty to eighty miles. The capacity of
known chemical forces to produce intense heat in this region is not
disputed. The eruptions of now active volcanoes might arise,
therefore, from processes going on in a part of the crust separated by
solidified strata from the internal reservoir of liquid fire, and not
accessible to its tides. We might ask also, in turn, whether
observations have been made upon volcanoes in a state of eruption,
exact enough to determine whether they are or are not influenced by
internal tides?
It is affirmed by Mr. David Forbes, in a recent number of _Nature_,
that Professor Palmieri stated, as the result of observations made by
him during the last eruption of Vesuvius, 'that the moon's attraction
occasioned tides in the central zone of molten lava, in quite a
similar manner as it causes them in the ocean.' Mr. Forbes adds that
'a further corroboration of this view is seen in the results of an
examination of the records of some 7,000 earthquake shocks which
occurred during the first half of this century, compiled by Perry, and
which, according to him, demonstrate that earthquakes are much more
frequent in the conjunction and opposition of the moon than at other
times, more so when the moon is near the earth than when it is
distant, and also more frequent in the hour of its passage through the
meridian.' If these statements are correct--and we have no reason to
call them in question--the supposed fact, which Sir Charles presumed
to tell in his favour, has been converted into an ascertained fact
which tells most forcibly against him.
In the latest edition of his 'Principles of Geology,' Sir Charles
Lyell seems, in at least one passage, to assume that this controversy
is at an end.
'It must not be forgotten,' (these are his words) 'that the
geological speculations still in vogue respecting the
original fluidity of the planet, and the gradual
consolidation of its external shell, belong to a period
when theoretical ideas were entertained as to the relative
age of the crystalline foundations of that shell wholly at
variance with the present state of our knowledge. It was
formerly imagined that all granite was of very high
antiquity, and that rocks, such as gneiss, mica-schist, and
clay-slate, were also anterior in date to the existence of
organic beings on a habitable surface. It was, moreover,
supposed that these primitive formations, as they are
called, implied a continual thickening of the crust at the
expense of the original fluid nucleus. These notions have
been universally abandoned. It is now ascertained that the
granites of different regions are by no means all of the
same antiquity, and it is hardly possible to prove any one
of them to be as old as the oldest known fossil organic
remains. It is likewise now admitted, that gneiss and other
crystalline strata are sedimentary deposits which have
undergone metamorphic action, and they can almost all be
demonstrated to be newer than the lately-discovered fossil
called Eozoon Canadense.'
"With all deference to one whom we acknowledge to be among the very
ablest living geologists, we must say that this language strikes us as
more emphatic than the state of the discussion warrants. We do not
undertake absolutely to maintain the theory of central heat as
explaining the formation of the granitic and metamorphic rocks, but we
cannot admit, what Sir Charles seems to imply, that the time has
arrived when investigation and experiment on the subject may be
relinquished, and the tone of dogmatic confidence assumed. The
reasonableness of permitting a certain degree of suspense of judgment
regarding it becomes the more evident when we observe that Sir Charles
is not prepared to maintain against astronomers that the planet was
not originally fluid. 'The astronomer,' he says,
'may find good reasons for ascribing the earth's form to
the original fluidity of the mass in times long antecedent
to the first introduction of living beings into the planet;
but the geologist must be content to regard the earliest
monuments which it is his task to interpret as belonging to
a period when the crust had already acquired great solidity
and thickness, probably as great as it now possesses, and
when volcanic rocks not essentially differing from those
now produced, were formed from time to time, the intensity
of volcanic heat being neither greater nor less than it is
now.'
There can be no doubt that astronomers have been startled into
something like general protest against the rigid uniformitarianism of
Sir Charles Lyell. Differing as they do very widely in their
conceptions of the probable manner in which planets are formed, they
seem to agree that those bodies have their beginning in heat and in
fusion. The phenomena of variable stars, taken in connection with the
revelations of spectrum analysis, demonstrate that the combustion and
the cooling of starry masses are occurrences not unknown in the
economy of the universe. If Sir Charles declines to contest the
astronomical position of the original fluidity of the planet,
considerable plausibility will continue to attach to that geological
doctrine which connects the crystalline rocks with the fluidity in
question. Those rocks, from the most ancient granites to the most
recent clay-slates, occupy a large proportion of the earth's surface.
Their great general antiquity is indisputable. The theory that they
furnish the link between the past and the present of the earth's
crust--that they furnish the point where the lights of geological and
of astronomical science meet--strongly commends itself to the mind.
These observations derive additional force from the circumstance that
Sir Charles Lyell's doctrine of the modern and chemical origin of all
crystalline rocks is dependent upon considerations which must be
allowed to possess not a little of a hypothetical and precarious
character. The phenomena of metamorphism, as arising from heat, from
thermal springs, and so on, are well-known and important; but there is
nothing like adequate evidence that they are capable of giving the
crystalline rocks that structure and aspect under which we behold
them. The chemical substances in the crust which Sir Charles presumes
to be capable of forming seas of molten matter, five miles deep and
5,000 miles long, have never placed before human eyes a lake of fire
three miles across; is there not a trace of arbitrary hypothesis in
supposing that, during hundreds of millions of years, those chemical
agencies have been providing, beneath the surface of the world,
cauldrons of fire to melt the granites of all known ages, from the
Laurentian to the Tertiary, to produce the twistings, undulations,
contortions of the metamorphic strata throughout hundreds of thousands
of cubic miles of rock, and to feed every volcano that ever flamed on
the planet? Not even to that proposition which is avowedly at the
basis of Sir Charles's theory, namely, that the solidified shell of
the earth is at least from 800 to 1,000 miles thick, can absolute
certainty be said to belong. We are willing to admit the distinguished
ability of Mr. Hopkins; but it is a fatal mistake to impute to
solutions of problems in mixed mathematics that character of certainty
which belongs to the results of purely mathematical reasoning. Into
every problem of mixed mathematics one element at least enters which
depends for its correctness upon observation. In many cases this
correctness depends on the perfect accuracy of instruments, and upon
consummate skill in using them. A minute error in the original
observation may produce comprehensive error in the conclusion. It is
still fresh in the public memory that new and more accurate
observation corrected by millions of miles a calculation comparatively
so simple as the distance between the earth and the sun. The problem
by the solution of which Mr. Hopkins determined that the minimum
thickness of the crust is from 800 to 1,000 miles depends for its
reliability on certain obscure phenomena connected with precession and
nutation. Sir Charles Lyell admits that the problem is a 'delicate'
one. Mr. Charles MacLaren remarked, and Miller quotes the remark with
approval, that Mr. Hopkins's inference 'is somewhat like an estimate,
of the distance of the stars deduced from a difference of one or two
seconds in their apparent position, a difference scarcely
distinguishable from errors of observation.' Add to this that opinions
might be quoted from mathematicians of name as decidedly in favour of
the theory that the geological changes which have taken place in the
earth's crust are due to central heat, as the deduction of Mr. Hopkins
is opposed to it. In the ninth edition of his 'Principles,' _i.e._, in
the edition immediately preceding that now current, Sir Charles
informs us that
'Baron Fourier, after making a curious series of
experiments on the cooling of incandescent bodies,
considers it to be proved mathematically, that the actual
distribution of heat in the earth's envelope is precisely
that which would have taken place if the globe had been
formed in a medium of a very high temperature, and had
afterwards been constantly cooled.'
Sir Charles replied to this in the same edition that, if the earth
were a fluid mass, a circulation would exist between centre and
circumference, and solidification of the latter could not commence
until the whole had been reduced to about the temperature of incipient
fusion. We fail to see that this is an answer to Baron Fourier. What
necessity is there for supposing that the solidification of the crust
commenced before the matter of the globe had been reduced throughout
to about the temperature of incipient fusion? The water in a pond must
be reduced to about the temperature of incipient freezing before ice
can form on the surface, but this does not prevent the formation of a
sheet of ice on the top.
In the article in _Nature_, from which we have already quoted, Mr.
David Forbes mentions that M. De Launay, Director of the Observatory
at Paris, 'an authority equally eminent as a mathematician and an
astronomer,' having carefully considered Mr. Hopkins's problem,
decided that its data were incorrect, and that it could shed no light
whatever on the question whether the globe is liquid or solid. There
is some doubt, however, as to the import of M. De Launay's statement.
We may be the more disposed to wonder at the decision with which Sir
Charles Lyell pronounces upon this subject in his latest edition, by
the fact that, since the publication of the previous edition, he has
modified, to a very serious extent, his conception of the evidence on
which the theory which he adopts is based. In the ninth edition of the
'Principles' he laid so much stress on Sir Humphry Davy's hypothesis
of an un-oxidized metallic nucleus of the globe, liable to be
oxidized at any point of its periphery by the percolation of water,
and thus to evolve heat sufficient to melt the adjacent rocks, that
Hugh Miller, in contending against Sir Charles, selected this as an
essential part of the argument. In his tenth edition Sir Charles does
not even mention Sir Humphry Davy's theory. The star under the
influence of which the tenth edition was prepared was that of Mr.
Darwin. No brighter star may be above the geological horizon, and Sir
Charles may have done well to own its influence, but we submit that
opinions which undergo important modification within a few years ought
hardly to be promulgated as marking the limit between the era of
darkness and the era of light in geological discovery.
After all, however, the crucial question is, whether the theory of
central heat has any positive evidence to support it. Here we meet, in
the first place, with the undisputed fact that heat increases as we
descend from the surface of the earth. Sir Charles Lyell admits that
the fact of augmentation is proved. Experiment and observation, no
doubt, have not yet enabled us to determine the ratio in which the
heat increases as we penetrate into the crust; but this does not
neutralise the force of the fact itself. Sir Charles endeavours to
parry its effect by remarking that if we take a certain ratio of
increase, a ratio which seems to be countenanced by experiment, we
shall, 'long before approaching the central nucleus,' arrive at a
degree of heat so great 'that we cannot conceive the external crust to
resist fusion.' It is surely a sufficient reply to this to say that
our conceptions as to the consequences arising from an admitted fact
can neither invalidate its evidence nor annul the obvious inferences
from it. The reader of the 'Principles of Geology,' besides, who has
been told by Sir Charles Lyell that the interposition of a few feet of
scoriæ and pumice enables him to stand without inconvenience on molten
lava, may be permitted to form a high estimate of the power of many
miles of stratified and unstratified rock to resist fusion by the
internal fires. Sooth to say, however, it will be time to consider an
objection grounded on the ratio of the increase in heat from the
surface of the earth downwards, when the ratio in question has been
ascertained. The fact of increase is admitted; the ratio of increase
is an unknown quantity: it is curious logic to impugn the direct
bearing of the former, on the strength of consequences conceived to
arise from the latter.
Hugh Miller believed that the existence of the equatorial ring, in
virtue of which the polar diameter of the earth is shorter than the
equatorial, furnished explicit evidence that the planet once was
molten.
'If our earth,' he wrote, 'was always the stiff, rigid,
unyielding mass that it is now, a huge metallic ball,
bearing, like the rusty ball of a cannon, its crust of
oxide, how comes it that its form so entirely belies its
history? Its form tells that it also, like the cannon-ball,
was once in a viscid state, and that its diurnal motion on
its axis, when in this state of viscidity, elongated it,
through the operation of a well-known law, at the equator,
and flattened it at the poles, and made it altogether the
oblate spheroid which experience demonstrates it to be.'
In other planets, he urged, the same form is due manifestly to the
action of the same law. Venus, Mars, Saturn, oblate spheroids all,
have been similarly 'spun out by their rotatory motion in exactly the
line in which, as in the earth, that motion is greatest.' In these,
however, we can only approximately determine the lengths of the
equatorial and polar diameters; 'in one great planet, Jupiter, we can
ascertain them scarce less exactly than our own earth;' and Jupiter's
equatorial diameter bears exactly that proportion to his polar
diameter which 'the integrity of the law,' as exemplified in the
relation between the equatorial and polar diameters of the earth
demands. 'Here, then,' proceeds Miller, 'is demonstration that the
oblate sphericity of the earth is a consequence of the earth's diurnal
motion on its axis; nor is it possible that it could have received
this form when in a solid state.'
Sir Charles Lyell holds that the excess of the equatorial diameter
over the polar may be accounted for on uniformitarian principles. 'The
statical figure,' he says, 'of the terrestrial spheroid (of which the
longest diameter exceeds the shortest by about twenty-five miles), may
have been the result of gradual and even of existing causes, and not
of a primitive, universal, and simultaneous fluidity.' Miller denies
this possibility; and we confess that the passage in which he assails
the position of Sir Charles Lyell appears to us to have great force.
Let us hear him:--
'The laws of deposition are few, simple, and well known.
The denuding and transporting agencies are floods, tides,
waves, icebergs. The sea has its currents, the land its
rivers; but while some of these flow from the poles towards
the equator, others flow from the equator towards the poles
uninfluenced by the rotatory motion; and the vast depth and
extent of the equatorial seas show that the ratio of
deposition is not greater in them than in the seas of the
temperate regions. We have, indeed, in the Arctic and
Antarctic currents, and the icebergs which they bear,
agents of denudation and transport permanent in the present
state of things, which bring detrital matter from the
higher towards the lower latitudes; but they stop far short
of the tropics; they have no connection with the rotatory
motion; and their influence on the form of the earth must
be infinitely slight; nay, even were the case otherwise,
instead of tending to the formation of an equatorial ring,
they would lead to the production of two rings widely
distant from the equator. And, judging from what appears,
we must hold that the laws of Plutonic intrusion or
upheaval, though more obscure than those of deposition,
operate quite as independently of the earth's rotatory
motion. Were the case otherwise, the mountain systems of
the world, and all the great continents, would be clustered
at the equator; and the great lands and great oceans of our
planet, instead of running, as they do, in so remarkable a
manner, from south to north, would range, like the belts of
Jupiter, from west to east. There is no escape for us from
the inevitable conclusion that our globe received its form,
as an oblate spheroid, at a time when it existed throughout
as a viscid mass.'
Accordingly, though admitting that 'there is a wide segment of truth
embodied in the views of the metamorphists,' Miller declared his
belief on the subject of central heat in these terms: 'I must continue
to hold, with Humboldt and with Hutton, with Playfair and with Hall,
that this solid earth was at one time, from the centre to the
circumference, a mass of molten matter.' Hugh Miller saw the ninth
edition of Sir Charles Lyell's 'Principles,' and seems to have had its
reasonings in view in writing these and other passages; we cannot
persuade ourselves that he would have recalled them if he had lived to
see the tenth edition.
We wish to state in the clearest terms that, though we have stated
some of the evidence which supports the ordinary geological doctrine
of central heat, we do not adduce that evidence as absolutely
conclusive. All we argue for is, that the question be not looked upon
as decided in favour of the uniformitarians. It may be that more
minute and comprehensive observation on the age of the crystalline
rocks and on the phenomena of metamorphism will demonstrate that the
condition of no system of rocks known to us can be traced to the
influence of an originally molten state of the planet. It may be that
what seems at present the unanimous opinion of astronomers, that 'the
whole quantity of Plutonic energy must have been greater in past times
than the present,' is a mistake; it may be, in the last place, that
the primeval fusion of the planet ceased to act upon those parts of
the crust which are accessible to geological observation before those
causes came into operation to which their present state is due. But
we deny that these positions are established. A writer in the
_Edinburgh Review_ declared, so recently as last year, that M.
Durocher, in his 'Essay on Comparative Petrology,' has produced
'absolute proof that the earth was an incandescent molten sphere,
before atmospheric and aqueous agencies had clothed it with the strata
so familiar to our eyes.' Sir Roderick Murchison, who, as a student
not only of books and museums, but of the rock-systems of the world in
their own vast solitudes, is an authority as high as any living man,
holds that 'the crust and outline of the earth are full of evidences
that many of the ruptures and overflows of the strata, as well as
great denudations, could not even in millions of years have been
produced by agencies like those of our own time.' These statements may
be correct or the reverse; but they prove, we submit, that the
controversy respecting central heat is not at an end.
Those who hold that Hugh Miller's views as to the connection between
an originally molten state of the planet and the most ancient rocks
known to us, have been finally disposed of by Sir Charles Lyell, must,
we think, admit that his interpretation of the six days' work can no
longer be maintained. On the other hand, if his conception of the mode
in which the crystalline rocks were formed can be shown to be
substantially correct, we see not how any one can refuse to grant that
those correspondences between the day-periods of Genesis and
successive stages in the geological history of the globe, which he
pointed out, are highly remarkable. Ten thousand omissions of detail
go for nothing, if it can be proved that, although light existed in
space, the condition of the atmosphere of this world prevented the
sun's rays for myriads of ages from reaching the surface; that the
same atmospheric conditions which excluded light from the planet
favoured the development of vegetation in the Carboniferous epoch;
that the day-period during which the sun and moon are stated in
Genesis to have been set to rule the day and the night coincides with
that geological era when light was first poured in clear radiance on
our world; that the times of the Oolite and the Lias exhibited an
enormous development of reptilian and ornithic existence inevitably
suggestive of the creeping things, and fowls, and great sea-monsters
of the fifth day-period; and that the predominance of mammalian life,
of 'the beast of the earth after his kind, the cattle after their
kind,' distinguished alike the latest of the great geological periods
and the sixth day of the Mosaic record. Assuming the correctness of
his fundamental conception of geological progression, Miller might
challenge the geologist--_confining himself to the number of words
used by the Scriptural writers_--to name phenomena, belonging to the
successive geological epochs, more distinctive, impressive, and
spectacular than those mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis.
Admitting that life existed in the planet millions of years before the
time which he assigns to the third day, Miller might ask whether the
darkness, and the slow separation of cloud from wave, were not the
unique and universal phenomena of those primeval ages. Granting that
there was an important flora, as well as a large development of
ichthyic life, in the Devonian epoch, he might ask whether, at any
earlier period, the earth possessed forests comparable with those of
the Carboniferous epoch; and if it were urged that the Carboniferous
flora, consisting as it did in an immense proportion of ferns, cannot
be regarded as corresponding to the 'grass, the herb yielding seed,
and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in
itself,' of the Mosaic record, he might still reply that the _fact_ of
vegetation, apart from botanical distinctions, was then the most
conspicuous among the phenomena of the planet. In like manner, while
granting that life--animal and vegetable, of many forms--existed in
the Oolitic and Liassic ages, he might ask whether the presence in the
planet of at least four unique orders of reptilia, to wit;
Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, Pterosauria, Dinosauria, and perhaps, as
Professor Huxley says, 'another or two,' was not the circumstance
which a geologist would select as distinctive, and if so, whether the
coincidence between these and the creeping things and great
sea-monsters of the fifth Mosaic day is not striking. As we formerly
remarked, Miller's geological interpretation of the fifth and
succeeding day is independent of any theory as to the originally
molten state of the planet. On the sixth day-period, both in Genesis
and in the geological history of the world, we have a great
development of mammalian life, and, finally, the appearance of man.
There was a Tertiary flora, but it was not strongly marked off from
other floras; there were Tertiary reptiles, but their place was
subordinate; in respect of their beasts of the field, and in respect
of the presence of man, the Tertiary ages stand alone. The mammoths
and mastodons, the rhinoceri and hippopotami, 'the enormous
dinotherium and colossal megatherium,' elephants whose bones,
preserved in Siberian ice, have furnished 'ivory quarries,'
unexhausted by the working of upwards of a hundred years, tigers as
large again as the largest Asiatic species, distinguish the Tertiary
times from all others known to the geologist. In stating his views,
Miller availed himself of the hypothesis, put forward by Kurtz and
others, that the phenomena of the geological ages passed before the
eyes of Moses by way of panoramic vision. This, we need hardly say, is
a pure hypothesis, favourable to pictorial description, but not
essentially connected with the logic of the question. Perhaps, the
weakest point in Miller's theory--always presuming him to be right as
to the originally molten state of the planet--is the apportionment of
the present time to the seventh Mosaic day and to the Sabbatic rest of
the Creator. Geologists would now, with one voice, refuse to admit
that any essential alteration can be traced in the processes by which
the face of the earth, and the character of its living creatures, are
modified in the present geological epoch, as compared with those of,
at least, the two or three preceding epochs. Man, doubtless, effects
changes in the aspect of the world on a far greater scale than any
other animal. He can reclaim wide regions from the sea, he can arrest
the rains far up in the mountains, and lead them to water his
terraces, he can temper climates, he can people continents with new
animals and plants. It is allowable in Goethe, talking poetically, to
style him 'the little god of earth.' But his entire activity, and its
results, depend not upon a suspension of the laws and processes of
nature--not upon a withdrawal of creative energy--but upon his
capacity, as an observing, reasoning being, to ascertain the processes
of nature, and use them for his own advantage.
The strongest objection in some minds to this scheme of reconciliation
between Genesis and geology will be that it does not harmonise with
the general method of Scripture. Miller was abreast of his time as a
geologist, but from his complete unacquaintance with the original
languages of Scripture and with the history of the canon, he could
form a judgment only at secondhand on fundamental questions in
theology. That the Bible is inspired--that it is pervaded by a Divine
breathing--we have upon apostolic authority. In no part of Scripture,
however, is the nature of this Divine breathing explained to us, or
information given as to what it implies and what it does not imply.
Without question, the inspired writers were neither turned into
machines nor wholly disconnected from the circumstances, the
prevailing scientific ideas, the modes of expression, of their time.
It would seem, therefore, to be in contradiction to the analogy of
Scripture that one of the most ancient books of the Bible should
contain an elaborately correct presentation, by means of its cardinal
facts, of the history of the world for hundreds of millions of years.
Many, therefore, while cherishing the firmest assurance that the Bible
is the religious code of man, the inspired Word which authoritatively
supplements man's natural light of reason and conscience, will believe
that the first chapter of Genesis is a sublime hymn of creation,
ascribing all the glory of it to God, wedding the highest knowledge of
the primitive age in which it was written to awe-struck reverence for
the Almighty Creator, but not containing any scientific account of the
processes or periods of creation. To many it will convey the
impression that its simplicity, childlike though sublime, and its
grouping of natural phenomena, exceedingly noble and comprehensive but
naïve and unsophisticated, are not inspired science, but inspired
religion. It will appear to them that, looking out and up into the
universe, feeling that it infinitely transcended the little might of
man, thrilling with the inspired conviction that God had made it all,
the poet-sage of that ancient time named in succession each
phenomenon, or group of phenomena, which most vividly impressed him,
and said or sang that God had called it into being. The beginning he
threw into the darkness of the unfathomable past. What first arrested
and filled his imagination in the present order of things, was that
marvel of beauty and splendour which bathes the world at noontide, and
lies in delicate silver upon the crags and the green hills at dawn,
that mystery of radiance which is greater than the sun, or moon, or
stars, greater than them and before them; and he uttered the words,
'God said, Let there be light, and there was light.' Then he thought
of the dividing of the land from the sea, and of the separation
between those waters which float and flow and roll in ocean waves and
those waters which glide in filmy veils along the blue expanse, and in
which God gently folds up the treasure of the rain. The sun and the
moon he knew to be those natural ministers which mark off for man day
and night, summer and winter, and he told how God had assigned to them
this office. The creatures that inhabit the world were grouped for
him, as for the young imagination in all ages, into the living things
of the earth, cattle, and creeping things, and wild beasts; the living
things of the sea, fish and mysterious monsters; the living things of
the air, birds; and that vegetable covering which clothes the earth
with flower and forest. All these, he said, owed their being to God.
Man he discerned to be above nature. Shaped by God like other
animals, he alone had the breath, of the Almighty breathed into his
nostrils, and the image of his Maker stamped upon his soul. So be it.
Such recognitions leave the religious character and authority of the
Divine record untouched.
ART. IV.--_Hereditary Legislators._
(1.) _An Essay on the History of the English Government and
Constitution, from the Reign of Henry VII. to the Present Time._ By
JOHN, EARL RUSSELL. Longmans and Co.
(2.) _Selections from Speeches of Earl Russell, 1817-1841._ With
Introductions. Longmans and Co.
It happens sometimes that political power is transferred from one set
of hands to another without creating a panic, or even greatly
startling society. Changes, of so much moment as almost to rank with
revolutions, may be effected so calmly and quietly as to leave the
society they affect unconscious of their full meaning. If the drums
and the banners of revolution are beaten and displayed, and the other
outward and visible signs of a violent dislocation of the compact of
society are plainly to be discerned, the event takes its place as a
revolution, and the nervous system of society is fluttered and shaken.
But if the promoters of political change are content to leave
undisturbed the ancient symbols, forms, and nomenclature of the past,
the substantial alterations may be comparatively unheeded. For
example, we are told by Tacitus, in few but pregnant words, that when
political power was passing from the senate and the people of Rome
into the hands of the Cæsars, the republican forms were so carefully
preserved as to mask and veil that immense change. 'Domi res
tranquillæ; eadem magistratuum vocabula;... Tiberius cuncta per
consules incipiebat tanquam vetere republicâ.... At Romæ ruere in
servitium consules, patres, eques.'[22] Thus, without appearing to
override or annul the functions of the senate or the people, the
Emperor made himself, in fact, 'the sole fountain of the national
legislation.'[23] So, also, a vital change in the government of
Florence was brought about in the same way. The form of government was
ostensibly a republic, and was directed by a Council of ten citizens,
and a chief executive officer, called the Gonfaliere. Under this
establishment, the citizens imagined they enjoyed the full exercise of
their liberties. But, in reality, the Medici, acting apparently in
harmony with the Constitution, and working under the sanction of
republican forms, names, and offices, and ever seeming to defer to
public opinion, drew into their own hands, without fluttering or
alarming the citizens, the reins of personal government.[24] It is
even so with ourselves. The political transfer has taken place in an
opposite direction to those which have just been alluded to. But
though, in those instances, the tendency was towards the concentration
of power, and in ours towards its diffusion, yet they closely resemble
each other in that discreet preservation of ancient forms and legal
nomenclature which intercepts a veil between the eyes of society and
its real position. For the splendours of the royal court are as
imposing and attractive as ever. People still talk complacently of
royal prerogatives, the hereditary peerage, the House of Lords, and
the many shadowy forms of ancient administration. The barriers and
landmarks of fashionable society are but slightly altered. To the
superficial observer, society presents a picture differing very little
from that of earlier times. There are still some Sir Leicester
Dedlocks, who live in the contemplation of their family greatness, and
some Sir Roger de Coverleys, who sway their neighbourhoods with
unresisted authority; and there are thousands of Englishmen who are
constitutionally averse to the recognition of distasteful facts. Some
persons refuse to perceive that children have become adults, and that
they themselves are growing old and weak; and some do not choose to
perceive that, despite the ancient names and forms of government, the
constitution has been so completely re-cast that we seem destined to
live for a time under the reign and influence of democracy.
It will be useful to refer very briefly to the two great statutes
which have brought us to the present state of affairs. Prior to the
Reform Bill of 1832, the real power of the State was lodged in the
hands of certain wealthy and ennobled families, which numbered less
than five hundred. This oligarchy, to be sure, was not a pure one,
because there were some outlets for genuine popular feeling in a few
free constituencies, whose decisions were always watched with special
attention. Nottingham, Leicester, Norwich, Westminster, and Southwark
had thoroughly popular elections; Liverpool and Bristol had the same
privilege; but though these and some other constituencies constituted
safety-valves, through which the popular feelings were relieved, yet
the essential characteristic of the government was a disguised
oligarchy--that is, the possession of political power by a few. Does
this assertion seem incredible to our younger readers? Let them listen
to the testimony of a witness of the highest authority, who lived in
those times, and was profoundly versed in the history and mechanism of
governments. 'It is difficult,' says Lord Macaulay, 'to conceive any
spectacle more alarming than that which presents itself to us when we
look at the two extreme parties in this country--a _narrow_ oligarchy
above, and an infuriated multitude below.'[25] This was a description
of the British Government in 1831 by that very eminent man. And why
did he venture to affirm that a narrow oligarchy was dominant in the
State? Oligarchy is chiefly distinguished from aristocracy, by the
smaller numbers of the governing body. Before the period of Lord
Grey's Reform Bill, the signs and symbols of popular government
(inherited from times when the shell contained a kernel) were allowed
to appear, and be in use; but the substantial power was vested in the
hands of the owners of rotten boroughs, and the great proprietors of
estates in the counties. Notwithstanding a few free elections, and
many popular rights, the voting power of practical politics was
directed by that narrow oligarchy.
In the year 1792, a petition was presented by Mr. Grey, in which it
was asserted, and proof was offered, that one hundred and fifty-four
peers and rich commoners _returned_ a majority of the House of
Commons. This statement may have been somewhat overdrawn, but it had a
perfectly truthful basis. We summon the late Duke of Wellington as a
witness to prove how boroughs were manipulated, negotiated, bought,
and sold. When he was Chief Secretary for Ireland in the year 1807, he
wrote the following words:--
'MY DEAR HENRY,--I have seen Roden this day about his
borough. It is engaged for one more session to Lord Stair
under an old _sale_ for years, and he must return Lord
Stair's friend, unless Lord Stair should consent to sell
his interest for the session which remains....
Portarlington was sold at the late general election for a
term of years ... &c.--Ever yours, ARTHUR WELLESLEY.'
And, again, he wrote as follows, in 1809:--
'MY DEAR SIR CHARLES,--The name of the gentleman _to be
returned_ for Cashel is Robert Peel, Esq., of Drayton
Bassett, in the county of Stafford.--Ever yours, &c.,
ARTHUR WELLESLEY.'[26]
Such were the methods by which the reigning oligarchy, operating hand
in hand with the Sovereign, secured a majority in the House of
Commons, and thus controlled the policy of the nation, under the false
pretence that it emanated from the people. To a great extent this
system was destroyed by the first Reform Bill. The great grievance of
the day was redressed by a substantial measure. It is commonly said
that the political effect of that statute was to assign the real power
of the nation to the custody of the 'middle classes.' This is not a
perfectly accurate statement of the change. The powers of the State
were not made over by that measure to the merchants and tradesmen of
the country, for the influence of the landed interest was even
augmented by the Reform Act, and, though diminished, was not abolished
in the boroughs. The effect of the new electoral law was made apparent
by its securing for a time the preponderance of the popular and
reforming party. It turned the scale for many years, and just enabled
the Liberal party to carry a series of measures in harmony with
intelligent public opinion. It was a tree of justice and freedom that
bore abundant fruit. It is hardly too much to affirm that _every great
law_ under which we are now living and working was made or amended in
the quarter of a century which followed the Reform Act, and is due to
the Liberal party. But useful and fruitful as that measure was, it was
not in the nature of things that it should be final. The opinions of
enlightened men, and the desire of the masses, agreed in promoting
some extension of the franchise, and after several futile attempts it
was reserved for the Tories to effect it. The surrender was a strange
and inexplicable transaction. Carlyle thus deals with it in that queer
phraseology in which he chooses to address society:--
'Have I not a kind of secret satisfaction of the malicious,
or even the judiciary kind (mischief-joy the Germans call
it, but really it is justice-joy withal), that he they call
"Dizzy" is to do it--a superlative conjuror, spell-binding
all the great lords, great parties, great interests of
England to his hand in this manner, and leading them by the
nose like helpless, mesmerised, somnambulant cattle, to
such issue?'[27]
In other words, we obtained from the natural opponents of
constitutional change a political act which may be likened to the
'happy despatch,' and was hardly inferior to a revolution. The very
centre of political gravity was displaced. The middle classes were
dethroned. The late Lord Derby described his own operation as a 'leap
in the dark,' and in a facetious mood is said to have confessed that
it was intended 'to diddle the Whigs.' Surely this act of prodigious
inconsistency was beyond justification or even excuse. The Liberal
party would have shrunk from so vast a change until education had
struck its roots more deeply into the unenfranchised population. The
Tory party, on the contrary, determined to enfranchise the people,
before they educated them, and it is our duty to acquiesce and realize
our position. It is not for us to predict the future fate and fortunes
of that incomprehensible party. They will gradually open their eyes to
the full meaning of their own political deeds, and that meaning,
expressed in one pregnant word, is Democracy.
But though we cannot reconcile the Conservative theories with
Conservative practice, Tory professions with democratic statutes, it
is not difficult to discover causes which pushed the party into such
violent action. The obvious tendency of the age is to advance towards
democratic institutions. Everywhere in Europe--Russia and Turkey
excepted--power now springs from popular opinion and liberal
institutions, of which the invariable impulse is not to rest, sleep,
and be thankful, but to move, advance, and be doing.
'When a nation modifies the electoral qualification, it may
easily be foreseen that sooner or later that qualification
will be entirely abolished. There is no more invariable
rule in the history of society. The further the electoral
rights are extended, the more is felt the need of them; for
after each concession the strength of the democracy
increases, and its demands increase with its strength.
Concession follows concession, and no stop can be made
short of universal suffrage.'[28]
To apply this theory to the facts of Europe, it is evident that while
at no distant period the policy of almost the whole continent was
directed by the reigning sovereigns, we now discern the sovereignty of
the people, in _esse_ or _posse_, not less widely established. The
causes which have led to this consummation are by no means obscure.
The creation of municipal corporations introduced a democratic element
into the area of despotisms. The invention of printing cheapened the
diffusion of ideas. The post circulated information further and
further, until its work seems to be almost perfected by steam and
electricity. The Reformation lifted vast weights from the human mind.
Slowly, but surely, the European populations have arrived at the
comprehension of their just claims, and have decided that the end of
government shall be the happiness of the people, and not the
exaltation of the few. Thus it has come to pass that everywhere
democracy is in the ascendant, and prerogative on the wane. Is not
this assertion corroborated and exemplified in the political affairs
of our own country? Can anyone honestly and fairly deny that the
supremacy of the popular will is established? 'The people'--that
mighty aggregate of millions of minds, whom Aristophanes delighted to
caricature under the _sobriquet_ of 'Demus'--is certainly invested
with sovereign power. It may be that, like him, we are sometimes
crotchety, sometimes too fond of oratorical blandishment, sometimes
hasty in our judgments, and occasionally liable to panics.
Notwithstanding these and other infirmities, public opinion, formed by
the leading spirits of the day, 'rules and reigns without control.'
'You, Demus, have a nice domain!
For all men fear you, and you reign
As though you were a king.'[29]
It is true that we have to act by delegation, because we cannot meet
to legislate _en masse_. It is also true that the authority of the
people is veiled and masked by antiquated forms and customs, which,
perhaps, are wisely retained. 'Why, every one,' says Monarchicus,
'calls it a monarchy.' 'It may be very audacious,' says
Aristocraticus, 'but I consider it a republic. By a republic, I mean
every government in which sovereign power is distributed in form and
substance among a body of persons.' This was the language of the late
lamented Sir George Cornewall Lewis before Mr. Disraeli's democratic
change. How would he have made Aristocraticus describe the
Constitution now? Not, surely, as a republic, but as a democratic
republic. So, on the 17th of February, 1870, Lord Lyveden, speaking in
the House of Lords, said,--'The real truth is that the _government is
in the House of Commons_.' If it be argued that the well-settled Crown
and the hereditary peerage are incidents which still distinguish our
constitution from those of republican and democratic states, we answer
that the constitution does not depend upon names, forms, and symbols,
but upon the answer to this question, 'Where does the real power
reside?' No candid and well-informed person would now attempt to
contend that either the Crown or the peerage, or both, can offer any
permanent obstruction to the measures desired and indicated by the
popular will. With reference to the Crown, the _Times_ has recently
held the following remarkable language:--'What can one say but that
the Crown has no right or will in this free country but that which is
consistent, and does not clash with the rights and will of the people
as represented in Parliament?' With reference to the House of Lords,
it would be easy, if space were at our command, to cite sentence after
sentence from speeches in that highly-educated assembly, which would
show the opinion of its leading members that its functions are now
limited to amendments, to modifications, and to postponements of
measures, and do not extend to the act of thwarting or nullifying the
clearly-expressed will of the representative House, with respect to
any important subject. It is true that in one respect the democratic
power seems to be kept in abeyance. We do not see the working man in
Parliament. Plutocracy, or the money power, has still great influence
in the representative House. The elections and the social position are
too expensive for busy working people. But the pecuniary obstacles
will be gradually removed, and many men of humble position, but real
ability, will make their way into the House. This is a mere question
of time. For the present, the representatives of the people must needs
be wealthy. But the day is not distant when many a borough, and even
some counties, will be represented by men of the class and order which
form the basis of the constituencies. There cannot be a doubt that the
work of a very few years will diminish, if not abolish, the expenses
of elections, and make the all-powerful House almost as democratic as
the constituencies.
It is under these circumstances that we approach two great questions,
the public discussion of which cannot be much longer deferred. First,
can the continuance of a purely hereditary and ennobled branch of the
legislature be reconciled with the state of things we have portrayed?
Secondly, ought the further and continuous creation of hereditary
social honours to be permitted by the people of a free and
substantially democratic state?
In dealing with the first of these inquiries, the thought that
naturally comes into the mind is this--what a wonderful anomaly and
apparent departure from sound sense is the creation of an
_hereditary_ legislature! The function of making laws for millions of
free people is calculated to tax to the utmost the mental energy of
the ablest men. The high duties of a lawgiver have always, in theory
at least, been entrusted by civilized states to their best and wisest
citizens. But our knowledge of the laws of succession does not teach
us that as a rule the wise beget the wise. On the contrary, experience
continually confirms the truth of Solomon's lamentation, 'I hated all
my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it
unto the man that shall come after me, and who knoweth whether he
shall be a wise man or a fool?'[30] 'Fortes creantur fortibus et
bonis,' said Horace. No doubt that is physically true to a great
extent, but the transmission of intellect is a very different matter.
We have heard it asserted that no bishop ever left an eminent son. The
present Lord Ellenborough, a son of the late Bishop Law, is a signal
exception; but where is another to be found? How many British peers
whose honours are derived from ancestors of genius and capacity, who
in their day rendered good service to the nation, are now contributing
anything to the legislative power of the House of Lords? Do we now
hear the senatorial utterances, or obtain any political counsels, from
our contemporary Portland or Wellington, Bedford or Leeds, Exeter or
Camden; Macclesfield or Oxford, Somers or Effingham; Sandwich,
Hardwicke, Mansfield, or Eldon; Hood, St. Vincent, Exmouth, or
Bridport; Kenyon, Erskine, Tenterden, or Wynford; Rodney, Abinger,
Hill, or Keane? Yet all these are honourable titles held and enjoyed
by men who inherited them from ancestors who deserved well of their
country. Nor are these all the peers who have never done anything in
public life to justify the hereditary honours bestowed on their
meritorious ancestors. The list might be greatly enlarged. Others,
again, may be counted by the hundred, whose honours have no nobler
origin than Court favour or Parliamentary influence, and who utterly
abdicate their legislative functions. In truth, the working department
of the House of Lords is generally in the hands of five or six aged
barristers, who have won their coronets by their brains, and a dozen
or so of active peers, whose high attainments attract the confidence
of their fellows. Is it possible to contend that this is a healthy
organization of a co-ordinate branch of the imperial legislature? It
is true that there are many men of great ability in the House, and
many more of truly noble but retiring character, who reside wholly or
for the most part on their estates. But of these a very small
proportion take the trouble to attend the debates, and even in the
present session, Lord Granville was obliged to remark, that 'the large
number of peers _who do not attend the debates_ ought to be called
upon to serve on committees.' There is no doubt that the peerage
contains excellent materials for a senate, and that practically the
power of the whole is now delegated to a part. But though this is the
case under ordinary circumstances, it cannot be right that the
majority of the House, idle hereditary legislators, should lie dormant
and apart from the working bees during the ordinary days of the
session, and only wake up and rush to town under the extraordinary
pressure of a great party division. It may be argued, however, that a
second chamber is a valuable element in the Constitution, and that the
hereditary principle is of the very essence of our political system.
As to the importance of a second chamber, we make no dispute. On the
principle of a division of labour, it is wanted for the despatch of
business, and it is also required for the interposition of discussion
and delay between the hasty introduction of bills and the final act of
legislation. As to the hereditary element, it cannot be denied that
for several centuries it has been fully recognised and established.
But there are good reasons to believe that it is part and parcel of a
comparatively modern Constitution, and that it did not prevail in
those days when the germs of our institutions were in their early
growth. The fact is that all our titles of honour seem to have been
originally derived _from offices_. That of duke, the highest of the
hereditary titles, is evidently derived from 'dux' and 'duc;' words
used to signify a leader, and a man of merit. But this was a foreign
use of the word which never obtained in England, and it was not
introduced at all before the time of Edward the Black Prince. The
title of 'marquess' designated originally the persons who had charge
of the 'marches' of the country; that is, the boundaries, _marks_, or
border lands between Scotland and England, and England and Wales. An
earl derives his title from the earldorman of the Anglo-Saxons, and
the earle of the Danes. It was afterwards adopted by the Conqueror,
and both in his time and previously, was the designation of certain
high officials. The viscount or vicecomes, was originally the deputy
of the earl, count or comes, but its adoption as an English dignity is
involved in some obscurity. The lowest of our hereditary titles is
that of 'baron,' which originally designated those persons who held
lands of a superior by military and other services, and who were bound
to give attendance in the court of the superior, and assist in the
business there transacted. In plain language, these ancient titles
indicated _appointments_ for life of various kinds, or duties
connected with property which, as a rule, had been bestowed as a
reward for merit.
'From virtue first began,
The difference that distinguished man from man;
He claimed no title from descent of blood,
But that which made him noble made him good.'[31]
Such being the origin of the British titles of nobility, we pass to
the origin of the aggregate peerage in their position as a separate
and hereditary branch of the legislature. It is well ascertained that
the Saxon kings were not authorized to make new laws or impose taxes
without the sanction of the 'witan,' in which the Thanes and the
prelates of the church had seats. It is also certain that in Normandy
there was a council of Norman barons, which the dukes were bound to
consult on all important occasions. The Anglo-Norman kings of England
continued to recognise the custom, and duly summoned and consulted
their great council. All who held land immediately from the Crown had
a right to attend, and these were originally designated the king's
barons. Besides these, the prelates and the principal abbots and
priors were expected to attend. No other persons had the right to
appear except in the attitude of petitioners. It is probable that many
of the Crown tenants found it inconvenient and expensive to be present
as regularly as the great proprietors, and by degrees the title of
'peer' and 'baron,' which at first had been common to all the king's
immediate tenants, came to be applied to a few great feudatories of
the Crown. This state of things is actually recognised in Magna Charta
in these words,--'We shall cause the archbishops, bishops, abbots,
earls, and _greater barons_ to be separately summoned by our letters.'
Here, then, we have the origin of the temporal peers of the realm in
their own House. The temporal peerage was evidently a body of the most
powerful landowners. Now, at that time and for many years after, there
was no legal power of devising real estates by will. The estates
descended from heir to heir, and the successor of a great feudal baron
came in course of time to be regarded as standing in the position of
his predecessors as to the right to be summoned by letters patent to
the royal council. Thus the notion of hereditary descent became
associated with the position and privileges of a great baron. At a
later period the status of peerage was extended to others, who were
not tenants in chief, but were summoned by writ to take their places
in the council. Still later, the sovereign took upon himself to
_create_ peerages by letters patent, which seem to have conferred the
privilege of hereditary descent. Finally, it became a fixed maxim in
constitutional laws that the person summoned by royal writ to the
House of Lords acquired a right not only to sit in that particular
parliament, but the right for himself and certain heirs to become
hereditary peers of the realm. Thus a complete inroad was gradually
made upon the early connection between the peerage and the tenure of
property; and the general result was that Lords of Parliament took
their seats by virtue of tenure, of writs, of letters patent, and, in
a few isolated cases, by Act of Parliament.[32] In the time of Lord
Coke the number of peers was about 100; at the time of the Revolution
of 1688 the House consisted of about 150 lay and 26 spiritual peers,
and at the present time it reckons nearly 500 members. We found no
argument upon the special privileges possessed by the order of nobles.
With the exception of their appellate jurisdiction, they are neither
numerous nor important, and the judicial functions which are now very
efficiently exercised by some of the ablest lawyers of the day will
probably be remodelled in the course of the reforms in the
administration of justice which are now very near at hand.
The facts and circumstances thus briefly stated form the materials for
an answer to our first question, namely, Can the continuance of a
purely hereditary branch of the legislature harmonize with the vast
democratic change which was described in the earlier pages of this
article? The answer is short and simple. Considering the spread of
education, the increasing circulation of literature and newspapers,
the growing influence of commerce and manufactures, the omnipotent
force of public opinion, and the increasing importance of the middle
classes, it certainly appears that the House of Lords is not now
satisfactorily constituted for a senate. It consists of a large number
of members who feel themselves under no obligation to take part in its
deliberations. It is acted upon only _indirectly_ by public opinion.
Its members belong almost exclusively to one class and interest, and
all stand on the same social platform. Moreover, two out of the three
chief interests of the nation--that is, the manufacturing and
commercial interests--are scarcely represented in that House. Under
these circumstances, it appears to us that some alteration in the
constitution of this noble House is a mere question of time. In the
famous debate of April, 1866, upon Lord Russell's project of reform,
Mr. Lowe, in one of the cleverest speeches ever delivered in the House
of Commons, used the following words:--
'Let us suppose democracy established more or less in this
country: with what eyes would it look upon institutions
such as I have described--what would be the relation of
this House to the House of Peers? I shall call a witness
who will tell you. Eight years ago the honourable member
for Birmingham inverted the course he is now taking; he now
seeks to secure the means, he then proclaimed the end. Then
he said, "See what I'll do for you if you give me reform."
Now he says, "Give me reform, and I shall do nothing." His
words were, "As to the House of Peers, I do not believe
they themselves believe that they are a permanent
institution." What do you suppose would become of the House
of Peers with democratic franchises?'
Such was the prophecy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Its
realization may be distant, but we venture to say it is certain. What
the nature of the change ought to be, we can but faintly hint. And, be
it remembered, that it is in no wild spirit of revolution, but rather
in the temper of sober conservation, that even a suggestion of this
kind is hazarded. We believe, then, that the needful change may be
made in perfect harmony with recognised principles of the present
Constitution. Surely a more serviceable House would be secured by
introducing the same system of election and delegation amongst the
peers of the realm that now prevails among the peers of Scotland and
Ireland. In the next place, a certain number of high offices of State
might be connected with life-seats in the House of Lords. The Crown
might be empowered to introduce a limited number of peers for life.
Lastly, it might be practicable, though doubtless very difficult, to
import into the House the direct influence of public opinion by some
kind of public election. The composition of the Herrenhaus, or House
of Lords of Prussia, offers the model of a very useful assembly. It
consists of princes of the royal family; sixteen chiefs of certain
other princely houses; about fifty heads of the territorial nobility;
a number of life peers chosen by the king from the class of rich
landowners, great manufacturers, and _national celebrities_; eight
titled noblemen _elected_ in the eight provinces of Prussia by the
resident landowners of all degrees; the representatives of the
Universities; the heads of religious chapters; the mayors of towns of
more than 50,000 inhabitants; and a few other peers nominated by the
king, under certain limitations, for a less period than life. The
Upper House in Spain is partly composed of hereditary peers, and
partly of peers for life. The peerage of Portugal is for life. And
thus we might go on, from Chamber to Chamber, and prove that the
British House of Lords is the only legislative Chamber in the world in
which the hereditary system alone prevails. This fact alone, taken in
connection with the rapid progress of political events, and the other
circumstances which have been slightly touched upon, may suffice to
justify us in affirming that the continuance of a purely hereditary
House of Lords, unmodified by delegation or election, is not in
harmony with the rest of our Constitution.
The last question to be answered is this: Ought the further creation
of hereditary dignities to be permitted by a people enjoying the wide
and liberal franchises of this country? It must not, however, be
supposed that this inquiry must needs touch or involve the advantages
or disadvantages of an hereditary sovereign. The king or reigning
queen of these realms has special functions by virtue of the
Constitution, which, under any circumstances, must be intrusted to
some hands, and it is hard to imagine any order of affairs more
beneficial to the people than the present; for our sovereign is not
merely entrusted with attributes which affect the imagination, she
holds a position not less useful than splendid as the visible head of
this mighty Commonwealth. There ought to be the least possible
latitude for the jealousies and rivalries of the leading spirits of
the State. But if the most exalted position is open to competition,
the most powerful minds may be diverted by evil influences from the
line of duty. The hereditary office of the sovereign ought to be
tenderly and loyally upheld as being not merely a picturesque
decoration of the State, but subserving most important purposes, by
preventing intrigue, and by visibly representing the nation in a form
most attractive to society. The present question, therefore, has no
reference to the sovereign. The inquiry is, whether the _minor_
hereditary dignities can be continuously and freshly created
consistently with our apparent advances towards social and political
equality. The answer may be found in the lines of Dr. Johnson:
'Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru.'
He who thus looks from the watch-tower must perceive that the
political movement of nations is almost everywhere in _one_ direction.
He might suppose that one transcendental law was slowly overruling the
world--the law under which equality is advancing, and artificial
inequalities disappearing. It would seem that the desire for equality
marches hand in hand with civilization. Nowhere in the world will the
inquirer discover that _hereditary_ privileges _are being created_
except in England, though the order of ancient nobility is by no means
rare. The defenders of the order of nobility will urge that the
distinction of rank is necessary for the reward of public services,
and to stimulate and encourage others. Virtuous ambition is,
doubtless, a spring of action which produces excellent results.
Blackstone says that 'a body of nobility creates and preserves that
gradual scale of dignity which proceeds from the peasant to the
prince, rising like a pyramid from a broad foundation, and diminishing
to a point as it rises. It is this ascending and contracting
proportion _which adds stability_ to any government.'[33] Historical
research can alone determine the amount of truth contained in these
assertions. The general proposition that public honours of some kind
are valuable incidents in every country can hardly be disputed. But
does it necessarily follow that those honours should be hereditary? We
know that many of the truest patriots in ancient and modern times have
desired no other reward than posthumous fame and the esteem of their
fellow-citizens. Was Washington, for example, moved by the glitter of
any hereditary honours to devote himself to the good of his country?
Or Pericles, Epaminondas, or Tell; Pym, Hampden, Peel, or Cobden? Peel
had inherited his baronetcy, and by will forbade his heirs to accept
the hereditary peerage. Take the case of Mr. Peabody. Society
regretted that he declined the riband of the Bath, but how unsuitable
a reward for his grand Christian munificence would a coronet and a
title have been. It was natural to ask in his case, 'What shall be
done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour?' The only answer
is, 'Let his memory be embalmed in the loving esteem of two great
nations.' To him virtue was its own reward. The mass of mankind are of
less elevated quality. It would be unwise, and even dangerous, to
dispense with public rewards for public services. But surely it is an
unreasonable method of recompensing the services of a great citizen to
confer title, dignity, and rank, not only upon himself, but upon his
descendants for ever. The services of the great Duke of Marlborough
may have merited a high recompense, but it is strange that one hundred
and fifty years after his decease his great-great-grandson should be
born a duke on the score of his ancestor's merits--
'Honours best thrive
When rather from _our_ acts we them derive
Than our foregoers.'[34]
It seems monstrous that in a State in which the power of the people is
fully recognised, any artificial exaltation of one family above
another should be perpetuated apart from personal merit. Far be it,
however, from the writer of these pages to desire the abolition of
existing dignities. They are vested interests which it becomes us to
respect, though it is difficult to tolerate any longer the fresh and
needless elevation of more families above the rest in perpetuity. The
political exigencies of the State cannot possibly require it, and if
it is not necessary it is unjust. It may be said that the House of
Lords must be recruited by the infusion of fresh blood; but it has
been shown that the House is already too full, and rather needs
reduction than expansion. At all events, the grants of peerages for
life would enable the Crown to place many 'national celebrities' in
the Upper House who, from want of fortune, would decline the honour if
it must necessarily descend to a poor son. It may also be urged that
the objection to a further creation of hereditary honours has its
source in the envy of the human heart; but in truth the objection is
simply founded upon a sense of the abstract _injustice_ of the
inheritance of honour, title, and exalted social rank unless it be
justified by merit of some kind. How can it be _just_ that if neither
policy nor merit justify the ordinance, the State should make one
family superior in perpetuity in all the social incidents of
precedence and rank to thousands of other families? It is affectation
to deny that social circumstances of this nature are greatly valued.
They influence the life and fortunes of the men and women of the
ennobled families in a high degree. _Cæteris paribus_, the son of the
nobleman and the son of the commoner do not start in the race of life
upon equal terms. The younger son of a peer will, in all probability,
attain any object he may have in view with less difficulty than the
son of a plain esquire. He will have a better chance of entering the
diplomatic service, of becoming a member of the House of Commons, of
obtaining a nomination for the civil service, of entering the navy, of
getting a commission in one of the best regiments, and of preferment
in the Church. Is it just that these purely artificial advantages
should be accorded to more families than those which already
accidentally possess them? There may be enthusiastic admirers of the
order of nobles, who will affirm that they are necessary for the
safety and balance of society. But such enthusiasts will do well to
listen to the weighty words of Bacon, who, treating of 'nobility,'
wrote thus: 'For democracies, they need it not, and they are commonly
more quiet, and less subject to sedition than where they are stirps of
nobles. For men's eyes are upon the business and not upon the
persons.... We see the Switzers last well, notwithstanding their
diversity of religion and of cantons. For utility is their bond and
not respects. The United Provinces of the Low Countries in their
Government excel. For where there is equality the consultations are
more indifferent, and the payments and tributes more cheerful.'[35]
Thus this great man goes further than the present argument is intended
to advance. It is not suggested that a flat social equality is
practicable or desirable in civilized life. It may exist in theory,
but it fails in practice. Dr. Johnson proved this in his peculiar
fashion to a lady who was an enthusiastic republican,--'Madame,' said
he, 'I am become a convert to your way of thinking; I am convinced
that all mankind are upon an equal footing; and to give you an
unquestionable proof that I am in earnest, here is a sensible, civil,
well-behaved fellow-citizen--_your footman_; I beg that he may be
allowed to sit down and dine with us. I thus, sir, showed her the
absurdity of the levelling doctrine. She has never liked me since.' So
Count Mirabeau was unable to tolerate his own theory of equality.
Returning one day from the assembly in which he had pressed that
doctrine with great power, he ordered and entered a warm bath. 'More
hot, Antoine.' 'Yes, citizen,' said Antoine. Whereupon Mirabeau seized
his man by the head and plunged it into the bath. It may be that Dr.
Johnson, who was an earnest advocate for the subordination of ranks,
was sound in his views with reference to general happiness. But it
must be admitted that the greatest experiment ever made of theoretical
equality--that of the United States--has not been unsuccessful. It may
be true, as affirmed by De Tocqueville, that 'the men who are entrusted
with the direction of public affairs in that country are frequently
inferior, both in capacity and morality, to those whom aristocratic
institutions would raise to power. But their interest _is identified
with that of the majority_ of their fellow-citizens. They may
frequently be faithless, and frequently mistaken; but they will never
systematically adopt a line of conduct opposed to the will of the
majority.' If we turn to our own great political experiments--those of
our principal colonies--the result is upon the whole satisfactory. No
local dignities are there created or inherited. It would, perhaps, be
expedient that great public services should be rewarded by the
creation of baronetcies for life in the colonies. But though nothing
of this kind is known in any of them--except by the casual importation
of some poor cadet of a noble British family--prosperity, good order,
and all the elements of social and political well-being, are secured
and developed more and more. The great colonies of Australia, which
enjoy the full rights of autonomy, and are only connected with the
mother country by one slender thread, through which no maternal
influence really passes, have thus furnished evidence that liberty,
equality, and order may exist together.
We have already averred that this article is not intended to promote
any levelling assault upon any existing dignity. Nor do we think it is
expedient that a flat table-land of social equality should be created
in this old country. Let public services be rewarded not only by
gratitude and esteem, but by dignities and honours coincident with the
life of the grantees. Honorary decorations, too, might be more
extensively conferred, and would surely be worn with as much
gratification by the deserving plebeian as the blue or red ribbon by
the noblest aristocrat of the bluest blood. Let sculpture, painting,
and architecture do their best to perpetuate the memory of 'national
celebrities.' Let us construct a Walhalla of worthies in which
Englishmen shall deem it the highest attainable honour to be reckoned.
And as Pericles nobly said to the Athenians,--'I shall begin with our
forefathers, for it is fair and right that the honours of
commemoration should be accorded to them. For the same people
constantly dwelling in this land did by their valour hand it down in
freedom to posterity. Well worthy of praise were they, and still more
worthy are our own fathers; for they, in addition to their
inheritance, won by the sweat of their brow the imperial position we
now hold, and transmitted it to us of the present generation.' So let
us recall and commemorate every unselfish public life, all genius
dedicated to the nation's good, and all those _quasi_ inspirations of
the native mind which set a mark upon their age, and tinge the thought
of successive generations. Nor let us shrink and shiver as we see the
irresistible advance of the democratic wave. The most timid may take
courage by studying the attempted legislation of the Commonwealth. To
that period may be traced the source of nearly all our best laws and
largest reforms. The reactionary powers blighted the attempted work of
enlightened men, and it has only come to maturity within living
memory, or is even now ripening. Let us never forget that it is our
first duty to educate the democracy, to purify its morals, and so to
modify the distribution of public honours that merit and its reward
may never be severed. Exalted rank derived from birth alone must be
permitted to die out by flux of time, and meritorious industry must be
warmly cherished.
'The smoke ascends
To heaven, as lightly from the cottage hearth
As from the haughty palace. He whose soul
Ponders this true equality may walk
The fields of earth with gratitude and hope.'[36]
FOOTNOTES:
[22] 'Quiet reigned at home; the public offices kept their old
titles;... Tiberius initiated all his measures under the mask of the
consuls, as if it was the old republic.... Yet at Rome there was a
race for servitude; consuls, senators, and knights alike.'
[23] See 'Merivale,' vol. iii. p. 464.
[24] Roscoe's 'Life of Lorenzo de Medici,' p. 6.
[25] 'Macaulay's Speeches,' p. 36.
[26] 'Civil Correspondence of the Duke of Wellington' (Ireland), pp.
28 and 627.
[27] 'Shooting Niagara,' p. 12.
[28] 'De Tocqueville,' vol. i.
[29] Rudd's 'Aristophanes,' 'The Knights.'
[30] Ecclesiastes ii. 18, 19.
[31] Dryden.
[32] Creasy 'On the Constitution.' Hallam's 'Middle Ages,' vol. ii.,
p. 319.
[33] Stephen's 'Blackstone,' vol. ii., p. 361.
[34] 'All's Well that ends Well.'
[35] 'Essays,' p. 45.
ART. V.--_The Genius of Nonconformity and the Progress of Society._
Archbishop Laud, in his conference with Fisher, the Jesuit, when he
was Bishop of St. David's, sets forth the ample basis and
justification of Nonconformity. It is impossible that the platform can
be laid for our principles and action more broadly and firmly than by
this highest of High Churchmen in the following admirable and explicit
words:--
'Another Church may separate from Rome if Rome will
separate from Christ. And so far as it separates from them
and the faith, so far may another church sever from it....
The Protestants did not get that name by protesting against
the Church of Rome, but by protesting (and that when
nothing else would serve) against her errors and
superstitions. Do you but remove them from the Church of
Rome, and our protestation is ended, and the separation
too. The Protestants did not depart, for departure is
voluntary; so was not theirs. I say, not theirs, taking
their whole body and cause together.... The cause of
schism is yours, for you thrust us out from you because we
called for truth and the redress of abuses. For a schism
must needs be theirs whose the cause of it is. The woe was
full out of the mouth of Christ, ever against him that
gives the offence, not against him that takes it, ever....
It was ill done of those, whoever they were, that made the
first separation. But then A. C. must not understand me of
actual only, but of causal separation. For, as I said
before, the schism is theirs whose the cause of it is. And
he makes the separation, that gives the first just cause of
it; not he that makes an actual separation upon a just
cause preceding.'--(Works, vol. ii. sec. 21.)
We cordially adopt the definitions and allegations of the great
Anglican. He describes perfectly the necessity which has constrained
and the spirit which has animated the great party, which seems at
length to stand on the very borders of that Canaan of religious
liberty and equality towards which for three centuries it has been
struggling through the wilderness, and in which it hopes to find rest
and the free play of its life at last.
'Schism is separation--cutting off; cutting ourselves off
from that to which we ought to be united. The root of
schism is the separation of man from God. He is thereby out
of harmony with the universal and ruling system of things.
In this way he is out of harmony with all that remains
under that presiding system. And the crime of schism lies
in this; that it is a contest with Him who has instituted
that system--that it arises out of our repugnancy to Him,
or (to take the lowest view of it) out of our want of
understanding of the principles which he has established
for the unity of the world which He has made.'--(A. J.
Scott, 'Discourses,' p. 230.)
Schism, then, is separation from that with which God made us to be
united. The only schism about which we need be anxious is separation
from the truth which can make Divine order in our lives; to which by
inward affinities we are related; to which we are bound to attach
ourselves, or rather to maintain our attachment, under penalty of
perpetual unrest, harm, and loss. The fundamental question of schism
is truth--the truth which God has made known as the one basis of the
vital fellowships and activities of mankind.
The only principle which could fairly rob us of the justification
which the Anglican Archbishop's words afford to us would be, that the
State is absolutely the highest expression of the Lord who made and
who rules the world, as to the conduct of man's life in the spiritual
as well as in the secular sphere. There are secular sects in Europe
who lay down this dogma as the fundamental principle of the
constitution of society. The State, in their view, has the sole right
and the sole power to organize everything, from industry to worship,
and there is no higher will than that of the community known to or
knowable by man. But this principle presupposes the abolition of the
spiritual. Worship and the whole region of man's religious activity
must have been already relegated to the domain of senseless
superstition, before such an idea could reign. Religion ceases to be
an intrusive and disturbing element in the secular realm under such
conditions, because it has already ceased to have an independent life.
We have no need to spend time in controverting this position. Amongst
Christian politicians, lay or ecclesiastical, there can be no need to
demonstrate the falseness of a principle which would make Christ and
His Apostles the chief schismatics of the world. Even Mr. Arnold, who
is as hard upon Nonconformity as a man can be, allows that there _are_
things which may compel separation; and where those are found, by
Laud's own definition, the word schism can no longer apply.
Man, like all things, animate and inanimate, is made in concord. There
are relations with beings and with things, with the world, with man,
and with God, in which his nature moves freely and all his powers are
drawn forth to their full strain of work. The secret of free movement
in the universe is equipoise. It is not otherwise with man. He is made
to sustain certain relations, to exchange certain influences, to
fulfil certain functions. There is a condition conceivable in which
man would be in entire harmony with all things around him, would move
with perfect freedom, and give full expression to all the functions
and possibilities of his life. Out of that condition he has fallen; to
it he hopes and aspires to return. Schism is that which breaks the
harmony, which places him in a wrong relation with all around him, and
sets him at war with himself. The first, the fundamental schism, as we
have seen, is sin. The Archschismatic, the father of schism, is the
Devil. Next, that is of the essence of schism which prevents man
struggling back into the harmony; which introduces any unnatural
limitations or compulsions into the movements of his soul with regard
to that Being, the righting of his relations with whom sets him right
with himself and with all the world. Whatever hinders the free
movement of man's spirit in relation to God, or limits or thwarts the
relations with his fellow-men into which he is drawn by the Spirit;
whatever, in fact, makes an order which is not spiritual in the sphere
of his duties and life, is schismatic. The first condition of the
higher order, the order of the Spirit, is liberty; the free movement
of the spiritual element, the free play of the spiritual life, is the
essential condition of that unity of the Church for which the Saviour
prayed, and for which the Spirit is striving still. When human orders
or forms are established as essential bases of communion, schism is
inevitable, simply because no human arrangement of man's relations can
be co-extensive and conterminous with the plan by which the Spirit is
working out the unity of the Church, and which is realizable only
through the entire freedom of the movement of His energy in individual
human hearts. The cause of schism, adhering to Laud's definitions, is
inherent in the very constitution of a system like that of our
national Established Church. It is but the repetition, within the
limits of a nation, and under national auspices, of the Roman
endeavour to found and to govern a church which should be conterminous
with Christendom. That which broke up the Roman system and shattered
the Roman idea of the Church, was the development of a true national
life in the countries of the west, which, speaking roundly, we may
date from the thirteenth century. The national development of France
in that century really broke up the Mediæval idea of unity, whether
conceived of, as by the nobler spirits, under the form of the Holy
Roman Empire, or by the commoner under the form of the Holy Roman
Church. The great Papal schism which immediately followed, and the
seventy years' captivity at Avignon, were the beginning of the end.
The dream was dreamed out. The vision of the unity of Christendom
under a visible vicar of Christ vanished for ever.
The vision which has replaced it is that of a Federal Christendom--a
confederation of national churches, each under its national head,
establishing in the spiritual some such order as the Commune dreams of
establishing in the political sphere. But it is the same enterprise.
We wish our able advocates of Establishment would consider it. It is
the endeavour to build the Church on a basis of authority, whether
external to the nation, as the Pope, in the ages in which Christendom
was conceived of as a visible kingdom, or internal to the nation, as
is necessary when the nation rises to the consciousness of
individuality, and the assertion of the independence of the national
life. It is an aiming at a kind of order in Christ's kingdom which has
the root of all disorders in the heart of it; and it has for three
centuries blocked the way of the true successor to the Mediæval idea
of the unity of Christendom, a unity of spirit unexpressed in
formularies or organizations, reigning in all the provinces of man's
social, political, and national life.
The Mediæval idea of the unity of the Church was a noble and beautiful
vision; far nobler and more beautiful, broader, deeper, grander, than
anything that is proposed or that can be proposed under the conditions
of a Law-established National Church. The movement of the Reformation
both in England and in Germany was a grand step of progress as regards
the actual condition and relations of men. The overthrow of the Roman
System, the branding it as of the Devil and not of Christ, was an
unspeakable gain and progress. But, yet as regards the idea of the
Church, in the form which the Reformation assumed in both countries,
we hold that it was distinctly a fall. That which England had to
substitute for the idea of a Church co-extensive with the Christian
name, ruled by a power which professed and was believed to rest its
rights and to draw its influence from a sphere beyond this world,
perpetuating in Christendom the tradition and the right of apostolic
rule, was a miserably narrow, shallow, and selfish assertion of the
right of a class to represent Christ in legislating or the Church, and
of a James I. to represent Him in ruling it. The inner life of the
Church System which the Reformation established in England shines
brightly only against the background of Roman atrocity; it is dark
enough against any conception of Christ's Kingdom inspired by the
Spirit or drawn from the word of God.
If the Establishment principle, as some of its passionate advocates
seem to imagine, is to be the permanent form of church life which is
to supplant in Christendom the idea which the Roman Church enshrined,
but marred and murdered in embodiment, then we say deliberately,
Europe, in the long run, will have lost immensely by the Reformation;
then the hope of the establishment of a Kingdom of Christ, in which
the weary heart of humanity shall realize the fulfilment of the hope
which poets and prophets have kept bright before the mind of the
world, will be forever dead.
The words Dissenter and Non-conformist are in one sense ugly words;
and Protestant must be put in the same category. They define unhappily
by negation, that which in its essential nature is strongly
affirmative, that which has the spirit of the 'Everlasting Yea' in it
as fully as any belief which has ever been formulated by or
promulgated among men. It is most unfortunate that the creeds and
principles which are most closely related to the political and
industrial, as well as to the spiritual progress of mankind, have by
accident, as it were, assumed this negative shape in their
proclamation of themselves to the world. It is their aspect to their
opponents which has become their definition; and this has affixed to
them a kind of stigma which has acted most injuriously on their
progress. We little realize how this negation has stood in our way.
The 'Dis' or the 'Non' is the essential part of us in the estimation
of a large number of Churchmen; while the Romanist still finds in the
word Protestant a perpetual justification of his antipathy, and a mark
for the shafts of his scorn. We have in all generations been regarded
as a dissatisfied and dissident race; strong only in opposition, and
living by envy and hatred of that which commands the support of the
great majority of mankind. It has been believed, in fact, that we
rather nurse our grievances, and make the most of them, lest if they
were to cease, our _raison d'être_ would at once expire. We believe
that this has been to a very large extent the popular notion of us
among the members of the Establishment; and the main reason for the
impression, were it probed, would be found to be the negation implied
in our name. To this day the term Protestant is perhaps the gravest
difficulty in the way of the spread of Evangelical ideas and of the
Evangelical spirit among the Latin nations of the West.
But in truth the 'yea' is with us rather than with our opponents. The
Establishment is the natural home of the true 'Negative Theology.'
'The moderation of the Church of England' is the chief boast of her
children--that is, of those who are most loyal to her principle of
Establishment, and to whom the term Erastian conveys nothing of which
they feel the slightest disposition to be ashamed. And it describes
something which is very characteristic of her policy, and which fills
a large place in the various 'Apologies' which several schools of
Essayists have recently given to the world. Moreover, it seems to us
to set forth something which must be maintained if the Established
Church is to endure. Just in the measure in which Church parties feel
themselves possessed by very positive convictions, and inspired by
burning zeal, so the limits of the system grow irksome; while the
strongest parties which have arisen within her communion, those with
the most intense convictions and the most spiritual aims, have been
driven to develope themselves outside her pale.
At this moment the party in the Church which is the most strongly
devoted to the Establishment principle is, theologically, the most
colourless. The most solid argument, as it seems to us, which sustains
the Establishment platform, would lead us to regard its ministers as a
kind of Levitical order--the clerisy, as Coleridge has it--which would
aim at little higher than a civilising, humanizing mission to the
ignorant, the vicious, and the wretched in the land. God forbid that
we should for a moment speak slightingly of such a service, rendered
by such men as are now at the disposal of the State for this most
blessed work. But it is no longer specially clerical work. The world
is busy about it by a thousand agencies, which more than compete with
the clerical; and it is hardly a question whether the world at large
would be prepared to maintain a costly and highly-favoured order of
men to do the work which in these days is the general charge of
society. But the work of the Gospel, of which St. Paul strikes the
key-note in the first chapters of his first Epistle to the
Corinthians, is of a widely different order. The school of which we
have spoken deals chiefly with the diffused light of Christianity
which is abroad in the atmosphere of a Christian state; the preacher
after the Pauline type (and the world cannot spare him yet) unveils
the solar light and fire. The affirmative force, the penetrating,
searching fire of Christianity, has from the first been mainly with
the communities which have been unable to find room within the bosom
of the moderation of the Church of England for their truth and for
their zeal. The moderation paled the one and chilled the other, and
drove them forth into a separation which seemed to them in those days
as bitter and unnatural as the violent disruption of a Christian home,
so strongly did the idea of the family life of a nation possess men's
hearts, so strongly did man's imagination cling to the visible unity
of the Church.
Few who love the truth of the Gospel would, we imagine, be disposed to
question that the higher life of the Church, that which makes its
gospel the power of God unto salvation, was more fully represented in
the early days of King James by men like Dr. Rainolds than by Bancroft
and the party which he and Whitgift represented at the Conference at
Hampton Court; by the Nonconforming clergy rather than by the Court
party in the early days of the Restoration; by the Methodists rather
than by the bishops and clergy of the Georgian Church; by the Free
Churchmen rather than by the residue of the Established clergy of
Scotland in the early days of our Queen. The affirmative side, the
energy of strong belief, strong assertion, strong purpose and
endeavour, has been seen mainly in the Nonconformist communities;
while the Established Churchmen have on the whole cultivated, with a
fair measure of energy and with conspicuous ability, the broad fields
of thought and life which the energy of more enterprising and earnest
communities has won. We claim for our fathers that they represented on
the whole the affirmation of the Gospel; the belief which sets a man's
face like a rock against the tide of worldly temptations and
seductions, which so few churches find strength to stem, while it
nerves his arm to wield effectually that sword of the Spirit which
cuts its way most deeply into the camp of the Devil, which the Lord
came to storm and to destroy. Apology and exposition have been the
main strength of Anglican Church literature and activity. The words
which have been the advanced guards as it were of liberty and
progress; the pointed, pungent, vivid, stirring treatises which have
laid hold most powerfully on the popular heart, and have been the
chief auxiliaries of the Gospel in turning men from darkness to light,
and from the power of Satan unto God, have come forth mainly from the
Nonconformist schools. Not that there has been, or can be, any
monopoly of gifts or functions in a country in which classes and
orders are so happily mixed and forced into association as in England.
The Church has not neglected the Sword of the Spirit, the
Nonconformists have not laid by the implements of culture; but still,
on the whole, taking a broad view of the character and work of the two
communions, we believe that there is substantial justice in the
distinctions which we have laid down.
The culture of the Church of England is a favourite topic with her
apologists. And most justly. On the whole, she has probably been the
most learned, polished, and politic Church in Christendom. We
Nonconformists have no long list of names of the first eminence in the
ranks of scholarship which may compare with the long line of able
scholars and champions of the faith whom the Anglican Church has sent
forth. But then the conditions of life in the Church of England are
precisely those which are most favourable to this special development;
and unfavourable, we think, in no small measure, to the growth and
free activity of yet higher things. Our men in all generations have
had in the main yet higher work on hand than theological scholarship;
and work, we venture to think, still more profoundly important to the
best interests of the community. The exiles in Holland in the early
years of the 17th century produced works of scholarship which may
compare with anything, save such a master-piece as Hooker's, which
emanated from the Anglican divines of their time. Henry Ainsworth was
one of the ablest Biblical scholars in Europe. He was 'living on
ninepence a week and some boiled roots' as a bookseller's porter, when
his master discovered his skill in Hebrew, and put him in the way of
more congenial work. In Moreri's Dictionary full justice is done to
Henry Ainsworth--'the able commentator on the Scriptures;' while he is
carefully distinguished from 'Ainsworth the heresiarch, one of the
chiefs of the Brownists;' nothing being more indubitable than that the
two were the same man. John Robinson, too, was a man of large culture
as well as conspicuous intellectual power. His controversial works
reveal a learning, a wisdom, a breadth of view, a foresight, a
large-hearted charity, joined to the most intense conviction on the
points which made him a separatist, which are rarely to be found in a
great theological champion in any age of the world.
But, after all, these men had higher and harder work on hand than
thinking and writing as scholars, and work which the world could less
easily spare. Those exiles in Holland, by their toil and their
suffering, were nursing and training that spirit which created the
American Republic, and which rules it still. The world probably wanted
that work just then more than the rarest scholarship; though
intellectual power was at a low ebb at that particular crisis in the
Anglican Church. And the world found what it supremely wanted, the
simplest, purest, toughest, noblest band of colonists ever sent forth
from any country. In the rude, rough times which succeeded, the
leaders of the great action which settled on a sure basis for ever the
liberties of our country, were of the Nonconformist Schools. The men
who did such work for England as the conduct of that long and
tremendous struggle to its glorious issue, might well be pardoned if
their culture were of a poorer type than that of their antagonists.
But it is really marvellous how, during the storm of the Civil War,
Nonconformist learning and intellectual ability flourished. Lord Brook
and Peter Sterry, leading spirits among the Independents, were deeply
tinctured with Platonic learning; they drew their large and liberal
ideas from a deeper than an Arminian spring. In John Howe strong
traces of the same Platonic element may be discovered. There seems to
have been a certain native affinity between this young Independency
and the thoughts of the great master of ideal philosophy in the
ancient world. At the time of the Restoration, probably the most
many-sided, variously-accomplished, and masterly man was Richard
Baxter. His position in relation to the Church and Nonconformity
through the most active part of his career, was not unlike the
position which Erasmus held during the Reformation between
Protestantism and Rome. But most certainly, despite his views 'on
National Churches,' it was mainly from the Nonconformist springs that
his life was nourished, and the weight of his influence was thrown
practically into the Nonconformist scale.
But perhaps of all the able men who were busy about things theological
and political, about the time of the Westminster Assembly, there was
not one who thought so freely and wrote so liberally as John Goodwin,
the Independent.[37] Far from feeling himself shut up, as we
Independents hear that we are shut up, to the traditions of the
elders, which were unquestionably strongly Calvinistic, he discerned
and grasped whatever good there might be in the Arminian scheme of
doctrine; while his views on public affairs, on political and
religious liberty, on toleration, on the welfare and progress of
states, were more in the key of modern ideas than anything else which
is to be met with in the literature of those times. A man must have
had a far sight and a brave heart who could write concerning the
Scriptures in those days and in such an atmosphere, 'The true and
proper foundation of the Christian religion is not ink and paper, not
any book or books, not any writing or writings whatsoever, whether
translations or originals, but that substance of matter, those
glorious counsels of God concerning the salvation of the world by
Jesus Christ, which are indeed represented and declared both in the
translations and the originals, but are distinct from both.'
Passing on to the midst of the next century, the Nonconformist
evangelists of the great Methodist revival were busy in other work
than that which occupied the scholars and divines of the not
over-earnest or spiritual Georgian Church. But it was more distinctly
church work; and it lay far nearer to the heart of the true welfare
and progress of the state. The men who established a strong Christian
influence over those classes of the population who in times of
political ferment are truly the dangerous classes, were mainly
Nonconformist. What England owed, socially and politically, to the
leaders and ministers of the great Evangelical revival, when the storm
of the Revolution swept through Europe, has never been calculated,
and never can be. The work of the evangelists among the colliers and
miners, and generally among the poorest of the poor, was a grand
safeguard to us when our turn of revolutionary trial came. The chief
reason why the Revolution in England ran in the main a peaceful and
orderly course, while in France it was convulsive and destructive, is
to be found in the nexus of the classes which the great Evangelical
movement established, and in the gleam of hope which it kindled in the
popular heart.
And it is not a little noteworthy that the party in the Church of
England which is seeking to repeat, though under widely different,
and, as we judge, quite lower forms, the Methodist revival, and is
striving hard, and not unsuccessfully, to bring some Christian
influence (though many would deny its right to the name) to bear on
the vast heathen class in our cities which perplexes and saddens all
churches, is that which bears most uneasily the yoke of Establishment,
and talks enthusiastically of Disestablishment as emancipation. One of
its orators the other day at St. James's Hall, young and enthusiastic,
no doubt, but the meeting cheered him to the echo, thus delivered
himself: 'Nothing is so fatal as this Establishment, and if the
suspension of Mr. Mackonochie should lead to the overturning of that
rooks'-nest, so much the better.' (Tumultuous cheering.)
But it may be said, and with a specious colour of truth, that one of
the chief virtues of the Establishment principle is, that it
comprehends these extreme parties and keeps them under some moderating
control. It seems to us that in the past it was entirely for the good
of England that the Church did not comprehend the Puritan, the
Nonconformist, the Methodist elements. Happily, it was not in the
nature of the Church to comprehend them in any sense. Had she been
capable of retaining them and subjecting them to her moderating hand,
the nation would have lost its ablest leaders, and the Church the most
glowing breath of its life. And the best thing that could happen now
would be that the High Anglicans should be let alone, to work out in
entire freedom their ideas. The State influence lends importance and
power to their movement with one hand, while it maddens them by
limiting and crippling their freedom of action on the other. There is
a spirit working within them which, whether we like it or not, has a
definite meaning and purpose, and is destined to become a power. It
may be trammelled, cramped, crippled by the action of authority, but
it cannot be exorcised or expelled. In the present temper of the
public mind, it has a distinct vocation of its own, which it would be
well for itself and for the world that it should work out freely. The
sooner that it is set perfectly free to try with its own resources
what its method is worth, the better for itself, and the better for
the people whom it dreams that it can lead and save.
We have spoken casually of the Calvinistic and Arminian creeds. The
subject is worthy of some close examination from the point of view of
the present article; inasmuch as it is often urged by the advocates of
the Establishment, as a strong point in its favour, that the leading
Anglican divines of King James and King Charles led the reaction
against Calvinism, and made room for Arminian doctrine and influence
in the Established Church. It is a point which is urged in the able
and temperate article on the Church and Nonconformity which appeared
in the last number of the _Quarterly Review_, which, as well as its
liberal rival, evidently feels that the question is no longer
speculative but practical, and must be dealt with as one of the
leading and most pressing public questions of the day. The tone of
both those articles is most significant and assuring to
Nonconformists. They both recognise most cordially the large service
which the free churches of England have rendered to the cause of
liberty and progress, though they do not, of course, yet see their way
to make the principle of religious freedom supreme in the conduct of
our ecclesiastical affairs. Hear the _Quarterly_:--'The sects of
Nonconformity have been of great service to English progress; it does
not follow from this that it would be a great gain to England if there
were nothing but sects in which its religion could take refuge and
find expression.' (_Quarterly Review_, No. 260, p. 234.) The change of
tone surely is most significant here.
But to return to our immediate subject. King James had no sooner
reached England and tested the adulation, so grateful to his coarse,
vain nature, with which the Anglican prelates were ready to welcome
him, than he discovered that Presbytery agreed with monarchy 'as God
agreed with the devil.' Still he was a strong Calvinist, and held the
Genevan doctrines in common with Whitgift and the leading doctors of
the Anglican Church. He was not without shrewd native wit, and in the
Hampton Court Conference, bitter and even brutal as he was to the
Puritans, his strong common sense rebelled against the policy which
the Bishops would have forced upon him. We owe probably to him that
the Lambeth Articles were not incorporated in the formularies of the
Church. But before the end of his reign he found that Calvinism agreed
with monarchy as ill as Presbytery, and the Church lapsed slowly but
steadily, or rose as some may prefer to call it, into Arminian
doctrine. But the remarkable thing about the matter is that Calvinism
declined and Arminianism rose in favour, just in the measure in which
the clergy lent themselves to be ministers of the Court. As matter of
history, the vaunted reaction against Calvinism was coincident and
consonant with the cry, 'Church and King.' And this opens out an
important truth on which it is worth our while for a moment to dwell.
Mr. Froude has recently indulged, in a wild, vigorous way, in a
glorification of Calvinism, before an audience whose traditional
sympathies, at any rate, must have been strongly on his side. He
suggests a pregnant question: How is it that a system which is so
terribly dishonouring to the goodness and righteousness of God, should
have afforded such an inspiration to some of the very noblest men who
have ever left their trace on the history of mankind? He gives a list
of great names, noble names, among the noblest of our race; and with
regard to most of them, at any rate, the claim or charge of being
strongly under the influence of Augustinian ideas of the Divine
government cannot be denied. And yet there is something horrible in
the picture of the Divine principles and methods of action, which
Calvinism in its pure and naked form presents. It is difficult for us
to contemplate, without shuddering, the ideas of divine and human
things which seem to have been adopted with grim satisfaction by some
of the very strongest and most high-minded men who have ever swayed
the destinies of the world. How are we to account for it?
Surely the solution of the difficulty is to be found in the fact that
the great Calvinists held more vitally to the affirmations than to the
negations of their creed. Its bearing on them and their lives, in an
age of strong swift action, was the thing of vital personal moment;
its bearing on their fellow-men and the universal government of God,
though expressed in terribly clear and logical formularies, held a
very secondary place in their minds. The grand idea, God's
election--man the chosen agent of God, raised up, though all unworthy,
for the setting forth of His counsels, and the execution of His
will--seized and possessed them wholly; and the outside bearing of the
truths, so to speak, appeared but partially to their moral sight. The
world was then a great camp, in which the fiercest martial passions
were raging. Sections of society, as well as nations, were in chronic
and stern antagonism; and it was not so unnatural to regard in those
days as reprobate children of the devil those whom it was almost a
matter of religious duty to afflict and to destroy. A man easily
persuades himself that an enemy is a child of darkness when his sword
will soon be at his throat. Terms have changed; but the language and
thoughts of the French army and the National Guards in Paris about
each other, repeat in substance the relations of Protestant and
Romanist, Englishman and Spaniard, Cavalier and Roundhead, in the
Elizabethan and Caroline days. The thing appeared to them quite
otherwise than to us, who have been studying for ages the Christian
doctrine of the brotherhood of mankind; a doctrine which, to our shame
be it spoken, was first forced on the public notice of peoples by
profane and godless writers who laid the train of the first French
Revolution.
We need only read the language in which Hawkins or Raleigh utter the
thoughts of their hearts about the Spaniards, to comprehend how easy
it was for them to regard themselves as elect instruments for the
overthrow of the devil and his works, in their daring, but
semi-piratical forays into the harbours and the treasure fleets of
Spain. Hawkins, with his cargo of slaves on board, crowded so close
that fever began to rage among his crew, could hardly have comforted
himself so complacently, in the midst of a terrible calm in the
tropics, with the thought that 'God never suffers His elect to
perish,' unless his whole thought had been occupied with what he was
doing against those whom he believed to be ministers of darkness,
while his relations and duties to his hapless fellow-creatures were
dropped out of sight. Calvinism easily inspires men, that is, the
larger sort of men, who are capable of the inspiration, with the sense
of a Divine call to a Divine service, and it makes them sharp as flint
and hard as iron in working out their mission. And these great
Protestants and Puritans in the age of the struggle for life saw,
partly, no doubt, through prejudiced eyes, so much moral foulness in
those with whom they were contending, that reprobation did not seem so
dread a doctrine in their sight as it seems in ours; who sit down
calmly, after the great battle is over, to think out the system in all
its bearings, and to examine its principles in the light of modern
cosmopolitan sympathy and charity. To us much of it seems simply
revolting, and we marvel how it could ever have commended itself as
of God, as it unquestionably did commend itself, to some of the
wisest, noblest, and most merciful of our race.
The Calvinism of the Reformers, as a body, is of course
unquestionable. Even Whitgift, bitterly as he hated, and hard as he
struck the Puritans, shared their profoundest convictions as
theologians, as the Lambeth Articles fully reveal. So long as the
battle with Rome was a life and death struggle, that is, through the
whole reign of Elizabeth, Calvinistic ideas strung the courage and
energy of the chief actors to the keenest tension. When the Church had
won its position, and was settling down into a respectable
institution, one of whose chief functions seemed to be to sustain the
dogma of the divine right of kings, then the Arminian bed was made
ready for it; and most of the chief actors in the next stage of the
drama in which the Church was the main prop of the monarchy, leaned
strongly to the Arminian side. The men, on the other hand, who had to
fight the battle of liberty--liberty of body, liberty of thought,
liberty of spirit--against all the force which the world of authority
could bring to bear against them, were Calvinist to the backbone.
God's elect they held themselves to be, weak, unworthy instruments, by
whom He was yet pleased to manifest His glory, and to accomplish His
will. And this was the backbone of their strength, '_'Not I, but the
grace of God which is in me._'
It may well be questioned whether anything weaker than this sense of a
personal call, a personal inspiration, to which the Calvinist readily
opened his soul, could have borne the conquerors through that
tremendous struggle which assured the liberties of Englishmen forever,
first against the spiritual tyrant at Rome, next against the domestic
tyrant on the throne of their own realm. Perhaps the Puritan struggle
against episcopal and regal tyranny, which brought the Independents to
the front, was the sternest ever fought out in the world. The best
measure of the grandeur of Cromwell's proportions is to be found in
the measure of the men whom he ruled. The English under Elizabeth
proved themselves, in the Narrow Seas, on the Spanish Main, amid
Arctic ice, and all around the world, the most masterful race upon
earth. The spirit had not died out in the Caroline days. The Puritan
party nursed its traditions and cherished its fire, as, among other
significant signs, these words of Pym reveal:--'Blasted may that
tongue be, that in the smallest degree shall derogate from the glory
of those halcyon days which our fathers enjoyed during the government
of that ever-blessed, never-to-be-forgotten, royal Elizabeth.'
The struggle within the bosom of such a nation demanded powers of the
highest and strongest order, and drew them forth. And the man who
could conduct that struggle to a successful issue and rule such a
strong-handed, imperious race as the English of the Commonwealth,
could have found little beyond his strength in any enterprise in any
age of the world; and nothing but that spirit which from the positive
side of their Calvinistic creed entered into Cromwell, and the men of
whom he became the organ and the head, could have borne them through
the tremendous pressure. No 'sweetness and light' of intellectual
culture, no sense of 'natural human power' could have borne John
Robinson's company of pilgrims first to Holland, and then across the
stormy Atlantic, and given them strength to hold together, as they say
of themselves touchingly, 'in a most strict and sacred bond and
covenant of the Lord, of the violation of which we make great
conscience; and by virtue whereof we do hold ourselves strictly tied
to all care for each other's good, and of the whole by every, and so
mutual.'--(Letter of Robinson and Brewster to Sir E. Sandys.) It was
this spirit, which no conformity to an Elizabethan, still less to a
Jacobean church, could have nurtured, which made New England, and
through New England made America.
Calvinism was so profoundly associated through that age with the
advancing cause of the spiritual and political liberties of our
country that the Arminian bias of the dignified clergy of the
Establishment, which began to manifest itself after the settlement of
the Church and the kingdom under King James, is by no means a noble or
beautiful feature in its history. Arminianism in the Church went hand
in hand with worldly compliance, slavish homage to princes, idolatrous
rites, gorgeous ritual, and episcopal tyranny; and it went down with
the Church righteously to ruin under the shock of the men who did
believe themselves called, quickened, and raised up as witnesses, by
the God of righteousness and truth.
We look too little at these doctrinal developments in the light of the
political life of the times which produce them. The connection is a
profound one between schemes of doctrine and political ideas. A point
too little considered is the truth of a scheme of doctrine for its
times. They must be blind indeed who cannot see that with the
Calvinistic Puritans, and not with the Arminian Anglicans, rapidly
tending to the Laudian Church, were stirring through the whole of
that struggle the motive forces of the progress of society.
But the question now arises, and it is the central point of this
discussion of the genius of Nonconformity in its relation to the
progress of society, What is this affirmation of Nonconformity which
has made it in all ages a factor of supreme importance in the culture
and development of mankind? It stands as a witness against the State
organization of Christianity, but that is not its strength. Not what
it stands against, but what it stands for, is the secret of its power.
Briefly, then, it witnesses for the ancient historic and Christian
idea of the Church, as the manifestation and the organ of the Spirit
working freely in individual consciences and hearts. It is
Nonconformity which truly inherits and cherishes the legacy of early
and mediæval Christian society, which the Roman organization of
Christendom did its best to destroy. Throughout the whole of the
Mediæval period the true development of the Church was carried on, not
on the basis of authority, or by the application of accepted doctrines
and methods, but by the original energetic action of individual men
and the disciples whom they might gather round them, who brought new
ideas into the Church, and leavened it with their own independent
life. The antagonism of constituted Church authorities to all the
leaders of new modes of Christian activity and development, is
precisely parallel to the treatment which original men of genius in
all ages have met with at the hand of the constituted authorities of
society. The young monasticism had to fight its way desperately into
the hallowed sphere of Church organization. 'It is the ancient advice
of the Fathers,' says Cassianus, 'advice which endures, that a monk at
any cost must fly bishops and women.' And the bishops repaid the
antipathy with interest. The struggles of the monks and bishops in the
West, in the sixth and seventh centuries, form the most interesting
and pregnant chapter of their ecclesiastical history. The monks had to
fight hard for their independence, and to fight their way into
influence. But no intelligent student of the history of that period,
we imagine, can doubt that the higher life and aim of the Church was
on the whole more fully represented in the irregular than in the
regular line.
How far such a man as St. Bernard was in his day a Nonconformist,
would be an interesting subject to discuss. Champion of orthodoxy as
he was, and maker of Popes, his position was far more like that of the
Puritan in the Anglican Church of King James than at first sight
appears. But the discussion of this question would lead us too far out
of the direct line of our argument. What hard work St. Francis had to
wring recognition for himself and his tattered mendicant company from
Pope Innocent III., great and far-seeing man as he was, is well known
to all students of Mediæval history. And yet St. Francis and holy
poverty for the time saved the Church. Though the mendicant orders
soon grew fearfully corrupt, and made the Reformation doubly
imperative, yet their brief career of purity and power added, it is
not too much to say, two centuries to the life of the Roman system,
and staved off the Ecclesiastical Revolution till the Western nations
were full-grown, and were strong enough to use nobly the freedom which
they might win. The life of the Church has been cherished, and its
influence has been fed in all ages, by men who drew fresh ideas, fresh
inspiration, from the life of the Saviour as set forth in the Divine
Word. And the Mediæval Church had room for them. There was nothing out
of tune with its professed organization in this direct appeal to the
fountain head of truth. It could include its Nonconformists, and find
room and work for them; though it had but a dim eye to distinguish
between its Nonconformists and its heretics, and was prone to harry
the last with fearful brutality,--a brutality which would be blankly
incomprehensible, for they were often far from brutal men who
exercised it, but for the idea which filled the minds of Churchmen,
that heresy was the spawn of hell. When the Catholic Church, like the
Anglican in after ages, was unable to comprehend its Nonconformists,
could only cast out its Luthers, as Anglicanism cast out its Barrowes,
its Robinsons, its Baxters, its Whitfields, it ceased to be Catholic
and became Roman, and all the living energy of the Church, and all its
promise, passed over to the opposite side.
A church like the Anglican, in which its judges of doctrine confess
frankly that really they have nothing to do with Scripture or with
truth in settling Church controversies, but simply with the legal,
and, therefore, we freely allow, the liberal construction of certain
documents settled by the legislative authority of the State centuries
ago, would have been regarded with simple horror by the great Mediæval
Churchmen, on whose limited views of things we somewhat loftily look
down. The belief did then survive in the Church that the Spirit of the
Lord is a free Spirit; and that the Church is constituted, not by
documents, but by the perpetual presence and manifestation of that
Spirit, though it came at last to believe that He dwelt in a shrine so
narrow and foul as the Roman Court. This idea the Anglican Church has
deliberately renounced, while the Nonconformists have upheld it. The
constitution of the Establishment is distinctly not by the Spirit, but
by the letter of legal documents; and those in whom the Spirit stirs
new energies, and moves to new agencies, have no choice but to pass
outside her pale.
The great churchmen of Mediæval Christendom--Benedict, Boniface,
Dunstan, Anselm, Bernard, Francis--would have found themselves not out
of tune with the Independent, John Robinson, when he said to his
pilgrims as he sent them forth, that he
'miserably bewailed the state and condition of the Reformed
Churches who were come to a period in religion, and would
go no further than the instruments of their reformation.
As, for example, the Lutherans, they could not be drawn to
go beyond what Luther saw; for whatever part of God's will
he had further imparted and revealed to Calvin they will
rather die than embrace it. And so also you see the
Calvinists, they stick where he left them--a misery much to
be lamented; for though they were precious shining lights
in their times, yet God had not revealed his whole will to
them; and were they now living, they would be as ready and
willing to embrace further light as that which they had
received. I beseech you to remember it, it is an article of
your Church Covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever
truth shall be made known unto you from the written Word of
God.'... 'I am very confident the Lord hath more truth yet
to break forth out of his holy word.'[38]--_Robinson's
Farewell Address to the Pilgrims._
But we think that these great Churchmen would have found themselves
entirely out of tune with the ablest doctors who should seek to settle
the faith on the basis of legal authority, and whose Church courts
could give no dispensation to the word of the Bible, or the
illumination of the Spirit, to move men to think and speak in the
Church otherwise than it had been determined that they should think
and speak three centuries ago. We hear much of historic Churches. It
is, we believe, Mr. Arnold's term. The writer of the very able and
liberal article in the current number of the _Edinburgh Review_ adopts
the term with high approval, and sustains Mr. Arnold's argument
against us, that by separation we cut ourselves off from history. We
answer that the Church of England made a new thing in history at the
Reformation,--a poor, base image of a Divine idea; while the
Nonconformists maintain and cherish the traditions of history, and are
in full tune with all that has been deepest and strongest in the life
of Christendom, in holding fast this liberty, to watch for, to
entertain, and to reflect, the 'fresh light that is ever breaking
forth from the word of God.' It was the Article of the Church Covenant
of the Pilgrims, it is in our Church Covenant still, and it will
remain in our Church Covenant while Independency endures.
And herein our Church Covenant is at war with the idea which Sir
Roundell Palmer developed briefly, in his able and earnest argument
for establishment in the debate on Mr. Miall's motion. His speech was
probably the ablest which was delivered on his side of the question.
He seemed to think that there was a certain fixity in religious truth,
which offers a strong contrast to the continually progressive
character of scientific truth, and which renders Establishment a more
feasible thing in relation to religion than it would be in relation to
truths belonging to the continually shifting and expanding scientific
sphere. There can be no question, we imagine, that this idea of fixity
possessed the minds of the men who created the Anglican formularies,
and is behind the defence of their integrity which a powerful party in
the Church so strenuously maintains. Some of the ablest and most loyal
of English Churchmen hold firmly this finality doctrine; indeed it is
the only logical justification of the subscription which has hitherto
been the imperative demand of the Church. Lord Bacon's remarks on this
point are interesting and important. He presses the question, 'Why the
civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws
made every three or four years by Parliament assembled, devising
remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief; and contrariwise the
Ecclesiastical Estate should still continue upon the dregs of time,
and receive no attention now for these five and forty years and more?'
With Bacon in his question stand Greenwood, Barrowe, Ainsworth,
Robinson, Jacob, and the long line of Nonconformists; while the
principle of finality has ruled in all ages the policy of the National
Church, and has been decisively and even vehemently expressed at
critical periods of its history. New adjustments of doctrinal belief
establish themselves within the Anglican pale; but it is by doing
violence to the fundamental principle on which the Church is founded,
for it is unquestioned in our ecclesiastical courts that the Articles
of Religion were intended to fix the form of truth to be developed in
the teaching of the Church of England so long as that Church should
endure.
But there is a complete confusion in this notion between the subject
matter of theology and the modes of its manifestation in the forms of
human thought. In the sense in which theology takes its place among
the creations of the human intellect, the highest, the noblest, the
most influential on the culture of mankind, it is subject to movement
and progress like the rest. Because the science of divine things has
been treated systematically as a fixed form of truth, capable of at
any rate approximately complete expression in the propositions which
form the creeds of the Church; because the measures of bygone
centuries are rigidly applied, and all excursion of the reason beyond
their logical pale is treated with stern repression, theology has
fallen from the upper heaven of man's intellectual sphere, and grovels
weakly and painfully in the dust. Theology learns nothing and forgets
nothing, like the Bourbons; and, like the Bourbons, she has fallen out
of the march of the world. There is no province of human thought about
which men so shrug their shoulders as about theology.
We believe that those champions of the Church of England who glory in
their formularies, as containing and maintaining the 'form of sound
words once delivered to the saints,' and who regard them as the
strongest bulwarks of the truth, are glorying in her weakness. She has
followed systematically the policy against which the great Founder of
the empire of modern thought so energetically protested. She suffers
no revision, no readjustment, except by tricks of interpretation which
fill timid men with distress and honest men with shame. And yet
readjustment is imperative. Theology, in the very nature of things,
must progress with the progresses of the world or fall out of its
march. The connection is a profound one, as we have said, between the
secular life of an age and its religious beliefs. The history of the
growth of the Augustinian, the Calvinistic, and the Arminian
theologies is profoundly interesting, when studied in the light of the
vital secular movements of the ages which gave them birth. The present
collapse of the Augustinian theology has its springs distinctly in the
secular sphere. Because the world has been progressing so rapidly,
enlarging its views of all things around it, searching out the secrets
of nature and of man, theology must move on or perish. And, in truth,
in no province of human thought and life is there stronger
fermentation; spirit working out new forms of expression and action,
and working so strongly that the old vessels of the State creed can
contain it no longer; they must be unbound, or it will burst them to
pieces. The belief of this age about God, man's relation to God, God's
work for man, God's way in the government of the world, demands
readjustment quite as much as the biography, the chemistry, the
geology which our fathers handed down to us; and the idea that this
new spirit must be made to let theology alone, that theology is too
sacred, too settled in a fixed form by a Divine hand, to be capable of
progress or expansion, is the nurse of atheism and the mother of
despair.
But it seems to us that a State Churchman, to be entirely consistent,
is bound to maintain this as the fundamental principle of the
constitution of his Church. Room for vital growth and progress cannot
be afforded openly without involving the destruction of the whole
system. The ultimate test is not the word of truth or the mind of the
Spirit, but the construction, more or less liberal, and this is
largely a matter of accident, of formal, and on some points narrowly
dogmatic documents, formulated in the heat of intense controversy
three centuries ago. We recognise fully and cordially rejoice in the
progress of belief which the thinkers and writers of the Anglican
Church have practically secured, in spite of their bonds. There is no
little truth, to our shame be it spoken, in the boast which is often
on their lips, that the progress of theology in our generation is due
far more largely to the labours of Anglican than of Nonconformist
divines.
But the reason of this does not lie in our system; it was founded in
freedom, and to maintain and develop freedom; it lies in our own weak,
timid, and faithless hearts. But the very fact of the large
development of liberal ideas, of an expansive and progressive theology
in the Anglican Church, must surely call not only serious but decisive
attention to the miserably uncertain and insufficient basis on which
it rests. There is nothing broader and firmer for an Anglican of the
liberal school to rest upon than the chance of a liberal
interpretation of stringent articles, by a court the composition of
which is always changing, the most influential member of which is the
State officer, who has risen to the proud pre-eminence of the first
lay subject in the realm by the arts and services of legal and
political life. A latitudinarian chancellor, a Gallio, it may be,
'caring for none of these things'--not but that Gallio was in his day
and with his duties quite right--may pronounce a judgment which fills
one great party in the Church with dismay, and strains the system
nigh to bursting on that side. A pious and conscientious chancellor
may, by another judgment, strain the system as strongly on the other.
But recently the pious and able Lord Hatherley pronounced a judgment,
in which he laid down certain propositions concerning the penal
character of the sufferings of Christ, which led to much searching of
heart, and a great deal of anxious correspondence, before it could be
settled whether with a good conscience the Broad Churchman could
remain in the Church if the dicta of the Voysey judgment were to be
accepted as law. And these swayings on one side or the other are pure
matter of accident. A Dean of the Arches with one bias gives offence
to one party, a Dean with another bias offends equally their
opponents. And Churchmen are kept in constant and painful uncertainty
as to the authoritative decisions which may at any moment be laid down
on matters which they feel to be of supreme, of sacred importance, and
on which they believe that a man, rather than be untrue to his own
convictions, should be prepared to die.
It appears to us that this growing freedom in the Church, the fact of
which we gladly recognise, is revealing, by the new decisions which it
is constantly challenging, the miserably narrow and uncertain basis on
which this boasted culture and liberty rest. What progress the advance
of society compels Church teachers to make is made in violation of the
fundamental pact on which the community rests; and it seems to be
inevitable that sooner or later this fact will become so glaring, that
the attempt to maintain the articles of religion in face of the
opinion of Churchmen will be abandoned in very shame.
So much the better, many broad Churchmen will say. The articles are
the skeleton of a dead theology, it would be well if it were buried
out of sight. Not so, say Sir R. Palmer and the great body of zealous
Churchmen whom he represents so ably. And of the rest--the synagogue
of the Libertines, we might call them--we may surely say that a Church
in which all sorts of opinions are endowed and invested with such
sanction and influence as a State establishment can impart, would
become in time more like a synagogue of Satan than a Church.
We contend, then, strenuously for an _honest_ liberty of thought,
bounded only by the broad limits of Scripture and the teachings of the
Holy Ghost; and we hold that it is only possible to realize it under
our independent conditions. The attempt to square the free movements
of the Christian mind of the community with the legal construction of
ancient Church documents must grow increasingly impracticable, and in
the end hateful to all upright, earnest, truth-loving souls.
But it is not as the minister to the intellectual progress of the
community, though the progress of an age is never secure until it is
keyed by its theology, that the genius of Nonconformity has rendered
the most conspicuous service to the world. Its great mission in all
ages has been to care for the purity and intensity of the spiritual
life of society. Power to live in holier, closer fellowship as
Christians, to make the Church more like what Christ meant it to be,
and through the Church the world, has been the one thing which
Nonconformists have striven to secure by separation, and to cherish
for the help and salvation of mankind. They have done much for the
light of divine truth; they have done more for the life of God in
society. It may be said of them with a truth of which Lucretius little
dreamed, noble dreamer as he was--
'Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt.'
And to estimate this fairly we must turn again to the past, to the
_fons et origo_ of our power.
The English Reformation differed in one most essential point, be it
for good, be it for evil, from all the other Reformations of Europe.
It was distinctly a constitutional movement, carried out from the
commencement to the close by the constituted authorities of the land.
It was not forced on the rulers by a burst of popular enthusiasm,
stirred by some great preacher; nor on the other hand, and on this
point we often do it scant justice, was it forced by the rulers on a
careless or unwilling people. In the first and second Parliaments of
Elizabeth, the House of Commons was far in advance both of the Lords
and of the Queen. It was fairly the movement of the nation acting
through its political organs. Hence it had a character of compromise
here in England which it bore nowhere abroad. Various interests had to
be conciliated, as is inevitable in government under a mixed
constitution like ours. The laggards had to be thought of as well as
the vanguard. Catholics as well as Puritans had to be considered in
every bill that was passed through Parliament; and thus our cumbrous
incoherent Church system, the child of policy and compromise, was
shaped and grew.
This method was the parent of many miserable evils. The monarchical
and aristocratic influence was altogether too potent. Had the House of
Commons under Elizabeth been free to carry out its judgment, a Church
might have grown up pure, noble, beautiful, compared with the
present, and might have spared the nation some of the sorest pains of
Nonconformity. A hint of what might have been possible we see in the
curious account of the Church at Northampton in 1571; and still more
perfectly in the first draft of the Constitution of the Hessian
Church. But then the result would have been gained most probably, and
none knew it better than Elizabeth, at the cost of a tremendous and
premature civil war. The key of Elizabeth's policy, and the secret of
the great work which she accomplished, was that beyond even Cecil she
was a national politician. But on the whole, and in the long run, we
are bound to confess that the evils were not without at any rate some
counterbalancing advantages. It is always thus with all great human
institutions and movements. More or less of evil mingles with the good
in all of them; and even in those in which the evil seems largely to
preponderate, there are always some elements of blessing to be set in
the opposite scale.
Now this feature of our English Reformation has had one remarkable
result. Being essentially a compromise, a concession to parties on
this side and on that; being the fruit, not of the toil and travail of
our most spiritual men, but of the politic judgment, of the average
intelligence and spiritual life of the community, the purer spirits,
the men of the higher order, touched with the diviner fire, were from
the very first driven into opposition. Instead of resting in the
movement and ruling it, they found that it stopped miserably short of
what they believed to be practicable, and were sure was right. The
foremost men of the nation in point of spiritual insight and power
from the first were discontent, and then, as time wore on, malcontent,
through the earlier days of the Puritan struggle; and then, when time
brought no reform, but rather tightening of bonds, they were
constrained to become Separatists. A pure and intense, if not
powerful, Nonconformist party began to organize itself, of whose life
and aims in the early days we could say much did our space allow,
which, sealing its testimony with its tears and its blood, handed down
its sacred legacy to succeeding generations. We owe it to the special
constitution of the Anglican Church, the method of whose growth we
have glanced at, that in all generations since the Reformation there
has been a considerable, earnest, enthusiastic body of Christian men
and women in England devoted to the cause of political and
ecclesiastical reform.
This state of things, the coincidence of political and ecclesiastical
tyranny on the one side, and of political and ecclesiastical
Nonconformity on the other, due to the special organization of the
National Church, has had two notable and benign results. It has
identified the spiritual and the secular progress of society in
England. With us the great political questions fell early into
spiritual hands. The men who sympathized with the 'Millenary
Petition,' were the men who commenced under James the Parliamentary
struggle which was conducted to a triumphant issue under Charles. And
if we contrast our own revolutionary struggles with the French, the
last--dare we say the last?--the ghastliest, and most horrible act of
which is but now complete, we shall estimate the full significance of
the fact which we have noted. Then, and not less important, it has
kept our best and most earnest men constantly in opposition--in the
wilderness as it were, voices crying in the desert--whereby the purest
life of the nation has been kept free from the corruption which never
fails to attend on worldly prosperity and power. Thus it has been able
to preserve its life pure, its light intense, to illumine the darkness
and enlighten the dulness of the whole community.
We hear much of what the culture of the Church has done for
Nonconformity; and we gladly acknowledge it. We hear less of what the
life of Nonconformity has done for the Church. The balance of the
exchange would show the largest debt, the debt of life, due to the
Nonconformist side.
And this great Nonconformist party has been in all generations the
salt of our national life, politically as well as spiritually. The
resistance of the seven Bishops to the despotic tolerating edict of
King James, is often quoted by Church writers as a noble contribution
of the Establishment to the cause of political liberty; and justly,
though the Non-jurors must be set in the opposite scale. But we cannot
but think of the nobler Nonconformists, persecuted and ground down, to
whom the edict would have offered a door of escape from grievous ills,
but who stood with the party of resistance, because they cared more
for the liberty of the nation than for their own welfare, and
preferred to suffer still if the constitutional liberties of England
might thereby be sustained. This despised and persecuted band has at
the critical moment ruled our revolutions, it has kindled our
revivals, it has won and watched our liberties. By the stimulus it has
afforded, and the confidence it has created, it has saved us the
tremendous catastrophes, the cataclysms, through which alone progress
has won its way in less favoured countries. And this is one of the
high elements of our happy estate as a people, which we owe
incidentally--no thanks, however, to the founders of the
Establishment--to the special form which the Reformation assumed in
England, and to the organization of our national Church.
Whether the incidental good has or has not been counterbalanced by the
very grave and palpable evils which our establishment of religion
generated, we have no time here to consider. But a comparison of the
actual state of religion, the vigour and vitality of the religious
life in England at this moment, with that of Germany, Scandinavia,
Holland, and Switzerland,[39] where we should say that the Reformation
had at once freer course than in England and more decisive results,
may suggest the question whether, looking at the matter on a large
scale, and through a long day, the loss is altogether on our side.
Now, it is just this Nonconformist element, this light, this leaven,
as we contend, of our national life for ages, which it is proposed by
an able and influential party to bring into the national
Establishment, making it thereby partaker of the fatness of the olive
tree of the State Church. But if our argument is worth anything, it is
just the missing this through all these ages which has been its
salvation. Bring it in, make it rich and powerful, give it State props
and stays, and you will rob it of all that makes its life so pungent
and stimulating, and will rob the nation thereby of an element which
nothing else can supply, and which it would most surely miss. Endow
it, and write over its temple, 'Ichabod: The Lord has left it, the
glory is gone.'
But why should it be so? Here we approach the core of the controversy
between ourselves and the ablest and most liberal of our opponents,
with a glance at which we shall conclude. It may be said, and is said,
by the broadest of the advocates of Establishment: This spirit has
done its work as Nonconformist, and done it bravely; but in that form
its work is done. The time is come, we are told, when it should leave
the wilderness and enter the pale of society, to work from within,
inside the legal pale, at the building up of the Christian State.
Surely, it is urged, there is something unhealthy in the life of a
community when so much that is purest and most intense is
Nonconformist; the more it can be brought in, the better manifestly
for the State. On this point the real controversy with those of our
opponents whom we most respect and sympathize with, hinges; and it can
only be dealt with by opening a yet deeper question, out of which the
true answer must come. In such a world as this, the purest spirit, the
spirit of Christ, must always to a large extent be Nonconformist. It
was so with the Patriarchs, it was so with the Judges, it was so with
the Prophets, it was so with the Lord, it was so with the Apostles, it
was so with the founders of the great Orders, it was so with all the
chief leaders of Reformations and Revivals, who at critical moments
have brought salvation for a nation or for the world.
And it must be so, at least, until some far off millennial day.
Perfect amalgamation of elements is not possible in a world
constituted like this. Unity of form, a visible body comprehending all
the higher movements of the life of society, is a thing we may dream
of, but shall never see. Just as spirit and flesh keep up an interior
antagonism, and progression is possible only through this inward
conflict, so there must be this interior discord in every human
political society; and its progress will be realized by the action on
its mass, its material, of some finer spirit, which must in some
measure dwell apart, feeding its life from a diviner spring.
And this separation is the reverse of isolation. 'In the world, not of
the world,' is the Christian rule, and it is the very opposite of that
of the ascetic. It is the glory of England that there is the freest
opportunity for the play of the influence of the smaller communities,
which are held together by some special sympathies and beliefs, on the
great community at large. And now at last the nation, by opening the
Universities, has allowed to these communities the fullest advantages
for the culture of their own individual life. It appears to us, to sum
up the argument, that the subjection of the free Christian spirit,
which seeks and strives to gather light and inspiration continually in
fellowships which rest on the word of truth and watch for the guidance
of the Spirit, to the regimen of legal authority, just destroys that
in it which makes it mordant to the lust and the selfishness of the
world around it, that which has been kept in comparative purity
through all these ages by being Nonconformist, and which will remain
Nonconformist, or, at any rate--for when there is no Church there can
be no Nonconformity--will remain free with the freedom which reigns
where the Spirit of the Lord is, while the world endures.
No doubt it is at first sight a fair vision, this inclusion of all
decently orderly and decently Christian ministries in the land within
one pale of order and law: one service, one liturgy, one recognised
ministry, one administration of ordinances, throughout the whole
country,--the whole people taught out of the same books, at the same
time, and by men who have the same claim to their attention, until the
nation, in the visible uniformity of its religious acts and
expressions, presents a fair image of one visible Church. But it is a
mere _mirage_, a mocking image, no more. The kind of spiritual order
which would grow up under such conditions would be deathlike and not
lifelike; and the visible uniformity could be maintained only by the
strong repression of all that makes the life and progress of a Church.
There is, in the intellectual sphere, something very like this in
France. The course of instruction for the youth of France, in all the
institutions which are sustained and directed by the State, is very
elaborately and admirably organized. It used to be said of a recent
Minister of Public Instruction, that it was his glory to reflect that
he could sit in his bureau and read from a manual on his table the
lesson which was being taught at that particular moment in all the
public schools in France. Now, the French Government manuals are
admirable. There has been an immense improvement in our English
schoolbooks since their compilers condescended to look into the
schoolbooks of France. The lesson thus given at a particular hour
throughout the country would probably be in every way excellent--the
best of its kind. But what is the broad result of this monstrous
uniformity, this _par ordre supérieur_, in every department of a
youth's education? It turns out admirable scholars, devoted to
scholarship, and admirable theoretical politicians educated in the
philosophy of citizenship above every nation in the world. But when a
tremendous shock, as at this moment, has broken up their accustomed
order, and thrown each in a measure on his own resources to choose the
wisest course in perilous emergencies, an utter want of the highest
faculty--the faculty of self-guidance in emergencies--is revealed; the
people have been as shepherdless sheep, and for want of the higher
leadership, we may say, France has been lost.
We see, then, all that is fair in aspect in this vision of one happy,
united, and prosperous Church in the country, leaving no room for
Nonconformity; but we see too plainly the disastrous cost at which it
would be purchased. And we turn to gaze upon another vision, fairer,
nobler, more fruitful by far, which would realize our aspiration for
the religious future of our land. The country full of a zealous and
independent ministry of the Gospel, independent in the highest sense,
which includes dependence on Christ; each community working out in
entire freedom its conception of what a Church ought to be and what a
Church ought to do, and under the guidance of one whom it recognises
as Christ's minister, ordained for its service by the manifest unction
of the Spirit: diversities of gifts, diversities of methods,
diversities of operations, diversities of results; but each Christian
company honouring the other and rejoicing in its work, recognising
that each one is adding a contribution to a great whole which can be
built up only of these independent cells of spiritual life; the whole
spiritual body, the Church of England, having no visible form of
unity, but manifesting itself spiritually in the whole social estate,
the commercial, intellectual, and political activity of England; a
fair image, it seems to us, whose grand and solemn aspect could only
be parodied by the most elaborate and comprehensive pattern of a
law-made National Church.
The broad truth about our times from a spiritual point of view is--and
it is a truth on which both Churchmen and Nonconformists may
stand--that we have utterly outgrown the power of Establishment to
help us, if it ever had any; and that the spiritual conversion and
education of the community must be carried on by some higher method,
or abandoned in despair. We are struggling out of the _pupa_ state of
protection, when the ark of our religious estate was slung tenderly by
a net-work of bands and ligatures to the government wall. Slowly, with
sore effort and pain, as is the way with all these supreme acts of
development, we are emerging into a higher, because freer and more
spiritual stage of our religious life as a people. Anxiously and
fearfully those who have been trained under the shadow of Protection
watch the process. We Independents, who have been nursed in a freer
school, look calmly on the pains and struggles: we have faith in the
destiny of the fair, bright-winged creature which is being born.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Wordsworth's 'Excursion.'
[37] He must not be confounded with Thomas Goodwin, also an
Independent, who was a member of the Assembly.
[38] This was not, so to speak, Robinson's private word. It was the
tradition of the Separatists. Greenwood writes from his prison to the
same effect in Elizabeth's days.
[39] The action of Nonconformity in reviving religious life, as in the
Free Church of the Canton de Vaud, is a very instructive chapter of
modern Continental ecclesiastical history.
ART. VI.--_The Dialogues of Plato._ Translated into English, with
Analyses and Introductions, by B. JOWETT, M.A., Master of Balliol
College, Oxford and Regius Professor of Greek. Four vols. 8vo. Oxford,
1871.
PROFESSOR JOWETT has accomplished a great feat in giving to the world
a complete English translation of Plato's 'Dialogues;' for it
certainly is no small matter to have placed Plato in the hands of
all, conveyed in language, divested, as far as possible, of mere
technicalities and scholasticism, and put in a form equally accessible
and alluring to average students of ancient or modern philosophy. And
as this is a real benefit to non-classical readers, so the work itself
is a real translation, in so far as nothing is intentionally omitted.
We have the genuine Platonic dialogues in their integrity, without
foot-note or comment, in the place of the excerpts or extracts which
the nature of Mr. Grote's great work rendered necessary, and of the
occasional and somewhat too frequent omissions of passages in Dr.
Whewell's equally laudable, but, perhaps, not equally successful,
endeavour to present Plato--in part, at least--in a popular form to
the English reader. From the very nature of Plato's philosophy, which
is to a considerable extent tentative and progressive, and which is
constantly working out with variations the same leading ideas, it is
essential to the English student to have the work complete. The
_Republic_, of which an excellent version by Messrs. Davies and
Vaughan has for some time been before the world, is to a
considerable extent a _résumé_ of Plato's earlier views--an epitome of
Platonism, in fact; but a student may know the _Republic_ fairly well,
and yet have a vast deal to learn from such dialogues as the
_Theætetus_, the _Philebus_, the _Parmenides_, the _Timæus_--all very
difficult in their way; or from the more genial _Protagoras_, _Phædo_,
and _Gorgias_; or the more transcendental and imaginative _Phædrus_
and _Symposium_, which last may be called the most fascinating and
brilliant of the dialogues, excepting always the _Republic_ itself.
Some of the minor, easier, and shorter dialogues, which fall within
the range of average school reading--the _Apology_, the _Crito_, the
_Menexenus_, the _Lysis_, the _Charmides_, the _Ion_--hardly touch the
Socratic philosophy in its deeper sense; they are genial sketches of
the idiosyncrasies of the wise old man, or deal with matters distinct
from dialectics properly so called. Very little of Plato proper (so to
speak) will be learnt from these alone. But the subtle reasonings of
Plato, in some of his greater works, are sufficiently difficult to
make even the best Greek scholars glad to have occasional recourse to
studied English versions, on which they can with tolerable confidence
rely.
Mr. Jowett has not given us a general introductory dissertation on
Plato, or Socrates, or on the Sophists, or on the influence of
ῥητορικὴ, or on the progress of Greek philosophy--subjects in
themselves, as he doubtless felt, almost interminable, and already so
well discussed in Mr. Grote's great work, 'Plato and the other
Companions of Socrates,' and his 'History of Greece.' His preface,
comprised in the modest limits of four pages of large print, might
seem intended as a protest against the licence of writing long
introductions, which, after all, are, perhaps, seldom read. We could
have wished, indeed, to see some opinion expressed on a point of not
less interest than importance--how far the Socrates of Plato, who
differs so widely from the Socrates of Aristophanes, partook of the
Platonic _ideality_, and was a typical and imaginary talker, used as a
peg, so to speak, to hang speculative opinions upon, rather than the
real author of all or any of the conversations attributed to him by
his pupil. Mr. Jowett, however, though he has given us no general
introduction, has been liberal, even to diffuseness, in the special
introductions to the separate dialogues. In these, which are drawn
with a masterly hand, and are of great value and interest, he gives us
the object and scope, as well as the condensed and analyzed matter of
each dialogue, so as to form a most useful summary to the right
understanding of it. Such introductions, though they add greatly to
the bulk of the work, are necessary, and all editors and translators
of single dialogues have adopted them, _e.g._, Dr. Thompson in his
_Phædrus_ and _Georgias_, Mr. Cope in his translation of the latter
dialogue, Mr. Campbell in his _Theætetus_, Messrs. Davies and Vaughan
in their translation of the _Republic_, Professor Geddes in his
edition of the _Phædo_, and Stallbaum in all his dialogues. In fact,
the diffuseness and almost desultoriness of some dialogues--the
ποικιλία, or variety of matter introduced--render a clear and
well-arranged analysis of each absolutely necessary for the right
understanding of it. Such a work, with the further advantage of a good
index of Platonic words and topics, by Dr. Alfred Day, had been
published the year before (Bell and Daldy, 1870). By such aids, we
more easily attain the real scope of a dialogue than by the perusal of
the dialogue itself. A casual reader would think that the _Phædrus_
and the _Symposium_ are primarily essays on 'Platonic Love,' or the
_Gorgias_ a satire upon the vanity of the Sophists, and that each of
these ends with a topic totally alien from that with which it
commenced. Thus Plato might appear a desultory essayist rather than a
close thinker. But when a student is forewarned that the _Phædrus_ is,
in fact, a critical and psychological essay on the true principles of
rhetoric, or, rather, of dialectic as distinct from rhetoric; that the
point of the _Gorgias_ (in the words of the Master of Trinity) is 'a
discussion of the ethical principles which conduct to political
well-being,' or, as Mr. Jowett somewhat differently puts it, 'not to
answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the
true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men
with judgment according to the truth;' and that the _Symposium_ is a
sketch of the course of transcendental thought and education in the
science of abstract beauty, which can alone fit man for the
inheritance and enjoyment of a blessed eternity;--when all this is
made perfectly clear to a reader at the outset, he not only sees each
dialogue in quite a new light, but what is far more important, he then
only realizes why it was written, and what it was really designed to
inculcate. Thus much we have said, almost apologetically, for the
addition of so very much introductory matter in four octavo volumes,
already of a bulk sufficient to discourage some of the less
enterprising class of readers.
Viewed as a literary composition, and as emanating from one who has
the highest reputation for Greek scholarship, as well as for
Platonism, we must plainly say that Professor Jowett's work has its
serious demerits as well as its merits. The style is somewhat jaunty
rather than closely faithful to the original. It is throughout far
more of a paraphrase than of a translation, in the accurate sense of
the word. Over the verbal difficulties, the subtle syntactical
niceties, even the grammatical meaning of the more involved sentences,
the author passes very lightly. He shows that unconcern for Greek, as
mere Greek, that ῥᾳστώνη of an interpreter of philosophy
rather than of a philosopher's very words, which we should hardly have
looked for in a professor of the language. The grammarian, in fact, is
so merged in the philosopher that his peculiar province has become
quite secondary. No doubt considerable latitude must be conceded to
those who would win the attention of purely English readers. Between
the Greek and the English idioms, where no compromise can be made, the
preference must be given to the latter; otherwise, the version will
be, or, at least, is liable to be, somewhat stiff, pedantic, awkward,
and wanting in that brilliant and genial spirit of _talk_ that the
original undoubtedly had to a Greek, and which, in truth, gives the
chief fascination to the exquisite and perfect language of Plato.
With all this, and more that might be pleaded in Mr. Jowett's defence
or excuse, there are certainly very many of his renderings which show
a laxity that is neither necessary for the relief of the English
reader nor satisfactory to the accurate Greek scholar. There seem to
us even indications of haste, which, though not, perhaps, to be
wondered at, when the vastness of the whole work is considered, must
certainly be set down as a blemish in the performance of it. We may go
considerably further, and express our fears that actual errors in the
rendering are by no means very infrequent. We say this, not in a
random way, nor from a casual inspection, but after having carefully
gone over _five_ of the dialogues (_Phædo_, _Phædrus_, _Theætetus_,
_Philebus_, _Symposium_) _verbatim_ with Plato and Mr. Jowett's
translation. Some passages we have noted for critical remark, not, of
course, as exhausting all that could be said with truth, but as
examples of the kind of incompleteness, or vagueness, or faultiness of
rendering of which we have taken occasion rather seriously to
complain.
Let us take first the opening of the _Symposium_, of which the
following is a _close_ translation, made with due regard to tenses,
moods, arrangement of words, and other niceties of the original:
'_Apollodorus._ I flatter myself I am pretty well practised
in the matter you are asking about. The fact is, only the
day before yesterday I chanced to be going up to town from
my house at Phalerum, when an acquaintance of mine, who had
caught sight of me from behind, called to me from a
distance, and with a joke on my name as he called,
exclaimed, "_Ho there! you, Apollodorus, of Phalerum, wait
for me!_" So I stopped till he came up. "Why, Apollodorus!"
he said, "I was looking for you just now, as I wanted to
hear a full account about the party Agathon gave to
Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of the company who
were present at the feast,--in a word, to learn what was
said in their speeches about _Love_. Another friend did
indeed essay to give me some account--he had heard it from
Phoenix, the son of Philippus, and he said that you also
knew--but, to confess the truth, he had nothing definite to
tell. Do _you_, therefore, give me information in full; for
none so fit as yourself to report the conversations of your
bosom-friend. But first tell me," he said, "Were you
present yourself at this party, or not?"'
We do not think that the above, though quite a literal version,
strikes on the English ear as in any way harsh. Whether the much
looser rendering of Professor Jowett has a more truly English ring, or
any other advantage, as a set-off to the evident laxity of it, we
leave as an open question for others to decide. Here it is _in
extenso_:--
'I believe that I am prepared with an answer. For the day
before yesterday I was coming from my own home at Phalerum
to the city, and one of my acquaintances who had caught a
sight of the back of me at a distance, in a merry mood
commanded me to halt. "Apollodorus," he cried, "O thou man
of Phalerum, halt!" So I did as I was bid; and then he
said, "I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now,
that I might hear about the discourses in praise of love,
which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others,
at Agathon's supper. Phoenix, the son of Philip, told
another person who told me of them, and he said that you
knew; but he was himself very indistinct, and I wish that
you would give me an account of them. Who but you should be
the reporter of the words of your friend? And first tell
me," he said, "were you present at this meeting?"'
It might, perhaps, seem to savour of pedantry, to remark, that the
nice distinctions between the aorists διαπυθέσθαι and διήγησαι and the
imperfect διηγεῖτο, are needlessly slurred over; but the clause παίζων
ἅμα τῇ κλήσει must mean something more than 'in merry mood.' We do not
know precisely what the joke was; but probably φαληρὸς or φαλαρὸς was
applied to one who had a bare patch on his head, a white whisker
perhaps, or some such facial peculiarity.
Let this, however, pass. We admit there is no serious error here, but
the passage will fairly well illustrate the kind of paraphrastic
version Professor Jowett has generally adopted,--we do not say
wrongly, for we repeat that it is quite a matter of taste and
judgment; and neither of these qualities in so experienced a scholar
is it our desire to impugn. His object was to give the _matter_ of
Plato, certainly not to compose 'a crib' for young students. But,
whatever the motive was, we are rather afraid that this slipshod way
of translating, and of inverting or perverting the order of the Greek
words, not unfrequently borders closely on inaccuracy. For instance,
and not to go further than the first chapter of this same _Symposium_
(p. 173, A.), Apollodorus says, in his impulsive way, that he has kept
close company with Socrates for something less than three years;
'Before that, I used to run from one to another without any fixed
object; and though I persuaded myself I was doing something, I was the
most miserable of men; aye, as miserable as you (Glaucon) are, in
thinking you ought to do anything rather than study philosophy.'
The point of the passage is the hit at his friend as one of the
χρηματιστικοὶ (not 'traders,' but) those absorbed in
money-making, and the eulogy of his own novitiate in philosophy. In
Mr. Jowett's version the passage stands thus: 'I used to be running
about the world, thinking that I was doing something, and would have
done anything rather than be a philosopher; I was almost as miserable
as you are now.' A little further down (173, D.) he appears to us to
miss the true sense, or, at least, to misrepresent it. The friend
(ἕταιρος) says to Apollodorus, 'How ever you came to be
called by this name, "The Excitable," I know not; for in your
conversations you are always the same; you are savage at yourself and
everybody else except Socrates.'
An impulsive man does things by fits and starts, and does not, like
Apollodorus, in this matter at least, follow a consistent course. We
doubt if the right meaning is conveyed by the following: 'True in this
to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you
acquired, of Apollodorus the madman, for your humour is always to be
out of humour with yourself and with everybody except Socrates.'
One more instance of what seems a very slovenly rendering, we will add
from _Symp._, p. 179, E. In this passage every clause of the original
seems, for some reason inexplicable to us, to be disarranged, and the
whole to be hashed up, as it were, into a new hodge-podge:--
'Far other was the reward of the true love of Achilles
towards his lover Patroclus--his lover and not his love
(the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish
error into which Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was
surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the
other heroes; and he was much younger, as Homer informs us,
and he had no beard). And greatly as the gods honour the
virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the
beloved to the lover is more admired, and valued, and
rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine
and more worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware,
for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid
death, and return home, and live to a good old age, if he
abstained from slaying Hector. Nevertheless, he gave his
life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only on
his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore the gods
honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the
Islands of the Blest.'
What Plato really says, with all the logical accuracy of carefully
balanced sentences, is as follows:--
'Far different was the honour they paid to Achilles, the
son of Thetis, in sending him to the Islands of the Blest,
because when he knew from his mother that he was destined
to die on the field if he slew Hector, but if he did not,
to return home and die old, he had the courage to make the
nobler choice,--to take the part of his lover Patroclus and
avenge his death, and so not only to die for him, but to do
more, to die after him (_i.e._, when he could no longer
help him). _That_ was the reason why the gods held him in
such extraordinary regard, and paid him such special
honour, viz., because he held his lover in such high
esteem. Æschylus, by the way, talks absurdly in saying that
it was Achilles who was the lover of Patroclus. For
Achilles was much better looking, not only than Patroclus,
but than all the heroes without exception; and besides
that, beardless, and so greatly his junior, as Homer
affirms. But, be that as it may, it is a truth that the
gods do hold in special honour this chivalrous spirit when
it is shown in attachment to another; albeit they feel more
regard and admiration, and have more disposition to confer
benefits, when the favourite shows affection for his lover,
than when the lover does so towards his favourite; for the
lover has more of the divine in him than the favourite,
since he is inspired by them. For these reasons also they
honoured Achilles more than Alcestis, by sending him to the
Isles of the Blest.'
A comparison of these two versions will show how widely--we had nearly
said, how recklessly--the Greek Professor departs from the letter of
his author. A conspicuous example of this occurs also at p. 194, E.,
where about one hundred Greek words are expressed in less than seventy
of English; whereas the differences of idiom require, as a rule, in
really accurate translation from Greek, the use of, at the very least,
one-third more English words. The difficulty to us is to see wherein
lies the gain on the side of the loose paraphrase--unless, perhaps, in
brevity, _i.e._, in giving something less than Plato gives. Even as a
matter of accuracy, we might object to the rendering of τὴν ἀρετὴν τὴν
περὶ τὸν ἔρωτα, 'the virtue of love.' It means evidently, 'bravery
shown in the cause of love,' which surely is a very different thing.
So, too, in p. 183, A., δουλείας δουλεύειν οἵας οὐδ' ἂν δοῦλος οὐδεὶς,
is not 'to be a servant of servants,' but 'to perform services such as
no menial would.' In p. 186, E., ἡ ἰατρικὴ πᾶσα διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου
κυβερνᾶται, 'it is by the influence of love (_i.e._, a knowledge of
the natural loves and desires) that the whole art of the physicians is
regulated,' Mr. Jowett wrongly refers τοῦ θεοῦ to Æsculapius, whereas
Ἔρως is clearly meant. Just below (p. 187, B.), ὁ ῥυθμὸς ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος
καὶ βραδέος γέγονε, is not 'rhythm is composed of elements short and
long'--a proposition hardly intelligible--but 'time (in music) is made
up of quick and slow,' _i.e._, when two instruments either slacken or
quicken their pace so as to harmonize with each other and keep true
time. And in p. 205, D., τὸ μὲν κεφάλαιόν ἐστι πᾶσα ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν
ἐπιθυμία καὶ τοῦ εὐδαιμονεῖν, ὁ μέγιστός τε καὶ δολερὸς ἔρως παντὶ, is
not, 'You may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is
due to the great and subtile power of love,' but 'Love is, in its most
general sense, all that desire which men feel for good things and for
happiness--that greatest of all loves, which every man finds so
deceptive.' The meaning is, that no form of love is so generally
deceptive and disappointing as the desire to be happy. Again, in p.
206, D., is a passage very badly rendered. All the delicate and
accurate points in the imagery are missed, and the coyness of an
animal not in a state of desire, compared with the free and ecstatic
surrender of itself to the favourite when it is so disposed, so
exquisitely expressed by the Platonic words, is not expressed at all,
or in phrases neither appropriate nor significant. The sense, in fact,
is very superficially given. The philosopher is speaking of mental,
not of bodily τόκος, and means to say that when an idea has been
conceived, the author of it keeps it to himself till he can find a
congenial person (the καλὸς, and not the αἰσχρὸς) who will help him to
bring it into the world. The same notion exactly occurs in _Theætet._,
p. 150, and is repeated more explicitly shortly below, p. 209, B.,
though even that passage is very inaccurately rendered:--
'And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in
him, and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity
desires to beget and generate. And he wanders about seeking
beauty, that he may beget offspring--for in deformity he
will beget nothing--and embraces the beautiful rather than
the deformed; and when he finds a fair, and noble, and
well-nurtured soul, and there is a union of the two in one
person, he gladly embraces him, and to such an one he is
full of fair speech about virtue, and the nature and
pursuits of a good man.'
In this version the words, 'and there is a union of the two in one
person,' are hardly intelligible. But in a correct rendering, as
follows, their meaning is at once apparent:--
'When, again, one of these (viz., whose aspirations are for
mental rather than for bodily offspring) has been pregnant
with some great idea from early youth--as may be expected
in one possessing a god-like nature--and when at length,
the proper age having arrived, he first feels a desire to
bring forth and give it birth, then he, too, I take it,
goes about looking for the beautiful, on which (_i.e._, in
contact with which) he may generate; for on the unsightly
he will never be able to do so. Accordingly, he not only
likes to keep company (ἀσπάζεται) with the persons (bodies)
which are comely rather than with those which are ugly,
as being in a condition of pregnancy, but, whenever he
falls in with a soul which is beautiful, noble, and apt
to learn, then he does heartily welcome the union of the
two (viz., the handsome body combined with the beautiful
soul); and in his converse with such a man as this, he at
once finds himself at no loss for words about virtue, and
the duties that a good man ought to engage in, and his
pursuits.'
Of course, all this is said in respect of that philosophic and
unsensual παιδεραστία which is a favourite fiction with Plato. A
well-disposed youth, who has some idea or theory to communicate, is
supposed to keep it to himself till he meets with some older friend,
whose mental qualities, as well as bodily appearance, inspire him with
affection and confidence. The result is the τόκος ἐν καλῷ, the
bringing out the idea or eliciting and giving tangible form to it, by
the aid, the sympathy, and the co-operation of the good-looking and
congenial friend.
A little below (p. 210, D.), an erroneous rendering goes far to make
nonsense of a very grand and transcendental passage--one of the first
passages, probably, in all Plato. The philosopher says, that a youth
should be trained gradually in the science of beauty, rising ever
higher and higher in the objects of his admiration, 'that by looking
to the beautiful, now wide in its scope (πολὺ ἤδη), he may no longer
by a menial service (δουλεύων ὥσπερ οἰκέτης) to the beauty in some
one--that is, being content to admire the comeliness of a stripling,
or of some particular person, or institution--became a feeble and
trifling character, but, betaking himself to the vast ocean of beauty,
and contemplating it, may give birth to many fine and stately
discourses and sentiments on the boundless field of philosophy.'
The confusion of Mr. Jowett's rendering here appears to us
extraordinary. 'Being not like a servant in love with the beauty of
one youth, or man, or institution, himself a slave, mean and
calculating, but looking at the abundance of beauty, and drawing
towards the sea of beauty, and creating and beholding(!) many fair and
noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom.'
We are compelled to ask, in all earnestness, Would such construing as
this be tolerated from a boy of the sixth form in any public school in
the kingdom? Our suspicions are aroused, that the Oxford Greek
Professor has admitted aid from less competent hands, and, in a too
generous confidence, has failed to look closely over the contributions
which he invited and received. Plato, we cannot doubt, in the above
passage, has been expounding his own aspirations for leaving behind
him what he elsewhere calls 'offspring of the mind,'--viz., immortal
records of his own genius in the composition of his Dialogues. He goes
on to speak of the ultimate attainment of that highest καλὸν, the
knowledge of abstract science, or rather of science, ἐπιστήμη, in the
abstract; and in language evidently borrowed from the economy of the
Eleusinian mysteries, he proceeds to ask what must be the happiness of
those who, as the result of a right discipline on earth, attain
hereafter to the enjoyment of the τὸ θεῖον μονοεῖδες, the Beatific
Vision of God, or rather (if we might say) of 'Godness,' unmixed with
human frailties and imperfections. The passage itself reads almost
like one inspired; and it is very remarkable how exalted and spiritual
an idea of the Deity Plato had realized. He seems to transcend the
_anthropomorphic_ doings and sayings attributed to the Jehovah of the
Old Testament. In rendering such a passage, Mr. Jowett should have
devoted especial pains to attain the closest accuracy possible, for
every word is a jewel. Yet he wrongfully renders τὰ καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα,
'fair actions,' and τὰ καλὰ μαθήματα, 'fair notions,' (p. 211, C.),
whereas 'institutions' (laws, &c.), and 'lessons,' or 'instructions,'
are really meant; and the important words, ἐκεῖνο ᾧ δεῖ θεωμένου,
'contemplating that beauty by and with the proper faculty, _i.e._, νῷ,
with mind, not with mere eyes,' he omits, apparently because ὁρῶντι ᾧ
ὁρατὸν τὸ καλὸν occurs a little further on.
We have devoted some space to the examination of the _Symposium_,
because we have found in it, perhaps more than elsewhere, indications
of hasty and superficial rendering. Yet Mr. Jowett himself says, in
his introduction, 'Of all the works of Plato, the _Symposium_ is the
most perfect in form,--more than any other Platonic dialogue, it is
Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty "as of a statue."'
Special care, therefore, should have been taken in presenting it
accurately to the English reader. Turn we now to the _Phædo_,--that
remarkable essay, which has exercised more influence than some are
willing to suppose on all subsequent theology, and which, though of
little weight as an argument in _proof_ of the immortality of the
soul, is of such special interest as standing alone among the writings
of the age in advocating anything approaching to the Christian idea of
a good man's hopes and prospects of a happy existence hereafter. For
even Aristotle, it is well known, in a professed treatise on the laws
and ends that influence men's action (the 'Ethics'), in no case
appeals to moral responsibility, obedience to Divine commands, or the
hopes of a happy eternity. He does not seem to rise above the
conception of the half-conscious Homeric ghost or εἴδωλον wandering
disconsolate in the shades below. And even of this state of existence
he speaks doubtfully (Eth. i. ch. x.) In this treatise, the _Phædo_,
we may say at once, and with pleasure, Mr. Jowett has given us a
tolerably close, as well as a fairly accurate rendering throughout. It
is hard indeed to believe that the two dialogues can have been
translated by the same hand. Let us cite, as a good example, the
following extract (p. 66, B.):--
'And when they consider all this, must not true
philosophers make a reflection, of which they will speak to
one another in such words as these: We have found, they
will say, a path of speculation which seems to bring us and
the argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the
body, and while the soul is mingled with this mass of evil,
our desire will not be satisfied, and our desire is of the
truth? For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by
reason of the mere requirement of food; and also is liable
to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search
after truth, and by filling us as full of loves, and lusts,
and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly,
prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a
thought. For whence come wars, and fightings, and
factions--whence, but from the lusts of the body? For wars
are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be
acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and
in consequence of all these things, the time which ought to
be given to philosophy is lost. Moreover, if there is time,
and an inclination towards philosophy, yet the body
introduces a turmoil, and confusion, and fears into the
course of speculation, and hinders us from seeing the
truth; and all experience shows that if we would have pure
knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body, and the
soul in herself must behold all things in themselves; then,
I suppose, that we shall attain that which we desire, and
of which we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom: not
while we live, but after death, as the argument shows; for
if, while in company with the body, the soul cannot have
pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow--either
knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all,
after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be
in herself alone and without the body.'
There is not a word we could wish altered in the above, except,
indeed, that 'a path of speculation which seems to bring us _and the
argument_ to the conclusion,' should rather have been, 'a kind of path
which carries us on, _with reason for our guide_ (μετὰ τοῦ λόγου), in
the speculation.' A little below (67, B.), μὴ καθαρῷ καθαροῦ
ἐφάπτεσθαι, is not exactly, 'no impure thing is allowed to approach
the pure'--a version that savours too much of the language of
Christian theology--but, 'to realize the pure with that faculty which
is not itself pure,' _i.e._, with νοῦς not entirely dissociated from
σῶμα. The abstract, he says, cannot be realized by the intellect while
bound up with the concrete. In p. 80, B., τὸ νοητὸν and τὸ ἀνόητον are
not 'the intelligible and the unintelligible;' nor, in p. 81, D., is
τὸ ὁρατὸν, 'sight.' Everyone knows that τὰ αἰσθητὰ, 'the sensuous,' or
things which are the objects of sense, are opposed to τὰ νοητὰ, those
which are abstract, and can be realized only by the mind; and a soul,
or ghost, is said μετέχειν τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, not as 'cloyed with sight,' but
as 'having yet something of the visible,' or concrete, _i.e._, some
lingering remnants of _body_, which render it visible.
The passage in p. 82, E., is rather difficult, and has been
misunderstood by others. Mr. Jowett's rendering is, 'the soul is only
able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her
own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance; and
philosophy, seeing the horrible nature of her confinement, and that
the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity,'
&c. We think that τοῦ εἱργμοῦ ἡ δεινότης means, 'the strong tie, or
hold, that the prison--_i.e._, the body--has on the soul;' and that
ὅτι δι' ἐπιθυμίας ἐστὶ means, 'that it, the prison, is actually
_liked_.' Thus, says Plato, attached as the soul is to the allurements
and pleasures of the body, the latter 'helps the captive to remain in
captivity.' Thus, in Æsch., Prom. v. 39:
Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινὸν ἥ θ' ὁμιλία,
and elsewhere, δεινὸν, 'a serious matter,' is opposed to φαῦλον, what
is trifling and unimportant.
On the whole, this version of the _Phædo_ is well and carefully
executed. As a treatise, it is of the highest interest, if only from
the firm belief it everywhere shows in the immortality of the soul--a
belief which is nothing short of a real faith, and which seems almost
to _labour_ at demonstration by varied and often very subtle
arguments, as if the writer was half conscious, all the while, that
demonstration in such a matter is quite beyond the province either of
logic or physics. But 'dialectics' were thought equal to any
difficulty. Says Cebes (p. 72, E.), 'Yes, I entirely think so; we are
not walking in a vain imagination; but I am confident in the belief
that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that _the living
spring from the dead_; and that the souls of the dead are in
existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the
evil.' In this remarkable passage we recognise the same sublime faith
which gave birth to the ecstatic exclamation, 'I _know_ that my
Redeemer liveth,' and also the germs of the doctrine of a Resurrection
in τὸ ἀναβιώσκεσθαι τοὺς τεθνηκότας. No pagan writer before Plato had
attained to such exalted ideas of the destiny of a good man, _to be
with God_ in the life hereafter. He is full of hope, Socrates says (p.
63, B.), that he shall meet in the other world the wise and the good
who have departed hence before him, and still more sure that he shall
go to those blessed beings whom (with his usual acquiescence in the
popular mythology) he calls ἀγαθοὶ δεσπόται. The doctrine of
Resurrection is not really distinct from that of Metempsychosis, both
being in fact held by Orphic or Pythagorean teachers (ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος,
p. 70, C.), as was that of a final judgment, often insisted on by
Plato, as by Pindar and Æschylus before him. The fixed notion with the
ancient physicists was, that _soul_ (ψυχὴ, or vitality) was air
(πνεῦμα, _spiritus_, _animus_, ἄνεμος),--for all turn upon this
notion. When a person died, his last gasp was supposed to be the vital
air or soul leaving the body, and departing into its kindred and
eternal ether. The air, in fact, was thought to be full of souls; and
each nascent form, whether of man or animal, in drawing its first
breath, might inhale _a life_, _i.e._, the actual ψυχὴ that had
animated some former body. Hence arose the notion of cycles of
existence, of more or less duration, and of triple lives of probation
on earth (Pind. ol. ii. 68). This doctrine of a return to earth after
some period of residence in Hades is plainly affirmed, _Phæd._, p.
107, E., and 113, A., and _Phædr._, p. 249. One of the penalties of a
misspent life was thought to be a detention on earth in an inferior
and grovelling state of existence. 'If we tell the wicked' (says
Socrates in _Theætetus_, p. 177, A.) 'that if they do not get rid of
that cleverness of theirs, that place which is pure and free from evil
will never receive them after they are dead, but that here on earth
they will have to pass an existence like to themselves--bad
associating with bad; all this they will hear as the language of fools
addressed to men of cunning and genius.'
The oft-expressed fear of the loss, destruction, or dissipation of the
soul after death, lest, as Cebes says (_Phæd._, p. 70, A.), 'the
moment it leaves the body it should be dispersed and fly away like a
puff of wind or smoke, and be nowhere,' arose from the philosophical
value attached to the soul as the organ and instrument, or perhaps the
seat, of true φρόνησις, intellectuality, and comprehension of things
abstract and divine. This faculty the thinkers of this school regarded
as impeded and retarded by the union with the body. Of nervous force
and brain-power as the real source of intelligence, they had no idea.
In this respect, modern science is even more materialistic than
ancient philosophy. 'If,' says Socrates (p. 107, B.), 'the soul is
really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect
of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the
danger of neglecting her, from this point of view, does indeed appear
to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would
have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily
quit not only of their body, but of their own evil, together with
their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal,
there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of
the highest virtue and wisdom (ὡς βελτίστην καὶ φρονιμωτάτην
γενέσθαι).' Life, then, according to Plato, should be a constant
process of assimilation to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, _Theæt._, p. 176, B.), a
discipline and a learning how to die (_Phæd._, p. 67, D.), because God
is the type and fount as it were of all justice, wisdom, and truth.
'The release from evil,' ἀποφυγὴ κακῶν, was a favourite topic with
Plato, whose mind had received a strongly cynical impression from the
prevalent selfishness and injustice of the Athenians, and especially
from the crowning act of fanatical injustice, as he considered it, in
putting Socrates to death. That, in his view, was simply to extinguish
truth, to banish justice, to ignore intellectuality, reason, and
philosophy as the guides of life. His speculations on the _origin_ of
evil, and the permission of its existence on earth, are very
interesting. In the grand passage (_Theætet._, p. 176, A.), he thinks
that its existence, as a correlative of good, is a necessary law,
_i.e._, there would be no such thing as _good_ if it were not in
contrast with what is bad; just as we can conceive of cold only by the
opposite quality of heat, or death by the contrasted state of life.
But Plato had no idea of an evil spirit--the Semitic doctrine of a
Satan--as the personal author of evil. In _Republ._, ii. p. 379, C.,
he says that God is the author only of good; but as there is more of
evil in the world than of good, God is not the cause of all things
that happen to man; 'but of evil we must look for _some other causes'_
(ἄλλ' ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸν θεόν). The Aryan mind did
not realize the personality of an Evil Being. 'The Aryan nations had
no devil' ('Chips from a German Workshop,' ii., p. 235). Of penal
abodes in the other world, however, Socrates had an idea; in truth,
the doctrine of a purgatory (δικαιωτήριον, _Phædr._, p. 249, A.; τὸ
τῆς τίσεως τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, _Gorg._, p. 523, B.), as well as
of a hell, is distinctly Platonic. Into the one the ἰάσιμοι, into the
other the ἀνίατοι, the curable and the incurable sinners respectively
go. (_Gorg._, p. 526, B.) So _Phædo_, p. 113, D.:--
'When the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of
each severally conveys them, first of all, they have
sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and
piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither
well nor ill go to the river Acheron, and mount such
conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the
lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil
deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have
done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards
of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those
who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of
their crimes--who have committed many and terrible deeds of
sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like--such are
hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and
_they never come out_.' (Jowett, p. 464.)
The whole of this theory is developed in detail in the tenth book of
the _Republic_.
Thinkers will not be deterred from asking themselves, with all
solemnity and in all love of truth, How far is this doctrine of a hell
really a revealed truth, or a Platonic speculation, or both? If it is
both one and the other, either Plato anticipated Christian Revelation,
or Revelation confirmed Plato. Plato, without doubt, did not _invent_
a doctrine which was familiar to the Semitic theology long before him.
Still, it may be true that the Platonic theories are totally
independent of Jewish traditions, and that the belief in a penal state
of existence after death (so clearly developed in the well-known
passage of Virgil, _Æn._, vi. 735, _seq._), like that of a last
Judgment, had its origin rather in the speculation of mystics, and
passed into the popular theology of Christian teachers. The doctrine
of retribution for sin (τίσις) may be clearly traced to the
Pythagorean dogma δράσαντι παθεῖν, so often insisted upon by
Æschylus,--'the doer must suffer.' It was manifest to all, that such
suffering was no rule upon earth, since many villains escaped
scot-free; and therefore a filling up of the measure hereafter was
thought a necessary condition for the sinner. The beneficence of
Christianity consisted primarily in this, that it held out a hope that
such a debt of suffering could be paid vicariously; whereas the only
hope of release held out by Plato (p. 114, A.) was the forgiveness of
the persons who had been wronged on earth. This ancient idea of a
stern law of reciprocity, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'
is distinctly attributed by Aristotle, who calls it τὸ ἀντιπεπονθὸς,
to Pythagoras, Eth. N. V. ch. 8. Be this as it may, it is a very
interesting fact that Plato, the first writer of pagan antiquity who
describes a bright, supernal heaven, the abode of gods and blessed men
who hold converse with them, and a dismal, infernal abode of fire
(_Phædo_, p. 110-113,) derives all his imagery in describing the
latter from the effects of volcanic outbreaks, to which he even
definitely compares it (p. 111, D.) His description of heaven, which
in the _Phædrus_ (p. 247, C.) he places far above the sky, the
ὑπερουράνιος τόπος, with some reference to the Hesiodic doctrine of a
supernal firmament or floor, in the _Phædo_ is a singular compound of
the Homeric Olympus and the Elysium and Isles of the Blest in the
legends of the earlier poets. Those legends placed Elysium below, and
the Isles of the Blest _on_ the earth. Plato's heaven is on the earth
indeed, but on a part of it elevated far above the Mediterranean
basin, where, he says, men live in a comparatively dim and misty
atmosphere. His account suggests the idea that he had heard some
tradition of the healthy and prosperous life of the natives on the
sunny slopes of the giant Himalaya mountains. But Plato's heaven is
also, to a considerable extent, the heaven of the Revelation. Both are
described in very materialistic terms. To this day, the popular notion
of heaven is undoubtedly associated with saints in white garments,
crowns and thrones of gold and gems, music, brightness, and eternal
hallelujahs. One little coincidence between the Platonic and the
Apocalyptic account is too remarkable to be omitted. In Plato (p. 110,
D.) we are told that, besides silver and gold, heaven is spangled with
gems of which earthly gems are but fragments, σάρδια τε καὶ ἰάσπιδας
καὶ σμαράγδους. In the fourth chapter of the Revelation (ver. 3) we
read, ἰδοὺ θρόνος ἔκειτο ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καθήμενος·
καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἦν ὅμοιος ὁράσει λίθῳ ἰάσπιδι καὶ σαρδίνῳ (al.
σαρδίῳ)· καὶ ἶρις κυκλόθεν τοῦ θρόνου ὅμοιος ὁράσει σμαραγδίνῳ.
Scarcely less remarkable is the coincidence of the _four rivers_ that
surround the abode of shades in the under world (_Phædo_, p. 112, E.),
and the four rivers that encompassed the 'Garden of Eden' (Genesis ii.
10-14). As for the river Acheron and the Acherusian lake, not only
does the word contain, like _Achelöus_, the root _aq_, water, but the
involved notion of ἄχος, 'grief,' suggested its fitness as
an infernal river, not less than the Κώκυτος, named from
groans. The disappearance of a river in a chasm or 'swallow,' like the
Styx in Arcadia and the Erasinus in Argolis, also gave credibility to
the existence of infernal rivers, as much as volcanic ebullitions
seemed to be proofs of subterranean fire lakes. But it is rather
curious that a geographical identity in name should exist between the
Acherusian lake and river in Thesprotia (Thucyd., i. 46), and the
semi-mythical lake and river in the above passages of the _Phædo_. The
tendency to localize adits to the regions below was very strong; so
the lake Avernus, and the promontory of Tænarus, and the καταῤῥάκτης ὀδὸς
at Colonus (Soph. Œd. Col. 1590) were all regarded with awe as places
giving direct communication with the shades below.
The simple but very touching narrative of the death of Socrates at the
conclusion of the dialogue, sets forth in golden words the calm
resignation, the perfect faith and happiness of the death of a truly
good man. The brevity and want of detail in the last scene is very
remarkable. Mr. Jowett gives it thus:--
'Socrates alone retained his calmness. What is this strange
outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that
they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a
man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience.
When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our
tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs
began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to
the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and
then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he
pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel, and
he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards,
and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them
himself, and said, When the poison reaches the heart, that
will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the
groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered
himself up, and said (they were his last words)--he said,
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay
the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there
anything else? There was no answer to this question: but in
a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants
uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes
and mouth.'
We will make bold to observe on this celebrated passage, that it bears
the impress of a dramatic scene rather than of a history. That Plato
himself was not present as an eye-witness is expressly told us at the
beginning of the dialogue (p. 59, B.) The narrative, to say nothing of
the improbability of the execution of a distinguished criminal taking
place before a company of friends at a social meeting, seems to us
framed in ignorance of the medical nature of either narcotic or
alkaloid poisons, and to have been compiled to suit the popular
notions of the effects of κώνειον (whether the word means 'hemlock' or
some other compound drug). The idea was, as is clear from the verse in
the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes--
εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπήγνυσι τἀντικνήμια,--
that death by this poison was caused by a gradual _freezing up_, or
suspension of vital power, beginning at the lower extremities, and
creeping up to the heart. Whether a vigorous old man would die in this
easy, gradual, and painless way by any known poison, is a medical
question we should like to see answered. It may be observed, too, that
if the poison were a narcotic, like laudanum, the 'walking about' was
precisely the wrong course to take. _That_ is the method specially
adopted to prevent and counteract the numbness caused by an overdose
of morphia or laudanum. That Socrates was really poisoned, there can
be no doubt; but the deed was probably done, as we think, in the
darkness of a prison, and the Platonic scene was invented to give a
vivid picture of the grand old man's calmness and dignity to the last.
Be this as it may, it may be fairly assumed that the deep injustice of
the Athenian republic in thus removing from a scene of usefulness, and
of harmless, if somewhat unpopular banter, this great teacher, rankled
very deeply in the heart of Plato. It is the real source of that most
favourite of all topics, that theme on which all his disquisitions on
moral worth turn--ἀδικία, or injustice. This may be called the
key-note of the _Republic_, as it is, in fact, of the _Gorgias_ and
the _Protagoras_, not to mention the very numerous passages in other
dialogues. Plato is ever fond of putting in the mouth either of
Socrates or his friends passages which he could hardly have uttered,
for they have a clear reference to the want of success in his
'Apologia' at the trial, through the non-use of clap-trap, δημηγορία,
and ῥητορική. (See _Gorgias_, p. 486, A.; _Theætet._, p. 172, C., 174,
C.) Modern writers on morals or casuistry do not, directly, at least,
take _injustice_ as the basis of all their teaching, even though, in a
sense, all vice is a form of injustice, either to oneself or one's
neighbour. The fate of Socrates, and the reasons of it, bear some
analogy to the unpopularity and harsh treatment which great moral
reformers have received in almost every country and under every form
of government. The alleged interference both in public and private
affairs, the resistance to popular indulgences and vicious pleasures,
and the persistent _lecturing_ men of deadened conscience, are more
than human nature is prepared to stand, if pressed beyond a certain
point. In the _Theætetus_ (p. 149, A.), Socrates sums up the popular
odium against himself in these words: 'They say of me that I am an
exceedingly strange being, who drives men to their wits' end;' and in
the _Apology_ he distinctly traces the διαβολὴ, or misrepresentation
of his motives and practices, to the ridicule brought upon him (some
twenty years before) by the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes. But the real
cause of his unpopularity was the fearless way in which he told
unpalatable truths: as that men should care for their souls more than
for their money, and that a life without self-examination was not
worth the living, ὁ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ (_Apol._, p.
29, E., 36, C., 38, A.) This was stronger doctrine, at least so far as
concerns the preference of money to all religious cares, than could
safely be preached now-a-days from a pulpit in London. We remember the
case of a clergyman being quite recently bemobbed and rather roughly
treated because he attempted to do so. No! the sophist and the
Christian moralist alike must give way when resistance to the career
of human feeling is pressed too far, just as a river will surmount or
wash away altogether the dam constructed to check its course.
Before parting with the _Phædo_, we must be allowed to cite one
passage, describing the earlier career of Socrates as a philosopher,
because it has always seemed to us the true key to the understanding
of the widely different views taken by Aristophanes and Plato of the
real character of Socrates. The passage occurs in p. 96, A., and is
rendered by Mr. Jowett thus:
'When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know
that department of philosophy which is called Natural
Science; this appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being
the science which has to do with the causes of things, and
which teaches why a thing is, and is created and destroyed;
and I was always agitating myself with the consideration of
such questions as these: Is the growth of animals the
result of some decay which the hot and cold principle
[principles] contract, as some have said? Is the blood the
element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or
perhaps nothing of this sort--but the brain may be the
originating power of the perceptions of hearing, and sight,
and smell, and memory, and opinion may come from them, and
science may be based on memory and opinion when no longer
in motion, but at rest.... Then I heard (p. 97, B.) some
one who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which
he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I
was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared
admirable, and I said to myself, If mind is the disposer,
mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular
in the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to
find out the cause of the generation or destruction or
existence of anything, he must find out what state of being
or suffering or doing was best for that thing, and
therefore a man had only to consider the best for himself
and others, and then he would also know the worse, for that
the same science comprised both. And I rejoiced to think
that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of
existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would
tell me first whether the earth is flat or round; and then
he would further explain the cause and the necessity of
this, and would teach me the nature of the best, and show
that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in
the centre, he would explain that this position was the
best, and I should be satisfied if this were shown to me,
and not want any other sort of cause.'
Now this avowal on the part of Socrates, that in his earlier career he
was a follower of the physical philosophers, goes far to explain
several important points. In the first place, it explains to us the
propriety, and in some sense the _justice_, of Aristophanes' sketch of
Socrates, some twenty years earlier than we know of the philosopher's
mind from Plato, viz., as a speculator on meteorics after the fashion
of Anaxagoras himself, a star-gazer, a lecturer on clouds and thunder
and circling motions, rain and mist, and phenomena celestial and
subterranean. We know, indeed, from Diogenes Laertius, ii. 4, that
Socrates had been a hearer of Archelaus, himself a pupil of
Anaxagoras. And thus we understand why Socrates was identified with
the other sophists or schoolmen of the day, who taught 'wisdom'
generally, ethics not less than physics. As subverters of the
established traditions about the gods, and exponents of truth to the
best of their knowledge, they met with the same opposition and the
same obloquy, in their day, that the Huxleys and the Darwins, and
other conspicuous men of our own times, are not wholly exempt from.
Their teaching was thought to be 'latitudinarian,' and so they were
credited with many views from which they would have recoiled with
horror. In the _Nubes_ (902), Socrates is charged with denying the
existence of justice, and defending the proposition by the example of
the gods, who themselves set it at nought, as when Zeus maltreated and
imprisoned his own father, Cronus; and in the same play (1415), the
lawfulness of a son beating his father is maintained as a part of the
new-fangled Socratic creed. Now in the second book of the _Republic_
(p. 377, _fin._), this case of Cronus is expressly repudiated by
Socrates as monstrous and unnatural; as also the doctrine that a son
may lawfully beat his own father for wrong-doing. In a very curious
passage of the 'Wasps' (1037), Aristophanes bitterly blames the
Athenians for not having supported him in putting down the _nuisance_
of the philosophers, whom he calls ἠπίαλοι and πυρετοὶ, 'agues' and
'fevers,' teachers of parricide, and base informers. By not giving the
prize, he says, to his play of the 'Clouds,' only the year before,
they had frustrated all his hopes of crushing and extinguishing the
philosophers. Now, these philosophers are represented as headed by
Socrates, and Socrates was the very worst of them. That he was at that
period (about twenty years before his death) essentially a sophist,
and incurring with the rest of them the odium of the popular opinion,
seems undeniable. The precise views that he held on ethics, and
consequently the exact nature of his teaching at that period, we have
no other means of knowing. But it seems inconceivable that
Aristophanes should have so grossly misrepresented his character with
the slightest chance of success; and we know that it was his ardent
desire that his play of the 'Clouds' should succeed. On the whole, we
should say, there is a greater chance that Aristophanes truly
represented the feeling of his age about Socrates than Plato, who, at
best, gives us the Socrates as endeared to his private friends--the
man of matured thought, and possibly of much altered and more
chastened views. Nor ought we to forget that Plato is as severe
against the Sophists generally as Aristophanes is against Socrates in
particular. All high teaching at Athens--all that we include in the
idea of a college education--was done by the Sophists. The art of
ῥητορικὴ was one of the most important: we can see the effect of the
training incidentally in the style and the speeches of Euripides and
Thucydides. Socrates saw that the ethical principles of the Sophists
were wrong, and he engaged in the dangerous task of trying to reform
them.
But secondly, the Platonic passage gives us a clue to that sympathy
which Socrates, or at least Plato, always shows for the Eleatic school
of philosophy as represented by Zeno and Parmenides. 'Of all the
pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato speaks of the Eleatic with the
greatest respect,' says Mr. Jowett (Preface to _Philebus_, p. 227).
That school was a reaction from the teaching of the Ionic physicists,
Thales, Anaximenes, and others, who were speculators on natural
phenomena without any true system of induction. Anaxagoras' doctrine
of Νοῦς, or pervading intelligence, though purely a pantheistic one,
stood half-way between the two schools. Xenocrates, the founder of the
Eleatics, taught that Creation emanated from a One Being, and not from
a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, from water or air, or states of
repose, or flux, or any other mere physical reason. In the Philebus
(p. 28, C., and p. 30, D.) we find an express eulogy and sympathy with
Anaxagoras, whose views were in truth much more adapted to the
doctrine of ἰδέαι and abstractions than the materialistic views of the
Ionic school. And in the _Parmenides_, one of the most obscure of the
Platonic dialogues, the discussions on τὸ ἓν, The One, and the
relations of the real to the phenomenal, though a great advance over
the Eleatic doctrines, which, as Mr. Jowett says, 'had not gone beyond
the contradictions of matter, motion, space, and the like' (Introd.
_Parmen._, p. 234), still are based on the views of Zeno in the main.
Parmenides, indeed, was 'the founder of idealism, and also of
dialectic, or, in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and logic.'
(_Ibid._)
We proceed now to the _Theætetus_, one of the most important, as well
as difficult, of the Platonic dialogues. To this Mr. Jowett has
written a rather long but excellent Introduction, replete with large
views of the Platonic philosophy, and containing many original and
striking remarks, _e.g._ (p. 329): 'The Greeks, in the fourth century
before Christ, had no words for "subject" and "object," and no
distinct conception of them; yet they were always hovering about the
question involved in them.' (We should be inclined to say, that the
familiar distinction between τὰ νοητὰ and τὰ αἰσθητὰ, to a considerable
extent represented our terms 'subjective' and 'objective.') Again (p.
328): 'The writings of Plato belong to an age in which the power of
analysis had outrun the means of knowledge; and through a spurious use
of dialectic, the distinctions which had been already "won from the
void and formless infinite," seemed to be rapidly returning to their
original chaos.' And (p. 353), 'The relativity of knowledge' (viz., to
the individual mind) 'is a truism to us, but was a great psychological
discovery in the fifth century before Christ.' In p. 360 the remark is
a shrewd one: 'The ancient philosophers in the age of Plato thought of
science' (_i.e._, ἐπιστήμη, exact knowledge) 'only as pure
abstraction, and to this _opinion_ (δόξα) stood in no relation.' The
subject of _Theætetus_, 'What _is_ knowledge?' involving, as it
doubtless does, some satire on Sophists, who professed to teach what
they were themselves unable to explain, has been well called 'A
critical history of Greek psychology as it existed down to the fourth
century.' In this treatise, the views of the earlier philosophers,
that there is no test of existence or reality except perception,
αἴσθησις, are impugned. Plato did not, perhaps, himself hold the
opinion that objective truth existed, independently of opinion; but
his favourite theory of ἰδέαι, or abstracts, implied the existence of
_some_ typical, eternal, absolute standard of goodness and justice, as
well as of the beautiful. If this were not the case, then all moral as
well as all physical οὐσίαι would depend on our sense of them. There
would be no φύσει δίκαιον, but only νόμῳ δίκαιον. That would be right
in every state which the laws enacted; and thus in two neighbouring
states one course of acting (say, lying or stealing, or promiscuous
intercourse) would be right, because it is legalised; in another it
would be wrong, because punishable by the law. Nor is this difficulty
wholly imaginary, as Aristotle felt. (Eth. Nic. V. ch. 7.) The old
law, for instance, sanctioned polygamy, as modern usage does in some
parts of the East; while the law of Europe condemns it. So in the case
of murder: a Greek thought it a solemn and absolute duty to slay the
slayer of his father; while we should regard it as one murder added to
another. There was a good deal of sense therefore in what Protagoras
taught, that 'man is the measure,' μέτρον ἄνθρωπος. If I feel it hot,
it _is_ hot to me; if cold, then it _is_ cold: or if wine tastes sour,
or bitter, because my digestion is in an abnormal state, then to me it
_is_ sour or bitter; and it is no use to argue with me that it is not,
but you must set right my disordered stomach, and then the wine will
taste as it should. Apply this doctrine to the diversities of
religious belief; the Christian says the Buddhist and the Mahommedan
are wrong; and each of these retort the same on the Christian and on
each other. A thing cannot be absolutely true _merely_ because this or
that party asserts it, which is but a 'petitio principii.' Protagoras
would have said, had he lived much later, and not altogether absurdly,
'If this form of religion is one that you embrace from conviction, and
with entire faith in it, then to you it _is_ true.' And after saying
this to the Christian, he would have turned to the Buddhist and the
Mahommedan, and have repeated the same formula to each.
Now Plato, to make the victory over Protagoras more complete, first
shows, in the _Theætetus_, that he, Protagoras, by his doctrine of
μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, virtually holds the same opinion as those (1) who
make αἴσθησις the sole test of truth; (2) who, like Heraclitus, allow
of no fixed existence, but hold that πάντα γίγνεται, states of things
are always _coming into being_, because everything is in a state of
perpetual flux. For it is evident that each of these views denies any
permanent, stable, or objective existence of anything. Even a
momentary perception is a fleeting sensation, not a true and real
sense. While I say this paper is 'white,' _some_ discoloration of it
occurred while the monosyllable was being pronounced, and therefore it
was not true that the paper was _absolutely_ white. It appears to us
that the question which Mr. Jowett moots as a difficulty in his
Introduction (p. 326) is not really very important: 'Would Protagoras
have identified his own thesis, "Man is the measure of all things,"
with the other, "All knowledge is sensible perception?" Secondly,
would he have based the relativity of knowledge on the Heraclitean
flux?' The latter, we think, Protagoras clearly does, when he says (p.
168, B.) ἵλεῳ τῇ διανοίᾳ ξυγκαθεὶς ὡς ἀληθῶς σκέψει, τί ποτε λέγομεν
κινεῖσθαί τε ἀποφαινόμενοι τὰ πάντα τό τε δοκοῦν ἑκάστῳ τοῦτο καὶ
εἶναι ἰδιώτῃ τε καὶ πόλει. To us it appears that Plato classed them
together, simply because they are logically coherent and inseparable.
He insists that all sensations imply a patient and an agent. Fire does
not burn if there is nothing for it to consume. Colour is non-existent
(being a mere effect of light), unless there is an eye to behold it.
That indeed is true, and Epicurus and Lucretius also perceived (Lucr.,
ii. 795) that three conditions are wanted to produce colour--viz.,
light, an object to be seen, and an eye to see it. It is quite true,
that a person sees a red or a blue cloth on a table while he looks at
it, but that when he turns his back upon it, it has _no_ colour,
because one of the three conditions, the sight, has been withdrawn.
Mr. Jowett seems, however (with the disciples of a modern school), to
press this doctrine of relativity too far in asserting (Introd., p.
332), 'There would be no world, if there neither were, nor never had
been, any one to perceive the world.' For we cannot escape from the
conclusion that the world must have existed (in the sense in which we
know of existence) prior to life, _i.e._, any perceptive faculty,
being placed upon it.
What appears to have struck Plato most strongly in considering the
doctrine of Protagoras was this--that if everybody is right, or as
right as any other, all reasoning, argument, persuasion, in fine, the
whole science of dialectics, becomes _ipso facto_ useless and absurd
(p. 161, E.) There are no such characters as _wise_ and _foolish_.
Protagoras himself felt the difficulty, but evaded it thus: the wise
man is not one who tries to argue a person out of his convictions,
_e.g._, that justice is only tyranny, or that sweet is bitter, but who
so trains and educates the mind or appetite that the sounder and
better view will spontaneously present itself. Thus a good sophist or
a wise legislator will endeavour so to educate and so to govern, that
right and reasonable views will approve themselves to the people.
Again, in judging of what will be good or useful in the end, sagacity
is needed, which clearly is not the property of everyone alike. A
thing is right or wrong only as individual conviction or the law of a
State makes it so for the time being; but in advising a certain course
of action, where result, and therefore, forethought are involved, one
counsellor may be greatly superior to another (p. 172). Hence, as
legislation is prospective, it is not true that one man's opinion as
to the wisdom or expediency of a measure is as good as another's; but
there are some things at least in which one man's must be better than
another's judgment.
It was thus that Protagoras endeavoured to reconcile the obvious fact
that some men were more clever than others, with the theory that all
morality is based on mere human opinion. And those persons would take
a very shallow view who think that all this is merely an ingenious
quibbling. The difficulties which Protagoras attempted to solve are
real ones, and only thinkers know to what extent all questions, both
of religion and casuistry, are bound up with them.
We proceed to perform, somewhat in brief, the less agreeable task of
showing that Mr. Jowett's version of the _Theætetus_, though always
fluent and pleasant to read, is not always as accurate as might have
been desired.
In p. 149, A., Socrates playfully asks Theætetus if he has never heard
that he, Socrates, is the son of a midwife, by name, Phænaretè, μάλα
γενναίας τε καὶ βλοσυρᾶς, 'a sour-faced old lady,' we should say. Mr.
Jowett somewhat oddly renders this phrase, a 'midwife, brave and
burly.' The epithets mean something very different. The first is an
ironical allusion to the humble station of the professional midwife,
the latter to the alarm which her presence might inspire in the
timid.... For βλοσυρὸν is something that shocks and causes terror, as in
Æschylus, Suppl. 813; Eumen. 161. To this real or supposed parentage
of the philosopher, a joke is directed by Aristophanes in the _Nubes_,
137--
καὶ φροντίδ' ἐξήμβλωκας ἐξευρημένην.
Perhaps also the Φαιναρέτη in Acharn. 49, may have reference to this
person. In p. 151, B., προσφέρου πρὸς ἐμὲ is not 'come to me,' but
'behave towards me,' 'deal with me.' And in p. 156, A., ἀντίτυποι
ἄνθρωποι are not 'repulsive' mortals (at least, according to our
established use of the word), but 'refractory,' 'men on whom one can
make no impression,' but from whom a blow rebounds as a hammer does
from an anvil. Antisthenes and the cynical party seem to be meant. In
p. 156, D., we come to a very obscure passage. Mr. Jowett's version
is, 'And the slower elements have their motions in the same place and
about things near them, and thus beget; but the things begotten are
quicker, for their motions are from place to place.' This is not very
intelligible. For ἡ κίνησις, it seems to us that we should read ἡ
γένεσις. The figure of speech is taken from the notion of sexual
contact, and by πρὸς τὰ πλησιάζοντα τὴν κίνησιν ἴσχει, Socrates seems
to mean that certain impressions or objects meet certain senses,
_e.g._, sounds the ear, scents the nose, objects the eye, but
severally 'have their rate of motion according to the speed of those
faculties with which they naturally unite;' but, he adds, the
sensations of hearing, smelling, seeing are more instantaneously
perceived, when once produced, because the γένεσις or production of
such sensation takes place ἐν φορᾷ, while the αἴσθησις and the
αἰσθητὸν are moving in space towards each other, and thus, as it were,
the offspring partakes of the speed of the parents. In plain words,
sight and sound and smell are produced at very different intervals of
time, but are equally sudden sensations _when_ produced; and even
those which are more slowly generated are as quickly felt. (Compare
Aristot., Eth. x. ch. iii. s. 4. πάσῃ (κινήσει) γὰρ οἰκεῖον εἶναι
δοκεῖ τάχος καὶ βραδυτής.) In p. 159, D., ἡ γλυκύτης πρὸς τοῦ οἴνου
περὶ αὐτὸν φερομένη seems to us to mean, the sense of sweetness from
the wine moving to and coming upon _the patient_,' τὸν πάσχοντα
(unless, indeed, we should read περὶ αὐτὴν, _i.e._, γλῶσσαν, which
would render the meaning rather clearer). Mr. Jowett's version is,
'the quality of sweetness which arises out of, and is moving about the
wine.' Just below, περὶ δὲ τὸν οἶνον γιγνομένην καὶ φερομένην
πικρότητα, the words καὶ φερομένην read very like an interpolation, as
an attentive consideration of the passage, we think, will show.
In p. 161, A., we come upon some rather loose rendering. Theætetus
asks Socrates whether he has not been all along speaking in irony, and
whether, having proved that black is white, he is not prepared equally
to prove that white is black. This, of course, is a playful satire on
his skill in dialectics. The words ἀλλὰ πρὸς θεῶν εἰπὲ, ἦ αὖ οὐχ οὕτως
ἔχει, literally mean, 'But tell me in heaven's name, is not all this,
on the other hand, _not_ so?' And so just below, Socrates says, 'You
are, indeed, a lover of arguments and a worthy good soul, my
Theodorus, for thinking that I am a mere bag of words, and can easily
bring them out when wanted, and prove that, on the other hand, these
things are _not_ so.' In the very next words, τὸ δὲ γιγνόμενον οὐκ
ἐννοεῖς, there is a joke, and not a bad one, on the doctrine, οὐδὲν
ἔστιν ἀλλὰ πάντα γίγνεται. Mr. Jowett's version of the whole passage
seems rather careless: 'But I should like to know, Socrates, by heaven
I should, whether you mean to say that all this is untrue? Socrates:
You are fond of argument, Theodorus, and now you innocently fancy that
I am a bag full of arguments, and can easily pull one out which will
prove the reverse of all this. But you do not see that in reality none
of these arguments come from me. They all come from him who talks with
me. I only know just enough to extract them from the wisdom of
another, and to receive them in a spirit of fairness.' The last words,
ἀποδέξασθαι μετρίως, more accurately mean, 'to take it from its parent
fairly well,' _i.e._, as a theme for discussion. The phrase μητρόθεν
δέχεσθαι, said of the nurse taking a newly-born infant, is playfully
alluded to.
In p. 161, C., Mr. Jowett's version but poorly represents the real
sense of a keenly ironical passage:--'Then, when we were reverencing
him as a god, he might have condescended to inform us that he was no
wiser than a tadpole, and did not even aspire to be a man: would not
this have produced an overpowering effect?' The exact words of Plato
are these: 'In which case he would have commenced his address to us in
grand style, and very contemptuously, by letting us see that we have
been looking up to him, as to a god, for his wisdom, while he all the
time was in no degree superior, in respect of intelligence, to a
tadpole, not to say to any other man.' The point is, that if
Protagoras had commenced his work entitled 'Truth,' with the
proposition, 'A pig is the measure of all things' (_i.e._, the
standard by which feelings and notions are to be tested), 'he would
have well shown his contempt of men who foolishly took _him_ for an
authority.' Of course the very object and heart's desire of Protagoras
in writing such a book was to be thought supremely clever. Hence the
irony is apparent.
Again, in p. 160, B., Socrates says to Theodorus:--
'You have capitally expressed my weakness by your simile
(τὴν νόσον μου ἀπείκασας). I, however, am stouter
(ἰσχυρικώτερος) than they; for before now many and many a
Hercules and Theseus' (meaning, of course, many Sophists),
'on meeting me, men brave at talk, have pounded me right
well; but I don't give it up for all that, so strong a
passion has taken possession of my soul for this kind of
exercise. Therefore, do not refuse on your part to prepare
for a contest with me, and so to benefit yourself and me
alike.'
We see no reason whatever why the above should have been diluted down
to such a version as this:--
'I see, Theodorus, that you perfectly apprehend the nature
of my complaint; but I am even more pugnacious than the
giants of old, for I have met with no end of heroes. Many a
Hercules, many a Theseus, mighty in words, have broken my
head; nevertheless, I am always at this rough game, which
inspires me like a passion. Please, then, to indulge me
with a trial, for your own edification as well as mine.'
The following (p. 175, A.) is not satisfactory:--
'And when some one boasts of a catalogue of twenty-five
ancestors, and goes back to Heracles, the son of
Amphitryon, he cannot understand his poverty of ideas. Why
is he unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a
twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was
such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth, and so on?
He is amused at the notion that he cannot do a sum, and
thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of his
senseless vanity.'
What Plato really says is this:--
'But, when men pride themselves on a list of
five-and-twenty ancestors, and trace them back to Heracles,
the son of Amphitryon, it seems to him surprising that they
should make these trumpery reckonings; and they should not
be able (further) to calculate that the twenty-fifth from
Amphitryon backwards was just such a person as fortune
chanced to make him, or at least the fiftieth from him, and
thus to get rid of the vanity of a senseless mind,--at this
he cannot suppress a smile.'
In p. 194, C., the words τὰ ἰόντα διὰ τῶν αἰσθήσεων, ἐνσημαινόμενα εἰς
τοῦτο τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς κέαρ, ὃ ἔφη Ὅμηρος, &c., should be rendered, 'the
impressions entering us through our senses, leaving their marks on
this _heart's core_, as Homer called it, intending to express in
allegory the resemblance between κῆρ and κηρός,' &c. Mr. Jowett rather
loosely turns it,--'the impressions which pass through the senses and
_sink into the_ [waxen] _heart of the soul_, as Homer says in a
parable,' &c. And just below, the words εἶτα οὐ παραλλάττουσι τῶν
αἰσθήσεων τὰ σημεῖα, which he renders 'and are not liable to
confusion,' might just as well have been brought out in their true
sense, 'and further, they do not misapply the impressions of (or left
by) the senses;' for παραλλάσσειν is 'to change wrongly,' and is a
word selected as exactly and most happily representing the idea Plato
wished to convey, that confused memories owe their confusion to not
keeping distinctly apart the impressions formerly received. A few
lines further on, ὅταν λάσιόν του τὸ κέαρ ᾖ, ὃ δὴ ἐπῄνεσεν ὁ πάντα
σοφὸς ποιητὴς, ἢ ὅταν κοπρῶδες &c., there are some points which only a
careful rendering will bring out. In taking a delicate impression of a
seal or gem on clarified wax, a hair left in it would mar the
impression. And the dark yellow colour of natural wax was thought by
the Greeks to be made foul by the dirt of the insects; clarifying it,
in fact, was 'defæcation.' So we render it thus:--'When, then, a man's
heart has hairs in it, which is the state the all-wise poet referred
to [in calling it λάσιον κῆρ], or when it has dirt left in it, or is
made of wax that is not pure [but adulterated], or too soft or too
hard, then,' &c. Now this hardly appears in Mr. Jowett's version, 'But
when the heart of any one _is shaggy_, as the poet who knew everything
says, or muddy and of impure wax, or very soft, or very hard, then,'
&c.
Of the _Phædrus_, as a whole, Mr. Jowett appears to us to give a
correct account, in saying (Introd., p. 552) that
'the continuous thread which appears and reappears
throughout is rhetoric. This is the ground into which the
rest of the dialogue is inlaid, in parts embroidered with
fine words, "in order to please Phædrus." The speech of
Lysias and the first speech of Socrates are examples of the
false rhetoric, as the second speech of Socrates is adduced
as an instance of the true. But the true rhetoric is based
upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin
to love; they are two aspects of philosophy in which the
technicalities of rhetoric are absorbed. The true knowledge
of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm or
love of the ideas; and the true order of speech or writing
proceeds according to them.'
With regard to the first speech of Socrates on Love (p. 237, C., to
241, D.) it appears to us that it is not so much 'an example of the
false rhetoric,' as a proof how much better and more logically even a
paradoxical subject can be treated by a dialectician than by a mere
rhetorician. The hit at Phædrus for having given no definition
whatever of his subject (p. 237, C.) is one of the points of contrast
which is very significant; and there is this subtle irony underlying
the whole speech, that whereas Socrates undertook to prove that
χαρίζεσθαι μὴ ἐρῶντι was better than χαρίζεσθαι ἐρῶντι, his essay is
made to turn, in fact, simply on the latter point, μὴ χαρίζεσθαι
ἐρῶντι, so as to be a diatribe against vicious παιδεραστία; only a
word or two at the end being added in _apparent_ sanction of the
other, and by way of verbally fulfilling the engagement he had made:
λέγω οὖν ἑνὶ λόγῳ, ὅτι ὅσα τὸν ἕτερον λελοιδορήκαμεν, τῷ ἑτέρῳ
τἀναντία τούτων ἀγαθὰ πρόσεστι(p. 341, _fin._) And the _palinodia_, or
pretended recantation (p. 244, _seq._), cleverly pursues the same
theme, by showing that love, in its philosophical and nonsensual
phase, is a divine emotion, and the source of every blessing to man.
The famous allegory that follows, which means that Reason should
control Passion, gives a sketch of the orderly and well-trained man,
gradually recovering, even as the depraved mind gradually loses, the
impressions and memories of the god-like existence men enjoyed in a
previous state. The latter part of the dialogue hangs on to the
allegory, not indeed very directly; rather, we should say, it reverts
to the former part, and is intended to show, by a critique of the two
essays, that no essayist or speech-maker can hope to succeed, who
derives all his art from rules and treatises and the pedantic
phraseology of the teachers. He must trust to dialectic, _i.e._, the
science of hard and close reasoning, if he would rise above mere
δημηγορία, or clap-trap; and psychology itself must form the basis of
dialectic.
Mr. Jowett's version of this dialogue is fully as lax as that of the
_Symposium_. Still it reads pleasantly, and if one could forget the
incomparable and often so much more expressive Greek, one would be
fairly content with the general correctness of the paraphrase. Almost
at the outset, he renders εἴ σοι σχολὴ προϊόντι ἀκούειν, 'if you have
leisure to _stay and listen_,' instead of 'to _walk on_ and listen,'
where a slight satire is intended on the 'constitutional' and
prescribed exercise of the effeminate youth. And γέγραφε γὰρ δὴ ὁ
Λυσίας πειρώμενόν τινα τῶν καλῶν, οὐχ ὑπ' ἐραστοῦ δὲ, ἀλλ' αὐτὸ τοῦτο
καὶ κεκόμψευται means, 'Lysias, you must know, has written about one
of the handsome youths having proposals made to him, not, however, by
a lover; but this is the very point he has put in a new and quaint
light.' (Of course, κεκόμψευται, to which we have given a medial
sense, may also be taken as a passive.) Mr. Jowett gives us nothing
nearer to the above than 'Lysias _imagined_ a fair youth who was being
tempted, but not by a lover; and this was the point; he ingeniously
proved that,' &c. In p. 229, A., κατὰ τὸν Ἰλισσὸν ἴωμεν should be
rendered, 'let us go _along_ or _down_ the Ilissus,' _i.e._, in the
bed or channel, or even along the bank; certainly not, 'let us go _to_
the Ilissus.' Nor is ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ (p. 329, _fin._), this sort of
'_crude_ philosophy,' but 'an uncourteous (or uncivil) kind of
philosophy,' viz., that which employs itself in giving the lie to
received traditions.
The charming and justly celebrated passage in p. 230, B.--one of the
few in Greek literature that indicate intense feeling for the beauties
of nature--we propose to render as follows, nearly every word being a
_close_ representative of the equivalent Greek:--
'Upon my word, the retreat is a charming one; for not only
is this plane-tree of ample size and height, but the dense
shade of this tall _agnus_ is quite beautiful to behold; in
full flower too, so as to make the place most fragrant! Yon
spring, also, is most grateful, that flows from under the
plane-tree with a stream of very cold water, as one may
judge by the feeling to the foot. Moreover, there appears,
from the images and ornaments, to be a shrine here to
certain Nymphs and to the Achelöus. Pray notice, also, the
balmy air of the place, how delightful and exceeding sweet,
and how it rings with the shrill summer chirp of the chorus
of cicadas! But the quaintest thing of all is the growth of
the grass, which on this gentle slope springs up in just
enough abundance for one to recline one's head and be quite
comfortable. So that you have proved a most excellent guide
for a strange visitor, my dear Phædrus.'
Some extra pains might have been fairly bestowed on a passage almost
without rival in Greek literature. But Mr. Jowett gives us the
following bare and clipped paraphrase of it:--
'Yes, indeed, and a fair and shady resting-place, full of
summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading
plane-tree, and the agnus castus, high and clustering, in
the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the
stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is deliciously
cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and images,
this must be a spot sacred to Achelöus and the Nymphs;
moreover, there is a sweet breeze, and the grasshoppers
chirrup; and the greatest charm of all is the grass like a
pillow gently sloping to the head. My dear Phædrus, you
have been an admirable guide.'
In p. 248, C., θεσμὸς Ἀδραστείας is not 'a law of the goddess
Retribution,' but simply 'a law of necessity.' Had we space, we could
point out not a few very inadequate, not to say inaccurate, renderings
in the grand and mystical passage about the ἰδέα of beauty, p. 250.
For instance, Mr. Jowett does not see that we should construe
κατειλήφαμεν αὐτὸ (viz., κάλλος) διὰ τῆς ἐναργεστάτης αἰσθήσεως τῶν
ἡμετέρων, 'we realize it (here on earth) by the clearest of all our
senses,' viz., the sight of the eye. The whole translation of the
great allegory, in fact, reads as if it came from one who had never
taken the trouble to make out _exactly_ what the Greek meant; and, as
it is very difficult, and the passage itself very sublime, the student
ought to have found in Professor Jowett a safe and cautious and
accurate guide to the language as well as to the mind of Plato.
We are compelled to pass on, rapidly and very briefly, to that most
difficult of Platonic dialogues, the _Philebus_. This treats of a life
made up of pleasure and intellectuality, φρόνησις, combined in certain
proportions, a μικτὸς βίος, as the best and happiest. And the doctrine
of πέρας and ἄπειρον, the Finite and the Infinite, which Aristotle
(Eth., ii. 5) attributes to Protagoras,τὸ κακὸν τοῦ ἀπείρου, ὡς οἱ
Πυθαγόρειοι εἴκαζον, τὸ δ' ἀγαθὸν τοῦ πεπερασμένου, is so applied as
to show that mere pleasure carried to excess is self-destroying. This
also is touched upon in the Tenth Book of the Ethics, ch. ii., where
the μικτὸς βίος of ἡδονὴ and φρόνησις combined is preferred to either
alone. It has sometimes occurred to us, that in this dialogue Plato
has purposely used involved constructions and an affected obscurity of
style, as if to satirize Heraclitus, or some sophist of the Ephesian
school. The scholastic formulæ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ, implying synthesis and
analysis, and μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον, 'the more or less,' to denote the
ἄπειρον, which can always be carried forward or backward, as in 'hot
and cold,' till πέρας, or definite quantity, is brought to limit
them,--these and other subtleties give to the _Philebus_, besides its
linguistic difficulties, which are great, an aspect which is seldom
inviting to younger students.
In the difficult passage (p. 15, B.), about ἰδέαι, Mr. Jowett has
again failed to give the exact sense. Plato says, one difficulty about
them is, 'whether we must assume that the abstract principle of each
quality (_e.g._, abstract beauty) pervades concretes and infinites,
dispersed and separated in each, or exists _as a whole outside of
itself_.' That is to say, if an abstract or ἰδέα is one thing
indivisible, which yet exists in different objects, it must reside
outside itself, and apart from the centre of its own οὐσία, or
essence. The words εἴθ' ὅλην αὐτὴν αὑτῆς χωρὶς, Mr. Jowett oddly
translates, 'or as still entire, _and yet contained in others_.' In p.
15, D., ταὐτὸν ἓν καὶ πολλὰ ὑπὸ λόγων γιγνόμενα is, 'this doctrine of
"one and many" being the same, brought into existence (or, as we say,
brought before our notice) by discussions,' not 'the one and many are
identified _by the reasoning power_;' nor is ἄγηρων πάθος τῶν λόγων
αὐτῶν, just below, 'a quality of reason, as such, which never grows
old,' but 'a conditions of discussion themselves,' &c. Surely, to
render the plural λόγοι by 'reason,' is a singular error. In p. 23,
D., by not noticing the emphatic ἐγὼ the author has failed to see that
there is a reference to the clumsy attempts of _tiros_ at synthesis
and analysis, p. 15. _fin._; so that Socrates intends to say that he
fears _he_ is not much more skilful. A few lines below, where the
doctrine of causation is introduced, the words τῆς ξυμμίξεως τούτων
πρὸς ἄλληλα τὴν αἰτίαν ὅρα, 'consider now the _cause_ of the union of
these conditions (the finite and the infinite) with each other,' is
poorly rendered by 'find the cause of the third or compound.' In p.
24, D., Socrates argues that, if the principle of limitation (πέρας)
were admissible in, or could co-exist with, 'more or less,' _i.e._
progressive degree, the infinite would cease, by _ipso facto_ becoming
finite. And he concludes, κατὰ δὴ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἄπειρον γίγνοιτ' ἂν
τὸ θερμότερον καὶ τοὐναντίον ἅμα, 'according to this way of putting
it, the "hotter" would become at the same time infinite and finite.'
Surely Mr. Jowett quite misses the sense in rendering it, 'which
proves that comparatives, such as the hotter and the colder, are to be
ranked in _the class of the infinite_.' In p. 26, B., Socrates says
that 'the goddess Harmony, perceiving the general lewdness and badness
of men, and that there was no limiting principle in them, either of
pleasures or of satisfying them, introduced law and order, containing
in themselves the finite. And you, Protarchus (he adds), say that she
thereby spoiled our pleasures; whereas I say, on the contrary, that
she saved them.' If the text is right, πέρας οὐδὲν ἐνὸν is the
accusative absolute; but we propose to read καὶ πέρας, &c., so that
the accusative will depend on κατιδοῦσα. Mr. Jowett's version
is--'Methinks that the goddess saw the universal wantonness and
wickedness of all things, having no limit of pleasure or satiety, and
she devised the limit of the law and order, tormenting the soul, as
you say, Philebus, or, as I affirm, saving the soul.'
It is no disparagement to the best of scholars to say that a perfect
translation of the whole of Plato is too great a task for any one
person to perform. It would be hardly possible to have the same
knowledge of every dialogue, and those less familiar to the translator
would not be wholly free from some mistakes. The scholarship that can
grapple with and gain a perfect mastery over the Greek of Plato, to
say nothing of his philosophy, must be of a very high order. No man,
perhaps, could have done the task better than Professor Jowett; and no
man, probably, is more fully aware that it might have been a good
deal better even than it is.
ART. VII.--_Mr. Miall's Motion on Disestablishment._
_Debate on the Motion of Edward Miall, Esq., M.P., May 9th, 1871.
Reprinted from the Nonconformist._
We doubt whether when the opponents of Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church
policy, during the electoral campaign of 1868, insisted that
disestablishment in Ireland would inevitably be followed by
disestablishment in England, they expected that such a debate as that
which took place in the House of Commons on the 9th of May last would
furnish a seeming justification of their prediction. The prediction,
however, was one which tended to fulfil itself; for, if it did not
suggest, it encouraged the movement which has followed it. The
plea--in the mouths of English Episcopalians, at least--was an
essentially selfish one, and has brought with it its own punishment.
Mr. Gladstone has reminded us that he did his best to convince the
electors of Lancashire that, neither on logical, nor on practical
grounds, did his proposal necessarily involve the sweeping away of all
the Established churches; and he has also said, and, no doubt, with
truth, that while Mr. Miall and his supporters may be entitled to
speak of the Irish Church Act of 1869 as the initiation of a policy,
that was not the intention of its authors, who regarded it simply as a
measure of justice to the Irish people. The upholders of
Establishment, however, were too heated and unreflecting to see that,
in refusing to allow Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party to escape by
this flying bridge, they were virtually bringing down the enemy on a
portion of their territory hitherto comparatively secure. The less,
they insisted, involved the greater, and the public at large, taking
them at their word, was prepared for an advance movement on the part
of the opponents of all national religious establishments which a few
years ago would have been regarded as the blunder of a party
altogether bereft of political prudence.
It nevertheless required no small degree of courage on the part of Mr.
Miall to give notice so soon as a year after the passing of the Irish
Church Act that he would, in the following session, ask Parliament to
apply the principle of that measure to the other Established Churches
of the kingdom, and we are not surprised to know that the time
selected was, in part, determined by accidental circumstances, as much
as by deliberate choice. It is true that the honourable member was not
a novice in the matter; seeing that in 1856 he had submitted a motion
which similarly aimed at the extinction of the Irish Establishment.
But the Irish question, even in 1856, was, so far as public sentiment
was concerned, more advanced than the English Church question is now;
for Protestant ascendancy in Ireland had long been condemned by
English Liberalism, though the mode of bringing it to an end
occasioned a wide divergence of opinion. Nobody could and nobody did,
then deny Mr. Miall's facts, however much they dissented from his
practical conclusions; while the absence of concurring circumstances
gave to the debate an air of languor strangely in contrast with the
excitement occasioned by the same topic in after years. It is true
that the recent disestablishment motion is not the first which has
been submitted to the House of Commons, even in regard to the Church
of England. For nearly forty years ago--on the 16th of April,
1833--Mr. Faithfull, the member for Brighton--a borough then, as now,
intrepidly represented in Parliament--moved: 'That the Church of
England, as by law established, is not recommended by practical
utility: that its resources have always been subjected to
parliamentary enactments, and that the greater part, if not the whole,
of those resources ought to be appropriated to the relief of the
nation;' but on this occasion the question excited too little interest
to subject the mover to any sharp antagonism; Lord Althorpe declining
to reply to Mr. Faithfull's speech, and moving the previous question,
while the motion was negatived without a division. Mr. Gladstone's
memorable declaration, in 1868, that 'in the settlement of the Irish
Church that Church, as a State-Church, must cease to exist,' required
high moral courage; but the speaker knew that he was the mouthpiece of
a party powerful within, as well as without, the walls of Parliament,
and that he was sounding the tocsin for an immediate, and a
comparatively brief struggle, in which success was already assured.
Mr. Miall, on the contrary, knew that he would have no powerful
backing in the House of Commons, however great the moral strength
which he represented, and he knew also that he headed a skirmishing
party, rather than led a final attack; while he must also have been
conscious that the wisdom of his procedure would, by friendly, as well
as hostile, critics, be judged by the measure of success.
That the success was great, few persons who combine intelligence with
candour will be likely to deny, and probably it was greater than
either Mr. Miall, or the most sanguine of his friends, had ventured to
expect. Success, of course, has relation to the objects aimed at, and
these were well defined, and such as can be readily compared with the
actual results. We assume that Mr. Miall wished, by means of his
motion, to give a practical direction to the out-door agitation with
which he has been so many years identified; to put the subject in the
category of practical political questions, by forcing it on the notice
of politicians by the ordinary political methods; to place before the
greatest legislative assembly in the world, with something like
completeness, views held by a large and growing party in the country,
but never before directly and fully advocated in Parliament; to draw
out the forces enlisted on the side of establishments, and to put them
on the defensive, at a time when the difficulties in the way of
defence were by no means inconsiderable; and, finally, to secure such
a thorough discussion of the whole subject by the country as would
hasten the time when it must be dealt with with a view to a practical
settlement. If this is an accurate description of Mr. Miall's aims,
can it be said of any one of them that there has been even an approach
to failure? Could any parliamentary question, in the hands of an
independent member, have been launched with greater _éclat_, or with
more hopeful presages, than characterized the discussion in the House
of Commons on the 9th of May last? A large house--a speech which the
most competent critics in England have pronounced to be of the highest
class--a seven hours' debate sustained, for the most part, by members
of the greatest mark--a weakness of argument and of tone on the part
of the opponents of the motion which has excited general surprise--a
division almost exactly tallying with the calculations of those at
whose instance it was taken--leading articles and correspondence on
the subject in every journal in the kingdom, and an almost universal
impression that disestablishment is nearer at hand than it was thought
to be before the motion was submitted--if these do not satisfy the
most ardent of 'Liberationists,' the patience which has hitherto
distinguished them must have given way to unreasoning haste.
On one point, at least, in regard to which there was, at one time,
room for reasonable doubt, Mr. Miall's triumph must be considered
complete. Although it would have been difficult for any Nonconformist
member to have successfully vindicated a refusal to support the
motion, on the plea that it was 'premature,' yet there was something
to be urged in support of the plea itself, and it required a
recognition of some facts scarcely known to the public at large to
decide unhesitatingly in favour of the course actually adopted. But,
now that the motion has been made, the plea of prematureness can
scarcely be repeated. Even Sir Roundell Palmer frankly admitted that,
having regard to the feeling excited by the subject, both in the house
and in the country, it was one which was rightly brought under
discussion, and, notwithstanding the embarrassment which it was likely
to occasion the ministry, Mr. Gladstone tendered his thanks to Mr.
Miall for initiating the discussion, since, 'by introducing this
question, he has absorbed minor matters, which really involve his
motion as an ulterior consequence, but which do not fully express it,'
and has 'raised the question in a clear, comprehensive, and manly
manner, calculated to keep it from all debasing contact, and to raise
a fair trial of the great national question involved in the motion.'
These admissions are in singular contrast to the reception given to
Mr. Miall's Irish Church motion in 1856, when a Conservative member
actually tried to avert discussion by moving the adjournment of the
house, and Lord Palmerston, the then Premier, though he did not
venture to sanction the attempt, deprecated as 'unfortunate' the
enforced consideration of the subject.
If Mr. Miall has not acquired fame as a parliamentary debater, he has
made two speeches which will live in the political history of this
half century. Of that of 1856 it may, perhaps, be said that its
influence was greatest in the effect which it produced on the minds of
Liberal politicians whose minds were made up in condemnation of the
Irish Establishment, but whose notions in regard to remedial measures
were confused and undecided, or were radically unsound. The principle
which he then affirmed was as bread cast upon waters seen after many
days; and seen in the unequivocal shape of a statute of the realm
giving practical effect to the views enunciated thirteen years ago.
But the task undertaken then was far less difficult than that of 1871,
the area of discussion was much narrower, and the issues raised much
less complicated. Of Mr. Miall's recent speech, Mr. Leatham happily
said that it seemed to him 'as though it were the condensation of the
thought of a life-time;' but, in truth, the speaker had to disengage
his mind from many thoughts which had for years engaged the highest
powers of his intellect and the warmest sympathies of his heart. He
had to remember that he was standing, not on a Liberation platform,
but on the floor of the House of Commons, and that he was addressing
not the eagerly responsive readers of the _Nonconformist_, but the
cold and critical readers of journals of a very different type. And,
further, while avowing that the religious side of the question was
that which most powerfully affected his own mind, and conscious that
the most potent arguments which he could employ were those which
derive their force from religious considerations, he had to leave that
vantage ground, from the admitted unwillingness and unfitness of the
House of Commons to deal with the subject in its spiritual aspects,
and to take the lower ground involved in objections of an exclusively
political and social character. It required no small degree of
self-restraint, and of practical skill, for a speaker of such
antecedents as those of Mr. Miall to keep strictly within the lines
which he had laid down for himself; and the unstinted admiration
expressed by all the subsequent speakers and especially by public
journals, which--within a week of his Metropolitan Tabernacle
speech--were little likely to be biased in his favour, have shown
conclusively the completeness of his success. When the usually
moderate _Guardian_ affirms that Mr. Miall's speech was a signal
example of dissenting exaggeration, dissenting narrowness of view, and
dissenting shortness of thought and inability to comprehend the higher
aspects of a great religious and national question; and the _Record_
asserts that 'never was a speech delivered on a great question more
damaging to the cause it was intended to support:' the very
recklessness of the misrepresentations indicate a consciousness that
the impression produced was of a kind which has given great uneasiness
to the supporters of the Establishment. We expect, moreover, that the
_reading_ of the speech, in the complete form in which it has since
been published and widely circulated, will be found to have deepened
the impression produced by its delivery, and by a first hasty perusal.
Its calm yet forcible statements--its close reasoning--its apt and
pungent illustrations--its incontrovertible facts, and its elevation
of tone and style will, we are confident, perceptibly affect the minds
of thoughtful men on whom, for some time past, the truth has been
dawning that there must be something radically wrong in the existing
relations between the State and the several religious bodies of the
country. By a process of filtration, the truths enunciated by Mr.
Miall in this speech will, aided by other influences, find their way
into quarters into which none of his previous utterances on the same
subject have penetrated, and, unless the tendency of ecclesiastical
events greatly changes, it may be expected that the seed now sown will
germinate, and produce its fruits, with a degree of rapidity for which
previous efforts furnish no precedent.
Nor would justice be done to others were there no recognition of the
valuable aid given to the mover of the resolution by those who
supported him in the debate. It was fitting that a proposal so deeply
affecting the welfare of the Church of England should be seconded by a
member of that body, and the duty which Mr. J. D. Lewis voluntarily
undertook was discharged with both ability and courage. The facts and
figures supplied by Mr. Richard admirably supplemented Mr. Miall's
exposition of principle; while, so far as the Principality is
concerned, they demolished some of the boldest allegations of the
advocates of the existing system. If Mr. Leatham's speech must be
spoken of in terms of qualified praise--and notably in regard to his
insinuation respecting the views previously expressed by Mr.
Winterbotham--it must be admitted that he blurted out some truths
which were required to be told, however roughly, and presented with
admirable force, as well as vivacity, some aspects of the question
which ought not to have been neglected in such a discussion, and which
will tell upon minds but little affected by the less graphic method of
the philosophical and unrhetorical member for Bradford.
We do not wonder that the Dean of Norwich has expressed
dissatisfaction with the apologetic and low-toned character of the
replies given by the upholders of the Establishment; for an
ecclesiastic who holds it to be the duty of the State to find out
which is Christ's Church, and, having found it, to uphold and extend
it to the utmost, must have heard, or read, the debate with downright
dismay. The proverb that 'one story's good till another's told' does
not apply in this case; for strong as was Mr. Miall's case when he had
concluded his speech, it was stronger still after the weakness of the
other side had been shown by the reply. 'Is that all?' might have been
asked by any one conversant with all the traditionary arguments used
in defence of Church Establishments, after hearing Mr. Bruce, Sir
Roundell Palmer, Dr. Ball, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone. Of the
'national conscience' which enjoins the provision by the State of the
means of grace for the nation, or of the 'national atheism' involved
in the absence of such provision; or, in fact, of any theory whatever
on which it may be supposed to be possible to base an Establishment,
there was heard nothing. The friends of the Church, indeed, so far
abandoned theory, that Sir Roundell Palmer reproached Mr. Miall with
the theoretical character of his arguments, and was himself forced to
fall back on statements of the most prosaic and practical character;
while Mr. Disraeli, though vaguely asserting that 'the State ought to
recognise and support some religious expression in the community,' was
content to rest the case of the Establishment chiefly on 'the manifold
and ineffable blessings it bestows.'
It was perhaps a misfortune for that establishment that its defence
was mainly undertaken by official and ex-official advocates. They, it
is clear, were more concerned for their own position, in relation to
the question, now or hereafter--and especially hereafter--than
affected by a noble zeal on behalf of Church Establishments. Of
course, if it had been felt that the foundations of those institutions
were firm as the everlasting hills, that fact would have given
firmness of tone, if not vigour of expression, to those who were under
the necessity of doing battle on their behalf. But the insecurity of
the position renders necessary a system of Parliamentary 'hedging'--to
use sporting phraseology--on the part of those who wish to continue to
be, or to become, the depositaries of political power; and that,
perhaps, is the most alarming fact which the late debate has forced on
the notice of those who once thought that Church and State never
_could_ be separated.
The Home Secretary, in particular, described the ministerial policy in
this matter with a frankness which revealed in an almost amusing way
the embarrassment of official Liberalism. He admitted that 'the
question of an Established Church was seriously occupying the minds of
the people of Scotland,' but added that 'nothing, he was assured,
would be done in the matter until the great majority of the people
were in favour of disestablishment.' With respect, however, to
England, 'the question was far less mature.' No fair-minded man, he
added, could deny 'that there was a great deal of truth in many of the
statements' made by Mr. Miall, in regard to the shortcomings of the
Establishment, and the extent to which the spiritual necessities of
the people had been met by Nonconformists. But, he continued:--
'The practical question for the House to consider was
whether they were for those reasons prepared to pass a
resolution which would bind them at once to legislate on
the subject. No Government would, he thought, be justified
in undertaking such a task in the present state of public
opinion. The calmness of his hon. friend in dealing with
the question would, he was afraid, not be imitated by the
country at large, and its discussion must lead to great
dissension and controversy, although in the end the result
might tend to promote peace and harmony. It was a subject
on which no Government should attempt to legislate without
the assurance of success. (Ironical cheers.) He was
speaking without reference to the present or any other
Government, and he must repeat that no Ministry would be
justified in proceeding to deal with a question of such
great importance without some assurance of success. ("Hear,
hear," and a laugh.) It was the business of private members
to ventilate such questions, and the duty of the Government
to take them up only when public opinion declared it to be
expedient.'
And then, as a _solatium_ to those whom these ominous statements were
calculated to disturb, he proceeded to say a few civil words about the
great work which is being done by the Church of England, and the deep
root she has taken in the affections of the people; returning,
however, to the official line on which he started, by admitting that
he 'was not prepared to defend the Established Church with any
abstract arguments,' and insisting that, as prudent men, they must see
their way more clearly before adopting such a motion. 'Call you that
backing your friends?' was the indignant, and not unnatural reply of
the fervent Dr. Ball, who declared that 'the Church would be defended
as long as it did not imperil the interests of the Government, and no
longer.'
Mr. Disraeli's milder expression of the opinion that 'when it comes to
a question of maintaining the union between Church and State, I think
your adhesion to the proposal, or your objection to it, should be
founded on some principle which cannot be disputed, and guided by some
policy which the country can comprehend,' did elicit from the Prime
Minister 'very different sounds'--to use the language of Mr.
Disraeli--but the substance was substantially the same. He could
remind the Opposition leader that, notwithstanding his appreciation of
principles, he himself was content to rest his defence of the
Establishment, 'not so much upon adhesion to any abstract theory, or
principle, as upon the fact that the convictions of the nation are in
its favour, or, in other words, that public opinion is adverse to the
motion of my honourable friend.' And it was, practically, upon this
proposition Mr. Gladstone took his stand; while he, at the same time,
strengthened his position by descriptions of the 'vastness of the
operation' pointed at in the motion, and the immense difficulties
which it would involve, and also dilated, with characteristic grace
and copiousness, on the pre-eminent advantages resulting from the
manner in which the Church of England discharges its practical duties.
And his closing declaration went no further, and rose no higher, than
this:--
'I cannot but stand upon the firm conviction that the
nation which sent us here does not wish us to adopt the
motion of the hon. member.... I do not think that it is
necessary for us--indeed, I don't think the hon. gentleman
expects that we should do so--to vote for a motion which we
are firmly convinced is at variance with the established
convictions of the country, and I shall venture to say to
my hon. friend, what I am sure he will not resent, that if
he seeks to convert the majority of the House of Commons to
his opinions, he must begin by undertaking the preliminary
work of converting to those opinions the majority of the
people of England.'
When Mr. Miall led the attack on the Irish Establishment, in 1856, it
was stated that the task of replying to him was assigned to Mr.
Whiteside, but that the vehement representative of Dublin University
was quite unprepared to deal with a case so dispassionately put as it
was by Mr. Miall; while it is certain that he found his physical force
oratory--as Mr. Bright once described it--much more available in a
subsequent session, in denouncing the anticipated betrayal of the
Church by Mr. Gladstone. Sir Roundell Palmer, however, did not shrink
from fulfilling the intention which had been ascribed to him previous
to the debate, and, perhaps, no fitter representative man could have
been chosen for the purpose. Certainly no one could have succeeded
more fully in keeping the discussion up to the high level to which its
originator had sought to raise it. No one could be more candid in his
recognition of the ability, and the admirable spirit, with which Mr.
Miall had placed the subject before the House.[40] No one could be
more discriminating in choosing the grounds on which his resistance
was offered to the motion; and no one could put the case of the Church
more suavely, or more willingly. But, notwithstanding all these high
recommendations, the speech was a singularly weak one, in regard to
both its reasoning and its facts. The latter, indeed, constituted the
weakest part of his case--though, in some quarters, they are relied
upon with a confidence which seems to us to be attributable either to
imperfect knowledge, or to mistaken views of their bearing on the
question in dispute.
The two main facts urged by Sir Roundell Palmer were these--first,
that the existence of an Established Church no longer involves
injustice to Nonconformists; second, that 'this great institution does
a work of inestimable value over the whole land, and in every part of
society,' and, more especially, that, to the poor, and in the rural
parishes, it is of 'priceless value.'
If the first of these propositions can be sustained, the most
effective weapon at their command will be taken out of the hands of
the assailants of the Establishment. Mr. Miall, of course, insisted on
the converse of that proposition with the utmost emphasis--denouncing,
as he did, 'the essential and inseparable injustice involved in
lifting one Church from among many into political ascendancy, and
endowing it with property belonging to the people in their corporate
capacity;' and affirming that 'the inmost principle of a Church
Establishment is necessarily unjust in its operation,' and that 'man
suffers injustice at the hands of the State when the State places him
in a position of exceptional disadvantage on account of his religious
faith, or his ecclesiastical associations.' Sir Roundell Palmer has
two replies to this, viz., that what Dissenters 'call ascendancy' is
'no longer an ascendancy involving any civil rights, privileges, or
advantage whatever,' and that those who do not participate in the
benefit derived from the property in the hands of the Establishment
'fail to do so from simple choice.' He further asserts that the idea
'that no State institution intended for the public good can be just
which everybody does not equally participate in,' would 'lead us into
communism, or some other system of the kind.'
The plea that, the Establishment being open to all, no injustice is
done to these who stay outside, is one which it is difficult to
discuss with patience, even when seriously urged, as it seems to have
been, by an opponent like Sir Roundell Palmer. We saw nothing of the
inadequacy, as regards quantity, of that which the Establishment
offers to all--an inadequacy so great that the offer becomes a
mockery: it is enough to point out that that offer is one which, from
the necessity of the case, cannot possibly be accepted. The well-known
saying of Horne Tooke's that the London Tavern was open to every
man--who could afford to pay the bill, suggests the answer to the
shallow averment that the injustice endured by Nonconformists is,
after all, self-inflicted. If they are ready to pay the price at which
the advantages of the Establishment are offered to them, to sin
against their convictions, and to swallow their conscientious
scruples, they may enjoy religious equality within its pale, instead
of struggling for it without. It is a new use of the old defence of
the Irish Establishment so happily ridiculed by Thomas Moore, in his
'Dream of Hindostan:'--
'"And pray," asked I, "by whom is paid
The expense of this strange masquerade?"
"The expense!--Oh that's of course defrayed,"
(Said one of these well-fed Hecatombers)
"By yonder rascally rice consumers."
"What! _they_, who mustn't eat meat!"--
"No matter--"
(And while he spoke his cheeks grew fatter),
"The rogues may munch their _Paddy_ crop,
But the rogues must still support our shop.
And, depend upon it, the way to treat
Heretical stomachs that thus dissent,
Is to burden all that won't eat meat,
With a costly MEAT ESTABLISHMENT."'
Sir Roundell Palmer thinks that he has conceded everything which
equity requires when he expresses entire agreement with Mr. Miall that
'no State authority ought to interfere with any man's religious
belief,' and he clenches that admission by the bold assertion, that
the ascendancy of the Church of England no longer involves 'any civil
rights, privileges, or advantages whatever.' It might have occurred to
him that, even if his statement were strictly accurate, the words 'no
longer' pointed to a history of suffering and of struggle which
resulted from the existence of an Establishment, and in which
Nonconformists have figured as the victims. But is it accurate? Why at
the moment the statement was made there was before Parliament--as
there is likely to be for some time to come--a measure for
extinguishing the clerical monopoly in parochial churchyards; the
disabilities of Dissenters at Oxford and Cambridge had not been
removed,[41] and there had just been published the new Statutes of
Winchester and Harrow schools, which expressly insist that none but
members of the Church shall be qualified to act as members of the
governing bodies of those institutions! And, even when these grounds
of just complaint have been removed, there will still exist in
numerous Statutes, or Trusts, or Schemes, or Regulations, affecting
matters of parochial, educational, or charitable administration,
provisions which, directly or indirectly, exclude Dissenters from the
national Church from the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and
advantages, which Sir Roundell Palmer would have us believe are as
much within the reach of Nonconformists as of Conformists.
That, however, is a very limited view of the subject which supposes
that the principle of religious equality is violated only by means of
Statutes of the realm which, in so many words, place the members of
unestablished bodies on a different footing, as regards civil rights,
from that occupied by members of the Establishment. For it may be
safely asserted that for every act of exclusion, and every violation
of the principle of equity, for which the legislature is responsible,
in connection with an Established system, there are twenty others
which are the indirect, though inevitable, result of that system.
Establishment is a name for more than a collection of Statutes, and a
particular mode of appropriating national property: it represents a
powerful source of influence--a spring the force of which is felt
throughout all the ramifications of society, and is often experienced
by those who are unconsciously affected by it. Notwithstanding the
lip-homage now paid to the principle of religious equality, even by
politicians who once persistently fought against it, the ascendancy of
the Church Establishment is sought to be upheld by public
functionaries, by corporate bodies, and by individuals, organized and
unorganized, in a hundred ways which are independent of legislation,
but which, nevertheless, inflict, whether intentionally or not, great
injustice on those who are attached to other religious communities.
No one would now venture to declare, as a Conservative journal did
years ago, that a 'Dissenter is only half an Englishman,' but, so far
as a right to share in all the advantages afforded by civilized
society is concerned, that is the position in which he is, or is
sought to be placed, even now. The question with which Mr. Leatham
fairly startled Mr. Gladstone, 'How long are we, a party of
Dissenters, to be led by a cabinet of Churchmen?' suggests other
inquiries, of a more searching kind, which are even more strictly
relevant to the point we are now considering. Take the public
functionaries throughout the kingdom--the Commissioners who administer
the affairs of important departments, some of which decide matters
vitally affecting the interests of Nonconformists--the occupants of
the magisterial bench--the trustees of public charities--the holders
of municipal and parochial offices, great and small, and it will be
seen that the large majority are connected with the State-favoured
Church, and that offices of responsibility and influence, as well as
of emolument, are filled by Dissenters in an inverse proportion to
their numbers, their intelligence, and their energetic devotion to
public duty.
These are some of the allegations with which we meet Sir Roundell
Palmer's assertion that the Establishment no longer inflicts wrong on
those who think it right to dissent; but there are others, the aptness
of which will be still more apparent, because the facts come within
the knowledge of a far larger class. Whatever may be the case in the
great centres of population, it is certain that in the small towns,
and especially in those rural districts, in which, we are told, the
Establishment is so great a blessing, petty persecution, aiming at the
repression of dissent, is as rife as when that Establishment could
persecute by law. Is the dissenter a farmer? He is kept by Church
landlords and landladies out of a whole district, as carefully as the
rinderpest itself; or if he happens to be already in it, he is
deported as quickly as lease, or agreement, will allow. Is he a
shopkeeper? He must hold his head low, and consent to sell his
principles with his wares, or he loses half his customers. Does he
require education for his children? The day-school is, indeed, open to
them, but attendance at the Sunday-school and the church is insisted
upon, as part of the price to be paid for the education for which he,
in common with other tax-payers, largely pays. Is he poor? So much the
worse for him, when coals, blankets, and soup are distributed at
Christmas; when parochial charities, intended to be unsectarian, are
dispensed, or when misfortune makes him a fitting object for the help
and sympathy of all his neighbours. Nay! he may be wholly independent
of all around in regard to pecuniary circumstances--may have fortune,
culture, and all the gifts and graces of refined and of Christian
life; yet, if in the matter of the Lord his God he differs from those
who worship at the altars of the Establishment, he, too, pays the
penalty for conscientious Nonconformity, in the social exclusion, and
the haughty contempt, which to certain minds make country life one of
the hardest things to bear, and strongly tempt the children of wealthy
Nonconformists to desert, and ultimately to despise, the communities
to which they were once attached.
To these representations, as well as to others relating to the social
discord created by an Establishment, it has been replied that they
describe as much the result of the caste-feeling, which, rightly or
wrongly, exists among us, as the result of the Church being
established; that hard and fast lines will be drawn by individuals
even when State-made distinctions have ceased; that we 'shall not get
rid of the Church of England by disestablishing it;' and that 'so far
from being less energetic in the assertion of its claims,' it will be
'more energetic than ever.' The rejoinder is, that the existence of a
state-maintained Church aggravates social tendencies sufficiently bad
enough in themselves to require no encouragement--that, when the
possessors of invidious privileges find their privileges endangered,
they think themselves justified in doing what they would otherwise
condemn--that acts such as we have indicated are committed to a far
greater extent by the members of established than of unestablished
bodies, and that Episcopalianism in America, and in our own colonies,
does not adopt the repressive, and the oppressive, policy to which it
resorts at home. Sir Roundell Palmer's dictum that 'One of the
advantages of a union which subsists between Church and State is, that
it gives to the former an inducement to act in a more liberal and
conciliatory spirit than can be relied upon if the relations between
the two were different,' is, in our judgment, contrary to the facts of
history; and if the Church is, at the present time, 'bound over to
keep the peace' as it has not been before, it is just because the ties
between Church and State are loosened, and liberality and moderation
are necessary to prevent their being quickly severed.
There is one other aspect of the case to which, perhaps, full justice
was not done by any of the speakers in the late debate, and that is
the influence exerted by the Establishment, in regard to opinion, as
affecting both theological belief and ecclesiastical practice. The
Nonconformist objection to an Establishment, as popularly put, is,
that it appropriates public property to the maintenance of a Church,
the advantages of which cannot be shared by large sections of the
community. That is true, but it is not the whole truth; for even if
the Church found its own capital, and the State gave nothing but
authority and privilege, the Nonconformist would still have ground to
complain of the injustice done to him by the junction of the two
bodies. The pocket objection, strong as it is, is, after all, neither
the strongest nor the highest. To the man who, in these days of
shifting and uncertain belief, holds definite views of truth, and
especially of the highest forms of truth, it is less a grievance that
the State should deprive him of his share of public property than that
it should exert its influence on behalf of what he believes to be
mischievous error--error, possibly, dishonouring to God, as well as
detrimental to men. The member for Richmond says that he is at one
with the member for Bradford in thinking that 'no State authority
ought to interfere with any man's religious belief;' but what is
interference with man's religious belief? Is no one's belief
interfered with when the Canons of a national Church excommunicate
_ipso facto_ all impugners of the Articles, the worship, or the
government of that Church, until they have repented, and publicly
revoked, their 'wicked errors?' Is the Unitarian belief not interfered
with by the state-sanctioned Athanasian creed? Or the Baptist belief
by the baptismal service? Or the Quaker belief by the eucharistic
doctrines of the Church? Or, to put the question in the broadest form,
is the Roman Catholic's belief not interfered with when there is
established a Protestant Church, which asserts that the leading
tenets, or practices, of the Romish Church are damnable and
idolatrous?
It is true that everybody in the country is free to protest against
the creed and practices of the Establishment, but why should anyone
have to protest at all? The Nonconformist may enforce his own views of
truth and religious duty, but why should the State, which is invested
with authority derived from him, in common with his fellow-citizens,
not only compel him to become a Nonconformist, but put a heavy premium
on the acceptance of that which he feels it to be his duty to
denounce? This is a question, the force of which increases in
proportion as the Established clergy assert their right to set at
defiance authorized doctrinal standards and rubrics, as well as to
disregard the most solemn judicial decisions; for the points of
theological antagonism between their teaching and the views of
Nonconformists will multiply as confusion grows within the Church. But
we are content to enforce our present point by an illustration drawn
from a state of things with which we have long been familiar, rather
than from any new development of clerical extravagance. Here, for
instance, are specimens of the teaching of one of the authorized
instructors of the people, taken from a twopenny catechism, entitled
_Some questions of the Church Catechism, and doctrines involved,
briefly explained, for the use of families and parochial schools_; by
the Rev. J. A. Gace, M.A., Vicar of Great Barling, Essex,[42] and
which, we understand, is circulated widely in many parishes far
distant from the author's.
'85. _Q._ We have amongst us various Sects and
Denominations who go by the general name of Dissenters. In
what light are we to consider them? _A._ As heretics; and
in our Litany we expressly pray to be delivered from the
sins of "false doctrine, heresy, and schism."
'86. _Q._ Is then their worship a laudable service? _A._
No; because they worship God according to their own evil
and corrupt imaginations, and not according to His revealed
will, and therefore their worship is idolatrous.
'87. _Q._ Is Dissent a great sin? _A._ Yes; it is in direct
opposition to our duty towards God.
'94. _Q._ But why have not Dissenters been excommunicated?
_A._ Because the law of the land does not allow the
wholesome law of the Church to be acted upon; but
Dissenters have virtually excommunicated themselves by
setting up a religion of their own, and leaving the ark of
God's Church.
'98. _Q._ Is it wicked then to enter a meeting-house at
all? _A._ Most assuredly; because, as was said above, it is
a house where God is worshipped otherwise than He has
commanded, and therefore it is not dedicated to His honour
and glory; and besides this, we run the risk of being led
away by wicked enticing words; at the same time, by our
presence we are witnessing our approval of their heresy,
wounding the consciences of our weaker brethren, and by our
example teaching others to go astray.
'99. _Q._ But is language such as this consistent with
charity? _A._ Quite so: for when there is danger of the
true worshippers of God falling into error we cannot speak
too plainly, or warn them too strongly of their perilous
state; at the same time that it is our duty to declare in
express terms to those who are without, that they are
living separate from Christ's body, and consequently out of
the pale of salvation, so far, at least, as God has thought
fit to reveal.'
Assuming, as we may fairly do, that the author of all this--well! we
need not describe it--preaches as he publishes, have the heretics and
sinners whom he thus consigns to perdition no right to complain that,
besides receiving--according to the 'Clergy List'--£230 a year of
public money, he should also be invested with authority by the State?
It is idle to say that truth is truth, and falsehood falsehood, and
that the one will prevail, and the other perish, no matter whether he
who utters it is an established clergyman, or a dissenting preacher.
In the long run it will be so, but the struggle between truth and
falsehood is prolonged when, instead of the two being left fairly to
grapple with each other, the weight of State-influence, as well as of
State-gold, is thrown into the wrong scale. To speak plainly, the
establishment of a Church is an organized system of bribery in favour
of that Church. It may fail to buy the adherence of strong and
independent minds, but the minds of the majority are neither the one
nor the other. It appeals successfully to the self-seeking, the
timid, the conventional, the fashion-loving, and _they_ are to be
found among every class of the community. And, in doing so, it
inflicts injustice--injustice to those who reject the established
doctrines, even though they may be in possession of every civil right.
'The Established Church will certainly not be weakened by the debate
of Tuesday,' was the final conclusion of the _Times_, in the three
fluctuating leaders devoted to the subject, and that is true in the
sense in which it is true that an army hard pressed by an enemy is not
weakened by abandoning an untenable position, and by retreating within
its inner line of defence. And that is just what the English
Establishment has done, so far as its present position is indicated by
the late debate. Almost everything in the shape of _à priori_ argument
on its behalf has been given up, and it has fallen back on the plea of
utility alone. In doing so, it has adapted itself to a characteristic
of Englishmen, of whom Emerson has smartly said that, while there is
nothing which they hate so much as a theory, they will bow down and
worship a fact. It does not, however, follow that objectors to the
Establishment are bound to confine themselves to the same weapons as
those selected for the defence. The reasoning based on religious
principle which--strange anomaly! seeing that Parliament charges
itself with responsibility for the religious concerns of the
nation--is thought to be unfit for the House of Commons, may still be
employed with effect in influencing pious and thoughtful minds
elsewhere. Nor can the reasoning which appeals to men's sense of
equity be disposed of in the summary fashion adopted by Sir Roundell
Palmer. An institution based on principles which are radically unsound
cannot long be vindicated solely with reference to its alleged
usefulness. That which is unjust cannot be permanently upheld, because
it is seemingly successful. The painted sepulchre is a sepulchre,
though painted; and if an establishment really contravenes the rules
of right, its most brilliant, and even its most solid achievements,
will ultimately fail to prolong its existence.
When the Church of England, put upon its defence as a Church
established by law, insists that it is the source of blessings to the
community, amply worth the price which the community is required to
pay for them, it indicates no lack of Christian or of generous feeling
to examine these claims in the same practical way in which they are
put forward. Especially is it necessary to discriminate between the
action of the Church simply as such, and its action as a Church
specially favoured by the State, as well as to see that, while
acknowledging all its deeds of goodness, we do not draw from them a
totally erroneous inference. It does not seem to us that very much is
conceded, if we admit the correctness of Sir Roundell Palmer's
assertion that the Church of England is exerting more influence over
the country than all the other religious bodies put together. Why--to
quote the language of the _Times_, used for an opposite purpose--'a
man of education might be expected to remember that modern Dissent can
only boast a history of a hundred and fifty years, and that before it
arose the whole system of the Church of England was firmly
consolidated.' And, besides the advantage of a long start, she has had
wealth, power, and prestige--all three being enjoyed at the expense of
Nonconformity, and yet the nett result is, that she only does more
than all the unestablished bodies, and in doing so, leaves masses of
the people almost untouched by her ministrations! Let it be remembered
also, that these descriptions of the Establishment, which are intended
to reconcile us to its existence, are descriptions which, to a large
extent, have been applicable only during the last fifty years. No one
would speak of the Church in the days of the Georges as he may rightly
speak of her in the days of Victoria; for one of her own clergy--the
Rev. Sydney Smith--has characteristically declared that during the
former period 'the clergy of England had no more influence over the
people than the cheesemongers of England.' And whence the change? Is
it attributable to the action of the Establishment principle--to the
retention of Parliamentary grants, or to the multiplication of
political privileges? On the contrary, not until voluntaryism had to
so great an extent supplied the deficiency existing in connection with
State-endowments and compulsory exactions, and not until the process
of disestablishment had, in principle, been commenced, has the Church
of England earned the eulogiums of which she is now deservedly the
subject. Sir Roundell Palmer asks for the gratitude of Dissenters
because the zeal and energy of the Church have given to them a
powerful stimulus, and reminds us that, in regard to architecture, to
music, and to modes of worship, they have not hesitated to copy the
Church from which they dissent. Well! we are as thankful as he is for
that 'community of feeling between the most enlightened and best of
men on both sides,' which not only brings them together, but leads
them to select for imitation each other's wisest and best methods. But
is the obligation all on one side? Does the Church owe nothing to
Nonconformity, in regard to zeal, to organization, to education, to
hymnology, to preaching, and, above all, to the pecuniary aspects of
voluntaryism? She is welcome to all she has borrowed, and we hope that
it may be possible to import into her own system other admitted
excellencies, to be found in those of Nonconformists; but does this
interchange of influence between different Churches justify the
placing of one in an exceptional position, to the prejudice of the
rest; and is Nonconformity,
'Like a young eagle, who has lost his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,'
to have an Establishment foisted upon it in perpetuity, because it has
done so much to make such institution more tolerable than in days of
yore? And what authority had Sir Roundell Palmer for the assertion
that Mr. Miall wished, 'for certain theoretical reasons, to destroy
the whole of the immense machinery by which all this good is done?' If
by this it was intended to suggest that all the good effected by the
Church of England comes out of its legal position, Mr. Miall would
deny the correctness of the suggestion; while, on the other hand, if
no inconsiderable portion of that good be the result of the piety and
devotedness of Churchmen--manifested in spite, rather than as the
result, of Establishment--he would repudiate any intention to destroy,
or in any way to hinder their work.
We have said that the case of the Establishment has been made to rest
solely on the utilitarian argument; and we now add that the range of
that argument is practically limited to the rural parishes. Sir
Roundell Palmer admits that in the large towns the Church of England
is not overtaking the spiritual wants of the population; though he
thinks that its efforts to do so are greater than those of Dissenters.
That is to say, the influence of the Establishment is smallest where
the intellectual and moral forces which ultimately decide the
country's destinies exist--a large admission, and one which will have
cumulative weight as time progresses. Mr. Miall, he complained, 'did
not sufficiently distinguish between the position of the working
classes in the towns and the working classes in the country,' and,
with regard to the last, he affirmed that, 'speaking generally, they
are members of the Church, and through the Church they are partakers
of benefits of every description, spiritual, moral, and even
temporal.' 'Those,' he added, 'who know the rural districts of this
country, will bear testimony to the existence of multitudes upon
multitudes of poor people who have in them both "sweetness and
light."' And then--utterly ignoring the influence exercised by all
other agencies--he stated that he could not 'imagine any institution
to which this character of the labouring poor is due more than to that
which has placed in the centre of the population of every part of the
country a man educated and intelligent, whose business it is to do
them good, whose whole and sole business is to take care of their
souls as far as by God's help he is enabled to do so, in every way and
in all circumstances of life to be their friend and counsellor.'
We assume that Scotland is not included in the sphere within which the
Established system has wrought thus beneficently. We assume also that,
after the facts and figures for which the House and country are
indebted to Mr. Richard, M.P., the Principality of Wales also may be
excluded from the map of the territory over which the sun of the
Establishment sheds these blessings, and, probably, a candid
Episcopalian would hesitate to claim for his Church credit for all the
civilization and Christianity to be found in Cornwall, and some other
districts. So that, tried by a geographical test, the argument may be
pared down even yet lower than it has been by the speaker himself.
But are we to be satisfied with Arcadian pictures, or to seek to build
on solid fact? We repeat Mr. Miall's question--what is the condition
of the rural parishes? and for an answer refer, not to Blue Books
alone, but to the knowledge of living men. How are 'the men whose
whole and sole business it is to take care of the souls' of our
villagers discharging their high function? Are they feeding them with
the bread of life, or with 'the husks which the swine do eat,' in the
shape of superstitious teaching, or of vapid formalism? Is it not in
our village parishes that there are to be found the most stolid
ignorance and the grossest superstition? Can there not be reckoned up
by hundreds parishes in which spiritual deadness and intellectual
stagnation are the prevailing characteristics of the population--or
where the only ray of light issues from the mission-station of the
despised itinerant preacher, and the only mental activity is due to
the self-sacrificing efforts of a handful of, perhaps, persecuted
Dissenters? These are the kind of questions which will be stirred up
by Sir Roundell Palmer's statements, and other recent utterances of
the like kind. Those statements are, no doubt, true of certain
parishes, and the number of those parishes is, we are glad to believe,
increasing; but that they accurately describe the majority of rural
parishes we utterly disbelieve, and surprise must not be felt if,
henceforth, there is less reticence than there has been in regard to
the real working of the Establishment in those districts in which it
is now alleged to be the greatest blessing.
We have heard of those who represent the world as resting upon the
back of a tortoise; and now the case of the English Establishment is
based upon the agricultural labourer. Even a journal having so
unclerical a bias as the _Pall Mall Gazette_ gravely declares that
'Without the parson of the parish the English parish itself
would revert to that barbarism from which it is, even under
existing circumstances, not so very distantly removed. The
agricultural labourers of this country have been not
altogether unjustly described as a class without hope; but
whatever chance of kindness or consolation they may have in
need, sickness, or the approach of death, depends in the
main on the presence and the comparative affluence of the
parish clergyman.'
Thus, as Earl Russell once vindicated the Irish Establishment by
alleging that it gave the farmer in every parish a customer for his
eggs and butter, so in England it has now become the fashion to look
upon the Established clergy as auxiliary relieving officers, or as a
supplementary county police. It is not a high conception of their
functions; while it indicates the kind of impression which the Church,
as a spiritual institution, has made upon the political and
religiously-indifferent class. Nor will it reconcile good men, whether
in the Church of England or out of it, to a continuance of the evils,
the anomalies and the perplexities which are now admitted to be
inseparably connected with its position as an establishment. The eggs
and butter argument did not save the Irish Establishment; and neither
will the resident gentlemen theory save that of England. An
institution is, in fact, doomed when its advocates are thus obliged to
descend from the higher ground which they previously occupied, to
one--comparatively speaking--so miserably low. The question 'what will
become of the rural parishes if the Church be disestablished?' is one
which should be and can be answered; but, even if no satisfactory
answer were forthcoming, it would not be practicable to maintain
intact all the elaborate and costly machinery which goes by the name
of an establishment.
It is not our purpose to deduce from the debate on which we have been
commenting any practical lessons for the guidance of those whose
principles and aims it was the object of Mr. Miall to advance. The
leaders of the movement are not likely to be led by any elation of
feeling, resulting from the recent rapidity of their progress, to
relax the exertions needed to overcome the difficulties still awaiting
them; while they are acute enough to perceive the direction in which
they must in future work. If the passing of the Irish Church Act
demonstrated the possibility of disuniting Church and State by
peaceful, legal, and constitutional means, it has now been made
equally evident that, whenever public opinion calls for a similar
measure for England and for Scotland, our statesmen will be prepared
to comply with the demand. And, although we are not sanguine enough to
expect that the remaining stages of the controversy will be passed
through with the placidity which characterized the recent debate, we
yet hope that the fairness of spirit, and the generosity of feeling,
which were conspicuous from its commencement to its close, will exert
a perceptible influence on disputants in a less elevated arena. The
issue to be tried is one which, from its very nature, should restrain,
rather than excite evil passions, and which pre-eminently calls for
the manifestation of a broad and catholic feeling, instead of a narrow
and acrid sectarianism. If it be useless to cry 'Peace--peace!' amid
the din of conflict, that conflict may yet be carried on in a spirit
which will make it easy for victor and vanquished presently to rejoice
together, in what will be ultimately felt to be a gain for interests
which are equally precious to both.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Remembering the bitter vituperation of which the Liberation
Society has been the subject, the following passage from Sir Roundell
Palmer's speech, while creditable to the speaker, is amusing
also:--'When we see considerable bodies connected--_I won't call them
with agitations, for that is a word that might not be acceptable_--but
with movements out of doors for the purpose of influencing public
opinion on this subject.... I cannot pretend to deny that the question
should be brought under our attention.' This is substituting
rose-water for vitriol!
[41] The University Tests Abolition Bill received the royal assent on
the 16th of June.
[42] London: J. and C. Mozley, and Masters and Son, 1870.
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.
_The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland._ By J. P. PRENDERGAST,
Barrister-at-law. Second Edition. Enlarged. With a Facsimile of a
Cromwellian Debenture. Longmans. 1870.
It is the tritest of common places to deplore the persistency with
which the Irish will go back to early times, and explain the failure
of the well-meant attempts of modern legislation by narrating old
persecutions. They will do it; and the practical effect of their doing
so is seen, in the agitation for 'home government' among the wilder
spirits in Fenianism, among men like Mr. Butt and Mr. J. Martin. But,
though we regret the 'over-long memory' of the Irish, we cannot but
feel that Englishmen have never paid attention enough to the history
of the sister island. To most English readers everything beyond what
it suited the purpose of Macaulay and Carlyle and Froude to tell them,
is a mere blank. Educated men read with surprise in Mr. Hill-Burton's
Scotland, the statement that Ireland was the old _Scotia_, the _Scotia
major_ when it becomes necessary to make a distinction, and that the
_perfervidum ingenium_ which carried four Scotia missionaries over the
whole continent, is that very temperament which makes the Irish of
to-day so impatient of English rule. Mr. Reichel's lectures, again
(chiefly known, we fear, only through the appreciative notices of them
in the _Saturday Review_) have been a sort of new revelation of the
way in which Popery was forced upon Ireland by the English invaders,
and of the general state of the country in Plantagenet times. Even Mr.
Froude continually overthrows preconceived opinions--as when he proves
that in Elizabeth's time the only part of Ireland where there was
anything like peace and security was that which was still ruled by
native princes; 'the pale' being ground down by taxation and ravaged
by an unpaid soldiery, the successors of those 'paddy persons' who
under Leicester had made England despicable in the Netherlands, whilst
Ulster, under Shane O'Neil, was quiet and prosperous. What Englishman,
again, had anything like a true notion of the disgraceful horrors of
'98, till he read Massey's George the Third? Yet Irishmen know and
ponder over all these things. A whole library of cheap historical
monographs has for many years spread the knowledge of them broadcast;
and to this reading, unhappily so one-sided, is due that stubborn
'ingratitude' as we call it, which even the Disestablishment and the
Land Bill fail to satisfy.
Mr. Prendergast's book (which we see has reached a second edition) is
perhaps the very best that an Englishman could read in order to master
the causes of Irish discontent. It is well written in every sense;
full of minute research, which the author's office as cataloguer of
the Carte papers in the Bodleian enabled him to make; graphic in its
descriptions, and abounding in a kind of grim humour which suits the
story well. It is the work, in fact, of an educated Irishman.
Its object is to show how the Long Parliament, taking occasion from
the massacre of 1641, declared the whole of Ireland forfeited, and,
assigning Connaught as a home for the native population, divided the
rest into lots, which were given, partly to those who advanced money
to raise the Parliamentary army, partly in lieu of pay to the officers
and soldiers of that army. Mr. Prendergast does not give many details
of Cromwell's conquest--sufficiently known from Carlyle's Letters; but
he traces narrowly the history of the deportation, and shows how,
after causing incredible misery, it failed in 'thoroughness.'
The only doubtful portion of the book is the preliminary attempt to
explain away what our author styles 'the so-called massacre of 1641.'
The attempt will hardly satisfy anyone, and in some it may awaken an
unfair prejudice against the rest of the work. No doubt as to this
'massacre' there was immense exaggeration. It gave occasion for just
the sort of cry which the Parliament wanted to strengthen their hands
against Charles. He and Strafford, tolerant for their own ends, had no
prejudice against the use of those Irish Papists whom the great
majority of the King's party looked on much as Chatham in the American
war looked on our Red Indian allies. He therefore encouraged the Irish
of the North, smarting under the sense of James's confiscations and
Strafford's oppression, to arm with the view of helping him against
the Scots. They were to have come over and joined the Highlanders in
crushing the army of the Covenant. There is no doubt about it: since
Mr. Prendergast wrote, facts cited by Mr. Burton in his recent
history, prove that O'Neil's commission was not (as one historian
after another has repeated) 'a forgery with an old seal torn off an
abbey charter stuck upon it,' it was a bonâ fide document sealed with
_the Great Seal of Scotland_--a bit of that clumsy 'statecraft' which
the Stuarts learned from Elizabeth, for the Scotch seal had, of
course, no real power in Ireland.
Unfortunately for Charles both Irish and Scotch went to work more
quickly than he had expected. The first thought was naturally enough
that to recover their own lands was at least as important as to aid
Charles; so Sir Phelim O'Neil began his rising by driving out all the
English settlers instead of waiting till Ormonde was ready to seize
the strong places, and above all to get possession of Dublin. The
Scots, again, did not stop till Charles, who knew well enough that he
could not trust his English troops, had brought over his Irish forces
against them. They crossed the border, and the fight at Newburn and
the capture of Newcastle were the results. The actual killing done by
the rebels in 1641 has (we have said) been vastly exaggerated; the
mischief was that thousands were turned out of house and home and
driven off Dublin-wards in very inclement weather. Mr. Prendergast
stoutly asserts that it was the English and Scotch who began the
killing: their reprisals were certainly fearfully severe. Even Sir J.
Turner, seasoned as he had been to cruelty in the thirty years' war,
shuddered at the work which he was expected to do in Ireland: his
description of the massacre at Newry-bridge, where priests ('popish
pedlars'), merchants who had taken no share in the defence of the
town, and women were flung into the river and then fired at like
drowning-rats, is very shocking (Hill-Burton, vol. vii. 154). The fact
is that the report of Irish atrocities, industriously magnified by the
Parliament, had maddened the other side; and the Indian Mutiny, and
the Jamaica trouble, show what the Anglo-Saxon is capable of when he
is excited by garbled reports. Along with this feeling of race was
mixed that religious rancour which led the 'new English' to include
the 'old English' (mostly Papists) in the same category as the
aborigines. Parliament fostered--conscientiously, but still in
opposition to all sound toleration principles--this religious hatred,
in order to alarm the Cavaliers, who were mostly as anti-Romanist as
their opponents, and so to deprive Charles of any advantage from the
Irish Romanists. Parliament, moreover, knew that the 'massacre' was
exaggerated; else they would not have been content to levy troops for
the Irish war, and then to employ them in England instead, quietly
leaving Ireland to itself till Cromwell had leisure to conquer it.
Mr. Prendergast's strong points are, first, the silence of all
records--a silence which is complete (he says) till the Commission,
sent over five years after, begins to get up evidence. Second, the
certainty (in his eyes) that the English began the murderings: on this
we have the counter-evidence of Sir Charles Coote, in the trial of
Maguire; but Coote was emphatically a man of blood even in that bloody
age; he had made a great part of Connaught a desert; and as a witness
he is worthless. Third, the assertion that nearly all such killing as
there was, was in the way of ordinary war, as war then and there was
carried on.
But whether the reader is persuaded or not that our author has proved
his point as to 1641, there is unfortunately no doubt at all as to
what follows. The transplantation was an attempt to exile a whole
nation; and it failed as it deserved to fail. No doubt there was
plenty of justification for such a deed. The Jesuits and the house of
Austria had already done something of the kind on a small scale in
several parts of Germany; the St. Bartholomew had shown how impossible
it is for Rome to keep politics and religion apart. And the theory of
a compact Protestant Saxondom with the Shannon for its western
boundary was just what would commend itself to the most earnest minds
of the time. When even M. Guizot nowadays doubts whether we can extend
to Rome the same measures of toleration to which other sects have an
undoubted right, we can well understand how the men of that day, fresh
from the smart of Rome's blows, should have felt all pact with her to
be impossible. The priest was one of the 'three burdensome
beasts'--the others being the wolf (whose numbers had vastly increased
during this time of misery) and the 'Tory' _i.e._, the dispossessed
landowner who refused to go into Connaught, and lived as a freebooter
till he was shot down or hanged. For all these three, as we have said,
rewards were offered, and for the 'sport' of hunting them we refer the
reader to our author's pages. The anti-Popish feeling was equally
strong in the king's party. Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon) writes in
1654, 'Fiennes is made Chancellor of Ireland. And they doubt not to
_plant_ that kingdom without opposition. And truly if we can get it
again, we shall find difficulties removed which a virtuous prince and
more quiet times could never have compassed.' The plan was not
original: in Henry VIII.'s time it was regularly systematized (State
Papers, vol. i. 177); and Cowley's treatise in the State Papers (i.
323) is in this respect but an anticipation of Spenser's well-known
State of Ireland.
Of the misery which was caused by this wholesale eviction--after the
work had been facilitated by the banishment to Spanish service of
40,000 fighting men and the transportation of crowds more to Barbadoes
and elsewhere--some idea may be formed from the following picture. 'A
party of horse (Prendergast, p. 308), Tory-hunting on a dark night,
saw a light in the distance, which they found to proceed from a ruined
cabin, wherein was a great fire of wood, and sitting round about it a
company of miserable old women and children, and betwixt them and the
fire a dead corpse lay broiling, which as the fire roasted they cut
off collops and ate.' This is the record of Colonel Richard Lawrence,
an eye-witness. No wonder the wolves multiplied so that even the
environs of Dublin became unsafe.
That part of the Parliament's doings which grates most on modern ears
is their abundant use of Old Testament passages to enforce their
edicts. The Irish had such 'an evil witchery,' as Mr. Froude calls it,
that even the incoming Puritans got on friendly terms with them. The
most stringent orders were therefore issued to keep the two asunder.
The Irish are 'a people of God's wrath,' and to intermarry with them
is forbidden in the language used by Ezra to forbid the mixed
marriages of the Jews. Officers guilty of such a crime are cashiered;
dragoons are reduced to common soldiers; soldiers are flogged and made
pioneers. 'The moderate Cavalier,' 1675, says that he and his fellows
Rather than marrie an Irish wife
Would batchellers remain for tearme of life.
Of course the mode of paying troops with patches of land was wholly
delusive, as the history of the Roman Cæsars might have warned those
who adopted it that it would be. Instead of getting a compact body of
settlers forming a sort of 'military frontier,' the Parliament
unwittingly created vast estates and introduced absenteeism. The
soldiers did not care to stay in a poor wasted country where native
labour was scarcely to be had: they sold their 'lots' to their
officers or others for a horse, a barrel of beer, a little ready
money, &c. Thus was laid the foundation of colossal estates like that
of the Pettys. It was the same with the small debenture holders; a
London vintner or cook who had contributed £25 to the good cause, and
held a debenture to that amount for land in Kerry, was not likely to
go out and turn backwoodsman. He sold to one of the larger holders;
and these larger holders were soon obliged to connive at the gradual
return of the dispossessed Irish, who were content (except the Tories)
to till as cottiers and hinds the lands which they had lately owned.
Thus it was that, despite such a mixture of zeal and cruelty as that
to which the book bears witness, the Puritan idea was never realized.
We shall not be suspected of undervaluing our Puritan forefathers:
they were the salt of the earth in their day; they did the Lord's work
right well in many ways. But in Ireland they failed because, while
taking Scripture for their guide, they forgot the truth that 'the
wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.'
_The English Colonization of America during the Seventeenth Century._
By EDWARD D. NEILL. Strahan and Co.
Mr. Neill is one of those inconvenient persons who will permit no
romance of story-telling to condone falsehood or exaggeration. He
would have been a terrible bore to Hume, who is said to have
deprecated fresh materials from the State Paper Office, lest they
should disturb his conclusions. He would spoil the best anecdote in
the world by asking, 'Is it true?' His book is written avowedly to
rectify historical fictions respecting the English colonization of
America; and it certainly does destroy some very pretty stories, which
have furnished themes for both romance and poetry. His book, however,
is in itself a history, as well as a correction; and although it can
boast no glowing narrative or artistic skill, it reads very
pleasantly. One of the romances that he entirely destroys is that of
'Pocahontas and John Rolfe.' Even Bancroft speaks of Rolfe as a young,
amiable, enthusiastic Englishman, who, even in his dreams, heard 'a
voice crying in his ears that he should strive to make Pocahontas, a
young Indian maiden, a Christian, and constrained by the love of
Christ, uniting her to himself by the holy bonds of matrimony.' Mr.
Neill conclusively proves, by documentary evidence, drawn from the
records of the London Company's Transactions, that Rolfe had been for
some years previously a married man, and that at his death he left a
white widow and some children, beside his son by Pocahontas; and that
Pocahontas herself, instead of a romantic Indian maiden, was a bit of
an intriguer--with a slightly disreputable character.
Another myth to which Bancroft gives his sanction is that 'the
settlers of Maryland were most of them Roman Catholic gentlemen.' Mr.
Neill proves that, so far from the old Virginian families being
derived from any aristocratic source, the colony was an early Van
Dieman's Land, to which King James transported 'divers dissolute
persons' and other convicts. It was, in short, a penal settlement,
whose residents hailed from 'Bridewell,' fifty or a hundred at a time.
Edinburgh used to banish there its 'night-walking women.' Thus,
according to Sir Josiah Child's 'New Discourse of Trade,'
1698,--'Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose,
vagrant people, and destitute of means at home, being either unfit for
labour, or such as could find none to employ themselves about, or had
so misbehaved themselves by whoreing, thieving, and debauchery, that
none would give them work; which merchants and masters of ships, by
their agents or spirits, as they were called, gathered up about the
streets of London and other places, to be employed upon plantations.'
'As the descendants of these people,' says Mr. Neill, 'increased in
wealth, they grew ashamed of their fathers, and became manufacturers,
not of useful wares, but of spurious pedigrees'--illustrations of
which he gives. The preamble to the statutes of Williamsburgh College
presents a dark picture of the illiterate condition of Virginia at the
commencement of the eighteenth century. In striking contrast with
which is a recent report of Professor Henry B. Smith, D.D., which
proves that the largest development and increase of Christianity in
this century has been in the United States, the increase of Church
membership having relatively outrun the increase of the population. It
was in the ratio of one to fifteen in 1800; it is now in the ratio of
one to six.
Mr. Neill gives us interesting details concerning the settlement of
the American colonies, derived from records, statutes, memoirs, and
letters. The history is one of heroic enterprise and romantic
experiences. It comprises the emigration of the New England
Pilgrims--the _May Flower_ seems to have been destined for Northern
Virginia, and to have been treacherously taken to Cape Cod; the
singular history too of American Quakerism. We regret that we cannot
follow into details the information of Mr. Neill's honest and
singularly interesting book.
_The Annals of our Time; a Diurnal of Events Social and Political,
Home and Foreign, from the Accession of Queen Victoria, June 20,
1837._ By JOSEPH IRVING. A new edition, carefully revised, and brought
down to the peace of Versailles, February 20, 1871. Macmillan and Co.
History is just now made very fast, and is of a character that will
stand out very prominently in the annals of our century. The Peace of
Versailles is certainly not a _terminus ad quem_. It is already half
forgotten in the astounding events that have followed; but Mr. Irving
could not wait for the stream to stop, and every presumption was that
the Peace of Versailles was a _finale_ at which an ordinary annalist
might pause. Mr. Irving's book has been before the public more than
two years, and its plan and execution have alike commended themselves
to the student and the statesman. Proceeding in a chronological order,
he records, after the manner of a diarist, the noteworthy events and
incidents of our national history--politics, ecclesiastical events,
incidents of fire and flood, everything, indeed, that one would care
to know about; these he narrates in a succinct way, and illustrates by
quotations from the journals--from the speeches and sayings of
remarkable men--from official reports, biographies, histories--nothing
comes amiss to him that gives information. He supplies precisely that
information which has not yet passed into history, but which memory
can only imperfectly retain. He also preserves for us that class of
events which is interesting for a generation or two only, and of
which no educated man can conveniently be ignorant. The loving labour
bestowed by Mr. Irving on his work has been immense. In this second
edition of it he has corrected errors, supplied omissions, readjusted
proportions, condensed information, and carried on his chronicle to
the time of publication. Every name and date and entry has been
verified. The ten years between 1837 and 1847 have grown from 127 to
230 pages; the obituary notices, from 425 to 1,000; the volume itself,
from 734 to 1,034. The index has been carefully revised and extended.
The book, indeed, is as invaluable as it is unique; it is a dictionary
of dates expanded into a history; it is a history condensed into a
chronicle; it is the cream of our social life for thirty-five years;
it links together in a light and useful way, so as to present each as
a whole, chains of events and incidents in Parliament, Church and
social life, debates, duels, controversies, and personal incidents. We
have read on from page to page, unwilling to leave off. It is
indispensable for every public man.
_The Red River Expedition._ By Captain G. L. HUYSHE. Macmillan and Co.
This is a curious episode in the history of our Canadian colonies,
which, at the time of its occurrence last year, attracted but little
attention, owing to the absorbing interest of the Franco-Prussian war.
The present writer was in Toronto before the return of the expedition,
but even there heard no mention of it. The Red River settlement is an
almost unapproachable position, near the centre of our North American
Dominions, about 600 miles northwest of Lake Superior, and about 1,200
miles from Toronto. It is reached by crossing the Lakes Huron and
Superior, by traversing rivers, and by prairie tracks. The settlement
was made by Lord Selkirk in 1813, and was planted by Scotch emigrants.
It has attained a mixed population of 15,000 souls. In the
negotiations about the confederation of the British North American
Provinces, in 1867, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Dominion Government,
and the Imperial Government, do not seem sufficiently to have
considered the feelings of the little Red River Colony. The French
half-breeds in the colony took advantage of this; disputes about lands
aggravated it; the Roman Catholic priests fomented it. Louis Riel was
placed at their head. They resolved to oppose the Canadian,
authorities; formed a 'Provisional Government,' seized Fort Garry, a
little fortified town just on the border line of British and American
territory; expelled Mr. M'Dougall, the Lieutenant Governor, sent by
the Canadian authorities, and proclaimed their independence. After
fruitless negotiations, it was resolved to send an armed expedition
from Toronto to re-establish Canadian, or rather Imperial authority,
and to punish the rebels, especially as Riel had shot one of the
Canadian soldiers, after a trial by court-martial. 1,200 troops, under
Colonel Wolseley, were, after careful selection and thoughtful
provision, sent off. Captain Huyshe was one of the expedition, and
this is the record of it. The rebellion itself affords but little
incident; it collapsed at once on the arrival of the force, and Riel
escaped across the frontier. We regret to find that the American
authorities at first threw every obstacle in the way of the
expedition, hoping to profit by the disturbance. They refused
permission to it to pass through the canal connecting Lake Huron with
Lake Superior, and even stopped the _Chicora_ steamer on her regular
trip, lest it should give facilities. This involved great
embarrassment, delay, and expense. The remonstrances of Mr. Thornton,
at Washington, at length procured the removal of this interdict. All
means of progression known to the human race, except balloons, had to
be made use of. 200 boats had to be built, a commissariat organized,
road-makers, &c., to be employed. The time occupied by the expedition
was eight months, the cost £400,000. The organization and success were
perfect. Captain Huyshe's record is interesting, both as a journal of
travel, and as a military operation. It is an Abyssinian expedition on
a small scale; not a shot was fired, not a life was lost. The
achievement was altogether a remarkable and a creditable one, and has
found a capable and pleasant historian.
_A Manual of Systematic History._ By Dr. MARTIN REED. Containing, I.,
Chronological, Genealogical, and Statistical Tables of Modern History;
II., the Biography of Modern History; III., the Facts of English
History, Military, Diplomatic, Constitutional, and Social. Jarrold and
Sons.
It is impossible to do more than describe this stout and useful
volume, which is one of those admirable manuals for the library, desk,
or school which enable a ready reference to the facts of history,
biography, and social economy that constantly turn up in the work of
the student.
In the first part, a series of chronological tables present the
memorable facts of British and general history in divisions of
centuries, with the names of sovereigns and the date of their
accession, of statesmen, authors, artists, &c., together with
genealogies and full statistical tables, especially of the cost of
different wars in money and men. The second part is a brief
biographical dictionary brought down to the present day. The third
part is a synopsis and chronology of the principal facts of British
history, military, constitutional, institutional, and social--a
cyclopædia, indeed, of useful information. Of course we have attempted
no verifications of dates, but assuming accuracy, Dr. Reed has
furnished a very valuable manual for every literary man's desk.
_The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Political,
Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his time._ By DAVID MASSON,
M.A., LL.D. Vol. II. Macmillan and Co.
Professor Masson has not convinced us of the excellence of his method
by his formal defence of it, in which he urges, first, his deliberate
purpose, and next his disregard of preconceived ideas of literary
form. The former simply affirms that his book has not drifted by
accident into its present shape; in the latter every writer is to be
judged solely by success. There is, moreover, a strong presumption in
favour of a 'combination of a biography with a contemporary history.'
Every biography is a necessary part of contemporary history, and the
question is simply one of degree. Whether a method such as Professor
Masson's is justified, depends solely upon the degree in which the
hero of the biography contributes to the history with which his name
is associated, and in which he can say, _quorum pars magna fuit_.
Concerning Cromwell, for instance, there could scarcely be a doubt as
to its propriety. Mr. Christie is justified in adopting the same
method in his biography of the first Earl of Shaftesbury; both were
men whose lives entered greatly into the history of their time, not
only in the sense of being identified with it, in all that made them
notable, but in the sense of moulding and constituting it; so that
without them--the former especially--the history itself would have
been very different. Milton scarcely played such a part in the history
of the Commonwealth; although the most illustrious man in it, the
sphere of his especial greatness was not of it. It is difficult to
suppose that the course and character of the Commonwealth would in any
important particular have been essentially different had he not
existed. As Cromwell's secretary, and still more as a vigorous
pamphleteer, he doubtless contributed powerfully to the idea and
defence of the Commonwealth, especially of its ecclesiastical polity;
but only as Dryden and Swift contributed to the polity of their day.
In the period which this volume comprises--1638-1643--we are almost
ludicrously impressed with the insignificant relations of Milton to
the events that it narrates. In the huge sandwich which the volume
constitutes, the biographical chapters are not even the thinnest
slices of meat, they are at the most the mustard. Professor Masson has
not been able to avoid in history the solecism in geography of the
renowned minister of the lesser Cumbrae. It is a study of the
individual man in his relations to the universe. It is, therefore,
neither a perfectly detailed history, nor an independent biography;
while the biography is full and perfect, such portions of the history
only are narrated as are supposed to relate to the life and thought of
Milton, but of necessity this is an arbitrary and fluctuating
quantity. There is a sense of disproportion and of artificiality
throughout which disturbs our enjoyment of the scholarly and vigorous
qualities of the book; for Professor Masson is justly entitled to take
his place among the few genuine historians of the day. Every page
bears witness to his unwearied labour, his great learning, his
original research, and his perfect conscientiousness; both as a
historian and a biographer, he is equally able and trustworthy. It is,
as he affirms, 'a work of independent research and method from first
to last.' Much of his labour was done before the State papers relating
to the period were calendared. 'There is not a single domestic
document extant of those that used to be in the State Paper Office
which I have not passed through my hands and scrutinized.' His book,
therefore, both in its facts and in its judgments, is an independent
and valuable contribution to history. There is about the style a
little squaring of the elbows, and what might not irreverently be
called a little fussiness, which makes some parts unnecessarily
diffuse; but with this qualification, the work is vigorous in
expression, noble in sentiment, and elevated in its judicial fairness.
It is full of vivid portraits and pictures of the men and of the
times, and, better still, it is inspired with noble sympathies for the
great principles of political and religious freedom which were so
grandly contested. The present volume opens with a narration of the
Presbyterian revolt in Scotland and the two 'Bishops' Wars,' which
Professor Masson thinks have hardly had attached to them sufficient
relative importance. Between the first and the second, the Short
Parliament lived its little life; after the second, the Long
Parliament was called, a detailed account of the composition of which
is given by Professor Masson. After nine months of general
legislation, the movement for the reform of the English Church took
shape, the chief question being the exclusion of the bishops from
Parliament; which, after long debate, fluctuating opinion, and
abortive reaction, was effected in February, 1642, chiefly at the
moment through the blind blunder of Archbishop Williams in engaging
the bishops to a protest against all laws, &c., passed in their
absence from the House of Peers. 'The bishops,' said Lord Falkland,
'had been the destruction of unity under pretence of uniformity.' They
had been some of them so 'absolutely, directly, and cordially Papists,
that it is all that fifteen hundred pounds a year can do to keep them
from confessing it.'
The relation of Milton to public affairs at this time was solely that
of a pamphleteer. The Church question was uppermost, both in Scotland
and in England. Milton is supposed to have aided the _Smectymnuans_ in
the composition of their famous pamphlet. The word was made up of the
initials of the writers, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas
Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. It was a reply to
Bishop Hall's 'Humble Remonstrance,' and to his 'Episcopacy by Divine
Right.' Soon after, Milton began to publish his anti-Episcopal
pamphlets, of five of which Professor Masson gives an account. These
were directed against Hall, Bishop of Exeter, afterwards of Norwich,
so often belauded for his moderation and spirituality, but of whose
scholarship and conduct Milton had not a very exalted estimate, in
which Professor Masson agrees with him. 'I have seen,' says Professor
Masson, 'disagreeable private letters of information written by him to
Laud respecting nests of sectaries in London whom it would be well to
extirpate; and my distinct impression is, that in his conduct
generally, and even in his writings, when carefully examined, there
will be found a meaner element than our literary _dilettanti_ and
antiquaries have been able to discover in so celebrated a bishop.' No
reader of Milton's prose works needs to be told that, while their
arguments are cogent, their fierce and terrific declamation is simply
overwhelming; indeed, the coarse vituperation of both sides is hardly
conceivable to those who have not read the controversy. We may commend
the arguments, as, indeed, the public questions that were debated, and
the course of events, to the consideration of Church parties of the
present day. Those too who are so enthusiastic about 'our incomparable
liturgy,' may with advantage read Milton's incisive criticisms
thereupon. An ominous parallel--happily, however, not in spirit--might
be traced between the questions of that day and our own. The secular
claims of bishops, and the implication in secular politics of the
Established Church, have from that time to this been a fruitful source
of political and social embarrassment and evil.
Professor Masson traces the way in which the nation drifted into civil
war, and makes a valuable contribution to history by giving a detailed
statistical and personal account of the forces and leaders on both
sides. The history is a thrilling one. Both Mr. Christie and Professor
Masson give us new recitals of it. It cannot be told too often, if
told in the spirit of conscientious fidelity and generous sympathy of
these writers. The greatest lesson that Englishmen can learn, the
seeds of the noblest things they can realize, were contained in it.
All that is to be said of Milton is, that he was not in the army,
which Professor Masson regrets for his own sake, and that about this
time he married Mary Powell.
The volume concludes with a most able and valuable account of English
Presbyterianism and English Independency, introduced by a biographical
analysis of the Westminster Assembly.
Professor Masson, in a very masterly way, traces the rise and history
of English Independency from the first Brownists of 1580; gives an
account of the Separatists in Holland from 1592 to 1640; of the
Separatist congregations in London from 1610 to 1632; of the New
England Pilgrims and their Church from 1620 to 1640; of the
persistency, reinvigoration, and growth of Independency in England
from 1632 to 1643; and closes his volume by representing the array of
Presbyterianism and Independency in July, 1643, and their prospects in
the Westminster Assembly, which met on the first day of that month,
and which, as Professor Masson justly observes, 'for more than five
years and a half is to be borne in mind as a power or institution in
the English realm, existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and
in constant conference and co-operation with it. The number of its
sittings during these five years and a half was 1,163 in all, which is
at the rate of about four sittings every week for the whole time. The
earliest years of the Assembly were the most important. All in all, it
was an Assembly which left remarkable and permanent effects in the
British Islands, and the history of which ought to be more
interesting, in some homely respects, to Britons now, than the
history of the Council of Basel, the Council of Trent, or any other
of the great ecclesiastical councils, more ancient and oecumenical,
about which we hear so much.' We can neither condense nor criticise
here the very able and impartial narrative of this section of
Professor Masson's history. We may at a future time return to it. We
simply commend it to the attention of both Churchmen and
Nonconformists, as a very masterly sketch of a historic movement which
both should be familiar with, which the former is too apt to speak of
with a sneer which only ignorance could render possible, and which is
destined to produce great ecclesiastical and national results.
_A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury,
1621-1683._ By W. D. CHRISTIE. Macmillan and Co.
Mr. Christie's qualities as an historian are critical rather than
philosophical, scholarly rather than pictorial. He laudably prides
himself upon scrupulous accuracy, and has the patient industry and
conscientious truthfulness which deem no labour too great, no
minuteness too trivial, for the achievement of this result. His work,
therefore, is a critical rather than a constructive work: or, rather,
he constructs by a critical process of vindication. The first Earl of
Shaftesbury has fared badly at the hands of history. 'He lived in
times of violent party fury, and calumny, which fiercely assailed him
living, pursued him in his grave, and still darkens his name. He lived
in times when the public had little or no authentic information about
the proceedings of members of the Government or of Parliament, when
errors in judging public men were more easy than now, and when venal
pamphleteers, poets, and play-writers drove a profitable trade in
libels on public men.' Shaftesbury not only fell into the hands of
political enemies, but his political tergiversations rendered his
vindication difficult for his friends. A young man of twenty-one at
the commencement of the Civil War, his life ran parallel with the
events of that eventful period; he lived through the Restoration to
within five years of the Revolution of 1688, and was closely connected
with political affairs through the greater part of his life. A
Royalist in early life, he became an ardent Parliamentarian; a
Royalist again, he played an important part with Monk in bringing back
Charles II.; and the problem which Mr. Christie has set himself is to
vindicate his honour in these convenient changes; and with the array
of great names against him, including even those of Hallam and
Macaulay, an arduous task it is; the invective of Macaulay is almost
as terrible as that of Dryden. Of course such a career affords rich
material for writers on both sides. Dryden, whose unscrupulous pen is
no condemnation, unmercifully consigned Shaftesbury to infamy in the
judgment of the multitude who read poetry, and know nothing of
political history, by making him the Achitophel of his great satire,
published just a week before Shaftesbury's trial for high treason, and
by lampooning him in 'The Medal,' referring to the medal which
Shaftesbury's friends had struck on his acquittal. Hume, again, by
the power of his literary genius, for a long time brought popular
condemnation upon all Whigs and Whiggery, and until his Tory
proclivities for the Stuarts were counteracted by recent and more
careful historians, made the worse appear the better reason. These
falsehoods of detraction, as Mr. Christie justly observed, 'produced
counter-falsehoods of excuse and eulogy, and the result has been a
greater agglomeration of errors.' In his old age, Shaftesbury began an
autobiography, doubtless with a view of self-vindication, but
proceeded only so far as his twenty-first year. Locke, who resided in
Shaftesbury's house many years as his physician and friend, meditated
a biography, but only collected a few materials for it. The fourth
Earl, the son of the author of the 'Characteristics,' placed all the
materials he possessed in the hands of a Mr. Benjamin Martin, for the
purpose of a biography, which he began in 1734, but he was unfitted
for the task, and the result was unsatisfactory. The MS., in 1766, was
put, for improvement, into the hands of Dr. Sharpe, Master of the
Temple; then into those of Dr. Kippis, editor of the 'Biographia
Britannica,' after which it was printed, but the fifth Earl was so
dissatisfied with it that the whole impression was destroyed, with the
exception of two copies. Mr. Bentley republished it in 1836,
edited--incompetently, Mr. Christie says--by Mr. George Wingrove
Cooke. Stringer, Shaftesbury's solicitor, seems to have furnished
Locke with information, fragments of which, in MS., in Locke's
handwriting, are among the Shaftesbury papers at St. Giles's; but
Stringer is inaccurate and confused. With these materials, and, of
course, access to all the family papers, Mr. Christie has constructed
his history--or, rather, his vindication--for his book has,
throughout, the character of a polemic. It would have been more
interesting, and more generally valuable, had Mr. Christie written an
affirmative history relegating to appendices or footnotes the
polemical discussions which different points demanded. As it is, he
has furnished material and sifted it, for the use of the historian
proper, and he has done this with rare acuteness and scrupulous
fairness.
The entire history of the Great Revolution, the Commonwealth, and the
Restoration, passes under review before us, and it could not be
examined by a more competent critic.
Anthony Ashley Cooper was of good Hampshire blood on both sides. His
father, John Cooper, of Rockborne, was made a baronet the year after
his son's birth. His mother was the only daughter of Sir Anthony
Ashley, Knt., who was also made a baronet the day before Mr. Cooper;
the order of baronets having been created by James I. ten years
before; it was to be limited to two hundred. Every baronet paid £1,095
for the honour, and had to be possessed of £1,000 per annum clear of
all incumbrances. It was imperative, too, that he should have had a
grandfather who had borne arms. Anthony was a little, fragile fellow,
but of great abilities, and his family connections gave him a good
standing in Oxford, where he became a reformer of abuses. Against one
savage and stupid custom, 'tucking freshmen,' he led a successful
resistance. The seniors made the freshmen 'hold out their chin, and
they, with the nail of their right thumb left long for the purpose,
grate off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then cause them
to drink a beer glass of water and salt.' Senators of the House of
Commons were then chosen young; some being only sixteen. Cooper was
the champion of the Tewkesbury yeomen against a bullying squire at a
civic feast, and was rewarded by being sent, at the age of nineteen,
as their representative to the House of Commons. Henceforth his life
is part of the history of the county. Cooper was with King Charles at
Nottingham, and gallantly stormed Wareham; but he soon after, and, as
we think Mr. Christie has proved, honourably, went over to the side of
the Parliament, and became one of Cromwell's privy counsellors. The
motives of neither of his great changes are very clear, but Mr.
Christie has shown that they were at least disinterested and
unsuspected. He was an intriguer, like most of the men of his time,
but his sympathies were uniformly liberal, and he resisted oppressive
measures--the Act of Uniformity for instance--at much risk to his own
interests. As a reward for his part in the Restoration of Charles, he
was made Baron Ashley. He became Lord of the Treasury, and Lord
Chancellor. He was one of the notorious Cabal ministry, but Mr.
Christie has succeeded in proving that he opposed, though
unsuccessfully, the worst measures of that miserable clique,
especially the notorious 'Stop of the Exchequer.' The most suspicious
thing about him is that he continued in Charles's favour, who made him
his Lord Chancellor and created him Earl of Shaftesbury. It seems odd
to us that a man without special legal knowledge should have been made
the head of the legal profession. In this capacity he is included in
Lord Campbell's 'Lives of the Chancellors,' from whose inaccurate
criticism Mr. Christie has to rescue him. Charles is said to have
justified his choice by saying that Shaftesbury had more law than all
his judges, and more religion than all his bishops. Charles's bishops
may have been doubtful, but Sir Matthew Hale was one of his judges. He
gave general satisfaction to suitors during his year of office, which
is saying much. His dismission probably influenced his politics, for
he joined the Whig Opposition. His closing years were characterized by
fierce conflict with the king, and he was twice sent a prisoner to the
Tower, accused of high treason; his acquittal was celebrated by great
public rejoicings. At length he concocted, with Russell and Monmouth,
a rising against the King, and had to escape to Holland, where, in
1683, just before James II. came to the throne, he died. He was a man
of brilliant genius, and a great statesman. He played a not ignoble
part in the greatest drama of our English history. He was frail in
health, but courageous and high-minded, and an uncompromising champion
of liberty. By no means immaculate, either in political principles or
personal morals, he has yet, beyond all question, been grossly
calumniated. Mr. Christie's volumes throw much interesting light upon
not only the political events, but the manners and morals of the
times. There are few more melancholy chapters in English history than
the reign of Charles II. Political venality, patriotic dishonour, and
personal vice vie with each other. Mr. Christie's volumes abundantly
justify the conclusions which have at length been reached by Liberals
in politics and by Nonconformists in ecclesiastical matters. We
earnestly commend them to all students of history as scholarly, acute,
and just.
_The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by himself._ Vol.
II. Blackwood and Co.
Reserving until the completion of this work the more ample consideration
and criticism to which The Life and Character of Lord Brougham are
entitled, we simply report concerning this second volume that it
covers the eventful period between 1808-1828, and narrates Brougham's
strenuous and successful struggle for the repeal of the Orders in
Council, which he terms 'my greatest achievement'--ultimately achieved
under the excitement caused by the assassination of Spencer Perceval.
Even Horner described Brougham's exertions as 'unexampled in the
modern history of Parliament.' Also, his costly and unsuccessful
struggle for the representation of Liverpool, which cost the Liberals
£8,000 and the Tories £20,000, during which Brougham made 160
speeches, two or three persons were killed, others severely wounded,
and votes were bought at £30 apiece. 'All who knew Liverpool formerly
say nothing was ever seen so quiet at an election there.' There were
five candidates. Canning beat Brougham by some 200 votes. Such were
the good old times. The description of the election is very racy. The
chief interest of the volume, however, centres in its detailed account
of the family feuds of George III., the relations of the Prince and
Princess of Wales, and the trial of the Queen. In 1810, Brougham
became the legal adviser of the Princess, and from that time took an
active part on her side in the vicissitudes of this dirty and
ignominious history. Brougham most strongly affirms, in contradiction
of much gossip to the contrary, that he and all the legal advisers of
the Queen had a clear and unhesitating conviction of her innocence.
The narrative throws a clearer light than has hitherto been thrown
upon the whole history, clears away many misconceptions, and solves
some mysteries.
In an explanatory note, the editor informs us that Lord Brougham, then
in his eighty-fourth year, began his account of the trial, after
examining his letters and papers, on the 8th of October, 1861. In
September, 1862, he began the political part. In November, 1863, he
began the account of his early life. In his search for materials he
found the manuscript of 'Memnon.' This he marked in pencil, on the first
page, thus--'At B----m (Brougham), 1792.' He believed he had '_composed_
it, entirely forgetting that it was only a translation--probably a
task set him by his tutor--a very pardonable mistake, after a lapse of
seventy years.' No doubt; but is not the responsibility the editor's,
and not Brougham's?
There is, of course, a great deal of characteristic egotism in the
narrative; but it is amusing rather than offensive, and is, perhaps,
not much in excess of the necessary consciousness of a man who has
played a prominent part in life.
_Francis of Assisi._ By MRS. OLIPHANT. Macmillan & Co. (Sunday
Library.)
Almost the whole of Mrs. Oliphant's story may be read in the charming
gossip of 'Alban Butler;' but here the hand of a true artist has
arranged the dramatic material furnished by the celebrated biographer
of St. Francis. An almost faultless piece of literary work, a cabinet
portrait of exceeding beauty and grace, is the result. The authorities
on which Mrs. Oliphant relies for her facts are unimpeachably good.
The biographies of De Celano and Bonaventura are suffused and
interpenetrated with exceeding reverence for the founder of the Friars
Minor. They can hardly, indeed, be acquitted of an admiration akin to
worship for the hero of their pious romance, and they often leave us
in some perplexity as to the respective limits of fact and fiction in
this strange and wonderful life. Mrs. Oliphant, however, holds the
balance very fairly. Every visitor to Assisi who has tried to drink in
the spirit of the scene, or to understand the historic reality that
underlies the mythic splendour of the tomb of the great apostle of
poverty, must have felt it difficult to free his mind from strange
reveries as to the power of the human will not only to compel the
obedience of other minds, but to evolve a whole world of facts out of
its moral consciousness. Francis was a devout son of the Roman Church,
scrupulously obedient to sacerdotal authority, and profoundly anxious
to secure the authentication of his 'Order' from the Holy See; and yet
his career is a striking illustration of the triumph of the prophetic
rather than of the sacramental or priestly power. He was the founder
of a religion, the originator of a society, the fashioner and for many
years the master of a rule and organization which were absolutely at
war with all the passions of the flesh, all the current tendencies of
society, and the whole spirit of the so-called Christian world.
Mrs. Oliphant has thrown much light upon the condition of Italy in the
thirteenth century, and has used her historic imagination to great
effect in portraying the scenes in the early life of her hero, the
grand crises of his career, and the extremes of poverty and
self-abnegation to which he submitted. She devotes considerable space
to the beautiful romance which led to the foundation of his second
Order for women, and to the circumstances which induced him to frame a
rule for those in secular life who wished to aim at the counsels of
perfection. His visit to the East and the attempt he made to convert
the Sultan to Christianity by the offer of the ordeal of fire, as well
as by other urgent appeals, are told with dramatic force. The history
of the success which attended his labours, and the sketch of some of
the 'Chapters' of his Order which assembled at his bidding for
conference and prayer, bear strong resemblance to some of the legends
of Sakya-Mouni Buddha.
The enthusiasm shown by Francis for the beauties of nature, his sense
of brotherhood to all created things, his fellowship with birds and
beasts and creeping things, atone for the touch of fanaticism with
which he addressed even the fire that was to be applied to his own
flesh in medical cautery, as Frater Ignis. With deep pathos Mrs.
Oliphant tells the 'legend' of the origination of the 'stigmata' of
the Lord Jesus in the hands, feet, and side of Francis. She shows the
strength of the evidence for the existence of these mysterious marks
on the emaciated frame of the pious enthusiast; but she also indicates
the silence of any satisfactory eye-witness for the astounding
miracle, and proves that, though his disciples assert the fact, they
do not say they saw this portentous sign of resemblance to the Saviour
of sinners. That St. Francis--in virtue of this supposed imitation in
his body of the 'marks' of the Christ--has received an idolatrous
reverence, will hardly be denied; but that St. Francis ever called the
smallest attention to such a marvel, or mentioned the mysterious
circumstance to his dearest friend, cannot be proved. The story is
improbable, and to some extent sickening, yet it appears to us the
coarse and exaggerated expression which his less spiritual disciples
gave to that 'supernatural rapture of love to God in which his history
culminates.' Mrs. Oliphant says very justly and beautifully--'The
distinction between the active servant of God, who gives up all things
to serve Him, and the mystic, who gives up the privilege of serving
him in the deeper joy of beholding, is to a great extent a difference
of temperament, but in St. Francis occurs the unusual spectacle of the
two combined.... No man ever kept his eyes more open to the wants of
common humanity, and yet few mystics can show so strange a chapter of
absolute communion with the Almighty.' We almost wonder that our
author has not given even more ample specimens of the poetic
enthusiasm of the great prophet of Assisi. The Italian canticles said
to have been written by him, which were published by Wadding in 1623,
are full of wild, holy rapture. The closing lines (in Butler's
translation) of one may express the true significance of the
mysterious stigmata:--
"Grant one request of dying love--
Grant, oh! my God, who diest for me--
I, sinful wretch, may die for thee
Of love's deep wounds; love to embrace--
To swim in its sweet sea! Thy face
To see; then joined with Thee above,
Shall I myself pass into love."
_The Life of Hernando Cortes._ By ARTHUR HELPS. Bell and Daldy.
_Conversations on War and General Culture._ By the Author of 'Friends
in Council.' Smith and Elder.
Mr. Helps is rendering a substantial service to history and to popular
literature, by this re-cast and republication of biographies from his
greater work on the 'Spanish Conquest of America.' As he proceeds his
interest in his work deepens. So far from this life of Cortes being
the carving out of a journeyman, under Mr. Helps' superintendence, it
is practically a new work, upon which much patient thought and loving
labour has been expended. While Mr. Helps has properly enough made use
of that part of his history which relates to the conquest of Mexico,
he has, he tells us, gone 'carefully over every sentence quoted from
that history, to see whether, by the aid of additional knowledge, he
could correct or improve it.' He has also added much new material,
especially to those parts which relate to the private life of Cortes.
Mr. Helps has the great gift of succinctness. He never wearies us, but
often makes us wish that his canvas was filled in with more detail.
His style, as readers of 'Friends in Council' know, is dignified,
easy, archaic, and sententious. His narrative abounds in sage
reflections and wise apothegms--he has a knack of condensing a
philosophy into an epigram. A common-place book might be greatly
enriched by choice sentences from these volumes. Mr. Helps'
impartiality is very rigid, and his summaries of character and of the
moral quality of actions severe. His narrative does not flow into
glowing descriptions or romantic enthusiasm. He is always calmly, we
might say coldly, master of himself. He has a dread of brilliant
writing, but he attains to archaic picturesqueness, and arrests the
interest of his readers while he satisfies the judgment of his
critics. Not Hallam himself is more scrupulously accurate.
Mr. Helps is as unlike Prescott as any two writers of history can be:
but his minute accuracy, if it does not produce broad effects,
determines exact relations, and with enough of literary skill to make
the result very pleasing. The noble virtues and the signal faults of
the great soldier are admirably discriminated. On the whole, we admire
more than we blame. Cortes was a great-minded, generous-hearted,
religious-souled man. Nothing in history could be more unjustifiable
than the siege of Mexico, and the massacre of its brave inhabitants,
of whom 50,000 were slain--nearly the number estimated as killed in
the recent horrors of Paris; but we must not try him by the notions of
our nineteenth century. The civilized splendour of the Mexicans almost
provokes incredulity. Mr. Helps has to assure even Mr. Carlyle of it;
and the evidence abundantly establishes it. We heartily thank Mr.
Helps for his book, and trust he will complete his series after its
model.
The _Conversations on War and General Culture_ were suggested by the
early victories of the Germans over the French last summer. They are
miscellaneous in character--general, rather than specific in aim. They
vindicate no doctrine, elaborate no themes; they are what they profess
to be, conversations, and not sermons or lectures. Unlike 'Friends in
Council,' the conversations are not appendages to essays; only one
essay is introduced. They wander about in the pleasant but more
vagrant places of conversation, and do not escape the garrulousness
and inconsequence to which their literary form tempts. They are,
however, full of thoughtful suggestions, wise teachings, and apt
illustrations. They are transparent and simple--often ingenious and
striking. They are indeed, with a difference, a new series of 'Friends
in Council,' although inferior in freshness and force. They are to be
read as we read such books, by bits. Their gentle wisdom and benign
humour will not greatly excite us, but they will instruct and interest
us. We should say that the characters of 'Friends in Council' are
reproduced. There is neither table of contents, chapter headings, nor
index. The reader, therefore, may open where he likes, taking his
chance of what he may find; but whether it be woman's place and
culture, competitive examinations, or the war, he will certainly find
much subtle wisdom, genial feeling, and literary beauty.
_Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Madge, late Minister of Essex-street
Chapel, London._ By the Rev. WILLIAM JAMES. Longmans, Green, and Co.
Mr. Madge was one of the older school of Unitarians, who hold fast by
the supernatural, and believe in the special Divine mission of Jesus.
He was originally a member of the Church of England, but early
embraced Unitarian views, and gave himself to the Unitarian ministry.
He was an intelligent, devout man, and a clear, spiritual, and
effective preacher. The successor of Belsham at Essex-street, he
sustained a pastorate there of thirty years, retired a few years ago,
esteemed and beloved by all who knew him, and died in August last
year, at the advanced age of eighty-three.
Mr. Madge did not publish much--chiefly separate sermons, the
publication of which was requested. He was a clear thinker, moderate
in sentiment, devout in feeling, and elegant and eloquent in
expression. His ministry attracted persons of culture, and some of
high rank. Few men have been more highly, universally, and deservedly
esteemed in the circle in which they have moved. In his relations to
men differing from himself he was catholic-hearted and generous. His
distinctive opinions were not permitted to check his sympathies, or to
hinder his joining in worship with all who love Jesus Christ. Mr.
James has prepared his memoir with great good taste and skill.
_An Earnest Pastorate: Memorials of the Rev. Alexander Leitch, M.A.,
Minister of South Church, Stirling._ By the Rev. NORMAN L. WALKER.
Edinburgh: Andrew Elliott.
The simplicity, evangelical fervour, methodical and well-sustained
zeal of a holy man are well portrayed in this volume. The plans of an
earnest pastor, the secret of his practical success, the spirit of a
saintly and laborious life, are always worthy of attentive
consideration by those who are trying to do similar work. Mr. Leitch,
early in life, began ministerial work in the Kirk of Scotland; passed
through the agony of the disruption with unfaltering courage, and
left behind him a name which will long be had in remembrance.
_Life of Ambrose Bonwicke._ By his FATHER. Edited by JOHN E. B. MAYOR,
M.A. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co.
Ambrose Bonwicke, whose father was a non-juror, the ejected Head
Master of Merchant Taylors' School, was a student at Cambridge in the
beginning of the last century, and died of hemorrhage on the lungs at
twenty-three. He was what would now be called an Anglican of the
purest water, and we cannot help a feeling of regret and pity at the
ritual forms which his piety took; but the piety itself was very
beautiful. Ambrose was a model of gentleness, goodness, and
self-denial; a saintly youth, reminding one more of the old ascetic
monks than of a young English gentleman. The memoir throws a little
light, but not much, upon the manners and customs of Cambridge a
century and a-half ago. Incidentally we learn that the students had to
write Latin verses in eulogy of Dr. Gower on the very day that he
died, and that college chums sometimes slept in the same bed.
The notes, which make up almost half the volume, are rather in excess
of their occasion, but they are instructive and amusing. Mr. Mayor is
an indefatigable and learned antiquary.
_Scrambles Among the Alps, in the Years 1860-1869._ By EDWARD WHYMPER.
John Murray.
Mr. Whymper has written the history of the conquest of the Matterhorn
_quorum pars magna fuit_, and his book is a worthy record of a great
achievement. Making a not unreasonable allowance for the difficulties
of a writer who is the hero of his own story, and for the necessary
conflict between his modesty and his fidelity, and with the single
remark that the former is not unduly sacrificed to the latter, we may
commend to our readers a most interesting and exciting narrative,
written with lucidity and skill, terseness and pertinence, and
illustrated by Mr. Whymper himself, whose pencil, he tells us, has
been employed upon the work for the greater part of the last six
years. The illustrations are very numerous and effective, and,
generally speaking, all of a high artistic quality; with the
letterpress, they make a really sumptuous Alpine volume. From the very
nature of some of the subjects, some little has been supplied by the
imagination. For instance, the flying fragments in the 'Cannonade on
the Matterhorn' are not all of them in the line of any conceivable
projectile force; and certainly the 'Fall of Reynaud,' as represented
p. 229, could have had, for him, but one issue, and that not of a kind
to produce 'roars of laughter' from his companions. Had Mr. Whymper
fallen, as pictorially represented p. 120, he would never have written
his book save, indeed, with the assistance of Mr. Home. His survival
is, indeed, a miracle. He fell, he tells us, 200 feet 'in seven or
eight bounds--ten feet more would have taken me, in one gigantic leap
of 800 feet, on to the glacier below.' He describes his sensations as
by no means unpleasant, and thinks that death by a fall from a great
height is painless. Hardly, again, should we have fancied the suicidal
position of Croz cutting away the cornice on the summit of the Monning
Pass. Photographs, had such been possible, would, we imagine, have
presented some striking divergencies from these imaginary positions.
But, making allowance for pictorial effect in these two or three
instances, the illustrations appear to have been done with great care,
as well as with great spirit. Some excellent maps are also furnished;
two are transferred from the plates of the Dufour Map; two, a map of
the chain of Mont Blanc, based upon the Government maps of France and
Switzerland, and the survey of Mr. Reilly, and a map of the Matterhorn
and its glaciers, being an enlargement, with corrections, from the
Dufour Map, are original. The fifth is a general route map.
Mr. Whymper's first escalade in the Alps was the ascent of Mont
Pelvoux in Dauphiné, the account of which is reprinted from 'Peaks,
Passes, and Glaciers.' Sundry other subordinate, and yet novel and
arduous ascents are recounted; with interspersed dissertations on
Alpine climbing, on glaciers, on mountain lakes, &c., with criticisms
on the erosion theories of Professors Tyndall and Ramsay. But the
book, as we have said, is a history of the conquest of the Matterhorn.
Between the years 1861-1865, Mr. Whymper made seven unsuccessful
attempts to ascend the Matterhorn--four or five attempts having also
been made by others; two by Professor Tyndall in 1860 and 1862, who,
on the latter occasion, reached within 600 feet of the summit. These
attempts were made on the south-west ridge. Mr. Whymper's successful
attempt was made on the east face, which, from the Gorner Grat, is so
familiar to tourists, and looks like the side of an obelisk; its
profile, however, shows the angle to be less than 45°, and the ascent
is comparatively easy. Some of the most experienced guides had given
up the Matterhorn as inaccessible. Almer decidedly declined it.
'Anything but the Matterhorn,' said he, thinking it hopeless. The two
Cassels proved treacherous, and finessed with Mr. Whymper, while
completing arrangements with Signor Giordano, who started up the
south-west side from Breil, on July 11, 1865. On the 12th, Mr. Whymper
crossed the St. Theodule, for Zermatt, having been joined by Lord
Francis Douglas and Peter Taugwalder the younger; at Zermatt he found
Michael Croz, who had been engaged by the Rev. Charles Hudson and his
friend, Mr. Hadow, to attempt the Matterhorn. The two parties united,
and started on the 13th at half-past five, four tourists and four
guides; by twelve o'clock they had easily ascended 11,000 feet; they
halted for the day, and pitched their tent. At 9.55 on the 14th they
had reached the height of 14,000 feet, at the base of what, from the
Riffell, seems the overhanging summit. They then crossed the ridge to
the northern side, the general slope of the mountain being less than
40°. Only one part, of about 400 feet, was really difficult; it was
surmounted, and 200 feet of easy snow brought them to the summit at
1.40. The party from Breil had been four days on the mountain; they
were seen at an immense distance below; the shouts of Mr. Whymper's
party, and some stones which they rolled down to attract attention,
frightened them. 'The Italians turned and fled,' but whether from
superstition, as Mr. Whymper implies, or from fear of the stone
avalanche, so ominously directed upon them, we are not told. The fatal
accident on the descent, when five out of the eight perished--three
travellers and two guides--seems, like the accident on the Col du
Géant two or three years before, to have been caused by no special
difficulty. Mr. Hadow's foot slipped; he fell against one of the
guides, and knocked him down; the party was roped together, and but
for the providential breaking of the rope the three who were saved
must have been precipitated with the rest 4,000 feet, down to the
Matterhorngletscher. Some sixteen ascents of the Matterhorn have been
subsequently made, but it must ever be an arduous and perilous
expedition, save to the best trained and most experienced cragsmen.
_At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies._ By CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Macmillan and Co.
Readers of 'Westward Ho!' will remember the singular vividness with
which Mr. Kingsley described West Indian scenery. It was difficult to
believe that he had not seen it, and that his minute and glowing
pictures were productions of the artistic and pictorial imagination
purely. 'At last,' he has actually visited the region about which he
has read and dreamed and written for forty years, and the result is a
book of luxuriant and gorgeous description, such as nobody but Mr.
Kingsley could have written, and no one can read without catching
something of his enthusiasm. He fairly revels in West Indian fauna and
flora. Wherever he goes he sees some insect, or shell, or plant, or
flower, or forest-tree, or geological phenomenon worth noting. His
knowledge as a naturalist--his imagination as a poet--his skill as a
literary artist--all combine to produce a book which is a naturalistic
romance, gorgeous with colour, and riotous with enthusiasm on every
page. It would be difficult to find a stronger illustration of the
difference between 'Eyes and no eyes,' or of the wealth of beauty and
æsthetic and devout stimulus that an instructed eye can command. Mr.
Kingsley discovers nature for us as well as interprets it, and clothes
the earth with a glory that duller eyes only dimly observe. It is
difficult to imagine a better preparation for such a journey, or a
finer combination of qualifications for describing it. Mr. Hugh
Macmillan has great gifts of this character, but he must yield the
palm to Mr. Kingsley. Every footstep is on fairyland. His touch opens
our eyes, and we see mountain and forest, cliff and glade, shore and
sea, full of the chariots and horses of God. If the book is for
criticism at all, it is to be criticised as we criticise a picture.
From the first departure from Hurst Castle to the return to it, Mr.
Kingsley has some unthought-of thing to say, or some undiscovered
beauty to point out in common things; the phosphorescent sea suffices
for the prelude to his grand prose poem, and the gorgeous vegetation
of the West Indian islands furnishes inexhaustible material for its
substance. The book is not without its details of personal incident,
its snatches of historical reminiscence and of superstitious legend,
its sketches of negro life and of romantic adventure, its touches of
social and political disquisition; these are skilfully woven together
as only Mr. Kingsley could weave them, but they are entirely
subordinate to the visions and revels of the rapturous naturalist, his
pictures of tropical forests, pitch lakes, mangrove swamps, volcanic
mountains, and cultured gardens. Mr. Kingsley spent seven weeks in the
island of Trinidad, only glancing at other West Indian islands as the
touches of the steamer enabled. His descriptions are therefore almost
limited to that island. We are sorely tempted to cull some of the racy
anecdotes that Mr. Kingsley tells, and to reproduce some of the superb
pictures that he has painted, but we must forbear. We will say only
that his science is simply the framework of popular descriptions, that
his book is for the multitude, and not so much for natural
philosophers, and that from beginning to end it is simply a gorgeous
series of pictures, a fairyland of colour and form and wonderful
adaptation, a psalm not of life but of nature, a prolonged
'Benedicite,' a companion-book to 'Glaucus,' and to the 'Essay in a
Chalk Pit;' only richer in detail, more novel in phenomena, and more
gorgeous in colour. The world was as beautiful when he found it, but
he has made it more beautiful to our apprehension. His book has
excited our enthusiasm almost as much as the scenes which it describes
excited his.
_To Sinai and Syene and back, in 1860-61._ By WILLIAM BEAUMONT, Esq.
Smith and Elder.
A very fairly written narrative of the author's journey, having the
drawback that the writer is slightly given to bad jokes--thus,
'Suli-_man_, the boy of our party,' 'the cam-els are coming,' &c.
The route to Sinai from the wells of Moses was the more eastern one,
taken by Robinson, whereby the writer missed the fine Wady Feiran, the
Bedouin Paradise, which, however, he afterwards visited on his return.
He was admitted to the convent of Sinai by the looped chain; more
fortunate than the writer of this notice, who, arriving after sunset,
had to sleep at the door in the open air, the archbishop's letter
notwithstanding, but was afterwards admitted at sunrise through the
postern. Surely Mr. Beaumont is wrong in saying that Tischendorf found
his famous Codex at Cairo, and not at Sinai.
We can only say concerning Mr. Beaumont's book, that it is one of
those painstaking records of travel which gather together round each
locality, most of the important things done, and interesting things
said concerning it. It has not grown, it has been made; but it is
written with intelligence and commendable accuracy.
_Peeps at the Far East: a Familiar Account of a Visit to India._ By
NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D. Strahan and Co.
India is almost as well travelled as Palestine, and a cursory
traveller must have great gifts of suggestive imagination and of
description to interest us in a book about it. Dr. Macleod does
interest us: in addition to the gifts we have named, he has an
unfailing geniality and an indomitable optimism, which give a glow of
kindly interest to his pages. He went to India on official business in
connection with the Missions of the Church of Scotland. Elsewhere he
has reported concerning them. In this volume he only incidentally
refers to them, chiefly in relation to the genial brotherhood of
Christian Ministers and members of all Churches which he experienced.
It is a melancholy reflection upon our home religious life that such a
sensation of relief and enjoyment in this particular is realized by
the traveller in America or India. We hardly know in what a bitter
sectarian element we live until we get out of it. Dr. Macleod's broad,
healthy, human soul heartily rejoiced in deliverance from it.
Dr. Macleod tells us about Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta--places that
we have heard about as often as about Jerusalem. He describes
peculiarities of Hindoo life, features of Indian scenery, and the
ordinary incidents of Eastern travel; but with an observation so
alert, a geniality so bright, a humour so rich, and descriptive powers
so lively, that his book has a very pleasant charm; the reader's
interest never flags. Bombay is less eastern than Cairo, which Dr.
Macleod justly thinks is the most picturesquely oriental of all
cities. European insolence to natives, which has borne such bitter
fruits, is greatly diminished in India; the Mussulman is, in moral
virtue and general tone, superior to the Hindoo; Hindoo villages
surpass in poverty and squalor the worst specimens of Irish; English
education is doing great things for India--Dr. Macleod was frequently
surprised by the familiarity of the natives with our English
literature; the Brahmo Somaj lacks an objective basis, and can never,
therefore, firmly cohere, or make real progress. A genuine reform
movement it must ever be, changing and breaking up, gaining, and
losing what it gains; it wants the positive cohesive power which
Christianity would give it. Dr. Macleod recounts again, with great
power of description and pathos, the story of the Mutiny. In short,
this book, which is elegantly got up and profusely illustrated, is
full of the manifold charms of high intelligence, generous sympathy,
and easy, yet brilliant description. A pleasanter book has not often
fallen into our hands.
_The Nile without a Dragoman._ By FREDERICK EDEN. Henry S. King and
Co.
Egypt is by no means an economical country to travel in for Europeans,
and a Nile dahabeah, which costs from £100 to £200 per month, is an
expensive luxury. Dragomans covenant to supply travellers with
everything at so much _per diem_, according to numbers. We have known
£4 paid, and we have travelled for £1 10s. Mr. Eden determined to
dispense with a dragoman, hire a dahabeah of a friend, paying,
however, the advertised price demanded, and he accomplished a pleasant
voyage of more than four months at a cost of £60 per month. This
bright and clever little book tells us how he did it. It does not deal
much in antiquities or descriptions, it chiefly narrates experiences;
tells us the things that Murray does not tell us. A dragoman is a very
pleasant luxury, relieving the traveller of all care and many
difficulties, which Mr. Eden had to overcome; but this is the final
cause of difficulties, which Mr. Eden proved, although he evinces his
utter ignorance of the customs and prejudices of his motley crew. For
his racy descriptions of his very pleasant life, and for innumerable
touches and impressions of Nile life, we must refer our readers to the
volume; it is enough to say, that it scarcely suffers by comparison
with that of Lady Duff Gordon.
POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND ART.
_Pauperism: Its Causes and Remedies._ By HENRY FAWCETT, Fellow of
Trinity Hall, and Professor of Political Economy in the University of
Cambridge. Macmillan and Co.
In this very timely book Mr. Fawcett commences the discussion of his
subject by depicting, in somewhat gloomy colours, the pauperized state
of a large class of our population. This debased condition, he
believes, is not a dismal necessity which admits of no remedy, but the
fruit of unwise legislation, which has produced and still encourages a
disregard of those social virtues of prudence and self-restraint which
can alone permanently raise and maintain the social condition of any
class in the community. He proceeds to show how powerful was the
influence upon our population exerted by the old Poor-law, which was
in operation until 1834. The evil results which flow from bad
legislation, at that time reached a height which threatened the
dissolution of society, and this was averted only by the new Poor-law,
which yet has failed to provide a perfect remedy, and in some of its
provisions has even a tendency to discourage in our people those
qualities from which we may hope for the extinction of pauperism. The
practice of outdoor relief to able-bodied paupers is shown to be
pernicious, and indeed ruinous in its tendency; and a very shrewd
suggestion is made, or rather hinted at, for its abatement. The relief
of the poor is now, it is well known, a common charge upon a union of
parishes which is under the charge of a board of guardians. Permit
this to continue in the case of indoor relief, but provide that
outdoor relief should be a charge upon the parish in which the pauper
resides. This would no doubt soon lessen the amount of outdoor relief,
and would secure its administration only in cases of real and pressing
necessity. Against the modern practice of boarding out pauper
children, which has been recommended by many kindly and philanthropic
persons, a very heavy indictment is drawn, and grave doubt is shown to
exist as to its practical operation. Broadly, it may be said, that Mr.
Fawcett judges of the administration of relief to the poor mainly
according to its ultimate moral effects upon the class to which they
belong; because he holds that the existence of a high standard of
prudence and self-restraint is the only means by which any class can
attain and keep a high social and physical condition. If the working
classes of England are taught by the Poor-law and by misdirected
charity to abandon providence and self-restraint, no power on earth
can permanently improve their position, and every temporary
amelioration must be soon lost in a still larger class depressed to
the low level existing before the benefit was received. If, on the
other hand, the virtues of providence and self-restraint be but
sufficiently cultivated, it is difficult to say how high may be the
standard of comfort reached by the working classes of our country.
The views we have thus slightly sketched are expanded and enforced
with great clearness in the first three chapters of this book, and in
the postscript, on the boarding out of pauper children. We should be
glad indeed if all our legislators could be compelled to pass an
examination in the first half of Mr. Fawcett's little volume, and
should hope for the best results from their study of his vigorous and
thoughtful sentences. In the remaining four chapters the probable
effects upon the condition of the working classes of national
education, co-partnership, and co-operation, and an improved land
tenure, are carefully examined, and many valuable suggestions are
made; but it must be obvious, on Mr. Fawcett's own principles, that
except these remedial measures have a direct tendency to produce
prudence and self-restraint, they can only afford temporary relief, to
be followed by a depression to the previous low condition. This is the
great lesson taught by the learned professor, and taught with abundant
illustration and convincing argument; and we hold that it is a lesson
which our people greatly need to learn.
At the present time, probably, the greatest hindrance to a real
improvement in the condition of the working classes is the feeble
sentimentality which prevails so widely in modern society, and which
finds its natural expression in that maudlin pity which doles out
relief alike to idle and industrious, to the vicious and the
unfortunate. By this practice, so common both in public and private
charity, and which is far more deleterious in systematic and public
charity than in private gifts, all the springs of care and prudence
are weakened, and even that degree of providence which is admitted as
needful to the middle classes, to enable them to maintain their
position, is scouted as unnatural and cruel, when urged upon the
working classes. Mr. Fawcett is an advanced Liberal, and one of the
ablest leaders of the most democratic party in our country. We think
it greatly to his honour that he has the courage and honesty so
fearlessly to proclaim the true causes of most of the pauperism which
exists among us; and we trust his words will be received with all the
weight they deserve by that great body of working people who are
especially his clients, and whose cause he is ever ready to plead.
Mr. Fawcett's book is written with great clearness and force, and we
can hardly fancy any one finding political economy dull in his
company. Sometimes, perhaps, the strength of his convictions seems to
lead to statements so strong and unqualified as to need some
correction, but we fully concur in the main drift of his argument, and
recommend his book to the careful study of all interested in the
investigation of the causes of pauperism.
_General Outline of the Organization of the Animal Kingdom, and Manual
of Comparative Anatomy._ By THOMAS RYMER JONES, F.R.S. John Van Voorst
The fourth edition of Professor T. R. Jones's 'Outline' may be taken
as an evidence that his work is still in demand, notwithstanding the
formidable rivalry of Professor Rolleston's recent work on the same
subject addressed to the same class of readers. Perhaps the less
formal and technical style of treatment may be an attraction to some
students of comparative anatomy. Men who give themselves to the study
of what are called the descriptive sciences, have often had their
attention directed to them in the first instance by their pictorial
attractions, and they retain a certain license in dealing with these
branches of learning which neither instructors nor students of the
more exact sciences would permit themselves. Professor R. Jones has
taken his full poetical license, and the parts of the work which
display it in the highest degree are peculiarly his own. There is no
objection to this mode of treatment so long as it does not take off
the attention of the learners from the more general and harder parts
of the subject. But the comparative anatomy of the whole animal
kingdom is so vast that if the author allows himself to run after the
descriptions which are of most interest, his presentation of the whole
subject is likely to be fragmentary and imperfect.
The previous editions of this work have stood almost alone as popular
elementary manuals, and this edition contains very few additions to
the former ones--such only, in fact, as have been forced on the
author. He has designedly hung in the rearward of the science, and is
a collator rather than a critic or an investigator. Thus he cannot
resist the claims of the Cælenerata to be ranked as a sub-kingdom, and
the adoption of Free and Leuckart's classification has compelled him
to transpose the positions of the Anthozoa and Hydrozoa. This,
however, is almost his only classificatory innovation. By a convenient
conservation he still retains the Cirrepedia as a distinct class,
while the Rotifera are placed under the Crustacea. The Brachiopoda
are still interposed between the Conchifera and Gasteropoda. The
Amphibians are not separated from the Reptilia. These antiquated ideas
of classification are to be regretted; but inasmuch as the object of
the volume is to describe, rather than to classify, they need not be
condemned as erroneous. When treating of the vertebrate classes, the
author becomes little more than the interpreter of Professor R. Owen,
and we deplore that a theory of the elements of a vertebra which has
never been generally adopted by the scientific world should be
introduced into a student's book without criticism or comment.
The principal additions which appear in this edition are pictorial,
and the new pictures are, for the most part, illustrative of natural
history rather than of anatomy. An exception to this is, however,
found in the introduction of Mr. Albany Harcock's very instructive
delineation of Waldheimia Australis.
An absence of dogmatism in dealing with the natural sciences is, for
some reasons, commendable, but all instructional works must be
dogmatic. To place two quite contradictory descriptions taken from two
authors side by side, without aiding the student to determine in any
way which is the truthful one, is quite inexcusable, and yet this is
precisely what is done with regard to Dugè's and Dr. Williams's
descriptions and theories of the functions of the organs of the
earth-worm. Old errors are still retained in this new edition. Thus
the description of the generative system of the common snail is
repeated word for word from the old edition, although the views there
taken are certainly wrong.
We have freely remarked on the shortcomings of the work, but with all
its faults it has been long known as a very interesting and popular
treatise on a subject which is very difficult to treat as a whole, and
we do not doubt it will retain its popularity in its present form.
_Wonders of the Human Body._ From the French of A. Le Pileur. Blackie
and Son.
This is a work on human anatomy and physiology so treated as to form
an easy, familiar, and interesting book of study for the public of
both sexes. It is not of any special 'wonders,' but of the whole
structure of the body, _minus_ those parts of anatomy which are unfit
for the young, of which the book treats. No doubt the whole body is a
world of wonder, and therefore the title is allowable, and was meant
to be attractive, but it is a little liable to mislead. This is,
indeed, a painstaking and systematic description of the structure and
functions of all the anatomical elements and complex organs throughout
the body, illustrated by good clear diagrammatic drawings. It is by no
means so charming in its style as Professor Huxley's little volume on
the same subject, but it is more equable in the attention it bestows
on the several parts of the body, and so far is better suited for the
kind of general school instruction for which we assume it is intended.
POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.
_The Coming Race._ William Blackwood and Sons.
The author of 'The Coming Race' treads in the steps of the author of
'Gulliver,' _haud passibus æquis_, indeed, but with an individuality
and a power that are altogether his own, and with a geniality in the
delicate and subdued irony of his satire that makes his book as
pleasant as it is clever. In competent hands, no form of allegory so
lends itself to the castigation of the follies of an age, or to the
embodiment of previsions and prognostications. It constitutes a little
literature of its own, which boasts of some remarkable productions.
'The Coming Race' inhabit a subterranean world, into which the author
was precipitated while at the bottom of a mine; and in the inhabitants
thereof we are led to contemplate the good and evil of certain social
theories and scientific speculations realized in actual result. There
is no savage castigation of vices, nor cynical delineation of
abortions, but a quiet, keen, playful exhibition of possible good and
probable evil; of things to be desired and of things to be shunned.
The author is too serious for ridicule, and too sly for gravity. His
tone is that of a good-natured optimism, with just a touch of banter.
Probably, he himself would find it difficult to balance the exact gain
or loss of the changes he conceives. It is difficult, indeed, to
determine when he is indulging in day-dreams, when in subtle satire.
He is a citizen of the American Republic, and as such is in the best
subjective condition for appreciating the unconventional. In this also
there is a touch of sly satire. He realizes in his pallid world what
Brother Jonathan boasts so much about, the actual apotheosis of
republican liberalism, social equality, and religious and scientific
knowledge. We cannot even indicate the vast variety of problems that
in these several departments find their solution. We can only, in a
loose way, mention a few of the phenomena of life in the nether world.
Deprived of solar light, it is compensated by science, and innumerable
lamps constitute perpetual day, but of a pale hue. Its strange flora
and fauna are described. Its inhabitants are a giant race, perfected
through long processes of natural selection, and advanced to
unthought-of possibilities of scientific culture. They have attained
to a perfect practical knowledge of mesmeric force or 'vril;' a tube
in the hands of a child is charged with an agency so terrible that it
would annihilate an army, and yet so delicate and subtle that it
soothes a nervous impatience--a force so perfect that it cannot be
used in strife. Absolute equality, social harmony, and tranquil
happiness are not only the privileges, they are necessary conditions
of social existence; leisurely enjoyment, consummate knowledge, virtue
cultured into an instinct, are its natural causes. Mechanism has been
so perfected that automaton figures render all necessary domestic
service, and locomotion is equally facile on the earth, in the water,
or through the air. Of course, their laws are perfect; government is
a high social duty from which men shrink, save as moral obligation
constrains, self-seeking being annihilated. Wise provision against
over-population is made by regulations for emigration. The women are
bigger and cleverer than the men, having greater power over the
mysterious 'vril;' and in love matters have men's privilege of
'speaking first,' love being of more importance to women than to men.
Democratic government--the government, that is, of the most
ignorant--is denounced as superlative folly--Koom-Posh; and the utmost
scorn is poured upon our legislation, war, and social habits, as the
absurdities of a barbarous age and people. Learned disquisitions on
language, literature, and the arts suffice to show, at any rate, the
accomplishments of the writer: and the tender susceptibilities of
which the hero was the victim from the Vril-ya women supply a pleasant
touch of humanity. The people, in short, have attained a development
which is as far ahead of ours, as ours is of our anthropoid ancestors.
They have penetrated the chief secrets of nature, and almost got rid
of all human ills. Theirs is a paradise of physical, scientific,
social, and moral perfection; wealth is disliked, power is shunned,
crime is unknown, and force is unnecessary. But somehow the general
result is unsatisfactory and melancholy. The book is an able and
remarkable one. Much wisdom, as well as much learning, is veiled under
its ingenious allegory; the _reductio ad absurdum_ is suggested with
exquisite subtlety. It is one of the cleverest satires of its class.
_The Songstresses of Scotland._ By SARAH TYTLER and J. L. WATSON.
Strahan and Co.
Notwithstanding some slight tendency in two or three of these sketches
to attempt a story when there is no story to tell, this is as charming
a book of its class as we remember to have read. A single ballad
sometimes gives fame, as, for example, the 'Werena my Heart Licht' of
Lady Grisell Baillie; but then all that we care to know about its
author may be told in a paragraph. With others, however, it is
different. Song-writers like Mrs. Cockburn, Lady Ann Barnard, and the
Countess of Nairn, are so much more than song-writers that they amply
deserve the separate biography which has already been produced of the
latter, and which, we are glad to learn, is being prepared of the
former. Scotch ballads, like Scotch whisky, have their own peculiar
flavour, and it has a special charm for Englishmen. We should be
ashamed to have to confess how many mediocre verses in poetry, and
dialogues in novels, delight us simply in virtue of their Scottish
dialect. There are Scotch ballads, however, that, in virtue of their
intrinsic merits, will live for aye. The biographies which the
industry and skill of Miss Tytler and Miss Watson have here supplied
are those of Lady Grisell Baillie (1665-1746), author of 'Werena my
Heart Licht,' immortal chiefly in virtue of its single refrain, 'And
werena my heart licht I wad dee;' Jean Adam (1710-1765), author of
'There is nae Luck about the House,' who was a pedlar; Mrs. Cockburn
(1712-1794), author of 'The Flowers of the Forest;' Miss Jean Elliot
(1727-1805), author of another 'The Flowers of the Forest;' Miss
Susanna Blamire (1747-1794), author of 'What ails this Heart of Mine,'
and 'Ye shall walk in silk attire,' &c.; Jean Glover (1758-1801),
author of 'O'er the Muir among the Heather;' Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton
(1758-1816), author of 'My ain Fireside;' Lady Ann Barnard
(1750-1825), author of 'Auld Robin Gray;' Baroness Nairne (1762-1851),
author of 'The Land o' the Leal,' 'Caller Herring,' 'The Laird o'
Cockpen,' &c.; and Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), author of 'Woo'd and
Married and a',' 'Saw ye Johnny Comin,' &c. A more charming miscellany
of gentle thought and lyric sweetness it would be difficult to find.
As might be expected with woman's songs, there is but little of the
national and political fierceness that inspires so many of the Scotch
ballads of the other sex. Even the Jacobite songs of Lady Nairne are
so gentle and winsome that the stoutest old Hanoverian Whig might
easily sing them. But the chief charm of the book is the sketch of the
delicious old lady, Mrs. Cockburn, the friend of Allan Ramsay, Burns,
and Scott, and surely the most vivacious, witty, and optimist
octogenarian that ever lived. She was one of the queens of Edinburgh
society, and the authoresses have had access to her letters, which
Walter Scott so highly prized, and which for gossiping fulness,
vivacious interest, intellectual sparkle, and versatile cleverness,
can hardly be surpassed. She was the life and soul of the social life
which she helped to mould. We are glad to learn that a biography of
this clever and beautiful old lady is in preparation. Meanwhile we
commend the 'Songstresses of Scotland' as a delightful book.
Everything that Miss Tytler touches she adorns, and she has here hit
upon a genial and interesting theme.
_Arber's English. Reprints._--_Tottel's Miscellany, 1550_; _Thomas
Lever's Sermons, 1550_; _William Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie,
1587_; _The First Printed English New Testament_. Translated by
WILLIAM TYNDALE. Photo-lithographed from the Unique Fragment now in
the Grenville Collection, British Museum. London: 5 Queen-square,
Bloomsbury.
Mr. Arber continues his munificent and inestimable work with
increasing efficiency, and we infer with increasing encouragement.
Certainly no attempt to bring the curiosities and treasures of our
early English literature within the reach of the very poorest student
and the common reader is at all comparable to it. For a shilling may
be purchased copies of precious treasures which wealth could not buy.
'Tottel's Miscellany' is the first known collection of English verse,
the progenitor of the countless volumes which now load our
drawing-room tables, and defy criticism. Tottel's collection includes
poems by the Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Nicholas Grimald, and
ninety-five by 'uncertain authors.' Either our forefathers three
centuries ago had very contracted ideas about literature, or it was
more affluent than we suppose--for we find William Webbe, in his
'Discourse of English Poetrie,' thus complaining of a tribulation
which we thought was peculiar to modern reviewers. 'Among the
innumerable sortes of Englyshe bookes, and infinite fardles of printed
pamphlets, wherewith thys Countrey is pestered, all shoppes stuffed,
and euery study furnished; the greatest part, I thinke in any one
kinde, are such as are either meere Poeticall, or which tende in some
respecte (as either in matter or forme) to Poetry.' Mr. Arber has the
genuine bibliophilist's afflatus: the patience with which he picks up
bits of bibliographical information, and the caution and skill with
which he uses it, are perfect. 'Tottel's Miscellany' was very popular
in its day.
Lever was Fellow, Preacher, and Master of St. John's College,
Cambridge; Pastor in exile of the English Church at Aarau; Prebend of
Durham Cathedral, and Master of Sherburn Hospital. He was, as Mr.
Arber terms him, one of the 'spiritual children' of the Reformation,
the associate of Latimer, Bradford, and Knox. These three sermons,
after the manner of the times, deal with public and passing topics,
manners, and customs, and are valuable not only as part of the
religious but as part of the domestic history of their day. Lever was
a man of Latimer's type--superlatively faithful and fearless.
Webbe's 'Discourse of English Poetrie' is a reprint of a very rare
book, only two copies of it being known to exist. Webbe was a
Cambridge graduate, and a very accomplished, modest, and able man.
Singularly his critique on English poetry was almost synchronous with
the greater work of Puttenham, on 'the Arte of English Poesie,' which
Mr. Arber has already reprinted in this series. Webbe's discourse
contains a good deal of shrewd penetrating criticism. He was well
acquainted with the classical poets, and made experiments in
translation, with a view of naturalizing classical feet.
The facsimile of the fragment of Tyndale's 'First Printed English New
Testament' is a great literary, as well as religious curiosity. Well
may Mr. Arber speak of the reverence, almost the awe, with which he
offers the 'photographic likeness of a priceless gem in English
literature,' the progenitor of the millions of English Scriptures. Mr.
Arber accompanies the work with a very extensive and multifarious
bibliography, giving an account of Tyndale and Roy, and of the first
two editions of the English New Testament; and discussing the question
whether Tyndale's quarto was a translation of Luther's German version.
It is a perfect luxury to read the scholarly, modest, and painstaking
bibliography of Mr. Arber. We earnestly direct attention to his
invaluable labours.
_The Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century._ By WILLIAM
FORSYTH, M.A., Q.C. John Murray.
Mr. Forsyth's book hardly falls within the scope of criticism. Gossip
is scarcely amenable to the laws of art, and Mr. Forsyth's research
is not wide enough, nor are his reflections profound enough to deserve
any other description. It is, however, very pleasant gossip, and will
both amuse and instruct, even if it amuses rather more than it
instructs. The eighteenth century has now passed into the region of
history, and we study it with the same merely historical interest with
which we study the fifteenth. We read the books of the eighteenth
century as we read the classics--not as we read the authors who
reflect our own ideas, and manners. Fielding is perhaps now less read
than at any other time, and chiefly by literary men in the way of
their profession, or by historical students. We would forgive Mr.
Forsyth the admitted defects of his book, if it did anything to arrest
the progress of this classical oblivion. That, however, does not seem
to be Mr. Forsyth's intention. He seems to have been a good deal
surprised when he found, in the course of his studies, that he had got
into such disreputable company, and was correspondingly disgusted.
Much of the book is accordingly occupied with criticism, in which the
author is very hard on the immoral novelists, who only aimed at
describing the times as they were. Mr. Forsyth does not maintain that
they were unfaithful to the reality, and therefore criticises the age
rather than the books which mirrored it. But that kind of criticism
belongs to an almost extinct school.
_The Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini._ Vol. VI. Critical and
Literary. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The critical and literary writings of Mr. Mazzini are not purely
literary, and their criticism is not disinterested. The prophetic
function and the critical are not quite compatible, and Mr. Mazzini is
a prophet of the Old Testament order, though unhappily with the fate
of Cassandra. The political passion burns too hotly in him to admit of
the coexistence of that pure critical instinct which has no
enthusiasms, and which maintains its impartiality by holding aloof
from affairs. Accordingly the objects of his admiration belong to the
militant class in literature; he subordinates Homer to Dante, Goethe
to Byron, and, we suppose, Fielding to George Sand. If he would not
exactly define genius as the spirit of revolt, he would say that
sympathy with the active movements of humanity is an essential
constituent of it. An organ for apprehending thought as such, ideas
apart from their application, he does not seem to possess. The purely
spiritual side of life, the purely metaphysical side of thought, are
blanks to him; yet in even the most imperfect state of society, and
the most urgently needing reformation, these will always form a large
part of the total life of humanity. He is, in short, the high-priest
of the revolution, and grants absolution only to votaries at that
shrine. The essays in the present volume are conceived in this spirit,
and are less criticisms than impassioned orations, delivered with
crusading fervour. That on George Sand is a discourse on the 'life of
Genius,' its sorrows, aspirations, and ineradicable melancholy. That
on Goethe is a denunciation of political inaction and the worship of
indifference; while the greatness of Lamennais is recognised only when
he ceased to be a thinker, and took to abortive action. Putting aside
their absence of critical disinterestedness, and therefore of critical
value, these essays are full of eloquence and genuine enthusiasm. They
may be called the evangel of that section of the party of action which
aspires to a great democracy of the future--a transformation that
shall be more than political, more than social, that shall be almost
theocratic.
_The Orations of Cicero against Catiline; with Notes, &c._ Translated
from the German of Karl Halm, with many additions. By A. S. WILKINS,
M.A. Macmillan and Co. 1871.
_A Complete Dictionary to Cæsar's Gallic War._ By A. CREAK, M.A.
Hodder and Stoughton. 1870.
The first-mentioned of these works is, we think, the best school-book
that has ever come under our notice. The excellence of the original is
sufficiently guaranteed, by its appearing in Haupt and Sauppe's
series, and its practical usefulness fully established by the sale of
seven editions in the course of a few years. But we do not hesitate to
affirm that the English edition is rendered far superior to the
original by the extensive additions of Professor Wilkins, which bear
ample testimony, not simply to his varied critical and literary
acquirements, but also to the correctness of his judgment respecting
the difficulties and wants of the generality of students. There is
scarcely a note in the original to which important additions have not
been made by the editor. Among the most valuable helps to the English
student are the constant reference to 'Mommsen's History,' 'Ramsay's
Antiquities,' and 'Madvig's Grammar.' The etymological notes by the
translator often contain, within a narrow compass, the substance of
the views of Curtius, Schleicher, or Corsen on the subject. More
advanced students are directed for further information to the works of
Bekker, Drumann, Nägelsbach, Arnold, Niebuhr, Merivale, and Forsyth.
In fact, no source of illustration has escaped the editor, not even
essays in the _Rheinisches Museum_ and the _Fortnightly Review_. Not
the least valuable contribution is the excellent analysis of the four
orations, enabling the student to follow the argument at every step.
We cannot speak too highly of this little volume. It is our candid
opinion that here the junior student will lack nothing, and that the
mature scholar may learn much. We have the greatest satisfaction in
recommending it to all in search of an efficient help in studying the
Catiline Orations.
The second book is quite an elementary work, somewhat on the plan of
our Teutonic neighbours. The author's aim is twofold; to provide the
youthful learner with a better dictionary for the reading of Cæsar, by
delivering him from the bewilderment of a large one and the meagreness
of a small one, and to secure from the very commencement idiomatic
modes of translation. The latter is kept in view all through the
work, and is the sole object of the two appendices, the first of which
contains 116 idiomatic phrases, with their English equivalents; and
the second, hints on translation into English. Mr. Creak very rightly
maintains that a lesson in Latin translation should also be one in
English composition. This work, though small and elementary, is not
unimportant. It aims at correcting one great defect of most of the
current school-books, and exhibits the ability of a scholar, combined
with the experience of a teacher. We heartily wish the author success
in his effort to shorten the tedious and cumbrous modes of instruction
prevalent in our best institutions.
_Homer--Odyssey._ Books I--XII. By W. W. MERRY, M.A. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
School-books, in almost every department of literature, seem to be
making their appearance in battalions. There are at present several
rival series, which travel over exactly the same classical ground. The
volume before us belongs to the Clarendon Press series, and is the
precursor of a larger work on the same subject. This will probably
account for the disappointing brevity of the notes and illustrations.
The materials for a good edition of the 'Odyssey' are abundant,
consisting of elaborate works treating of every topic connected with
this ancient poem, as well as of excellent commentaries. The notes
given by Mr. Merry are so brief and elementary as to convey but little
idea of the labours of his predecessors. We do not believe in a
school-book being overladen with explanatory matter or piled up with
references to authorities, which the schoolboy will be probably unable
and certainly unwilling to consult; but we do think that every
annotated classical book should contain ample references to our best
elementary books on grammar, antiquities, and history; the absence of
which is in our opinion a serious drawback to the present edition. Mr.
Merry has followed in the main the text of La Roche. The brief but
excellent introduction is adapted from the pamphlet of Thomaszewski.
The illustrated matter contains a sketch of the principal Homeric
forms, the metre of Homer, Homeric syntax, and notes for which the
commentaries of Nitzsch, Ameis, and Crusius have been consulted. The
notes, as far as they go, are clear, precise, pertinent, judicious,
and seem to be on the same plan, and scarcely more extensive than
those on the first six books of the Iliad, in the 'Annotated Oxford
Pocket Classics.'
_The Georgics of Virgil._ Translated by P. D. BLACKMORE, M.A. Sampson
Low, Son, and Marston.
Mr. Blackmore is not only one of the best of novelists and gardeners,
he is also a complete scholar and a charming poet. This translation of
the 'Georgics' is a most remarkable achievement; the full significance
of Virgil's words is almost always perceptible in the rendering,
notwithstanding the exigencies of rhyme. We are by no means of opinion
that the decasyllabic couplet is a fit metre for Virgil; that elegant
Roman was as nearly as possible a Tennyson, and his tricks of
versification can be admirably echoed in Tennysonian blank verse. Mr.
Blackmore has more force and a stronger idiosyncrasy than Virgil had;
hence, in the translation we think more of the English than of the
Roman poet. To such a style of translation we do not object; we read
our Virgil with a difference, with a new flavour, in fact. Just in the
same way did Dryden turn Horace into a nobler form when he wrote,
'Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.'
If we mistake not, Mr. Blackmore himself remarks somewhere, that the
meaning of the New Testament comes out better in English than it
possibly could in Greek; similarly, we prefer Blackmore's 'Georgics'
to Virgil's. As we have here no space for anything like critical
discussion, we prefer to quote the beautiful lines with which the
translator apologises for his temerity.
'Indulgence have ye for a gardener's dream
(A man with native melody unblest)!
How patient toil and love that does its best,
Clouds though they be, may follow the sunbeam.
'And in this waning of poetic day,
With all so misty, moonlit, and grotesque,
'Tis sweet to quit that medley picturesque,
And chase the sunset of a clearer ray.
'Too well I know, by fruitless error taught,
How latent beauty hath fallacious clues,
How difficult to catch, how quick to lose
The mirage of imaginative thought.
'And harder still to make that vision bear
The loose refraction of a modern tongue,
To render sight to hearing, old to young,
And fix my purview on an English ear.
'Too well I know, by gardener's hopes misled,
How cheap are things which long have cost me dear;
And though I fail to graft the poet here,
No wilding branches may I flaunt instead.
'But yonder, lo, my amethysts and gold,
So please you--grapes and apricots--constrain
These more accustomed hands; unless ye deign
To tend with me the kine and beeves of old.'
The pregnant felicity of this prelude will show better than any
criticism Mr. Blackmore's poetic capacity.
_Ancient Classics for English Readers. The Commentaries of Cæsar._
By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. _Horace._ By THEODORE MARTIN. _Æschylus._ By
REGINALD S. COPLESTON. _Xenophon._ By Sir ALEXANDER GRANT. Edited by
Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. Blackwood and Sons.
This is a brilliant idea of Mr. Collins; and his collaborateurs have
well discharged their duty. It is not only the English reader who will
be thankful to Messrs. Trollope, Martin, Swayne, Grant, and Collins,
but all young students, who may now grapple with portions of those
great classics with more zest and profit after thus obtaining a
comprehensive view of the whole works which they are compelled often
to nibble at in sublime unconsciousness of their general purport or
spirit. Mr. Trollope has told the wondrous story of Cæsar as far as
his Commentaries reveal it, and has illustrated it throughout with
geographical exposition, historical parallel, and realistic art.
Bright, stirring bits of description, curt despatches, stunning
condensations of campaigns into a few pages or sentences, are given in
the mighty Cæsar's own words, and the story is told with grace and
simplicity in nervous clear English by one of the most popular writers
of the day. Mr. Martin has graduated with high honour in the school of
Classical Translation before attempting this difficult task. We must
confess to great satisfaction with his dainty and delicate work. He
has given us a sketch of the career of Horace, and by skilful
quotation has made him tell the story of his youth, of his high
military career, of his relation to Mæcenas, of his health, and his
tastes, of his love-passages, of his friendships, and of his religious
ideas. Mr. Martin has gracefully introduced Professor Conington's
translations where he preferred them to his own. Lord Lytton has not
met with equal favour at his hand, though his criticisms are not
unfrequently referred to.
If our readers will try and conceive what 'Hamlet' or the 'Revolt of
Islam' would look like if described to some younger civilization in
some language of the future, they will have an idea of the difficulty
of reproducing the dramas of the ancient tragedians in the shape of a
mere account of them in prose. It is not only that the exquisite art
of the originals evaporates in the process, but the poetry goes, and
only the great conceptions remain; even the beliefs of the ancient
world lose their simplicity in transmission. But it was hardly
necessary for Mr. Reginald Copleston to be so misleading as to speak
of the 'gloomy deities which belong to the sphere of conscience and
moral responsibility,' or to find in the Greek mythology such lessons
as the 'deep and dreadful responsibility of man, the possibility of
restoration from sin to purity, and the overruling providence of a
supreme Creator.' Some of these truths are the offspring of Roman law,
others are the growth of Christianity, but they are all modern.
Aristotle certainly knew nothing of them, and anyone who carried such
associations into his reading of the 'Prometheus' would find his ideas
of it vitiated by a fundamental misconception. Except that Mr.
Copleston's sentences are mostly halting and broken-backed, his
account of the plays is otherwise good and accurate.
'Xenophon' is the father of military history, of romance, and of
Boswelliana. He is less appreciated than 'Herodotus,' but is equally
vivacious and interesting. We do not think, therefore, that his 'chief
service to modern readers consists in the amount of information he has
preserved.' There is more in his pictures of contemporary life than
this. Sir A. Grant has done his work well, and 'Xenophon' ought
thereby to be more attractive to English readers than he has been. We
could have wished for a somewhat fuller picture of his life and times,
but the exigencies of space are imperative.
_The Works of Virgil, rendered into English Prose._ By JAMES LONSDALE,
M.A., and SAMUEL LEE, M.A. Macmillan and Co.
A prose translation of 'Virgil' is of course unreadable. We presume
this is meant as a 'crib.' Davidson certainly left room for
improvement, and may now be considered to be superseded by the
excellent translation of Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee. The introductions
are full of matter, though they are written in a pedantically antique
style which was probably suggested by a not quite accurate sense of
congruity.
_Ralph the Heir._ By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Hurst and Blackett.
Mr. Trollope's novels contribute a distinct element to English
fiction. He is the creator, almost perfect, of commonplace. If we
limit his genius, it is not because it so embodies itself, for it
demands genius as great to create the commonplace as the heroic or the
grotesque. Extremes are always easy, they are the fault of all
undisciplined force; only well-balanced and practised power can avoid
them. The artistic defect of Mr. Trollope is that he never does
anything else. He is a Paganini among novel writers; he fiddles
exquisitely, but always upon one string. He has no situations of
passion; his characters are not conceived so as to render development
into passion possible. What heroics can be got out of the Bishop of
Barchester or his wife, or 'Ralph the Heir'? Within his range, Mr.
Trollope has wonderful variety, but before opening a new work of his
we may always predicate, if not the species, yet the genus of his
characters; no one would ascribe to him many-sidedness. 'Ralph the
Heir' is essentially commonplace--not wicked, nor good--not weak, nor
strong--in any distinctive way. A young man with a few hundreds a
year, the heir-presumptive of his uncle, he has simply gone the way of
many young men who ultimately settle down, as he does, into
respectable country gentlemen, magistrates, and fathers. He has given
himself to horse-racing, hunting, and betting, with their belongings,
and has got embarrassed, his only chance of extrication being the
reversion of the estate, the possession of which, however, his uncle
seems likely to retain for many years. Out of these circumstances,
such being his characters, the entanglements of the tale are wrought.
Ralph, who is as weak in love as he is in moral habit, commits himself
to a virtual declaration of affection for Clarissa, the daughter of
his guardian, Sir Thomas Underwood; his pecuniary necessities press
hard upon him, and drive him to the extremity of a proposal to Polly
Neefit, the daughter of a wealthy breeches-maker; a brilliant cousin
of Clarissa's--Mary Bonner--comes from the West Indies, with whom
everybody falls in love; delivered from old Neefit by the accidental
death of his uncle, Ralph proposes to her and is refused, then again
to Clarissa and is refused, and at last is married by Lady Eardham to
her daughter Augusta. The peculiar triumph of Mr. Trollope is that he
carries his hero and the ladies through all this without a single
feeling of disgust. None of the characters have much in them except
Mary, who shadows a fine conception, but they are all redeemed from
contempt. Pooly Neefit is vulgar, but she has strong common sense and
true-hearted honesty, and knows what she is; Clarissa is a coquette,
but she has tenderness and faithfulness, if not depth of feeling; the
Eardhams are the Eardhams, types of scores of common-place families,
who, if they think about affections at all, clearly regard them as
troublesome superfluities; the viciousness and vulgar ambition of old
Neefit are redeemed by a certain generosity and kindliness of social
and domestic feeling. Everybody interests, nobody excites; everybody
is tolerable, and commonplace. Indeed, so conscious of this is Mr.
Trollope, that he devotes two or three pages at the conclusion of his
novel to an apology for it, showing us how undesirable it is that
every man should be a Henry Esmond, and every woman a Jeannie Deans.
True: but the only hope for mean, selfish, common-place people is for
literary artists to paint ideal excellence. Mere portrait-painting is
not the final cause of poetry and fiction; while life-like, it must be
life-idealized. Jeannie Deans has touched myriads of common-place
hearts, and made them nobler. Why does not Mr. Trollope try to give us
a Jeannie Deans occasionally? What good to anybody is it to paint only
Ralph Newtons, except, perhaps, to excite a tolerance for
common-place, an allowance for the defective men and women one meets
with every day--an end important, no doubt; but why not delineate
virtues and vices--nobilities and meannesses--so as to do something to
excite the emulation of Ralph Newtons themselves, as well as our
charity towards them?
Mr. Trollope's masterpiece in this novel is Sir Thomas Underwood, a
barrister, living in chambers, with two daughters at Putney, who has
been Solicitor-General, and who has been all his life purposing to
write a life of Bacon--a conception, again, of a respectable form of a
somewhat selfish and irresolute character, but admirably portrayed. So
is Ontario Moggs, the son of Ralph's bootmaker, his rival in the
affections of Polly Neefit, a red-hot Communist orator, and the
working man's candidate in the Percycross election. In the description
of this election, at which Sir Thomas was returned and then unseated
on petition, Mr. Trollope has excelled himself. Contested elections
have often been described; Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot
especially, have found them as fruitful in humour as Hogarth did.
George Eliot excepted, we doubt if any living writer could approach
the skill and power with which the election of Percycross, the tactics
of its candidates, and the characteristics of its free and independent
electors are described; happily, it is now disfranchised for bribery.
Mr. Trollope's selection of types of characters and his successful
delineation of them are equal even to his best work. Sir Thomas and
old Neefit are not surpassed by Mrs. Proudie and Archdeacon Grantley.
Every portrait is characteristic, and is most carefully finished.
There are few things in fiction finer than the subtle admixture of
excellencies and defects in Sir Thomas. We do not care much for 'Ralph
the Heir;' we feel neither great indignation at his sins nor great
satisfaction with his virtues. He will be as happy as a nature like
his can be. Old Neefit is, in his way, as distinctive in drawing and
indelible in impression as Pickwick himself, only, of course, far less
agreeable.
Mr. Trollope is a Dutch artist, and paints with the fidelity of a
Teniers and the power of a Paul Potter. It is not the highest school
of art, but Mr. Trollope is a master in it, and 'Ralph the Heir' is
one of his greatest pictures. If one word may designate it, it is a
novel of selfishness exhibited in various striking types, not
pleasant, but unquestionably powerful, and likely to live when many
things that Mr. Trollope has done are dead and forgotten.
_Joshua Marvel._ By B. L. FARJEON. Tinsley Brothers.
The promise which we recognised in Mr. Farjeon's 'Grif' is more than
fulfilled in 'Joshua Marvel.' The author, with a rapidity which is
really surprising, has acquired a mastery of delineation and a
delicacy of touch, that give him high rank among brothers of his
craft. The opening chapters, which delineate the boyish friendship of
Joe and Dan, and the bird-fancying of the poor little cripple, are as
full of delicate beauty and pathos as anything that we have for a long
time read. Indeed, the entire history of the friendship of the two
lads is exquisitely conceived and wrought out. In its unselfishness,
tenderness, truthfulness, and moral beauty, it is like the love of
David and Jonathan. Like the author of 'Episodes from an Obscure
Life,' Mr. Farjeon's strength lies in his descriptions of East-end
life. Like him, too, he idealizes it by the delineation of noble
thoughts and faithful love. The old sailor--Mr. Meddler--the
Lascar--Minnie--Ellen--as well as Joe and Dan, are all portrayed in a
very masterly manner; while all is idealized, nothing is exaggerated.
Joe is a very noble character. The shipwreck, and the experiences in
the Australian forests, which Mr. Farjeon's colonial life qualify him
for describing with great truthfulness and power of colouring and
incident, are narrated in a very powerful way. The quiet beauty and
pathos of the story have greatly charmed and moved us. It is a pure,
wholesome book, carefully and skilfully written, the precursor, we
hope, of many more.
_Tales of the North Riding._ By STEPHEN YORKE. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The title of this book led us to expect that 'Stephen Yorke' had
attempted to do for Yorkshire what the author of 'Lorna Doone' has so
admirably done for Devonshire, or what, in his 'Wenderholme,' Mr.
Hammerton has done for the Yorkshire and Lancashire borders. We are
disappointed. 'Stephen Yorke' is not the impersonation of a _genius
loci_, although there is no reason to deny that _she_ may be a
Yorkshire-woman; nor have the four stories any very distinctive local
colouring. Neither the descriptions of natural scenery nor the
reproduction of the vernacular is characteristic enough to necessitate
a Yorkshire _locale_ rather than a Devonshire one. It might be an
imperfect representation of either, save, indeed, that the items of
natural configuration catalogued are more true of Scarborough than
they are of Lynton. The forte of the authoress certainly does not lie
in description. We can, however, speak much more favourably concerning
her powers of portraiture. The characters of her four stories are well
conceived and delicately discriminated. The tone is artistic and
tender, and the treatment skilful; a quiet and acute observation of
the gentler sorrows of human life, sometimes, however, as in
Lizzie--the heroine of Thorpe House Farm--developing into sad domestic
tragedy, and considerable power in daguerreotyping it, are the
writer's _forte_. Thorpe House Farm is the best story of the four, and
is very pathetic; when the authoress attempts stronger positions she
becomes sensational, as in the quarrel of 'Squire Hasildene and his
Son,' and the rough winter experiences of the latter in Danesborough.
There is much that is natural and touching in the delineation of Mrs.
Wynburn and her daughter; the yearnings of the mother, and the
breaking down of the cold reserve of the daughter after the not very
original mishap which befel her. Sophia Wynburn is a very clever
creation. The book is not great, but there is a certain something in
it which indicates a power of character-painting which itself has not
adequately realized, and which may, when it has shaken off what 'A. K.
H. B.' would call a little of the 'vealy,' and when it has acquired
the confidence and skill of practised writing, develope into a
distinctive gift. The stories are very pleasant reading--that is, they
are admirable in tone and interesting in execution.
_For Lack of Gold: A Novel._ By CHARLES GIBBON. Blackie and Sons.
Success has produced upon Mr. Gibbon the effect that it always does
produce upon true men: it has animated him to painstaking effort. 'For
Lack of Gold' is a piece of very genuine workmanship, and its effect
upon us is that we have to restrain our strong inclination to eulogize
instead of criticize. The defect of the story is that the painful
tension is too great; it wants the relief of quiet scenes and composed
feelings. Angus and Annie are in a chronic agony. Shakespeare
understood the tragic art better; strong passions can be only
occasional, and 'Lear' without the fool would be too painful. This,
however, is almost the only fault we have to find. The writing is
good, and the little descriptive bits evince the keen and careful eye
as well as the skilful hand of an artist. The beautiful and tender
touches with which the work is inlaid--the genuine pathos of even the
most intense feeling is very powerful; the well-regulated freedom of
the artist's hand--the carefully-studied tone of the dialogue--the
constructive skill of the plot--the fine moral atmosphere of the
whole--even the humour of the mere Scottish dialect--all are
accessories essential to the best work, but in one or more of which
even very good work is sometimes lacking. But the prime quality of
every novel is its characterization, and in this Mr. Gibbon has been
eminently successful. The conception of Annie's character, and of the
blind instinct of noble, self-sacrificing love that always guides her
rightly even when she seems to be acting most fatally, are very able
and beautiful. Angus, again, in another way exhibits the same
characteristics, the difference being chiefly that between man and
woman, for in love it is true that the superiority is with the woman.
Angus's mother is after the type of Robert Falconer's mother,--a fine
Scottish matron, full of Calvinism and stern tenderness. Annie's
father, and Dalquherrie, the evil geniuses of the piece, are also well
conceived; they exhibit two natural, types of selfishness. Nor must we
omit to mention that strange compound of incontinence, soldierliness,
eccentricity, and fidelity,--the Deil--a creation worthy of Scott.
Altogether we congratulate Mr. Gibbon on a second very marked success,
which bids fair to place him, as a describer of Scottish forms of our
common humanity, at no very great distance from George Macdonald.
_The Beautiful Miss Harrington._ By HOLME LEE, Author of 'Basil
Godfrey's Caprice,' &c. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The accomplished writer who passes by the pseudonym of Holme Lee has
added to her reputation by this novel. It is written with great care
and felicitousness of style, with perfect taste, and much delicacy of
conception. As might be expected, it is pure as the driven snow, and
very life-like in delineation. It professes to be written by one of
the principal actors in the tragic story, the wife of the rector of
the parish in which the history developes itself, and every
complication of event and thought, and all the balancings of motive
reach the reader through the heart and mind of this one individual.
She is a nimble, strong-minded little woman, with an abhorrence of
shams, and an outspokenness at times quite astonishing. This old, old
story of love arrested by family pride and selfishness, and ending in
cruel disappointment and perverse conjugal relations, in a semblance
of madness, in cruel suspicions, fever, and death, has often been
told, but not often from the standpoint of a sympathetic, loving
spectator and intimate friend of the suffering heroine. The only
drawback is, that we are never admitted to the secret heart of any
masculine actor in the drama; we are never introduced into the privacy
of the lover, or the father, or the grasping heir-at-law of the
'beautiful Miss Barrington.' The presumed biographer is always
present, or quoting extracts from Felicia Barrington's letters, or
relating the gossip of her friends or her enemies. We question whether
poetical justice is altogether done, either to the selfish father, the
long-suffering husband, or to the sneaking, hypocritical reptile who
is the marplot of Felicia's happiness. There are so many ways in which
the machinations of her enemies might have easily been disappointed,
that it is evident that Holme Lee repudiates the position of being
'privy councillor to Providence,' to use one of her own expressions.
Felicia does conquer world, flesh, and devil after a fashion, and her
cruelly-used, high-minded, but intolerably blundering lover,
notwithstanding his gentleness and his Victoria Cross, his forbearance
and patience, deserves his fate; but then, after he has intentionally
broken the tender heart of the heroine, he provokingly consoles
himself with another love. We are not sure that a ward in Chancery and
heiress of entailed estates could have conferred on her husband such
powers as the wife and daughter of Mr. Barrington successively
entrusted to him; but let that pass. We thank Holme Lee for her
fascinating story, the moral of which is,--let young lovers be true to
their plighted word, though fathers, guardians, duennas, family
dignity, titled suitors, death's heads and cross-bones all demand
instant and precipitate repudiation.
_In that State of Life._ By HAMILTON AÏDÉ. Smith, Elder, and Co.
There is not much to be said about Hamilton Aïdé's little story. The
plot is slight. Maud, the stepdaughter of Sir Andrew Herriesson, a
pompous, irascible, narrow-minded baronet, is goaded into
clandestinely leaving his house, after refusing a wealthy match upon
which he was beset. She answers an advertisement, and becomes an under
lady's maid, with a stipend of twenty pounds a year, to Mrs. Cataret,
whose son falls in love with her, and, after a due amount of
difficulty and fuming, marries her. The story is told in a simple,
straightforward way, and the characters are well delineated,
especially that of the vivacious half-French Mrs. Cataret, and of
noble-hearted John Miles, the curate. If the story does not encourage
ill-used baronets' stepdaughters to run away, it may, harmlessly
enough, fill up an idle hour.
_Squire Arden._ By Mrs. OLIPHANT. Hurst and Blackett.
Mrs. Oliphant has won such a position among our lady novelists--second
only among living writers to that of George Eliot--that it is almost
enough to announce a new story from her pen: certainly it is
superfluous to speak of her characteristics as a writer; they are as
well known as those of Anthony Trollope. Like other writers, however,
her productions are not all of equal excellence, and although there
are in 'Squire Arden' elements of literary skill and imaginative power
which would arrest the attention and excite the interest of any
critic, it cannot be designated one of her best works. The story is
not a cheerful one. Its plot is very simple. Edgar Arden, a young man
whom his father has hated and kept abroad, finds himself, soon after
attaining his majority, the Lord of Arden, with an only sister,
between whom and himself there exists a strong affection. Clare has
the Arden blood in her; with much that is excellent derived from her
mother, she has the imperious temper of her father. The redeeming
feature of her character is her love for Edgar. The new experiences of
the heir are described. A few of the village characters are
introduced, notably Dr. Somers, the village doctor, a _bon vivant_,
clever and good at heart, but somewhat cynical; his sister, Miss
Somers, a very clever creation, a kind of pious Mrs. Nickleby; Mr.
Fielding, the gentle, kindly rector, and some of the peasants. At the
house of one of them a Scotchwoman, Mrs. Murray, and her
granddaughter, Jeannie, come to lodge. The Pimpernels, Liverpool
merchants, come on the stage, but little comes of it; so do the
aristocratic neighbours, the Thornleighs. A cousin, Arthur Arden, a
half worn-out and penniless man about town, turns up, and schemes to
marry Clare, to the great distress of everybody who knows her.
The chief interest centres in Arden. Some letters are discovered in a
bureau proving that Edgar is not an Arden, but an adopted child, the
old Squire having been at enmity with his heir. Edgar at once makes
known the discovery, and surrenders the estate to Arthur Arden, the
true heir, whose coarse, servile selfishness comes out. Edgar proves
to be the grandson of Mrs. Murray. The three volumes are occupied with
the simple development of this. The fault of the story is its
prolixity; it doesn't get on. Chapter after chapter is filled with
analyses of everybody's feelings and reflections, and with details of
everybody's movements, until the reader is really wearied. The burthen
of three volumes lies heavily upon both writer and reader. Like every
story that Mrs. Oliphant writes, the book is full of good sense and
clever things, but she should either have put into it more subordinate
and varied incidents, or have made it shorter. It is altogether
melancholy. We pity the villagers who have Arthur Arden for their
Squire; we pity Edgar, who goes forth almost penniless; but most of
all we pity Clare, whose defects hardly deserved such a retribution as
Arthur for a husband.
_A Snapt Gold Ring._ By FREDERICK WEDMORE. Smith, Elder, and Co.
A story of ill-consorted marriage and of the evil that comes of it.
The point of contrast is between gifts and goodness--the power of
intellect and the greatness of love. Madeline, the simple, loving
wife, is well delineated; so is her cousin Kate, the sempstress and
actress. The writer has no great depth, but is well acquainted with
places and people, and with artist-life, and he tells his story and
points its moral fairly well.
_Shoemakers' Village._ By HENRY HOLBEACH. Two vols. Strahan and Co.
Mr. Henry Holbeach cannot write without saying many clever things. He
has an eye for the humours of men and the oddities of religious
persuasion. From an outside standpoint he can see the incongruities of
strongly marked religious profession with the common affairs of life
and business. If Serene Highnesses or great ecclesiastics were
represented with their feet in hot water, and with bowls of toddy at
their side, and seen to be intent on expelling the results of
superfluous rheum from their systems, or if Prime Ministers were
honestly painted at their sport or personal business, the
incongruities of their great professions and their positive actual
doings would seem as laughable as the toy-shop and bill-discounting
and mutton pies of 'cumbersome Christians.'
There are many scenes and bits of description in these volumes which
are almost worthy of Robert Browning, or Mrs. Oliphant; but Mr.
Holbeach seems often to be trying to produce a droll or a weird
effect, in which he never quite succeeds. For our part, we laughed
when he clearly meant us to weep, and we failed to see anything
ludicrous in the incongruities and weaknesses which he so painfully
depicts. As to plot or scheme in 'Shoemakers' Village,' there is
scarcely the apology for one. A few mysteries, of no earthly interest,
are supposed to be lying under our feet, or huddled up in dark
corners, ready to break forth upon the hum-drum life of the principal
characters, but they vanish away, without conferring any interest on
the narrative. The character of Cherry White, _alias_ Tomboy, is
freshly and vividly drawn; and the simple sweetness of her life, just
opening to the significance of love, and making her the _confidante_
of everybody in 'Shoemakers' Village,' redeems the story from absolute
insipidity; but why she should have been drowned in a horse-pond, in
the attempt to save the life of a 'malignant epilept,' who was her
only enemy, baffles our philosophy; and we feel that the ugly splash
she must have made, when she was dragged into the muddy pool,
disfigures the entire story with uncanny stains. However, the separate
characterizations of the 'Shoemakers' Village' reveal a touch of real
power. We would respectfully advise Henry Holbeach to keep to those
higher walks of literature, where he has won for himself so just a
reputation.
_Historical Narratives._ From the Russian. By H. C. ROMANOFF.
Rivingtons.
Madame Romanoff has translated six Russian tales or sketches--three by
S. N. Shoubinsky and three by V. Andrèeff. She has, she tells us,
taken great liberties with Mr. Andrèeff's original narrative, which is
extremely disorderly and rambling. She has curtailed it; and from its
parts or chapters has compiled one continuous narrative. The result is
not very satisfactory. The stories of Catherine the Great and the
Emperor Paul are very timidly told--either from the cautiousness of
the original or the courtliness of the translator. Strange romances
are possible under a despotism, and few nations have more tragic or
wonderful court tales to tell than the semi-oriental, semi-barbarous
despotism of Russia; but whether it be autocrat or favourite, it is
necessary that the story should be told fearlessly and fully. Neither
concerning the venal favourites about whom Shoubinsky tells us, nor
the scandalous monarchs upon whom Andrèeff employs his pen, do we get
this. We have read the stories with a certain interest; but we have
felt in doing so that 'the half was not told us.' Ugly facts are
covered over with gentle euphuisms, and manifest barbarians are
decently clothed. It is the shadow of history that falls upon the
disc, not history itself.
_Restored._ By the Author of 'Son and Heir.' Hurst and Blackett.
'Restored' is a very conscientious and clever novel, and deserves a
much fuller description and criticism than we can bestow upon it. It
is a piece of very honest, painstaking work; its plot and characters
are fresh, and escape the conventional type of novel-writers; its
descriptions indicate a close study of nature, an eye to observe, and
a considerable power of reproduction; while its narrations and
dialogues are inlaid with thoughtful observations and vivacious
disquisitions on men and things. The writer has made her book a
repertory for much of her philosophy of life. It would, for instance,
be possible to glean from it something like a complete theory of the
'Woman's Right' question; and we must do the authoress the justice to
say that her views are generally just and her remarks sensible. The
book, in short, is full of sterling stuff, and will bear more than one
perusal. Evidently, it has been a labour of love, written with
literary care and pride, and with a purpose much higher than that of
mere amusement. The writer's aim is high, and it has achieved a signal
success. Mr. Malreward, of Malreward Park, in Somersetshire, a
handsome, almost unmitigated scoundrel, had married the sister of the
Rev. Arthur Byrne, rector of Tintagel--we beg pardon, Trevalga--on the
northern coast of Cornwall. He soon breaks her heart; and her two
children, Victor and Frederica, become the charge of the rector, until
Harry, Mr. Malreward's eldest son by a former wife, is killed by being
thrown from his horse, and Victor becomes the heir, and has to reside
at Malreward Park. The story turns on his temptations there, under the
bad influence of his father, who is brute as well as devil, and once
almost kills him. Strong in noble principle, Victor is faithful, aided
by Deverell, the head-keeper, a striking character, an illegitimate
son of Mr. Malreward. Deverell is accused of Mr. Malreward's death,
and Victor is suspected of implication in it. After a few years,
during which, under most disheartening conditions, Victor redeems the
estate and regenerates its peasantry, he dies of fever, after a deed
of noble heroism. Freddy, his sister, has married Stansfield Erle, a
cold, selfish, self-willed lawyer, whose conversion is the most
improbable thing in the story--almost a psychological impossibility,
we think--and her son inherits the estate. Three or four of the
characters--Victor's own--Arthur Byrne, the noble-hearted
rector--Deverell's, and Freddy's--are almost original in their
conception, and are developed with admirable vigour, truth, and skill.
The drawbacks are that Victor is too hysterical, and Stansfield Erle
too much of a brute. Throughout, indeed, the agony is piled on a
little too much, but there are great power, deep truth, and a
wholesome moral in this really remarkable novel.
_Emmanuel Church: A Chapter in the Ecclesiastical History of the
Present Century._ By R. THOMAS. Hamilton, Adams and Co.
A very well-written and pleasant sketch of Nonconformist church life,
exhibiting the influence which a good and wise pastor will always
gather, and the impotence of mere faction and folly seriously to
damage it. There is great good sense in the conception of the sketch,
and considerable skill in the execution of it.
_Checkmate._ By J. SHERIDAN LE FANU. Hurst and Blackett.
Mr. Le Fanu occupies a distinctly original position among novel
writers. He is a master of what it has become the fashion to call
'sensation,' yet does not attain his ends by the ordinary methods. The
stereotype characters of such stories do not appear on his pages.
Never do we encounter the lovely female fiend whose first type was
'Miladi' in the 'Three Musketeers' of Dumas the inexhaustible, and who
has since committed bigamies and murders (the murders of best husbands
by preference) in the works of popular authors whom we need not name.
Again, Mr. Le Fanu is great at a mysterious plot, but his mysteries
have the immense advantage of being not entirely translucent; and in
the novel now under notice we think the readers of most experience in
such matters may reach the middle of the third volume without
penetrating the mystery which surrounds Longcluse. It is a real
puzzle, based upon an original contrivance which it would be unfair to
reveal. Mr. Le Fanu has also a strongly penetrative imagination,
whereby he lights up luridly the strange scenes that he describes,
producing an effect like a picture by Rembrandt, or like that
observable when the electric flame through a lighthouse lens falls
upon some scene in utter darkness. This power of giving intense
reality to description makes every chapter of our author's work worth
reading. The story of 'Checkmate' we shall leave untold; it has a
curious fascination about it, and will pretty surely be finished by
any one who commences it. Its characters are definite and varied.
Longcluse, hero and villain, successful for a long time, yet
checkmated at last, is an admirable portrait. The Arden baronets,
father and son, might almost be identified in Lodge or Debrett. The
ladies, especially Grace Maubray and Lady May Penrose, are choice
studies of patrician life; and as to Baron Vanboeren, that wonderful
patron and protector of scoundrels, he is one of the most original
conceptions in modern romance. Critics who question the existence of
romantic brilliancy may be referred to the _Times_ newspaper, which
has daily to record events that no novelist dare imagine. Therefore we
shall decline to inquire whether a Vanboeren exists or has
existed--whether, indeed, his vocation is possible,--and shall simply
say that he is an entirely new and strangely powerful character in the
world of bizarre romance.
_The Mad War-Planet._ By WILLIAM HOWITT. Longmans.
_Muriel, and other Poems._ By E. T. WEATHERLY. Whittaker and Co.
_Avenele, Desmond, and other Poems._ Two vols. By SOPHIA A. CAULFEILD.
Longmans.
With some distrust of our critical infallibility, we have selected
these four volumes of poems out of some two dozen that lie on our
table. The difference between one volume of minor poetry and another
is generally infinitesimal, and we are far from meaning to imply that
the volumes left unnoticed are much below the level of the others. We
presume that minor poetry is written chiefly for a few congenial minds
in whom similar associations produce susceptibility to similar
impressions and emotions. But the critic must judge from a _quasi_
absolute point of view, and take his stand, as it were, on the
elementary passions of the mind and the cardinal facts of nature. We
notice Mr. Howitt's volume not because we think it contains anything
even resembling poetry, but from respect for his name, and for the
sincerity of his convictions. 'The Mad War-Planet' is, unhappily, an
epic, and, still more unhappily, an epic with a theory. Mr. Howitt
believes the earth to be a spherical lunatic asylum, in which the
thousand million lunatics are unfortunately _not_ under restraint. The
theory is, of course, not new, but the working out of it is less
original and interesting than we should have expected. 'Muriel, the
Sea King's Daughter,' is musical with the tones and tinged with the
hues of the youngest school of poetry. But the art of it is delicate
and finished, and proves a real poetic gift, apart from the echoes of
Tennyson and Morris which ring through the poem. The majority of Miss
Caulfeild's poems are the manifestations of an evidently unaffected
piety. The poetry of them lies chiefly in a certain completeness of
presentation, a severity of limitation by which the ragged edges of an
emotion are made to fall off, and the mood to crystallize into a
defined and beautiful form.
_Pilgrim Songs in Cloud and Sunshine._ By NEWMAN HALL, LL.B. Hamilton
and Adams.
Few things in modern literature are much more significant than the
extraordinary diffusion of the author's first publication, 'Come to
Jesus.' The spirit of that musical and soothing refrain pervades these
'Pilgrim Songs,' and offers a loving rebuke to the cold and cynical
criticism which it is fashionable to pronounce on Evangelical
Christianity. These songs of the pilgrim are full of hope and
exultation; they all seem singable on the border-land between earth
and heaven. They reveal great sensitiveness to beauty, and show the
kind of chord that has been struck in the heart of the writer by the
loveliness of earth as well as by the deepest realities of life. There
is in them a triumphant faith, born of a deep experience--a faith
which does not battle with scientific speculation nor modern
mysticism. It knows and does not prove, it rests and does not fret.
The key-note of the volume is struck in a hymn of universal praise.
The tenderness, strength, and good cheer of many of the personal
meditations are helpful. A motto appropriate to the volume would be,
'Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.'
_Parish Musings, or Devotional Poems._ By JOHN S. R. MONSELL, LL.D.
Rivingtons.
A new and neat edition of one of Dr. Monsell's volumes of exquisite
sacred poems. Next to Keble and to Dr. Bonar, there is no hymn-writer
of this generation to whom the Church of God owes so much. Like them,
he is intensely subjective, spiritual, and tender. Many of his hymns
have passed into the use of all sections of the Church, and minister
richly to the best forms of devotional feeling.
THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOLOGY.
_The Doctrine of Holy Scripture respecting the Atonement._ By THOMAS
J. CRAWFORD, Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.
Blackwood and Sons. 1871.
When Dr. Crawford published his treatise on 'the Fatherhood of God,
considered in its general and special aspects, and particularly in
relation to the Atonement,' we called the attention of our readers
(_B. Q._ vol. xlvi., p. 272) to the great ability and admirable temper
with which he brought various modern theories of the Atonement to the
following test:--'How far do these theories represent the sufferings
of Christ as a manifestation altogether unparalleled of the fatherly
love of God towards all mankind.' In our opinion, he showed
triumphantly that they were lamentably defective in this prime article
of their alleged strength. The substance of these criticisms is
introduced into the present volume, and much of the able review of the
theories of Messrs. Maurice, M'Leod Campbell, Robertson, Young, and
Bushnell is here repeated, with a broader reference to the whole
question of the Atonement. The powerful _argumentum ad hominem_ is,
however, omitted, and the author's views of the limited extent of the
Atonement are so far hinted as to make us anxious to see how he will
on that hypothesis develope his strongly held thesis on the Fatherhood
of God. Doubtless, the ground taken by him would be this, that the
love of the Eternal Universal Father was so great to the whole of
mankind that He sent His Son to save all who should believe in Him.
Dr. Crawford says truly, that 'a full discussion of it would be
impracticable, apart from the difficult and mysterious subject of the
_purposes of God_.' The limitation of the _extent_ and _destination_
of the Atonement to those and those only who stand in covenant
relation with Christ in the counsels of the Godhead, or who are in
living union with the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, originates _per se_
so many grievous difficulties that it has done more than anything else
to induce the violent criticism of the orthodox doctrine of the
Atonement. The not infrequent concession of this hypothesis in this
able writer's discussion of other aspects of the Atonement, disturbs
the almost unlimited satisfaction with which we have perused the
volume. We may say further, by way of criticism, that it seems to us
scarcely legitimate to place the theory upheld by Wardlaw, Pye-Smith,
Jenkyn and others, on a lower platform than that of Martineau, Jowett,
or Bushnell. It is certainly submitted to the most scathing criticism
contained in the entire volume, and is represented in colours and
terms hardly meted out to those who arraign at the bar of conscience
the entire idea of substitution, and who entirely repudiate the
Catholic doctrine of the Atonement. We have not space here to discuss
or defend Dr. Wardlaw from this powerful attack. We have previously,
in this Review, at considerable length, shown that we consider the
rectoral or governmental theory insufficient, and exposed to serious
objection. It is well known that Dr. Campbell, in his interesting work
on the 'Nature of the Atonement,' reveals far less sympathy with the
modern Calvinism of the school of Wardlaw and Jenkyn than he does with
the more logical and profound principles of Calvin and Owen. But
Wardlaw and Campbell, though they widely differ on the _rationale_ of
the Atonement, do both, together with Dr. Crawford, stand firmly on
the position that our blessed Lord consummated a great work of
redemption _for_ human nature, which no individual of the human race
could effect for himself, and this _over_ and _above_ that work
wrought _in_ humanity by the grace of the Spirit in virtue of the work
of Christ. We beg our readers, however, to read Dr. Crawford's
examination of the 'theory of sympathy,' which is made by Campbell and
others to cover and explain the deep mystery of the sufferings of
Christ. The alternative exhibited by Luther, that forgiveness of sins
could not be conceived of in the dominion of a holy God, unless there
be either a sufficient satisfaction or an adequate repentance, was
accepted by Dr. Campbell; but instead of looking, with Luther, for
satisfaction of a violated law, he has taken the other side of the
alternative, viz., the _adequate repentance_ for the sins of the human
race, rendered from the ground of human nature, in the awful sympathy
of Jesus, and in that loving consciousness of human sin and peril
which filled the cup of sorrow, and broke the heart of the Son of God.
Now, Dr. Crawford has not referred to the various Scriptural arguments
by which Dr. Campbell endeavoured to sustain his somewhat startling
thesis, but has grappled with the main proposition itself, and shown
it to be insufficient to sustain the language of Christ or his
Apostles; that all the elements of a complete and _adequate
repentance_ for the sins of the world could not be found in one who
had no experience of sinful desire; further, that if this were
possible, and were clearly stated in Holy Scripture, then, so far from
the sufferings of Christ consequent on his agonizing sympathy with
sinners providing the ground of forgiveness of sins, this theory would
merely aggravate the offensiveness of sin, and run the danger of
transforming the entire efficacy of the Atonement of Christ into the
power of His example exercising a sanctifying influence upon the life
of the believer.
We cannot follow Dr. Crawford in his clear, calm, candid treatment of
the various hypotheses of Grotius, Maurice, Bushnell, Young, and
Robertson. These controversial chapters are models of honourable
debate, they are scrupulously fair in quotation, and complete in
rejoinder. But it would be incorrect not to state that the greater
proportion of this valuable work is expository rather than
controversial; inductive rather than deductive. The author assumes no
theory or theological definition from which to start, but simply
enumerates, with much elaboration and care, in fourteen 'groups,' all
the teaching of the New Testament on the subject of the work of
Christ. The principal interpretations of these _loci classici_ come
under review, and great care is taken to make them sustain no weight
greater than they can bear. The conclusions at which the author
arrives are given in twelve brief sections of high and sacred
eloquence. 'The confirmatory evidence of the Old Testament respecting
the Atonement' is summed up under the heading of _prophecy_ and
_sacrifice_; and, while claiming for the Levitical sacrifices a
piacular character for sins of a certain class, the non-expiatory
theories of Bähr, Hofmann, Keil, and Young are carefully reviewed.
The general objections to the Scriptural doctrine of the Atonement are
well handled. We call special attention to the manner in which Dr.
Crawford replies to the allegation that Christ manifested personal
reserve respecting the Atonement. It is well to remember that 'the
purpose of our Lord's ministry was to _make_ rather than _preach_, the
Atonement;' that 'Christ is the _subject_ as well as the _author_ of
the Gospel--His life, death, resurrection, and ascension are included
in it as its most important elements; that the teaching of Christ was
gradual and progressive, and when most advanced indicated the need of
further teaching,' and then, finally, that 'this reserve has been
greatly exaggerated.' Our author is most happy in refuting a variety
of objections raised to the atoning character of the work of Christ
from the silence of the parables, and says, most truly, that 'if we
were to proceed upon the principle that anything that is not expressly
mentioned in a particular passage which speaks of the forgiveness of
sin may be set aside as having no connection with that blessing, I
might undertake to prove that _repentance_ is not at all necessary to
forgiveness.'
We have devoted unusual space to our notice of this important book.
The intrinsic grandeur of the theme, and the masterly treatment it has
received from our author, must be our explanation. We have, however,
touched only a very few of the points with which he has grappled. It
ought to be observed, in conclusion, that he has purposely omitted all
reference to the _history_ of the doctrine of the Atonement Nor was it
necessary. The treatise is, strictly speaking, a vigorous attempt to
establish, by an inductive process, 'the Biblical theology' of the
Atonement. Dr. Crawford does not use or defend the soteriology of the
Fathers, Schoolmen, or Reformers, nor does he the confession of faith
of his own Church. We have not read a theological treatise for a long
time which, upon the whole, has given us greater satisfaction.
_The Doctrine of the Atonement, as taught by the Apostles; or, the
Sayings of the Apostles Energetically Expounded._ With Historical
Appendix. By Rev. GEORGE SMEATON, D.D. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
We cannot too highly commend the conception and general execution of
this really great theological work. Professor Smeaton may claim the
honour of having inaugurated, at any rate in Scotland, a _novum
organum_ of theology. In relation to passing phases of thought in
Christendom, he opposes the severely theological character of his work
to 'a sort of spiritual religious or mystic piety, whose watchword is
spiritual life, divine love, and moral redemption, by a great teacher
and ideal man, and absolute forgiveness, as contrasted with everything
forensic.' In relation to ordinary Scottish methods of treating
theological doctrines, he proposes to establish the doctrine of the
Atonement by a severely inductive method. In his former volume he
submitted to an exegetical examination the sayings of our Lord in
relation thereto; in the present volume he submits to a similar
examination the sayings of the apostles. In this he has had
predecessors in Germany and Holland--as for example, in the works of
Schmid and Van Oosterzee, of which translations have been recently
published. But in British theology he has had no predecessor, so far
as we remember, in such treatment of the doctrine of Atonement. In his
great work on the 'Scripture Testimony to the Messiah,' Dr. Pye-Smith
adopted it in relation to our Lord's Divinity. Obviously it is the
only satisfactory method. _A priori_ theories constructed for systems
of theology can never satisfy independent inquirers concerning a
doctrine which, while it appeals to the principles and intuitions of
our moral nature, yet as to its facts is a matter of pure revelation.
The exegetical method which Professor Smeaton adopts, as opposed to
the systematic theology method usually adopted, is clearly the true
one.
The question, therefore, is, how far has Professor Smeaton been
successful in realizing his method, and what is his exegetical
ability? _First_, we regret that, with all its disadvantages of
repetitions and lack of order, he rejected the plan of 'discussing the
passages as they lie _in situ_ in the several books,' and adopted the
plan of 'digesting them under a variety of topics.' Not only does a
strictly inductive method demand the former plan, but very important
meanings depend upon the development of a strict chronological order.
Professor Smeaton even accepts the arrangement of the Epistles in the
English Testament. _Next_, in our notice of Professor Smeaton's former
volume, we were compelled to say that he brought to our Lord's sayings
much preconceived theology--that he had not thrown off the heavy
burden of the Assembly's 'Confession of Faith,'and that thus his
method was seriously vitiated. From this the strictly chronological
method would have helped to keep him. In this volume he has perhaps
been more successful, but the indications, not to say the bias, of his
school of theological thought, are everywhere cognizable, both in
phrase and in exegesis--_e.g._, the term 'surety for others' as
applied to our Lord; the statement, 'according to the will of Him that
sent Him, He comprehended in himself a body, or a vast multitude;'
with the corresponding interpretations of 1 John ii.2. The 'whole
world,' according to Professor Smeaton, is 'believers out of every
tribe and nation,' 'The redeemed of every period, place, and people.'
This bias, too, prompts the interpretation of 1 John i.7 in an
objective rather than a subjective sense. Altogether, the subjective
conditions of the Atonement are unduly disparaged, although they are
not only recognised in Scripture, but are the essential complement of
the objective conditions. Throughout, the theological and scholastic
predominate over the exegetical and inductive. Professor Smeaton is a
very accomplished scholar, and, notwithstanding the qualifications we
have mentioned, a vigorous and independent thinker. His work would
have been better had its method been more rigidly adhered to, but it
is a great and noble work--a credit to British Biblical scholarship,
and a great service to doctrinal theology.
_An Examination of Canon Liddon's Bampton Lectures in the Divinity of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ._ By A CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND. Trübner and Co. 1871.
This writer is anxious to impale, not only Canon Liddon, but all who
hold substantially the Catholic doctrine of the Person of our Lord
Jesus, on one or other horn of the following dilemma:--Either Pure
Rationalism is our adequate guide, or the Catholic Church is the true
divine informant of man. 'Repudiate,' he virtually says, 'orthodox
doctrine, or admit that the Church is the depository and organ of
Divine revelation.' Protestant orthodoxy confessing Catholic
exposition of Holy Scripture, is, to our author's mind, inconsistent
in method and fundamentally insecure. He professes not to debate 'the
truth or falsehood of a doctrine, but the security or insecurity of a
foundation on which a minority of Christians have attempted to erect
that doctrine.' In every variety of phrase our author charges upon
Protestant interpreters of Holy Scripture, and on Mr. Liddon, as the
principal illustration of the painful phenomenon, the prepossession
and bias which blunt their exegetical tact; the traditionary and
apparently invincible blindness which prevents their understanding the
contents of the Bible; and the prejudice which so obfuscates their
spiritual perceptions that they continually wrest the true
significance of God's Word written, into irrational agreement with the
creeds of the Church. Orthodox believers 'never read the other side.'
The mastery of standard Unitarian books is no part of clerical
preparation in the Church of England, and orthodox Nonconformist
ministers are 'not genuinely and honestly acquainted with the
adversary at all.' The moral results of Protestant orthodoxy are, in
this writer's opinion, deplorable. Where anything has been effected by
it, according to our anonymous author, it has not been 'in virtue of
the dogma that God is three Persons rather than one Father, but in
virtue of truths which are the property of Theism as much as of
Ecclesiasticism.' We think he is just when he urges that 'no man or
society of men, while abjuring the Church's authoritative,
interpreting, and revealing functions, is legitimately empowered to
bind on the conscience doctrines which have not reasonable evidence
and do not admit of reasonable detailed exhibition.' He is extremely
vigorous, if not bitter, in his denunciation of those Protestant
divines who, according to him, already surcharged with Catholic or
ecclesiastical traditions, pretend to find on Protestant principles
the doctrines they know and love in the Holy Scriptures. Repeated
examinations of the Bampton lecture of Dr. Liddon have convinced him
that the lecturer's method is vicious and unsound, and that no
'unbiased individual judgment, rationally exercised, can deduce from
the Bible the doctrines of Christ's co-equal deity.' The work which
follows is a searching attempt to grapple with the Scriptural argument
as presented by Mr. Liddon. There is great ingenuity in the method of
attack. The author lays hold of the most consummate expression of Mr.
Liddon's theology--one on which Trinitarians of different schools
might join issue with him, and which can hardly be said to be the
explicit doctrine of the Nicene or Athanasian Creed--viz., 'that our
Lord's Godhead is exclusively the seat of His personality, and that
His manhood is not of itself an individual being.' There are those who
may say that in this statement Mr. Liddon somewhat verges on
Monophysitism, and therefore on a special theory which is intended to
explain what for ever must remain inexplicable, if the two halves of
the great synthesis are both to be held with equal tenacity. We are
not concerned here with this theory further than to show that the
author continually supposes this fundamental principle involved by Mr.
Liddon in every reference which Holy Scripture makes to the humanity
of our Lord. The leading features of the Catholic doctrine in the
matter seem to us to be a repudiation of any theory on the _how_ of
the hypostatic union, and a continuous assertion of the veritable
humanity as well as the eternal godhead of the Christ. Our author
refers to the various and abundant proofs contained in Holy Scripture
of the humanity, as if they were, _pro tanto_, a denial of the vast
induction of theology touching the Person of the Lord. He appears to
imply that every investigator in this great field of theological
inquiry must necessarily go through the entire induction for himself
before he is at liberty to see in any particular passage of Scripture
anything more than what a rigid grammatical praxis can make out of it.
Let us take an analogous case: The doctrine of gravitation (together
with the third law of motion) is established on a wide induction of
facts, still the realization of the truth of it requires a careful
elaboration of the facts in a generalized form, and a certain amount
of imagination. The motion of the earth towards the falling
rain-drops; or the circumstance that each fly on a window-pane drives
the round earth backwards in its upward march, is absolutely
inconceivable and incredible taken as a separate, isolated fact of
observation; and when the observer goes to the special supposed
phenomenon he must take with him pre-suppositions and broad
generalizations, which countervail all the evidence of his senses. No
one fact of attraction would be enough anywhere in the vast field to
determine the law, or even suggest it; the majority of isolated facts
taken alone would--nay, _still do_--suggest a counter theory; and yet,
for all that, the theory of universal gravitation may be held
dogmatically, and must be brought to interpret an apparently
recalcitrant fact without violating any principle of induction. It
does not follow, even if the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed be
accepted as a true induction of the facts of the Scripture, and a
broad and satisfying generalization of the revealed Essence of the
Godhead and of the Person of Christ, that those who do so accept it
are bound to believe the creed to be the result of supernatural
guidance given to the Church; nor is it just or rational in their
application of it to see _all_ it involves in _every_ text of Holy
Scripture on which its elements are presumed to rest. Our anonymous
clergyman is lavish in his terms of abuse, and, though careful to
quote Mr. Liddon's own words, he does not hesitate to speak
continually of his 'heedless rhetoric and readiness of assumption,' of
his 'reckless verbiage and stilted exposition and neglected context,'
of his 'rapacious deduction,' and 'unscrupulous eagerness, in the face
of probability, to appropriate ambiguous language.' He sings a
cuckoo-note of 'pre-supposition' and 'orthodox bias' blinding orthodox
eyes, and all the rest of it. It would seem that those who take a
diametrically opposite view of the Person of our Lord always 'calmly
review the evidence,' and are never moved by any predisposition
whatever. Now, nothing has seemed to us more obvious than that this
clergyman of the Anglican Church has gone with a thorough Arian, if
not Unitarian bias, to the New Testament, and he cannot see there what
to the consciousness of millions of honest thinkers is as plain as the
sun in the heavens. It would be just as easy for Mr. Liddon to turn
round, and with text after text accuse his critic of foregone
conclusions, of arrant scepticism, of ignorant sciolism, of
colour-blindness.
We think that it is scarcely fair of this anonymous critic to promise
to refute the Protestant method of Mr. Liddon in demonstrating the
Deity of our Lord, and then to commence by undermining, not simply the
authenticity of John's Gospel, but the trustworthiness of the
synoptists. If the New Testament is to be blown upon as well as the
Protestant principle, let us understand one another, and not waste
time in writing our rational vindication of the orthodox doctrine of
the Godhead.
It is impossible to go into the details of the criticism of Mr. Liddon
in a short notice, we therefore confine ourselves to two more remarks
on the principle of the volume. The author seems to think that nothing
but Catholic, conciliar orthodoxy can be held to account for the
perverse exegesis of Protestant theologians, and their unthinking
trust in the revealed dogma of the Divine-humanity and Deity of our
Lord. Surely the very fact may be in itself a vindication that, apart
altogether from Church authority, and apart from the Bible also, in
the history of religious thought and philosophical speculation there
are predisposing causes and tendencies which lead up to this great
induction. Apart from Christianity altogether, religious men have with
surprising frequency believed either in Divine incarnation or in
apotheosis, or in both. No wonder, when the religious instinct points
so strongly in this direction, that the exegetical faculty may be
assisted by it to see what mere grammar may sometimes fail to see.
The speculative view, the induction which this author would justify as
the final dictum of Biblical theology, would, after all, go a long way
in the direction of the truth. He admits the Christ of the New
Testament to be more than man; he cannot deny He is the giver of all
spiritual gifts to man, and possesses many other lofty sublime
superhuman functions. The difficulty in this whole class of exegesis
has been felt for ages, and appeared in the Nicene controversy; it
leads to practical tritheism, to a rivalry on the throne of God. If
the Biblical theory of the author be accepted, he who is less than God
is, practically, the God of the Christian; but this, with the Bible in
our hands, is impossible. It is the intense monotheism of the Bible,
and of Christ himself, which has driven the Protestant Christian
consciousness, as well as the Catholic Church, into the formulization
of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. We cannot affect to regret
that the arguments and method of Mr. Liddon should have received so
searching a criticism. Our author's extra-bilious hatred of rhetoric
has betrayed him into unnecessary severity of personal invective, but
there is a manly and obvious desire to be fair and honourable in his
treatment. It is a war to the knife over the most sacred theme in
human thought, and, while we do not attempt to justify all Cannon
Liddon's interpretations, or stand by all his philosophy, we believe
that he is much nearer to the thought of St. John and St. Paul than
his critic.
_Select English Works of John Wyclif._ Edited from original MSS., by
THOMAS ARNOLD, M.A. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. 1869.
These volumes were undertaken by the delegates of the University
Press, at the earnest instance of the late Canon Shirley, the
accomplished editor of the 'Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis
Wyclif cum Tritico' of Thomas Netter, of Walden, one of the series of
'Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the
Middle Ages,' issued by the Master of the Rolls. The learned Canon
intended to have personally superintended their preparation, and to
have prefixed to them an Introduction, in which he would have
endeavoured to fix the exact theological position of the writer, in
reference both to his own and to later times, besides probably
settling, so far as the means at our disposal allow, the chronology
and authenticity of the immense mass of writings ascribed to Wyclif--a
task for which he was eminently qualified, having devoted the best
part of ten years of his life--alas! too short--to the study of the
works and age of the English Reformer. The lamented death of Dr.
Shirley devolved the duty of preparing these select works for the
press on Mr. Arnold, whom he had previously requested to act as his
editorial assistant.
Some time before his death, Dr. Shirley had compiled, partly from
previously-published catalogues of the writings of Wycliff, such as
those of Bale, Leland, Tanner, Lewis, and the late editor of this
Review, and partly from other sources, a carefully prepared catalogue
of his own, which he issued from the press in 1865, adding to each
article critical notices of the evidence on which it was assigned to
the Reformer, and intimating in the preface that one of his objects in
the publication was to solicit the aid of scholars generally, in
making the catalogue complete. What success this intimation met with
does not appear. There is but one writing of Wyclif's published in
these volumes which is not included in Dr. Shirley's catalogue, the
'Lincolniensis,' vol. iii. 230. Mr. Arnold prints it from a manuscript
in the Bodleian, in which it is inserted between two other tractates,
both of which appear in this selection, and one of which had
previously been published both by Dr. James and Dr. Vaughan, who, as
well as Ball, Lewis, and Dr. Shirley, also ascribe the other to the
Reformer. It would have been more satisfactory, therefore, if he had
given his reasons for including it in his selection, as it is scarcely
possible that it had been 'overlooked,' especially by Dr. Vaughan and
Dr. Shirley, the inference from which would be that they regarded it
as of much too doubtful authenticity to be even noticed; and all the
more so, that although he had previously said (vol. i. 3), 'I have no
doubt that this, like most of the remaining contents of the
manuscript, was written by Wyclif,' in the note which he has prefixed
to the tractate (vol. iii. 230), he confesses 'it cannot be denied
that it contains nothing which might not equally well have been
written by one of his followers, as Herford, or Repyndon, or Aston.'
Dr. Shirley's catalogue enumerates _sixty-five_ English works which
are attributed to Wyclif. Of these, however, Mr. Arnold has only
published _thirty-two_, the others being omitted on one of the
following grounds: either 'that they are certainly not by Wyclif, or
that their authenticity is more doubtful than that of those selected,
or that they are in themselves less valuable, or that they have been
already frequently printed.' It is on this last ground, especially,
that he omits the _Wycket_, the best known, and at one time also the
most popular of all Wyclif's writings. The omissions are enumerated,
vol. iii. _et seqq._, where Mr. Arnold also states his reasons for
assigning each to the head under which it is classified. Some of these
reasons are conclusive--_e.g._, when he rejects the '_Speculum vitæ
Christianæ_,' because it is found to be a little manual of religious
instruction, compiled in English by the direction of Thoresby,
Archbishop of York, in the year 1357. But those assigned in other
cases strike us as being open to considerable question--_e.g._, the
only one alleged for the rejection of the 'Early English Sermons' is,
that '_no one except Dr. Vaughan ever ascribed them_ to Wyclif, and
_the partial examination_ I was able to make of them at Cambridge last
year convinced me they were the production of a traveller in the
well-known track of homiletics, who possessed no spark of the erratic
and daring spirit of our author.' Dr. Vaughan was not the man to
rashly commit himself on such a subject, and it is quite possible that
his opinion was based on something more than 'a partial examination'
of the MS. In other cases Mr. Arnold has endorsed his opinions, though
without any reference to him; a more thorough 'examination' might,
therefore, have led him to a similar agreement with Dr. Vaughan in
this. But Mr. Arnold's omission of some of the other writings included
in Dr. Shirley's Catalogue on the ground of their authenticity 'being
more doubtful than that of others selected,' is even more summary than
his dismissal of the judgment of Dr. Vaughan on the subject of the
'Sermons.' The reason he assigns is, that after carefully reading them
through, he 'considered that whether from the absence of a tone of
authority, or from the contractedness and poverty of the style, or
from peculiarities of diction, or from the _multiplied indications of
a period of active persecution_, it was more probable that they
proceeded from some Lollard pen, writing _from ten to thirty years_
after the Reformer's death.' And this appears in the preface to vol.
iii., after his Confession in the preface to vol. i. 'Relying on the
_consensus_ of all the ordinary English historians, including Lingard.
I came to the study of the questions affecting the authenticity of
writings ascribed to Wyclif with the preconceived belief that the
attempts of the English State and hierarchy to coerce heretical or
erroneous opinions had not, previously to the enactment of the famous
statute commonly called "De Hæretico comburendo," in 1401, proceeded
to the length of inflicting capital punishment, either on the gibbet
or at the stake. The common impression certainly is--and it was shared
by myself--that no one suffered death in England for his religious
opinions, by direct infliction at the hands of the magistrate, before
William Sawtre, the first victim to the statute above-mentioned....
Being led to examine narrowly the grounds of the supposition
above-mentioned, I came upon certain facts which tended to throw doubt
... on (it). Mr. Bond, keeper of the MSS. at the British Museum, was
good enough to point out to me a passage in the Chronicles of Meaux
... which is much to the purpose.... Abbot Burton says (vol. ii. 323)
that the Franciscans or a section of them, opposed certain
constitutions of John XXIII., who therefore caused many of them to be
condemned to be burnt, some in France in 1318, others at various
places in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany in 1330; and that among
the severities practised on this last occasion, "in Anglia, in quâdam
sîlva, combusti sunt viri quinquaginta-quinque, et mulieres octo,
ejusdem sectæ et erroris." This is indefinite, certainly, but there
seems no possibility of questioning its substantial truth; and if it
be true, then men and women were burnt in England for heresy before
1401!' We have no means of judging of the 'multiplied indications of a
period of active persecution' in the writings which are ascribed for
that reason to 'from ten to thirty years after the Reformer's death,'
but they can hardly be more decided or more numerous than similar
indications, even in the 'Sermons,' contained in the first and second
of these volumes, the 'authenticity of which, taken as a whole,' Mr.
Arnold tells us, 'cannot reasonably be questioned.' The following are
examples: 'Antecrist denyeth not to alegge Goddis lawe for his power;
but he seith that, if men denyen it, thei shal be cursid, _slayn_ and
_brent_' (vol. i. 111). 'Crist diffineth thus, that who so is wroth to
his brother is worthi of judgment to be dampnyd in helle: and who so
with his ire speketh wordis of scorne, he is worthi to be dampned in
counsaile of the Trinitie. And who so with his wrathe spekith folily
wordis of sclaundre, he is worthi to be punishid with the fire of
helle. Myche more yf _preestis now_ withouten cause of bileve _sleen
many thousand_ men, thei been worthi to be dampnyd' (vol. i. 117).
'They procuren the people, bothe more and lesse, to kille Cristis
disciplis for hope of great mede' (vol. i. 153); an evident allusion
to the Act surreptitiously foisted into the Statute Book by the
prelates in 1382, like the following, 'And herfore make them statutis
stable as a stoon; and thei geten graunt of knyghtis to confirmen hem.
O Crist ... wel y wote that _knyghtis tooken gold in his case_, to
help that thi lawe be hid' (vol. i. 129). 'And this word (Luke vi. 23)
comfortith symple men, that ben clepid eretikes and enemys to the
Chirch, for thei tellen Goddis lawe: for thei ben somynned and
reprovyd _many weies and after put in prison, and brend or kild as
worse than theves_' (vol. i. 205). 'Seculer men for _muck ben_ to these
prelatis ... and these betraien Cristene men to _turment_, and
_putten hem to death_ for holdinge of Cristis lawe.'
Had Mr. Arnold consulted Burton for himself, he would have found
another passage: 'Hiis diebus (1201) idem papa Innocentius tertius,
Philippo regi Franciæ misit ut terram Albigensium converteret et
hæreticos deleret. Qui plures capiens cremari fecit; quorum _aliqui in
Angliam venientes vivi comburebantur_' ('Chronicc. Mon. de Meesa,' ed.
Bond. i. 333). And if he had pursued the subject further, he would
have found the abbot's testimony confirmed by that of Thomas of
Walden, of whom he speaks, vol. iii. 9, who says: 'Tempore Joannis
Anglorum regis veniunt in Angliam Albigenses hæretici, quorum _multi
capti vivi_ combusti sunt' ('Doctr.' i., 2d ed., 1532); and also by
Knyghton, who, speaking of the same reign, tells us: 'Albigenses
hæretici venerunt in Angliam, quorum aliqui comburebantur vivi' (ap.
Twysden, x. Script. 2418): that according to the 'Liber de Antiquis
Legibus,' there was an Albigense burnt in London in 1210 (ap. Hook,
'Lives of Abps. of Cant.,' i. 153): and that Ralph of Coggeshall tells
us of two persons that were burnt for heresy at Oxford in 1222
('Chron. Angll.' 268). He would also have discovered that, so far from
being 'the first victim to the Statute de Hæretico comburendo,' Sawtre
did not suffer under that Act at all. The warrant for his execution
had been signed and his execution had taken place before the Act was
passed. ('Rott. Parl.' iii. 459. Fascicc. lix.) Such lawyers as
Britton, Bracton, Fitzherbert, and Chief Justice Hale maintain that
heresy had previously been punished with death under the common law of
the realm. (Hale, 'Pleas of the Crown,' i. 383.)
But although for these and other reasons we cannot estimate the
critical value of these 'Select works' at all highly, we welcome their
appearance with great thankfulness as a very important addition to the
materials already supplied, especially by Dr. Vaughan, Dr. Shirley,
and Dr. Lechler, for the study of the times and works of the Reformer.
They add but little to our knowledge of his opinions or of those of
his followers, but they throw great light on his unwearied industry
and the heroic zeal in the cause which he espoused; and particularly
the 'Sermons,' which were evidently intended to be used by his 'poore
preestis' in preaching to the people, on the means by which he
acquired so paramount an influence with his countrymen generally. They
will not, by any means, supersede Dr. Vaughan's carefully prepared
'Tracts and treatises' (Wycl. Soc., 1845), but rather add to their
value. We shall yet hope that the delegates of the University Press
will issue, if not all, at least the more important of the English
writings of the Reformer which are still unpublished; and, if that
were followed by another or two of his Latin theological treatises,
under the editorship of some such competent scholar as Dr. Lechler, to
whom we are indebted for admirable editions of the 'De Officio
Pastorali' (Lips., 1863) and the 'Trialogus,' recently issued from the
Clarendon Press, they would do the ecclesiastical student a most noble
service.
_The Martyrs and Apologists._ By E. DE PRESSENSÉ, D.D. Translated by
ANNIE HARWOOD. Hodder and Stoughton.
This second volume of Dr. Pressensé's great work on the early years of
Christianity, like its predecessor, has been specially prepared by its
author for this English edition. Although not, perhaps, of such
familiar and pregnant interest as the first volume, which contained
the history of the first Christian century, it is yet hardly possible
to exaggerate the importance of the sub-apostolic age, its
crystallizing life and formulating dogmas, its incipient errors and
manifold oppositions; and we need not say that M. de Pressensé brings
to the delineation of these the rich eloquence, epigrammatic
characterization, keen spiritual insight, and ample learning which
have given him perhaps the very foremost place as a Church historian
and apologist among his contemporaries in France. Especially must we
note the scientific skill of his arrangement, and his artistic sense
of proportion--an essential feature, without which a general history
becomes a mere encyclopædia. The volume abounds in finished portraits
and descriptions. While, however, M. de Pressensé holds firmly by the
great principles of the Christian revelation, as they are held by
orthodox theologians, he is yet so essentially independent in his
judgments, and sympathetic in his charities, that he is utterly
removed from either narrowness or dogmatism. He thus combines
orthodoxy with liberality, as he does scientific exactness with
popular representation, in a way which makes his work for general uses
as valuable in England as it is in France. It takes a place of its
own, with a power, completeness, and eloquence not likely soon to be
surpassed. It is affecting to think how in the midst of the sad
tragedies of Paris during the past nine months the author has been
engaged, while the translator and printer have been doing their work.
The present volume is divided into three sections. The first treats of
the missions and persecutions of the Church; the second of its most
illustrious representatives, the Fathers of the second and third
centuries; and the third of its controversial conflicts, presenting a
complete outline of the Apology of the Early Church. We can only touch
one or two points, premising that M. de Pressensé's wonderful touch
quickens into life and beauty things that _dilettanti_ readers are
accustomed to turn from as dry and barren. M. de Pressensé first
describes in a few masterly paragraphs the conditions, and, that we
may the more vividly apprehend the magnitude of the Church's
conquests, he summarizes the elements of conflict; on the one side,
the simple, unaided spirituality of the Church, her poverty, lack of
prestige, prejudice, and simplicity; on the other, the moral
corruption, the intellectual as well as physical sensuousness, the
religious fanaticism, the philosophic materialism and infidelity of
heathenism. We had marked for quotation more than one eloquent
paragraph, but must forbear. M. de Pressensé maintains the continuance
and only gradual cessation of miraculous powers in the Church. Equally
beautiful and masterly is his picture of Christian life during
persecution, carefully gathered in its details from patristic
writings. Of the persecutions themselves he gives a discriminating
account, especially of the severest and most anomalous of all, the
persecution under Marcus Aurelius. Alexander Severus relaxed the
severity of Imperial infliction, and on one occasion even exceeded
some of our modern Churchmen; for, when some Roman tavern-keepers
memorialized him for the closing of a place of Christian worship, he
refused, saying that 'It was better that a god should be worshipped in
that house, be he who he might, than that it should fall into the
hands of tavern-keepers.' He also so much admired the principles of
Christian Church government that he sought to introduce some of them
into the administration of the empire. In this portion of his work M.
de Pressensé gives us admirable epitomes of the principal Christian
apologies. Concerning his portraits of the Fathers of the Church,
beginning with the Apostolic Fathers, then arranging in two classes
the Fathers of the Eastern and of the Western Churches, we can say
only they are most admirable. Some are medallions, some are
full-length figures; they all constitute a gallery of great richness
and brilliancy. M. de Pressensé is never greater than when
portrait-painting. We can only commend this very instructive,
eloquent, and fascinating book to all who care to know how the forms
of Christian life, which fill eighteen centuries, had their origin;
once taken up, they will find it difficult to lay it down. It is only
just to say that, aided in matters of scholarship by learned friends,
Miss Harwood has achieved the translation with great care and ability:
while converting idiomatic French into idiomatic English, she has
admirably preserved the vivacity and antithesis of M. de Pressensé's
style.
_The Ten Commandments._ By R. W. DALE, M.A. Hodder and Stoughton.
The ten 'Words' of Sinai, both as an injunction of mere authority, and
as a mere prohibition of evil, are a very inferior rule of Christian
life. They are adapted to the nonage of men, and they relate, in part,
to vices from which all men of ordinary Christian morality are far
removed; they are, in fact, an authoritative legislation for men who
have not yet risen to the intelligent recognition of the great
principles of right and wrong, and who know nothing of the love of God
and of holiness--which, by making a man a law to himself, makes
statutory legislation in the domain of religion and virtue
superfluous. The humiliating thing is, that after eighteen centuries
of the 'Sermon on the Mount,' and of the principles and constraints of
the Gospel of Christ, any teaching from the 'Ten Commandments' should
be either requisite or possible. But so it is. There are multitudes of
men and women upon whom sheer authority alone will tell, who love to
be dealt with as we deal with children; but even with these, among
ourselves, Mr. Dale has to exercise his ingenuity in finding practical
applications for the first two of the commandments, which relate to
idolatry. With the rest he has no difficulty--they furnish him with
texts for the inculcation of much practical and urgent moral teaching,
often entering, as in the fifth and ninth commandments, into domains
of life and relationship that are not often touched by preachers. We
especially commend Mr. Dale's wise and beautiful treatment of the
fifth commandment; his remarks on family relationships and duties are
very felicitous and timely. We cannot agree with Mr. Dale's conclusion
that the Sabbath originated with the Leviticus. Some of his arguments
in support of it, as, for instance, that the gathering of manna was
interdicted on the seventh day before the delivery of the decalogue,
to prepare the people for the new Sabbath-keeping, are singularly
weak, especially in an acute reasoner like Mr. Dale; while all the
presumptions are, we think, against him. We think, too, that the
Divine authority for the Lord's Day is stronger than he represents it
to be. These, however, are but exceptions to the strong approval and
admiration that the volume has constrained. The simple, nervous, lucid
style, the clear discrimination, the pointed, practical faithfulness,
and especially the manly, fearless honesty of Mr. Dale's expositions,
demand the very highest eulogy. It is a vigorous, useful, and honest
book.
_Fundamentals or Bases of Belief concerning Man, God, and the
Correlation of God and Man._ By THOMAS GRIFFITH, M.A., Prebendary of
St. Paul's. Longmans.
This extremely interesting book is justly entitled a 'Handbook of
Mental, Moral, and Religious Philosophy;' and the author, while fully
alive to the latent expression of physiological metaphysics, takes a
firm stand on the datum of consciousness, and establishes the
substantial, moral, religious, progressive, and permanent qualities of
the human being, as well as the intelligence and personality of God.
The author then proceeds to those facts of history which show that God
is carrying on a development for the human race, by awakening men to
their need of himself, by sending gifted spirits to respond to this
need, by originating the sacred family, nation, and brotherhood, by
dwelling in the midst of this brotherhood, by assimilating its members
to His own image, and perfecting them in His final kingdom. The volume
is full of quotations from the masters of human thought, and is
pervaded by a very high tone of speculation. Distinctive doctrines of
the Gospel are scarcely touched upon, but they are not ignored. The
author makes good his profession that in spite of 'the dust rained by
the conflict of opinion in this unsettled age, there are foundation
truths upon which to plant the tottering feet.'
_Seven Homilies on Ethnic Inspiration; or, on the Evidences supplied
by the Pagan Religions of both primæval and later Guidance and
Inspiration from Heaven._ By the Rev. JOSEPH TAYLOR GOODSIR, F.R.S.E.
Part First of an Apologetic Series and a sketch of an Evangelical
Preparation. Williams and Norgate. 1871.
There is a wonderful flourish of trumpets about this volume. One might
almost suppose that Mr. Goodsir was the first man who from a purely
Christian and Biblical standpoint recognised a divine order in the
evolution of the human race--a divine and supernatural guidance
afforded to the nations of the world beyond the limits of the Hebrew
people and the Christian Church. It is remarkable that in spite of his
considerable learning he makes no reference to such popular treatises
as Archbishop Trench's 'Hulsean Lectures,' or Archdeacon Hardwick's
work entitled 'Christ and Other Masters,' or the abundant labours of
Döllinger, De Pressensé, Creuzer, and others in the same region. He
does not appear in the whole discussion to look into the metaphysical
ground of the facts to which he alludes, nor attempt to generalize the
law of divine illuminations, nor even to show that the extraordinary
light possessed by the 'ethnics,' by great sages, by distinguished
races of the old world, is any vindication in itself, of the Father's
heart. We believe that Mr. Goodsir has something to say well worth
hearing, and while he is aiming to redeem what he calls catholic
history from 'rationalizing mythologers like Professor Max Müller, and
rationalizing theologians like the Rev. Baring-Gould,' it is rather
curious that he should have so little to say in reply to the theories
of Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Tylor, Mr. Darwin, Mr. M'Lellan, and others,
whose principles and facts, if they have any truth in them, destroy
much of his position. We believe it is a rejoinder to the theory of
evolution, and of the utterly savage origin--to say the least--of all
our civilization to go back steadily on the traces of the
'intellectual antiquity of man,' and to follow the line of human
elevation along the course of certain sublime traditions. There is,
however, something mortifying in the extraordinary dependence Mr.
Goodsir places on the divine origin of the Great Pyramid. Adopting all
Professor Piazzi Smyth's most dubious speculations as to the
astronomical significance of the Great Pyramid, he comes to the
conclusion that the subtle measurements and recondite facts of modern
astronomy, must have been revealed to the builders of the Pyramid, and
that the Pyramid was not only a protest against astrology, but is
frequently referred to in Holy Scripture! The proof of this is flimsy
in the extreme. Mr. Goodsir accepts Mr. Osburn's theory of the early
history and mythology of Egypt, and Mr. Galloway's elaborate and
inconclusive arguments on the chronology of Egyptian dynasties. It is
extraordinary that he does not refer to the Vedic faith, nor make any
mention of Buddhism. There is much in the sixth and seventh homilies
worthy of careful consideration. The philosophy of the heathen
oracles, the significance of dreams, and the ethnic doctrine of Divine
Providence and judgment, deserve our hearty recognition; but the
ethnological authorities to whom he appeals for his facts are
generally of the highest speculative class, the class that may be
called crotchety.
_The Problem of Evil. Seven Lectures._ By ERNEST NAVILLE. Translated
from the French, by EDWARD W. SHALDERS. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
We called attention to M. Naville's very able and popular lectures
when they appeared in the original (_British Quarterly Review_, vol.
1. p. 286); we need therefore only announce this translation by Mr.
Shalders, which is done with an intelligence and a precision which
places the English reader almost upon a par with readers of the French
original. The book is a very valuable and honest apologetic, and we
shall be glad to know that English readers are induced by Mr.
Shalders' translation to make themselves acquainted with it.
_The Hidden Life of the Soul._ From the French. By the Author of 'The
Life of Madame Louise de France,' &c., &c. Rivingtons.
This volume consists of certain brief meditations of Père Jean
Nicholas Grou on some of the deepest realities of the spiritual life.
This saintly man, born in 1731, and educated by the Jesuit fathers,
lived through stormy and eventful days an uneventful life that was
hidden with Christ in God. His fellowship was with the Father and the
Son, and his spirit seemed above the need of any other companionship.
There is more of the spirit of à Kempis than of Aquinas in him, and a
clear, stainless, childlike sweetness pervades all his utterances.
With exceedingly few exceptions, there is nothing in these meditations
which would determine the ecclesiastical position of the writer. They
have to do with truth and reality, with eternal beauty and purity,
with the redemption in Christ Jesus, with the mysterious joys of the
interior life. 'Assuredly (says he) God would not have a soul which
clings to Him, scared at the thought of the last narrow passage to be
crossed in reaching Him. But no set words or thoughts will enable us
to meet death trustfully. Such trust is God's gift, and the more we
detach ourselves from all save Himself, the more freely He will give
us' this, 'as all other blessings. Once attain to losing self in God,
and death will indeed have no sting.' 'God calls such rather to a
perpetual death to self, in will, in thought, in deed; so that when
the actual moment of material death arrives, it is but the final
passage to eternal joy for them.' How near the saints of God approach
each other! What gathering together is there unto HIM!
_Breviates, or Short Texts and their Teachings._ By the Rev. P. B.
POWER, M.A. Hamilton, Adams, and Co.
The author of this volume has long been known as the writer of many
admirable, sententious, readable tracts, through which he has
exercised a wide and beneficial influence. The same happy
characteristics of sharp phrase, proverbial sentence, apt
illustration, original turns of thought, and earnest piety which mark
his tracts, are to be found in these short sermons. There is here more
sturdy thinking, taking indeed quaint, pleasant forms of expression,
than is contained in many a more pretentious work. We feel inclined to
compare it with Beecher's 'Familiar Talks,' different though it is in
its style, it has the same forceful, wise, and broad tone in dealing
with many special aspects of spiritual life. If sermons are to be
reduced to a ten minutes' limit, then we could wish them to be not
unlike these.
_One Thousand Gems from the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher._ Edited and
compiled by the Rev. G. D. EVANS. Hodder and Stoughton.
Perhaps no preacher of modern times has said so many wise and good
things as Henry Ward Beecher, or said them so well. His sermons abound
with passages of racy description, of penetrating exposition, of
rhetorical brilliancy, and of fervid, practical urgency. Mr. Beecher's
habits of preparation make this very remarkable. Most orators prepare
their best passages, and are careless about their frame-work. Mr.
Beecher does the reverse: he prepares his frame-work, and trusts to
the inspirations of his regal creative imagination to conceive and
shape his most brilliant things. Mr. Evans has culled out of the
reported sermons of this great preacher a thousand 'Gems.' They are
full of wisdom, depth, and beauty. A more precious and suggestive
table book--a book to take up in the morning, for a fresh, dewy
germinant thought to lay upon the heart, and to expand into the
religious wisdom of the day--it would be difficult to name.
_The Peace-maker; or the Religion of Jesus Christ in His own Words._
Dedicated to all His Disciples. By the Rev. ROBERT AINSLIE, of
Brighton. Longmans, Green, and Co.
We like the idea of Mr. Ainslie's little book better than we do the
preface in which he expounds it. The latter seems to undervalue those
parts of the New Testament which are not the _ipsissima verba_ of
Jesus Christ, and apparently casts a reproach at the grand science of
inductive theology. Surely there is room for the most varied approach
to the revelation of God. History of dogma is not to be despised if we
wish in true brotherhood to understand the thoughts of past ages. We
agree heartily with Mr. Ainslie in his unwillingness to allow to any
doctrinal standards whatever the place due to the words of Jesus. All
dogmatists, however, and Mr. Ainslie cannot be shut out from their
number, have a trick of believing that the words of Jesus are best
explained and enforced in their own system. We think that the
translation and arrangement are for the most part excellent. Mark's
Gospel is made the central line for the arrangement, and this always
seems to us the most satisfactory principle. Mr. Ainslie translates
from Tischendorff's eighth critical edition. We are rather surprised
to find some omissions, such as the words of our Lord addressed to
Paul and John, and a few others from Mark and Lake's Gospel. We think
that at times he becomes an interpreter as well as translator; _e.g._,
he translates δῶρον in Matthew x. 5, as 'offering to God,' and ἐν τοῖς
τοῦ πατρός μου, in Luke ii. 49, as 'in the house of My Father.' We
doubt whether Τελώνης is accurately or satisfactorily translated
'tax-_gatherer_,' nor do we see why, if ἄρχων is translated magistrate,
the Greek terms for moneys should have been retained. However, these
are minor blemishes. There is very great care and wisdom shown in the
translation as a whole, which does not aim at preserving the tone of
the authorized version, but at putting into nervous, modern English
the words of 'the Peace-maker.'
_Christ in the Pentateuch; or, Things Old and New concerning Jesus._
By HENRY H. BOURN. S. W. Partridge and Co.
This volume is the result of much careful and devout study, not only
of Holy Scripture, but of some of the best and most thoughtful
interpreters of the Pentateuch. The literature bearing on the typology
of Scripture is very extensive and unequal in value, and Mr. Bourn has
added to the long list a treatise, the aim of which is greatly to
enlarge the doctrinal significance of the ritual and sacrificial
worship of the Hebrews. The author sets aside Dr. Alexander's prudent
canon on the determination of the typical character of the Old
Testament history by the express teaching of Scripture as highly
unsatisfactory, and proceeds to find the most recondite evangelical
truth in minute circumstances and details of the old worship.
Analogies may be found between the tabernacle in the wilderness, and
the tabernacle of our Lord's humanity, but when the shittim-wood, the
gold, the silver, and the brass, have all to do special duty in
working out the analogy, when 'the _blue_ covering is made the
manifestation of God's love in the ways and death of Christ,' the
'_purple_ as the manifestation of the God-man,' the '_scarlet_ as the
manifestation of the true dignity and glory of man as seen in the Son
of Man,' the '_goat's-hair curtain_ as a memorial of the death of the
Lord Jesus Christ as an offering for sin,' and 'the rams' skins dyed
red, the outward aspect of Christ as born into this world to die, and
'the badgers' skins as the outward aspect of Christ as having neither
form nor comeliness to the natural heart,' we feel that Mr. Bourn has
gone beyond his depth, and endangers the significance of the analogy
altogether. This allegorical interpretation of Scripture runs the risk
of transforming the holy Word of God into a collection of pretty
riddles, and makes the whim, audacity, or it may be, good taste of the
interpreter, the revelation of God to mankind. It would be just as
wise, just as reverent, and perhaps more to the purpose, to see in the
seven coverings of the ark, the last seven days of our Lord's life, or
any other seven things mentioned in the Old or New Testament. We much
prefer Dr. Fairbairn's interpretation of the Cherubim to that of our
author. The sentiment that pervades the volume is admirable, but we
have very little confidence in the method of interpretation adopted by
Mr. Bourn, and the school to which he belongs.
_Keshub Chunder Sen's English Visit._ Edited by SOPHIA DOBSON COLLET.
Strahan and Co. 1871.
This is a volume of more than six hundred pages, filled with the
reports of the various public meetings which Mr. Sen attended during
his English visit, and the sermons and addresses delivered by him on
numerous occasions. We have frequently referred to the work of the
Baboo Sen, to what is noble and grand in it, and also to the striking
method in which he holds himself aloof from purely Christian thought
and enterprise. We merely remark now on the significant welcome he
received from all the leading Christian societies in England, the fine
and appreciative sympathy he won from the representatives of almost
every phase of religious thought in England. This did not prevent his
very frequent allusion to the sectarianism of our Christianity. He has
gone back to India confirmed in his bare Theism, and in the mystic
theology which has been his consolation. The mode in which he
patronizes the Bible, the Christ, and the Church of God and
Christianity, may be perfectly explicable from his education and his
standpoint, but it hardly shows that deference for the religious
consciousness of the West which he is so anxious that we should accord
to Indian religion. This patronage, often supercilious, if tendered by
one who had resiled from Christianity, instead of one who, from a
Heathen-Theist standpoint, was drawing near to the Kingdom of God,
would be mischievous and offensive. We notice that the address
presented to him by the clergy of all denominations at Nottingham is
given at length as well as his outspoken reply. The speech he made
before the Congregational Union is also included, and his sermon on
'The Prodigal Son.' We believe his mission may prove a harbinger of
light and hope for his country,--it corresponds with the attitude
assumed by philosophic reformers beyond the pale of the Church at many
crises in the history of Western Christianity.
_The Hebrew Prophets._ Translated afresh from the original, with
regard to the Anglican Version, and with illustrations for English
readers. By the late ROWLAND WILLIAMS, D.D., Vicar of Broadchalke.
Vol. II. Williams and Norgate. 1871.
This volume completes, we suppose, the publication which Dr. Williams
projected before his lamented decease. It includes the prophets
Habakkuk, Zechariah, and Jeremiah, a version of Ezekiel, and a
fragment from his translation of Isaiah lii.-liii. To the translations
of the three prophets first mentioned are prefixed introductory
dissertations, which are not, however, to be regarded as general
introductions to these prophetical Scriptures. The first is occupied
with a vigorous attempt to bring into the language of modern thought
the famous verse of Habakkuk, or rather, the thought of the Hebrew
prophet about the relations of _life_ and _faith_, as these were
subsequently conceived by the apostles of Christ, and expounded in
theological systems. We could hardly discuss the question without
occupying a space equal to that of the author. There is much hardness
coupled with his great learning; there is roughness of translation,
and lack of susceptibility to the deeper beauties of the prophetic
Scripture, which take away our highest satisfaction with these
versions; while a curious admixture of extreme rationalism with
mediæval sympathies is very noticeable. Thus, after repudiating all
the directly Messianic or predictive qualities of Jeremiah's
prophecies, he says (p. 69), 'The collapse, first of popular
predictions, and at last of those which seem well grounded, until they
are brought into contact with tests of priority or meaning, teaches us
the depth of Gibbon's sarcasm, that "with all the resources of miracle
at their disposal, the fathers of the Church betray an unaccountable
preference for the argument from prophecy." The sting of the remark
depends on the supposition that religious faith must have a ground
external to its own sphere. It disappears when we recollect that Deity
is revealed to us by moral attributes more evidently than by power or
wonder.' Surely the sting of the remark is that the great authority of
Gibbon should thus insinuate that there was no miraculous evidence
worth quoting. Is not the 'supposition' based after all on deepest
truth? Can we lose the 'sting' by being ready to inflict it upon
ourselves, by endorsing Gibbon's sneer, and making it one element of
our faith? Dr. Williams follows up these remarks by many others, which
reveal his rationalistic sympathies. Thus he speaks of 'the
aggregation of later writers under the name of Isaiah,' and says 'what
Jeremiah was for Israel (in the way of meriting Divine favour), Christ
is for mankind.' It is very amazing, after remarks of this kind, to
find that his commentary on Jeremiah i. 5--'_Before I formed thee in
the belly, I knew thee_,' &c.--is as follows: 'The eternal law that
fitness is the gift of God, though human officers or assemblies may
consign to it a sphere, appears in Jeremiah's sense of consecration
from his birth. Hence the rightful indelibility of holy orders when
deliberately accepted.' Dr. Williams's arrangement of the order of
Jeremiah's prophecies is very thoughtful, and his moral sympathies are
throughout very lofty and pure.
_The Holy Bible, according to the Authorised Version_ (1611); _with an
Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of the
Translation, by Bishops and Clergy of the Anglican Church_. Edited by
F. C. COOK, M.A., Canon of Exeter. Vol. I. Part I. Genesis and Exodus.
Part II., Leviticus--Deuteronomy. John Murray. 1871.
This is the first instalment of a work for which scholars have waited
with considerable curiosity, and 'the ordinary reader of the English
Bible' with some impatience. The publication of 'Essays and Reviews,'
and the critical examination of the 'Pentateuch' and the 'Book of
Joshua' by a certain Anglican Bishop, who is, for the most part,
referred to in these pages as 'a living writer,' or a 'modern critic,'
and the appearance of works or translations which many acquainted with
the arguments, theories, and historical reconstructions of German
philologers and critics, created about seven years ago considerable
anxiety. It was a wise thing to combine such forces as Mr. Cook has
been able to marshal, to offer the results of modern criticism to the
intelligent readers of the Bible in a form in which Christian scholars
have received them, to reply to some objections, to vindicate some of
the impugned authorities, to take the Bible book by book, and show
what, in the estimation of Biblical students, it is reasonable to
believe with reference to its authorship, integrity, and
trustworthiness; and then to take it, chapter by chapter, and verse by
verse, and resolve to shirk no difficulties, to meet honest scepticism
by careful criticism, and dishonest conjecture by calm repudiation. It
is too soon to speak of this work as a whole, or as finally
accomplished. When the 'Speaker's Commentary' is further advanced, we
shall venture on a lengthened examination of its merits. We are not
precluded, however, from saying how the beginning strikes us. Bishop
Harold Browne and Canon Cook, the Rev. Samuel Clark and the Rev. J. E.
Espin, are the authors of the commentaries now before us. They appear
to us to have done their difficult work with singular tact, fine
spirit, and considerable learning, and to have produced a series of
exegetical and explanatory comments far in advance of anything in the
hands of the English reader. They have aimed at condensation, at
explanations of difficulty, at exposition of beauty, harmony, and
truth. The pages are not burdened with moral reflections or spiritual
homilies. Notes of considerable expansion amounting at times to the
importance of essays, on points of special interest, are introduced
between the chapters. Improved translations are given in the notes in
such a type as to strike the eye. The only deficiency of which we are
disposed to complain is the limited choice of marginal references, and
the almost entire absence of maps. The latter may be supplied in later
volumes or subsequent editions. Few things are more needed by the
average reader of the Bible than well-executed maps, conveying the
most recent information, not only as to the identification of sites,
but the configuration of the country. This noble work will be
incomplete unless it include within itself a trustworthy Biblical
atlas. It may be true that the introductions and comments on the
several books of the Pentateuch are executed with different ability;
that the reading of Mr. Espin is more extensive in this particular
line than that of the Bishop of Ely. We concede that the latter has
not expounded all the theories, or even the latest of the
speculations, which aim at the solution of the problem of the
composition of Genesis. He has mainly confined himself to the
literature which has been produced in reply to the fragmentists, and
has presented the arguments of Mr. Quarry rather than any fresh
exposition from his own standpoint. He does, however, steer quite
clear from Mr. Quarry's authority in his interpretation of the Book of
Genesis, and accumulates a mass of presumptive evidence for the
traditional belief, which no fresh evolution or re-arrangement of
Elohists or Jehovists and Redactors can overturn. Bishop Browne and
all his collaborators admit that the author of the Pentateuch may have
gone over his work with the new light of the full revelation of the
name of Jehovah; that subsequent revisions, and added notes, and
quotations from other documents may have been reverently intertwined
with the original text; and when they appear in the course of
exposition, they are pointed out. This leaves a far truer estimate of
their number and insignificance than a laboured discussion of them in
rotation. The special discussions in the comments on Genesis are of
varied value. The Cherubim, the Deluge, the Chronology of Jacob's
Life, and the Shiloh, are useful. We think it would have been well to
have given some specimens of the Hindu and Persic analogues to the
story of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge. Considering the
immense interest excited by the recent study of the Zendavesta, and
the light thrown on the 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' it would have been
desirable to refer to it.
Mr. Cook has had an immense field to traverse in his introduction to
'Exodus,' and his comment thereupon. He has disposed of many of the
difficulties raised by Colenso, and ignored others. He takes the
naturalistic interpretation of the passage of the Red Sea, but does
not adopt the theory of Ewald as to the multiplication of seventy
persons into a vast migratory nation. The Essays on Egyptian history
and Egyptian words in the Pentateuch, though beyond the faculty of
those who are entirely unacquainted with Hebrew, are well adapted to
build up the cumulative argument that these books must have been
written in the main by one who was learned in all the wisdom of
Egyptians, familiar with its manners, laws, language, and people. Mr.
Clark's dissertations on the sacrifices of the Levitical law are most
instructive and thoughtful; his notes on the clean and unclean beasts,
&c., on leprosy, on the various offerings, are worthy of close
attention; and Mr. Espin's introduction to Deuteronomy appears to us
to be a triumphant refutation of the theories of Colenso and Kuenen.
We have not space to enter at the present time into details, but we
are satisfied that if the learned and candid scholars who have, for
the most part, undertaken this work, complete it with corresponding
ability, there will be a practically useful commentary on Holy
Scripture, as great in advance of all previous works of the kind, as
the Dictionaries of the Bible by Kitto and Smith transcended all
cyclopædias of Biblical literature accessible before their time.
_Commentary on the Boole of Isaiah, Critical, Historical, and
Prophetical; including a Revised English Translation, with
Introduction and Appendices._ By the Rev. T. R. BIRKS, Vicar of Holy
Trinity, Cambridge. Rivingtons. 1871.
This work derives some special interest, from the circumstance that it
was originally intended for the so-called 'Speaker's Commentary.'
Circumstances, not very fully explained, led to a separate and
independent publication. We have thus the prospect of two works on
this great theme instead of one, and obtain a treatment of the whole
complicated question from different standpoints. Mr. Birks devotes
great space, in an appendix, to the question of the integrity of the
prophecies of Isaiah, and has, with extreme ability, gathered up the
arguments in favour of the Isaian authorship of the last twenty-six
chapters, answering objections with admirable vivacity and pith, and
doing much to establish the genuineness of this most sublime portion
of Hebrew prophecy. We fear that Mr. Birks overstates what he calls
the 'external evidence,' for the Isaian authorship of this portion. It
does not amount to more than this, that the book was treated as a
whole, and that the later prophecies were referred to by the Son of
Sirach, by the Baptist, by the Evangelist Matthew, and by our Lord, as
those of the prophet Esaias. The theory of the modern critics is made
to involve what Mr. Birks calls the 'spuriousness' of the prophecies,
and even the character and inspiration of our Lord. It does not appear
to us that the theory involves the _spuriousness_ of this portion of
Scripture any more than a critical examination of 'the Psalms of
David' involves their spuriousness, even though it should refer half
of them to later authors and a subsequent period. The arguments of Mr.
Birks for their true origin are very difficult for the advocates of
the modern theory to refute. He lays stress on the fact that the
prophets of the later portion of the captivity and of 'the return' are
known, and that they bear not the slightest resemblance to the
mysterious unknown author of this most precious portion of the Old
Testament. He must therefore have deviated from all his great
confraternity, in concealing his name, his date, and the circumstances
or great men of his times. He is silent about any prophetic call, and
preserves an inexplicable reticence about the names of all the great
men and notorious events in contemporary history.
Mr. Birks has elaborated an interesting argument, to show that the
structure of the whole book demands unity of authorship; that through
the second part there are references more or less distinct to the
earlier oracles; that the repeated claim to foretell future events
connected with the return from captivity would have constituted his
prophecies impudent forgeries, supposing them to have been written in
the days of Cyrus. We cannot go over a tithe of the arguments alleged
by Mr. Birks, but call special attention to the list of 'words and
phrases which the later prophecies have in common with the earlier,
but which are not found in the writings of the prophets of the close
of the exile, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and Daniel.'
Another interesting appendix on the chronology of the Assyrian kings
differs from the opinion of the Rawlinsons and others on the matters
supplied by the Assyrian monuments. The author shows that it is
exceedingly probable that the SARGON of Isaiah and of the monuments is
identical with the SHALMANEZER of the Books of Kings, and he thus
brings the records of the prophet into harmony with the Assyrian and
Hebrew authorities.
We have no space to say in conclusion, more than that we highly value
Mr. Birks's translation of the prophecies, and the devout and
spiritual tone which pervades all his commentaries. His learning and
insight are unquestionably of a high order, and he has devoted them to
a maintenance of the integrity, the predictive character, and the
Messianic import of the visions of the great 'Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.'
_The Book of Psalms._ A new translation with Introduction and Notes
Explanatory and Critical. By J. J. STEWART PEROWNE, B.D. Vol. II. Bell
and Daldy.
We are glad to receive the completed version of Mr. Perowne's really
great and able work. No book of Scripture so thoroughly tests a
critic, not only in the lower departments of philology and theology,
but in the higher department of spiritual discernment, as the 'Book of
Psalms.' Mr. Perowne's scholarship is of a high character; his robust
common sense is equal to it, and his poetic and religious feeling are
superior to both. Introductions, translations, and comments are alike
excellent. It is not to be expected that Mr. Perowne will always carry
with him the convictions of his critical readers, but he will commend
himself very generally. The peculiar gratification that we have felt
in the use of his book is, that the higher devotional feeling of the
Psalms is neither vulgarized nor comminuted by their critic. He helps
us to meanings in a scholarly, reverent, and sympathetic spirit. We
repeat our conviction that Mr. Perowne's book is by far the best
commentary on the Psalms that English theology possesses.
_The Psalms Translated from the Hebrew. With Notes, chiefly
Exegetical._ By W. KAY, D.D. London: Rivingtons. 1871.
Notwithstanding the endless translations of this ancient hymnal, no
one who has carefully examined the subject will think that the result
is so satisfactory as to render a further attempt unnecessary and
superfluous. So much, however, has been accomplished as to justify us
in expecting from anyone who enters the field afresh a conclusive
proof of his possessing the highest qualifications for the task. The
time for mediocrity is gone by. We would not deny that Dr. Kay
possesses several important qualifications for the work. He is
orthodox in sentiment, and free from dogmatism. He has profound
reverence for Divine truth, and exhibits considerable reading, with
the power to make use of it. But we have been deeply impressed with
the fact that he lacks several of the qualities which constitute the
successful exegete, and, above all, a thorough and profound knowledge
of the Hebrew language. Hence we find him disappointing in passages
demanding the highest critical ability. There are, as all Hebrew
scholars are aware, several crucial passages which always test the
strength and quality of the translator--_e.g._, Ps. xvi., 2, 3, where
he translates, 'I have said to the Lord, My Lord art Thou, my
prosperity has no claims on Thee: 'tis for the holy ones, who are in
the land,' &c. Pss. xxxii. 6 and 9; xl. 5, 6, 7; cx. 3, 6; cxxxix.
14, 15, 16, &c. In all the instances above-mentioned, the author has
signally failed. In dealing with some of the psalms he has,
consciously or unconsciously, allowed doctrinal predilections to shape
his conclusions; we can see no other reason for such renderings as Ps.
ii. 12, 'Kiss the Son.' xvi. 10, _corruption_ for _pit_ or _grave_.
Ps. civ. 'Making his angels to be wind.' This will also account for
the wide range of the author's Messianic Psalms, and the faith he
places in the authority of the titles. The chief faults we have to
find with the translation are its obscurity, and its unnecessary
innovation, and in some instances the substitution of Latinized words
for the simpler but equally expressive Anglo-Saxon--_e.g._:
Ps. ii. 12. 'While His wrath blazes for a moment.'
Ps. vii. 6. 'And rouse Thee unto me.'
Ps. xiv. 4. 'The eaters of My people have eaten bread.'
Ps. xxvi. 8. 'O Lord, I have loved Thy house _domicile_.'
Ps. xxxii. 9. 'With curb and rein must its gaiety be tamed,
so as not to come near Thee.'
Ps. xxxix. 10. 'I am wasted away because Thy hand _is cross
to me_.'
Ps. c. i. 'Shout ye aloud to the Lord, _all the whole
earth_.'
Ps. cxxxix. 14. 'Wondrously _amid awful deeds_ was I
formed.'
We have observed many instances where literalness has been aimed at to
the violation of good taste, idiom, and rhythm.
The notes are not intended to form a full and complete commentary; we
are not, therefore, surprised at finding some of the most difficult
expressions passed over without any explanation. This is, alas! too
often the case with more extensive commentaries; but we think Dr. Kay
might, with advantage to the reader, have confined himself to a
critical explanation of the text, instead of indulging so freely in
theological and allegorical interpretations. Several literary mistakes
of minor importance might be pointed out, which, though of small
moment in themselves, yet tend to shake our confidence in the accuracy
of the author's scholarship. We regret our inability to pronounce this
volume a successful attempt to translate and explain this ancient
Psalter. We think it inferior to what we might fairly expect from one
who had before him the valuable commentaries of Hüpfeld, Hitzig,
Olshausen, Ewald, and Kamphausen. We would, however, remind our
readers that Dr. Kay has undertaken a very difficult task in appearing
on a field where so many have failed, and that, notwithstanding all
faults of the work, its excellencies are very numerous. We have
thorough sympathy with the author's spirit, and fully agree with many
of his renderings.
_Notes and Reflections on the Psalms._ By ARTHUR PRIDHAM. Second
Edition. Nisbet and Co.
These, like most notes and reflections that have come under our
notice, are exceedingly feeble. We see no reason why such books might
not be produced by the score. A person has only to exercise a little
patience and to draw freely upon his inner consciousness, disregarding
at the same time all exegetical laws and lexical meanings, and the
result will inevitably follow. We would gladly recognise in any one
the ability to evolve out of this old book any new truths which it may
be justly said to contain, but we protest against having so much
common Christian experience and so many religious platitudes crammed
into it, in violation of all the laws of common sense as well as of
interpretation. The author has full right to ventilate his own views
on Messianic prophecy, the restoration of the Jews, and the details of
the millennial reign, with which he seems to be perfectly familiar,
but we demur to his palming them off upon the authors of the Psalms.
The work is for the most part composed of pious reflections loosely
strung together, dogmatic assertions, and illogical inferences. The
author spiritualizes the Book of Psalms without ever catching its
spirit or comprehending its meaning. Mr. Pridham tells us in his
preface that his aim is twofold, to 'minister to the refreshment of
those who are already established in the grace of God,' and to 'afford
encouragement to the inexperienced but godly inquirer after truth.'
And with a view to this end he has attempted 'to present a faithful
though general outline of the Book of Psalms both as it respects the
true _prophetic_ intention of each psalm, and also its immediate
application to the Christian as a partaker of the heavenly calling.'
This will enable our readers to comprehend the writer's standpoint. It
is just the kind of work to be pronounced by certain oracles as
containing 'much precious truth and able criticism.' The pious conceit
of such productions has often secured for them an immunity from the
criticism they richly deserved. To let them pass without condemnation
is an abuse of Christian charity.
_A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures--Critical, Doctrinal, and
Homiletical--with especial reference to Ministers and Students._ By
JOHN PETER LANGE, D.D., with a number of eminent European Divines.
Translated from the German, revised, enlarged, and edited by PHILIP
SCHAFF, D.D. Vol. VII. of New Testament, containing the Epistles of
Paul to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.
_The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, theologically and homiletically
expounded._ By Dr. C. W. EDWARD NAEGELSBACH. Translated, enlarged, and
edited by SAMUEL RALPH ASBURY.
_The Lamentations of Jeremiah._ Translated by W. H. HORNBLOWER, D.D.
Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
This great work is advancing to completion. Whoever becomes possessed
of it will have, in a compendious form, the results of all ancient and
modern exegesis of the sacred Scriptures, with an _apparatus criticus_
of surprising copiousness. The doctrinal lessons and homiletic and
ethical comments give a sketch of the entire literature of every
verse passing under review. These two volumes equal their predecessors
in every respect; the first puts the student in possession of all the
work done by the great English scholars who have devoted so much of
their energy to the elucidation of the epistles to the Galatians,
Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. Dr. Schmoller is the author of
the Commentary on the Galatians, and the translation is made by Mr.
Starbuck and Dr. Riddle. We have often been struck by the admirable
'additions' which are the work of the latest editor. The epistles to
the Ephesians and Colossians were originally entrusted to Dr.
Schenkel, but the present commentary has been substituted for Dr.
Schenkel's in consequence of his change of theological position. The
work has been effected by Dr. Karl Braune, and translated by Dr.
Riddle. Dr. Braune is also the author of the Commentary on the Epistle
to the Philippians. It would be obviously impossible to convey in a
brief notice any idea of the contents of this large volume by
referring to a few details of exposition.
The elaborate Commentary on Jeremiah is accompanied by a careful
introduction to the two books, in which the chronological and
historical difficulties are treated with clearness and independence.
Dr. Hornblower has criticised Dr. Naegelsbach's curious scepticism as
to the authorship of the Lamentations, and has vindicated the
traditional opinion on this matter with a great array of argument.
Although nearly seven hundred pages of closely printed matter are
devoted to these two books, a far larger proportion of the work is
occupied with the exegetical and critical departments, than in some
previous volumes of the series. The author has developed with
considerable care both in his introduction and in his commentary, the
important canon 'that all parts of the book in which the threatening
enemies are spoken of generally, without mention of Nebuchadnezzar or
the Chaldeans, belong to the period before the fourth year of
Jehoiakim, while all the portions in which Nebuchadnezzar and the
Chaldeans are named, belong to the subsequent period.' This canon
enables the author to reduce the difficulties of a chronological kind,
and the supposed confusion in the order of the prophet's discourses.
The new translation, in spite of the use of certain Latinized words,
appears to us to be singularly excellent and spirited, to preserve the
fire of the original, and to remove much of its obscurity. It is
incomparably the most elaborate work on the writings of this prophet
accessible to the English scholar. We heartily congratulate Dr. Schaff
and his English publishers on the admirable despatch and punctuality
with which this Herculean task is approaching completion.
_Commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans with an Introduction on
the Life, Times, Writings, and Character of Paul._ By WM. S. PLUMER,
D.D., LL.D. Edinburgh: W. Oliphant.
An imperial octavo of 650 pages on the Epistle to the Romans is
somewhat appalling, especially from Mr. Plumer, whose verbiage is
chiefly the cause. He is not very learned, and not very logical. He
heaps together a vast amount of comment from various writers,--not,
however, modern ones, whom he ignores,--in which are some things acute
and useful. We could spare the bits of sermons; _e.g._, 'Reader, have
you a good conscience? Is it purified by atoning blood? Do you study
to keep it void of offence?' Dr. Plumer should not palm off sermons
under the guise of a commentary.
_The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians._ A new Translation, with
Critical Notes and Doctrinal Lessons. By JOHN H. GODWIN. Hodder and
Stoughton.
The volume before us contains a treatment of the Epistle to the
Galatians after the same general principle of arrangement as that
adopted by Professor Godwin in his translation of the Gospels of
Matthew and Mark. The translation is not offered as a specimen of the
revision which it is desirable to introduce into the authorized
version, it being 'agreed by all that in this revision the fewer
changes the better, none being proper that are not necessary.' 'But it
is (continues Mr. Godwin) desirable that ordinary religious
instruction should be given in familiar modes of speech; and so there
is an advantage in looking at the writings of prophets and apostles
without the guide of an antique dress, and with the aids to clear
thought and correct reasoning which are afforded by the language we
daily use.' Mr. Godwin has taken full advantage of this principle, and
by his use of certain non-technical words and phrases, which may in
theological usage have acquired a different signification from that
intended by the Apostle, provokes inquiry and compels attention. Thus,
the word _gospel_ is uniformly translated _good message_; _grace_ is
rendered _favour_; _to be justified_ is rendered _to be judged right_;
_child-guide_ by _schoolmaster_; and _the flesh_ by a _lower nature_.
Familiar verses are thus made to startle us by unfamiliar forms.
Conscientious labour and long pondering are very evident throughout
the entire work. The notes and the apothegmatic statements of
doctrinal truth are charged with significance, and are models of lucid
condensation. The exposition of the train of thought pervading the
third chapter is singularly happy. We wish we had space to quote the
note to verse 16, as it appears to us a most felicitous removal of the
difficulty involved in Paul's use of the promise made to the seed of
Abraham. Mr. Godwin's exposition of the celebrated verse 20 of the
same chapter deserves careful study. Everywhere we have the results of
scholarship, of penetration, of strong sense, and practical sympathy
with the purpose of the Apostle.
_A Commentary on the Epistles for the Sundays and other Holy Days of
the Christian Year._ By the Rev. W. DENTON, M.A. Vol. II. Bell and
Daldy.
The great excellency of Mr. Denton's running commentary on the
Epistles of the Prayer-book is its richness of patristic reference;
while his own remarks are vigorous, spiritual, and suggestive.
Literally every paragraph has a marginal reference to some Church
writer, either as embodying his sentiments or quoting his words.
Excepting Mr. Williams's 'Devotional Commentary on the Life of our
Lord,' we know no work that in this respect is to be compared with it.
It is, however, a great defect that only the name of the writer is
given, and not the reference to his works. Mr. Denton is evangelical
in sentiment, and although a very decided Churchman, tolerant in
spirit.
_Synonyms of the New Testament._ By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.,
Archbishop of Dublin. Seventh edition. Revised and enlarged. Macmillan
and Co. 1871.
The two small duodecimo volumes which Dr. Trench, when Professor of
Divinity at King's College, published on the Greek synonyms of the New
Testament, have long been highly prized by all the students of Holy
Scripture. The seventh edition of this invaluable work in a goodly
octavo, revised and enlarged by the accomplished author, will augment
the obligation under which he has placed all who are searching for the
exact meaning of the sacred text. Dr. Trench's work even now does not
pretend to be a complete encyclopædia of reference on this profoundly
interesting theme. He gives us in the preface to the present volume a
long list of words on the mutual relations of which he would have
thrown light, if they had been included in his scheme. Among them are
many which Archbishop Trench candidly admits are among 'the most
interesting and instructive.' We have only to refer to such words as
πνεῦμα and νοῦς, ὄλεθρος and ἀπωλεία, λυτρωτὴς and σωτὴρ, προσφορὰ and
θυσία, δικαίωμα, δικαίωσις,and δικαιοσύνη, to make it evident that
certain large divisions of exegetical theology which are included in a
full discussion of the synonyms of the New Testament, have been
purposely omitted from this volume. Still this does not detract from
the extreme value of the work that has been actually done by our
author. The treatises on the words νέος and καινός, on ἀγαπάω and
φιλέω, on ζωή and βίος, on μετανοέω and μεταμέλομαι, and many others
will be fresh in the recollection of all students. The great range of
Archbishop Trench's reading, and the ease with which Greek literature
is laid under contribution to further his well-defined purpose, the
flashes of light that he throws over many difficult texts, and the
caution, candour, and fairness of his judgments, combine to render
this edition of his important work a very welcome addition to the
_apparatus criticus_ of the Biblical student.
_A History of the Christian Councils, from, the original documents, to
the close of the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325._ By CHARLES JOSEPH
HEFELE, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of Theology in
the University of Tübingen. Translated from the German, and edited by
WILLIAM R. CLARK, M.A., Oxon., Prebendary of Wells. Edinburgh: T. and
T. Clark.
We are glad to see this instalment of a translation of Dr. Hefele's
great work on the history of Christian Councils. As the title
indicates, this volume of five hundred pages does not bring the
history beyond the proceedings, canons, and creeds of 'the first
Œcumenical Council.' Dr. Hefele's last published volume of the
_Conciliensgeschichte_ comes down to the Council of Constance. He does
not confine the history of this volume to the preliminaries and
discussions of the Council of Nicæa, but gives what documentary
evidence is at hand to throw light on the synods relative to
Montanism, and the feast of Easter, in the first two centuries; on
those held at Carthage and Rome on account of Novatianism and the
_Lapsi_; on those held at Antioch on account of _Paul of Samosata_,
and on the African synods demanded in the Donatist controversy. He
has, moreover, presented from a thoroughly Roman standpoint a general
introduction to the history of this department of ecclesiastical
history. There is no controversial tone in the exposition of the
elements of his theme, but the divine inspiration and supernatural
guidance granted to these assemblies is quietly assumed as undoubted
and indubitable. The chief authority for such a conviction is the way
in which these sacerdotal _réunions_ were accustomed to speak of
themselves. This sublime self-consciousness has never forsaken them,
and has reached its highest expression in the Vatican Council, which,
by its infallibility dogma, has, probably, constituted itself the last
of the series. Dr. Hefele seems also more impressed than we can be,
with the opinion of the Emperor Constantine on this point. The
deference of Constantine to the bishops, and his belief in the
infallibility of their conciliar conclusions, have not the smallest
weight with those who mourn over the entire work of Constantine, and
who see in his subsequent treatment of Arius a practical refutation of
the high-sounding titles he gave to the Council of Nicæa.
Dr. Hefele assumes that an _Œcumenical_ Council must be summoned by
'the oecumenical head of the Church, the Pope; except in the case,
which is hardly an exception, in which, instead of the Pope, the
temporal protector of the Church, the Emperor, with the previous or
subsequent approval and consent of the Pope, summons a council of this
kind.' Our author refutes the arguments of Bellarmine in favour of the
_formal_ recognition by the Ancient Church of the hierarchical
initiative in this matter, because his proofs are derived 'from the
pseudo-Isidore, and, therefore, destitute of all importance;' but he
tries to build up a similar argument in support of the early
recognition of the supremacy of Rome in this matter, which is very
shaky. Constantine is _supposed_ to have consulted Sylvester, Bishop
of Rome, before issuing his summons to the bishops to attend the first
oecumenical council, _because_ in the year 680 A.D., _i.e._, 355
years after the Council of Nicæa, _it is said_ that the sixth
oecumenical council made reference to such consultation. A second
argument appears to us even more Jesuitical: 'Ruffinus says that the
Emperor summoned the Synod of Nicæa _ex sententia sacerdotum_, and
certainly, if several bishops were consulted on the subject, among
them _must have been_ the chief of them all, the Bishop of Rome.'
The way in which our author toils to make it appear that theπρόεδροι
of the council were the delegates sent from Sylvester, diminishes our
confidence in the general excellence of this elaborate, painstaking,
conscientious work. The effort is made to show the part which the Pope
took in the calling of the subsequent general councils. The volume
will not be studied for its treatment of Christian doctrine, so much
as of ecclesiastical discipline. The whole discussion of the Easter
controversies, which were brought before the Council of Nicæa, is done
with much greater clearness and fulness than the exposition of the
doctrine of the ὁμοούσιος. Indeed there is, for general purposes, no
dissertation more valuable than this in the entire volume. The
elements are contained here for a reply to the speculations of the
Tübingen school on the irreconcilability of the traditionary notices
of the Johannine practice, and the _primâ facie_ evidence of the
Fourth Gospel as to the day on which the Passover was kept in the week
of our Lord's Passion. Dr. Hefele also explains the astronomical
controversy between the Easter calculations of Rome and Alexandria,
and clearly expounds the several problems brought up for the solution
of the Council of Nicæa.
We thank Mr. Clark for this well translated and carefully-edited
volume. It supplies a great _desideratum_ in English literature, and
we hope he will be enabled to continue his task. We have no doubt it
is impossible to secure perfect accuracy in producing such a volume.
The egregious misprint on p. 309, involving a huge chronological
blunder, will almost correct itself. Polycarp is said to have visited
Amcetus 'in the middle of the _eleventh_ century.'
_Title-Deeds of the Church of England to her Parochial Endowments._ By
EDWARD MIALL, M.P. Second edition, revised. Elliot Stock.
Few people know the history of English tithes. Nothing is more common
than to hear intelligent Churchmen talk of the pious enthusiasm with
which the early English Church was parochially endowed. The very
completeness and universality of the system might make us sceptical
concerning the spiritual fervour of the people, whatever the feeling
of their rulers. Mr. Miall shows convincingly that the charter of
Ethelwolf, which is the title-deed of the English tithe system, was a
bribe to Aelstan, Bishop of Sherburn, who, during his absence in Rome,
had conspired to depose him, and that it was necessary, in order to
secure its provisions, that the charter should be renewed by
successive monarchs, sometimes in a minatory and coercive way that is
very significant. Thus Edgar, A.D. 967, enacts that if any one shall
refuse to pay tithes, the king's sheriff shall seize them by force,
causing the tenth part to be paid to the Church, four parts to the
lord of the manor, four parts to the bishops, the unfortunate owner
being left with but a tithe himself. With great minuteness, Mr. Miall
traces the history and operation of the law, and shows that the law
knows nothing of the Church as a corporate ecclesiastical body, or of
a common ecclesiastical fund. Individual bishops and clergymen may
claim personal revenues as assigned to them by Act of Parliament, but
that is all. The individual claim that is, is the only claim to be
satisfied in the event of disendowment. The Church is no more a
corporate body than the army is; in its relations to Church property,
the endowments pertain not to Protestant Episcopalianism, as such, but
to the State Church for the time being, whether Roman, Episcopalian,
or Presbyterian.
Mr. Miall has done good service in publishing his able and valuable
little book for eighteen-pence. No Nonconformist or Churchman who
wishes to be well informed concerning the questions of Church property
that are pending should be ignorant of it.
_Letters from Rome on the Council._ By QUIRINUS. Reprinted from the
_Allgemeine Zeitung_. Authorized Translation. Rivingtons.
We have already noticed the first parts of this admirable history and
critique on the Council. It is full of learning, wisdom, and wit, and
must be read so long as the Council itself engages the attention of
either theologians or historians. We do not wonder that a book so able
and well-informed should have excited denunciation and protest from
those whose trickery it exposes. Written by Liberal Catholics, it is
the most damaging exposure of the chicanery of Rome that this century
has seen.
_Reasons for Returning to the Church of England._ Strahan and Co.
This is a kind of book of Ecclesiastes, which no one will read without
interest, and which will be even instructive to some of the author's
co-churchmen; but it is almost astounding to find him detail as new
discoveries, arrived at after years of pondering, reasons for leaving
the Church of Rome which have been the _principia_ of Protestantism
from the time of the Reformation.
The real interest of the book lies in the contrasts of practical
religious life in the two churches which the peculiar experience of
the author enables him to give. Thirty-five years ago he took orders
in the Church of England. Twenty-five years ago he became a member of
the Church of Rome. After remaining in it thirteen years he seceded
from it, and has for the last twelve years passed a 'life of
isolation,' which he now ends by returning to the bosom of the
Anglican Church. Those acquainted with that Church will have no
difficulty in identifying the author with Mr. Capes. In much that he
says about the common religious life of the two Churches, and of all
Churches, we agree, although he goes too far, we think, in his
depreciation of the practical religious influence of Divine dogmas.
The credulities of intellectual ability and moral conscientiousness
chiefly strike us in reading the author's confessions; but he has
furnished us with an interesting _apologia pro vitâ suâ_.
_Pioneers and Founders; or, Recent Workers in the Mission Field._ By
C. M. YONGE. Macmillan and Co.
Miss Yonge has made a selection of biographies of eminent missionaries,
with a view of exhibiting the scope and progress of modern English
Protestant missions. The names selected are John Eliot; David
Brainerd; Christian Frederick Schwartz; Henry Martyn; Carey, Marshman,
and Ward; the Judson family; the Bishops of Calcutta--Middleton,
Heber, and Wilson; Samuel Marsden; John Williams; Allen Gardiner; and
Charles Frederick Mackenzie. Knowing Miss Yonge's strongly marked
Anglicanism, we opened her volume with some apprehension, but were
gratified to find it not justified, for, with the exception of a
certain phraseology when speaking of Nonconformists or Americans--such
as 'it is the custom of this _sect_,' the word being used with a
perceptible emphasis, as from a vantage ground of ecclesiastical
orthodoxy--the spirit of the book is admirable. We all know how
lucidly, beautifully, and sympathetically Miss Yonge can write, and
all that is best in her devout feeling flows forth without restraint
as she narrates the marvellous stories of Carey, the Judsons, and John
Williams. She cannot resist--she has no wish to resist--the power and
wisdom with which they spake, or the indubitable signs and wonders of
God's Spirit that followed them. We have only words of commendation
for her charming little book; never have the achievements of these
Christian heroes been told in a more religious or fascinating way.
_Baptist History: From the Foundation of the Christian Church to the
Present Time._ By J. M. CRAMP, D.D., with an Introduction by Rev. J.
ANGUS, D.D. Elliot Stock.
We confess to an utter and disqualifying impatience with 'the Baptist
Controversy.' We wish that our friends who prefer immersion and think
the baptism of believers the true conception of the design of the
ordinance, would follow their preferences, and cease to vex the Church
so much with their reasons, defences, and assaults. The controversy is
not worth its cost. Dr. Cramp begins fiercely with 'Pædobaptist
Concessions and the New Testament,' and finds support for his views in
the Apostolic Fathers and in the past Nicean Church. Be it so; we are
not convinced, but we will not controvert him. His book aims at being
a general history of Baptists throughout the world, as distinguished
from provincial histories of Baptists--English, American, and Foreign.
We might be glad to accept it as a chapter of Church history,
containing many things in which all good men have a common interest;
but then, conceived and based as it is, it has necessarily a
denominational twist and colour. Baptists whose faith needs
confirmation and support may derive benefit from it.
_The Practical Moral Lesson Book._ Edited by the Rev. CHARLES HOLE,
F.R.G.S. Longmans and Co.
Mr. Hole has produced a very valuable elementary lesson-book on topics
too often neglected in education. It is divided into three books--the
first which is the only one yet published, treats of duties which men
owe to themselves--(1) duties concerning the body, including the laws,
functions, and conditions of physical life, such as food, air, light,
exercise, cleanliness, rest, recreation, temperance, &c.; (2) duties
concerning the mind--treating of the right conduct of the appetites,
the senses, the intellect, the emotions, the will, the actions, &c.;
and (3) embracing the whole range of self-culture, and of moral and
social obligations.
The little work is prepared and adapted for schools, and is written
simply, popularly, and with great wisdom and completeness. We have
only good to speak concerning it. We should be thankful to know that
it was used in every elementary school in the kingdom.
_Synonyms Discriminated; a Complete Catalogue of Synonymous Words in
the English Language, with Descriptions of their Various Shades of
Meaning, and Illustration of their Usages and Specialities._ By C. J.
SMITH, M.A. Bell and Daldy.
It is impossible to exhibit the character of works of this kind by
detailed criticisms. Even the best will furnish abundant material for
adverse judgment, while the worst must be right sometimes. A thorough
knowledge of such works, moreover, can be attained only by long use.
We can only, therefore, give our impressions of Mr. Smith's work,
formed, after turning over his pages, and fixing upon examples here
and there most likely to test his knowledge and his judgment.
The task which he has set himself is a very delicate one--it demands
an equal knowledge of philology, literature, and popular usage, and a
keen faculty for discerning things that under apparent resemblances
really differ, and things that under various and unlike forms, have
common root ideas. The philologist has to deal with only one root
word. The compiler of a book of synonyms must be, so to speak, a
compound philologist, and must have in hand, for comparative purposes,
several root words. Nor, again, is philology a sufficient guide, for
the significance of words changes in popular usage; they are found
sometimes in a state of ambiguous, sometimes of even contradictory
meaning. Mr. Smith had the advantage of Crabbe's previous labours; but
to say nothing of Crabbe's inferior scholarship, his book is almost
obsolete--for, unlike dictionaries which deal with intrinsic meanings,
a book of synonyms has chiefly to do with conventional meanings.
Generally, we may say, that Mr. Smith is a very accomplished
etymological scholar, a very keen discriminator, and that his
illustrative examples are selected with great industry, and from a
wide field of English literature--although he might have laid under
greater contribution great living masters, such as Tennyson, Freeman,
Froude, Browning, and others; but it is only gradually, and by the
labour of contributive students, that a corpus of references is
formed. Perhaps the defect that we the most frequently note is in
derivations. Mr. Smith is too often contented with popular meanings,
to the neglect of etymological ones. Thus, under 'Devout, Pious,
Religious, Holy;' all that he says under the crucial word 'Religious'
is, that it is 'a wider term, and denotes one who, in a general sense,
is under the influence of religion, and is opposed to irreligious or
worldly, as the pious man is opposed to the impious or profane, and
the devout to the indifferent or irreverent.' He ventures upon no
etymology, although he has given us Fr. _dévot_--why not the Latin
_devotus_?--Lat. _pius_--A.S. _halig_. A book of synonyms is not,
however, a hook of etymological solutions; and we are very thankful to
Mr. Smith for a work incomparably superior to Crabbe, and which will
be indispensable on every scholar's desk.
_The Practical Linguist; being a System based entirely upon Natural
Principles of Learning to Speak, Read, and Write the German Language._
By DAVID NASMITH, Member of the Middle Temple. In 2 vols. Nutt.
Mr. Nasmith is the author of the ingenious chronometric characteristic
History of England, by which the student may learn at a glance, more
than it might take him hours to put together for himself. Information
obtained so easily, though impressed involuntarily upon the eye, does
not leave so deep an effect behind it. In the 'Practical Linguist' Mr.
Nasmith has endeavoured to throw into a system the principle naturally
adopted by a child or uneducated person in learning a foreign tongue.
The more frequently used words, called the 'permanent vocabulary,' are
separated from the 'auxiliary vocabulary,' and an effort is made to
bring the former into great prominence, and gradually to introduce the
latter according to the varied subject-matter of a prolonged series of
graduated exercises, terminating in translation and re-translation of
Heine and other German classics. A careful and practical arrangement
of the German accidence precedes the exercises, and grammatical
commentaries follow them; while each exercise is accompanied by a
Germanized English version of the English sentence that is to be
rendered into German. The Germanized English which is called by the
author 'Anglicized German,' forms the rock in the midst of the stream,
to and from which it is supposed more easy to throw the pontoons over
which the army of young scholars may pass from one territory to
another. This, like many other systems, will demand much effort and
patience to master. We have no doubt that if it be followed carefully
to the end, a thoroughly practical acquaintance with the German
language will be secured.
THE
BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
OCTOBER, 1871.
ART. I.--_Dr. Carl Ullmann_.[43]
Dr. Carl Ullmann is perhaps best known in this country and in America
as the author of the two apologetic treatises, 'The Sinlessness of
Jesus' and 'The Essence of Christianity;' but his name will probably
live in the history of theology mainly as the founder, and for many
years conductor of the _Theologische Studien und Kritiken_, that
oldest and ablest of all the German theological journals. Though not
what his fellow-countrymen term an epoch-making man, either in the
scientific or practical sphere, he was unquestionably a representative
man--representative of the best elements both of German thought and
German character. Both the strength and weakness of German theologians
were illustrated in his experience; the former in his successes, the
latter in his failures. There are few, if any, German theologians
whose works contain so much that applies directly to the theological
needs and efforts of the present moment.
Dr. Carl Ullmann was born on the 15th of March, 1796, at Epfenbach, a
village about half-way between Heidelberg and Mosbach, six miles from
the river Neckar, where his father was pastor of the Reformed Church.
Several of his forefathers on his mother's side had been pastors at
Epfenbach; and his father, who was a native of Heidelberg, took
possession of the living, and married the daughter of its previous
incumbent at the same time. His father was a harmless, kind-hearted,
cheerful, and pious man; his mother had a lively, imaginative,
poetical temperament; the son inherited the qualities of both. The
only other child, a daughter, died when very young.
Carl was of a delicate physical constitution, but eager to learn. Till
he reached his ninth year, he went to the village school, the
instruction at which was supplemented by his father. Among the first
things he read were the poems of Claudius and Hebel; and he learnt by
rote so easily, and took such a pleasure in declaiming poetry, that
his parents used to say--'We must make a Professor of him.' Happy as
he was at home, he began early to feel the lack of other companionship
than that supplied by the peasant children with whom he associated,
and a desire stirred in him to go out into the world. In the fragment
of an autobiography which was found among his papers, he says:--'I
remember the very spot--it was in one of the beautiful forests near my
birth-place--where I first became conscious of a yearning to leave
home. It was as strong as the yearning which one generally feels to
return home when one is away. I was then seven years old.' In his
ninth year he was accordingly sent to Mosbach, where he lodged with a
clerical brother of his mother's, and attended the Latin school. After
a year he entered the Gymnasium at Heidelberg, with the distinct idea
of becoming a pastor, and perhaps eventually of succeeding his father.
The school does not seem to have been all that it ought to have been;
but the social influences by which he was surrounded were of an
exceptionally stimulating and elevating kind. He rose from class to
class in the Gymnasium with such rapidity, that he was prepared to
pass the so-called _Abiturienten-Examen_[44] before reaching his
seventeenth year--an unusually early age.
About this time his thoughts were almost completely turned aside from
the profession he had intended to pursue, by the influence of friends
of the family with which he lived. These were the brothers Boisseree,
who were enthusiastic lovers of art, and had a fine collection of
works of the old German masters. Young Ullmann was often invited by
them to study their treasures, and became eventually so infected with
their enthusiasm; or rather, perhaps, one ought to say, his own
slumbering love of, and susceptibility to, the beautiful in nature and
art, was so awakened, that he proposed to his parents to allow him to
become a landscape painter. Two young men who were then his friends,
and in whose company he used to traverse the charming scenes which
abound in the neighbourhood of Heidelberg, afterwards became eminent
artists, and he himself produced sketches and drawings full of the
brightest promise. His parents, however, were shocked at the idea of
their son taking up a profession that brought more honour than bread,
especially as they were not in circumstances to sustain him until he
should have attained a name and position; they urged on him,
therefore, that he might secure leisure enough for the pursuit of art
as a country pastor, and promised to let him study in Munich after
completing his course at the University. The prospect thus opened up
calmed him, and by the time his theological studies were completed,
other thoughts filled his mind. To the end of his life, however,
Ullmann remained a lover of art, and the æsthetic turn of his mind
manifested itself in occasional poetic effusions, in that grace of
style for which he was reputed beyond most of his contemporaries, and
in a general refinement of culture. It is scarcely likely, however,
that he would have attained the eminence as an artist that he gained
as a theologian; and certainly the pursuit of art would not have
admitted of his exerting the direct practical influence which he
eventually wielded, and which was to him a source of such deep
satisfaction.
He matriculated at Heidelberg in the autumn of 1812. The University
had just lost one or two of its brightest ornaments--the youthful
Neander, for example,--but still, notwithstanding its losses, next to
the young and rising Berlin, it had the ablest professors, and was
inspired by the highest aims. The most eminent member of the
theological faculty was Daub; the most notorious was Paulus. The
former was a man of remarkable force, energy, simplicity and
earnestness, and so devoted to his academic vocation that he once
wrote to his then young friend Rozenkranz, now Professor of Philosophy
in Königsberg, and one of the few remaining Hegelians of the right
wing, 'Holidays, do you say? Does the old man still take no holidays?
No, my dear friend, not yet, nor do I want any; my heart's desire is,
if possible, to die in my chair, docendo.' His desire was almost
literally fulfilled; for the stroke which terminated his life, smote
him whilst lecturing on anthropology, November 19th, 1836. He has been
termed, rather wittily, but spitefully, the Talleyrand of German
Philosophy and Theology, because 'he passed from the Kantian
Revolution, through Schelling's Imperialism, to Hegel's Reactionaryism.'
Deducting the spite, there is truth in the description, for he began
his career as a thorough Kantian, then became a warm disciple of
Schelling, and finished up as a Hegelian of the right wing. The
changes he underwent were both sign and evidence of the honesty and
thoroughness with which he devoted himself to the investigation of
truth; there was not a trace in him of the frivolity of the French
diplomatist. His best-known work is 'Judas Iscariot; or, Meditations
on the Good in its relation to Evil.' Daub was still in his Schelling
stage when Ullmann began to study. Paulus was, on the other hand, the
most noted representative of the _Rationalismus vulgaris_, as it has
been termed, in the department of exegesis. He was a man of wide
reading, great learning, and acuteness, but possessed by so intense an
aversion to everything that did not square with his narrow common
sense, that he was incapable of understanding Christianity, and
therefore made it his business to explain away everything that bore a
supernatural or mystical character. Perhaps this was due in part to
the fact that his father, who had been removed from his pastorate, _ob
absurdas phantasmagorica visiones divinas_, forced him, whilst still a
boy, to take part in the conferences with spirits and demons which he
was in the habit of holding in conjunction with others like-minded.
Professor Tholuck, of Halle, rarely lets pass an opportunity, in his
exegetical lectures, of whetting his humour on some absurdity or other
of Paulus. A greater contrast than that between him and Daub could
scarcely have existed; and scientifically they may be said to have
lived like cat and dog. Beside these two, another eminent name then
graced the rolls of the University--Creuzer, author of the 'Symbolik
und Mythologie der alten Völker, insbesondere der Griechen,' a work
which was long the chief authority on its subject, and which even now
well deserves consulting.
Ullmann's mind seems at this stage to have been in the unreflective
state, in which, perhaps, a majority of German theological students
are at the outset; naturally so, too, for his vocation was rather the
choice of his parents than his own. He says about himself:--
'As I was still young, and my father wished me to have
plenty of time for study, I did not at once devote myself
exclusively to strictly professional studies, but attended
the philosophical and philological lectures of Daub and
Creuzer, and those on the "Encyclopædia of Theology" and
"Church History," by Paulus. During the year that I thus
spent at Heidelberg, I cannot say that I either felt any
specific interest in science, or evinced any independence
of mind. I was an industrious and respectful hearer, but
little more. With the idea of setting me on my own feet,
and plunging me more into theology, my father wished me to
go to another University.'
Advised by Daub, Ullmann accordingly resolved to go to Tübingen.
This custom of students pursuing their studies at more than one
University is almost universal in Germany; and where the system of
instruction is one by lectures, has, unquestionably, many advantages.
Some of the direct personal influence and stimulus that a man of
eminent vigour may exercise, is perhaps lost; but, on the other hand,
the danger of a young man being too much influenced is avoided, and a
greater manifoldness of development is favoured. This is one reason
why thought in Germany is less stereotyped than among ourselves. Some,
however, may, perhaps, deem this no advantage.
Tübingen was at that time considered the safest and soundest of all
the German universities. It was the seat of the so-called
Supranaturalistic school, and had been the refuge and stronghold of
orthodoxy during the prevalency of Rationalism. Students of theology
streamed thither from all parts of Germany. The principal theological
professors were Scheurer, Flatt the younger, Bengel, and Bahnmeier,
whose teachings tended to confirm young Ullmann on the positive
Christian belief which had been inculcated on him at home and at
school. Still he cannot be said to have been satisfied. The Tübingen
theology, based as it was on philosophical presuppositions that had
been to a large extent outgrown, was now becoming antiquated, and his
mind was unconsciously reaching out towards the new mode of
representing Christian truth, of which Schleiermacher was the
harbinger, and which he himself eventually did so much to propagate.
Some of his best and highest instincts and capabilities found
nourishment and stimulus, however, in the circle of University friends
to which he belonged. Among these were Gustav Schwab, the biographer
of Schiller, and himself a poet, and above all, Uhland, who had then
just published his first poems. The friendship formed with Schwab
continued unbroken to the end of life. Such circles, originating in
like literary interests and tastes, were then common in Germany. The
atmosphere, especially of the universities, was full of what strikes
our colder English mind as sentimental enthusiasm, but which then
appeared to be glowing love for the highest ideals in State and
Church, in science and philosophy, in prose and poetry. It were
possibly better for our national and social life if there were a
little more capability of enthusiasm for the ideal in the young men of
our universities and colleges. We are too hard, muscular, and
materialistic. Ullmann retained his susceptibility for the beautiful
in literature to the end of life; and occasionally, too, expressed his
thoughts and feelings in rhymes, of which, even poets by profession
would not have needed to be greatly ashamed. He returned home in the
autumn of 1816, and shortly afterwards passed his theological
examination at Carlsruhe. The certificate he received was so good that
he was at once offered a teachership at the Lyceum in Carlsruhe, but
declined it on the ground of health, and resolved, according to the
general custom in Baden, to become a 'vikar,' or, as we say in
England, a 'curate,' or assistant. He was ordained on the 12th of
January, 1817, in the church at Epfenbach, and immediately thereupon
entered on a _vikariat_ at Kirchheim, where a friend of his father's
was the incumbent. There he remained a year, but his wish to become a
country pastor was not to be realized. The manner in which he had
passed his examination had excited the attention of the ecclesiastical
and university authorities, and as there was at that time a strong
wish to see Baden young men selecting the _academical career_, that
is, settling as teachers at the university with a view to becoming
professors, the Government called upon him to take this course, and
offered to supply him with the means necessary to further study.
Ullmann's own inclinations responded to this invitation; but he
hesitated at first because he had a wholesome horror of adding
another to the already too long list of second-rate professors. His
parents were naturally gratified; but with noble tact and generous
self-sacrifice, at once said that they themselves would provide their
son with the requisite means, in order that he might remain free to
take whatever course seemed most suitable to himself.
In the autumn of 1817, he accordingly recommenced his university
studies. At first he hesitated whether he should go to Göttingen or
remain at Heidelberg; he wisely decided on the latter. For though the
former had not a few eminent men, it was bound too much by the
traditions of the eighteenth century, whereas Heidelberg was one of
the fountains of the new theological and philosophical life that had
begun to permeate Germany.
Philosophy was the subject to which he first devoted himself; in
particular, the philosophy of Hegel, who had then just been appointed
professor at Heidelberg. He never properly relished Hegel; indeed, to
judge from one of his letters to his friend Schwab, he seems to have
been made not a little melancholy by it. Satisfaction it could not
well afford him, for his was not a mind to put up with dry bones and
logical subtilties; but it proved to be an excellent intellectual
gymnastic, and compelled him to an examination of his own theological
and philosophical position that was greatly needed, and which would
otherwise have been scarcely possible. The _à priori_ constructive
method of the Hegelian philosophy did not accord with the native bent
of his mind. He shows, too, that he began to be aware of the line he
himself would have to take in the following words addressed to one of
his examiners who had urged him to turn his special attention to
systematic theology:--
'I am not one of those who are able to construct an
historical fact like the Christian religion, by starting
from a philosophical centre. My way into science is that of
historical inquiry; it passes from the particular to the
general, not from the general to the particular; or,
applied to theology, from exegesis and history to
systematic theology and Christian ethics.'
He accordingly first took up philological, exegetical, and patristic
studies; he did so from a just though instinctive conviction that
satisfactory solutions of the great problems of theology and
philosophy are only possible on the basis of sound and thorough
historical studies. That it cost him no little self-restraint to carry
out this method, is evident from the letters he wrote about this time.
In one addressed to Schwab occur the words--
'It is my misfortune that at present I have little time to
give to the highest questions. I have so many of the merely
outward parts of science which are absolutely necessary to
fetch up, that I often groan as under a heavy burden.
Still, even in the desert of grammatical and critical
study, I meet with many a refreshing oasis.'
He began also to feel a deeper sympathy with the practical aspects of
the vocation on which he was entering. In the same letter from which
we have just quoted, he says--
'I am sometimes disposed to envy the men--and there are
many of them--who live on an untroubled life, doing the
right without difficulty. My life appears, by comparison,
one continuous self-torture. But should I not be acting
unworthily? Must I not rather confess to myself that I have
as yet no solid ground on which I can take my stand? Yes;
and therefore, I am resolved to forego all the enjoyments
and pleasures of life rather than not attain to
certainty--rather than not be able to say, "I know in whom
I have believed."'
He concluded his studies at Heidelberg by taking the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy, and in the spring of 1819 entered on a scientific tour
intended to embrace Jena, Göttingen, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, and
other centres of German culture. His stay in Berlin was both the
longest and the most important. He there made the personal
acquaintance of De Wette, Neander, and Schleiermacher, and his
intercourse with the last two in particular had a determining
influence on the whole of his future course. That for which his own
studies had been preparing the way was now accomplished, namely, his
emancipation from the old supranaturalistic forms of theological
thought which had hitherto hampered him. He did not, however, quit his
hold of the substance of the Christian faith; on the contrary, it
became more completely a living possession. In the sketch he wrote of
the life of his friend Umbreit, he describes his Berlin experiences as
follows:--
'In intercourse with De Wette, Neander, and Schleiermacher,
I absorbed into myself the elements of the new theology. In
opposition to both Rationalism and Supranaturalism,
Christianity presented itself to me then as a new vital
creation and divine revelation, in the full sense of the
term, but, at the same time, as something undergoing an
organic development in the history of mankind. I saw
accordingly that it was the function of the theologian to
seek to effect a reconciliation between the Christian faith
and the healthy elements in the culture of the age, that
is, to exhibit it in its reasonableness, instead of in the
form of authority.'
De Wette's influence was more an exegegetical than a critical one,
and Ullmann never showed much taste for the business of the critic.
Schleiermacher taught him the distinction between faith and theology
and the central significance of the person of the Redeemer, without,
however, seriously infecting him with his own exaggeratedly subjective
and speculative tendencies. Through Neander, his mind was open to the
appreciation of Christianity as a phenomenon and power in the history
of humanity. He was most drawn towards the last-mentioned, and always
spoke of him with deep and loving reverence. There was not a little
affinity between the two--an affinity which manifested itself even
more distinctly in later years; and if their course of development had
been more similar, the resemblance between them would have been
something very unusual. This will appear as we advance in our task.
During this tour, Ullmann visited Hamburg, and there formed an
acquaintance which was destined to become very intimate, and to have
not a little influence on his career as a theologian--it was that of
the celebrated publisher, Friedrich Perthes. The circumstances under
which the introduction took place were embarrassing enough. Ullmann
had ran short of money, and not knowing what else to do, went to
Perthes, who at once, on the credit of his honest face, as he said,
lent him a sufficient sum of money to enable him to carry out his
immediate plans. Perthes subsequently became Ullmann's publisher.[45]
In the autumn of 1819, Ullmann commenced lecturing at Heidelberg,
taking for subjects Exegesis and Church History. With unusual
consideration, the Government gave him, even as _Privat-Docent_, a
small salary, and promised him early promotion to an _Extraordinary_
Professorship, a promise which was fulfilled in 1821. The first
published fruits of his studies were a critical treatise on the Second
Epistle of Peter, in which he defended the first two chapters as a
genuine fragment of the Apostle, but admitted the remainder to be the
work of another hand; and an examination of the 'Third Epistle of Paul
to the Corinthians,' which had just been translated from the Armenian
by Rind, and which he demonstrated to be a forgery. These were the
first and last properly critical essays he ever wrote. His next
publications, which were 'An Archæological Essay on the Christian
Festivals,' originally appended to the second edition of Creuzer's
'Symbolik,' and another on the sect of the Hypsistarians, written in
Latin, as the programme when he entered on his professorship,
inaugurated the labours in the field of Church history where lay his
true vocation, and in which he achieved his best successes.
The year 1820 brought two events on which he never ceased to look back
with the intensest thankfulness--his betrothal with Hulda Moreau, who
eventually became his wife, and his friendship with Umbreit, who had
become his colleague as Professor of Oriental Languages. The strain in
which he refers to the former, when writing to his friend Schwab, was
all that the most ardent lover could demand. It will suffice to quote
one sentence:--'Never had I either in hopes or dreams represented to
myself the happiness of love so beautifully and truly as I have found
it to be in reality.' Of Umbreit he spoke in the following terms:--'He
is just the friend for whom I have longed; one who takes me and
understands me just as I am and live; who loves me faithfully with all
his heart, despite my defects, and who has insight into and sympathy
with the needs of my soul.' 'Soon,' says he, in his own sketch of
Umbreit's life, 'our hearts opened to each other, and ere long our
relation to each other was such that it became a necessity to meet
daily and exchange thoughts and experiences. We were one as to the
basis and goal of life; and yet the individuality and development of
each were so different that we supplemented each other, and were thus
for each other a perpetual stimulus.' It was due to Ullmann's
influence that Umbreit became positively Christian, both in his
theology and life.
These were the bright aspects of the life of the young professor. It
had, however, its shadows. The University numbered at this time only
fifty-five students of theology, and they were mainly divided between
Daub and Paulus; besides, the ground was so pre-occupied by
Rationalism on the one side, and Speculation on the other, that there
was no room for a theology that aimed to be at once evangelical and
historical. In 1823, Ullmann wrote to Schwab:--'In a scientific
respect, our position here is bad. The constellation of theological
studies is of such a kind that several, I might say most of the
professors, are really useless. To this number I have the honour to
belong, along with men like Abegg and Umbreit. I deliver my regular
lectures, but I have very few hearers and little hope of an
improvement.' In addition to this, his salary was so small that it did
not suffice for his own wants, much less could he marry on it. He
became at last so weary of this state of things that he begged the
Government to give him a living in the country. Instead of acceding to
his wish, however, they increased his salary, and thus enabled him to
venture on marrying in 1824.
In the following year he published his first large work--a monograph
on Gregory Nazianzen, which proved him to be a worthy compeer of
Neander, and brought him, in 1826, an invitation to the Theological
Seminary at Wittenberg. Had not the Government again increased his
salary, and made him in addition Professor in Ordinary, he would
probably then have quitted Heidelberg, much as he loved it, and
thoroughly loyal and grateful as were his feelings towards his native
land. He no longer, however, felt so happy there as he had done in
former years. The party spirit under which he had to suffer so
severely at a later period, and which has done so much to degrade both
theology and the Church in Baden, was just beginning to make itself
felt, both in the University and in private circles.
The next great event in his life, and an important event in the
history of German theology, the founding of the _Theologische Studien
und Kritiken_, shall be narrated in his own words:--
'About this time the thought occurred to us' (referring to
Umbreit and himself) 'of establishing a new theological
journal, of which we proposed to ourselves to be joint
editors. Our idea was, not to increase the already too
numerous depositories of mere dry erudition, but to create
an organ for the new theology which was either already in
existence or in process of growth. After talking the matter
over carefully between ourselves, we communicated our idea
to our friends--Nitzsch, Lücke, and Gieseler,[46] all of
whom were then in Bonn. As they at once promised their
cooperation, we arranged to meet, for the maturing of our
plans, at Rüdesheim, in the spring of 1827. Singularly
enough, too, the publisher to whom we proposed applying,
Friedrich Perthes, had himself also, quite independently,
been entertaining a similar plan; and that not merely as a
business speculation, but also for the sake of promoting
the so-called new theology.'
As his and their wishes thus happily met, the scheme was speedily
ripened, and the first number made its appearance at Hamburg, in 1828,
bearing on its title-page the names of Drs. Ullmann and Umbreit as
editors, and of Drs. Gieseler, Lücke, and Nitzsch as collaborateurs.
During the first years of its existence, the _Studien und Kritiken_
had a severe struggle: in a commercial point of view it certainly
did not pay; indeed, as such things are now regarded in this country,
it never has paid well. The highest circulation it ever
attained--unprecedented before, and since, in Germany--was between 900
and 1,000. This was prior to that year of political and social
disturbances--1848. What the number of its subscribers at the present
moment may be, we do not know; we have been told they do not reach
500. Among its contributors it has had almost all the greatest German
theologians of the last forty years; for example, Schleiermacher, De
Wette, Rothe, Julius Müller, Twesten, Hundeshagen, Tholuck, Bleek,
Neander, Dorner, Schenkel, Schweitzer, and others too numerous to be
specified. At present, it is edited by Drs. Hundeshagen and Riehm.
Whilst from the beginning the original design of its founders--that it
should be the organ of the theology of which Neander and Nitzsch may
be said to have been the best-known representatives--was
conscientiously adhered to, its pages were constantly open to opinions
diverging very widely from those of the editors. In fact, it was a
kind of neutral ground on which men of, one might almost say, opposite
theological opinions met for courteous tourney. None were excluded
from contributing whose spirit was that of reverential inquiry. It has
accordingly been in the best sense a power, not only in Germany but
even throughout Christendom. We cannot write these words without
blushing with shame that we in Great Britain have never been able
adequately to sustain, for any length of time, any purely theological
journal at all, much less one that dared to be something more than the
mere organ of a little party or sect. It is a disgrace to us. In this
matter, we are far behind even America; how much farther behind
Germany! and that, too, notwithstanding that a certain interest in
theological questions is much more widely diffused among us than in
the latter country.
The article with which the _Studien_ opened, at once established the
character both of the journal and of its principal editor; it was one
on the 'Sinlessness of Jesus,'[47] which subsequently appeared in a
separate and considerably enlarged form. During Ullmann's lifetime it
ran through seven editions, and was translated into, at all events,
one foreign language. Few books have rendered better service to young
theologians, in their doubts and struggles, than this.
In 1829, an invitation came to him from Prussia to take the chair of
Church History at the University of Halle. Strongly as he was attached
to Heidelberg, and patriotically desirous as he was of serving Baden,
still this time he felt that it was his duty to go. Such, too, was the
opinion of his friends; even the Minister of Education in Baden raised
little objection, though he expressed the hope that when the right
moment came, Heidelberg would be able to reclaim its own. The change
was a very great one--greater than can well be appreciated by any one
who is not acquainted with the difference, not only between Halle and
Heidelberg, but also between their respective inhabitants. South
Germans do not always harmonize well with North Germans. No contrast
could be greater than that between the two towns. The praises of
Heidelberg--of its river, castle, forests, mountains, and
valleys--everybody sings, and sings with justice. Halle is known to
comparatively few, and is not likely to be loved by ordinary tourists.
And yet those who have lived in Halle for any length of time always
think of it with affection. Its streets are narrow and close; its
pavements used to be uncivilized in summer, and absolutely barbarous
in winter; its atmosphere is tainted by one general smell of the
peculiar kind of turf that is burnt, and by numerous particular
odours; the older houses and rooms are fusty, and abound in tenants
who do not pay, but exact rent from their fellow-lodgers; it is
awfully hot in summer and cold in winter; the scenery around, save in
one direction, is very dismal--and yet few who have studied there can
help saying, 'Dear old Halle!' The secret is the kind, unpretending,
truly scientific spirit that prevails among the professors and their
families, rendering them very accessible to all, and facilitating
close intercourse. Ullmann found in Halle all the diversities of point
of view that existed at Heidelberg, and, indeed, at every University.
Wegscheider and Gesenius represented Rationalism, but a better and
larger spirit possessed the faculties. More frequent opportunities
were, moreover, afforded him of meeting the other eminent men of the
age. He visited Schleiermacher and Neander in Berlin; Tieck in
Dresden; Hase and Baumgarten-Crusius in Jena; went a foot tour with
Lachmann, Hossbach, and Schleiermacher in Thuringia; and held a
conference with the co-operators and contributors of the _Studien_ in
Marburg. But the chief source of satisfaction were the 800 theological
students who then frequented Halle; for he now secured auditories
double the number of all the theological students of Heidelberg taken
together. Naturally, too, his income was more adequate to the
necessities of a man of family and learning than it had ever been
before. All these circumstances gave his letters to his friends in
South Germany a tone of unmistakeable cheerfulness.
During the early Halle years, his time and energies were so much
absorbed in the preparation of his lectures and the editing of the
_Studien_, which now devolved almost entirely on himself, that
extensive literary undertakings were out of the question. He lectured
on Church History, History of Doctrine, Symbolics, Introduction to the
New Testament, and at last also on Dogmatics. This last subject was
taken up by way of counteracting the influence of Wegscheider. In his
inaugural discourse on 'The Position of a Church Historian in the
Present Day,' afterwards printed in the _Studien_ (1829), Ullmann
sounded the key-note of his entire future teachings in words some of
which may be quoted here. The entire discourse well deserves studying
by ourselves at the present time:--
'Sound reason and pure revelation of God are not at the
root diverse, and cannot be opposed to each other, though
they may present religious truth in differing forms and
compass. A truly divine doctrine will never interfere with
the freedom of thought and of intellectual development; on
the contrary, it will confer true, inward liberty. That
which separates the opposing parties in our midst is, on
the one hand, that the defenders of reason are not always
rational enough, not truly and impartially rational; and on
the other hand, that the believers in revelation do not
adhere with sufficient simplicity to the word and spirit of
revelation.' 'Christianity is higher reason; it is reason
in the form of history, in the form of a divine
institution; and as such it connects itself with the
deepest needs of the human soul.' 'Christianity and reason
must not and cannot be separated from each other.'
The years 1831 and 1832 were years of deep sorrow: in the former he
lost his eldest daughter; in the latter his beloved wife. Severe as
was the test to which his faith was thus put, it stood it well. He was
able to say, 'The Lord gave; the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the
name of the Lord.' But the blow affected him very severely. He
withdrew from the social intercourse in which he had so greatly
delighted; his health, too, was so enfeebled that he was compelled to
go for a time to Baden on visits to friends. The following extract
from a letter to Umbreit, after his return, shows how he thought and
felt:--
'I have found it very hard to settle down in Halle after so
long an enjoyment of the beauties of my old home. Like an
unwilling child, I have only given in by degrees. Nor did I
really become contented again till I set thoroughly to
work. And now that I am at work, I am again looking forward
to the holidays. One always seems to remain a child, and
life is an eternal circle, and after all a labour and
sorrow, occasionally broken by brighter glimpses of heaven,
of the hearts of friends, of one's own soul, and of nature.
When one looks seriously at life, one can scarcely help
both smiling and weeping; and it would be utterly
unintelligible to me without God and eternity. It is not
good, however, to think and grub too much about it; one
must undertake some work, even though it be not much. Faith
and work are the only sources of lasting peace.'
In the autumn of 1834 he married again. Until 1833, when his first
contribution to the 'History of the Reformers before the
Reformation'--'John Wessel and his Times'--appeared, he printed
nothing but a few essays and reviews in the _Studien_. That the time
was not a very favourable one for theological authorship would appear
from the circumstance that Perthes, the publisher of 'Wessel,'
large-minded and sympathetic as he was, did not expect it to pay
expenses. It proved, however, a success, and with the portions
subsequently issued, is now esteemed one of the best German monographs
in the domain of Church history.
Early in 1835, Ullmann wrote to a friend: 'In the world of literature
we have at present a complete ebb; nor does there seem any prospect of
our being stirred out of our quiet jogtrot existence. What a blessing
it would be, if some great light were to arise in theology--some
second Luther, or Lessing, or Goethe!' He little thought that the
stirring up that he desired would so soon come; still less that it
would come in the way in which it did come. It was not a new Luther,
or Goethe, or Lessing that arose, but Strauss, with his 'Life of
Jesus.' As is well known, this work, notwithstanding its containing
little that was really new, produced an unexampled sensation in the
theological and ecclesiastical circles of Germany. It called forth a
perfect flood of replies; and among them, Ullmann's, though small in
compass, occupied a very honourable position. He put his finger on the
weak spot in Strauss's book, in the following words of a letter
written to Schwab, immediately after he had taken a first glance at
it:--'All honour to criticism, but in Strauss's case it becomes
plainly unhistorical; for on the view with which he starts, the origin
of Christianity and the rise of men like the Apostle Paul are alike
inexplicable.' His reply consisted of two essays in the _Studien_ of
1836 and 1838, and afterwards published separately, under the title,
'Historisch oder Mythisch.' Next to Neander's 'Life of Jesus,'
Ullmann's treatise is said to have had most influence on Strauss.
Shortly after his second marriage, Ullmann wrote to a friend that he
felt he was becoming every year more and more attached to Halle and
North Germany; and yet, when the call came to him, in 1836, to resume
his position at Heidelberg, he was unable to resist it. He had
previously declined without hesitation to entertain a proposal to
remove to Kiel. Many considerations weighed with him; certainly,
however, not an increase of income, for he positively lost by the
change. The thought of revived intimacy with Umbreit; the being near
to his aged father; the beauty of Heidelberg; perhaps, too, the
sorrows associated with Halle; but, above all, the prospect held out
that his return should be the first step in the renewal of the
theological faculty, were the magnets drawing him homeward. Still he
found it difficult to decide. The Prussian Government did all in their
power to retain him, but he thought duty pointed to a return; and he
accordingly left Halle in the autumn of 1836. He could not always
congratulate himself on the step thus taken. Indeed, a certain feeling
of disappointment almost immediately took possession of him. He
missed especially the large Halle auditories. In Halle he had 100
students; in Heidelberg he began with six, who evinced, moreover,
little interest. His hope of securing Nitzsch as a colleague was
frustrated; the Government soon grew weary of special efforts to
further theological study; the old ornaments of Heidelberg died
rapidly out; and the new generation had neither faith nor refinement,
so that when a professorship was offered him in 1841 at the University
of Bonn he was strongly tempted to accept it, although he had
previously refused one at Tübingen. Indeed, he probably would have
returned to Prussia but for the renewal of the promises to do more for
theology than had been done heretofore, and an autograph letter from
the Grand Duke himself, begging him in the most flattering terms to
remain. Having, soon after this time, purchased a house and garden of
his own, he settled down inwardly and outwardly as a permanent
Heidelberg fixture.
Death again visited his household, taking this time the only remaining
daughter of his first wife, and the only child of his second. In other
respects, however, he grew more content as the years advanced; partly
because the circle of sympathizing friends gradually increased, and
partly because the state of things at the University materially
improved. The advent of new colleagues like Rothe, Hundeshagen,
Schenkel, and Schöberlein, was naturally a source of great
satisfaction.
In 1842, he completed his principal work--'The Reformers before the
Reformation.' It was his last great effort. An intention, long
entertained, of writing a life of Luther, was never realized. He
became too absorbed in the various theoretical and practical questions
that successively agitated the political, theological, and
ecclesiastical worlds, to find time or energy for extensive literary
undertakings; not that he ceased writing, but that what he wrote bore
predominant reference to questions of immediate interest, and appeared
for the most part in the pages of the _Studien und Kritiken_. Two of
the most notable of the essays written at this period are those on the
'Cultus des Genius' and 'Das Wesen des Christenthums.' The former was
directed against Strauss, who, in his 'Vergängliches und Bleibendes im
Christenthum,' having reduced Jesus Christ to the rank of a religious
genius, maintained that the cultus of genius is the only form of
public and common religion the educated of the present generation can
celebrate. The immediate occasion of his 'Sendschreiben,' as he termed
it, was an oration delivered by his friend Schwab in connection with
the inauguration of a monument to Schiller, at Marburg. It has always
been esteemed one of the freshest, completest, and most artistic
products of his pen. Of the geniality of the tone in which he
approached the subject, the following passage will be sufficient
evidence:--
'Our age is an age of distracted spirits. Let us look at
the greatest among them, that ideal of all who really are,
or affect to be, at discord with themselves and God, the
Poet-Lord! A spirit of defiance, of contempt for mankind,
of doubt; a cold breath of hopelessness and destructiveness
pervades his writings. Terror is his domain; the
destruction and misery of mankind are his dwelling place;
he knows little of those fundamental elements of piety,
hope, humility, and self-sacrifice. And yet who dare deny
that he is engaged in a struggle, painful and desperate it
is true, after the highest; that he is filled with
irrepressible longings after the noblest? Because human
life seemed to him so vain and empty, therefore did he
despise it; because he would fain have loved men so much
more truly than he could, therefore did he hate them; and
yet, when at certain moments the primal consciousness of
the heavenly and divine welled up from the depths of his
soul, what energy and vitality did it evince, and what a
mighty influence did it wield!'
There is very much in this essay that deserves carefully weighing by
all who are mixed up with the intellectual struggles of the present
time; and we have noted numerous passages for quotation, but our space
forbids. The second one, on the 'Essence of Christianity,' strikes us
as a scarcely satisfactory answer to the question discussed, though
one's estimate of it naturally depends on one's own point of view. His
course of thought is as follows.
Christianity, although unchangeably one and the same, has been viewed
in different ages in different ways; first as doctrine, then as law,
then as a plan of redemption. If we wish to understand its inmost
essence, and to account for its workings in their entire compass, we
must regard it as a new life, grounded on a complex of divine deeds
and manifesting itself in human works. This life necessarily had a
creative centre; this centre must have been a living one; and as it is
life of the highest kind, the centre must have been a person. The
founder of Christianity was the person in whom was effected that which
all religions have striven after, the perfect union of God and man.
Such being his character, the relation in which he stands to the
religion founded by him, is not the outward one which subsists where
the religion is advanced as a doctrine, or a law, or an institution;
no, he himself embodies in himself the religion he founded, and his
religion is essentially faith and life in him. The essence, the
distinguishing character of Christianity, must accordingly be defined
to be the person of its founder. Many of the ideas unfolded in this
essay have exercised a very great influence on, and are now the common
property of Christendom. Schleiermacher was the first in modern times
to assign to the person of Christ the central position in
Christianity; but Ullmann purified Schleiermacher's teaching on this
subject from its speculative accessories, and made it in the best
sense popular. The wide-spread tendency among the preachers and
religious thinkers of this country to bring the person Christ to the
foreground is, unquestionably, largely traceable to this German
source. What we should blame in it is the vagueness and sentimentalism
by which it is often accompanied or marked. The treatise pleased
neither the critical nor the ultra-orthodox. An attack made on it by
Count Agenor de Gasparin, in the 'Archives du Christianisme' (1851),
called forth a reply from Ullmann which, to our mind, is far more
interesting and valuable than the work it was meant to defend. From
that reply, which appeared in the _Studien_ of 1852, we cannot forbear
making the following quotation, partly for what seems to us its
intrinsic suggestiveness, and partly because it is characteristic of
its author's position. 'The subject in dispute between Count Gasparin
and myself,' says Ullmann,
'May be reduced to three points, the relation first between
the outer and inner rule; secondly, between dogma and love;
thirdly, between the person and the work of the Saviour. As
to the first point, he appeals solely to the outer rule.
Now an outer rule is one that comes to us from without,
with the claim to be the norm of our spiritual life. The
completest embodiment of the idea of the outer rule is
Catholicism. But the Count will say, "The true outer rule
is the Bible, not the Church." But how does he decide which
of these outer rules is the true one? Each is a form of the
same thing; each claims to be the only true form. In
discriminating between them, appeal must clearly be made to
an inner rule of some kind or other. Do I then mean to deny
that the Scriptures are an outer rule? Certainly not! If I
am asked, In what sense, then, is the Bible an outer
rule?--is it in a sense that excludes all reference to an
inner rule, to something higher, deeper, broader than the
written word? I reply, No! In such a sense the Bible does
not itself claim to be an outer rule. That in it which is
outward issued forth from what was originally inward, and
has the tendency, and is designed to become inward again.
In thus becoming inward, it is not intended to operate as
an outward rule, but to bear witness to itself in our inner
life, and secure our free assent. Inward and outward thus
act and react on each other. If the Scripture be a rule, it
is fair to ask whence it came to us? It did not fall from
heaven; it was not written immediately by the hand of God;
it did not exist prior to Christianity. Christianity, on
the contrary, existed first, and the Scripture was the
organ through which it presented itself to, and propagated
itself among men. That which existed before Scripture was
the complex of saving facts, whose centre is Christ and the
Christian life. The function of the Scripture, therefore,
was to be the medium of making known the person and work of
Christ, where the living message could not reach. For this
reason its position and worth are not unconditional. Christ
it is who conditions Scripture and gives it its worth. It
is not the Scripture that gives authority to Christ, but
Christ to Scripture. The proper object of faith is Christ,
not the Scripture; the latter is merely the guide and
educator unto Christ.'
The point of view indicated in the above extract is one that needs
taking to heart and developing by the Christian thinkers of this
country; rightly carried out, it would aid them materially in meeting
the difficulties raised by the critics or opponents of the Bible. The
exposition of the nature and function of mysticism in this same reply
is admirable.
In two things, Ullmann had always differed from the majority of German
theologians, and resembled the majority of English theologians. He
endeavoured to write so as to be intelligible and acceptable to
educated laymen, and aimed at exerting direct practical influence.
Science, including theology, is too frequently pursued and expounded
in Germany in the genuine dry-as-dust style; and theological authors
in particular have been in the habit of completely ignoring the fact
that they lived to serve the Church, and ought therefore to have an
eye to its practical needs in all their enquiries. Hence the
astonishing ignorance of theology that prevails in all but
distinctively professional circles. A better feeling on this point has
been growing up during the last ten years; but any change of practice
has been rather forced on the theologians than spontaneously
adopted--forced on them by the consideration that the laity of their
Church were being utterly robbed of faith by the popular
anti-Christian expositions of philosophy, criticism, and natural
science that abounded. We in this country have erred for the most part
in an opposite direction. Our eye to popularity and practical effect
has had a squint in it. But though our theological investigations have
lacked depth, they have, at all events, been far more widely
appreciated. And that our fault is the less serious of the two is
clear from the fact which is possibly unknown to most--that sound
German theological works like those published by the Messrs. Clark, of
Edinburgh, have had, with few exceptions, a larger circulation in the
English than in their original dress. Still, it were well if both
writers and readers in this country were a little more eager to sound
the deeper depths of the science even at the risk of creating and
meeting with difficulties.
The desire felt by Ullmann to exert a direct influence in Church
matters grew with his years. He longed to see the ideas he had
expounded becoming realities, and thought he could and ought
personally to put hand to the work. There was much, too, in the
circumstances of the ten years that preceded 1853 to draw his mind in
the direction in which it naturally tended. Germany was everywhere in
a state of ferment; especially in the domain of ecclesiastical
affairs, were new and difficult problems constantly presenting
themselves. He was also repeatedly called upon by the authorities of
various German States to supply them with _Gutachten_ on difficulties
that had arisen; and the opinions he gave carried great weight,
because of the sound judgment, thorough conscientiousness, and
reverential liberality which characterised them.
One movement in particular greatly strengthened the inclination to
which we are referring: we mean the secession from the Roman Catholic
Church of Germany that took place under Ronge. He was not, however,
carried away by it, as were many of his contemporaries, who hailed it
as the harbinger of a new era in the history of the Christian Church.
Its insignificance was clear to him from the very first. In a letter
to his friend Schwab, he says sarcastically:--'The reformers of the
nineteenth century have already passed through Heidelberg and
Mannheim, doing a notable amount of eating and drinking and halloeing
by the way.' An essay on the subject, published originally in the
_Studien_ for 1845, and afterwards as a pamphlet, contains much that
bears forcibly on efforts that are now being made among ourselves to
form churches or religious communities without either historical or
doctrinal basis.
In 1853, a post was offered to him, which seemed to meet the wish he
had cherished, to be able to wield direct practical influence in
ecclesiastical affairs. He was called to be _Prälat_ of Baden. This
office or dignity--to which nothing exactly corresponds in our own
country--conferred on its holder a seat in the Upper Chamber of
Deputies, as the representative of the Evangelical Church; but,
singularly enough, did not necessarily make him a member of the Upper
Ecclesiastical Council, so that his direct influence was more personal
than official. Ullmann hesitated at first to sacrifice the quiet and
independence of his University position, and the opportunities of free
action which he largely enjoyed, possessing, as he did, the confidence
of the better clergy throughout the country; but at length he yielded.
Considerations, such as loyalty to his prince, disgust at the
illiberal liberalism that was increasingly gaining the upper hand at
Heidelberg, and perhaps, too, an unconscious stirring of ambition,
influenced his decision; but the main reason, undoubtedly, was the one
to which reference has already been made. Before making this change,
he did as he had done when he consented to remove from Halle to
Heidelberg, and his experience, as a man of a less idealistic turn of
mind might have anticipated, was again the same. He stipulated for
many alterations, both in the principles and methods of ecclesiastical
procedure. Could the programme which he laid before the Grand Duke
have been thoroughly carried out, a great reform would have been the
consequence; but the programme was a professor's programme, and the
professor was not the man to make it a reality. He soon found that
bureaucratic redtapeism, vested interests, indifference, incapacity,
not to mention intrigue and open opposition, were as common in the
higher ecclesiastical as in the political circles, and as difficult to
vanquish.
In 1857, he was appointed to the office of Director of the Upper
Ecclesiastical Council--a position equivalent, in some respects, to
that of the Minister of Cultus in Prussia. The increase of honour
brought an increase of care, but the increase of apparent power did
not bring a corresponding increase of real power. He was associated
with men who, besides being narrow bureaucrats, and having no sympathy
with the higher interests of the Church, looked on Ullmann as a sort
of interloper; the consequence being perpetual struggles and
annoyance, without adequate compensation. Dislike to him personally
began also to spread among the clergy, and the laity charged him with
being a High Church reactionary. His difficulties culminated in the
so-called _Agenden-Streit_, and in the disputes relating to the new
constitution proposed for the Church; the upshot of the whole, being
that, in 1860, he retired from office, broken in health, and almost
broken in spirit.
He was never able to resume independent literary work, though he did
again undertake the direction of the _Studien und Kritiken_, which for
several years had mainly devolved on his colleague Umbreit. After the
death of the latter, in 1860, he associated Dr. Rothe with himself as
joint editor; but, owing to an ever-increasing divergence of their
views--both practical and theoretical--this arrangement terminated in
1864, at which date the journal passed into the hands of its present
editors.
The faith that Ullmann had expounded and defended in life, sustained
him in the decline of health and in the hour of death. In the autumn
of 1863, both bodily and intellectual vigour began seriously to fail;
and on the 12th of January, 1865, he died, surrounded by his family,
and repeating to himself the closing words of that grand, but almost
too moving hymn--
'O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden.'
FOOTNOTES:
[43] For the materials of this paper, we are largely indebted to a
biographical sketch by Dr. W. Beyschlag, Professor of Theology in
Halle.
[44] This is the examination which every _gymnasiast_, or scholar of a
Gymnasium, who intends going to a University must pass ere quitting
school. Papers certifying that this examination has been passed have
to be laid before the University authorities prior to matriculation.
[45] F. A. Perthes, of Gotha, son of F. Perthes, has recently
published a collected and cheaper edition of the works of Ullmann.
[46] Dr. Gieseler, author of one of the most valuable Church histories
Germany has produced; Dr. Lücke, best known by his exhaustive
commentary on the writings of St. John; and Dr. Nitzsch, equally
celebrated as a theologian and practical ecclesiastic.
[47] A translation has been published by the Messrs. Clark, of
Edinburgh. The line of argument pursued by Ullmann has an important
bearing on controversies that are now arising in our midst, especially
on that relating to the Incarnation, as opened by such writers as Mr.
Hutton, in his 'Essays,' and Mr. Baring-Gould, in his work on 'The
Origin and Development of Religious Beliefs.' It is not a little
remarkable that the latter, in his discussion of the evidence for the
incarnation, should never allude to the sinlessness of our Lord--a
point on which great stress has justly been laid by some of the most
eminent of the recent apologists for Christianity. If it be true that
Christ was sinless; if it be further true that moral perfection is
impossible, save on the condition of complete fellowship and harmony
with God; if it be further true that the creature, the more intimate
its fellowship with God, the more completely it will recognise, in
word and deed, the distinction between itself and God, then, as it
seems to us, the sinlessness of Jesus, taken in connection with the
claims he advanced for himself, involves his standing in a relation to
God such as is meant by the word incarnation. Either that, or his own
very assertion of sinlessness, is one of the strongest evidences of
his sinfulness. Mr. Baring-Gould's arguments for the incarnation, in
_another form_, may be utilized by such as hold the old position; in
his hands, they seem to us a piece of caprice.
ART. II.--_Aerial Voyages._
_Travels in the Air._ By JAMES GLAISHER, F.R.S., CAMILLE FLAMMARION,
W. DE FONVIELLE, and GASTON TISSANDIER. Edited by JAMES GLAISHER,
F.R.S. With 125 illustrations. London: Richard Bentley and Son. 1871.
A few years ago a Frenchman, apostrophising the Genius of Humanity as
none but a Frenchman can do, took the liberty of reproaching that
metaphorical being for its extreme backwardness in one department of
duty. He called upon it to 'march,' an injunction which his countrymen
are so fond of issuing that they sometimes forget to tell you where,
or to state the reason why. The present age, he intimated, demanded
this movement: the coming generations would be greatly disappointed if
it were not accomplished. 'One effort,' said he encouragingly to the
Genius, 'and the future is thine (_l'avenir t'appartient_)!' The
crooked places, he promised, should be made straight, and the rough
ones delightfully smooth. There should be no more mountains (Pyrenees
or otherwise), and the valleys should become as level as the plains!
And what does the reader suppose was the duty in respect of which the
genius in question was so shamefully in arrear? It was, says M.
Farcot, in the matter of aerostation. How is it, asked this
individual, somewhat sharply, that man, who is so anxious to conquer
everything and everybody (except, we might add, himself), should not
have made greater exertions to subdue the sole element which continues
in a state of rebellion? How is it that a being who has such
magnificent forces at command, and can traverse the ocean with an ease
and a rapidity which the fleetest denizens of the deep cannot surpass,
should suffer himself to be outstripped in the air by an insignificant
fly? M. Farcot could not comprehend it; M. Farcot would not submit to
it. He therefore offered his services to mankind as the precursor of a
new era, in which the balloon was to become the prominent figure, and
entreated the object of his invocation to wake up, and with a single
bound to overleap the gulf that lay between it and its greatest
triumphs.
We are not in a position to state whether the genius in question
listened favourably to M. Farcot's fervid appeal; but it is certain
that his hopes have not yet been realized. The balloon has always
appeared to possess such splendid capabilities that it is no wonder
its admirers never weary of predicting a brilliant future for the
machine. Considering the prominent part which Frenchmen have played in
the history of aerostation, it will be readily understood that the
apparatus commenced its career with a dash and _élan_ which led
mankind to anticipate that it would accomplish marvellous things, and
become one of the foremost agents in the great work of civilization.
Our lively neighbours, ever on the alert for glory until their recent
misfortunes, and probably so still, were charmed with the idea of
conquering a new region, though it contained nothing but clouds, and
were by no means insensible to the vanity of riding in the air, though
in most cases they went up, like their famous sovereign, simply to
come down again.
Many years have elapsed--nearly a century--since Pilâtre de Rozier and
the Marquis d'Arlandes made their daring voyage into the atmosphere in
the car of a fire-balloon, this being the first excursion ever
attempted by living creatures, if we except three anonymous animals, a
sheep, a duck, and a cock, which were sent up in the previous month,
and returned in safety to the earth. But as yet, though the machine
has rendered considerable service to science, and will doubtless
assist in the solution of many interesting problems, it is a thing of
promise rather than of performance. It is still in a rudimentary
state, and should be received, says M. Glaisher, simply 'as the first
principle of some aerial instrument which remains to be suggested.'
Potentially, it may include the germ of some great invention, just as
Hiero's eolipile and Lord Worcester's 'water-commanding' engine
contained a prophecy of the most masterly of human machines--the steam
giants of Watt. But to apply the well-known metaphor of Franklin,
when asked what was the use of a balloon, we may say that the
'infant' has not grown up into a man.
Within the last twelve months, however, this largest of human
toys--the plaything of pleasure seekers, and the cynosure of all eyes
at _fêtes_ and tea-gardens--has been converted into a useful machine,
though under the pressure of circumstances which every philanthropist
must deeply deplore.
Of course, when the balloon was presented to mankind, one of the first
thoughts which suggested itself to our combative race was this--'Can
we turn it to any account in war? Will it assist us in killing our
enemies, or capturing their fortresses?' And when we remember that the
machine was reared amongst the most military people in Europe, can we
doubt that as Napoleon's great question respecting the Simplon road
was, whether it would carry cannon, so the chief point with a
Frenchman would be, whether a balloon could be rendered of any service
in a battle? Not many years were suffered to elapse before regular
experiments were instituted with this view. An aerostatic school was
established at Meudon, a company of aeronauts, under the command of
Colonel Coutelle, was formed, and a number of balloons constructed by
Couté were distributed amongst the divisions of the French army, not
even forgetting the troops despatched to Egypt. At the sieges of
Maubeuge, Charleroi, Mannheim, and Ehrenbreitstein the invention was
found to be of some value for purposes of reconnoitring; and previous
to the battle of Fleurus, Coutelle and an officer spent several hours
in the air, studying the positions of the Austrians, and this with
such effect that their information materially assisted General Jourdan
in gaining the victory. The machine was, of course, held captive
during the process, but its tether was easily extended by means of a
windlass, and thus the occupants were enabled to soar above the
enemy's fire.
More than once it has been proposed to build huge balloons, and
freight them with shells and other missiles, which might be
conveniently dropped down upon a hostile corps, or 'plumped' into the
midst of a beleaguered town. With a view to the demolition of the
fortress of St. Juan de Ulloa, during the war between Mexico and the
United States, Mr. Wise suggested the construction of an enormous
air-ship, which was to carry up a quantity of bombs and torpedoes,
and, whilst securely moored in the atmosphere by means of a cable
several miles in length, it would be in a position to rain down death
upon the devoted place. To its honour, however, the American
Government declined the use of such an aerial battery.
Fortunately--we think we may say fortunately--for the interests of
mankind, the balloon has not succeeded to any considerable extent as a
military machine. Even the Jesuit Lana felt inclined to weep over his
abortive project (he did pray over it) when he considered how easy it
would be for warlike marauders to set the stoutest walls and ramparts
at defiance, and to hurl destruction into any city they might select.
Let us hope that the balloon is destined for more pacific purposes.
The range of modern guns, and the difficulty of manoeuvring so
rudderless an apparatus, seem to cut it off from a career of glory. If
employed for purposes of reconnoitring purely, and kept in a captive
condition, it may occasionally render service by darting suddenly into
the atmosphere, and taking a glimpse of the enemy's position or
movements. But, then, a tethered balloon, as M. de Fonvielle
intimates, belongs neither to the air nor the earth; it is a creature
compelled to serve two masters, and therefore cannot do its duty to
either; but, whilst attempting to obey the commands of its rulers
below, it is forced to yield to the caprice of the breezes above. If
free, asks M. Simonin, and if the wind were everything the aerial
heroes could wish; if, moreover, the balloon, charged with the most
formidable fulminates, were carried direct to the hostile camp, could
they expect to find the enemy massed for a review or a manoeuvre
precisely at the spot over which they sailed, and could they time
their discharges so beautifully, having due regard to the speed of the
machine, that their projectiles should explode at the most fitting
moment for damaging their foes? Happily, in neither of the two
greatest struggles of recent times--how recent none need say, for the
scent of blood is yet on the soil of Virginia, and the bones of Teuton
and Gaul still lie blended on the fields of France--has the balloon
brought itself into formidable confederacy with Krupp cannon or the
murderous mittrailleuse.
War, however, the greatest of scourges, is sometimes compelled, in the
good providence of God, to yield an incidental harvest of blessings.
Liberty has often been entrusted to the keeping of the bayonet, and
civilization has more than once depended upon the explosive virtues of
charcoal and saltpetre. It is not impossible that the recent
investment of Paris may ultimately lead to the development of aerial
navigation on a scale which would gladden the heart of M. Farcot, and
almost satisfy the expectations of some of the greatest enthusiasts in
the art. We allude, of course, to the employment of the balloon for
postal purposes. During the recent siege of that city--we mean, of
course, by the Germans, and not by Frenchmen themselves--upwards of
fifty of these aerial packets sailed from the beleaguered metropolis
with despatches for the outer world. They conveyed about
two-and-a-half millions of letters, representing a total weight of
about ten tons. Most of them took out a number of pigeons, which were
intended to act as postmen from the provinces. One, called _Le Général
Faidherbe_, was furnished with four shepherds' dogs, which it was
hoped would break through the Prussian lines, carrying with them
precious communications concealed under their collars. The greater
number of these balloons were under the management of seamen,
sometimes solitary ones, whose nautical training, it was naturally
supposed, would qualify them more especially for the duties of aerial
navigation. More than one fell into the hands of the enemy, having
dropped down right amongst the Prussians. In some of these cases the
crews were generally made prisoners, but in others they effected their
escape; and more than once their despatches were preserved in a very
remarkable way--in one instance being secreted in a dung cart, and in
another being rescued by a forester, and conveyed to Buffet, the
aeronaut of the _Archimède_, who had been sent out in search of them,
and had traversed the hostile lines on his errand. Many of these
postal vessels were carried to a considerable distance, some landing
in Belgium, Holland, or Bavaria; whilst one, _La Ville d'Orléans_, was
swept into Norway, and came to anchor about 600 miles north of
Christiania. A few, unhappily, never landed at all. _Le Jacquard_,
which left the Orleans railway station on the 28th November, with a
bold sailor for its sole occupant, disappeared like many a gallant
ship. It was last observed above Rochelle, and probably foundered at
sea, as some of its papers were picked up in the Channel. _Le Jules
Favre_ (the second of that name), which set out two days subsequently,
has arrived nowhere as yet; and one of the last of these
mail-balloons, the _Richard Wallace_, is missing, as much as if it had
sailed off the planet into infinite space. So long as these machines
continued to be launched by day, they were exposed to a fusillade
whilst traversing the girdle of the Prussian guns, the bullets
whistling round them even at an elevation of 900 or 1,000 mètres. To
avoid this peril it became necessary to start them by night, although
the disadvantages of nocturnal expeditions, in which no light could be
carried, and consequently the barometer could not be duly read, were
held by many to outweigh all the dangers attaching to German
projectiles.
Let us now attempt an imaginary voyage through the air, availing
ourselves as much as possible of the experience of the gentlemen whose
excursions are chronicled in the work which heads this article. A more
attractive volume cannot well be imagined. It is the production of one
Englishman and three Frenchmen. Mr. Glaisher is well known, in
companionship with Mr. Coxwell, as our greatest authority on the
subject. All his visits to the clouds have been for scientific
purposes, and if the question,
Quis crederet unquam
Aerias hominem carpere posse vias?
could be put in reference to any man, it might surely be applied to
him, for he has had the honour of ascending higher than any other
mortal from Icarus to Gay-Lussac. MM. Flammarion, Fonvielle, and
Tissandier are all enthusiasts in the matter of ballooning; the second
of these gentlemen having expressed his willingness to be shot up into
the air in connection with a sky-rocket, provided its projectile force
could be duly regulated and a proper parachute were attached. In the
narratives of their numerous ascents, there is necessarily some degree
of sameness; but the whole are not only thoroughly readable, but
thoroughly enjoyable to the last. The illustrations to the book are
really superb. As a mere portfolio of sky-sketches, it is well worth
the price. Not unreasonably indeed, one of the writers expresses his
hope that the work will form a kind of epoch in the history of the
subject, 'for it is the first time that artists have gone up in
balloons for the purpose of familiarizing the eyes of the public with
a series of aerial scenes.' We have charts of triple texture, showing,
first, the path of the machine through the air; secondly, the
geography of the country over which it passed; and thirdly, the
gradations of light and darkness during the expedition, these being so
arranged as to answer point for point. We have also pictures in which
the balloon is seen in almost every phase of adventure--sweeping
through the clouds, plodding through the snow, cruising amongst the
stars by night, exploding in the sky, plunging into the sea, dragging
on the ground, caught in the trees, stranded amongst the sheepfolds,
or tumbling upon the coast and struggling madly to escape the pursuing
billows. But we have also some gorgeous views of cloud-land, with its
marvellous scenery; now silvered with the pale radiance of the moon or
the stars, now drenched in the golden glories of the setting sun--at
one time darkening into night under the gathering thunderstorm, at
another fantastically illuminated with haloes and many-tinted spectra;
and through all these wonderful fields of air, a tiny sphere, a mere
bubble of the sky, with a bubble or two of human breath attached, may
be seen pursuing its noiseless way as if it had escaped for ever from
this turbulent earth.
Before we start, however, the great question is, Dare we start at all?
Well might the first aerial navigator, like the anonymous hero _qui
fragilem, truci commisit pelago ratem primus_, shudder at his own
audacity as he launched his miserable vessel upon the untraversed
deep. When it was first determined to send up some human beings to the
clouds in a Montgolfier, it was by no means an unnatural suggestion
that the experiment should be tried upon a couple of criminals; but
French valour would not permit even French rascality to carry off the
honour of the exploit, and Pilâtre de Rozier indignantly protested
that vile malefactors ought not to have 'the glory of being the first
to rise in the air.' Brave men, however, whose courage could not be
impeached even in the fieriest hour of battle, have been known to
shrink from a balloon when they would have calmly faced a battery. A
gallant field-marshal, says Flammarion, 'who had never hesitated to
advance through the discharge of cannon and musketry,' declared more
than once that he would not, for a whole empire, ascend even in a
captive machine! On the other hand, it is related of an old woman (who
had been an inmate of Lambeth workhouse for forty years, and who, on
losing her son at the age of seventy-five, exclaimed, 'I felt sure I
should never bring up that poor child!') that being asked on her
hundredth birthday what treat she would like by way of celebrating the
occasion, the ancient female decided upon an excursion in the great
balloon then tethered at Chelsea. Her wish was granted, and she
enjoyed a ride in the atmosphere at the foot of this huge floating
gasometer, which was fettered to the earth by a cable of two thousand
feet in length. The fair sex, indeed, have never exhibited much
timidity in dealing with balloons. Out of the seven hundred persons
carried up in the air at various times by the veteran Green, not less
than one hundred and twenty were females. 'If,' hinted he to
Fonvielle, 'you wish balloons to become popular in France, begin by
taking women in them; men will be sure to follow!' Does not this
accord to the letter with George Stephenson's dictum, that feminine
influence would draw a man from the other side of the globe when
nothing else would move him? Not that we think the advice was
specially needed for France, for the first lady who made an ascent was
a Frenchwoman, Mme. Thiblé; and the first lady who met her death on an
aerial excursion was Mme. Blanchard, who belonged to the same nation.
First of all, then, we ought to see the balloon before it is inflated.
There it lies, a vast expanse of varnished silk, or calico, or
india-rubber cloth, enveloped in netting, and covering many a square
yard of ground with its flabby, crumpled form. Nothing more lifeless
and uninteresting can well be conceived than the huge shape which, in
a short time, will lift itself by degrees from the soil, like a giant
creeping gradually into consciousness, and then standing erect in all
the pride of its newly-discovered powers, will expand into one of the
most stately and picturesque machines ever invented by man. It is even
possible to sympathise with M. Flammarion in his heroics when he
imagines an aeronaut addressing it in language of mingled insult and
adulation:--
"Inert and formless thing, that I can now trample under my
feet, that I can tear with my hands, here stretched dead
upon the ground--my perfect slave--I am about to give thee
life, that thou mayest become my sovereign! In the height
of my generosity I shall make thee even greater than
myself! O vile and powerless thing! I shall abandon myself
to thy majesty, O creature of my hands, and thou shalt
carry my kingdom unto thine own element, which I have
created for thee; thou shalt fly off to the regions of
storms and tempests, and I shall be forced to follow thee!
I shall become thy plaything; thou shalt do what thou wilt
with me, and forget that I gave thee life!"
For many reasons, carburetted hydrogen, or coal gas, is the agent
employed to give levity to the machine. In the earlier days of
aerostation, hydrogen presented strong temptations. It is the lightest
of the gases, being upwards of fourteen times rarer than atmospheric
air, and therefore it was naturally regarded as the element best
fitted to do man's bidding, and to drag him nearest to the stars. But
hydrogen is an expensive article, and needs an elaborate apparatus for
its production, whereas coal gas is burnt in every civilized street,
and may be obtained in any quantity by connecting a flexible tube with
the nearest tap. In the still darker ages of aeronautic science, it is
well known that heated air was the element employed; and, going back
into yet more benighted times, we find that Father Lana proposed to
give buoyancy to copper globes by filling them, as an Hibernian once
remarked, with a vacuum; whilst another worthy Père, Galien of
Avignon, gravely suggested that balloons should be inflated with
attenuated air, brought down from mountain tops in bags prepared for
the purpose, in which case they would, of course, ascend to similar
heights!
Let us now enter the car. The huge monster above us is swaying to and
fro in the breeze, and struggling for freedom like some giant soul
which has done its work on earth and is eager to reach its native
skies. The cords which hold us captive are loosed, and, as if by
instinct, we grasp the nearest rope, or hold fast to the wicker work,
to secure ourselves from the effects of our sudden translation--we
might almost say projection--through the air. But the first feeling is
one of surprise. We find ourselves perfectly stationary, whilst,
strange to say, the earth--the great solid globe on which we recently
stood, with all its towers and temples, its gazing crowds and
spreading landscapes--is seen shooting downwards in space with
frightful velocity! Worse still, glancing upwards, the sky appears to
be falling, as if the ceiling of the universe had given way; and
yonder big dark cloud, which seemed to be motionless when we took our
seat, is now tumbling headlong upon us, and will, infallibly, crush
our balloon like a moth. It requires some little consideration to
correct this delusion, and satisfy ourselves that here, as in many of
the moral and social phenomena of life, the change is in us, and not
in the world itself.
As we rise, the view below grows more expansive, but, at the same
time, it appears to flatten. The hills are planed down, the valleys
are filled up, and the rich undulations and inequalities which
contribute so much to the picturesque are in a great measure lost to
the aerial eye. We seem to be hovering over a huge, variegated
ordnance map, tinted for the most part with green; its rivers looking
like silver ribbons, its railways like ruled lines, its woods
represented by patches of verdure, and its towns exhibiting grooves or
gutters for streets, and kitchen areas for squares.
This effect is the more striking when we look perpendicularly down
upon tall, slender objects like steeples, pillars, or elevated
statues. The Monument of London becomes a mere gilded speck on the
pavement. The hapless column in the Place Vendôme, now overthrown by
the hands of Frenchmen themselves, was described by an aeronaut as a
kind of 'pin stuck head downwards in a cushion.' A view of the statue
of Napoleon, as seen from on high, is given by M. Flammarion, and
presents a ludicrous picture, the figure being crushed into a sort of
black amorphous lump, which would be utterly unintelligible were it
not that the shadow exhibits something of the human form, and not
inaptly suggests some strong reflections respecting the fallen
fortunes of the imperial dynasty. In fact, the landscape seems to be
flattened as if some great roller had passed over it, and ironed out
all the prominences in order to reduce it to one vast plain.
This appearance may be qualified by another, which, however, is not
visible to every voyager. Without going so far as to imagine that the
earth will display any portion of its convexity, we certainly should
not expect it to assume a concave aspect to the eye. Yet, for the same
reason that the sky above us looks like a great vault, and that the
clouds overhead slope down towards the horizon, if sufficiently
extended, the landscape beneath us should appear to be similarly
hollowed were it surveyed from a corresponding elevation. In some
degree, and to some susceptible minds, this curious impression is
realized in a balloon. The central parts of the expanse below seem to
sink and assume a dish-like form, so that, as M. Flammarion observes,
we float between two vast concavities, the blue dome of heaven resting
upon the green and shallow but inverted dome of earth.
But can we witness all this without a sensation of giddiness? Is not
our enjoyment of the scene marred by a strong disposition to vertigo,
such as is natural to human heads when raised to perilous altitudes?
This tendency, however, is far less prevalent than might be expected
in the car of a balloon. Professor Jacobi, who could not look down
from a lofty building without dizziness, made his first, perhaps his
only ascent without experiencing the least swimming of the brain. The
chief feeling of an aeronaut, according to M. Simonin, is one of
elation; his sense of individuality becoming so triumphant that he
glances down upon the poor wretched globe he has left grovelling in
its sins and sorrows, with a species of pity which is probably very
much akin to contempt! But this sentiment, according to M. Flammarion,
may be combined with another of a much more equivocal description. 'I
also felt,' says this gentleman, 'a vague desire to throw myself out
of the balloon. Though feeling convinced that it would be certain
death, I was under the influence of a mild temptation to allow myself
to fall, and my death became, for the moment, a matter of indifference
to me.' The lofty air with which this is written, and the supreme
_nonchalance_ displayed, are eminently characteristic of the soil, or
rather of the sons of France. 'Let me live or let me die,' he seems to
say; 'whether I float in these pure ethereal regions, victorious over
all the evils of earth, or whether my body lies shattered on those
rocks below, a mass of featureless pulp, is a question of no
consequence to Camille Flammarion! He is perfectly content whether he
figures as an aerial conqueror or as a poor, palpitating corpse!'
We continue rising. The balloon will, of course, persist in doing so
until the weight of the included gas and of the entire apparatus
exactly balances an equal bulk of the surrounding air. Starting from
the earth with all its buoyant power in hand, it would soon acquire a
considerable momentum were it not controlled by the resistance of the
atmosphere, which reduces its motion to a steady, uniform ascent. This
presumes, however, that nothing transpires to alter its gravity. The
addition of a few rain-drops to the machine would infallibly slacken
its speed, whilst the fall overboard of one of the passengers would
convert it for the time into a runaway balloon. When Mr. Cocking
severed his parachute from the great _Nassau_, the latter, huge as it
was, bounded aloft with such swiftness that whilst the poor fellow was
descending to death, the two aeronauts seemed to be mounting to
destruction, either by the bursting of the balloon or the stifling
emission of gas.
In another way, also, too rapid a start may lead to dangerous
consequences. In 1850, MM. Bixio and Barral took their places in the
car of a balloon inflated with pure hydrogen. Their object in using
this lightest of all aerial fluids was to climb to an elevation of
thirty or forty thousand feet; but not having made due allowance for
its buoyancy, the machine, when released, shot through the air like a
ball from a gun. The envelope expanded so rapidly that it bulged down
upon the aeronauts and shrouded them completely, the car being slung
at too slight a distance below. Struggling like men beneath a fallen
tent, one of them, in his endeavours to extricate himself, tore a hole
in the great bag, from which the gas poured upon them, producing
illness and threatening suffocation. Precipitately they began to sink,
and it was only by tossing everything overboard that they succeeded in
landing safely on the earth. They had traversed a bed of clouds 9,000
feet in thickness, reached a height of 19,000 feet, and then performed
the return journey all in the space of little more than three quarters
of an hour.
Higher and higher we mount. Shall not we knock our sublime heads
against the stars, if we continue to ascend in this indefinite way?
How rapidly we move, and what curious effects vertical travelling may
involve, a single illustration will suggest. Aeronauts may enjoy a
spectacle which, at the first mention, might almost recall the
retrograde movement of the solar shadow on the dial of Ahaz--namely,
that of two sunsets in one day. An early balloonist, M. Charles, was
very much impressed by this vision. When he left the earth for an
evening excursion, the great luminary had just disappeared, but, said
the Frenchman, proudly, 'he rose again for me alone!' 'I had the
pleasure of seeing him set twice on the same day.' For was the
spectacle such as the dwellers on the soil may command, by permitting
the orb to sink behind some elevation, and then mounting it so as to
bring him again into view--thus playing at bo-peep with the lord of
day. For, continued M. Charles, still more proudly, 'I was the only
illuminated object; all the rest of nature being plunged into shadow!'
But now, looking aloft, we observe a mass of clouds, towards which we
are rapidly speeding. There are mountains of snow and great
threatening rocks, against which it seems as if our fragile vessel
would inevitably be dashed. The novice in aerial navigation almost
instinctively holds his breath as he sees the distance narrowing
between his frail skiff and these frowning piles, and awaits the awful
collision. But they open as if by magic, and the balloon glides into
the midst without a shock, or a tremor in its frame. We are then
enveloped for a time in a sort of obscurity, but we have nothing to
fear, for the machine might travel blindfold without dread of the
slightest obstruction in these pathless expanses. Destitute of every
object which could serve as a guide, we proceed until we emerge into
sunshine once more, and then, looking down, we see the clouds through
which we have entered closing like a trap-door after us, and shutting
us out from the dear old world, where we lead such a life of charmed
misery.
Sometimes, however, it seems impossible to rise above the 'smoke and
stir of this dim spot, which men call earth.'
In an ascent from Wolverton, in June, 1863, Mr. Glaisher passed
through an extraordinary succession of fogs and showers and
rain-clouds; and though he soared to a height of 23,000 feet, the
balloon was unable to extricate itself from its earthly entanglements.
Following a fine rain came a dry fog, which continued for some
distance; this traversed, the aeronauts entered a wetting fog, and
subsequently a dry one again. When three miles in height, they
imagined that they would certainly break through the clouds, but, to
their great surprise, nebulous heaps lay above them, beneath them, and
all around them. Up they clambered, but at an elevation of four miles
dense masses still hung overhead as if to forbid any further progress,
and two clouds with fringed edges specially attracted their attention,
from the fact that they were unmistakeably nimbi, although formations
of this latter class are mostly creatures of the nether sky. On
returning, a heavy rain fell pattering on the balloon at an altitude
of three miles, and then, lower down, for a space of 5,000 feet, they
passed through a curious snowy discharge, the air being full of icy
crystals, though the season was high summer.
It is not often, however, that the atmosphere is in this nebulous
condition throughout so large a portion of its depth. For days
together terrestrials may be enveloped in fog and rain, and in that
case must wait patiently until the clouds please to roll off, and
drench some other locality; but if at such seasons we were to jump
into a balloon, we might soon pass out of the watery zone and soar
into the jocund sunshine. Continuing our ascent, therefore, through
the dense tract of moisture we first entered, our machine at last
lifts its head joyously above the surface, and shaking off the cloudy
spray, bounds into a new sphere, where the great giver of light glows
with unadulterated ray. We are, in fact, in a new world. We are
completely cut off from our native earth by a huge continent of
vapour, which appears to have been suddenly petrified into rock.
'Above our heads,' writes Mr. Glaisher, 'rises a noble
roof, a vast dome of the deepest blue. In the east may
perhaps be seen the tints of a rainbow on the point of
vanishing; in the west, the sun silvering the edges of
broken clouds. Below these light vapours may rise a chain
of mountains, the Alps of the sky, rearing themselves one
above the other, mountain above mountain, till the highest
peaks are coloured by the setting sun. Some of these
compact masses look as if ravaged by avalanches, or rent by
the irresistible movement of glaciers. Some clouds seem
built up of quartz, or even diamonds: some, like immense
cones, boldly rise upwards; others resemble pyramids whose
sides are in rough outline. These scenes are so varied and
beautiful that we feel we could remain for ever to wander
above these boundless plains.'
As we ascend, however, a serious question comes into play. To the
first adventurer we may suppose that it would present itself with
alarming force. Shall we be able to breathe safely in yonder upper
regions, where the air is so thin that the lungs must work 'double
shift,' as it were, to procure their necessary supply? At the earth's
surface, it is well known that the atmosphere presses upon every
square inch with a force of from fourteen to fifteen pounds. A column
of air forty miles in height resting upon a man's hat, would, of
course, crush it flat upon his head in a moment, were it not for an
equal resistance within; and, but for the same cause (the equal
diffusion of pressure at the same level), we should all go staggering
along under our burden of thirty thousand pounds--such is our share of
the atmospheric load--or, if laid prostrate, should find ourselves
incapable of rising. But of course the pressure grows smaller as we
ascend, for the simple reason that the height of the column above us
continually decreases. Seeing, moreover, that we are adapted by our
organization to existence at the bottom of this aerial ocean, it is
natural to expect that at considerable elevations some sensible
disturbance of our functions will ensue. At the height of three miles
and three-quarters the barometer, which stands at about thirty inches
at the level of the sea, has sunk to fifteen inches, exhibiting a
pressure of some seven-and-a-half pounds to the square inch, and
showing that as much of the atmosphere in weight is below us as there
is above. Reaching an elevation of between five and six miles, the
mercury would be found to mark ten inches only, representing a
pressure of five pounds to the square inch, and proving that
two-thirds of the aerial ocean had been surmounted, leaving a thin
third alone to be traversed. The following table, as given by Mr.
Glaisher, will, however, best express this decline of density:--
'At the height of 1 mile the barometer reading is 24·7 in.
" 2 miles " " 20·3 "
" 3 " " " 16·7 "
" 4 " " " 13·7 "
" 5 " " " 11·3 "
" 10 " " " 4·2 "
" 15 " " " 1·6 "
" 20 " " " 1·0 " less.'
One indication of increasing rarity in the air is to be found in the
lowering of the point at which water boils. On the surface of the
earth ebullition takes place, as is well known, at 212° Fahr.; but at
the top of a mountain like Mont Blanc, where the pressure is so much
lightened, and the liquid therefore encounters so much less resistance
to its vaporous propensities, it will pass into steam at a temperature
of about 178°. At still greater elevations this point becomes so
ridiculously reduced--if the expression may be employed--that we might
plunge our hand into the fluid when in full simmer, or drink it in the
form of tea when absolutely boiling. Of course, under such
circumstances, it would be impossible to extract the full flavour of
that generous herb unless the process were carried on under artificial
pressure, and therefore the most gentle and legitimate of all
stimulants must lose much of its potency if decocted at 20,000 feet
above the level of the sea.
Another little circumstance is very significant. In opening a flask of
pure water at the earth's surface, we should not expect the cork to
fly out with an explosion as if it were a flask of Clicquot's
sprightliest champagne; but this is what occurs when we reach an
altitude where the external pressure is slight compared with the
spring of the imprisoned air. In dealing with a bottle of frisky
porter or highly impatient soda-water, it may be well to act
cautiously, lest the cork should go like a shot through the envelope
of the balloon; and in drinking the contents it will be wise to wait
till the effervescence has subsided, lest the same results should
arise as those which were experienced by the Siamese king, when,
instead of mixing his soda powders in his goblet, he put the acid and
the alkali separately into his stomach, and left them to settle their
affinities there.
Whilst urging his way aloft, therefore, the novice will probably call
to mind some of the accounts he has read of poor animals which have
been tormented and philosophically murdered in the receiver of an
air-pump. He will remember how miserable butterflies and other insects
have been unable to use their wings, and, after a few flutterings,
have fallen motionless; or how helpless mice, after gasping for a time
in hopeless distress, have expired, unwilling martyrs to science. And
can he enter such an attenuated atmosphere as the one above him
without undergoing some of their agonies, though in a milder and less
fatal form? For, on ascending a lofty mountain, the traveller is soon
reminded that his lungs are dealing with a much thinner fluid than
they inhaled below. Long before he reaches the summit he finds that
his drafts upon the atmosphere are increased in consequence of its
tenuity, and that the requisite supply can only be obtained with much
pulmonary toil. His head begins to ache, a feeling of nausea is
frequently induced, and sometimes he experiences the taste of blood in
the mouth, or the scent of the same fluid in the nostrils. With
throbbing temples and tottering limbs, he drags himself to the peak,
and then probably throws himself upon the rock utterly exhausted, his
first sentiment being one of relief that the ascent is well over, and
his next one of regret that the descent is not already accomplished.
But in estimating the results in such a case, we must remember the
great physical exertion which has been incurred. Every traveller who
plants himself upon the summit of the Dôme du Gouté must have lifted
as many pounds avoirdupois as he weighs, to say nothing of his baggage
and personal accoutrements, to a height of some 15,000 feet in the
atmosphere by the sheer force of his own muscles. To carry one's own
body about is scarcely regarded as porter's work, but what
particularly stout man would ever dream of reaching the Grand Plateau,
or even attempt to scale the Great Pyramid, without a troop of
attendants to drag him to the top? In a balloon, however, all this
expenditure of strength is spared. The aeronaut arrives at an
elevation far higher than the tallest peak in Europe without
squandering as much force as would be required to grind an ounce of
coffee. Here, therefore, the influences of rarefied air may be tested
without any of the complications arising from previous fatigue or
present muscular exhaustion.
Now, the results, as noted by different voyagers, are by no means
accordant. In his first ascent, Mr. Glaisher found his pulse throbbing
at the rate of a hundred per minute, when he had reached a height of
18,844 feet. At 19,415 feet, his heart began to palpitate audibly. At
19,435, it was beating more vehemently, his pulse had accelerated its
pace, his hands and lips were dyed of a dark bluish hue, and it was
with great difficulty that he could read his philosophical
instruments. At 21,792 feet (upwards of four miles), he seemed to lose
the power of making the requisite observations, and a feeling
analogous to sea-sickness stole over him, though there was no heaving
or rolling in the balloon. Of course, we may well suppose that
different individuals will be differently affected. There are some
terrestrials who suffer little from sea-sickness, whilst there are
others who can scarcely cross the bar of a river without incurring the
agonies of that abominable complaint. But Mr. Glaisher seems to be of
opinion that the balloon voyager may speedily master the _maladie de
l'air_, and become quite at home at any elevation hitherto attained.
It is a matter of simple acclimatization. In his own case, he found
that he could breathe without inconvenience at a height of three or
four miles, whereas his first sallies into that region, as we have
seen, were productive of considerable discomfort; and though he
regards an altitude of six or seven miles as the frontier line of
natural respiration, with a possible reserve in favour of its
extension, he hints that artificial appliances may, perhaps, be
devised for freighting the aerostat with the fluid in suitable
quantity, and so enlarging the sphere of atmospheric enterprise. We
are not certain whether this hint has reference to an apparatus for
condensing the air; but it is a pleasant fancy, whether practicable or
not, to picture a couple of excursionists feeding their lungs by
compressing the thin medium around them into pabulum of the needful
density.
There is another enemy, however, to encounter, and it is probably to
this more than to the attenuation of the air that the painful effects
in question are attributable. We allude to the extreme cold of the
upper skies. The atmosphere has its polar regions as well as the
earth. There frost builds no solid barriers it is true, but his
invisible ramparts are a surer defence against intrusion than bulwarks
of granite. Even at a height of three or four miles, explorers are apt
to find their extremities benumbed, and their faces turning purple or
blue. In a night ascent in 1804, Count Zambeccari, who subsequently
met his death in consequence of his balloon taking fire, was so
severely handled by the frost that he lost the use of his fingers, and
was compelled to have some of them amputated. On one occasion, Mr.
Coxwell, having laid hold of the grapnel with his naked hand, cried
out in pain that he was scalded, which is precisely the punishment
inflicted by metallic objects upon all who grasp them incautiously in
arctic latitudes, when the temperature is exceedingly low.
Combining, therefore, these two causes, the rarefaction of the upper
air, and the crushing influences of frost, we may readily understand
why so many bold adventurers have been smitten with asphyxia when
pushing their way into such untrodden solitudes. When Andreoli and
Brioschi ascended from Padua, in 1808, to a prodigious height, the
latter sank into a state of torpor, and shortly afterwards the former
found that he had lost the use of his left arm. In the instance
already alluded to, when Zambeccari was so mangled by the cold, he and
Dr. Grassetti both became insensible, and their companion alone
retained the control of his faculties.
On one memorable occasion, Mr. Glaisher and Mr. Coxwell rose to a
region which had certainly never been visited before, and most
probably will not be speedily visited again. The precise elevation
they reached could only be guessed, but it could scarcely be less than
35,000 feet, and might possibly extend to 37,000 feet, or seven miles.
This famous ascent was made in 1862 from Wolverhampton. When the
aeronauts had soared to a height of some 29,000 feet, about
five-and-a-half miles, Mr. Glaisher suddenly discovered that one arm
was powerless, and when he tried to move the other, it proved to have
been as suddenly stripped of its strength. He then endeavoured to
shake himself, but, strange to say, he seemed to possess no limbs. His
head fell on his left shoulder, and on his struggling to place it
erect, it reeled over to the right. Then his body sank backwards
against the side of the car, whilst one arm hung helplessly downwards
in the air. In a moment more, he found that all the muscular power
which remained in his neck and back had deserted him at a stroke. He
tried to speak to his companion, but the power of speech had departed
as well. Sight still continued, though dimly; but this, too, speedily
vanished, and darkness, black as midnight, drowned his vision in an
instant. Whether hearing survived, he could not tell, for there was no
sound to break the silence of those lofty solitudes. Consciousness
certainly remained; but the mind had ceased to control the body, and
the reins of power seemed to have slipped for ever from his grasp. Was
this the way men died? And did one faculty after another desert the
soul in its extremity, as servile courtiers steal away from the
presence of royalty when its last hour has arrived? Soon afterwards
consciousness itself disappeared.
Fortunately, this insensibility was not of long duration. He was
roused by Mr. Coxwell, but, at first, could only hear a voice
exhorting him to 'try.' Not a word could he speak, not an object could
he see, not a limb could he move. In a while, however, sight returned;
shortly afterwards he rose from his seat, and then found sufficient
tongue to exclaim, 'I have been insensible!' 'You have,' was the
reply; 'and I too, very nearly!'
At the time Mr. Glaisher was smitten with paralysis, Mr. Coxwell had
climbed up to the ring of the balloon, in order to free the
valve-rope, which had become entangled. There, his hands were so
frozen that he lost the use of them, and was compelled to drop down
into the car. His fingers were not simply blue, but positively black
with cold, and it became necessary to pour brandy over them to restore
the circulation. Observing on his return that Mr. Glaisher's
countenance was devoid of animation, he spoke to him, but, receiving
no reply, at once drew the conclusion that his companion was in a
state of utter unconsciousness. He endeavoured to approach, but found
that he himself was lapsing into the same condition. With wonderful
presence of mind, however, he attempted to open the valve of the
balloon, in order that they might escape from this deadly region, but
his hands were too much benumbed to pull the rope. In this fearful
extremity, he seized the rope with his teeth, dipped his head
downwards two or three times, and found to his relief that the machine
was rapidly descending into a more genial sphere. Fortunately, the
voyagers reached the ground in safety, without feeling any lasting
mischief from their audacious excursion; but it would be difficult to
invent a scene better calculated to make the nervous shudder than that
of a balloon floating at a height of nearly seven miles, with its
occupants awaking from a state of insensibility to discover that their
limbs were utterly powerless, that the rope which might enable them to
descend was dangling beyond their reach, and that there they must
remain until the cold, which had turned every drop of water into ice,
should eat away the feeble relics of vitality from their frames.
We proceed. We are now cruising in the full glare of the sun. The rays
of that luminary beat upon us with scorching force; but whilst the
head seems to be in the Sahara, the feet may be in Spitzbergen. For
here, as on the top of a snow-clad mountain, the temperature of the
air is one thing, the direct heat of the sun is quite another. The
difference may amount to thirty or forty degrees in an ordinary
ascent, and of course, becomes more noticeable the higher the flight.
The thin air and scanty vapour of the upper regions furnish us with
flimsy clothing; whilst in the nether world we wrap the dense medium
round us like a mantle, and keep our caloric within our frames.
Is there any law, however, by which the decrease of temperature can be
expressed? Seeing that the atmosphere is divided, as it were, into
various storeys, these being formed of changing currents, or fugitive
strata of clouds, each with its peculiar charge of heat, is it
possible that any fixed principle of decline can be detected?
Take a few results. On leaving the ground, where the temperature was
50° (in the afternoon of the 31st of March, 1863), the thermometer
indicated 33½° at one mile, 26° at two miles, 14° at three miles, 8°
at 3¾ miles, where a bed of air heated to 12° was entered, and then at
an elevation of 4½ miles, the instrument had fallen to zero. In
descending, the temperature rose to 11° at about three miles in
height, it sank to 7° in passing a cold layer, afterwards increased to
18½° at two miles, to 25½° at one mile, and finally settled at 42° on
the ground.
Again, on starting (17th July, 1862), the temperature at the surface
was 59°, at 4,000 feet, it was 45°, and at 10,000 feet it had sunk to
26°. For the next 3,000 feet it remained stationary, during which
time the aeronauts donned additional clothing, in anticipation of a
severe interview with the Frost King; but to their great surprise, the
thermometer rose to 31° at 15,500 feet, and to 42° at 19,500 feet, by
which time they found it necessary to divest themselves of their
winter habiliments. Sometimes, indeed, the changes of temperature
experienced are startling and unaccountable. At an elevation of 20,000
feet, Barral and Bixio, whilst enveloped in a cloud, found their
thermometer at 15° Fahr. Above this cloud, at a height of 23,127 feet,
the instrument had sunk to 38° below zero, making a difference of not
less than 54° of heat between the two points. Judging from this
observation, might we not expect to find all the moisture at those
cheerless altitudes curdled into ice? and if our globe is sheathed in
an envelope of frozen particles, is the fact wholly without meaning in
reference to the aurora and other meteorological phenomena?
From such capricious data, it would seem impossible to extract any
definite law; but it has been assumed by many that, taking all things
into account, the temperature decreases one degree for every 300 feet
of elevation. Putting the matter more exactly, there is, according to
Flammarion, a mean abatement of one degree for every 345 feet where
the sky is clear, and of one degree for every 354 feet when the
heavens are overcast; the decline being quicker when the day is hot
than when it is cold, and in the evening than in the morning. Mr.
Glaisher, however, feels himself compelled to repudiate this theory of
a steady, constant diminution of heat. The results of all his midday
experiments amounted to this:--
'The change from the ground to 1,000 feet high was 4° 5´
with a cloudy sky, and 6° 2´ with a clear sky. At 10,000
feet high it was 2° 2´ with a cloudy sky, and 2° with a
clear sky. At 20,000 feet high the decline of temperature
was 1° 1´ with a cloudy sky, and 1° 2´ with a clear sky. At
30,000 feet the whole decline of temperature was found to
be 62°. Within the first 1,000 feet the average space
passed through for 1° was 223 feet with a cloudy sky, and
162 feet with a clear sky. At 10,000 feet the space passed
through for a like decline was 455 feet for the former, and
417 feet for the latter; and above 20,000 feet high the
space with both states of the sky was 1,000 feet nearly for
a decline of 1°. As regards the law just indicated, it is
far more natural and far more consistent than that of a
uniform rate of decrease.'
It should be carefully observed that these conclusions refer to
ascents by day; and that by night the temperature augments within
certain limits, as Marcet showed, and as numerous experiments have
confirmed.
Scarcely less interesting is the question as to the moisture in the
atmosphere. Does it decline according to any graduated law? From a
large number of observations it has been concluded that the watery
vapour increases up to a certain elevation (varying with the season of
the year, the hour of the day, and the condition of the sky), and
then, having reached this maximum, we find that the air grows
continually drier the further we climb. Upon this simple fact much of
the physical happiness of our globe depends, for it is the moisture in
the lower regions which arrests the efflux of caloric, preserves it
for home consumption, and assists the earth in the kindly production
of its fruits.
Meanwhile, the rays of the sun playing with unchecked fervour upon the
balloon, have been heating and expanding the gas. Lightened also by
the dissipation of the moisture contracted in the cloudier portion of
the ascent, it probably occurs to the voyager, particularly if he is
prone to take alarming views of events, that as the machine rises into
a rarer atmosphere the envelope may distend until it actually bursts.
Nor is this apprehension, however painful to the nerves, wholly
without foundation. Looking up at the flimsy globe above his head, he
will observe that it is now fully inflated, though purposely left
somewhat flaccid when the journey commenced; and, possibly, he may
observe signs of the sun's action on its sides, as if it were
blistering under the solar beams. Brioschi, the Neapolitan astronomer,
wishing to soar higher than Gay-Lussac, who had reached 23,000 feet on
his way to the stars, was stopped on his ambitious flight, as Icarus
had been before him, by getting too near the sun. He had no wings to
melt, it is true, but he had a balloon to rupture, and the swollen
tissue accordingly gave way, though, happily, without involving him in
the fate of the presumptuous youth. Will it be credited, however, that
any aeronaut could deliberately make an ascent with the express
intention of bursting his balloon himself? Yet this has been done
without pre-engaging a coroner, and without the slightest wish to
commit scientific suicide. The individual by whom this perilous
experiment was performed was Mr. Wise, the American. He argued that if
the explosion were neatly managed, the collapsing envelope would act
as a sort of parachute, the lower part retreating into the upper, and
forming a concavity which would present sufficient resistance to
ensure a safe and steady descent. Nor were his expectations wholly
disappointed. Having risen through a thunderstorm to a height of
13,000 feet, he fired his magazine of hydrogen gas. The car rushed
down with awful rapidity, supported, however, by the relics, like a
torn umbrella, and alighted upon the ground without inflicting any
great violence upon the daring navigator. Not many weeks afterwards,
he repeated the exploit, if such it may be called, and in exploding
the gas tore the silk receptacle from top to bottom; but, with equal
good fortune, he arrived at the earth without a broken limb, the
machine having taken a spiral course in falling, which enabled him to
descend with uniform velocity.
Having now reached the highest point to which our aerostat will mount
so long as its weight continues unchanged, we surrender ourselves to
the guidance of the current in which we are involved. In rising to a
moderate elevation, a balloon will sometimes shoot through more than
one of these aerial streams. Mr. Foster detected the existence of four
distinct currents in one experiment, namely, from the E.N.E., N.,
S.W., and S.S.E., and on the following day found there were three,
namely, from the E.N.E., S.E., and S.S.W. Sometimes an upper and an
under current may move in opposite directions. Had it not been for
this fact, M. Tissandier's _début_ in the clouds might have terminated
in his death in the ocean. Ascending with M. Duruof from Calais under
somewhat rash and defiant circumstances, their balloon was borne out
to sea, not towards the English coast, which might, perhaps, have been
reached, but right up the North Sea, where they would probably have
perished. Fortunately, after proceeding for some distance, they
observed a fleet of _cumuli_ steering for Calais at a depth of some
3,000 feet below, and by dropping into this counter stream they were
floated back to land.
There is no subject of greater moment to aeronauts than the
determination of the atmospheric currents. Upon this question in a
great measure depends the utility of ballooning as an art. We should
certainly consider that ocean navigation was in a despicable condition
if the utmost we could do for a vessel was to commit it, preciously
freighted with our own persons, to the wind and waves, without a sail
to propel it or a rudder to guide it in any particular direction. Yet
this is pretty much the state of aerial seamanship, except for
purposes of vertical travelling. If it could be ascertained that
streams flowed to different quarters at different elevations--river
rolling over river--then it might be easy to book our balloon for some
special point of the compass. But the atmosphere is comparatively
unexplored in this respect, and it will require long study before any
definite conclusions can be formed, even if such should be ever
realized.
That there is some degree of certainty in air-currents may be
indicated by a curious fact mentioned by Flammarion, namely, that the
traces of his various voyages are all represented by lines which had a
tendency to curve in one and the same general direction. 'Thus,' says
he, 'on the 23rd June, 1867, the balloon started with a north wind
directly towards the south-south-west, and, after a while, due
south-west, when we descended. A similar result was observed in every
excursion, and the fact led me to believe that above the soil of
France the currents of the atmosphere are constantly deviated
circularly, and in a south-west-north-east-south direction.'
Still more curious is a fact which Mr. Glaisher may be said to have
discovered.
We are accustomed to talk much of the Gulf Stream. It is as popular a
marine phenomenon as the Great Sea Serpent. For some time it has
figured in meteorology as the subtle agent to which all climatic
eccentricities, and not a few climatic advantages, are ascribed; but
what shall we say to a genuine 'aeria Gulf Stream?' What, to a stream
flowing through the atmosphere in kindly correspondence with the
beneficent current which sweeps through the Atlantic below?
On the 12th January, 1864, Mr. Glaisher left the earth, where a
south-east wind was prevailing. At a height of 1,300 feet he was
surprised to enter a warm current, 3,000 feet in thickness, which was
flowing from the south-west, that is, in the direction of the Gulf
Stream itself. At the elevation in question the temperature, according
to the usual calculation, should have been 4° or 5° lower than that at
the ground, whereas it was 3½° higher. In the region above, cold
reigned, for finely-powdered snow was falling into this atmospheric
river. Here, therefore, was a stream of heated air previously
unsuspected, which, if its course is steady, as it appears to be
during winter, constitutes a prodigious accession to our resources,
and adds another to the many meteorological blessings the world
enjoys.
'The meeting with this south-west current (writes Mr.
Glaisher) is of the highest importance, for it goes far to
explain why England possesses a winter temperature so much
higher than our northern latitudes. Our high winter
temperature has hitherto been mostly referred to the
influence of the Gulf Stream. Without doubting the
influence of this natural agent, it is necessary to add the
effect of a parallel atmospheric current to the oceanic
current coming from the same regions--a true aerial Gulf
Stream. This great energetic current meets with no
obstruction in coming to us, or to Norway, but passes over
the level Atlantic without interruption from mountains. It
cannot, however, reach France without crossing Spain and
the lofty range of the Pyrenees, and the effect of these
cold mountains in reducing its temperature is so great that
the former country derives but little warmth from it.'
The velocity of these atmospheric streams must, of course, differ
considerably; but, however rapid may be their motion, the balloonist
will not fail to notice the feeling of personal immobility which gives
such a peculiar character to aerial travelling. We can hardly realize
the idea of being transported, say, from London to Dover, without
experiencing sundry jars of the muscles or tremors of the nerves, even
if we escape, as is by no means certain, the chances of a collision;
but M. Flammarion remarks in reference to one of his journies, that
the distance accomplished was a hundred and twenty miles, 'during the
whole of which time we never felt ourselves in motion at all.' No
better illustration of this exemption from the jerks and joltings of
terrestrial locomotion could be given than a simple experiment. A
tumbler was filled with water till the liquid stood bulging over the
brim. The balloon was travelling with the velocity of a railway train,
and sometimes rising, sometimes falling, through hundreds of feet at a
time, yet not a single drop of the fluid was swung out of the glass!
Striking as the fact is, it would be still more surprising if it were
otherwise; for, having once entered a current of air, and surrendered
our machine to its guidance, we become, as it were, part of the medium
in which we are immersed. The balloon has no longer any will of its
own, or of its occupants, except for purposes of ascent or descent. It
glides along with the stream, and, coming athwart no obstructions, it
knows none of the bumpings to which more grovelling vehicles are
exposed. Hence results another consequence which will scarcely escape
attention, namely, that here, in the very place of winds, we
experience no wind whatever. You may sit in the car of a balloon
without undergoing much danger from draughts. There are no fierce
gales to encounter, and therefore there are no weather-beaten mariners
aloft. If we come to a spot where two breezes meet in battle, or, if
two currents of differing directions were so sharply defined that the
upper part of the machine could emerge into the superior stream whilst
the lower part was in the keeping of the inferior, then very
unpleasant results might ensue; but these are not events which aerial
navigators have frequently to record in the serener regions aloft.
And as all motion seems to have ceased, except what is due to the
rotatory action of the balloon, so all sound appears to have expired.
On earth we have nothing to compare with the awful stillness of these
airy solitudes. Some noise--be it the sighing of the wind, the
pattering of the rain, the fall of a crumbling particle of rock--will
break the tranquillity of the vale, the loneliest wilderness, the
loftiest peak. But here nature appears to be voiceless, and silence,
'the prelude of that which reigns in the interplanetary space,' seems
to be a consecrated thing, as if it were destined to remain
uninterrupted until the Trumpet of Judgment shall wake the world.
But did we say we were in absolute solitude? If so, imagine the
startled look of an aeronaut when, on issuing from a cloud, he sees
before him, at the distance of some thirty or forty yards, the figure
of another balloon! If a feeling of horror creeps over him at the
sight, he might well be pardoned, for his first thought would
doubtless be that it was some phantom of the air sent to lure him to
destruction, as the Flying Dutchman is reported to do with mariners at
sea. One remarkable feature, however, instantly attracts his
attention. The car of the stranger is placed in the centre of a huge
disc, consisting of several concentric circles--the interior one being
of yellowish white, the next pale blue, the third yellow, followed by
a ring of greyish red, and, finally, by one of light violet. That car,
too, is occupied. Its tenants are engaged in returning the scrutiny,
and their attitudes express equal surprise. By-and-bye, one of them
lifts his hand; but that is just what one of the aeronauts has done.
Another motion is made, and this is imitated to the letter. A laugh
from the living voyagers follows. They have discovered that the
stranger is an optical apparition, for on examination it is found to
correspond with their own machine, line for line, rope for rope, and
man for man, except that they, the living ones, are not surrounded by
a glory as if they were resplendent saints.
This beautiful phenomenon is due to the reflection or diffraction of
light from the little vesicles of vapour, and must not be confounded
with the ordinary shadow of the balloon which, under fitting
conditions, and in a more or less elongated form, generally appears to
accompany us like some spectral shark in pitiless pursuit of an
infected ship.
It is now time, however, to commence our homeward voyage. In other
words, we must tumble perpendicularly to the earth, but so regulate
our fall that no bones shall be broken, and no concussion, if
possible, sustained. To do this from an elevation of three or four
miles must strike us as a vastly more dangerous problem than the
ascent to a similar height. The valve at the top of the balloon
affords us the means of diminishing its relative levity by a gradual
discharge of the gas. But this process must be cautiously performed,
otherwise the machine may start off like a steed which is suddenly
inspired with a new life when its face is turned towards its home.
Hence the necessity of retaining a proper amount of ballast to control
its impatient descent. If it should sink too rapidly, the emptying of
a bag or two will check its pace, and even give it an upward turn for
the time, so that the aeronauts, in rising again, will sometimes hear
a pattering upon the balloon, which proves to be the very shower of
sand they have just ejected.
So delicately, indeed, does the machine respond to any alteration in
its weight, that once, when M. Tissandier threw out the bone of a
chicken he had been assisting to consume, his companion gravely
reproved him, and, on consulting the barometer, he was compelled to
admit that this small act of imprudence had caused them to 'rise from
twenty to thirty yards!'
Not unfrequently it happens that a balloon has to dive through such
heavy clouds, or through such a rainy region, that its weight is
considerably increased by the deposited moisture. In passing through a
dense stratum, 8,000 feet in thickness, Mr. Coxwell's aerostat, on one
occasion, became so loaded that, though he had reserved a large amount
of ballast, which was hurled overboard as fast as possible, the
machine sped to the earth with a shock which fractured nearly all the
instruments.
Lunardi, having ascended from Liverpool in July, 1785, found himself
without ballast, and in a balloon insufficiently inflated. He was
carried out to sea, retaining of course the power of sinking, which,
however, he did not wish to exercise, as he was almost without the
means of rising. To lighten the machine, he tossed off his hat, and
even this insignificant article afforded him some relief. Soon
afterwards, he removed his coat, and this enabled him to mount a
little higher, and bear away towards the land. To escape a
thunder-cloud, he subsequently divested himself of his waistcoat, and
finally succeeded in grappling the earth in a cornfield near
Liverpool, spite of his improvidence in the matter of ballast.
It is under such circumstances, however, that we discover the value of
the long rope suspended from the car, and which may be let out to the
depth of some hundreds of feet. It is a clever substitute for ballast,
with this great-advantage, that it is retained, not lost; and that it
may also be used as a kind of flexible buffer to break the force of
the descent. When the balloon is sinking, every inch of the rope which
rests upon the ground relieves it of an equivalent portion of its
weight: the process is tantamount to the discharge of so much ballast,
and, therefore, the rapidity of the descent is not only lessened, but
possibly the downward course of the machine may be arrested some time
before it reaches the soil; should it mount again, every coil of the
cable lifted from the earth adds to its gravity. In cases where the
aeronaut has from any cause lost the mastery of his vessel, this
self-manipulating agency may preserve him from a fatal reception,
whilst, on the other hand, he has it in his power, by letting out gas
when the balloon is balanced in the air, to lower himself (other
conditions being favourable) as peaceably as he chooses.
The _Géant_ of Nadar, with a weight of 7,000 to 8,000 lbs., in
descending on one occasion, after all the ballast had been exhausted,
rushed down towards the earth with the speed of an ordinary railway
train, and yet, thanks to the guide-rope, no serious accident
occurred, though the instruments were all broken, and a few contusions
were sustained. This admirable contrivance was introduced by that
'ancient mariner' of the air, Mr. Green.
In returning to our native soil, however, one of the most dangerous
conditions which can arise is the prevalence of a thick fog, or the
necessity for ploughing our way through a dense cloud. Under such
circumstances, how do we know where the earth lies? Not that we are
likely to miss it--the great fear is that we may hit it too soon, and
too forcibly. It is then that the value of the barometer is most fully
appreciated. This instrument does for the aeronaut what the compass
does for the sailor. But the observer must be prompt and careful in
his reading, for if the descent is rapid, the least inattention may
result in a fractured collarbone, or a couple of shattered bodies.
Presuming, however, that, as we sink through the cloudy trap-door by
which we entered the upper sky, we find all clear below, the old
familiar earth again bursts upon our view. For a few moments the
planet appears to be shooting upwards with considerable velocity. It
is like a huge rock which has been aimed at our little balloon, or a
star which has shot madly from its sphere, and is hastening to crush
us on our return from our sacrilegious voyage. By throwing out a
quantity of ballast, however, as if in defiance, we seem to check it
in its course, and if it continues to approach, it does so with
moderate speed. But we soon discover the deceit, and learn (probably
to our chagrin) that it is not the world which is troubling itself to
meet us, but we who are doing obeisance in our own puniness to its
irresistible will.
In one sense, indeed, the appearance of a balloon in the sky is always
the signal for a certain amount of commotion. Dogs begin to bark
furiously, poultry begin to run to and fro in evident alarm, whilst
cattle stand gazing in astonishment or scamper off in terror, as
people used to do--so we suppose--when hippogriffs were in the habit
of alighting at their doors. One French aeronaut remarks very drily
that the best mode of obtaining a correct estimate of the population
of any given district is to approach it in a balloon, for then every
individual rushes out of doors to look at the visitor, and so 'the
people can be counted like marbles.' Another states that in passing
over Calais the only figure that did not lift its head to gaze at the
travellers was the Duc de Guise, whose bust in the Place d'Armes was
incapable, for good reasons, of paying them that act of homage.
Other things being duly considered, the chief business of a balloonist
in descending is to select an open and unincumbered locality. To plump
down upon a cathedral, or impale his car upon the top of a spire; to
allow it to alight amongst the clashing trees of a forest, or to
attempt to ground it amongst the chimneys and gables of a crowded
town, would be pretty much the same as for a sailor to run his vessel
amongst the breakers, or to drive it full tilt against the nearest
lighthouse. The experienced navigator knows where to throw out his
grapnel, and this, digging into the soil or catching in the rocks, or
laying hold of any object from a tree to a tombstone, will bring the
big airship to anchor, and enable the crew, with a little management,
to disembark.
But having landed, what kind of a reception shall we encounter? That
is a question of some little consequence. There are two ways of
dealing with aeronauts: the first is to invite them to dinner and
offer them beds for the night; the other is to make an extortionate
claim for damages, or carry them before the magistrates as
trespassers. The latter practice is much in vogue in rustic regions.
You have scarcely leaped out of the car than up there comes an angry
farmer, vociferating loudly, gesticulating frantically, and when he
sees his fences broken down, and his crops trampled under foot by a
crowd of villagers who rush to the spot to inspect the stranger from
the clouds, his wrath rises to the boiling point (far below 212°
Fah.), and the brute threatens immediate arrest, or appears to be on
the eve of inflicting personal chastisement. In some instances,
attempts have been made to distrain upon the balloon, _damage
feasant_, as lawyers would say, though it would have puzzled the
bumpkins to determine how such an unmanageable object could be safely
lodged in the village pound.
When the first hydrogen balloon fell at Gonesse, near Paris (1783), a
most extraordinary scene was witnessed. The inhabitants of the village
were struck with terror upon seeing an unknown monster descending from
the sky. A genuine dragon could not have excited more consternation.
Was it some fabulous animal realized in the flesh, or was it the great
fiend in proper (or improper) person? On all sides they fled. Many
sought an asylum at the house of the _curé_, who thought that the
wisest mode of dealing with the intruder was to subject it to
exorcism. Under his guidance they proceeded falteringly to the spot
where it lay, heaving with strange contortion. They waited to see what
effect the good man's presence would produce, but the creature seemed
to be utterly insensible to his fulminations. At length one of the
crowd, more intrepid than the rest, took aim with his fowling-piece,
and tore it so severely with the shot that it began to collapse
rapidly; whereupon the rest, summoning up courage, darted forward and
battered it with flails or gashed it with pitchforks. The outrush of
gas was so great that they were driven back for the time, but when the
dying monster appeared exhausted, the peasants fastened it to the tail
of a horse and drove it along until the carcase was utterly
dismembered.
The rustics who witnessed the first descent in England--Lunardi's, in
Hertfordshire--shrank from the aeronaut as a very equivocal personage,
because he had arrived on what they called the 'devil's horse.' Nor
are these terrors wholly extinct in the present day, for Flammarion
gives a description (with the pencil as well as the pen) of a descent
in which men appear to be flying, children screaming, and animals
scampering, whilst the balloon with its flags and streamers, waving
fantastically on each side like long arms or tentaculæ, is regarded by
them as some formidable being coming from the clouds. 'It is the devil
himself!' they exclaim.
But having anchored, and escaped all the perils due to chimney-tops or
infuriated farmers, the first question we put will doubtless
be--Where are we? A more unfortunate query could scarcely be
propounded. It expresses the greatest of all the infirmities under
which the balloon labours--namely, that no mortal can tell us
beforehand where we shall alight. Would it not be rather inconvenient
if a traveller, on setting out from Derby, were unable to say whether
he should land at Liverpool or at Hull, at Brighton or at
Berwick-upon-Tweed? For aught we know, we might find ourselves, after
ascending from the most central part of England, hovering over the
Irish Sea or the English Channel, with simple power to rise into the
clouds or plunge into the waves, but with none to choose any
horizontal path or enter any particular port. Whilst drifting
tranquilly along in a current, we could hardly fail to ask whether no
means could be adopted for propelling balloons in the air as is the
case with vessels on the water. Put out our oars? Unhappily they would
do little to assist our progress, for, however broad their blades,
they would meet with small resistance from the thin medium into which
they were dipped. Rely upon paddle-wheels? Just as bad! There is no
dense fluid like water to grip, and the floats would spin around
almost as vainly as if they were worked in the receiver of an
air-pump. Besides, the inflated globe with its suspended car does not
constitute a rigid and inflexible whole, and if it did, the attempt to
drive it against or athwart a current, in its present form, would be
like rowing a man-of-war, with all its canvas stretched, right in the
teeth of a gale.
It would be impossible in an article like this to glance at the
innumerable schemes which have been propounded for the guidance and
propulsion of balloons. Wonderful ingenuity has been expended upon the
subject. In one project, for example, the waste gas, instead of being
idly discharged, was to be conveyed into an apparatus from which it
would issue with a centrifugal force capable--so it was fondly
supposed--of urging the aerostat in any given direction. In another,
the balloon itself was to be converted into a kind of screw, so that
when turned by means of a small engine, it should advance at each
motion through a space proportioned to the distance between the
threads of this monster spiral. M. Farcot gives us a description, in a
little treatise on Atmospheric Navigation,[48] of a _petit navire
aèrien de plaisance_, framed like a flying whale, 100 yards in length,
with an extensive gallery slung below, and fitted up with fins or
wings, by means of which it is to be propelled. The picture of this
marvellous structure is so enchanting, that we feel an irrepressible
desire to mingle with the passengers who seem to be lounging
luxuriously over the balcony, and who are evidently as much at home as
if they were taking a pleasure excursion in a steamer on Windermere or
the Lake of Geneva. M. Dupuy de Dôme not long since received a grant
from the French Government to enable him to construct a fish-like
machine to be worked by a screw, and assisted by a sort of swimming
bladder. Indeed, a large number of persons, either doubting or
despairing of man's power to master the balloon in its ordinary form,
rest their hopes upon the construction of machines which, whether
lighter or heavier than the air, shall be driven through the
atmosphere by brute force, if it may be so called. Mr. Glaisher does
not, of course, share in these views. He tells us that he has
attempted no improvement in the management of the balloon, that he
found it was wholly at the mercy of the winds, and that he saw no
probability of any method of steering it being ever discovered.
Fonvielle and Tissandier, on the other hand, whilst admitting that the
machine is still in its infantile stage, complain that the engineers
have not yet brought all their resources to bear upon the subject, and
entertain some vague notion that what has been done for locomotives,
for steamboats, and ordinary sailing vessels, will surely be done for
the ships of the air, forgetting that the problem to be solved is not
exactly how you shall skim the surface of the water in a boat, but
rather how you could drive a frigate through the fluid with its sails
set when sunk to a depth of many feet, and this with the whole body of
water in motion in a different direction. M. Flammarion remarks that a
bird is much heavier than its bulk of air, yet the eagle and the
condor, massive as they are, soar with ease to the tops of the tallest
rocks; and shall man, he inquires (especially a Frenchman, to whom the
empire of the air properly belongs[49]), be beaten by a bird? M.
Flammarion declines. M. Farcot positively refuses.
For all purposes of aerial travelling, however, the painful fact
remains, which may, perhaps, be most summarily expressed by saying
that there is no Bradshaw for balloons. When the day comes in which it
can be announced that 'highflyers' or 'great aerials' will leave
Trafalgar-square for Paris or Dublin, weather permitting, at a
certain hour; or that balloon trains will regularly ply between Hull
and Hamburg, or, better still, that a Cunard or Collins line of
atmospheric steamers has been established between London and New York,
then the apparatus will be admitted into the noble army of machines
which, like the ship, the locomotive, the steam-engine, the spinning
jenny, the telescope, the mariner's compass, the electric telegraph,
and many others, have rendered such splendid service to mankind.
Some dozen years ago, indeed, an aerial ship, intended to traverse the
Atlantic, was announced as in course of construction in America, by
Mr. Lowe. Weighing from three to four tons in itself, it was to
possess an ascending power equal to twenty-two tons. Its capacity was
to be five times larger than that of any previous machine. Fifteen
miles of cord were to be employed in the network alone. Beneath the
car a boat thirty feet in length was to be slung, and this skiff was
to be fitted up with masts, sails, and paddle-wheels, in order that
the crew might take to the water in case their balloon failed them at
sea. Copper condensers were to be attached, in order that additional
gas might be driven into the globe, or surplus gas abstracted, as
occasion demanded, the object of this contrivance being to enable the
navigators to raise or lower themselves without wasting any precious
material. The ship was to be directed by an apparatus containing a fan
like that of a winnowing machine, and this was to be worked by an
Ericsson's caloric engine of four-horse power. Various ingenious
appliances, amongst others a sounding line one mile in length to show
the course of the atmospheric currents, were to be adopted, and it was
confidently hoped that this _Great Eastern_ of the atmosphere, which
was to be styled the _City of New York_, would cross the Atlantic in
not less than three days, and possibly in two! We regret to say that
it has not yet put into any European port, though its arrival would be
hailed with more satisfaction than the first steamship, the _Sirius_,
was in America.
Let it not be supposed, however, that the balloon, even in its present
rudimentary condition, is available for frivolous or exceptional
purposes alone--for the former, when it is used as a brilliant
supplement to some display of fireworks; for the latter, when we
happen to be locked up in some steel-begirded city. For scientific
objects it may be difficult to overrate its value as a 'floating
observatory,' and we cannot refrain from sharing in M. Fonvielle's
chagrin when he tells us how, on one occasion, after preparing to view
an eclipse from a lofty elevation, he found that his aeronaut was not
ready to set out until the eclipse was over; or how on another, when
all had been arranged to make a sally amongst the November meteors on
one of their grand gala nights, he found, on arriving at the spot,
that the workmen had taken to flight in consequence of the escape of
the gas, and that his only chance was to go up the 'day after the
fair.' Many uses also may be found for captive balloons. Half in jest,
M. Flammarion inquires, whether these might not be pleasantly employed
in traversing the deserts where camels or dromedaries constitute the
ordinary means of conveyance. How uncomfortable is a seat upon the
back of one of these brutes--what patience it requires to endure the
tearing, jerking motions of these ships of the wilderness--most
wanderers in the East well know, and perhaps painfully remember.
Suppose, then, that an aerostat were harnessed to a dromedary and
drawn peacefully along, whilst the traveller sat softly in the
car--reading, smoking, sleeping, dreaming--without a single jolt to
mar his enjoyment, would not this be a blessed improvement in
locomotion? Half in jest, too, we might carry the idea a little
further, and ask whether, if balloons occupied by delicate voyagers
were attached to steamers, and allowed to float at a sufficient
height, so as to reduce the see-saw motion of the vessels to an
imperceptible quantity, the pains of that abhorrent malady,
sea-sickness, might not be avoided in crossing the Channel, or making
small marine excursions?
So, many homely uses for captive balloons might be imagined. A
traveller in Russia gives an account of a church at St. Petersburg
with a lofty spire crowned with a large globe, upon which stood an
angel supporting a cross. The figure began to bend, and great fears
were entertained lest it should come down with a terrible crash. How
could it be repaired was the question? To erect a proper scaffold
would involve a formidable expense, and yet to reach the object
without it seemed utterly impracticable, for the spire was covered
with gilded copper, and looked more unscaleable than the Matterhorn. A
workman, however, undertook the task. The plates of metal had been
attached by nails which were left projecting. Furnished with short
pieces of cord, looped at both extremities, he slung one end over a
nail, and placing his feet in the other, raised himself a short
distance: this enabled him to reach a little higher and fasten another
loop over another nail, and so by repeating the process, and mounting
from stirrup to stirrup, he crawled up, until by a still more daring
manoeuvre he threw a cord over the globe, and then finally
clambered to the side of the figure. A ladder of ropes was next drawn
up, and the rest of the work became comparatively easy of execution;
but with a captive balloon the needful materials might have been sent
up, and the angel put in repair, without costing an anxious thought,
or jeopardising either life or limb.
How far it is possible to employ a balloon for purposes of exploration
in quarters which are naturally inaccessible, or at any rate difficult
of approach, must be a question dependent in no small degree upon the
power of replenishing the machine with gas or heated air. It would,
doubtless, be a fine thing if men could thus sail over all the
obstructions which fence in the two poles, and pry into the Antarctic
continent, or solve the problem of a hidden Arctic sea. Many years ago
Mr. Hampton designed, and we believe completed, a big Montgolfier,
which was to be employed in the search after Sir John Franklin. The
machine was to be inflated by means of hot air produced by the agency
of a great stove; but, if the necessity for a supply of the ordinary
gas was thus avoided, the demand for fuel in regions where neither
timber nor coal could be had (blubber, indeed, might perhaps have been
procured), must have proved an insuperable difficulty, and the
enterprise would probably have terminated in leaving the aeronauts
stranded on some icy waste, without any better means of return than
were possessed by the poor lost ones themselves.
Let us not part from this subject, however, without informing the
reader that if M. Flammarion's views are correct, it is the most
important topic under the sun. 'For,' says he, with the look of a
prophet and the tone of a poet, 'when the conquest of the air shall
have been achieved, universal fraternity will be established upon the
earth, everlasting peace will descend to us from heaven, and the last
links which divide men and nations will be severed.' Without laying
any stress upon the oracular form of this prediction--and the
indefinite 'when' may conceal some sly reference to the Greek
Kalends--we regret to say that we cannot join in his jubilant
conclusion. Our firm persuasion is, that in the present state of
affairs, seeing that so large a portion of the world's revenue is
squandered upon fighting purposes, one of the first steps which would
be taken in case the 'conquest of the air' were perfected to-morrow,
would be to fit out a fleet of war-balloons, to raise a standing army
of aeronauts, to add a new and afflictive department to our annual
estimates, and to encourage the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make
another assault upon the match-sellers, and probably to double our
income-tax without compunction.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] 'La Navigation Atmosphérique.' Par M. Farcot,
Ingenieur-Mécanicien, Membre de la Société Aérostatique et
Météorologique de France. Paris, 1859.
[49]
'Les Anglais, nation trop fière,
S'arrogent l'empire des mers;
Les Français, nation légère,
S'emparent de celui des airs.'
ART. III.--_Early Sufferings of the Free Church of Scotland._
(1.) _Illustrations of the Principles of Toleration in Scotland._
Edinburgh. 1846.
(2.) _The Headship of Christ and the Rights of the Christian People._
By the late HUGH MILLER. Nimmo, Edinburgh.
(3.) _The Cruise of the Betsy._ By HUGH MILLER. Nimmo.
(4.) _Evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons on the
Refusal of Sites for Churches in Scotland, 1847._
(5.) _Statement on the Law of Church Patronage, prepared by a
Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in
compliance with a suggestion of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone._
William Blackwood and Sons. 1870.
We were enabled to present our readers last year with what we believe
to be the only full sketch in existence, drawn from authentic and
official documents, of the rise and progress during a quarter of a
century, of the Free Church of Scotland. From the figures there quoted
it was made clear that at the very time when the Archbishop of
Canterbury was proclaiming that this voluntary church was 'a failure'
financially, its yearly income, steadily increasing from £275,000 of
its earliest lustrum, had at last reached the highest point of
£400,000; and that just when his Grace was asserting that 'whereas for
a time it went forth triumphantly, now the ministers in all remote
places are utterly destitute,' these remote ministers had, for the
first time (although their number was doubled) attained the minimum
stipend proposed by Dr. Chalmers of £150 each. The organization and
machinery by which such a striking success has been achieved, as well
as the principles which gave the original impulse to the body, were
worthy of careful statement and study. Yet while devoting exclusive
attention to these, we became gradually conscious that we were
treading coldly upon the ashes of what history will describe as a
marvellous outburst of self-sacrifice. The pathos and the suffering of
that sad but noble year of 1843 have never yet been brought before
English readers, but there is not so much heroism among us that we can
afford to lose from the annals of this easy-going modern time so
startling a narrative.
'Ah! that was something like disestablishment,' said a minister of the
Free Kirk to us in the spring when the precedents of the Irish Church
Bill were being discussed. He had been arguing that besides assuring
their life-interests to the Irish clergy, it would be only fair to
make a present to them of their glebes and parsonages. 'You should let
a working-man take his working tools with him,' said our friend, and
he was not sorry when the House of Lords gave a million or so of money
to the new body. We were rash enough in reply to ask whether he got
any equivalent for a glebe when a quarter of a century ago he and his
two boys left the pleasant manse of B---- overlooking the Great
Strath. But we had touched too deep a sore. The old man cheerfully
turned it off with the words we have quoted above, but we could not
forgive ourselves; and the thing led us back to enquire into some
extraordinary scenes which took place in Scotland when many of the
present generation were too young to observe them.
For this chapter of forgotten heroism, in which men of kindred blood
and almost of our own generation took part, there are fortunately
authentic as well as vividly descriptive materials. The reports
presented year by year to the Scotch General Assemblies are the most
public of all documents, and are intended to invite challenge and
scrutiny. The evidence presented to the House of Commons Committee in
1848 is of great importance and of unquestioned authority. The
writings of a man of genius like Hugh Miller will carry part of the
truth down to other generations of readers. And yet, while much is
known, much must ever remain untold. Scotchmen, who are men of
education, and in a sacred office, are precisely the men to cover the
sharpest pangs of poverty, and dread of poverty, with an impenetrable
covering of reserve; and now that twenty-six years have passed, most
of those grave, suffering faces have gone down into a deeper silence.
Besides, the Free Kirk has come to be so proud of its extraordinary
success in reconstruction, that it has rather attempted (notably in
the recent debates in the House of Commons) to throw into the
background the anguish of its birth, and to dwell rather on the
achievements of the whole than on the sufferings of individuals. Our
business is now rather with the latter, and fortunately there is one
additional source whence this information can be derived. Dr. Thomas
Guthrie, of Edinburgh, is known chiefly by his philanthropic efforts,
after the example of Dr. Chalmers, to provide churches and schools
and ragged schools for the masses in the large towns of Scotland; but
the great achievement of his life, and one, too, for which men of all
parties can now join in his praise, was that marvellous tour through
Scotland in the year 1845, as the result of which parsonages, or
'manses' as they are called in Scotland, were actually provided for
the seven hundred ministers, most of whom had been left homeless a
year or two before, and whose places in the Establishment had all now
been filled up. In the course of this great 'circumnavigation of
charity,' he naturally became acquainted with facts and details, some
of which found their way into speeches published at the time, and it
is fortunate that we can still quote, from one of the greatest
platform orators whether of England or Scotland, some of the fresh
facts of that suffering time.
Until we recently came to the knowledge of these documents, we had the
feeling that this suffering must have consisted more in apprehension
or imagination than in actual privations--that the terrible dread
which haunted men who were giving up their whole livings had scarcely
any actual realization. And even though this turns out not to be the
case, it is plain from Dr. Guthrie's own statements, that all over
Scotland the approaching trial struck a chill to the hearts even of
those who were determined to face it:--
'I remember,' he says, 'in a certain district of country, a
minister said to me, "You think there is no chance of a
settlement?" I said, "We are as certain of being out as
that the sun shall rise to-morrow." I was struck by
something like a groan, which came from the very heart of
the mother of the family; they had had many trials in their
day: there had been cradles and coffins in their home, and
the place was endeared by many associations to the mother;
there was not a flower or shrub or a tree but what was dear
to her--some of them were planted by the hands of those who
were in their graves,--and that woman's heart was like to
break. I remember another instance, where there was a
venerable mother who had gone to the place when it was a
wilderness, but who, with her husband, had turned it into
an Eden. Her husband had died there. Her son was now the
minister. This venerable woman was above eighty years of
age; yes, and I never felt more disposed to give up my work
than in that house. I could contemplate the children being
driven from their home; but when I looked on that venerable
widow and mother, with the snows and sorrows of eighty
years upon her head, and saw her anxiety about two things,
namely, that Lord Aberdeen should bring in a bill to settle
the question, but her anxiety, at the same time, that if
Lord Aberdeen did not bring in a satisfactory measure, her
son should do his duty,--I could not but feel that it was
something like a cruel work to tear out such a venerable
tree--to tear her away from the house that was dearest to
her on earth.'
For, as we formerly said, compared with this blow, the
disestablishment of the Irish Church was a fall into the lap of
luxury. Every minister in Scotland who adhered to the Church lost his
income in one day--Whit-sunday of 1843. On the same day they lost
their dwellings. The professors of divinity, with Chalmers at their
head; the missionaries, with Dr. Duff at their head; the humble
schoolmasters, with no great name to sustain them--were all turned out
at the same moment. And the great strain and crisis of conscience must
have been in the spring of that year, when those who in 1842 had
pledged themselves, with two-thirds of the Assembly, 'to endure
resignedly the loss of the temporal blessings of the Establishment,'
saw that there was to be no escape from the sacrifice. The dread and
depression must often have been extreme; yet it was not unmixed with a
sustaining joy, as in the case of the following story, with reference
to Dr. Charles Mackintosh (a venerated minister in the North, whose
memorials have recently been published), for which we are indebted to
a correspondent who is a native of the Highlands:--
'One morning in the spring of 1843, I jumped early out of
bed, for my head was full of marbles and peg-tops, and a
dozen or so of games before breakfast has its attractions
for a schoolboy. To my astonishment, I found my father down
before me; nay, he had evidently been there for some time,
for the moment I appeared he folded up the newspaper in
which he had been so unseasonably engaged, and--with a
break in his voice indicating an emotion that was quite
unaccountable to me--he asked me to take it at once over to
the manse, with his compliments to the minister. I went
very readily, for, besides the comfort of fingering the
marbles in my pocket, the hedge-rows were full of young
birds upon whom legitimate hostilities could be waged in
passing. But as I went I reflected on the austere and
stately image of the minister--a man everywhere respected,
but whose face inspired awe rather than love in the
beholder--(Had I not seen the town-boys break and scatter
round one corner of the street as soon as he appeared at
the other?)--and I resolved that my interview with him
should be short. And it was shorter than I expected, for I
had scarcely got out of the sunshine into the manse
evergreens, when I found him in the porch; and when I
offered him the newspaper, he showed me that he had already
got the _Times_, by some unusual express, and as he spoke
he patted my head and smiled--but such a smile, so full of
radiant kindliness! I was confounded; and as I went back
between the edges the birds sang unheeded while I thought
what could be up with the minister. Had anybody left him a
fortune? or had he met one of the shining ones walking
among the hollies in that early dawn? And it was not for
some weeks that I found out that this was what had
happened--the newspaper that morning had brought him the
vote of the House of Commons, finally refusing an inquiry
into the affairs of the Scotch Church, and so making it
certain that within a few weeks he and his aged mother
would leave for ever the home, at the door of which I saw
him; in which his father, the previous minister, had dwelt
peacefully before him, but which the son would now have to
quit without retaining a farthing of his income for the
future. Of course he came out, and 470 ministers with him.'
For the crisis followed in May. The disruption itself (as the actual
and final wrench given to the Church came to be called) concentrated
the anguish of the general sacrifice in a very painful, but, at the
same time, a more poetical form. Sir George Harvey, the present
President of the Scottish Academy, has painted the 'Leaving of the
Manse' with much dignity and power: the grey-haired pastor moving with
feeble steps from the well-known door; his wife's quiet tears, as she
guides the child whose pet lamb refuses to accompany it in its early
exile; the awe-struck respect of the rustics around, while the men
take off their caps, and the women throw their aprons over their faces
and sob. Yet the words which immediately follow what we have already
quoted from Dr. Guthrie, are, perhaps, the most memorable record of
the feelings which accompanied the final step:--
'I remember passing a manse on a moonlight night, with the
minister who had left it,--for the cause of truth, his
brother Scotchman earnestly adds--'No light shone from the
house, and no smoke arose. Pointing to it in the moonlight,
I said, "Oh, my friend, it was a noble thing to leave that
house." "Ah, yes," he replied; "it was a noble thing, but
for all that it was a bitter thing. I shall never forget
the night I left that house till I am laid in my grave.
When I saw my wife and children go forth in the gloaming,
when I saw them for the last time leave our own door; and
when in the dark I was left alone, with none but my God in
the house; and when I had to take water and quench the fire
on my own hearth, and put out the candle in my own house,
and turn the key against myself, and my wife, and my little
ones that night--God in His mercy grant that such a night I
may never again see! It was a noble thing to leave the
manse, and I bless God for the grace that was given to me;
but, for all that, it was a cruel and bitter night to me."'
The actual circumstances of departure must have been very various:
'One minister writes to us that he left the manse with his family in a
snow-storm, when the mountain was white with snow, and the sky was
black with drift; but that he never knew so much of the peace of God
as he did that night, when following his wife and children as they
were carted over the mountain, without knowing where they were to find
a place to dwell in.'
And in many places over Scotland, this was the beginning of sorrows.
In some parts, and especially in the large towns, the actual hardships
were nothing worse than diminution of income and straitened
circumstances; while in not a few cases even that was not felt. But in
the country, and especially in the Highlands, it was different. It was
some years before the manses were built, and homelessness added to
poverty pressed heavily on the outed ministers.
'I remember well,' writes the Highland correspondent we
have already quoted from, and for whose accuracy and good
faith we can vouch, 'how I used to watch one man, the
minister of the neighbouring parish of E----, who, like
many others, was unable to find a place to dwell in among
his own people, and had to come into the neighbouring town.
He was a scholarly and cultivated man, who in his early
days had attained much academical distinction at a Northern
University, but a weak chest and a threatening of heart
complaint now bore heavily upon him. Yet week after week,
as every Sabbath morning came round, he persisted in
driving away for miles through that first inclement winter,
to meet his congregation; and I can remember to this day
his keen, delicate face set to meet a heavy snow-storm from
the north-west, while a hacking cough shook his whole frame
as he set out on his journey, four miles of which must pass
ere he caught sight of the well-sheltered manse, which the
year before he had left for ever.'
But those who, like him, found shelter in a town dwelling, however
humble, were not worst off. The great difficulty was in the country;
even where harbouring the minister was not forbidden (as in some
cases, from a desire to crush out the movement, it was) by the great
landlords. And of course it was with this that Dr. Guthrie's facts
chiefly dealt.
'I have a letter here from a man who has suffered more for
gospel truth than any other I know. He says that he has
been obliged to pack two nurses and eight children into two
beds, in the small house to which they have removed. His
wife took a cold in October, which there was some
apprehension might end in consumption; and at my own table
he told me, what was enough to melt a heart of stone, that
when he and his family gather together at the family altar,
they have not room to kneel before Almighty God, and some
of them require to kneel on the floor of the passage before
they can unite together in their family devotions. Some of
our ministers write that they live in crofter's houses;
some in places as damp as cellars, where a candle will not
burn. One says he sits with his great coat on; another that
the curtains of his bed shake at night like the sails of a
ship in a storm. One minister, a friend of mine, lives in a
house which every wind of heaven blows through. On getting
up one morning he found the house all comparatively
comfortable, and wondered what good genius had been putting
it in order, when he discovered that a heavy shower of snow
had fallen, and stopped up the crevices of the roof.'
Narrating this to a vast meeting in Glasgow, at the close of which he
announced that upwards of £10,000 had been subscribed during that one
day for his scheme, Dr. Guthrie added, with Scotch shrewdness, 'I said
to my friend, that I was glad he had told me that story, for if that
shower of snow did not produce a shower of notes, I would be very much
disappointed.' The story of the shower of snow was hearsay; but we
must make room for what the speaker testifies to having seen with his
own eyes.
'Some of you may have read of the death of Mr. Baird, the
minister of Cockburnspath, a man of piety, a man of
science, a man of amiable disposition, and of the kindest
heart, but a man dealt most unkindly by; although he would
not have done a cruel or unjust thing to the meanest of
God's creatures. I was asked to go and preach for a
collection to his manse, last winter. He left one of the
loveliest manses in Scotland. He might have lived in
comfort in Dunbar, seven or eight miles away, but what was
to become of his people? They were smiting the shepherd,
that they might scatter the sheep. No, said Mr. Baird, be
the consequences what they may, I shall stand by my own
people. I went out last winter, and found him in a mean
cottage, consisting of two rooms, a _but_ and a _ben_, with
a cellar-like closet below, and a garret above; and I
honestly declare, that the house was so small and so cold
that, when sitting by the fire, the one part of the body
was almost frozen, while the other was scorched by the
heat. Night came, and I asked where I was to sleep. He
showed me a closet; there was a fire-place in it, but it
was a mockery, for no fire could be put in it; the walls
were damp. I looked horrified at the place; but there was
no better. Now, said I to Mr. Baird, where are you to
sleep? Come, said he, and I will show you. So he climbed a
sort of trap stair, and got up to the garret, and there was
the minister's study, with a chair, a table, and a flock
bed. His health was evidently sinking under his sufferings;
and, but that I was not well myself, I never would have
permitted him to lie on such a bed. A few inches above were
the slates of the roof, without any covering, and as white
with hoar frost within, as they were white with snow
without. When he came down next morning, after a sleepless
night, I asked him how he had been, and he told me that he
had never closed an eye, from the cold. His very breath on
the blankets was frozen as hard as the ice outside. I say,
that man lies in a martyr's grave ... and I would rather,
like him this day, be laid in the grave, with a grateful
Church to raise my honored monument, than dwell in the
proudest palaces of those that sent him there.'
We have exscinded from these quotations, not only all polemics, but
such not unnatural expressions of indignation as the brethren of the
more unfortunate ministers slipped into. There is no injustice in
omitting these now, for the time has come when all parties, and in
particular most of the members of the Scotch Established Church, are
earnest in expressing their admiration of the heroism of those who
suffered. But, in order to bring out the story completely, and, in
particular, to do justice to the difficulties in the face of which the
enormous task of covering the land with voluntary churches and manses
and ministers was accomplished, it is necessary to go farther down,
and refer to another historical chapter. We allude to the facts which
came out in the Committee of the House of Commons on 'Sites for
Churches (Scotland),' in 1847. No doubt these hardships have nearly
all now passed away, and the great landowners, themselves chiefly
members of the Church of England, have, almost in every case,
consented to sell to the poorer congregations of the Church ground on
which to erect churches. But at first it was perhaps natural that men,
most of them imperfectly acquainted with their countrymen, should have
conceived it possible to stamp out, or starve out, the new church.
And, accordingly, some very strong things were done. The writer
happened to be acquainted with one district, where a gentleman of
large property, a man, too, of immense energy and public spirit,
entertained a passionate opposition to the popular movement, and had
been heard to declare, shortly before the disruption, that he would
'give five hundred trees from his woods, to hang the seceding
ministers upon.' Those innocent vegetables were, fortunately, not
called upon to bear the _novos fructus et non sua poma_, thus destined
for them; but Mr. R---- soon tried another course, which was
practically of not much more use. He suddenly issued a notice, that
every labourer on his estates, who did not go to the parish church,
should cease, after next Monday, to work on his land. Now, in that
part of the Highlands, as in most others, the people had gone out _en
masse_ with their ministers, and no one would go to the Established
Church for the heaviest bribe. What was the result of the attempt at
coercion? The result was simply this, that on that Monday no plough or
spade was touched on all his estates; and Mr. R----, proud and
passionate as he was, had simply and unconditionally to
surrender--knowing, too, that he had consolidated the whole
country-side in a bond of mutual allegiance, which would long survive
the living generation of men. The same sort of oppression was
attempted in particular cases for years afterwards. So late as 1847,
we find, in the evidence before Parliament, many cases, _e.g._, a
witness, whose family had been tenants of a farm, in Strathspey, for
many generations, 'probably since 1630,' saying, that 'there is a
general rumour prevalent in the district, and among the adherents of
the Free Church, that certain of their number may be made examples of
at the earliest opportunity, in the way of being evicted from their
farms, possessions, or holdings', and expressing his own lively
apprehensions in consequence. Nor was this general belief unfounded. A
poor woman, who had offered a shed on her holding, where the
congregation might meet, 'got a message from his lordship's factor,
through another person, that, in the event of her granting such a
site, he would withdraw her lease.' One Donald Cameron, in the same
place, who, being an elder in the church, had come out with his
brethren, was urged by the same middleman with the sensible argument,
'Why, I conceive you to be the greatest fool in the nation; might not
a minister who remained within the walls of a church, be as
instrumental in saving your soul, as those who preach in woods or
fields?' but, on this very fair reasoning failing to make him abandon
his own pastor and principles, he was summarily turned out of his
situation as the great man's overseer. But the most curious instance
of this sort of thing being carried out systematically is given in the
evidence of Mr. M----, of Skye, who was factor for Lord Macdonald, in
that island. In this case, not only was the minister refused a
holding, but a list was made out of all the collectors who ventured to
go round and gather up the small contributions of their brethren, and
all of them received summary notice to quit, some under circumstances
of the greatest hardship. The factor, who seemed, at last, to be
somewhat ashamed of the transaction, told the Committee that 'It was
Lord Macdonald himself who gave me the list of such as he wished to be
served with notices, on account of their being collectors. The day he
was leaving the country he gave me a list, and said, "Here is a list
of fellows that must have notice to quit."' One of the poor men
travelled all the way up to London to try to persuade his landlord to
be merciful; but, as the factor told the Committee, 'I rather think
his lordship did not look at his petition.' Nor was it merely the
officials connected with the Free Church who were turned out: the
innkeeper and the miller of the district were both ejected on account
of their being members, or, as the factor put it, partisans, of that
body. 'Being, as we considered, public servants, we thought it better
to remove them.' The Committee was very severe in dealing with the
allegations of partisanship made _ex post facto_ against these
unfortunate people, the factor not being able to say that he had ever
hinted such a reason to themselves. Mr. Bouverie's question to the
factor, 'Was any _locus penitentiæ_ allowed to the miller?' was met by
the curious reply, 'That would be interfering with the man's
conscience, if he thought he was acting rightly,' and Mr. Fox Maule's
rejoinder, 'And you think it was no interference with his conscience,
turning him out of his farm?' received the placid answer, 'No.' Niel
Nicholson, one of the unfortunate Free Churchmen removed at this time
to make way for a teacher of the Established Church, at the time he
received notice to quit, had a bedridden wife, and his son the eldest
of eight or ten children, laid up with a broken leg. Another man,
removed by a brother of the Established minister, after being ejected
from his land had nowhere to go, and lived for a considerable time in
a kind of tent by the roadside, at last receiving shelter from the
very factor of Lord Macdonald whose general conduct seems to have been
so harsh. The correspondence brought in evidence before the Committee
on this occasion was very instructive, as in the case of the following
laconic missive:--
'ARMADALE, 16_th November_, 1846.
SIR,--I refuse a site for a Free Church for your people.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
MACDONALD.'
But the same minister who was thus addressed as to his church, wrote a
very respectful letter to his landlord, as to his house, trusting
'that your Lordship does not really intend to drive me, with my young
and helpless family, out of my present dwelling-house.'
'I am willing to give any rents for the same which another
will offer; and should your Lordship not choose to give the
farm on any terms, I would be satisfied with the house, and
grass for two cows and a horse. The building of this house
cost me £150, and I have been at considerable expense in
improving the farm, for which, from the shortness of the
lease, I have had as yet little or no returns. Will your
Lordship allow me to observe without offence, that at a
time[50] when we are all suffering under the chastening
hand of our heavenly Father, it looks somewhat unseemly
that we should be the occasion of suffering to one another.
I have already taken the principal part in distributing
food supplied by the Free Church among your Lordship's
cotters and crofters in this country. I am at this moment
in receipt of nearly £40 (I may now say £100) from
respectable private parties in London, Edinburgh, and
Glasgow, with which I am helping to relieve much of the
present distress, besides lessening the burden of
supporting many of the people to your Lordship and tenants.
From all these considerations, I might naturally expect
some favour at your Lordship's hands.'
The answer to this letter came through, another factor, to the effect
that 'Lord Macdonald instructs me to inform you that he has received
your letter, and that it is not his intention either to grant you a
site or give you any lands;' adding that the landlord would not give
him any compensation for his improvements, and that 'he had brought it
all on himself' by persisting in staying with his present
congregation.
But with the House of Commons Blue-book before us, let us leave cases
of individual suffering for a time, and look at the case of whole
congregations. Throughout Scotland the Free Church was, with labour
and difficulty, erecting places in which to worship God. But in many
places the landlords refused a foot of soil on which to do it. The
congregations who met in the open air were not much to be pitied at
their starting, for it was summer, and a thorough soaking with rain
was the worst that befel them. But as the first winter of 1843
darkened down upon them, it was no wonder that men and women gathering
weekly under a canvas tent, and in some cases without even that, but
in the open air, under the bitter inclemency of the northern sky,
began to set up piteous requests to be permitted to meet under some
roof, or at least to be allowed land on which to erect a roof to cover
them. But in many instances this was refused; and during that winter,
in different districts of Scotland whole congregations of not men
only, but delicate women and children (after coming, as the Scotch
manner is, many miles to worship or to sacrament), remained through
each Sunday of December, January, and February, under whatever variety
of snow, sleet, slush, frost, rain, and ice, their native sky, rich
in such alternations, chose to pour upon them. Another year came
round, and though by this time a number of the proprietors had
relented, a great many stood firm, and the second winter showed the
same kind of suffering as the first. The following circumstances in
which one of the ordinary services in a congregation in the South of
Scotland, in February of the year 1844, was held, must have had
parallels during the same months, especially in Skye, and the Western
Isles, and the Highlands of Inverness and other counties. But it is
given by the Edinburgh minister who conducted the meeting, and whose
evidence on matters of which he was eye-witness we have already found
so graphic. In this case the congregation had met for some time in a
canvas tent on a piece of moor or waste ground by the permission of
the tenant; but the landlord, who had already refused a site,
checkmated this evasion of his will by procuring an interdict, or
order of Court, and the congregation were driven in the beginning of
winter to meet on the public road, and to try to erect their tent
there. But the tent could not be erected without digging holes for the
poles, and making holes in the public road was an illegal proceeding,
which they were afraid to attempt so soon after being driven off a
waste moor. Consequently, they met all that winter without shelter, as
described in the following private letter, written at the time, but
afterwards read publicly to the Committee of the House of Commons:--
'Well wrapped up, I drove out yesterday morning to Canobie,
the hills white with snow, the roads covered ankle deep in
many places with slush, the wind high and cold, thick rain
lashing on, and the Esk by our side all the way, roaring in
the snow-flood between bank and brae. We passed Johnnie
Armstrong's tower, yet strong even in its ruins, and after
a drive of four miles a turn of the road brought me in view
of a sight which was overpowering, and would have brought
the salt tears into the eyes of any man of common humanity.
There, under the naked boughs of some spreading oak trees,
at the point where a country road joined the turnpike,
stood a tent, around, or rather in front of which was
gathered a large group of muffled men and women, with some
little children, a few sitting, most of them standing, and
some old venerable widows cowering under the shelter of an
umbrella. On all sides each road was adding a stream of
plaided men and muffled women to the group, till the
congregation had increased to between 500 or 600, gathering
on the very road, and waiting my forthcoming from a mean
inn, where I found shelter till the hour of worship had
come. During the psalm-singing and first prayer I was in
the tent, but finding that I would be uncomfortably
confined, I took up my position on a chair in front, having
my hat on my head, my Codrington close buttoned up to my
throat, and a pair of bands, which were wet enough with
rain ere the service was over. The rain lashed on heavily
during the latter part of the sermon, but none budged; and
when my hat was off during the last prayer, some man kindly
extended an umbrella over my head. I was so interested, and
so were the people, that our forenoon service continued for
about two hours. At the close I felt so much for the
people; it was such a sad sight to see old men and women,
some children, and one or two people pale and sickly, and
apparently near the grave, all wet and benumbed with the
keen wind and cold rain, that I proposed to have no
afternoon service; but this met with universal dissent--one
and all declared that if I would hold on they would stay on
the road till midnight. So we met again at three o'clock,
and it poured on almost without intermission during the
whole service; and that over, shaken cordially by many a
man and many a woman's hand, I got into the gig and drove
here in time for an evening service, followed through rain
in heaven and the wet snow on the road by a number of the
people.'
When this letter was produced to the House it was taken advantage of
by Sir James Graham, with the view of bringing out that so sad a sight
must have had the effect of driving the minister who witnessed it into
some bitterness of expression in the pulpit, such as might perhaps
justify or excuse the Duke of Buccleuch. Said Sir James--
'May I ask whether your own feeling was not that some
oppression had been exercised towards those people? Ans.
Certainly; I felt that the people were in most grievous
circumstances, being necessitated to meet on the turnpike
road; and not only I, but I may mention in addition that
the person who drove me in the gig from Langholm to
Canobie, when we came in sight of that congregation
standing in the open air upon such a day, and in such a
place, burst into tears, and asked me, Was there ever a
sight seen like that?
'You have mentioned that "oppression makes a wise man mad;"
the feelings of the driver might be one thing, but you, a
minister of the gospel, would be very considerably excited
by seeing what you have described; you thinking it an act
of oppression upon the people? Ans. Deep feeling would be
excited--if you mean by excitement that I was ready to
break forth into unsuitable expressions, I say certainly
not; I felt when I saw it as if I could not preach, I was
so overpowered by the sight--to see my fellow-creatures,
honest, respectable, religious people, worshipping the God
of their fathers upon the turnpike road was enough to melt
any man's heart.'
Sir James was disappointed in the object of his examination, for it
turned out that Dr. Guthrie on this occasion had with some
deliberation avoided making any reference to the circumstances of the
congregation, and had turned all the feeling roused within him into
the channel of more fervid preaching of the common gospel.
This was in 1844; the following year the ministers, even in the
bleakest Highlands, began to have some comfort, for now the manse
scheme was set on foot, and was being pressed by Dr. Guthrie; but the
position of these unfortunate and exceptional congregations remained
the same. A minister in Skye, whom the Highlanders there regarded with
boundless veneration, but who was little fitted to face hardships (he
saw his family of eleven delicate children melt into the grave before
him), used to preach at Uig in the open air, with a covering over
himself, but none for the people. 'I have preached,' he says, 'when
the snow has been falling so heavily upon them, that when it was over
I could scarcely distinguish the congregation from the ground, except
by their faces.' Two years more passed on; and even then, in 1847,
there were still thirty-one cases in Scotland in which sites were
absolutely refused, besides many others in which very inconvenient and
humiliating places were alone offered, and in many cases had been
accepted. The House of Commons now took up the matter, and perhaps the
most curious thing in their investigation was the careful
cross-examination of medical men on the question whether it could be
proved that the members of the congregation who met winter after
winter in the open air had actually suffered, or at least had suffered
seriously and fatally from their compulsory exposure. No doubt they
were drenched with rain and chilled with sleet, and then they caught
cold and died; but were the medical men prepared to prove (so argued
the apologists of oppression in the committee)--could the medical men
say that their taking cold was the necessary consequence of the drench
and chill, or that the fatal result was due to this original cause,
and not to subsequent carelessness or blunders in the treatment? For
example, when 'Miss Stewart, Grantown, about eighty years of age, but
strong for her years, and of sound constitution, after attending
public worship of the Free Church in the open air, was attacked by
sub-acute rheumatism,' and died exhausted after four months of the
disease, no one could certainly say that the old lady might not have
taken rheumatism even if she had separated from her neighbours, and
gone peaceably back to the Established Church!
We shall quote no more, however, from the details of this Blue-book,
but it will be remembered that, after taking evidence extending to
nearly five hundred pages of print, the committee unanimously
concurred in expressing an 'earnest hope that the sites which have
hitherto been refused may no longer be withheld.' They held, and all
Englishmen will echo the opinion, that 'the compulsion to worship in
the open air, without a church, is a grievous hardship inflicted on
innocent parties;' while they found that even at that late date of
1847, about 16,000 people were still compelled so to worship, or at
least were 'deprived of church accommodation,' and were without 'a
convenient shelter from the severity of a northern climate.'
But though the site-refusing caused much distress to the people, still
the edge even of this fell chiefly upon the ministers. Driven out of
their old homes in one day, they were often refused new ones, and in
the great Highland counties denied even temporary shelter. Lodging
there was hardly to be got, and in many places the tenantry were
haunted with fears of what the consequences might be to themselves if
they gave house-room where their landlords had already refused a site.
'Many of these ministers' families,' said Dr. Guthrie in 1845, when
the facts were recent,--'some of them motherless families--are thirty,
and fifty, and sixty, and seventy miles separated from them. I think
of the hardship of many of these men going to see their own children;
and of children who see their father so seldom that they do not know
him when he visits them.' One of the most curious cases thus produced
was that of the parish of Small Isles--so called because it consists
of four little islands clustered together in the Atlantic. The
minister, Mr. Swanson, well known now as the friend from youth of Hugh
Miller--famous as a geologist, and much more famous as a Scottish
stonemason, gave up his home, 'placed far amid the melancholy main,'
and came out with the others in 1843; and a site both for manse and
Church being refused on the central island, where the whole
congregation adhered to him, he betook himself to what his friend, the
gifted editor of the _Witness_, dubbed the 'Floating Manse.' It was a
little yacht, 30 feet by 11 feet, in which he lived when visiting his
parish, his family, however, residing in Skye.
In 1844, Hugh Miller set out to visit his friend on a geological
excursion, the scientific record of which he has preserved in his
volume 'The Cruise of the _Betsy_,' where he also gives a most curious
account of the relations of Mr. Swanson, the minister, to the people
to whom he so clung. On one Sunday morning the geologist and his host
got ashore on their way to a low dingy cottage of turf and stone
(just opposite the windows of the deserted manse), which its former
occupant had built with his own money as a Gaelic school for the
people, and which they were obliged to use as a place of worship--'the
minister encased in his ample-skirted storm-jacket of oiled canvas
protected atop by a genuine _sou'-wester_, of which the broad
posterior rim sloped half-a-yard down his back; and I closely wrapped
up in my grey maud, which proved, however, a rather indifferent
protection against the penetrating powers of a true Hebridean
drizzle.' When they got in, the minister took off his sou'-wester, and
preached on 'God so loved the world,' and the visitor remarks how the
attention of his hearers to him who was not only their pastor, but the
sole physician, and that without fee or reward, in the island, was
increased by his new life of hardship and danger undertaken for their
sakes; for they had seen his little vessel driven from her anchorage
just as the evening had fallen, and always feared for his safety when
stormy nights closed over the sea. Next year Miller had himself an
opportunity of judging of this, for while he was on board the _Betsy_
'the water, pouring in through a hundred opening chinks in her upper
works, rose, despite of our exertions, high over plank, and beam, and
cabin door, and went dashing against beds and lockers. She was
evidently fast filling, and bade fair to terminate all her voyagings
by a short trip to the bottom.' They barely saved themselves by the
Point of Sleat interposing between them and the roll of the sea. The
'Floating Manse' will not be forgotten while the works of this
charming writer survive; but very much later than this, on Loch
Sunart, also in the West, a 'floating church' also had to be provided
in consequence of the refusal of a site; and the Sheriff of
Edinburghshire, himself a naval officer in his youth, testified to the
Committee of the House that in the winter of 1846 it answered very
well. It was moored about a hundred yards from the shore, and although
there was a little difficulty in the people going out in boats, still
it was possible to manage it. Many English pedestrians in Sutherland
have seen the famous Cave of Smoo, a vast cavern protected by a
natural gateway of rock, and with an interior chamber where a black
stream flows in perpetual darkness. It was here that the Free Church
congregation of Durness met.
'One minister has preached for two years in a deep sea pit,
which I saw in Sutherlandshire; God's sea is their
protection. No man can say he is ruler of the sea, though
he boasts himself possessor of the land. In a deep gully,
where the rocks are some hundred feet high, a hollow has
been closed in from the sea by a barrier of rocks, which
protects them from the Western Ocean, behind this they
meet; and there, some hundred feet down, where no man can
see them till he stands on the verge of the precipice, and
where they might have been safe from Claverhouse in the
days of old, that minister with his congregation, while the
waves of the Atlantic Ocean were roaring beside them, and
protected by that barrier of rock, met two winters and two
summers; and I know, from the determination of that man and
his people, that there they would have met till their dying
day if the Duke of Sutherland had not granted them
redress.'
But we were treating of the hardships rather of the ministers than of
the congregations, and Dr. Guthrie's question is pertinent,
'Where does the minister go after having preached in such
circumstances? Not in the case I have just mentioned, but
in another, the minister, after preaching to his hearers in
the winter snow, where there was no barrier or creek
sheltering them from the salt sea spray, had to go back,
not to a comfortable home, like you and me, but to a
miserable dwelling, where he had to climb to a lonely and
miserable garret, and in a place where there was little
ventilation, and in a room where he could have no fire, the
minister had to sit from week's end to week's end, till his
health was broken down, and he was obliged to retire from
the battle-field, forced away from it to save himself from
an early, and, I say, a martyr's grave.'
It need not be said that such cases as these were exceptional and
extreme; but, on the other hand, it is certain the facts in these
cases are accurately given, and are representative of other extreme
cases that were never published. Our last quotation from the eloquent
divine who laid the foundations of the homes of a whole Church (and to
whom we shall not apologize for quoting so many facts which are the
inheritance of the Church catholic) is interesting to the writer,
because the younger of the two ministers spoken of in it was one of
the first men whom he remembers in his childhood to have seen in the
pulpit. He gave up no manse in 1843, but belonged to another class,
the licentiates or candidates of the Church, who threw in their lot
with the body now to be stripped of all its prospects and emoluments.
The following visit, narrated by Dr. Guthrie, was to the old minister
of Tongue, 'a man of the highest character and the best affections.'
His son, whom we remember merely as a gentlemanly young cleric, with a
rather plaintive voice, which ranged through endless intonations and
cadences, and was provocative of meditation much more than of
thought, was at this time his father's assistant, and died of the
fever mentioned by Dr. Guthrie.
'The place where Mr. Mackenzie's old manse is situated is
near the small village of Tongue, the prettiest place in
all that country. He had a sort of ancestral right to
it--his family having had possession of it for about a
hundred years--and he had spent several hundreds of pounds
in improving the property, never dreaming but that his son
would inherit it after he was gone. It was told me that his
Grace of Sutherland wrote to him, expressing his hope that
he would not go out, considering how much he had done for
him. Mr. Mackenzie wrote back that he was not forgetful of
his Grace's kindness, but that he owed more to the Lord
Jesus Christ.... When I went to Tongue, where did I find
him? I passed the manse, with its lawns, its trim walks,
and its fine trees. I went on till I came to a bleak,
heather hill, under the lee of which I found a humble
cottage belonging to the parish schoolmaster, where this
venerable man and his son had found a shelter, and were
accommodated for four shillings a week. There was nothing
inviting about the house, though I believe the people were
kind enough. Before the door there was an old broken cart,
and a black peat stack, and everything was repulsive. I
opened the door of the single room, which served for
dining-room, drawing-room, parlour, library, study, and
bedroom, all and everything in one; and there, beyond the
bed, I saw him, nature exhausted. He had never closed his
eyes all night, having passed a night of extreme suffering;
and there, in exhausted nature, he was sitting half dressed
in a chair, in profound slumber, his old grey locks
streaming over the back of the chair on which he was
sitting--a picture of old age, a picture of disease, a
picture of death. I stood for some time before him, and as
I looked round the room I thought, Oh! if I had B----, if I
had any of the men here who are persecuting our poor Free
Church, surely they would be moved by such a sight as this!
I pushed open a door, and in a small mean closet I found
this venerable man's son--a minister of our Church, and a
man who would be an honour to any Church--lying on a fever
bed. His children were seventy miles away, for no house
could be procured for them in the district. The son had
never closed his eyes all night, his own sufferings having
been aggravated by his father's. I tried to console him,
but I was more fit to weep with him than anything else. I
only remember that he said something to this effect: "Ah,
Mr. Guthrie, this is bad enough and hard enough, but,
blessed be God, I don't lie here a renegade; my own
conscience and my father's are in peace." As I came back
amid the driving tempest, I confess that I was more like a
child than a man, so little was I able to resist what I had
seen; and as I came along I saw a little flower, that God
in his providence had taught, when the storm came on, to
close its leaves; and I thought, if God is so kind to this
little flower, he will never see the righteous man
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.... When I returned
from the North a few days ago, I found a letter, informing
me that this venerable man was dead. Death has tied his
tongue: it has loosed mine. I believe that that man may
have died as much in consequence of the privations he
endured, as John Brown did from the pistol of Claverhouse.
There was some mercy in the dragoon's pistol; it put an end
to the man's sufferings at once. But he is now in his
coffin, and they cannot disturb him there.'
'And what I pray this meeting to remember,' concluded the speaker, 'is
that there are other men in similar circumstances.' There were others,
not a few; but most of them now dwell where they hear not the voice of
the oppressor; and though family records all over Scotland might add
not a few pages to our chronicle of constancy, these are generally too
sacred to draw upon. Enough has been said to recall us to the
circumstances of straitening and suffering under which the
extraordinary work of church organization and construction which we
formerly sketched was carried on; and to remind us that the favourite
motto of the Scottish church, _Nec tamen consumebatur_, has more
modern applications than to those days of the Covenant
'Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour.'
But this subject has at present a more than historical interest. The
paragraph referring to Scotland and its urgent educational needs in
the Queen's Speech at the opening of this Session, followed by the
immediate introduction of a bill by the Lord Advocate, which was
promptly opposed by his political opponents, on the ground that it
confessedly cuts off the parish schools from any connection with the
Established Church, reminds us of perhaps the most cruel chapter in
the whole history of suffering in 1843. The parish school-masters of
Scotland have always been a most meritorious but very ill-remunerated
set of men; and it might have been hoped that whatever severities a
mistaken sense of duty might have led those in power to exercise
towards the ministers and leaders of the Church after 1843, these
humbler members not being themselves ecclesiastical officials, might
have been allowed to remain in the possession of their hearths and
homes. But it was not so. Many of the schoolmasters were elders of the
Church. All of them were to a certain extent educated men, and took an
interest in the questions raised as to the Church's right to be free
from patronage and from civil dictation generally. The consequence
was, that not a few of them came out along with the other laymen who
followed the ministers in 1843, prepared to take their share of the
pecuniary burdens which were thus brought upon the community. But this
milder lot was not allowed them. They, too, like the ministers, had
their Bartholomew's Day. They would gladly have clung to their humble
daily work in the school-house, and more gladly still to the little
home built generally at the end of it, during the week, with bare
liberty on the Sabbath to join with either congregation in worship;
but it was not to be. Throughout Scotland, every schoolmaster who
joined with the Church in fulfilling its pledge of 1842, was at once
ejected from his small house, and deprived of his smaller income; and
the consequences to them and to their families were in many cases
misery, approaching almost to starvation. The result to education was
not disadvantageous; for the Free Church, having thrown upon it the
burden of so many men deprived of bread, for no other crime than their
attachment to itself, was in no mood to shrink from the duty. It at
once added to the rest of its organization an education scheme. Homes
were gradually built for the ousted schoolmasters, and in as many
places as possible they continued to teach the same children of the
same hamlets where they had previously dwelt. The Free Church has now,
or had very recently, 620 schools and 645 teachers, and taught upwards
of 60,000 of the youth of Scotland, many of whom were in the most
remote and destitute parts; while its normal schools are reported by
her Majesty's inspectors as the most efficient in Scotland. Yet for a
proper national scheme, such as has for many years been desired in
Scotland, the Free Church would at once be ready to give up an
organization so interesting in its origin, and so powerful in its
results. Some years ago, in the midst of the keenest opposition by the
Conservative party and the Established Church, the choice of a teacher
of any denomination was allowed to the heritors; and next year,
whatever else is done on this most important subject, it is plain that
the last strands of exclusive connection will be parted.
The remaining matter which may come before Parliament during the next
session is one in which the other Voluntary and Presbyterian Churches
of Scotland are quite as much interested as that which dates from
1843. It is the proposal to transfer the patronage of the churches
from the few existing possessors, partly to the landowners, and partly
to the communicants of the Established Church, but excluding other
parishioners. A Committee was appointed in 1869 by the General
Assembly, to watch over a legislative measure to this effect, and
their first step was to go to the Prime Minister. In answer to Mr.
Gladstone's questions, they explained that the chief reason for the
sudden change of sentiment on the part of a body which had hitherto
been distinguished by its uncompromising defence of the present rights
of patrons, was a desire to conciliate the Presbyterians outside by a
deference to their well-known views. On this point, and on the
proposal generally, Mr. Gladstone requested that a formal memorial
might be drawn up, not only 'because it is desirable that the
Government should have in their hands some statement with some degree
of authority,' but also to instruct 'the Parliament of the three
kingdoms' in a matter which Scotchmen alone can be expected accurately
to know.
The desired 'Statement on the Law of Church Patronage' has accordingly
now been issued and transmitted to the Government, and will doubtless
be laid on the table of the House. It is a very remarkable document,
giving the ecclesiastical history of Scotland with great fairness
until it comes down to quite recent times, but making it in
consequence quite impossible for any Legislature with the least sense
of justice to reconstitute church endowments in the way desired. It
narrates how patronage was abolished in Scotland at the Revolution
settlement; and how its restoration by an Act in 1711 (protested
against by the Free Church in 1843 as altering a thing reserved from
the jurisdiction of the Union Parliament) was 'one of the acts of a
conspiracy for the purpose of bringing back the Stuart dynasty to the
throne.' The Assembly of 1735 stated in an address to the King, 'That
it was done in resentment against the Church of Scotland.' Bishop
Burnet, present at the passing of the Act, says it was intended to
'weaken and undermine' the Church of Scotland. The 'Statement' then
goes on to show how it was not merely the Free Church that protested
against the outrage: the Assembly of 1812 protested that 'the Act
abolishing patronage must be understood to be a part of our
Presbyterian constitution secured to us by the Treaty of Union
forever;' and for seventy years in succession thereafter the Assembly
yearly instructed its Committee to attempt to get redress. Gradually,
however, as the cold eighteenth century crept on, a party began to
dominate in the Church which took the same view of patronage which was
afterwards formulated by Dr. Mearns and Dr. Cook, and by the aid of
the civil courts became finally triumphant in 1843. And thus followed
the first secession. Ebenezer Erskine, a great name in those northern
regions in that dark century, protested publicly that 'those professed
Presbyterians who thrust men upon congregations without, and contrary
to, the free choice their king had allowed them, were guilty of an
attempt to jostle Christ out of his government.' He and three other
ministers were thereupon deposed in 1733, and 'appealed unto the first
free, faithful, and reforming General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland.' The second secession, in 1752, was a still more exact
parallel to the third great schism of 1843, for the founders of the
Relief Church in 1752 were driven out, like Dr. Chalmers and his
friends, because they refused to take a personal part in ordaining
those whom the patron had presented, but whom the people refused to
receive. These circumstances are very fairly narrated in the
Statement, which farther refers to the evidence given before the
Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Law of Patronage in
1834, as giving 'the best summary of the historical and legal aspects
of the question which we possess.' That Committee, it is stated, came
to no definite finding, because the necessity for doing so was
superseded by the Act of the previous General Assembly, giving the
people a veto against an unacceptable presentee--an Act which was 'not
passed without a full assurance from the law officers of the Crown in
Scotland that it was quite within the power of the Church.' Within a
year thereafter, however, a question arose as to this, and a narrow
majority of the Scotch judges, backed by the House of Lords, held that
it was not within their power. The Church at once took steps to appeal
to the Legislature to correct the anomaly, and concede the power which
was questioned; asking only that in the meantime the courts should not
force them to take a part in violating with their own hands those
rights of the Christian people which they had affirmed. The refusal to
allow this brought on the disruption. The 'Statement' winds up with
pointing out how 'the non-intrusion controversy thus passed into that
of spiritual independence;' and 'it was on a question thence arising
in regard to the respective provinces of the ecclesiastical and civil
courts that the secession of 1843 actually took place.' They add,
however, that though in 1836 the Church refused to condemn patronage
altogether, and was satisfied with the supposed security of the Veto
Act, in 1842 this as well as other matters came to maturity, and the
General Assembly resolved, 'That patronage is a grievance; has been
attended with much injury to the cause of true religion in this
Church and kingdom; is the main cause of the difficulties in which the
Church is at present involved; and that it ought to be abolished.' Far
from conciliating opponents, however, this resolve was made part of
the reason by the courts and the moderate party for driving its
authors into disruption.
The candour and fairness of the earlier historical part of this
memorial will always give it importance; but the gross inadequacy of
the practical measures proposed has subjected it in Scotland to an
unfair amount of ridicule. Dr. Cook, as the head of the moderate
party, the proper representative of those who stayed in in 1843, at
once protested against it, asserting that patronage is essential to
the stability of the Church of Scotland. Dr. Tulloch, of St. Andrew's,
as representing the broad section of the Church, repudiated it two
days after. Mr. Story, the biographer of Dr. Lee, and Dr. Wallace, who
is Dr. Lee's successor in Edinburgh, made haste to attack it also. The
great difficulty within the Church seems to be the proposed refusal to
admit all parishioners to vote for the parish minister. So long as he
was appointed by a single laird or nobleman, who might be a stranger
altogether, that difficulty was not felt. The people were excluded,
but they were excluded equally. It is now proposed, however, that the
minister should be paid by the whole country, but should be appointed
by the communicants of the Established Church alone, excluding the
members of the older and properly anti-patronage bodies, who have all
the same creed, but whose principles of Church polity the Established
Church, itself a minority of the nation, is only now adopting. It is
clearly the vague sense of injustice and wrong thus caused which is at
the root of the dissatisfaction everywhere expressed with the proposed
measure, even by members and ministers of the Scottish Establishment
itself. But another more important result has been the clear
recognition that there is no chance of thereby 'conciliating' the
older anti-patronage Presbyterians or uniting the Church. Last year we
expressed the belief that any fair proposals or endeavours on the part
of the Establishment would have the effect of at least producing a
pause in the projected union of the voluntary Presbyterians outside.
The 'Statement' to be laid before Parliament has had decidedly the
effect of consolidating that union, and there is no doubt now that it
will go on, though probably in the meantime rather by way of mutual
co-operation. A very short time will see the Free Church, the United
Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church--all the
large Presbyterian communities who have protested against patronage,
and whose leading principle is the liberation of religion from State
control--absolutely united in their work, and partitioning Scotland
between them. It need not be said how hopeless is the proposal to
choose this time for asking Parliament to reconstitute the endowment
of a minority of the Scotch people at the expense of the whole, or how
fatal to the Church the success of the scheme would be, even if it
could be expected to succeed.
The movement is more likely to be in quite another direction. Dr.
Wallace, in his paper on 'Church Tendencies in Scotland,' and some
other men not belonging to his party in the Kirk, have rather
indicated that the Highlands of Scotland, with which a large part of
our paper has dealt, should be handed over from their own body to that
disestablished church which for the last twenty-five years has with
increasing success taken charge of it. In July last, this subject came
up in the House of Commons, in the discussion upon Mr. M'Laren's
Church Rates Abolition Bill for Scotland, a measure which its able and
energetic mover has withdrawn, upon receiving a promise from the
Government to introduce one next year upon their own responsibility.
On some matters raised by this bill differences of opinion were
expressed. Mr. Graham, member for Glasgow, said that he knew from
experience that 'a large number of his constituents--the enormous mass
of the people of Scotland--bitterly resented these compulsory
assessments;' while his colleague, Mr. Anderson, opposed the bill as
premature, on the ground that 'if, as is very probable, in the course
of a few years the House should think proper to disestablish and
disendow that Church, its property will have to be handed over to the
State.' But the special matter of the Highlands, a scandal which even
the friends of the Establishment are desirous to see wiped out at any
expense, was brought forward by Mr. Ellice, who 'agreed with the hon.
member for Edinburgh, that in many parts of the country the Church of
Scotland was but the caricature of a Church, and that the presence of
the Established Church, in places where it was only represented by
five or ten persons, was a reproach to the Legislature. He hoped the
Lord Advocate, when dealing with the question, would also deal with
those useless churches and manses which were a standing reproach to
common sense, and ought no longer to be supported.' The Lord Advocate
was cautious in his rejoinder to this appeal, restricting his
observations to the Highland churches and manses '_provided by_
_Parliament_ at a time when the Church numbered a larger portion of
the population than it does now.' With regard to these--the annual
payments in connection with which form, perhaps, the most offensive
example of mere waste of public money at present existing--the
Government officer said, 'So far as I have been able to ascertain, it
would be in accordance with good sense to make provision whereby that
accommodation, which is not profitable either to the kingdom or the
Church, might close.' Any money saved in this direction will almost
certainly be devoted to the education of Scotland; for the Free Church
will refuse a concurrent endowment which would include Roman
Catholics, and the long Conservative battle against a good Education
Bill beyond the Tweed, cannot be successful for ever. When the Scotch
Presbyterians form their Union (in which as Mr. Gordon pointed out in
Parliament, there is no reason why the members of the present
Established Church should not join), they will undertake a weighty
responsibility for the religious good of Scotland. But the weight
which they unite to bear will be easy, compared to that crushing load
which fell upon one of them in 1843, and which yet became to it only
such a burden 'as wings are to the bird.'
FOOTNOTE:
[50] The famine of 1846, to relieve which the Free Church sent £15,000
to the Highlands.
ART. IV.--_The Romance of the Rose._
(1.) _Le Roman de la Rose._ Nouvelle Édition. Par Francisque Michel.
Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. 1864.
The study of pre-Renaissance literature belongs especially to the
present century. A few ballads had been previously rescued from
oblivion; a few names unearthed from the rubbish of centuries; but the
great mass of writers who lived and flourished in what men used to
call the Dark Ages had been utterly forgotten, names as well as
writings, until the labours of Ampère, Fauriel, Raynouard, and others
in France, as well as those of our own antiquarian scholars in
England, brought them again to light within the last fifty years.
The literature thus revived has a value of its own quite independent
of any literary merit, though this is by no means contemptible. It
reveals to us not only the manners and customs of the time, the
mediæval daily life, but, which is more important, the mediæval
conditions and modes of thought, within such limits--too narrow,
alas!--as the conventional rules of poetry allowed. But artificial
grooves cannot wholly prevent a vigorous mind from running off the
beaten track, and in spite of conventionalism, the reader comes
sometimes, in the midst of sandy deserts of commonplace morality,
monotonous repetitions, and thirsty verbiage, upon oases of such
exceeding brightness and splendour, cooled with fountains so sparkling
and foliage so luxuriant, that he feels he is repaid for all his
trouble. And the country is by no means explored. As in the great
goldfields of Australia, the big nuggets have disappeared and been
gathered up long since; nevertheless there remain, for those who have
patience to dig, plenty of smaller pieces of virgin gold, which may
amply serve to reward their toil. But because all have not the time or
the opportunity for this work, and because, after all, it lies a good
deal out of the beaten track of scholars, it may not be uninteresting
to our readers to invite them to come with us and visit, sparing
themselves the trouble of looking for them, certain oases which lie
scattered about in a vast Sahara of verse called the 'Romance of the
Rose.' 'Rien n'est agréable et piquant,' says Sainte Beuve, 'comme un
guide familier dans les époques lointaines.'
Our sketch of the book will be necessarily incomplete; nor could any
ordinary limits of a paper suffice for its thorough examination. Its
importance is evidenced by the fact that for two hundred and fifty
years it was a sort of Bible to France; the source whence its readers
drew their maxims of morality, their philosophy, their science, their
history, and even their religion; and which, after having retained its
popularity for a length of time almost unparalleled in the history of
literature, was revived with success after the Renaissance, the _only_
mediæval book which enjoyed this distinction.
We shall endeavour to show some of the reasons of this long-continued
success, and to prove that the book, once the companion of knights and
dames, of _damoiseaux_ and _damoiselles_, has the strongest claims on
the student of the Middle Ages; that it is not a congeries of dry and
dead bones of antiquity, not a mass of mediæval fables, but a book
full of ideas, information, and suggestion--a book warm with life.
France, whence it came, is indeed the mother of modern literature.
Thence both Italy and England derived their inspiration. In the
countries of Provence and Languedoc lingered longest the remains of
the Latin civilization: there the lamp of learning, dwindled down at
last to a mere speck, had yet flame enough to light the new taper of
the troubadour; there was first heard the 'Nibelungen Lied;' there
originated the _tenson_, the _canso_, the _sirvente_, the _chanson
royale_, the _triolet_, and all the varied forms of mediæval poetry;
and there was the chosen home of such philosophy and science as
existed between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. English writers
before the Elizabethan age copied openly and avowedly from French
sources, taking plot, plan, and framework of their poems. Even Dante
deferred to Provence, and owned that the troubadour led the thought of
Western Europe. Other countries of Europe have little indeed in their
early literature to compare with the treasures of the Langue d'Oc and
the Langue d'Oil; and while, outside France, stand almost alone the
great figures of Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, there is, within the
circle of the Langue d'Oil alone, a constellation in which are the
names of Marie de France, Rutebeuf, Jean de Meung, Charles of Orleans,
Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, Eustache Deschamps, and François
Villon, besides a host of minor poets whose works are little inferior,
and who may still be read, if not always with delight, certainly
always with profit. Scattered about in their writings is the whole of
the mediæval life; by their light we can penetrate through the clouds
of six hundred years, and bring those picturesque ages of colour and
splendour back to our minds as brightly and vividly as we realize any
battle-field in France by the pen of a special correspondent. And
besides the mediæval life, with its habits and its thought, the
student will trace in this poetry the gradual development of the true
French Muse--her mockery, her satirical spirit, her cynicism, her
incredulity, her curiosity, her want of reverence, with her inimitable
wit and fresh buoyancy of spirit--a muse _gaillarde et moqueuse_,
unlike any other that the world has seen, whom to know is to love,
though not always to respect. It is no fault of modern France if her
old literature is not known as it deserves to be. Editions have been
multiplied of the fabliaux, romances, poems, and chronicles which
began with Wace and ended with Clement Marot. But as yet no great
writer has taken up the subject as it deserves, and a consolidated
history of the literature and thought of the Middle Ages, from the
tenth century to the Renaissance, embracing as a whole, and not in
unconnected parts, the writings of Italy, France, and England, with
those of Spain and Germany, is a work which awaits the hand of some
man who will devote to it the greater part of a lifetime. Materials
for such a work amply exist; but he who undertakes it should bring to
his task a knowledge of languages and an amount of reading rare
indeed, and difficult to be found.
English readers principally know this 'Romance of the Rose' through
the translation which is attributed to Chaucer. Whether it be really
his or not is a matter which does not concern us here, and, to save
trouble of explanation, we will refer to it as Chaucer's translation.
It is unfortunate, in some respects, that it contains only a
portion--viz., the first 5,170 lines, and then, with an omission of
5,544 lines, about 1,300 more. It gives entire the portion contributed
by Guillaume de Lorris, and as much of the remainder as fell in most
readily with the humour of the translator, the attack on the hypocrisy
of monks and friars. But by omitting all the rest, amounting to about
two-thirds of the whole, he has failed altogether in giving the spirit
of the work; and those who read only Chaucer's version would certainly
be at a loss to explain the rapid, extraordinary, and lasting
popularity which the book achieved.
The reasons of this popularity have, indeed, been the subject of
considerable discussion among French critics. Pasquier speaks of its
'noble sentiments,' and considers that its object was moral--viz., to
show that love is but a dream. Roquefort can see in it only a long and
rather stupid allegory, enlivened by occasional gleams of poetry;
Villemain considers it a mere gloze on Ovid's 'Art of Love,' with a
_mélange_ of abstractions, allegories, and scholastic subtilties.
Nisard deduces from its popularity a proof of its entire conformity
with the spirit of the age--an almost obvious conclusion. Other
writers, Goujet among the number, try to account for its success by
the reputation which Jean de Meung enjoyed as an alchemist, and the
belief that the great secrets of the science were to be found in the
poem: a manifestly inadequate reason, because the proportion of
alchemists to the rest of his readers must have been small indeed.
Others, among whom were Molinet and Marot--of whom more
presently--thought its success was due to a double allegory which they
found in it; while Professor Morley and Mr. Thomas Wright, the latest
writers who have given any account of the book--both of them meagre,
dry, and uninteresting--do not attempt to explain its popularity at
all. There are sufficient reasons why the book sprang at once into
favour, which we hope presently to explain. The great success which it
attained is illustrated by the number and weight of its assailants.
Foremost among these was Gerson, the 'most Christian Doctor.' He
calls it a book written for the basest purposes; he says that if
there were only one copy of it in the world, and if he were offered
fifty pounds in gold for it, he would rather burn it: that those who
have it ought to give it up to their father confessors to be
destroyed: and that even if it were certain--which was unfortunately
far from being the case, the contrary being presumable--that Jean de
Meung had repented his sins in sackcloth and ashes, it would be no
more use praying for him than for Judas Iscariot himself. Cursing so
ecclesiastical, invective so angry, stimulated public curiosity more
and more, and instead of copies being given to confessors to be
burned, copies were given to scribes to be multiplied. Assailants came
every day unto the field. Christine de Pisan, later on, took up the
cause of her sex, and vindicated womankind from the sweeping charges
made against them by the poet; while Martin Franc, who styled himself
'Le Champion des Dames,' wrote an elaborate apology for his clients,
which has all the dreariness of the 'Romance of the Rose,' and none of
its brightness. The one is a desert indeed; the other, as we have
said, is a desert with oases.
The book is the work of two writers, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de
Meung. The earlier of these seems to have died about the time that his
successor was born. Of his life we know absolutely nothing. He came
from the little town of Lorris, where, it is said, the house in which
he was born is still shown. Two or three lines in the poem are cited
to prove the date of his birth and death. These, however, are by no
means to be relied upon. Thus, he tells us in his opening lines--
'Au vingtiesme an de mon aage,
Si vi ung songe à mon dormant.'
whence most writers have assumed that he died at the age of twenty,
considering, we suppose, that it would not take a year to write the
4,670 lines which form his part. This would be, at least, quick
writing, while internal evidence seems to us to point most
unmistakeably to the bestowal of very careful thought, and therefore
much time, upon the work. And the lines which follow shortly after
have not received proper attention--indeed, hardly any modern writer
on the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to have read the book at all.
Here the poet says--
'Avis m'iere qu'il étoit mains;
Il a j'à bien cinc ans au mains.'
which would make him five and twenty at least, a much more likely age,
considering the work he had done, for his death.
At the close of his part of the book we get the following note by the
scholiast, if we may call him so:--
'Çi endroit, trespassa Guillaume
De Lorris et ne fist plus pseaume;
Mais après plus de quarante ans
Maistre Jehan de Meung li romans
Parfist, ainsi comme je treuve,
Et ici commence son oeuvre.'
That is,--
'Here William died; his song was done.
When forty years had passed away,
Sir John the romance carried on,
And here commencing, told the lay.'
While Jean de Meung himself says, prophesying after the event--
'Car quant Guillaume cessera
Jehan le continuera
Après sa mort que je ne mente
Anns trespassés plus de quarente.'
So that if we fix the date of Jean de Meung, we have that of Guillaume
de Lorris. Now, there is nothing to help us, except a tradition that
Guillaume died in the middle of the thirteenth century, and whatever
internal evidence the book itself affords. Most writers, because the
order of Knights Templars is mentioned as still existing, have been
content to date the book at about 1306, the year before the
destruction of the fraternity; but the poet mentions Charles of Anjou
as King of Sicily. We have, therefore, a much lower limit, viz., the
year 1282. Perhaps on closer examination, a range of years might
easily be found in which the book was written. It is, however,
sufficient for our purpose to date its authorship about 1280, and that
of Guillaume de Lorris at 1240.
It is not all certain that the poet was very young when he feigned his
dream. The hero of the poem is necessarily a young man. Early manhood
is the period of vehement desire and passion. Twenty is the typical
age of early manhood; that age may have very well been selected as the
one best fitted for dreams of love and the adventures of a lover. We
are, however, inclined to believe, on the whole, that the poem was
written in quite early manhood. A tradition which only recalls one
fact is generally true, and the one fact recorded of the poet is that
he died quite young. Internal evidence, too, appears to support this
view. His style bears marks which seem, though one may here be very
easily mistaken, those of inexperience. His imaginative faculty is
abundant, and even luxuriant. His descriptive power, fully employed in
his portraits of abstract personifications, is very much above the
average. He revels in picturesque accessories and details which his
copious fancy has conjured up; and his pictures, if they have not
always the _tone_, have all the vividness, with the wealth of work,
which belongs to a young poet's early style. The versification,
moreover, is cold, regular, and monotonous; there is nothing to
indicate the possession of experience or the presence of passion. He
had read Ovid, and used him freely to suit his own purposes; but he
wants Ovid's sympathetic power, and tries to supply its place by a
certain cold and mannered grace; his faults being attributable, in the
assumption of his early death, more to inexperience and youth, than to
any defects which years would not have removed. Considered in this
light, his work remains an unfinished monument of early genius,
chiefly redeemed from mediocrity by its collections of curiously
constructed allegorical portraits, a work which would never have been
rescued from oblivion but for the splendour of light thrown on it by
Jean de Meung.
Chaucer's translation is exceedingly accurate, giving line for line,
and almost word for word, save when he sometimes adds a line to
enforce its meaning, or to make it clear. Thus, when translating the
famous
'La robe ne faict pas la moyne,'
he says--
'Habite ne makyth monk no frere;
But clene life and devocioun,
Makyth gode men of religioun.'
The saying itself (for nothing in the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to
be original), may be traced to Neckham, who died at Cirencester in
1217.
'Non tonsura facit monachum, nec horrida vestis,
Sed virtus animi, perpetuusque vigor.'
The great ease of the translation makes it read almost like an
original work, though we cannot agree with those who think that the
translator has improved on his model. No literal translation, not even
the very best, can be free from a certain stiffness and constraint.
The felicity with which difficult passages are occasionally rendered
may be judged by the following lines, which contain a touch almost
worthy of Shirley. It is, if our own experience be worth anything,
excessively hard to translate. We subjoin original and translation,
side by side.
'Les yex gros et si envoisiés,
Qu'il rioient tousjors avant
Que la bouchette par couvant.'
'Hir eyen greye and glad also,
That laugheden ay in hir semblaunt,
First or the mouth by couvenant.'
That is, her eyes began to laugh before her lips.
We must, as briefly as possible, set forth the action of the poem. It
begins, like De Guilleville's 'Pilgrimage of Grace,' Chaucer's 'Court
of Love' (borrowed, of course, from this), Alain de l'Isle's
'Complaint of Nature,' and so many other mediæval works, with a dream.
In the month of May,--that season when the earth forgets the poverty
of winter, and grows proud of her renewed beauty, clothing herself in
a robe of flowers of a hundred colours; when the birds, silent during
the long cold months, awake again, and are so joyous that they are
fain, _per force_, to sing,--the youth of twenty summers wanders forth
and comes upon the Garden of Delight (_Déduit_). We may remark here,
how the walled garden, secured from the outer world, is the mediæval
writer's only idea of scenery. Perhaps our modern craving for the
picturesque would be greatly modified if we were uncertain, as our
ancestors were, about wolves, bears, and brigands, whose admiration
for wild scenes induces them to inhabit them.
The wall of the garden is painted with figures of all evil passions,
such as Envy, Hatred, Avarice, and Hypocrisy (_Papelardie_), with
those of Sorrow, Age, and Poverty. The youth is admitted at a wicket
by the Lady Oyseuse (_Idlesse_), and wanders about, admiring the rows
of strange trees, the birds and flowers, the peace and safety of the
place. Presently he comes upon _Déduit_ himself, whom Chaucer calls
Myrthe.
'Ful fayre was Myrthe, ful long and high:
A fayrer man I never sigh.'
With him are all his courtiers, including _Léesce_ (Joy).
'And wot ye who came with them there?
The Lady Gladness, bright and fair.'
With the company was the God of Love, accompanied by _Doux Regard_,
bearing two bows: one of them was crooked and misshapen; the other
straight, and beautifully wrought. This shows the different
impressions of love, or its opposite, produced by the eyes. He had,
too, ten arrows (the idea is borrowed from Ovid), five belonging to
Love, viz., Beauty, Simplicity, Frankness, Company, and Fair
Semblance; and five to Dislike, viz., Pride, Villany, Shame, Despair,
and New Thought. Love was followed as well by Beauty, whose attendants
were Riches, Largesse, Franchise, and Courtesy, as _Dames_
_d'honneur_, each of whom had with her a lover, that of Largesse being
'sib to Arthur Duke of Bretaigne.' This is intended, of course, to
show how different qualities attract love.
The garden is square; it contains all sorts of fruit trees, 'brought
from the country of the Saracens;' these are set five or six fathoms
apart; wells, fountains, and streams, soft grass and turf, and flowers
of every kind. Round the stone-work of one fountain he finds written,
'Here died the fair Narcissus,'--an accident which enables the poet to
narrate at length the full history of that unfortunate swain. Getting
over his digression, the youth discovers a rosebush laden with roses
and rosebuds, one of which he desires incontinently to pluck. Here his
troubles begin. Love shoots at him with five arrows, and when he is
sick and faint with wounds, calls upon him to surrender, and become
his vassal. This he does, giving Love as a gage of fealty his heart,
and receiving in return a code of rules which have been imitated by
many subsequent poets, notably by Chaucer, in the 'Court of Love,' and
by Charles of Orleans. He also receives as a mark of especial favour,
Hope, Doux Penser, Doux Parler, and Doux Regard--Sweet-Thought,
Sweet-Speech, and Sweet-Looks--as companions. He makes a rash and
ill-considered attempt upon his Rosebud. But Danger is there with
Malebouche, Shame (child of Trespass and Reason), and Chastity, the
daughter of Shame. He is driven away, loaded with reproaches. His
companions leave him, and while he is sitting dejected and despairing,
Reason comes to him and argues on the folly of love.
'Love is but madness! I tell you true;
The man who loves can nothing do.
He has no profit from the earth:
If he is clerk, he forgets his learning:
If anything else, whatever his worth,
Great is his labour and little his earning.
Long and unmeasured and deep the pain:
Short is the joy; the fruition vain.'
But the pleading of Reason, as generally happens in such cases, is
quite useless. The lover
'For still within my heart there glows
The breath divine of that sweet Rose,'
goes next to a Friend (Ami), from whom he gets small sympathy, but
much practical relief. Acting on his counsel, he begs pardon of
Danger, who grants it sulkily. Danger in most mediæval allegories
stands for the husband, but there is nothing to show that Guillaume de
Lorris meant him to be understood in this sense, and we may without
any violence take him to represent the natural guardian of the
damsel. Getting Bel Accueil to accompany him, he goes once more to see
his Rosebud, which he finds greatly improved. Venus obtains for him
the privilege of a kiss. Shame, Jealousy, and Malebouche, are alarmed,
and interfere. Danger turns everybody out. Jealousy builds a high
tower, in which Bel Accueil is shut up, a prisoner, with Danger and
Malebouche to guard him. Outside the tower sits the disconsolate
lover, lamenting his misfortunes, and the mutability of love's
favours, which he compares to those of Fortune, of whom he says:
'In heart of man,
Malice she plants, and labour, and pain;
One hour caresses, and smiles, and plays;
Then as suddenly changes her face:
Laughs one moment, the next she mourns;
Round and round her wheel she turns,
All at her own caprice and will.
The lowest ascends, and is raised, until
He who was highest was low on the ground,
And the wheel of Fortune has quite turned round.'
And at this point the poet died--'trespassa Guillaume de Lorris.' Had
he lived to complete his work we should had a complete Ars Amoris,
fashioned on the precepts of Ovid, and clothed in an allegory--cold,
monotonous, bloodless--though graceful, fanciful, and not devoid of
poetic taste.
Perhaps we should have had more than this. In its simple, first
meaning, it is not difficult for anyone to make out. Idleness or
Leisure alone makes Pleasure possible; through Idleness we enter into
the garden of Delight, where love wanders. Youth is the season of
love, and Spring is an emblem of youth. The escort of Love is the
collection of qualities which belong to the time of youth, and make it
happy, such as beauty, wealth, and courtesy. What has Reason to do
with Love? Who can advise but an experienced friend? The only
possession that the vassal can give to Love the suzerain is his own
heart; the chief aid to success is Bel Accueil--'fair welcome'--while
Envy, Shame (for fear of Malebouche--Calumny), Jealousy, and Chastity
protect the maiden.
So far all is clear and easy to be read. Was there not, however, under
an interpretation as easy as that of Bunyan's Holy War, a second and a
deeper meaning? It is a question not easy to answer. Molinet, the dull
and laborious Molinet, who published, towards the end of the fifteenth
century, an edition of the book in prose,
'Le Roman de la Rose
Moralisé cler et net
Translaté en rime et prose
Par votre humble Molinet,'
pretends not only that there is a hidden meaning, but also to discover
what this hidden meaning was. 'The young man,' he tells us, 'who
awakens from his dream is the child born to the light: he is born in
the month of May, when the birds sing: the _singing of the birds is
the preaching of holy doctors_ (!)' He dresses, in his dreams, to go
out. This is the entrance of the child into the world, enveloped in
human miseries: the river represents Baptism: the orchard is the
Cloister of Religion; outside it, because they cannot enter therein,
or have no share or part in paradise, are the figures of human vices.
_Déduit_ is our Lord; Léesce is the Church; Love is the Holy Spirit;
the eight doves of Venus's chariot are the eight Beatitudes; and the
combat between Love and the guardians of Bel Accueil is the perpetual
conquest between good and evil. Even the story of Narcissus is not
without its meaning; and the pine which shades the fountain is the
tree of the Cross, while the fountain itself is the overflowing stream
of mercy. Love, again, in the latter part, stands for our Saviour;
homage to him is the profession of faith of a novice; the commandments
of Love are the vows of chastity and poverty. Even the legend of
Virginia is an allegory; the maiden being the soul, and Appius the
world. This position he strengthens by deriving, after the fashion of
the philologists of the period, the name of Appius from _a_,
privative, and _pius_.
Clement Marot, on the other hand, in his edition, where he turned the
language into French of his own day, and thereby utterly spoiled it,
finds an interpretation of his own, quite as ingenious and quite as
improbable as that of Molinet. The Rose is the state of wisdom, 'bien
et justement conforme à la Rose pour les valeurs, doulours, et odours
qui en elle sont: la quelle moult est à avoir difficile pour les
empeschements interposez.' It was a Papal Rose, made of gold, and
scented with musk and balm; of gold, on account of the honour and
reverence due to God; scented with musk to symbolize the duties of
fidelity and justice to our neighbours; and with balm because we ought
to hold our own souls clear and precious above all worldly things.
Or, the Rose is the state of Grace, difficult for the sinner to arrive
at, and fitly symbolized by the flowers which had sufficient virtue to
transform Apuleius from an ass back to his human shape.
Or, again, the Rose was the Virgin Mary--the Rose of Jericho, pure and
spotless, and not to be touched by human hands.
Fourthly: it was the rose which the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon,
which signified eternal happiness. The interpretations of Molinet and
Marot are both manifestly absurd, and represent the pedantic trifling
of a time when the taste for double allegories had been carried to a
ridiculous extent. And as for Jean de Meung's part, there are plenty
of touches in it which show that the writer, though no heretic, had
little sympathy with church matters; and would certainly not be
disposed to spend his time in laboriously concocting a riddle of
twenty thousand lines, the answer to which was to be found in the
Romish creed. And in Guillaume de Lorris himself, it is difficult to
find a word for or against the Church.
He was, no doubt, mindful of the stern lesson read to heretics in the
crusade of Provence, fresh in all men's recollection. But he had been
nurtured and fed on the poetry of the troubadours; the form of his
verse and the turn of his thought were Provençal. Was it likely that
so young a writer should escape the spirit of the literature while he
studied its form? And since in a time of violent religious excitement,
he can find no word of sympathy for a church which persecutes, is it
not probable that his sympathies are, if not with the Church
persecuted, at least with the people? The probability, moreover, of
there being a double allegory in the 'Romance of the Rose,' as planned
originally by Guillaume de Lorris, appears to us to be strengthened by
a further consideration of the Provençal literature and the line of
its development.
Love, in a time when life had few pleasures and distractions to
offer--when these were generally only to be snatched in the intervals
of fighting--became not only the symbol of all life's joy, but grew
into a kind of religion. It had its own ritual, its ceremonies, its
sacraments, its lessons, and its hymns. Aged poets were its bishops,
the guardians of its forms; young poets its priests; instead of the
images of saints, were living women, and instead of the procession and
the chant, were the love song and the dance. It was nothing new to the
Provençal to celebrate the religious worship with a dance. He alone,
among Christians, preserved a custom handed down from old pagan times,
and as late as the sixteenth century, the worthy people of Marseilles
welcomed Christmas in this way.
The other sex would naturally offer few obstacles to a homage which,
though it sometimes destroyed their virtue, always flattered their
vanity, and invested them with a power which was beyond that of kings.
Princes, indeed, might make men rich, but women alone could make men
happy. An accurate knowledge of love's ceremonies became part of the
education of a gentleman; these were reduced, like those of chivalry,
to a sort of code; questions of law, so to speak, arose, which were
tried with great solemnity at courts of law where ladies were judges;
appeals from these decisions were often made to higher courts, and
there is every reason to believe that the _Arrêts d'Amour_, numerous
examples of which are given in the work of Martial d'Auvergne, were
courts as serious and as gravely disputed in times of peace, as those
which decided other differences of opinion. From being, therefore, the
legitimate end of a young man's hope, the chief solace of his life,
love grew gradually to be surrounded by all sorts of restrictions and
ceremonies, and losing its charm of spontaneity and freedom, was
idealized until it lost itself, and became the mere shadow of a poetic
dream. As every idea, pushed beyond its legitimate limits, provokes
some kind of rebellion, two streams of thought presently diverged from
the main channel, one of them, with which we have nothing to do,
satirical, cynical, earthly and gross; the other, religious. Sexual
love is only possible, or is strongest when life is young and the
blood is strong and hopeful; as years creep on and the end of things
approaches, its insufficiency to satisfy the cravings of the soul must
become, even to its most ardent votary, more and more deeply apparent.
The days when a smile from his mistress made him, according to the
rules of the craft, happy, or a frown miserable, would leave behind
them, when they had passed away, an increased sense of the real
seriousness of life; while at the best of times, the art of love would
not be felt as anything but elegant trifling, and the passion which it
excited, transitory. Women, too, the object of all this homage, were
really, though they might not know it, degraded by what was intended
to do them honour. And let those who lament the subjection of the sex,
own that the extravagant honour paid to ladies in the Middle Ages has
had something, at least, to do with it. From some such feelings as the
above, we believe it came to pass that the poet began first to
imagine, and then to contrive, for his love songs a deeper and a
mystical meaning. The sentiment of nearly all the Provençal poets, as
regards women, was delicate, elevating to themselves, and
enthusiastic. Women are to men, in the poet's imagination, what heaven
is to earth; their gentleness contrasts with man's ferocity, their
weakness with his strength, their strength with his weakness. Love is
the principle of all honour and merit, the mainspring of every noble
action; its desires and its pleasures are only legitimate, inasmuch
as they are as a stimulus to the painful duties of chivalry; the
springs of poetry are in love; without love there is nothing that
civilizes, softens, or elevates. But earthly love, so high, so pure,
so separated from the common instincts of the world, is but a type of
that infinitely higher and purer heavenly love. All the allegories of
the poets are to be read in a deeper sense by those who are initiated
into the mysteries, and when a poet sings songs of love, he is singing
songs of a mysterious religion.
That this was the case with all the troubadours, or even with most of
them, we do not affirm; that it was at one time believed to be true of
all of them seems tolerably clear. And no doubt many an honest bard,
quite simply putting down his thoughts about his mistress's lips, or
the tangles of her hair, would have been astonished to hear that he
was preaching the glories of the Virgin, or advocating a free and
Pope-less Church. On the supposition that Guillaume de Lorris was one
of those who had learned from the troubadours the art of double
allegory, and that he conveyed religious teaching under this disguise,
we should expect to find the key to his poem in the religious
difficulties of his time. It is not, at least, difficult to get at
these.
The people of Provence[51] had always mixed freely with the educated
Mahometans of Spain, and the wealthy Jews who lived among them: their
own Christianity sat lightly upon them, as a cloak, the fashion of
which might at any time be altered; theology was held in universal
disesteem, and the priesthood, taken from the lowest strata of
society, were objects of pity and contempt: a widespread heresy
existed, which does not appear to have had much, if anything to do
with modern Protestantism, holding 'erroneous views' on Baptism and
the Eucharist, rejecting the Old Testament, denying the authority and
necessity of the priesthood, and even repudiating, in some cases,
marriage itself. It was growing rapidly not only in Switzerland and
Languedoc but also in the _Nord_, in England, and in Germany, by means
of wandering bards, who scattered their new doctrines broadcast
wherever they went. By local persecutions and burnings, attempts were
made to stop it, but in vain; and Rome saw with consternation a
province the most cultivated, the most richly endowed with genius, the
most wealthy, that from which the greatest help for the Church was to
be expected, a prey to free thought of the most unbridled kind.
As soon as persecution began, or even suspicion of the truth, the
poets would see the necessity for veiling their thoughts under
carefully-constructed allegories, and while they chanted a monotonous
refrain on one of the many rules of love, secretly inculcated a code
of doctrines more subversive than any the Church had yet combated.
Occasionally we hear a voice which speaks aloud, and plainly enough,
to let us know the kind of thing that was whispered. Thus Fauriel
gives the following from Pierre Cardinal.[52] He is considering the
insoluble problem of suffering and evil, and cries, with a boldness
that has more despair than blasphemy in it--'At the Last Day I shall
say, myself, to God that He fails in His duty to His children if He
thinks to destroy them and plunge them into Hell.... God ought to use
gentleness and to keep His souls from trespass.'
Voluptuous, loose in morals, satirical, and careless as these poets
were, they yet have the merit of boldly using thought, and carrying
conviction to its logical and legitimate end. They anticipated the
movement of the fifteenth century, without its knowledge and higher
light: their penalty was extermination, thorough and complete. The
land was destroyed; its cities burned; the people massacred; Pope and
kings combined to make a desert, and to call it peace.
What could the Church do more? What indeed, could she do less? For the
war was a struggle for existence, and the heresies of Provence were
only the most formidable in a general movement of free thought which
shook the powers of Rome to its very foundations. But one thing the
Church could not do. The flame of insubordination and opposition could
be handed down in secret. Things that could not be attacked openly,
might be attacked secretly. There were secret societies in the Middle
Ages, which had a real and definite object, the danger and the terror
of the Church.[53] And to this day Rome excommunicates the members of
all secret societies, whether the mild and convivial Freemason or the
bloodthirsty Fenian. The Society of Jesus is the only secret society
to which a Roman Catholic may belong. Guillaume de Lorris belongs to a
time when doctrine was secretly assailed; his successor, Jean de
Meung, to a time when practice was openly assailed. For men very soon
left off attacking their enemies by allegory, and Guillaume de Lorris,
if he was indeed one of that school, was one of its last disciples.
Whether he was, or was not, can never now be satisfactorily answered.
He left his poem unfinished, hardly, perhaps, begun. Whatever has to
be said on the subject of its original plan, must be necessarily
conjectural. We incline, on the whole, to believe that he did have a
religious purpose, which was not understood by Jean de Meung; that one
who bears in mind the religious history of Provence as well as the
character of its situation, may well construct an interpretation of
the work of Guillaume de Lorris far more probable and consistent than
that of Molinet or of Marot.
Jean de Meung, so-called because he was born at the little town of
Meung, in the department of Loiret--
'De Jean de Meung, s'enfle le cours de Loire.'
Jean Clopinel, Limping John, because he was lame, finding himself,
some forty years later, with his head stuffed full of all the learning
of his time, and nearly bursting with sentiments, convictions, and
opinions, on religion, politics, social economy, and science, began,
one may suppose, to cast about for some means of getting rid of his
burden. Lighting on the unfinished and half-forgotten work of
Guillaume de Lorris, he conceived the idea of finishing the allegory,
and making it the medium of popularizing his own opinions. He could
hardly have hit upon a readier plan. It was not yet a time for popular
science; there were no treatises in the vernacular on history,
theology, and political economy, and the only way of getting at people
was by means of rhyme. But Jean de Meung was no allegorist, and no
storyteller. He took up the tale, indeed, where his predecessor left
it, and carried it on, it is true, but in so languid a manner, with so
many digressions, turns and twists, that what little interest was
originally in it goes clean out. Nothing can well be more tedious than
those brief portions devoted to the conduct of the story. It finishes,
somehow. Love calls his barons together, is defeated, sends an embassy
to his mother, Venus, who comes to his assistance; the fortress is
taken, Bel Accueil is released, and the Rose is plucked. In the course
of the poem, Malebouche gets his tongue cut out, Déduit, Doux Regard,
Léesce, Doux Penser, and others drop out of the allegory altogether;
the Garden is forgotten; all the little careful accessories of
Guillaume de Lorris, such as the arrows of Love and his commandments,
are contemptuously ignored. Those that remain are changed, the Friend
in the second part being very different from the Friend in the first,
while _Richesse_ appears with a new function. Every incident is made
the peg for a digression, and every digression leads to a dozen
others. The losses of the old characters are made up by the creation
of new ones, and, in Faux Semblant, the hypocrite and monk, Jean de
Meung anticipates Rabelais and surpasses Erasmus.
Between Guillaume de Lorris and his successor there is a great gulf
hardly represented by the forty years of interval. Men's thoughts had
widely changed. The influence of Provençal poetry was finally and
completely gone, and its literature utterly fallen, to be revived
after many centuries only by the scholar and the antiquarian. More
than this, the thoughts and controversies of men which had turned
formerly upon the foundations of the Christian faith, now turned
either on special points of doctrine, or on the foundation and
principles of society.
No writers, so far as we remember, have noticed the entire separation
between the two parts of the romance. They are independent works. Even
the allegory changes form, and the idea of the _trouvère_, Guillaume,
was lost and forgotten when his successor professed to carry it on.
In passing from one to the other, the transition is like that from a
clear, cold, mountain stream to a turbid river, whose waters are
stained with factory refuse, and whose banks are lined with busy
towns. The mystic element suddenly disappears. Away from the woodland
and the mountains and among the haunts of men, it cannot live. The
idea of love becomes gross and vulgar. The fair, clear voice of the
poet grows thick and troubled; his gaze drops from the heavens to the
earth. It is no longer a _trouvère_ bent on developing a hidden
meaning, and wrapping mighty secrets of religious truth in a cold and
careful allegory; it is a man, eager and impetuous, alive to all the
troubles and sorrows of humanity, with a supreme contempt for love,
and for woman, the object of love, and a supreme carelessness for the
things that occupied the mind of his predecessor. We have said that
new characters were introduced. The boundaries of the old allegory
were, indeed, too narrow. Jean de Meung had to build, so to speak, the
walls of his own museum. It was to be a museum which should contain
all knowledge of the time; to hold miscellaneous collections of facts,
opinions, legends, and quotations, than which nothing can be more
bewildering, nothing more unmethodical, nothing more _bizarre_.
As a poet he is superior, we think, to his predecessor, though
Guillaume de Lorris can only be reckoned as a second-rate versifier.
He is diffuse, apt to repeat himself, generally monotonous, and
sometimes obscure. His imagination is less vivid, and his style less
clear, than those of Guillaume de Lorris. Occasionally, however,
passages of beauty occur. The following, for example, diffuse as it
is, appears to us to possess some of the elements of real poetry. The
poet is describing a tempest followed by fair weather. Nature weeps at
the wrath of the winds:--
'The air itself, in truth, appears
To weep for this in flooded tears.
The clouds such tender pity take,
Their very clothing they forsake:
And for the sorrow that they bear,
Put off the ornaments they wear.
* * * * *
'So much they mourn, so much they weep,
Their grief and sorrow are so deep,
They make the rivers overflow,
And war against the meadows low:
Then is the season's promise crossed;
The bread made dear, the harvest lost,
And honest poor who live thereby,
Mourn hopes that only rose to die.
* * * * *
'But when the end arrives at last,
And fair times come, and bad are passed;
When from the sky, displeased and pale,
Fair weather robs its rain and hail,
And when the clouds perceive once more
The thunder gone, the tempest o'er--
Then they rejoice, too, as they may,
And to be comely, bright, and gay,
Put on their glorious robes anew,
Varied with every pleasant hue;
They hang their fleeces out to dry,
Carding and combing as they fly;
Then take to spinning, and their thread
Abroad through all the heavens spread,
With needles white and long, as though
Their feathery gauntlets they would sew--
Harness their steeds, and mount and fly
O'er valleys deep and mountains high.'
It is needless, after what has been said, to pursue any further the
story of the romance. There is not much lost by this omission, because
the work has really little or nothing to do with the allegory, and
might simply be called, 'The Opinions of Jean de Meung.' Our object is
to show what actually were the opinions of a scholar of liberal views
in the thirteenth century.
They may be divided into four classes, foremost of which, in his own
mind, stands his hatred of monks. In religion he was not an infidel,
or even a heretic; he was simply in opposition. He writes, not against
sacerdotalism, but against the inversion of recognised order by the
vagabond friars. Order, indeed, he would insist upon as strenuously as
Hooker himself; but order he would subordinate to what he deems the
most essential thing, personal holiness. To decry, deride, and hurl
contempt on the monastic orders: to put into the strongest possible
words the inarticulate popular hatred of these was, we believe, his
leading thought when he began his book.
His second idea was to make an angry, almost furious protest against
the extravagant respect paid to women, and an onslaught on their
follies and vices. It is very curious, and shows how little he was
trammelled by his allegory, that he fails altogether to see how
entirely out of place is such an attack in the 'Romance of the Rose.'
He had two other principal ideas: one to communicate in the common
tongue as much science as the world could boast; and the other, to
circulate certain principles of vague socialism and hesitating
republicanism which were then beginning to take the place of those
religious speculations which occupied men's minds in the early part of
the century.
Jean de Meung's was not the only book of the time which aimed at being
an encyclopædia, but it was by far the best known and the most widely
_répandu_. There were written towards the close of the thirteenth
century certain collections called _trésors_, which were designed to
contain everything that was to be learned, _quicquid scibile_, in
mathematics, physics, astronomy, alchemy, music, speculative
philosophy, and theology. They were generally in verse; one of the
best of them being by a monk, called 'Mainfroi,' which professedly
contained the Arabic learning, borrowed from the Moors in Spain.
Probably Jean de Meung had access to this. Readers of old English
literature will also remember that dreariest of dreary books, Gower's
'Confessio Amantis,' into which the hapless student plunges without
hope, and emerges without profit, having found nothing but vapid
imitation, monotonous repetition, and somnolent platitudes. The
'Confessio' is a _trésor_, and designed to contain all the science of
the time. It is adapted, so far as the science goes, from a _trésor_
called the _Secretum Secretorum_.
Let us, then, gather some of the opinions of our author, classifying
them according to this fourfold division. It may be premised that the
division was not thought of by the poet, from whom, indeed, sequence
and method are not to be expected.
Liberal thought, in the time of Jean de Meung, did not attack the
domain of doctrine, partly, perhaps, from an unwillingness to meet
the probable consequences of a charge of heresy; indeed, when doctrine
came in its way, it seems to have leaned in the direction of
orthodoxy. Thus we find Jean de Meung siding with Guillaume de St.
Amour in an attack on the 'Eternal Gospel,' that most extraordinary
book, ascribed to Joachim, Abbot of Flora,[54] which was intended to
have the same relation to Christianity which Christianity bears to
Judaism, to be at once its fulfilment and its abolition, which was to
inaugurate the third and last, the perfect age, that of the Holy
Spirit. The mendicants, an ignorant, credulous body, quite incapable
of appreciating cause or consequence of teaching, espoused the cause
of the book; Guillaume de St. Amour arraigned them, not only of the
ordinary vices attributed to them--vices entirely contrary to their
vows--but as preachers of doctrines pernicious, false, and heretical.
Probably Jean de Meung was actuated by _esprit de corps_, Guillaume de
St. Amour being a champion of the University of Paris, as well as by
hatred to the monks, and, in spite of his hard words, was not moved
strongly by any specially inimical feeling towards the book. Following
the instincts of his time, however, he flatly ascribes its authorship
to the Devil, the alleged author of so many theological books.
Partizanship in those days, as in ours, meant, to be effective, a
good, sound, honest hatred, and much command of language. In his
description of hell, Jean anticipates the realistic horrors of Dante.
'What guerdon,' he asks, 'can the wicked man look for, save
the cord which will hang him to the dolorous gibbet of
hell? There will he be rivetted with everlasting fetters
before the prince of devils; there will he be boiled in
cauldrons; roasted before and behind; set to revolve, like
Ixion, on cutting wheels turned by the paws of devils;
tormented with hunger and thirst, and mocked with fruit and
water, like Tantalus, or set to roll stones for ever up
hill, like Sysyphus.'
One thing seems here worthy of remark. The place of punishment for the
wicked man, in the Middle Ages, was the torture-chamber of their own
criminal courts, intensified by imagination. Their punishment was
through the senses. Of mental agony they had no conception. Yet,
strangely enough, their heaven _was never a heaven of the senses_; and
it shows how deeply they were penetrated with the feeling of Christ's
holiness that while every temptation seemed set to make the mass
believe in a paradise like that of Mahomet, the heaven of Christendom
has always offered, as its chief charm, the worship and praise of a
present God. 'There, by the fountain of mercy,' says Jean de Meung,
'shall ye sit.'
'There shall ye taste that spring so fair;
(Bright are its waters, pure and clear),
And never more from death shall shrink,
If only of that fount you drink.
But ever still, untired, prolong
The days with worship, praise, and song.'[55]
The poet reserves, however, his chief strength and the main exposition
of his views for his character of Faux Semblant--False seeming--the
hypocrite. There is a dramatic art of the very highest kind in the way
in which Faux Semblant draws and develops his own character,
pronounces, as it were, the apology of hypocrisy. His painting of the
vices of the mendicant orders cannot approach those of Walter de
Mapes, of Erasmus, and of Buchanan, in savage ferocity; but it is more
satirical and more subtly venomous than any of those, and has the
additional bitterness that it is spoken as from _within_ the body
which he attacks. The others, standing _outside_ the monastic orders,
point the finger of scorn at them. Jean de Meung makes one of
themselves, an unblushing priest, with a candour which almost belongs
to an approving conscience, with a chuckling self-complacency and an
entire unconsciousness of the contrast between his life and his
profession, which rises to the very first order of satirical writing,
depict his own life, and take credit for villanies which he takes care
to inform us are common to his order. He has been compared with Friar
John; but the animalism and lusty vigour of this holy man lead him to
a life of jovial sensuality through sheer ignorance; whereas Faux
Semblant, his conscience seared with a hot iron, sins against the
light. We may compare, too, the attacks made by Jean de Meung's
contemporaries and immediate successors. They never even attempt
satire.[56] It was an instrument whose use they could not comprehend.
Their line is invective, as when Rutebeuf says, in his straightforward
way--
'Papelart et Beguin,
Ont le siècle honi.'
or, as Eustache Deschamps attacks the pluralists--
'Prestres et clers qui tenez vos monciaulx
De chapelles, vous autres curiaulx,
Des povres clers ayez compassion:
Repartez leur ces biens ecclesiaulx,
Afin que Dieu vous soit propiciaulx:
Vous les tenez à vo dampnacion.'
Faux Semblant, in his sermon, or address, a small part only of which
we consider, begins by telling his hearers that he lives, by
preference, in obscurity, and may, therefore, chiefly be found where
this is most readily obtained, viz., under a religious habit. With the
habit, however, he does not put on the reality of religion. He
attaches himself to powerful patrons; he goes about preaching poverty,
but living on the best of everything; nothing can be more contrary to
his experience than that religion is to be found at all under the robe
of a monk; nor does it follow that men and women lead bad lives
because they wear a worldly garb; very many, indeed, of the saints
have been married, were parents of children, and men and women of the
world.
He tells how he changes his habit from time to time; how, out of the
religious life, he 'takes the grain and leaves the straw;' how he
hears confession and grants absolution, as well as any parish priest;
but how, unlike the parish priest, he will hear the confessions only
of the rich, who can afford to pay; 'let me have the fat sheep, and
the pastors shall have the lean.' So with the poor; he will not help
any.
'Let dying beggars cry for aid,
Naked and cold on dunghill laid:
There stands the hospital, with door
Wide open to receive the poor.
Thither let all who please repair,
For help nor money can I spare:
No use for me to save their life:
_What can he give who sucks his knife?_'
Now, with the rich it is different; and the mendicant, while he takes
the alms of those whose sins he has heard, may glow with conscious
virtue, reflecting that the rich are much more exposed to temptation,
and therefore, as a rule, more grievously weighed down with a sense of
guilt than the poor. When relief can be given, surely it should first
be bestowed on those who need it most.
Mendicancy, Faux Semblant acknowledges with an engaging candour, is
only right when a man has not learned and cannot learn a trade. Monks,
according to the teaching of Saint Augustine, ought to earn their
bread by labour, and when we are commanded to give all to the poor, it
is not meant that we should take it back by begging, but that we
should work for our living. But the world, neglecting this among other
wholesome rules, has set itself to rob, plunder, and despoil, every
man trying to get whatever he can from his neighbour. As for himself,
his business, and that of his brethren, is to rob the robber: to spoil
the spoiler.
The mendicants keep up their own power by union; if a man does one of
them an injury, they all conspire to effect his ruin: if one hates,
all hate: if one is refused, all are refused, and revenge is taken: if
any man is conspicuous for good deeds, they claim him as their own
disciple, and in order to get the praise of people and inspire
confidence, they ask, wherever they go, for letters which may testify
to their virtue, and make people believe that all goodness abounds in
them.
He says that he leaves others to retire into hermitages and caves,
preferring to be called the Antichrist of robbers and hypocrites: he
proclaims himself a cheat, a rogue, a liar, and a thief: he boasts
that his father, Treachery, and himself rule in every realm, and that
in the security of a religious disguise, where no one is likely to
suspect him, he contrives various means to charm and deceive the
world. Set forth in this bold fashion, the discourse of Faux Semblant
loses all its dramatic force. It is fair, however, to state that this
is chiefly found in detached passages, and that the sermon is entirely
spoiled by the many digressions, notably that on the 'Eternal Gospel,'
which are found in it. Chaucer's rendering of this portion appears to
us to be far less happy than the rest of his work.
Another long and very curious dissertation, into which there is no
space here to enter, is that on Predestination, where he arrives at
the conclusion that the doctrine must be accepted as a dogma in
Christian faith, but that it need not affect the Christian life--
'For every man, except a fool,
May guide himself by virtue's rule.'
A conclusion which seems almost to anticipate the conclusion arrived
at in the Article of the Church of England.
The sum of Jean de Meung's religious teaching is to be found in the
sermon of Genius--
'And, Lords and Ladies, this be sure,
That those who live good lives and pure;
Nor from their work and duty shrink,
Shall of this fountain freely drink.--
* * * * *
To honour Nature never rest,
_By labour is she honoured best_;
If others goods are in your hands,
Restore them all--so God commands.
From murder let all men abstain;
Spotless keep hands, and mouth keep clean.
Be loyal and compassionate,
So shall ye pass the heavenly gate.'
The one thing insisted on by Jean de Meung is the absolute necessity
of a pure life. A profound sense of the beauty of a pure life is,
indeed, the key-note to all mediæval heresies and religious
excitements.[57] The uncleanness of the clergy was the most terrible
weapon wielded by the heresiarchs. Thus Peter de Brueys compelled
monks to marry. Henry the Deacon taught that the Church could exist
without priests. Tanchelin of Antwerp held that the validity of the
sacraments depended on the holiness of him who administered them.
Peter Waldo sent out his disciples two by two, to preach the
subversive doctrine that every virtuous man was his own priest; while
the _Cathari_ went gladly to the stake in defence of their principle
that absolute personal purity was the one thing acceptable to God. The
more ignorant the age, the wider is religious speculation; but in the
most ignorant ages, there rises up from time to time a figure with a
spiritual insight far beyond that of more learned times. Protestantism
in its noblest form has found nothing more sublime than this
conception of a Church where every good man is a priest; and there is
nothing in the history of religious thought more saddening than these
efforts of the people, ever hopeless, ever renewed, to protest against
dogma, creed, perfunctory and vicarious religion, and to proclaim a
religion of personal holiness alone.
Let us turn to the second division. We find the book teeming with a
misogyny, bitter enough to make us believe that there must have been
some personal cause for it. 'What is love?' he asks. 'It is a _maladie
de pensée_--the dream of a sick fancy.... There is a far higher and
nobler thing in the friendship of men.' And it is after narrating the
stories of 'Penelope' and 'Lucretia,' that he puts into the mouth of
Jealousy the famous couplet--
'Toutes estes, serez, ou fustes,
De faict ou de voulenté, putes.'
Of course it may be urged that these are the words of jealousy, and
not of the poet; but, unfortunately, there are so many indications of
the author's entire approval of the sentiment, that the plea is hardly
worth much. Take, for instance, the dramatic scene, when the wife
worms out her husband's secret; or that of the old woman's lesson to
Bel Accueil, where, as in the case of Faux Semblant, he puts woman's
condemnation in her own mouth. She teaches him the art of love almost
in Ovid's own words; she prefaces her lesson by a lament over the past
days of youth and beauty; her regrets are not for a life of sin and
deceit, but for the past bad days that can come no more. She is
steeped in wickedness and intrigue; she can see no happiness, except
in love and luxury.
'My days of gladness are no more;
Your joyous time is all before;
Hardly can I, through age and pain,
With staff and crutch, my knees sustain.
Almost a child, you hardly know
What thing you have to bear and do.
Yet, well I wot, the torch that all
Burns soon or late, on you will fall;
And in that fount where Venus brings
Her maidens, will you drench love's wings.
But ere you headlong enter, pause,
Listen to one who knows Love's laws.
Perilous are its waters clear;
He risks his life who plunges here
Without a guide. Who follows me
Safe and successful shall he be.'
She tells of her vanished youth and all the pleasant follies of her
young days; how she threw away her affections on a scoundrel, who only
robbed and ill-treated her; how she wasted her money and neglected her
chances; how she grew old, and her old friends ceased to knock at her
door.
'But ah! my child, no one can know
Save him who feels the bitter woe,
What grief and dolour me befell
At losing what I loved so well.
The honeyed words, the soft caress,
The sweet delight, the sweet embrace;
The kisses sweet--so quickly sped,
The joyous time so quickly fled.
Fled! and I left alone to mourn.
Fled! never, never to return.'
The whole passage is full of the truest touches of nature, and is
written with a _verve_ quite extraordinary. Villon has imitated it in
his ballad of the _Belle Heaulmière_,--
'Avis m'est que j'oy regretter
La belle qui fust Heaulmière;
Soy jeune fille souhaiter
Et parler en ceste manière.
* * * * *
Qu'est devenu ce front poly,
Ces cheveulx blonds, sourcils voultiz,
Grant entr'oeil, le regard joly,
Dont prenoye les plus subtils;
Ce beau nez ni grand ni petit;
Ces petites joinctes oreilles;
Menton fourchu, cler vis, traictiz
Et ces belles lèvres vermeilles?'
And Béranger sings in the same key,--
'Combien je regrette
Mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite,
Et le temps perdu.'
Jean de Meung's old woman is no more reformed than her successors. And
she tells Bel Accueil all that Ovid had to impart.
It is quite possible that in putting an imitation of the 'Art of Love'
into the old woman's mouth, Jean de Meung catered to the lowest tastes
of the age, and courted a popularity from this part of his work which
he might not have obtained from the rest. The same sort of defence--no
defence at all, but another and a worse charge--has been set up in the
cases of Rabelais and Swift. All such offenders we are told, deferred
to popular opinion, and wrote what they inwardly disapproved. This
surely is worse. To be yourself so far depraved as to take delight in
things impure is bad; to deliberately lay yourself out to please
others with things impure is surely infinitely more wicked. It is
_possible_ that Jean de Meung, Rabelais, and Swift, did this; but we
do not think it probable. In the case of the poet whom we are now
considering, there seems every reason to believe that he had formed
the lowest possible ideas of love and women; that from the depths of a
corrupted morality, which permitted him the same pleasure in impurity
which the common herd of the vulgar and illiterate shared, he had
eager yearnings for that purity of life which alone as he felt and
preached, could bring one to taste of the heavenly spring. That a man
could at the same time grovel so low and look so high, that his gaze
upwards was so clear and bright, while his eyes were so often turned
earthward, is a singular phenomenon; but it is not a solitary one.
Other great men have been as degraded as they were exalted. Perhaps
when Christiana and her children saw that vision of the man with the
muck-rake, while the angel, unregarded, held the crown of glory over
his head, had they looked much longer, they might have seen him drop
his rake and gaze upwards, with streaming eyes, upon the proffered
glory. Jean de Meung was the man with the muck-rake who sometimes
looked upwards.
The poet feels it necessary to apologize for his severity against the
sex. 'If,' he says, 'you see anything here against womankind, blame
not the poet.'
'All this was for instruction writ,
Here are no words of idle wit.
No jealousy inspired the song;
No hatred bears the lines along.
Bad are their hearts, if such there live,
Who villainie to women give.
Only, if aught your sense offend,
Think that to know yourself is good,
And that, with this intent, your friend,
I write what else might seem too rude.'
He thinks it right, too, to make a sort of apology for the severity of
his attack on monks.
'I strung my bow: I bent it well;
And though no saint, the truth to tell
I let my random arrows fly,
In lowly town and cloister high.
For what cared I where'er they lit?
The folk that Christ called hypocrite,
Who here and there are always found,
Who keep their Lent the whole year round,
* * * * *
But feed on live men's flesh the while
With teeth of envy and of guile,
These were my mark; no other aim
Was mine except to blot their fame.'
Let us pass to what is perhaps the most curious part of the book, and
the richest for the student of mediæval ideas, that in which he gives
us his views on the growth and principles of society. Here are
advanced theories of an audacity and apparent originality which make
one curious to know how far they penetrated into the lower strata of
France; whether they were the speculations of a dreamer, or the tenets
of a school; whether there was any connection--it is more than
possible--between this kind of teaching and the frantic revolt of the
peasantry; whether, in fact, Jean de Meung was a prophet with a
following, or a visionary without disciples. Read, for instance, his
account, somewhat abridged, of the Golden Age:--
'Once on a time, in those old years,
When lived our grandsires and forbears,
(Writers, by whom the tale we know,
And ancient legends, tell us so),
Love was loyal, and true, and good;
The folk was simple; the fare was rude;
They gathered the berries in forest and mead:
For all their meat and all their bread;
They wandered by valley and plain and mountain,
By river and forest and woodland fountain,
Plucking the chestnuts and sweet wild fruits,
Looking for acorns and rustic roots.
They rubbed together the ears of wheat;
They gathered the clustering grape to eat;
Rich fare they made when the forest bees
Filled with honey the hollow trees:
Water their drink; and the strong red wine
Was not yet pressed from the autumn vine.
* * * * *
'When sleep came with the shades of night,
They spread no beds of down so light,
But stretched in their cabins on piles of hay,
Fresh gathered grass and leaves they lay.
Or slept without--when the air was mild--
And summer winds were hushed and stilled;
When birds in the early morning grey
Awoke to welcome, each in his way,
The dawn that makes all hearts so gay.
In that glad time when the royal pair,
Flora--Queen of the flowers fair--
And Zephyr, her mate, give timely birth
To flowers of spring, through all the earth.
* * * * *
... 'such splendour give
That you might think the world would strive
With Heaven itself for glory--so bright,
So fair, so proud, with its flowers bedight.
Then in the woods they lay at ease,
Over their heads the branching trees--
Lovers kissed, who lovers were,
And kissed again, and had no fear--
Then they chaunted rounds and lays,
Joyously led their sports and plays:
A simple folk; they had no prayer--
No fond ambition--nor other care
Then just to live a life of joy--
And loyal love without annoy.
No king or prince was with them yet
To plunder and wrong, to ravish and fret;
There were no rich, there were no poor,
For no man yet kept his own store:
And well the saying old they knew--
(Wise it is, and is proven true)
_Love and Lordship are two--not one_:
_They cannot abide together, nor mate_:
_Who wishes to join them is undone_,
_And who would unite will separate_.'
Or, as Dryden, who certainly never read the 'Romance of the Rose,'
unless perhaps in Marot's edition, says:--
'Love either finds equality, or makes it.'
The end of the Golden Age--a thing not generally known--was
accelerated by Jason's voyage, the hero bringing home with him
treasures from _Outremer_: people begin to get ideas of property: they
amass wealth: they rob and fight for plunder: they go so far as _to
divide the land_. 'La propriété,' says Proudhon, 'c'est le vol.'
'Even the ground they parcelled out,
And placed the landmarks all about;
And over these, whene'er they met,
Fierce battle raged. What they could get,
They seized and snatched; and everywhere
The strongest got the biggest share.
* * * * *
So that at length, of plunder tired,
Needs must a guardian should be hired.
* * * * *
A sturdy peasant chose they then,
The mightiest of the sons of men;
Strongest in battle or in ring,
And him they chose to be their king.'
Voltaire has exactly the same idea:
'Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux.'
This is the origin of royalty. The growth of feudalism, of armies,
taxation, and division into classes is carefully traced from these
small beginnings.
But he deduces the great law of charity and love for our neighbours.
Having this, we have everything; and wanting this, we get wars,
tyranny, and all the miseries of the world.
What is the nature of true gentility? Lineage, he explains, has
nothing to do with it. None are gentle, but those whose virtues make
them so. Ancestors may leave their wealth behind them, but not the
qualities that made them great. Clerks have an advantage over
unlettered persons in knowing what is right. If they are coarse and
rude, they sin against greater light, and incur heavier punishment.
'Let him, who gentleman would be,
From sloth and idleness keep free;
In arms and study be employed,
And coarse rusticity avoid.
Let him, with humble, courteous grace,
Meet every class in every place;
Honour all women, wife or maid,
So that not too much trust be laid
In woman's faith. So may he steer,
Of this great danger wholly clear.
* * * * *
Know all that gentle blood may bring
No benefit, or anything,
Except what each man's worth may give.
Know, also, none of all that live
Can ask for honour, praise, or blame
By reason of another's name.'
The idea, of course, is not new. It is found frequently enough in the
Greek and Latin literature. It occurs, we believe, for the first time
in the fragments of Epicharmus,--
ἀγαθὸς δ' ἄνηρ κἂν Αἰθίοψ καὶ δοῦλος, εὐγενὴς ἔφυ.
and afterwards it is found in Euripides, Horace, Juvenal--'Stemmata
quid faciunt?'--and, lastly, in Seneca. Doubtless, Jean de Meung took
it from Seneca. Once started anew, the idea, of course, became
popular, and poet after poet repeated it, until it became a mere
commonplace. But so far as we have been able to discover, Jean de
Meung gave it new life.
A few words only, for our limits press, on the natural science taught
in the 'Romance of the Rose.' The poet, having got rid of this
indignation and wrath that lay at his soul anent the mendicant friars,
and the vices of women, wishes now, it seems, to sit down for a quiet
and comfortable disquisition on universal knowledge, including
alchemy, in which he is a firm believer; indeed, he wants to pass, in
a certain ballad of his, for an adept. This part takes the form of a
confession of Nature to her chaplain Genius (in which Power afterwards
copies him). The confession is long and wearisome, but it is curious
as being the earliest and fullest popular account of mediæval science.
He fancies Nature to be perpetually at work, fashioning creatures whom
Death continually tries to destroy.
'Nature, who fashions all that holds
The sky beneath its ample folds,
Within her forge meanwhile was found,
And at her work's eternal round,--
Struck out new forms of every race,
Lest life should fail, and types should cease;
She made so many, that Death, who toiled
With heavy mace to kill, was foiled.
* * * * *
They fly to save themselves, where'er
Their fate may lead, or feet may bear;
Some to the Church and convent rule,
Some to the dance, some to the school;
Some to their merchandize are turned,
Some to the arts which they have learned.
* * * * *
Another, sworn by Holy Writ,
Puts on the cloak of hypocrite;
And, flying, would his thoughts conceal,
Did not his life the truth reveal.
So, shunning Death, do all men shape
Their diverse ways, his blows to 'scape.'
The scientific discourse follows: observe the _good sense_ of many of
his remarks:--
'God, having made the world out of nothing, having put all
things into their proper places, measured spaces, and
allotted courses, handed all over to Nature as his
_chambrière_. Whatever man can do--and his power is very
great--he cannot equal Nature, the inexhaustible and
untiring. By alchemy he can interchange metals; can restore
its pristine purity to everything; can turn quicksilver
into gold by subtle medicines; but he cannot change or
create species. This Nature alone is able to effect,
changing the complexions of things, so that they assume new
forms and become new substances; as when in thunderstorms,
stones fall from the clouds, where no stones ever were.
'The heavens turn every day, bearing with them the stars.
They go round from east to west, rejoicing the world. A
complete revolution is made every 26,000 years.
'The moon is different from the planets in being obscure in
some places and clear in others. The reason of this is,
that the sun can penetrate through one part of it, as
through glass; the dark part, on which is figured a serpent
having a tree on his back, reflecting the rays.
'In the centre is the sun, like a king. He it is who makes
the stars so bright that they serve as lamps of the night;
were we nearer to the sun we should be scorched; were we
farther away we should be frozen.
'The comets are not attached to the heavens, but fly about
in the air. They do not last long, and it is a mistake to
suppose that they portend disaster. For there is no man of
worth or power sufficient for the heavens to take notice of
him.
Nor any prince of so great worth,
That signs from heaven should give to earth,
Notice of death for him alone:
Nor is his body--life once gone--
Worth one jot more than simple squire,
Or clerk, or one who works for hire.
'Foolish people imagine, too, that stars fall like flying
dragons from the skies; and that eclipses are to be taken
as portents. Now, no one would be astonished at these
things who understood the causes of things.
'Every student ought to acquire a knowledge of optics,
which can be learned by the aid of geometry, from the books
of Aristotle, Albacen, and Hucayen. Here can be learned the
properties of mirrors; how they produce things which appear
miracles; make small things seem great--a grain of sand
like a mountain; and great things small--a mountain like a
grain of sand; how glasses can be used to burn things; how
straight lines can be made to look crooked, round things
oblong, upright things reversed; the phantoms which do not
exist appear to be moving about.'
The book from beginning to end is as full of quotations as Burton. The
author quotes from Aristotle, Justinian, Horace, Seneca, St.
Augustine, Ovid, Cicero, Boethius, Lucan, Claudian, Suetonius, and he
has, probably through Cicero, some knowledge of Plato, but all this in
the wildest jumble, with no discrimination and no critical power
whatever. His range of reading was not by any means contemptible, and
though we know of no writer of his time who can compare with him in
this respect, it is evident that since one man had command of so many
books, other men must have enjoyed the same advantages. There is
reason to believe from Jean de Meung alone that acquaintance with
Latin literature was much more extended than is generally thought, and
that the scholarship of the time was by no means wholly confined to
scholastic disputation.
Such, roughly sketched, is the work of Jean de Meung, from which we
have plucked some of the fruits that come readiest to our hand. If not
altogether an original or a profound thinker, he has at least the
merit of fearlessness. He taught the folk, in the most popular way
possible, great and valuable lessons. He told them that religion is a
thing apart from, and independent of, religious profession; that "la
robe ne faict pas le moyne;" he says that most of the saints, men and
women, were decent married people, that marriage is a laudable and
holy custom, that the wealth of monks is a mockery of their profession
and a perjury of their vows, that learned persons ought to set an
example, and what is sheer ignorance and brutality in others is rank
sin with them; he attacks superstition, showing that all phenomena
have natural causes, and have nothing to do with earthly events and
the fortunes of men, because men are equal in the sight of God; and he
teaches in terms as clear as any used by Carlyle, that labor is noble,
and in accordance with the conditions of our being--that man's welfare
is the end and aim of all earthly provision.
All this is what used to be called the Dark Ages. After six hundred
years, the same questions exercise us which exercised Jean de Meung.
We are still disputing as to whether true nobility is inherited or
not; we have not all made up our minds about the holiness of marriage;
we still think the clergyman, because he wears a surplice, holier than
other men; work has been quite recently and with much solemnity
pronounced noble by a prophet who forgot, while he was about it, to
call it also respectable; men yet live who look upon scientific men
with horror, and quote with fine infelicity, a text of St. Paul's
about 'science falsely so called;' while the lesson of personal
holiness has to be preached again and again, and is generally
forgotten in the war over vestments and creeds.
Jean de Meung wished, as it seems to us, to write a book for the
people, to answer their questions, to warn them of dangers before
them, to instruct their ignorance. On the sapless trunk of a dying and
passionless allegory he grafts a living branch which shall bear fruit
in the years to come. His poem breathes indeed. Its pulses beat with a
warm human life. Its sympathies are with all mankind. The poet has a
tear for the poor naked beggars dying on dung-heaps and in the
Hôtel-Dieu, and a lash of scorpions for the Levite who goes by on the
other side; he teaches the loveliness of friendship; he catches the
wordless complaint of the poor, and gives it utterance: he speaks with
a scorn which Voltaire only has equalled, and a revolutionary
fearlessness surpassing that of D'Alembert or Diderot.
And much more than this. It seems to us that his book--absolutely the
only cheerful book of the time--afforded hope that things were not
permanent: evil times may change; times have not been always evil:
there was once a Golden Age: the troubles of the present are due, not
to the innate badness of Nature and the universal unfitness of things,
but to certain definite and ascertainable causes. Now to discover the
cause is to go some way towards curing the disease.
In that uneasy time, strange questions and doubts perplexed men's
minds--questions of religion and politics, affecting the very
foundations of society. They asked themselves _why_ things were so;
and looking about in the dim twilight of dawning knowledge they could
find as yet no answer. There was no rest in the Church or in the
State, and the mind of France--which was the mind of Europe--was
gravitating to a social and religious democracy. An hour before the
dawn, you may hear the birds of the forest twitter in their sleep:
they dream of the day. Europe at the close of the thirteenth century
was dreaming of the glorious Renaissance, the dawn of the second great
day of civilization. Jean de Meung answered the questions of the times
with a clearness and accuracy which satisfied if it did not entirely
explain. Five generations passed away before the full burst of light,
and he taught them all, with that geniality that is his greatest
charm. His book lasted because, confused and without art as it is, it
is full of life and cheerfulness and hope. Not one of the poets of his
own time had his lightness of heart: despondency and dejection weigh
down every one: they alternate between a monotonous song to a mistress
or a complaint for France; and to Jean de Meung they are as the
wood-pigeon to the nightingale. They all borrowed from him, or studied
him. Charles of Orleans, Villon, Clement Marot, Rabelais, La Fontaine,
Regnier, Molière, Béranger, all come down from him in direct line, his
literary children and grandchildren. And in Jean de Meung, to make an
end, is the first manifestation of the true spirit of French
literature--the _esprit Gaulois_--the legacy, they tell us, of the
ancient Gaul.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. iv. p. 407
[52] He died about 1308, at the age of one hundred. A selection from
his satires is to be found in Raynouard's collection of Provençal
literature.
[53] Among these, the most formidable, at one time, was the great
order of Knights Templars--_Ecclesia super Ecclesiam_.
[54] See _Révue des Deux Mondes_, 1866, vol. 64.
[55] Cf. also Richard of Hampole--
'Ther is lyf withoute ony deth,
* * * * *
Ae yatte the most sovereign joye of alle
Is the sight of Goddes bright face,
In whom resteth all manere grace.'
[56] It may be objected that 'La Bible Guyot' was a satire on the
times. But this curious book is, so far as it deals with the Church, a
querulous complaint of certain indignities and privations suffered by
the author, chiefly in the way of eating and drinking. 'The Abbot,' he
says, 'gets the meat and the clear wine; the monks get beans and muddy
wine. And they are obliged to be "roaring and bellowing" all night
long, so that they can get no sleep.' A monk, whose chief complaint is
the frequency of church services and the rigorous mortification of the
flesh, can hardly be called a satirist.
[57] It was, among others, the cause of that most singular movement,
the Crusade of Children. Friar Nicholas preached that by reason of the
rapacity and lust of the soldiers, the Holy Land would never be
conquered, but that, were the children to invade it, the arms of the
infidels would drop powerless from their hands. Acting on this belief,
hundreds of children started from Germany and France, in the belief
that the Mediterranean would be dried up for them to pass. Seven
shiploads were kidnapped and sold for slaves in Alexandria, several
thousands perished; only a few found their way back. The story is told
by M. Capefigue in a note to Michault's 'Histoire des Crusades.'
ART. V.--_Letters and Letter Writing._
_Gossip about Letters and Letter Writers._ By GEORGE SETON, Advocate.
Edinburgh. 1870.
We all of us know well, and to our cost, that we can make no
improvement in the management of our affairs, no change for the better
in the arrangements, economical and ethical, of our modes of life and
action without some attendant trial, trouble, or loss coming ever like
a shadow in its train. It is, therefore, not a cause for wonder that
some spirit of evil has cast its shadow in the wake of the
introduction of the penny post, and the still later changes in the
direction of cheapness in the newspaper press. A feeling of regret
arises in our minds that with their introduction the good
old-fashioned long and newsy letter of bygone days has been almost
crushed out of existence. Letter writing is becoming a lost art, and
no correspondence is now carried on as in the olden time; for no one
now lives 'a life of letter writing' as Walpole said he did. The
reason of this is not far to seek, for the hurry and bustle of life
has become too great to allow of anything but the passing thought
being committed to paper, and each writer finds it to be useless to
tell news to a correspondent who has already learned what has happened
from the same source as himself. It is now frequently a shorter
operation to call upon your friend and talk with him than to write him
a long letter; but it is a happy thing for us of this day that this
was not always the case, for the letters of the past which we possess
form one of the most charming branches of our lighter literature.
The value of communication between persons in distant places was
appreciated in very early times; and we find Job exclaiming, 'Now my
days are swifter than a post.' In the days of Hezekiah 'the posts went
with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel
and Judah,' and Ahasuerus sent letters into every province of his
empire by 'the posts that rode upon mules and camels,' and were
'hastened and pressed on by the king's commandment,' to inform his
subjects that it was his imperial will that every man should bear rule
in his own house. Various modes of communication other than writing
have at different times been in use, such as numerically marked or
notched pieces of wood, and the many-coloured cords, regularly
knotted, which were called _quipus_ by the Peruvians. Herodotus tells
us of a cruel practice resorted to, in order to convey secret
intelligence with safety. The head of a trusty messenger was shaved,
and certain writings were impressed upon his skull. After his hair had
grown sufficiently long for the purposes of concealment he was sent on
his mission, and on arriving at his destination was again shaved, in
order that the writing might be revealed. When the Spaniards visited
America they found the postal communication in Mexico and Peru to be
carried out on a most perfect system; and we learn that the couriers
of the Aztecs wore a differently coloured dress, according as they
brought good or bad tidings.
The establishment of a postal system in England is chiefly due to the
sagacity of Richard III., who commanded the expedition against the
Scots, in his brother Edward's reign. During this time, as it was
necessary for the king and his government to know how the war was
carried on, stages of about twenty miles each were established upon
the North road. When Richard came to the throne he did not allow this
system to fall into abeyance. Henry VIII. instituted the office of
'Master of the Postes,' and from his time to the present the Post
Office has increased in importance year by year. Henry Bishop was
appointed Postmaster-General at the Restoration, on his entering into
a contract to pay to Government the annual sum of £21,500. In Queen
Anne's reign the revenue of the Post Office had risen to £60,000; in
1761 it reached £142,000; in 1800 £745,000; in 1813 £1,414,224, and is
now between four and five millions sterling.
Much of this great increase in the revenue is owing to the various
improvements that have been introduced; and most of these have come
from without, and have been opposed by the officials. John Palmer had
great difficulty in obtaining the adoption of his scheme of mail
coaches, and Sir Rowland Hill battled for many years for his penny
postage. Thomas Waghorn, the hero of the Overland Route, was
originally a pilot in the service of the Hon. East India Company, and
came to England with a letter of introduction from the Governor-General
to the chairman of the Company. The chairman cared nothing for his
scheme, and told him to return to his duties in India, saying that the
East India Company were quite satisfied with the postal communication
as conducted _viâ_ the Cape of Good Hope. Waghorn left the room,
disgusted with his reception, and wrote the following laconic note in
the hall:--
'To John Harvey Astell, Esq., M.P., Chairman of the Hon.
East India Company.
'SIR,--I this day resign my employment as a pilot in the
Hon. East India Company's Bengal Marine Service, and have
the honour to remain, your obedient servant,
'THOMAS WAGHORN.'
With the ink scarcely dry he rushed into the august presence, and
delivering his letter, said, 'There, sir, is my resignation of my
position in the Company's service, and I tell you, John Harvey Astell,
Esq., member of Parliament, and chairman of the Hon. East India
Company, that I will stuff the Overland Route down your throat before
you are two years older.'[58]
It was very long before the present enlightened views of cheap postage
took root in the official mind, and in a tract, entitled 'England's
Wants,' reprinted in 'Somers's Tracts' (vol. ix. p. 219), letters are
among the objects proposed for taxation. When the cost of postage was
high the receiver expected to get his money's worth in a long letter,
but various tricks were often resorted to in order to save this cost,
and blank letters, with a cipher on the outside, were sometimes sent,
and refused by the persons to whom they were directed, because they
had learnt from the exterior all that they wanted to know. Another
trick discovers an ingenious mode of getting letters free. A shrewd
countryman, learning that there was a letter for him at the post
office, called for it, but confessing that he could not read,
requested the postmaster to open it, and let him know the contents.
When he had obtained all the information he required, he politely
thanked the official for his kindness, and drily observed, 'When I
have some change I will come and take it.' The doctrine of the
inviolability of letters is held by all persons of honour, and Cicero
asks 'who at all influenced by good habits and feelings has ever
allowed himself to resent an affront or injury by exposing to others
any letters received from the offending person during their
intercourse of friendship?' Nevertheless, all Governments have
reserved to themselves the right of opening, in time of emergency, the
letters that pass through their hands. The great Falkland would not
countenance any such dishonourable doctrine, and Lord Clarendon says
of him, 'One thing Lord Falkland could never bring himself to, while
Secretary of State, and that was the liberty of opening letters upon
suspicion that they might contain matter of dangerous consequence,
which he thought such a violation of the law of nature that no
qualification of office could justify him in the trespass.' In late
years Sir James Graham incurred much public odium, for allowing the
letters of Mazzini to be opened as they passed through the English
post.
The history of literature presents us with many specimens of beautiful
letters, and of continued correspondence of a high order. The French,
more especially, excel in this charming department of the _belles
lettres_, and can claim a De Sevigné and a Du Deffand; while we too
can boast of the possession of Walpole, Gray, and Cowper among the
men, and of Lady Russell and Lady Mary Montagu among the ladies. Good
letters should be like good conversation, easy and unrestrained, for
fine writing is as out of place in the one as fine talk is in the
other. Pope did not understand this, and his early letters are showy
and unnatural, full of rhetorical flourishes on trivialities. He was
in the habit of keeping rough copies of his own letters, and sometimes
repeated the same letter to different persons, as in the case of the
two lovers killed by lightning, an account of which he sent to the two
sisters Martha and Theresa Blount. His letters, therefore, are of
little more interest than those of Katherine Phillips, the matchless
Orinda, to her grave Poliarchus (Sir Charles Cottrel). Dr. Sprat, in
his life of Cowley, makes some judicious remarks upon this subject,
but draws the conclusion that familiar letters should not be published
to the world.
'There was (he says), one kind of prose wherein Mr. Cowley
was excellent; and that is his letters to his private
friends. In those he always expressed the native tenderness
and innocent gaiety of his mind. I think, sir, you and I
have the greatest collection of this sort. But I know you
agree with me that nothing of this sort should be
published; and herein you have always consented to approve
of the modest judgment of our countrymen above the practice
of some of our neighbours, and chiefly of the French. I
make no manner of question but the English at this time are
infinitely improved in this way above the skill of former
ages. Yet they have been always judiciously sparing in
printing such composures, while some other witty nations
have tried all their presses and readers with them. The
truth is, the letters that pass between particular friends,
if they are written as they ought to be, can scarce ever be
fit to see the light. They should not consist of fulsome
compliments, or tedious politics, or elaborate elegancies,
or general fancies, but they should have a native clearness
and shortness, a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind
of familiarity which can only affect the humour of those
for whom they were intended. The very same passages which
make writings of this nature delightful among friends will
lose all manner of taste when they come to be read by those
that are indifferent. In such letters the souls of men
should appear undressed; and in that negligent habit they
may be fit to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not
to go abroad in the street.'
The letters of Scott, Byron, Southey, and Burns--all thoroughly
different in style--keep up the character of the moderns, and show
that they understood the secret of the art.
Letter-writing has a special charm for shy, retiring men, because they
are able to exhibit upon paper the feelings and emotions about which
they could not speak. Some men seem able to think only when a pen is
in their hands; though others, in the same situation, seem to lose all
their ideas. Johnson said of the industrious Dr. Birch, 'Tom Birch is
as brisk as a bee in conversation, but no sooner does he take a pen in
his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him and benumbs all his
faculties.' Dr. French Lawrence was an instance of the exact reverse,
for Fox made him put on paper what he wanted to relate, saying, 'I
love to read your writing, but I hate to hear you talk.'
Sir James Mackintosh was a great admirer of Madame de Sevigné, and we
find in his works the following admirable remarks on the proper tone
for polite conversation and familiar letters. We doubt whether it
would be possible to find juster or finer thoughts on this subject,
expressed in more elegant language:--
'When a woman of feeling, fancy, and accomplishment has
learned to converse with ease and grace, from long
intercourse with the most polished society, and when she
writes as she speaks, she must write letters as they ought
to be written, if she has acquired just as much habitual
correctness as is reconcilable with the air of negligence.
A moment of enthusiasm, a burst of feeling, a flash of
eloquence may be allowed, but the intercourse of society,
either in conversation or in letters, allows no more.
Though interdicted from the long continued use of elevated
language, they are not without a resource. There is a part
of language which is disdained by the pedant or the
declaimer, and which both if they knew its difficulty would
dread; it is formed of the most familiar phrases and turns
in daily use by the generality of men, and is full of
energy and vivacity, bearing upon it the mark of those keen
feelings and strong passions from which it springs. It is
the employment of such phrases which produces what may be
called colloquial eloquence. Conversation and letters may
be thus raised to any degree of animation without departing
from their character. Anything may be said, if it be spoken
in the tone of society; the highest guests are welcome, if
they come in the easy undress of the club; the strongest
metaphor appears without violence, if it is familiarly
expressed; and we the more easily catch the warmest
feeling, if we perceive that it is intentionally lowered in
expression out of condescension to our calmer temper. It
is thus that harangues and declamations, the last proof of
bad taste and bad manners in conversation, are avoided,
while the fancy and the heart find the means of pouring
forth all their stores. To meet this despised part of
language in a polished dress, and producing all the effects
of wit and eloquence, is a constant source of agreeable
surprise. This is increased when a few bolder and higher
words are happily wrought into the texture of this familiar
eloquence. To find what seems so unlike author-craft in a
book, raises the pleasing astonishment to the highest
degree. I once thought of illustrating my notions by
numerous examples from "La Sevigné." I must some day or
other do so, though I think it the resource of a bungler,
who is not enough master of language to convey his
conceptions into the minds of others. The style of Madame
de Sevigné is evidently copied, not only by her worshipper,
Walpole, but even by Gray, who, notwithstanding the
extraordinary merits of his matter, has the double
stiffness of an imitator and of a college recluse. Letters
must not be on a subject. Lady Mary Wortley's letters on
her journey to Constantinople are an admirable book of
travels, but they are not letters. A meeting to discuss a
question of science is not conversation; nor are papers
written to another, to inform or discuss, letters.
Conversation is relaxation not business, and must never
appear to be occupation, nor must letters. Judging from my
own mind, I am satisfied of the falsehood of the common
notion that these letters owe their principal interest to
the anecdotes of the court of Louis XIV. A very small part
of the letters consist of such anecdotes. Those who read
them with this idea must complain of too much Grignan. I
may now own that I was a little tired during the two first
volumes. I was not quite charmed and bewitched till the
middle of the collection, where there are fewer anecdotes
of the great and famous. I felt that the fascination grew
as I became a member of the Sevigné family; it arose from
the history of the immortal mother and the adored daughter,
and it increased as I knew them in more detail; just as my
tears in the dying chamber of Clarissa depend on my having
so often drank tea with her in those early volumes, which
are so audaciously called dull by the profane vulgar. I do
not pretend to say that they do not owe some secondary
interest to the illustrious age in which they were written;
but this depends merely on its tendency to heighten the
dignity of the heroine, and to make us take a warmer
concern in persons who were the friends of those celebrated
men and women, who are familiar to us from our childhood.'
A French writer has said, 'les marins ecrivent mal;' but the gallant
admiral, Lord Collingwood, whose correspondence was published in 1828,
was a brilliant exception to this rash assertion. The following
letter, addressed to the Honourable Miss Collingwood, is dated July
1809, and shows that its writer, in the midst of his manifold duties
as a sailor, found time to direct the education of his children.
'I received your letter, my dearest child, and it made me
very happy to find that you and dear Mary are well, and
taking pains with your education. The greatest pleasure I
have amidst my toils and troubles is in the expectation
which I entertain of finding you improved in knowledge, and
that the understanding which it has pleased God to give you
both has been cultivated with care and assiduity. Your
future happiness and respectability in the world depend on
the diligence with which you apply to the attainment of
knowledge at this period of your life, and I hope that no
negligence of our own will be a bar to your progress. When
I write to you, my beloved child, so much interested am I
that you should be amiable and worthy the esteem of good
and wise people, that I cannot forbear to second and
enforce the instruction which you receive by admonition of
my own, pointing out to you the great advantages that will
result from a temperate conduct and sweetness of manner to
all people, on all occasions. It does not follow that you
are to coincide and agree in opinion with every ill-judging
person; but after showing them your reason for dissenting
from their opinion, your argument and opposition to it
should not be tinctured by anything offensive. Never forget
for one moment that you are a gentlewoman, and all your
words and all your actions should mark you gentle. I never
knew your mother--your dear, your good mother--say a harsh
or hasty thing to any person in my life. Endeavour to
imitate her. I am quick and hasty in my temper, my
sensibility is touched sometimes with a trifle, and my
expression of it sudden as gunpowder; but, my darling, it
is a misfortune which, not having been sufficiently
restrained in my youth, has caused me much pain. It has,
indeed, given me more trouble to subdue this natural
impetuosity than anything I ever undertook. I believe that
you are both mild; but if you ever feel in your little
breasts that you inherit a particle of your father's
infirmity, restrain it, and quit the subject that has
caused it until your serenity be recovered. So much for
mind and manners; next for accomplishments. No sportsman
ever hits a partridge without aiming at it, and skill is
acquired by repeated attempts. It is the same thing in
every art; unless you aim at perfection you will never
attain it, but frequent attempts will make it easy. Never,
therefore, do anything with indifference. Whether it be to
mend a rent in your garment or finish the most delicate
piece of art, endeavour to do it as perfectly as it is
possible. When you write a letter give it to your greatest
care, that it may be as perfect in all its parts as you can
make it. Let the subject be sense, expressed in the most
plain, intelligible, and elegant manner that you are
capable of. If in a familiar epistle you should be playful
and jocular, guard carefully that your wit be not sharp, so
as to give pain to any person; and before you write a
sentence examine it, even the words of which it is
composed, that there be nothing vulgar or inelegant in
them. Remember, my dear, that your letter is the picture of
your brains; and those whose brains are a compound of
folly, nonsense, and impertinence are to blame to exhibit
them to the contempt of the world, or the pity of their
friends. To write a letter with negligence, without proper
stops, with crooked lines and great flourishing dashes, is
inelegant. It argues either great ignorance of what is
proper, or great indifference towards the person to whom it
is addressed, and is consequently disrespectful. It makes
no amends to add an apology for having scrawled a sheet of
paper, for bad pens, for you should mend them; or want of
time, for nothing is more important to you, or to which
your time can be more properly devoted. I think I can know
the character of a lady pretty nearly by her handwriting.
The dashers are all impudent, however they may conceal it
from themselves or others; and the scribblers flatter
themselves with the vain hope that, as their letter cannot
be read, it may be mistaken for sense. I am very anxious to
come to England; for I have lately been unwell. The
greatest happiness which I expect there is to find that my
dear girls have been assiduous in their learning. May God
Almighty bless you, my beloved little Sarah, and sweet Mary
too.'
Having seen from the foregoing extracts the principles that should
govern the composition of familiar letters, we shall be better able to
judge of the merits or demerits of the specimens that follow; and we
will take this opportunity of saying that we have preferred to choose
our examples from little known sources, rather than from such
well-known volumes as the correspondences of Walpole, Gray, or Cowper.
The celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Carter was much troubled by one of her
most intimate and early friends always writing to her in terms of
great respect. In order to show her correspondent the absurdity of her
conduct, and to obtain an easier kind of intercommunication, she wrote
the following letter:--
'Nov. 29, 1742.
'To MISS ----
'It is with the utmost diffidence, dear Miss ----, that I
venture to do myself the high honour of writing to you,
when I consider my own nothingness and utter incapacity of
doing any one thing upon earth. Indeed, I cannot help
wondering at my own assurance in daring to expose my
unworthy performance to your accurate criticisms, which to
be sure I should never have presumed to do if I had not
thought it necessary to pay my duty to you, which, with the
greatest humility, I beg you to accept. Unless I had as
many tongues in my head as there are grains of dust betwixt
this place and Canterbury, it is impossible for me to
express the millionth part of the obligations I have to
you; but people can do no more than they can, and therefore
I must content myself with assuring you that I am, with
the sublimest veneration, and most profound humility,
'Your most devoted,
'Obsequious,
'Respectful,
'Obedient,
'Obliged,
'And dutiful,
'Humble servant,
'E. CARTER.
'I know you have an extreme good knack at writing
respectful letters; but I shall die with envy if you outdo
this.'
Aaron Hill expresses in elegant words what many have felt when they
have received a letter from one who was separated from them by time
and space:--
'Letters from absent friends extinguish fear,
Unite division, and draw distance near;
Their magic force each silent wish conveys,
And wafts embodied thought a thousand ways.
Could souls to bodies write, death's power were mean,
For minds could then meet minds with heaven between.'
James Howell, who has left us a most amusing collection of letters,
and therefore may be allowed to speak with some authority, says
'familiar letters may be called the 'larum bells of love;' and he puts
the same idea into the form of a distich, thus--
'As keys do open chests,
So letters open brests.'
Unfortunately all the letters in the _Epistolæ Ho-elianæ_ are not
genuine, but were written when Howell was confined in the Fleet
prison, and were made up in order to supply their author with money
for his necessities.
To Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, has been given the credit of the
invention of letterwriting, but her claim is easily disposed of, as we
have specimens of written communications very long before her time.
The earliest letter of which we have any record is that written by
David to Joab, directing him to place Uriah in the front of the
battle. There are several classical stories, that bear a likeness to
this, of persons who carried letters, in which their own execution was
desired; thus Homer tells the story of Bellerophon, who himself bore
the sealed tablets that demanded his death. In later Jewish History we
learn from the Bible that Queen Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name,
and sealed them with his seal, and sent them to the elders and nobles.
Cicero was one of the earliest to bring the art to perfection, and his
letters exhibit most of the graces of which it is capable. Seneca and
the younger Pliny were also amongst the masters in the art. When we
consider the inconvenient and perishable medium that the Romans had to
content themselves with, we cannot but feel surprise at the number of
letters that were written, and the large proportion that has come down
to us. Thin wooden tablets, coated over with wax, were used and
fastened together with a crossed thread. The knotted ends were sealed
with wax, and as the letters were usually written by a confidential
slave (the _librarius_), the seal was the only guaranty of
genuineness. Sometimes ivory or parchment tablets were used, and an
elevated border was probably added, in order to prevent rubbing. The
want of a system of posts was not felt among the Romans, as most
families possessed _tabellarii_, or special slaves, whose duty it was
to convey letters to their destination.
It was the practice with the Romans to place the names of both the
writer and his correspondent at the commencement of the letter, as
'Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, unto Timothy, my own son in the
faith;' and the ending usually consisted of the word _vale_, or _ave_,
or _salve_. The dates were scrupulously added, and sometimes the very
hours were mentioned. This method of the Romans might well be imitated
by us, for we often find an old letter rendered of little value by the
omission of a date. A bad habit that some writers indulge in is to use
the name of the day of the week, instead of the day of the month and
year.
Amongst ourselves, etiquette once placed her stern hands upon
correspondence, and laid down rules of how a letter was to be written.
Among persons pretending to any fashion it was considered proper to
use fine gilt paper, sealed with a coat of arms. Ladies used tinted
paper with borders, and sealed their letters with coloured and
perfumed wax. In town it was not the fashion to send letters or notes
through the post, nor to put the address upon the envelope, for no one
could be supposed to be ignorant of the abode of so distinguished a
person as Lady Arabella Smith. The circle of fashionable life,
however, has been so much enlarged and encroached upon, that most
people now are forced to acknowledge their ignorance on such points.
If we imagine that we should groan under these restrictions, what
should we think of the etiquette enjoined in the East? There
correspondence is carried on with many degrees of refinement. Letters
are written by some accomplished scribe, on beautiful paper, and the
sender's mark is placed in a particular position, according to the
recognised status of his correspondent. The letter is folded by rule,
and a florid superscription is added, such as, 'Let this come under
the consideration of the benefactor of his friends, the distinguished
in the State, the renowned, the lion in battle, on whom be peace from
the Most High.' The following are two amusing specimens of the untrue
complaisance common in Chinese correspondence:--
'To a Friend who has lately left another.
'Ten days have elapsed since I had the privilege of
listening to your able instructions. Ere I was aware, I
found my heart filled and choked with noxious weeds.
Perhaps I shall have to thank you for favouring me with an
epistle, in which I know your words will flow, limpid as
the streams of pure water: then shall I instantly see the
nature of things, and have my heart opened to understand.'
'To a Friend at a distance.
'I am removed from your splendid virtues. I stand looking
towards you with anxious expectation. There is nothing for
me, but toiling along a dusty road. To receive your advice,
as well as pay my respects, are both out of my power. In
sleep my spirit dreams of you; it induces a kind of
intoxication. I consider my virtuous brother a happy man,
eminent and adorned with all rectitude. You are determined
in your good purposes, and rejoice in the path of reason.
You are always and increasingly happy. On this account I am
rejoiced and consoled more than can be expressed.'
We are not now so distant as formerly in the commencement of our
letters, and use more friendly openings (such as 'Dear Sir,' 'My dear
Sir') than our fathers did. 'Sir,' alone, was once nearly universal,
but is now usually considered cold. Even Howell, who was most
inventive in his endings, usually commences with _Sir_, although once
he breaks forth with 'Hail! half of my soul.' Such beginnings as
'Right worshipful Father,' 'Good Sir,' 'Honoured Sir,' 'Respected
Sir,' are quite out of date, but many writers adopt a variety in their
commencements, and do not always follow the beaten track; thus the
great Chatham wrote to his wife, 'Be of cheer, noble love.' In modern
letters we miss the use of some of the quaint and loving expressions
of former days, such a one, for instance, as the good old word
'heart,' for is there not always a charm about an old letter beginning
with the words 'Dear Heart?'
The ending of a letter requires some taste, and many find it as
difficult to close one gracefully as to finish conversation and leave
a room with ease. The 'I remain' requires to be led up to, and not to
be added to the letter without connection. There is a large gamut of
choice for endings, from the official 'Your obedient servant,' and
high and mighty 'Your humble servant,' to the friendly 'Yours truly,'
'Yours sincerely,' and 'Yours affectionately.' Some persons vary the
form, and slightly intensify the expression by placing the word
'yours' last, as 'Faithfully yours.' James Howell used a great variety
of endings, such as 'Yours inviolably,' 'Yours intirely,' 'Your intire
friend,' 'Yours verily and invariably,' 'Yours really,' 'Yours in no
vulgar way of friendship,' 'Yours to dispose of,' 'Yours while J. H.,'
'Yours! Yours! Yours!' Walpole writes--'Yours very much,''Yours most
cordially,' and to Hannah More, in 1789, 'Yours more and more.' Mr.
Bright some years ago ended a controversial letter in the following
biting terms, 'I am, sir, with whatever respect is due to you.' The
old Board of Commissioners of the Navy used a form of subscription
very different from the ordinary official one. It was their habit to
subscribe their letters (even letters of reproof) to such officers as
were not of noble families or bore titles, 'Your affectionate
friends.' It is said that this practice was discontinued in
consequence of a distinguished captain adding to his letter to the
Board, 'Your affectionate friend.' He was thereupon desired to
discontinue the expression, when he replied, 'I am, gentlemen, no
longer your affectionate friend.' The expression was supposed to have
been adopted from James Duke of York, who, when Lord High Admiral,
always so subscribed his official letters; but we have found a letter
from the Navy Office to the Officers of the Ordnance, dated '9th May,
1653,' which is subscribed 'Your very loveing ffrends.' The position
of the writer's name was once a matter of consequence in Europe, as it
is now in the East, and this appears from the following curious
directions in Angel Day's 'English Secretary' (1599).
'And now to the subscriptions, the diversities whereof are
(as best they may be allotted in sense) to either of these
to bee placed, forwarned alwaies unto the unskilfull
herein, that, writing to anie person of account, by howe
much the more excellent hee is in calling from him in whose
behalfe the Letter is framed, by so much the lower shall
the subscription thereunto belonging in any wise be placed.
'And if the state of honour of him to whome the Letter
shall be directed doe require so much, the verie lowest
margent of paper shall do no more but beare it, so bee it
the space bee seemelie for the name, and the room faire
inough to comprehend it.'
We now come to the consideration of directions, and here a certain
etiquette still lingers, as many who have no claim to any title are
dignified by the addition of the meaningless &c., &c., &c. A friend of
the once celebrated agriculturist, Sir John Sinclair, amusingly
ridiculed the fancy that some men have for seeing a number of letters
of the alphabet after their names, by directing his letter to 'Sir
John Sinclair, A.M., F.R.S., T.U.V.W.X.Y.Z.' Besides the name of the
person to whom the letter was sent, it was formerly the custom to
write on the outside of a letter various directions to its bearer:
thus a letter of the Earl of Hertford afterwards the Protector
Somerset, to Sir William Paget, upon the death of Henry VIII., was
addressed 'Haste, Post Haste, Haste with all diligence, For thy life!
For thy life!'
As long as letters have been written, the inadvertent misdirecting of
them must have been a constant source of trouble and annoyance. In
James I.'s reign a lover sent a letter intended for his mistress to an
obdurate father, and his letter renouncing her to the lady. When he
found out the dreadful mistake he had committed life became
insupportable to him, and he threw himself upon his sword. Swift sent
a love-letter to a bishop, and the letter intended for the bishop to
the lady.
The celebrated civilian, Dr. Dale, was fortunate in the success of his
expedient of purposely misdirecting his letters. When he was employed
on a diplomatic mission to Flanders he was much pressed for money, and
in a packet to the Secretary of State he sent two letters, one for
Queen Elizabeth and the other for his wife, which he misdirected, so
that the letter for his wife was addressed _to her most excellent
Majesty_, and that for the Queen _to his dear wife_. The Queen was
surprised to find her letter beginning 'Sweetheart,' and concluding
with a request to her to be very economical, as the writer could send
her nothing because he was very short of money, and could not think of
trespassing on the bounty of Her Majesty any further. Dale was
successful in his stratagem, as an immediate supply of money was sent
to him and to his family.
There are three peculiarities in letter-writing that ladies indulge
in, viz., crossing, postscripts, and the underlining of words.
Disraeli makes Henrietta Temple advise her lover to cross his letters,
and states her reasons as follows:--
'I shall never find the slightest difficulty in making it
out, if your letters were crossed a thousand times.
Besides, dear love, to tell the truth, I should rather like
to experience a little difficulty in reading your letters,
for I read them so often, over and over again, till I get
them by heart, and it is such a delight every now and then
to find out some new expression that escaped me in the
first fever of perusal; and then it is sure to be some
darling word fonder than all the rest.'
Few men cross their writing, but many of them indulge in the luxury of
a postscript, and some even when they have closed their letters think
of a last word, and write it on the envelope. It is said that the
underlining of words is a confession of weakness in the writer,
because if he had used the best possible word he would not need to
give it extra force by the mere mechanical contrivance of underscoring
it with a pen.
Letters written in the third person are a constant snare to some
people and usually lead to confusion. This form can only be used with
safety in very short letters.
Frequently, a short note contains more pith than a longer letter, and
Politian's letter to his friend well exemplifies this: 'I was very
sorry, and am very glad, because thou wast sick, and that thou art
whole. Farewell.' One of the most spirited letters ever written, was
that sent by Ann, Countess of Dorset, to Sir Joseph Williamson,
Secretary of State in Charles the Second's reign, when he wrote to her
to choose a courtier as member for Appleby:--
'I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been ill-treated
by a court, but I won't be dictated to by a subject. Your
man shall not stand.
ANN DORSET,
Pembroke and Montgomery.'
The following note from one Highlander to another is very pointed and
witty:--
'MY DEAR GLENGARY,--As soon as you can prove yourself to be
my chief I shall be ready to acknowledge you. In the
meantime,
'I am _yours_, MACDONALD.'
Charles Lamb being tickled by the oddity of Haydon's address, sent him
the following reply to an invitation:--
'My Dear Haydon,--I will come with pleasure to 22, Lisson
Grove North, at Rossi's, half-way up, right hand side, if I
can find it.
'Yours, C. LAMB.
'20, Russel Court,
'Covent Garden East,
'Half-way up, next the corner,
'Left hand side.'
Ignorant people when they manage to write a letter are usually very
proud of their performance, and this is illustrated by a very good
story in the Countess Spencer's 'East and West.' A lady proposed to
Mrs. Law, a poor woman in St. Peter's Home, Kilburn, that she should
write to Lady E., who had been very kind to her. She had some doubts
at first, but they passed away, and she dictated a letter which is
given, and the narrator adds:--
'Having finished it to her evident pride, I offered to read
it to her; but I had hardly got down the first page when
she became so deeply affected by her own eloquence, that
she began to cry and rock herself backwards and forwards. I
persevered, and when I had read the last word, paused, not
knowing what to say to this unexpected grief. Mrs. Law put
down her handkerchief, and shaking her head very seriously,
said, "Well, now, that _is_ a lovely letter! It's a great
denial to me that I can't write, or I'd send plenty like
it."'
It is usually supposed that writing comes natural to all, but we are
often led to agree with Sheridan, that 'easy writing is cursed hard
reading,' and the highest art is often required to be thoroughly
natural. The Irish hodman, however, managed to express in a fine
confused way his inner feeling, that he himself was little better than
a machine:--
'DEAR PAT,--Come over here and earn your money: there is
nothing for you to do but to carry the bricks up a ladder,
for there is a man at the top who takes them from you and
does all the work.'
Excuses of hurry, with expressions of fear lest the post should be
lost, and such endings as 'yours in haste,' should seldom be indulged
in, as they partake somewhat of the character of a slight to the
receiver. The letters of ladies are usually more natural and
unconstrained than those of men, and these are great merits, for the
real man or woman should be seen in the letter. Locke says:--
'The writing of letters enters so much into all the
occasions of life, that no gentleman can avoid showing
himself in compositions of this kind. Occurrences will
daily force him to make use of his pen, which lays open his
breeding, his sense, and his abilities to a severer
examination than any oral discourse.'
The deficiency of ordinary people in the art has long been felt, and
complete letter-writers have been compiled to supply the want. Sir
Henry Ellis has pointed out that manuals of epistolary composition,
both in French and English, of the early part of the fifteenth
century, exist in manuscript. The 'English Secretary,' published in
1599, is perhaps the earliest work on the subject in print. The
voluminous author, Jervis Markham, brought out in 1618 a guide, with
the following title: 'Conceited Letters: or a most excellent Bundle of
New Wit, wherein is knit up together all the perfections of the art of
Epistoling.' The booksellers, Rivington and Osborne, applied to Samuel
Richardson to write for them a volume of letters in a simple style,
on subjects that might serve as models for the use of those who had
not the talent of inditing for themselves. While employed in composing
some letters for the benefit of girls going out to service, the idea
of 'Pamela' came into Richardson's head, and the subsequent success of
that novel caused him to continue the mode of telling his stories by
letters, which he had there adopted.
In entering upon the consideration of special classes of letters, we
will take love letters first. This is a style of literature of which
the outer public have few opportunities of judging, and doubtless it
is one that is not fitted for rigid examination. Those love-letters
that we read in the reports of breach-of-promise cases are usually
beneath contempt: they are often unreal, and make us sick with
references to Venus and Cupid, goddesses and nymphs, and many other
absurdities. There are, however, existing some interesting letters of
the reckless Earl of Rochester to his wife, which exhibit him in a new
and pleasing character. The following breathes a tender consideration
to which few are able to rise:--
'I kiss my deare wife a thousand times, as farr as
imagination and wish will give mee leave. Thinke upon mee
as long as it is pleasant and convenient for you to doe
soe, and afterwards forget me; for though I would fain make
you the author and foundation of my happiness, yet I would
not bee the cause of your constraint or disturbance, for I
love not myself soe much as I doe you, neither doe I value
my owne satisfaction equally as I doe yours.
Farewell, ROCHESTER.'
As Sterne was making love to women throughout his entire life, we
suppose he may be considered as an authority on how a love-letter
should be written, and here is a specimen of his style:--
'MY DEAR KITTY,--If this billet catches you in bed, you are
a lazy, sleepy slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, unthinking
fellow for keeping you so late up--but this Sabbath is a
day of rest; at the same time that it is a day of sorrow,
for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you
meet me at Taylor's, half-an-hour after twelve; but in this
do as you like. I have ordered Matthew to turn thief and
steal you a quart of honey--what is honey to the sweetness
of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it comes
from! I love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you
on so to eternity. So adieu, and believe, what time will
only prove me, that I am,
Yours.'
Sir Richard Steele had for his second wife a woman who was difficult
to please, and the collection of his letters to her give us a curious
insight into his domestic life. They are mostly short, but filled
with excuses. The following are three of them:--
'DEAREST BEING ON EARTH,--Pardon me if you do not see me
till eleven o'clock; having met a school-fellow from India,
by whom I am to be informed in things this night which
immediately concern your obedient husband.'
'MY DEAR DEAR WIFE,--I write to let you know I do not come
home to dinner, being obliged to attend some business
abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see
you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient
husband.'
'DEAR PRUE,--I have partly succeeded in my business to-day,
and I inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I
cannot come home to dinner. I languish after your welfare,
and will never be a moment careless more.
'Your faithful husband.'
These are natural and real; but let us look into 'The Enemy of
Idleness,' 1621, and see there what the author thought a lover should
write to his mistress:--
'A Lover writeth unto his Lady.
'To expresse unto thee (my deere) the inward griefes, the
secret sorrowes, the pinching paines, that my poore
oppressed heart pitifully endureth, my pen is altogether
unable. For even as thy excellent vertue, beautie,
comelines, and curtesie farre surmounteth in my conceipt
that of all other humane creatures, so my pitious passions
both day and night are no whit inferiour, but farre above
all those of any other worldly wight. So excell not thy
giftes, but as much exceede my griefes. Therefore (my
sweete) vouchsafe of thy soveraigne clemencie to graunt
some speedie remedie unto the grievous anguishes of my
heavie heart; detract no time, but wey with thy selfe, the
sicker that the patient is--the more deadly that his
disease is deemed--so much the more speede ought the
physitian to make--so much the sooner ought he to provide
and minister the medicine, least comming too late his
labour be lost. But what painefull patient is hee that
sustaineth so troublesome a state as I, poore soule, doe,
except thou vouchsafe to pittie me? For the partie patient
being discomforted at thy handes can have recourse unto
none, but still languishing must looke for a lothsome
death. Consider, therefore, my deare, the extremitie of my
case, and let not cancred cruelty corrupt so many golden
gifts, but as thy beauty and comelinesse of body is, so set
thy humanity also and clemency of minde. Draw not (as the
proverb saith) a leaden sword out of a golden scabberd. And
thus hoping to have some speedy comfort at thy handes, upon
that hope I repose mee till further opportunity.'
The fair fame of Mrs. Piozzi (Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale) has been
injured by an attempt to represent her as in love with a young actor
in her old age and some letters of hers to William Augustus Conway
were published a few years ago as the 'Love Letters of Mrs. Piozzi.'
In 1862 the original correspondence was placed in the hands of the
editor of the _Athenæum_, and in an article in that journal her
character is vindicated, and the letters are proved to have been
garbled in order to infer a sexual love. Mrs. Piozzi formed an
intimate friendship with Mrs. Rudd, Conway's mother, and the two
ladies passed much of their time together, consulting how to help the
young actor. Conway was in love with a young lady who jilted him, and
Mrs. Piozzi tried to comfort him. In consideration of all her kindness
he calls her 'his more than mother,' and she calls him 'her youngest
adopted child.' The following is one of Mrs. Piozzi's letters to
Conway:--
'You have been a luckless wight, my admirable friend, but
amends will one day be made to you, even in _this_ world; I
know, I feel it will. Dear Piozzi considered himself as
cruelly treated, and so he was by his own friends, as the
world perversely calls our relations, who shut their door
in _his_ face because his love of music led him to face the
public eye and ear. He was brought up to the Church; but,
'Ah! Gabriel,' said his uncle, 'thou wilt never get nearer
the altar than the organ-loft.' His disinclination to
celibacy, however, kept him from the black gown, and their
ill-humour drove him to Paris and London, where he was the
first tenor singer who had £50 a night for two songs. And
Queen Marie Antoinette gave him a hundred louis-d'or with
her own fair hand for singing a buffo song over and over
again one evening, till she learned it. Her cruel death
half broke his tender heart. You will not wait, as he did,
for fortune and for fame. We were both of us past
thirty-five years old when we first met in _society_ at Dr.
Burney's (grandfather to Mrs. Bourdois and her sisters),
where I coldly confessed his uncommon beauty and talents;
but my heart was not at home. Mr. Thrale's broken health
and complicated affairs demanded and possessed all my
attention, and vainly did my future husband endeavour to
attract my attention. So runs the world away.'
Among the letters quoted in the _Athenæum_ is the following amusing
one:--
'While there was so much talk about the town concerning
maladministration, some of the Streatham coterie, in a
quibbling humour, professed themselves weary of
_male_-administration, as they pronounced it emphatically,
and proposing a _fe_male one, called on Dr. Johnson to
arrange it. "Well then," said he "we will have
Carter for Archbishop of Canterbury.
Montague, First Lord of the Treasury.
Hon. Sophia Byron, Head of the Admiralty.
Heralds' Office under care of Miss Owen.
Manager of the House of Commons, Mrs. Crewe.
Mrs. Wedderburne, Lord Chancellor.
Mrs. Wallace, Attorney-General.
Preceptor to the Princes, Mrs. Chapone.
Poet Laureate, Hannah More."
"And no place for _me_, Dr. Johnson?" cried your friend.
"No, no; you will get into Parliament by your little silver
tongue, and then rise by your own merit." "And what shall I
do?" exclaims Fanny Burney. "Oh, we shall send you out for
a _spy_, and perhaps you will get _hanged_. Ha, ha, ha!"
with a loud laugh.'
Having thus noted what may be said about love, let us turn to the
opposite feeling, and see what may be written under the influence of
hate.
'Ungracious offspring of hellish brood, whome heavens
permit for a plague, and the earth nourisheth as a peculiar
mischiefe, monster of mankinde and devourer of men, what
may I tearme thee? With what illsounding titles maie I
raise myselfe upon thee? Thou scorne of the world, and not
scorne but worldes foule disdaine, and enemie of all
humaine condition, shall thy villanies scape for ever
unpunished? Will the earth yet support thee, the clouds
shadow thee, or the aire breath on thee? What lawes be
these, if at leastwise such may be tearmed lawes, whereout
so vile a wretch hathe so manie evasions? But shalt thou
longer live to become the vexation and griefe of men? No;
for I protest, though the lawes doe faile thee, myselfe
will not overslip thee. I, I am hee that will plague thee;
thou shalt not scape me. I will be revenged of thee. Thinke
not thy injuryes are so easie that they are of all to bee
supported; for no sooner shall that partched, withered
carkasse of thine sende foorth thy hatefull and abhorred
lookes into anie publicke shew, but mine eyes shall watch
thee and I will not leave thee till I have prosequuted that
which I have intended towardes thee, most unworthie as thou
art to breath amongst men, which art hated and become
lothsome even in the verie bowels and thoughtes of men.
Triumph, then, in thy mischiefes, and boast that thou hast
undone mee and a number of others, whom with farre lesse
despight thou hast forced to bende unto thee; and when by
due deserte I shall have payed what I have promised thee,
vaunt then (in God's name) of thy winnings. For my
part--but I will saie no more, let the end trie all. Live
wretchedlie and die villainouslie, as thou hast deserved,
whome heavens hencefoorth doe shunne, and the world denieth
longer to looke upon.'
This is the model that Angel Day, in his 'English Secretary' (1590),
thinks suitable for 'a hot enraged spirit' to write to his adversary.
Most persons at some time in their lives are called upon to write
letters of condolence, but it is usually found to be a difficult task.
However well the writer may succeed, he must feel how inadequate words
are to give relief to a troubled spirit, and it is only insomuch as he
shows his own heart and sympathy that he is successful in his
attempt. When Alexander Lindsay, Earl of Balcarres, died, a few months
before the Restoration, Charles II., who was then at Bruxelles, wrote
the following kindly letter to the widow, Lady Anna Mackenzie:--
'Madame,--I hope you are so well persuaded of my kindness
to you as to believe that there can no misfortune happen to
you and I not have my share in it. I assure you I am
troubled at the loss you have had; and I hope that God will
be pleased to put me into such a condition before it be
long, as I may let you see the care I intend to have of you
and your children, and that you may depend upon my being
very truly, madame,
'Your affectionate, CHARLES R.'
Letters of thanks are frequently difficult things to write well, as it
is a hard matter to appear grateful for the present of something that
we do not want. Talleyrand made a practice of instantly acknowledging
the receipt of books sent to him; for he could then express the
pleasure he expected to enjoy in reading the volume, but if he delayed
he thought it would be necessary to give an opinion, and that might
sometimes be embarrassing. A celebrated botanist used to return thanks
somewhat in the following form:--'I have received your book, and shall
lose no time in reading it.' The unfortunate author might put his own
construction on this rather ambiguous language. When Southey published
his 'Doctor' anonymously, he gave directions to his publishers to send
all letters directed for the author to Theodore Hook, and the
following letter from Southey himself was found among Hook's papers:--
'SIR,--I have to thank you for a copy of the "Doctor," &c.,
bearing my name imprinted in rubrick letters on the reverse
of the title-page. That I should be gratified by this
flattering and unusual distinction you have rightly
supposed; and that the book itself would amuse me by its
wit, tickle me by its humour, and afford me gratification
of a higher kind in its serious parts, is what you cannot
have doubted. Whether my thanks for this curiosity in
literature will go to the veteran in literature,[59] who of
all living men is the most versed, both in curious and fine
letters; whether they will cross the Alps to an old
incognito,[60] who has the stores of Italian poetry at
command; whether they will find the author in London,[61]
surrounded with treasures of ancient and modern art, in an
abode as elegant as his own volumes; or wheresoever the
roving shaft which is sure to reach its mark may light, the
personage, be he friend, acquaintance or stranger, to whose
hands it comes is assured that his volumes have been
perused with great pleasure by his obliged and obedient
servant,
'ROBERT SOUTHEY.'
One of the most elegant letters of thanks we have met with is now
before us. It was written by Lord Lytton soon after the publication of
his 'Zanoni.'
'DEAR SIR,--I am extremely pleased and flattered by the
attention with which you have read, and the marks of
approval with which you have honoured, "Zanoni." Allow me
to wish to yourself a similar compliment from some reader
as courteous and as accomplished as yourself, you will then
judge of the gratification you have afforded to your very
truly obliged,
E. B. LYTTON.'
Begging letters are hardly a branch of literature, although great
ingenuity is frequently exhibited in their composition; but a
sufficient number of them can be seen in the 'Mendicity Society's
Reports.' W. F., the author of the 'Enemy of Idlenesse,' 1621, gives
the following directions how to ask a favour:--
'As concerning the manner how to demand temporall things,
as a booke, a horse, or such like, the letter must be
divided into foure partes. First, wee must get the goodwill
of him to whome wee write by praising his liberality, and
specially of the power and authority that hee hath to grant
the thing that hee is demanded. Secondly, wee must declare
our demand and request to bee honest and necessary, and
without the which wee cannot atchieve our determinate end
and purpose. Thirdly, that the request is easie to be
granted considering his ability, and that in a most
difficult thing his liberality is ordinarily expressed.
Fourthly, to promise recompence; as thankes, service, &c.'
Some men have very obdurate hearts, and will not be moved by any such
language. Jeffrey had a form of refusal which must have been very
tantalizing to his correspondents. He managed to bring the sentence 'I
have much pleasure in subscribing' to the end of the first page, and
then added, on the opposite side, 'myself, yours faithfully, F.
Jeffrey.'
Charles Lamb wrote upon books that are not books, or those that 'no
gentleman's library should be without.' In the same way there are
letters that are not letters, and of such are the political letters of
Junius, Pascal's 'Provincial Letters,' Swift's 'Drapier's Letters,'
and all essays, disquisitions, and satires which are merely thrown
into the epistolary form. Some historical letters are in the same
category; because, although the letters of such men as Cromwell,
Marlborough, Nelson, Franklin, Washington, and Wellington must always
interest us, we read them more for the matter that is in them than
for the form in which they are thrown. The following letter from the
Princess Mary (afterwards Queen of England) to the wife of the
Protector Somerset, is an exception to the above rule, and exhibits
its writer in an amiable light, as interceding for two poor servants
who were formerly attached to her mother's household, and who had
fallen into poverty:--
'To my Lady of Somerset.
'My good Gossip,--After my very hearty commendations to
you, with like desire to hear of the amendment and increase
of your good health, these shall be to put you in
remembrance of mine old suit concerning Richard Wood, who
was my mother's servant when you were one of her Grace's
maids; and as you know by his supplication, hath sustained
great loss, almost to his utter undoing, without any
recompense for the same hitherto; which forced me to
trouble you with this suit before this time, whereof (I
thank you) I had a very good answer; desiring you now to
renew the same matter to my lord your husband, for I
consider that it is in manner impossible for him to
remember all such matters, having such a heap of business
as he hath. Wherefore, I heartily require you to go forward
in this suit till you have brought it to an honest end, for
the poor man is not able to lye long in the city. And thus
my good Nan, I trouble you both with myself and all mine,
thanking you with all my heart for your earnest gentleness
towards me in all my suits hitherto, reckoning myself out
of doubt of the continuance of the same. Wherefore, once
again I must trouble you with my poor George Brickhouse,
who was an officer of my brother's wardrobe of the beds,
from the time of the king my father's coronation; whose
only desire it is to be one of the knights of Windsor if
all the rooms be not filled, and if they be, to have the
next reversion; in the obtaining whereof, in mine opinion
you shall do a charitable deed, as knoweth Almighty God,
who send you good health, and us shortly to meet, to his
pleasure. From St. John's, this Sunday at afternoon, being
the 24th of April.
'Your loving friend during my life,
'MARYE.'[62]
The duchess to whom the above letter was written was very haughty, and
held her head higher than the Queen-dowager, who had married the
Protector's brother, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Lord High Admiral.
Lloyd says, 'Very great were the animosities betwixt their wives, the
duchess refusing to bear the queen's train, and in effect justled her
for precedence, so that between the train of the queen and long gown
of the duchess they raised so much dust at court as at last to put out
the eyes of both their husbands.'
Men of position and fame must often groan under the affliction of
letters and other applications that are constantly besetting them. Sir
Walter Scott was frequently victimized in this way, and once he was so
unfortunate as to have to pay £5 postage for a large packet from New
York, which contained a MS. play, by a young lady, intended for his
perusal, and accompanied with a request that he would read and correct
it, write a prologue and epilogue for it, procure it a good reception
from the manager of Drury Lane, and make Murray or Constable bleed
handsomely for the copyright. A fortnight after he received another
packet, for which he paid the same amount, which contained a second
copy of the 'Cherokee Indians,' with a letter from the authoress
stating, that as the winds had been boisterous she feared the first
packet had foundered.
The managers of theatres are peculiarly troubled with applications
that they are unable to accede to, and authors often think that those
who do not rate their productions as highly as they do themselves must
be actuated by unworthy motives. The following letter from F. Yates
exhibits some of a manager's troubles:--
'MY DEAR SIR,--I this moment have received your letter,
which has given me more pain than I can describe to you. I
do assure you that, from the little I have known of you,
you are the last man in the world whose feelings I would
wound. Your note came to me yesterday at rehearsal; I
answered it, enclosing two orders, stating that I could not
afford more, and explained myself in the following manner
about "Love at Home," viz:--That, as there was no chance of
our being able to produce such a piece for some time, I
thought it better to return it to you, or words to that
effect. This note I put in the person's hands who gave me
yours; who it was I can't recollect. You know what last
rehearsals are to a manager sitting at the prompter's
table. This morning, when I was in bed, the servant came
with your card, and in answer to your note I could only
fancy you wanted your piece, and desired her to wrap it up
and give it the messenger. I confess I should have seen to
its being properly enveloped, but you can make excuse for a
fatigued man, who hears of nothing but manuscripts from
morning to night. I am most anxious that you should acquit
me, and believe me with truth to be yours,
'With much esteem,
'FRED. YATES.'
Managers are not the only persons who are troubled by the application
of authors, and the following letter from Liston (dated 1833) shows us
how he refused to perform an unpleasant task:--
'SIR,--The repeated annoyances I have been subjected to, by
undertaking to read pieces at the desire of authors and
managers, have determined me to avoid for the future so
unpleasant a task, and I therefore trust you will not take
offence, if, in pursuance of that determination, I feel
myself compelled to decline a compliance with your request.
Mme. Vestris will, I have no doubt, pay every attention to
your production should you feel disposed to entrust it to
her, and in the event of my having a character assigned me
you may be satisfied that I will do my duty, both to you
and to the theatre. I would have answered you earlier, but
I have not had five minutes at my own disposal for the last
three weeks.'
Besides the trouble of reading new plays, managers have to bear with
the offended dignity of the actors. The following irate letter of
Elliston (Charles Lamb's Elliston) shows what they have occasionally
to put up with:--
'SIR,--Your information respecting the "School for
Scandal," which I received last night, is happily imagined
to fill up the measure of disrespect which seems to have
been studiously offered to me since I have been in the new
Drury Lane Theatre. You cannot be ignorant that I have
always played the part of "Charles" with the Drury Lane
company, and Mr. Arnold, when I met him on Kew Bridge
previous to the opening of Drury Lane, and when it was in
contemplation to open the new theatre with Mr. Sheridan's
brilliant play, distinctly told me in answer to a question
I put to him, that I should be expected to play "Charles."
Under these circumstances I cannot but conceive the cool
mode in which I am asked, without request, to be ready for
the eldest brother, to be an insult. To oblige the
committee and to serve the interests of the concern, I
think I have already sufficiently manifested [my desire] by
the acceptance of a very inferior part in the tragedy, and
by my suppression of complaint where complaint was almost
peremptorily called for; but there are bounds beyond which
it would be contemptible for patience to show itself; I
enter, therefore, a decided protest against this your last
proceeding, and expect that for the future it may
constitute a part of yours and Mr. Arnold's management to
show me a little more good manners than your natures have
hitherto permitted.'
Although a great number of letters have been printed, there must be an
immense mass of unprinted ones that ought to see the light, and would
add much to our information. We should like to see all the known
correspondence of the world overhauled, re-arranged, and extracted
under heads. By this means we should gain new views of the characters
of men, and the high and dry description of action would be
supplemented by vivid touches of feeling that would breathe life into
the dry bones of history. Some such scheme as this was hinted at by
Dr. Maitland, in his work on the 'Dark Ages.'
We must now, however, bring our subject to a close, ere we have
exhausted the patience of our readers; but we do so with reluctance,
for the number of letters that we should like to quote are numberless.
We think that there is a peculiar pleasure in being taken into the
confidence of the great ones of the earth, of those who are great by
birth, by genius, and by worth; and we can imagine few greater
literary treats than to turn over a well-arranged collection of
autograph letters, which have been selected for the interest of their
contents as well as for the celebrity of the writers. We feel suddenly
taken out of ourselves and transplanted into a brilliant society, and
we rise with the feeling that our list of acquaintances and friends
has been enlarged by some of the best and greatest that have walked
the earth. We have only left ourselves room to say a few words on Mr.
Seton's book, but those words must be in its praise. The author has
succeeded in putting together some very interesting and amusing essays
on 'Letters and Letter-writers;' but as the subject is a large one,
and the illustrations for it are peculiarly rich, we have preferred to
make a selection of our own instead of using those that Mr. Seton has
collected.
In conclusion, we cannot but express the pride we feel in the belief
that our countrymen and countrywomen have added so many charming
chapters to this branch of the great literature of the world: chapters
that will bear comparison with those produced by the writers of any
other country.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] 'Mark Boyd's Reminiscences of Fifty Years.'
[59] Disraeli.
[60] Mathias.
[61] Rogers.
[62] Tytler's 'England under Edward VI. and Mary,' 1839, vol. i., p.
48.
ART. VI.--_Wesley and Wesleyanism_.
(1.) _The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., Founder of the
Methodists_. By the Rev. L. TYERMAN. 3 vols. Hodder and Stoughton.
(2.) _The Life and Times of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, M.A., Rector of
Epworth, and Father of the Rev. John and Charles Wesley_. By the Rev.
L. TYERMAN. Simpkin and Marshall.
(3.) _John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth
Century_. By JULIA WEDGEWOOD. Macmillan and Co.
(4.) _The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley_. Vols. I.--XI.
Methodist Book Room.
(5.) _John Wesley's Place in Church History_. Bell and Daldy.
(6.) _Wesley and Methodism_. By ISAAC TAYLOR. Bell and Daldy.
(7.) _John Wesley: His Life and His Work_. By the Rev. M. LELIÈVRE.
Translated from the French by the Rev. A. J. FRENCH, B.A. Wesleyan
Conference Office.
(8.) _John Wesley; or, the Theology of Conscience_, By the author of
the 'Philosophy of Evangelicism.' Bell and Daldy.
Protestantism has never shown any especial pride in its hagiology, it
does not treasure very highly the lives of its saints; yet it has an
illustrious succession of eminent and noble men--great by endurance
and self-denial, by the majesty and multiplicity of their labours, by
the fervent enthusiasm of their character, and by their exalted
intercourse with divine truths and things. Among the most eminent of
these lives, great by its endowments and virtues, transcendent by
incessant and immeasurable activity, extraordinary by its protracted
period of service, stands that of John Wesley, mild and modest, but
conspicuous and renowned, alike in the Old World and the New. Shall we
be doing a needless thing if we devote some pages to an attempt at an
estimate of the man, his ideas, his work, and his influence? First,
the man. Pleasant, it has been said, is the task to trace up to their
mountain source the streams which, broadening into great rivers,
descend to run among the hills and water the valleys; to drink at the
fountain-head, where perhaps all seems bleak and drear, compared with
the fertility through which the river wanders below; thus, also, it is
pleasant to trace some great benevolent flood of influence and thought
back to its obscure fountain, its unlikely, perhaps unsuspected,
spring. Thus also it is that in the kitchen of a poorly furnished
Lincolnshire parsonage, in its atmosphere of poverty and piety,
Methodism really had its origin; the early life of its founder was
lightened by its special providences, his sense of wonder was excited
by its supernatural voices, his frame was nourished by its hard
discipline. Such was the cradle and the early aliment of John Wesley;
and the first element in Methodism is the quality and character of the
man.
Even at this day, Epworth is a quiet old village town, lying on the
windy side of a Lincolnshire upland; no railway has, we believe,
disturbed its solitary stillness, and the rest of its inhabitants is
unbroken by the shrill whistle of the locomotive. We may figure to
ourselves its loneliness a hundred and seventy years since, when in
its old parsonage John Wesley's eyes first opened to the light. Samuel
Wesley, his father, was the rector of the little village; quite a
notable man to us, and by no means an obscure man in his day. Epworth,
considering those times, was not a poor living, it was worth £200 a
year; it is now worth nearly £1,000; but excellent and admirable man
as he appears to have been, the old rector was usually in debts and
difficulties. Perhaps even Goldsmith's typical clergyman would not
have 'passed rich with £40 a year,' if, in addition to that wealth, he
had found his quiver filled by nineteen children; although we know
wonderful Robert Walker became a rich man, kept out of debt and
danger, and accumulated a fortune in his incumbency of Seathwait on an
annual income of £10! Few well-authenticated stories are more romantic
than that of Epworth parsonage; among old houses it has a
distinguished pre-eminence. Both the pastor and his wife were
extraordinary people: on both sides their ancestors were remarkable,
and they in turn became parents of an offspring, marvellous not merely
in number, but in the singular versatility of their genius. The old
rector was one of the stupendous scholars, of whom there were so many
in the lone and obscure retreats of village life in that age; one of
those men who, patiently trimming the midnight lamp, or kindling it
before the earliest glow of the summer's sunbeam, thought or wrote
with equal facility in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, and published their
works in huge quartos or folios. Of him probably we should now know
nothing, but for the work of his remarkable children. Yet he was
himself a huge folio of a man, a poet, too, in virtue of a
considerable power of conception, fertility of illustration, and
melody of expression; those queer old volumes, the 'Athenian Oracle,'
which are a choice amusement and recreation for the bookworm, received
large contributions, and on the most curious subjects, from his pen:
he possessed a nimble wit, and his posthumous work on Job is said to
contain--for it has never fallen in our way--a vast wealth of
scholarship. Susannah Wesley, his wife, was at once a saint and a
scholar, far more equal to the discussion of many knotty matters in
divinity than some of the bishops of that day; and she also had an
intense concern for the souls of the parishioners round about her. The
household of that parsonage vividly reflects that old twilight time.
Twice the rectory was consumed by fire: it was supposed to be the work
of incendiaries, for the rector was very unpopular, and the story has
often been told in prose and in painting, how, on one of these
occasions, the infant John nearly perished in the flames, how he was
rescued, and how the brave rector knelt with his children on the
village green, exclaiming, 'Come, neighbours, let us kneel down, let
us give thanks to God, He has given me all my eight children--I am
rich enough.' But in the fire he lost not only his house, but his
furniture and his precious library, all his manuscripts, and his
sermons, and moreover a work on Hebrew poetry, which, from what we
know of his pen, must have been very valuable. Grim shadows often fell
over the rectory. One circumstance gives it a most singular notoriety,
and was probably not without influence on the mind of John. We allude
to its celebrated ghost. Among ghost stories, this of the apparition
or _polter-geisterie_ of Epworth--for the hauntings were noisy
racketings rather than appearances--has always been held to be one of
the most inexplicable. Dr. Southey quite inclines to a belief in the
genuineness of the ghostly visitations, and Mr. Tyerman expresses
himself as reluctantly driven to the conclusion that the noises and
other circumstances were occasioned by the direct and immediate agency
of some unseen spirit; Isaac Taylor also seems forced to a similar
admission. Thus it was a singular old house and household; much there
was calculated in every way to stir the souls of such children and
youths as John and Charles Wesley, not to mention the less famous, but
scarcely less ingenious, Samuel and Mehetabel, Amelia and Keziah; it
is interesting to think of that family in those old Epworth fields and
lanes and hedgerows, and to follow them in all their strange, varied,
and parti-coloured existence.
In due time, John left home for college; he studied at Christ-church,
Oxford, after he had fulfilled his earlier course at the Charter
House. It was long before he found his way into the work which has
made his name so eminent; nor can it be said that in earlier life he
gave much promise of that especial excellence to which he attained. He
was a hard and industrious student, an exemplary and pious youth and
young man. It is not uninteresting to notice that at this time he had
rather a close and not unaffectionate correspondence with Mary
Granville, then a young widow, which suggests suspicious
possibilities. Talented, beautiful, and accomplished, we know her
principally as the old lady, Mrs. Delany, the cherished friend of
George III., to whom he paid such courtly and beautiful deference in
her old age at Windsor. Mr. Tyerman seems to think, and we think too,
that Wesley had a 'fair escape;' that he was not at all uninteresting
to the fair widow is certain. What would have become of Methodism had
the intimacy been closer? He was elected a fellow of Lincoln College,
Oxford; but his ideas of Christian truth appear to have been very
crude and confused. In his twenty-fifth year he was ordained a priest
of the Church of England, and ministered for some time at a wretched
little Lincolnshire village called Wroote; the population was under
three hundred, 'and the people,' says Mehetabel Wesley, 'were as dull
as asses and impervious as stone.' It is true there was at this time a
small cluster of Oxford students who had received the denomination of
'Methodists,' and Wesley was one of them; he was called even the
'Curator of the Holy Club,' and a 'crack-brained enthusiast.' His
brother Charles regarded him with reverence, and all looked up to him
as the worthy leader of the little band. He appears to have led the
life of an ascetic, and his charity to the poor was limited only by
his very scanty means. An instance shows us something of the character
of the man. On one cold winter day, a young girl, whom these earlier
Methodists kept at school, called upon him in a state nearly frozen.
The young man said to her, 'You seem half-starved; have you nothing to
wear but that linen gown?' She said, 'Sir, it is all I have!' Wesley
felt in his pocket, but it was almost empty; the walls of his chamber,
however, were hung with pictures, and these now seemed to him to
become his accusers. 'It struck me,' says he, 'will thy Master say to
thee, "Well done, good and faithful steward, thou hast adorned thy
walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from
the cold." O justice! O mercy! are not these pictures the blood of
this poor maid?' When he had reached the age of seventy-three, the
Commissioners of Excise--in all generations a race of monetary
ferrets--addressed to him a circular, expressing that beyond a doubt
he had neglected to make a proper entry and return of his silver
plate. The letter was very curt and peremptory. Wesley evidently
thought the application to him was ridiculous, and he replied in a
note still more curt. 'Sir, I have two silver spoons at London and two
at Bristol; this is all the plate that I have at present, and I shall
not buy any more while so many round me want bread. I am, Sir, your
most humble servant, John Wesley.' Thus the reflection of the young
student realized itself in the active life of the old man.
For some time, however, John Wesley appears before us as a kind of
eighteenth century Puseyite, or rather such an one as Hurrell Froude;
his notions were cast in a mould of High Church idealism, not unmixed
with a certain morbid pietism; and Oxford Methodism almost anticipates
that other mighty reaction, the great religious movement of our age;
but the Methodism of Oxford, indeed, although it numbered among its
adherents such men as the Wesleys, and Whitefield, and Hervey, and
Ingram, soon came to an end, and, but for Wesley's after career, would
have been buried in oblivion, for Mr. Tyerman truly characterizes it
as 'misty, austere, gloomy, and forbidding, while yet intensely
earnest, sincere, and self-denying.'
The friends were soon widely scattered to their different vicarages
and curacies, and John Wesley himself--now in his thirty-second
year--accepted a mission to the little American State of Georgia. We
need not describe his experience in America further than to remark
how, on his way thither, he fell in with Moravians, who imparted to
him some new light in theology on its experimental side. The vigorous
hymns of the Moravians and their vivid representations of Christian
life, put before him a new set of ideas, which, when he separated
himself entirely from the organization of that sect and returned to
England, bore abundant fruit. His life in Georgia was of short
continuance, but characterized by singular circumstances; first and
foremost, he took into his ministry a very strange, morose, and
cheerless type of Christianity; also in connection with this, we have
to notice a very important item in his history--he fell in love. It is
quite remarkable that all Wesley's transactions with womankind--on
his own account--were unfortunate, even exceedingly unhappy. The lady
who first drew forth his affections appears to have accepted his
proposal of marriage; but by a rapid transition we find her a week or
two after, married to a Mr. Williamson; this overwhelmed the poor
priest, and introduced him to other troubles. He refused to admit her
to the Lord's table; then we find him arrested and brought before the
recorder for defaming the lady; then followed a stream of indictments
against him, and, in brief, sick and sore, and as a prisoner at large,
we find him hurrying away from the colony.
For a life which became so remarkable for the prescience and rigidity
of its principles, such a commencement was very singular. A strange
undeterminateness appears to rule, or rather to leave him unruled and
ungoverned, until his thirty-seventh year. It is singular, for
instance, to find an undoubtedly pious, earnest, holy, and
self-denying man, such as Wesley was, declaring that until he returned
from Georgia he was an unconverted man. He was no doubt in search of
that deep faith which is eternal life. It appears that a real change
came over him when he heard the preaching of Peter Bohler, the
Moravian; in all these earlier years of Wesley's activity he seems to
have been greatly indebted to the Moravians. The issue of the
influence of Bohler upon his mind, was his confession that before this
period he was a servant of God, accepted and safe, but now he knew it,
and was happy as well as safe, and in after years and until our own
time, the conscious happiness of believers has been a considerable
point in Methodist teaching. There is no doubt that Wesley himself
attained a cheerful, quiet, restful consciousness he had never known
before, and his life hereafter, while constant in its course of
self-denial, was lifted above the morose asceticism of his earlier
years. But as to the principle itself, it is surely as dangerous as a
rule of Christian experience, as it is doubtful in all human
philosophy. For some time he was materially influenced by Moravian
principles and practices, and, indeed, it is easy to see that God who
destined for his distinguished servant a very long life, was teaching
him in various schools those principles, which upon an eminently large
scale he was to apply. He went to Germany to visit the Moravian
settlement of Hernhutt, he came to know that eminent and extraordinary
man, Christian David, he heard him preach and received from his own
lips his singular story. He professed himself to have received
remarkable spiritual intelligence from Moravian teachings; and some of
the finest hymns in the Wesleyan Hymn Book are translations made at
this time by John Wesley from those of Count Zinzendorf. But it is
very remarkable that he signalized the period of his conversion by a
quarrel with William Law; he charged him most ungraciously with having
deceived him in having given to him a mystical, notional, and
intellectual faith; and Law replied to him in language, which
assuredly in every way leaves that devout and eminent Christian
philosopher in possession of the field. It is, however, the last
ground of serious exception we can take to the life of Wesley. At this
point, his life seems to collect itself into eminent purpose and
consistency. He was soon compelled to disentangle himself from the
Moravians, whose notions at that time were beset by the most mystical
and mischievous fancies, and ridiculous and even indecent allusions.
He was forbidden their pulpit on account of his clearly expressed
dissent from their doctrines, and almost immediately, and apparently
without any distinctly marked design on his own part, he commenced
that course which made him so pre-eminent a father and apostle in the
modern church. John Wesley's course is very singular. It has this
strong mark of eminent honesty: that the whole of the immense system
of usefulness he inaugurated, appears to have been without especial
intention or plan. From year to year the institution grew; piece by
piece, the mighty structure took proportion and shape. Commencing in a
simple design to be useful, to awaken men to a knowledge of sin, and
to the determination of salvation from sin, Wesley became an
evangelist. He had no idea of separating himself from the Established
Church; he always regarded himself as one of its ministers, and was
sufficiently filled, even to the close of his life, with all the ideas
implied in being an ordained priest in its communion. It is impossible
to regard him in relation to England at that time, without feeling
that he, in an eminent degree, was raised up and set apart for the
salvation of his country.
The social condition of England, when Wesley appeared presents no
attractive picture to the student; in some measure it relieves and
lightens our despondency concerning England at present, to remember
what the country was then. It is true the population was small, almost
insignificant, as compared with our present overcrowded masses--it was
not more than about six millions--but with abundant wealth and means
of happiness, the people fell far short of what we should now consider
comfort. This was, however, a slight shade in the picture; there were
cruelty and injustice in the administration of English law, life and
liberty were held very cheap, deism or atheism in religion and a wild
licentiousness and rude brutality of manners, pervaded all classes,
from the court to the meanest hamlet of the land. For the most part
the Church of England had shamefully forgotten and neglected her duty,
while the Nonconformists had sunk generally into so cold an
indifferentism in devotion, and so hard and sceptical a frame of
thought in theology, that almost every interest of the land was given
over to profligacy or recklessness, and in thoughtful minds to
despair. Those who called themselves Christians were for the most part
spiritually dead. The literature of England suffered a temporary
eclipse, and such as it was, it was shamefully perverted from all high
purposes, and was very generally adverse to all purity and moral
dignity. The gaols, indeed, were crammed with culprits, but that did
not prevent the heaths from swarming with highwaymen, and the cities
with burglars; in the remote regions of England, such as Cornwall in
the West, and Yorkshire and Northumberland in the North, and
especially Midland Staffordshire, the manners were wild and savage
beyond all description or conception. The reader must conceive a state
of society divested of all the educational, philanthropic and
benevolent activities of modern times. There were no Sunday-schools
and few day-schools; here and there a solitary chapel sequestered in
some lane, either in the metropolis or the country town, or more
probably far away from a town, stood in some confluence of roads a
monument of old intolerance; but religion was, as we have said, in
fact dead or lying in a trance. To few men has it been given,
commencing a career at the age of thirty-seven, to have reserved for
them yet, upwards of half-a-century of health, strength, and mental
vigour, to carry out and give effect to all their plans. Wesley rose
to break up this monotony, and to alarm this depravity of social life;
his strong, clear voice sounded over the land; the amount of hatred,
hostility and persecution which he roused, evidently showed the living
feeling he had created; it is a more favourable circumstance that a
man should hate religion than be wholly indifferent to it; on the
other hand, the love was more fervid and intense than the hate, hate
roared and hissed, and threw about its mischievous display of foolish
fireworks in the shape of pamphlets and satires; but there would
appear to have been such a degree of genuine sympathy, that men and
women, united by certain principles of faith, statedly met together,
regardless of peril or cost, and thus there gradually extended over
the whole of England a circle of religious societies bearing Wesley's
name.
The Church of England very soon set itself against the new movement;
Whitefield, much younger than Wesley, an ardent, flaming, seraphic
man, had been compelled to betake himself to the fields. Like Wesley
he was an ordained minister of the Church, but he had been threatened
with suspension and expulsion, and he was the first who could collect
thousands--sometimes not less than twenty thousand--to hear the
gospel. It was with great fear and trembling that Wesley imitated him,
and he says, referring to his first preaching in the open air near
Bristol, 'I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange
way of preaching in the fields; having been all my life, till very
lately, so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order,
that I would have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had
not been done in church.' 'Such,' says Mr. Tyerman, 'were the
prejudices and feelings of the man who for between fifty or sixty
years proved himself the greatest outdoor preacher that ever lived.'
It does not seem very easy to settle the precise etymology of the term
Methodist, whether derived, as some have said, from an allusion in
Juvenal to a celebrated quack physician, or whether, as Mr. Tyerman
seems to think, first used in a pamphlet attacking Whitefield in the
earlier years of his ministry, in which the author fetches up an old
sentence from the pages of Chrysostom, who says, 'To be a Methodist is
to be beguiled.' We ourselves happened once, in a parish church in
Huntingdonshire, to be listening to a clergyman notorious alike by his
private character and vehement intolerance, who was entertaining his
audience on a week evening by a discourse from the text in Ephesians
iv. 14. 'Whereby they lie in wait to deceive.' He said to his people,
'Now you do not know Greek; I know Greek, and I am going to tell you
what this text really says; it says, "they lie in wait to make you
Methodists;" the word used here is _methodeian_, that is really the
word that is used, and that is really what Paul said, "they lie in
wait to make you Methodists." A Methodist means a deceiver, one who
deludes, cheats and beguiles.' The Grecian scholar was a little at
fault in his next allusion, for he proceeded to quote that other
passage of the apostle, 'We are not ignorant of his devices,' and
seemed to be under the impression that 'device' was the same word as
that on which he had expended his criticism. 'Now,' said he, 'you may
be ignorant because you do not know Greek, but "_we_ are not ignorant
of his devices," that is, of his _methods_, his deceivers, that is his
Methodists.' It was a piece of the richest criticism we ever remember
to have heard in any pulpit. In such empty wit and ignorant punning,
it is very likely, however, that the term had its origin; be that as
it may, 'Methodist' soon became the designation of a really large body
of social and spiritual reformers, and assuredly no term has obtained
greater renown and importance since 'the disciples were first called
Christians at Antioch;' but in fact the word is to be found in several
places in our obsolete English. Wesley was not the greatest outdoor
preacher that ever lived, but we can forgive Mr. Tyerman for thinking
so in his high feeling of admiration for his illustrious hero. He
became a power in the country. Earl Stanhope in his very interesting
'History of England from 1713-1783,' devotes a lengthy chapter to
Wesley and the rise of Methodism, and says, 'with less immediate
importance than war or political changes, it endures long after, not
only the result, but the memory of these has passed away, and
thousands who never heard of Fontenoy or Walpole continue to hold the
precepts and venerate the name of John Wesley.' Thus this venerable
name is a distinguished landmark or milestone in the history of the
mind of England. By his labours he gave the noblest freedom to
thousands of enslaved minds, and marshalled their wild natures under
the principles of order and obedience. Wesley achieved his greatest
victories in the open air; he probably inherited from his father a
tolerably sharp power of satiric reproof, which often served him well
in such encounters as he would be sure to have in the broad streets or
the fields, and was well illustrated in his victory over Beau Nash.
The accomplished rake and dandy king of Bath, master of the ceremonies
in that then famous watering-place, appeared swaggering in his
enormous white hat, and asked, 'By what authority he dared to do what
he was doing now?' 'By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me
by him who is now Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands
upon me and said, "Take thou authority to preach the Gospel."' Cried
the man of Bath, 'Your preaching frightens people out of their wits.'
'Sir,' said Wesley 'did you ever hear me preach?' 'No!' 'How then can
you judge of what you have never heard?' 'I judge, he answered, 'from
common report.' 'Common report,' replied Wesley, 'is not enough; give
me leave to ask, Sir, is not your name Nash?' 'It is,' he said. 'Sir,'
replied Wesley, 'I dare not judge _of you_ by common report.' Even the
unblushing master of ceremonies was abashed and worsted; he was
slinking away, when, to complete his discomfiture, an old woman lifted
up her voice, and begged Wesley to allow her to question and to answer
him; this made the scene ludicrous, and in the midst of such a
singular and disgraceful defeat, the mighty dandy left the preacher to
continue and to close his sermon.
The most romantic lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar
do not present a more startling succession of incidents than those
which meet us in the life and labours of Wesley and his Prætorian
band, and these are all the more marvellous and romantic because they
lay no tax upon credulity and never appeal to miracle as their
foundation. Wesley never, like blessed St. Raymond of Pennafort,
spread his cloak upon the sea to transport him across the water,
sailing one hundred and sixty miles in six hours, and entering his
convent through closed doors; nor do we ever find him, like the dear
and judicious Xavier, spending three whole days in two different
places at the same time, preaching all the while. We fear it is true
that Wesley does not shine in feats like these, but he seems almost
ubiquitous, and moves with a rapidity which reminds us of that flying
angel who had 'the everlasting gospel to preach;' while his conflicts
with the tempests of nature, and those wilder tempests caused by the
passions of men, crowd his life with incident. We read of adventurous
journeys through regions in the North of England when snowstorms
drifted and baulked the way, and made travelling almost impossible, or
over roads made like glass by the hard frost, and through pathless
wastes of white. Thus we read of his travelling through the long
wintry hours, two hundred and eighty miles, on horseback in six days,
a wonderful feat, and Wesley himself writes,--'Many a rough journey
have I had before, but one like this I never had, between wind and
hail and rain and snow and ice, and driving sleet and piercing cold;
but it has passed, and those days will return no more, and are
therefore as though they had never been. So "the love of Christ
constrained him."' Vast concourses met him in singular places: on
Blackheath fourteen thousand people, in Kingswood more, in Moorfields
and on Kennington Common twenty thousand people. Singular was his
visit to Epworth, where he found the church of his childhood, his
father's church, and the church of his own first ministrations, closed
against him, but for eight days he stayed, and preached every night
standing on his father's tomb; truly a singular sight, the living son,
the prophet of his age, surely little short of inspired, preaching on
the dead father's grave, with such pathos and power as we may well
conceive. 'I am well assured,' he says, 'that I did far more good to
my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's
tomb, than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.' Visiting
York, he went to the service of St. Saviour's Gate church; the rector,
the Rev. Mr. Cordeux, had warned his congregation against hearing that
'vagabond Wesley' preach. Wesley went into the church in his
canonicals, it was not unusual for ministers then to wear the cassocks
or the gown like the university man in a university town: the rector
of course saw he was a clergyman, but not knowing who he was, offered
him his pulpit to preach, and Wesley was thoroughly willing and ready.
He took for his text a part of the gospel of the day--sermons leaped
impromptu from his lips and heart; this sermon was an impressive one,
and after the service the rector asked the clerk if he knew who the
strange clergyman was. 'Sir,' said the clerk, 'it was the "vagabond
Wesley" against whom you warned us.' 'Ay, indeed!' said the
astonished rector, 'we have been trapped, but never mind, we have had
a good sermon.' The Dean of York heard of the affair, and threatened
to lay the matter before the archbishop; but the rector outstripped
the dean, and went himself and told the story to the archbishop. 'You
did quite right,' he said, and so the matter ended; only when the
'vagabond Wesley' came to York again, the rector offered his church
the second time to him, and a second time be preached in St.
Saviour's.
A succession of persecutions attended him and his followers on their
way, and yet very little could be alleged to their discredit. In
Cornwall, Edward Greenfield, a tanner, with a wife and seven children,
was arrested under a warrant signed by Dr. Borlase, the eminent
antiquarian, who was a bitter foe to Methodism. Wesley appeared to
vindicate his friend, and he first inquired what objection there was
to the peaceable, inoffensive man. The answer was, 'The man is well
enough in other things, but the gentlemen cannot bear his impudence;
why, Sir, he says that he knows his sins are forgiven!' When
Bernardine of Sienna preached at Bologna, the people brought out their
dice-tables and burnt them in the streets; when Antony of Padua
preached at Pavia, he saw impure books and pictures committed to
immense flames; and even more remarkable, when Savonarola preached in
Florence, the woman left off painting their faces, and decorating
their hair. The results of Wesley's preaching were scarcely less
remarkable. The story is well known how in one place a whole
waggon-load of Methodists had been taken before a magistrate, but when
he asked what they had done, a deep silence fell over the court, for
no one was very well prepared with any charge against them; at length
some one exclaimed that 'they pretended to be better than other
people, and prayed from morning till night;' and another said, 'They
have _convarted_ my wife; till she went among them she had such a
tongue, but now she's as quiet as a lamb.' 'Take them back, take them
back,' said the sensible magistrate, 'and let them convert all the
scolds in the town.' We are amazed when we attempt to realize all the
causeless conflicts through which many of these holy enthusiasts
passed, certainly the world in all its force was against them; no wild
anti-popery riots were more unreasonable and brutal than the turbulent
mobs which tore down houses and insolently assaulted women and men for
their attachment to the new movement. Attempts were often made on
Wesley's life in Cornwall; wild cries rose around him, 'Away with
him!' 'Kill him at once!' 'Crucify the dog!' Stones and bricks were
frequently hurled at him; often he might have said, 'My soul is among
lions.' Staffordshire was scarcely behind Cornwall in the rough
assaults. Quiet men were pressed for soldiers, and sent as prisoners
to jail, simply because they were Methodists; hot-headed Hanoverians
did their best to make the whole Methodist body disloyal, and both
John and Charles Wesley were arrested or taken before the magistrates
upon suspicion of being favourable to the Pretender. Thus Charles was
brought before the magistrates at Wakefield, and five witnesses were
ready to swear that he had either prayed or preached about the return
of the 'Banished One,' the well-known and tender words of the wise
woman of Tekoa, being supposed to convey some sinister allusion to the
exiled Stuarts. It was the age of mobs and riots; for a long time the
preaching of Wesley appears to have been greeted by turbulencies as
wild and vehement as those which give a disgraceful notoriety to the
name of John Wilkes or Lord George Gordon.
So astonishing were the results of these very simple and Christ-like
ministrations, that there was surely something of the supernatural in
the man Wesley. It is part of the very nature of Christianity to
believe that from time to time the Church is invigorated by
extraordinary impulses of divine life find grace, and singular
effusions of the Holy Spirit: and to those who are able to reach at
all the idea of supernatural causes in the Christian life, it is not
difficult to apprehend the reality of such impulses. There was surely
much that was remarkable in Wesley; it is unquestionable that strange
influences seemed to attend him. His words, it has been remarked,
seemed to possess a mesmeric power; his proximity to the supernatural
has often been made the subject of criticism. Extraordinary
circumstances which Southey, Richard Watson, Isaac Taylor, and other
eminent writers have found to be perfectly inexplicable upon
principles of natural reasoning marked his ministry; we read of
innumerable instances of individual convulsions, and of multitudes
falling prostrate to the ground before his words; cold and
imperturbable natures were suddenly overwhelmed. Wesley was quite a
believer in the visible and oral manifestation of the 'powers of the
world to come;' such instances were especially prominent in the
earlier part of his singular course. We have no remarks to make upon
these phenomena, nor shall we inquire whether they may or may not be
accounted for on merely natural principles; the facts remain
unquestioned. One thing is certain, as when Peter preached, so at the
preaching of Wesley, innumerable thousands were 'pricked to the heart,
and exclaimed, "What shall we do?"'
The power of Wesley's teaching may probably be traced to the fact that
it dealt with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; but then the whole
doctrine was suffused in the fulness, the sufficiency, and the
sweetness of Jesus, and it was a mighty reaction against the
indifference and injustice of the age. The party formed against Wesley
represented the higher classes, bishops and men whose minds and hearts
it would seem were incapable of sympathy for the suffering and the
poor, and for those who were out of the way; coarse ribalds like
Lavington, the Bishop of Exeter, or dilettanti gentlemen like Horace
Walpole, buffoons and time servers like Foote, or even hard
theologians like Toplady, their doctrines tinctured with the harsh and
morbid severity of the times, when, as we have seen, reckless
disregard for life, a claim over it for the most insignificant
offences, must have tended to give a rigour and narrowness to many
religious ideas. Wesley's audiences were chiefly composed of the poor.
The early Methodist was a very simple, perhaps usually an ignorant,
man, but he had that light which 'lighteth every man that cometh into
the world.' The Methodist was not such an one as the Puritan of other
days, who was a sort of Knight of the Iron Hand, a Nonconformist
crusader, whose theology had trained him to the battle-field, nerved
him to frown defiance upon kings, and to treat as worthy only of
contempt the unsanctified nobles of the earth. The Methodist was not
such an one; he was as loyal as he was lowly, he had been forgotten or
passed by, by priests and Levites, but suddenly he found himself
raised to the rank of a living soul--a voice had reached him assuring
him that he, too, was in possession of a soul. Over the country the
ground, on the whole, was easy to Wesley to win; there was no
education, there were no conflicts of opinion, there were no popular
books, the people had no objects to claim their attention, the towns
were far apart, and connected only by the mail or stagecoach, or that
heavy and much more romantic-looking than agreeable conveyance, the
market-cart; there was little popular excitement, there were only
coarse amusements. It is unquestionable that the people had far fewer
religious interests than in the old days of popery, the entire
services of the Church were bald and uninteresting, there was no
music, unless of such a description as to move the passions by
shattering the nerves,--there was no popular psalmody worthy of the
name; thus the religious nature was entranced or buried. But the
Methodist was one who had heard the call of God, conscience had been
stirred within him, and a new life had created new interests; for
Christianity really ennobles a man, gives him self-respect, shows to
him a new purpose and business in life, and stirs the spirit,
moreover, with a pulse of joy and cheerfulness; hence Methodism
created the necessity for meetings and for frequent reciprocations.
There were no chapels, or but few, and none to open their doors to
these strange new pilgrims to the celestial city. The churches, of
course, were closed against them;--what could be done, for they must
speak together. Reciprocation was the soul of Methodism; almost all
the great religious movements have been instituted and marked by some
sign--Dominic invented the rosary, Loyola the spiritual contemplations
and the retreat, Wesleyanism created Class-meetings; this constituted
its essential symbolism. A church can scarcely long maintain a
standing without a symbol. This is the countersign of parties and
sects. So these people assembled in each other's houses, in rude and
homely rooms, by farm ingles, in lone hamlets; thus was created a
homely piety, rugged enough, but full of beautiful and pathetic
instincts. When the faith became more consciously objective, it was
possessed by that singular belief ruling the Church in all such
movements--the belief in the power, conjoined to the desire to save
souls. This drove them out on great occasions to call the vast
multitudes together on heaths and moors. Occasionally, but this was at
a later period, some country gentleman threw open his old hall to the
preachers; but the more aristocratic phase of the Methodist movement
fell into the Calvinistic rather than into the Wesleyan ranks; these
last sought the sequestered places of nature, or in cities and towns
they took to the streets, outlying fields or broadways; in some
neighbourhoods a little room was built containing the germ of what in
a few years became a large Wesleyan society. The burden of all their
meetings and their intercourse, whether in speech or song, was the
sweetness and fullness of Jesus; they had an intense faith in the love
of God shed abroad in the heart; their great solicitude was that souls
were on the brink of perdition. This was to them more than spiritual
difficulties, mere interior trials, or speculative despair; these were
mostly a _terra incognita_ to them. Wesley dealt, as it has been
expressed, with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; he had little
regard to mere proprieties. Wesley and his preachers, 'out of breath
pursuing souls,' seemed to many ungraceful, undignified, their faces
weary, their hands heavy with toil. Yet these men had found, such as
it was, a definite creed, and, as in the case of their great leader,
all the inexhaustible variety and world-wide energy of other minds
were in them concentrated into a burning instinct; the word of 'the
Lord was like fire, or like a hammer.' The early Methodists had also
the mighty instincts of prayer--to them there was a meaning in it and
a joy. So these men pursued their way. God's ministry goes on by
various means, ordinary and extraordinary; it is the difference
between rivers and rains, between the dews and the lightnings, the
rivers are exhaled by the sun and return to the earth in rains, the
Severn and the Wye roll their beautiful forces through the meadow and
along the hill-side, but if they did not give their waters to the sun
and the cloud, and fall back upon the earth as dew and showers, they
would cease from their channels among the hills. So Methodism availed
itself of the ordinary and extraordinary.
All truly holy souls, even those the most opposed in their pews or
their studies, meet and melt and mingle in song; holy song is the
solvent of the most divergent creeds. Perhaps the greater number of
the early Methodists were not pressed by physical want; concern for
the soul was the grand business, in many instances possibly it was a
wild and even diseased feeling. There was no art, no splendid form of
worship or ritual; early Methodism was as free from all this as
Clairvaux, in the valley of Wormwood, when Bernard ministered there
with all his monks around him, or as Cluny, when Bernard de Morlaix
chanted his 'Jerusalem the Golden.' Methodism, like all the great
religious movements which have shaken men's souls, was purely
spiritual, or, if it had a sensuous expression, it was not artificial;
loud 'Amens!' resounded as Wesley preached, spoke, or prayed, and then
the hearty gushes of, perhaps, not melodious song united all hearts in
some Wesleyan Litany or Te Deum. It was so throughout the whole land;
such cyclones of spiritual power mysteriously visit our world from age
to age, but this surely was one in which there was infinitely more to
bless and benefit, and far less to which good taste or good sense
could take any exception, than in perhaps any of the great preceding
waves of spiritual power which had rolled over Europe. It was the
ascetic type set forth by Wesley in an age of animal and sensual
indulgence. It was principally by fighting with the sins of the age,
at the same time by laying hold upon its characteristics, and
especially by remembering that man is more than a machine to fill rich
men's pockets, or to digest victuals--a soul, in fact, for whom Christ
died--that Methodism 'grew mightily, and prevailed.'
The strength of a great and popular leader is especially shown in his
power to infuse his own spirit into the minds of other men, thus
constituting an organized band of kindred helpers; never surely was
there a man who more remarkably abides this test than Wesley, and he
became the general of a remarkable order. Protestantism may well, with
Wesley to adduce, challenge Rome to produce any superior illustration
of spiritual power. Archbishop Manning has spoken of St. Benedict, St.
Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Ignatius, chiefs of the orders they
created, as the four rivers of the water of life; it is a singular
illustration and not creditable to the archbishop's piety or good
taste; but if Wesley be compared with these great fathers of the
Romish Church, he shines brilliantly in the comparison. Mr. Tyerman
enthusiastically inquires, 'Is it not true that Methodism is the
greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ?' We may reply we
do not think so, and may yet be prepared to render almost equal homage
with Mr. Tyerman to this stupendous spiritual organization. John
Wesley very soon poured his animating spirit into other men, and the
history of Jesuitism--that marvellous story of the conquest of the
human mind--does not exhibit anything like so striking an array of
heroic and glorious achievements. Rome would make much of such a
history, had she to recite it of herself. The names of those who
surround Wesley as his fellow-labourers and helpers are, indeed, all
of them humble men; no courtly or episcopal favour smiled upon him or
them as they passed along. He had absolutely nothing but the pure
Gospel, by the proclamation of which he sought to awaken human
interest and to command attention; but soon there came a host, of whom
it might be said, 'There went with him a band of men whose hearts God
had touched.' The mind of England seemed to be waiting for that which
Wesley brought to it. Spiritually dead as the Church of England was,
many clergymen, responsive to his call, shook off their lethargy, and
several, like William Grimshaw, of Haworth, laboured heartily with the
apostle of Methodism. The right material was constantly at hand so
soon as it was needed, in men who have almost passed away from memory,
but whose 'record is on high.' We have no space for the review of that
long gallery of interesting portraits of marked and remarkable men;
only we notice there seemed to be a hand for every kind of work that
had to be accomplished; one to lead on the polemic work of the
disputant, and another, or others, to pour forth hymns; some to sway,
by rugged but splendid powers of persuasion, immense masses of people;
others to minister in localities and gather up the lost sheep into
folds; and others to visit in prison, or in those scenes where the
tender voice and the ministering hand were needed, while all bowed
before the omnific mind of Wesley. Few lives are more startling than
that of John Nelson; few types of saintly holiness are higher than
Thomas Walsh; Thomas Maxfield has generally been supposed to be the
first of the long line of lay preachers to whose exertions Methodism
owes so much; while John and Thomas Oliver, John Haine, George Story,
and Sampson Staniforth, and a number of other goodly names, represent
lives of such intense earnestness, holiness, and activity, as would
certainly win them a place in a Catholic calendar of saints, and are
so full of glowing adventure, that the story of many of them would
keep a boy's eyes from winking even late in the night.
Simultaneously with Wesley came the singular apparition of Whitefield,
who fell into no groove of Church routine or life, although
undoubtedly standing on the Calvinistic side of Methodist opinion. It
is interesting to compare these two men together. Whitefield sprang
upon the world ready armed as a youth of twenty, and finished his
career in the prime of life; he seems almost to realize, if it can be
realized, the idea of an abstract soul. We read his words, and they
are nothing; but those words uttered by him broke down, overwhelmed,
and dissolved all prejudices. What must he have been to whom such
strong men, such courtly, artificial, yet highly cultured men, such
sceptical and inaccessible men as Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield, and
David Hume, and Garrick, and Benjamin Franklin, 'were as tow,' while
he was as 'a spark' to kindle all into consuming flame. Not
immediately connected with Wesley's organization, this mysterious and
marvellous man, an entire soul of all-embracing love and compassion,
greatly aided the movement;--equally at home in preaching in the
select saloons of the Countess of Huntingdon, to Dukes and Duchesses
and arrays of Peers, or in the wildest and most furious and murderous
mobs. Whitefield is a mystery to us; he only seems to burn with an
incandescent heat, so that words shrivel, and evaporate in the flame
of that pure, ingenuous, generous, and wholly consecrated soul; and
this, notwithstanding the melody of that full, clear, all-encompassing
voice, varying to every passionate accent, sinking to the most
penetrating entreaty, swelling to the most rousing apostrophe. In the
full careering heat of his speech, Whitefield became, unconsciously to
himself, poet, philosopher, psychologist, thus enabling us to
understand something of his stupendous power, even while we are still
perplexed as to its cause. No melody or poetry shines through the
words of his published discourses; but no pictures we have ever met
with of inspired, rapt oratory, are more surprising than those which
are presented to us by his contemporaries of Whitefield's preaching,
on the slope of some mountain or hill, the trees and hedges full of
people hushed to profound silence, the open firmament above him, the
green fields around him, the sight of thousands on thousands of
people, some in coaches, some on horseback, gathered around him and
all affected--melted to tears. When the evening approached, he once
said, 'Beneath the twilight it was too much, and quite overcame me!'
One night he describes a time never to be forgotten: it lightened
exceedingly; he preached the warnings and the consolations of the
coming of the Son of Man; the thunder broke over his head, the
lightning gleamed upon his path; it ran along the ground, and shone
from one part of the heavens to the other. His spirit rose above the
storm; he longed for the time when Christ should be revealed in
flaming fire. 'Oh,' exclaims he, 'that my soul may live in a like
flame, when He shall actually come to call me!'
But Wesley's success! Wesley, as an orator, seems still more
inconceivable. By all accounts Whitefield was seraphic. Wesley seldom
rose beyond penetrating good sense, and nothing appears to have
transported him out of his invariable calm. Yet the effects of his
oratory were even still more wonderful; there was something of
magnetism in it. Henry Moore, his great friend, says, 'At this moment,
I well remember my first thought after hearing him preach nearly fifty
years ago; _spiritual_ things are natural things to that man;' In
innumerable instances we find audiences shaken as by a mighty wind,
hurled down, agonizing, screaming aloud; there was much more of all
this in Wesley's preaching than in Whitefield's, yet in Whitefield's
we should expect it more. Wesley, in the style of his oratory, seems
to have been judicial, and our readers are not unaware of the
remarkable power that quiet statement is able to exercise. Who so
passionless apparently as Jonathan Edwards, a man who would have
disdained every approach to sensationalism, whose entire mode of
pulpit delivery was obnoxious to all ideas of pulpit oratory, and
whose whole scheme of thought and expression were as calm and clear as
logical metaphysics could make them? yet what scenes he witnessed when
he preached? Thus it was eminently with Wesley; crowds thronged around
him intent to listen wherever he appeared; if the face was beautiful,
the height of the body was so far beneath the average standard that it
seems almost contemptible for the holding of such powers as he
wielded; and then the voice, not less than the manner, appears to have
been unfitted to carry tempests of passion--nor did he desire that it
should; we suppose that it must have been singularly clear and
penetrating, and that every sentence was sharply cut and elaborated,
not by preparation and the pen, but by convictions deep and indelible.
Such sentences carried upon a clear penetrating voice--and in oratory
the voice is all but everything--will achieve more than more plausible
means. It is fervour which fires, but fervour often burns more
effectually in the still, white, soundless heat, than in what seems to
be the most raging flame. There must have been considerable natural
dignity in the man. 'Be silent, or begone,' he said on one occasion to
some who were molesting him in preaching, and the intruders were
silenced. The traditions of Methodism are rich in the recollection of
such scenes;--the scenes of Gwennap Pit for instance. This is a
natural excavation, three miles from Redruth, an amphitheatre, formed
by nature, whose walls are from seven to eight hundred feet in height,
and which is capable of holding from twenty-five to thirty thousand
persons. This was one of Wesley's most famous churches. Year after
year this most spacious and magnificent cathedral amongst the wild
moors of Cornwall was crowded by vast and hushed assemblies. Until
Wesley's day, all that immense population might have said, 'No man
cared for our souls.' Wild, rugged miners and fishermen of whom it was
true that they never breathed a prayer except for the special
providence of a shipwreck--men whose wicked barbarity in kindling
delusive lights along the coast to allure unfortunate ships to the
cruel cliffs of those dangerous shores, had won for their region the
name of 'West Barbary.' Now, as if some power had passed over them,
clothed anew and in their right minds, they assembled to greet and
gladden their venerable father in that wild glen, creating a strange
and not unbeautiful life in the stillness of that desolate and
romantic spot, and worshipping with the birds overhead and the broom
and the wild flowers under foot, under the overhanging shadow of the
venerable rocks. Truly it must have been a sublime thing to have heard
that great multitude peal out in Wesley's own words:--
'Suffice that for the season past,
Hell's horrid language filled our tongues,
We all thy words behind us cast,
And loudly sang the drunkard's songs.
But, oh! the power of grace divine,
In hymns we now our voices raise,
Loudly in strange hosannas join,
And blasphemies are turned to praise.'
Twenty-five thousand persons! and it is said he was able to make
everyone hear his words; wonderful, whether we think of the acoustical
properties of the church itself, the attentiveness the preacher could
command, or the marvellous strength, the clearness and fulness of his
voice.
Of all the helpers from whom Wesley derived assistance essential to
the carrying on his work, his brother Charles was the most
providential. He was a narrow ecclesiastic, and often troublesome, but
he did good service. Much as Wesley loved the service of the Church of
England, it was utterly impossible to employ it in the work he set
himself to perform; but it has been felt again and again, whether it
has been expressed or not, that a religious service without liturgies
is impossible. People may disclaim and disown the word liturgy, and
substitute for it psalms and hymns, the fact remains the same; psalms
and hymns are liturgies in rhyme--liturgies sung instead of said.
Congregations need to be held together; the voice of a solitary soul
is not enough for religious purposes, and especially for the pressure
of overwrought emotions; multitudes require something more than a mere
monologue. Wesley arose at a time when that popular and united form of
worship, the hymn, had but just ceased to be regarded as an
innovation. There were Churches in London--Maze Pond, for
instance--which had divided upon the question of singing, and the
unmusical members went off, and formed a community of their own,
undistracted by notes of song. Watts had only just published some of
his psalms and hymns, when Wesley came down among the people and began
to move to and fro amongst his congregations. The want of simple forms
of prayer and praise was soon felt. No doubt his recent acquaintance
with the Moravians had given him invaluable suggestions, of which he
was prepared to avail himself. Amidst much which was worse than
foolish, the Moravians had, as he knew, many inspiring psalms, and a
far greater variety of metre than English devotional verse had
heretofore employed. Some of the most magnificent hymns in the
Wesleyan collection are Wesley's translations from Zinzendorf and
other German psalmists; but the fulness and splendour of Wesleyan
psalmody was developed by Charles Wesley. His hymns have been the
liturgies of Methodism, the creeds of that Church have been embodied
in them, they have formed its collects, and enshrined its loftiest
bursts of devotional ardour. What sentiment of Christian experience is
there which does not find an utterance in them? What phase of
Methodist faith is there which is not translated into some of these
verses? In preparing the hymn-book, indeed, a great number of Watts's
hymns were included, and included not only without any acknowledgment,
but the preface, from the pen of John, claims for the Wesleys all the
hymns in the volume. In this condition the hymn-book remains to this
day, and we have often conversed with Methodists who have stoutly
maintained that certain hymns in the volume legitimately belong to it,
although published by Watts years before its compilation. This,
however, in no way interferes with the estimate we have to form of
these sacred lyrics; of course, the Methodist estimate of them is that
they are the highest achievements of sacred song. That which we are
constantly using, and which touches our affections becomes supremely
precious and dear to us. They are all eminently experimental; they
seem to have been constructed for the class-meeting and band-meeting;
they are especially conjubilant, hymns well calculated to excite and
stir, and carry aloft the feelings of the people; and they have
become--they very soon became--the voices of the Church.
Wesley, in his reformation, soon commenced the work of reforming the
singing. Throughout his life and labours he often remarks upon the
questionable psalmody by which he was greeted; thus at Warrington, he
says:--
'I put a stop to a bad custom which was creeping in here; a
few men, who had fine voices, sang a psalm which no one
knew, in a tune fit for an opera, wherein three, four, or
five persons sung different words at the same time; what an
insult to common sense! what a burlesque upon public
worship! no custom can excuse such a mixture of profanity
and absurdity.'
Elsewhere he says,--
'Beware of formality in singing, or it will creep upon us
unawares; is it not creeping in already by those complex
tunes which it is scarce possible to sing with devotion?
Such is the long quavering "Hallelujah," and next, the
morning song tune, which I defy any man living to sing
devoutly, the repeating the same words so often, especially
while another repeats different words, shocks all common
sense, brings in dead formality, and has no more religion
in it than a Lancashire hornpipe.'
In harmony with the Hymns, he introduced tunes, which appropriately
rendered the words, and were soon used throughout the whole communion;
from one end of the country to the other these have echoed and rolled;
few are the circumstances in which they have not awakened or sustained
some thrilling emotion. They hailed the bridal party as it returned
from the church singing,--
'We kindly help each other,
Till all shall wear the starry crown.'
they followed the bier to the grave chanting--
'There all the ship's company meet,
Who sail'd with their Saviour beneath;
With shouting, each other they greet,
And triumph o'er sorrow and death.'
And few separations took place without that consolotary song,--
'Blest be that dear uniting love,
That will not let us part.'
While some hymns speedily became like national airs to the Methodist
heart: amongst the chief,--
'Jesus, the name high over all
In hell or earth or sky.'
They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and
plaintive mood; they roll and bear it aloft in its most inspired and
prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ's swell.
Among the mines, and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the
factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the chambers of death, in
the most joyful assemblages of the household, they have relieved the
hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; in other lands, soldiers,
and slaves, and prisoners have recited with what joy those words have
entered into their life. So early as 1748, when a sad cluster of
convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and
thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey said he had never
seen such people before. When the bellman came, as usual, to say to
them, 'Remember, you are to die to-day;' they exclaimed, 'Welcome
news! welcome news!' The Methodists had been in their prison, and
their visits had produced these marvellous effects; and on their way
to Tyburn, the convicts sang that beautiful sacramental hymn of
Charles Wesley:--
'Lamb of God, whose bleeding lore
We still recall to mind;
Send the answer from above,
And let us mercy find.
Think on us who think on Thee,
And every struggling soul release;
Oh, remember Calvary,
And let us go in peace.'
These hymns supplied battle-cries for all the scenes of open-air
aggression and warfare. When Charles Wesley himself was preaching at
Bengeworth, he was beset by a mob. He says, 'Their tongues were set on
fire by hell!' One in the crowd proposed to take him away and duck
him; he broke out into singing with Thomas Maxfield, and allowed them
to carry him whither they would. At the bridge end of the street they
relented and left him; there, instead of retreating, he took his
stand, and, with an immense congregation about him, sang,--
'Angel of God, whate'er betide,
Thy summons I obey;
Jesus, I take Thee for my guide,
And walk in Thee, my way.'
Innumerable anecdotes might be accumulated touching the glories and
triumphs of Methodist song. With all our higher love and admiration
for Isaac Watts, and our feeling that, as a sacred poet, he had a more
lofty and gorgeous wing, even a far more, tender and touching
expression, and that in some of his hymns he speaks in a manner of
strength altogether far more wonderful, nevertheless it is true that
to Charles Wesley must be given the merit of, perhaps, the most
perfect of all hymns, as the expression of Christian experience,--
'Jesus, lover of my soul.'
It is necessary to have some apprehension of the Theology of
Methodism, for the spirit of Methodism was in its theology, even as
the soul of that theology was in its hymns. It met the heart at that
point of experience at which it felt its need of God, a living God:
consciousness pervaded it everywhere. This was the central teaching of
the great evangelical reaction. How well does it compare and contrast
with the contemplations and exercises of Loyola in the solitude of the
Manreza; and also with the 'De Imitatione' of à Kempis, against which,
large as has been the regard for it, a certain instinct of the Church
has always testified. The theology of Methodism was, in one word,
Christ for the conscience. Those, happily, were not the days of
scientific theology; as a scientific statement the theology of Wesley
has justly been regarded as defective, but it is possible to be
defective in comprehensive knowledge, and yet to have a sufficiently
full and clear understanding for practical uses; even as it is
possible to work an engine well, and yet in no sense to be an
accomplished engineer. The secret of Wesley's success lay in the fact
that his was a theology for the multitude; on the one hand it was not
a forensic theory, on the other it was not rationalistic. Both are
alike unsatisfactory to the heart. There is a forensic theology, but
it is for the schools rather than for the factories or the fields.
'Wesley,' says Alexander Knox, 'regarded justification neither merely
nor chiefly as a forensic acquittal in the court of heaven, but as
implying also a conscious liberation from moral thraldom.' Indeed this
was the important point with him; consciousness, everywhere
consciousness. It is in the consciousness faith is to be wrought, as
he sings--
'Inspire the living faith,
Which whosoe'er receives,
The witness in himself he hath,
And _consciously_ believes.'
The strife ran very high upon matters where the disputants were not
substantially divided; the doctrine of personal election and
reprobation, Wesley, indeed, denounced in some of his most vehement
words; and it seemed that the imputed righteousness of Christ, and in
consequence, the doctrine of the substitution of Christ for the
sinner, paled and became ineffective in his teaching. This was
especially manifested in his controversy with the beloved and amiable
rector of Weston Favell, James Hervey, on the publication of his
'Theron and Aspasio.' Hervey says, 'The righteousness wrought out by
Jesus Christ is wrought out for all His people,' &c. Wesley replies,
with truth and force, but with needless vehemence, 'What becomes of
all other people? They must inevitably perish for ever. The die was
cast ere ever they were in being. The doctrine to pass them by has
consigned their unborn souls to hell, and damned them from their
mother's womb. I could sooner be a Turk, a deist, yea, an atheist,
than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very being of
God, than to make Him an Almighty tyrant.' It was Wesley's great and
favourite faith that 'in every nation he that feareth God and worketh
righteousness is accepted of Him.' In some hymns he expresses,
however, very unreservedly the doctrine of substitution for instance--
'Join earth and heaven to bless
The Lord our righteousness;
The mystery of redemption this,
This the Saviour's strange design;
Man's offence was counted His,
Ours His righteousness divine.'
Wesley dealt always with those great truths which, because of the
depths of his own moral consciousness, man cannot hear announced
without awe. It is possible to receive Christian doctrine as only a
science, or a judicial exposition; the Calvinistic theology has too
often been merely this, but the core of Wesley's creed was personal
perception and appropriation of the work of Christ--in a word,
Consciousness. And usually his ideas were presented in a clear and
transparent style, the chief of them being salvation by faith;
_salvation_ by faith rather than _justification_ by faith. No doubt
Wesley clearly and distinctly held and preached the latter, but those
who have made this the principal theme of their religious teaching
have been usually led into a region of thought higher than was
suitable to the practical purposes of the great Methodist apostle. The
designation of his doctrine, 'Evangelical Arminianism,' has often been
charged with involving a contradiction in terms. The discussion of the
principles of the Divine government, and the Divine decrees, the
relations of fore-knowledge and predetermination in the Infinite mind,
impressions concerning the freedom of the will and the nature of
evil--such questions, it must be admitted, are more curious and
speculative than useful, or sometimes even pious. Wesley was no
metaphysician, he had little taste for such studies; and his life was
passed in a round of useful activities unfavourable to their
prosecution. Into the department of thought which implies the relation
of logic to theology, he never entered. Alike in the frame-work of his
popular creed, as we shall see in the frame-work of his Church
organization, he struck out a broad basis; breadth rather than depth
was the characteristic of his mind and work; he cared little for the
nice distinctions of philosophical refinement; his theology turned
chiefly on the responsibilities of man; his aim was to make man feel,
rather than to make him think. The Calvinistic side of theology
produces the exactly opposite effect. Wesley, naturally, insisted
strongly on the personal sanctification of the soul, this follows, of
course, that other chief and much-belaboured item of Wesleyan faith,
the doctrine of perfection. 'This,' says Alexander Knox, 'was the
perpetual bone of contention between Wesley and the whole phalanx of
Calvinist religionists.' And assuredly, that whole phalanx showed
itself to be imperfect enough in the controversy. In the story of the
strifes of good men this has a shocking pre-eminence. We cannot blame
Mr. Tyerman for presenting the various phases of the struggle, or even
for quoting passages from the innumerable abusive volumes and
pamphlets which were poured out upon Wesley, but we shall not
ourselves dwell upon these scandals. On the whole, we have in Wesley
the picture of a fine Christian temper and spirit, seldom
condescending to reply at all, and when replying, doing so in a tone
worthy even of him who could say, 'Let no man trouble me, for I bear
in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
That Wesley should be defamed and denounced by ungodly scoffers or
worldly bishops is not surprising, but that he should become the
object of the ribaldry and scorn and contumely of men who were
undoubtedly the children of God, is amazing. He had for long years
been scourged and lampooned in newspapers, magazines, tracts, and
pamphlets; Samuel Foote, the buffoon, had ridiculed him; and
Lavington, the merry-andrew-bishop of Exeter, had poured out upon him
volumes of ribaldry. And well says Mr. Tyerman, 'In turn Mr. Wesley
had encountered mobs, and men of letters, drunken, parsons, furious
papists, honest infidels, and others; but of all his enemies his last
were his bitterest and worst, Calvinistic Christians.' It is a mystery
to us now--and that it is so seems to prove that we have made some
advances beyond our forefathers in good sense, good taste, and good
manners, to say nothing of the higher attainments of Christian
moderation and temper--that Christian men could ever have indulged in
such envenomed speech, and that the pure air of metaphysical theology
should ever have been burdened with such exhalations and such
thunders. It is to the honour of Mr. Wesley that he never condescended
to stoop from his work to personal recrimination, and scarcely,
indeed, to personal explanation. His theology was wanting in those
more noble excursions of intelligence and experience which supply
strength to the spirit in seasons when a black night of doubt spreads
out over the soul. Concerning the ways and means of faith, of
revelation, and providence, he never attempted any solution. His mind,
in all departments of it, was characterized by a quick apprehension;
this was not accompanied by a power of lofty and sustained reflection;
the business of his life was to train as many persons as he possibly
could to habitual and orderly devotion. He taught the doctrine of the
witness of the Spirit, and personal assurance of salvation, with a
persistency which surely ought to have satisfied Toplady; but then
his teaching had this serious difference, he conditioned assurance in
the personal consciousness of the believer, while the school of
Toplady fell back more securely upon the purposes, character, and
promises of God. This makes the technical difference between the
salvation by faith, taught by the one school, and justification by
faith, taught by the other. To a profoundly experienced nature we
suppose the former is included in the latter, and furnishes sources of
satisfaction altogether wanting to the more narrow, plausible, and
popular scheme.
Hence, so much was made of the happiness arising from states of
feeling, and from the witness of the Spirit; this was to be the aim
and object of the life and heart, and was the proof of that growth in
the life of perfection which seems to reduce--as Coleridge has well
shown in a very able note to Southey--the Christian life to a
sensation: sensational assurance became the counterpart of the
doctrine of sinless perfection in this life; the one is quite
absolutely related to the other. It is not too much to say that Wesley
quite misconceived the term 'perfect' (τέλειος) as it was used by
Paul; hence it was, no doubt, that Wesley entangled himself in
contradictions, and founded the religious life very much upon certain
ascetic and sumptuary laws: 'Powder was antichristian; a ribbon became
the sign of a carnal nature, and snuff-boxes and tobacco were the very
emanations of the bottomless pit; and very innocent things became
really Babylonish.' The life prescribed by Wesley was as severe as a
monastic rule: his disciples were met every hour by something of which
they were to deny themselves, which was to be a contradiction to them,
and which they were to overcome. He insisted in the spirit of a
monastic legislator, that his preachers should always preach at four
or five o'clock in the morning. 'I exhort all those who desire me to
watch over their souls, to wear no gold, no pearls or precious stones;
use no curling of hair, or costly apparel.' 'Be serious,' was one of
his favourite injunctions; 'avoid all lightness as you would
hell-fire, and trifling as you would cursing and swearing; touch no
woman, be as loving as you will, but the custom of the country is
nothing to us.' Sometimes Wesley uses wiser words, but generally he
appears to teach that deliverance from sin implies deliverance from
human infirmities, and that it is almost inconsistent with temptation;
and this arises apparently from an unnatural interpretation of the
word 'perfect,' as we have it in the language of our Lord and in the
writings of the apostles. 'Truly,' says Coleridge, 'there is no point
at which you can arrive in this life, in which the command, "Soar
upwards still," ceases in validity or occasion.' And yet such seems to
be the doctrine of Wesley: and while in a corrupt and dissolute age
his rules fostered and trained innumerable holy and saintly lives,
they to a very large degree gave occasion for that satire and
ridicule, which indeed is not wonderful, from the scoffing world, but
which is shameful when indulged in by the pens and lips of believers.
The two great controversialists of Methodism, Calvinistic and
Arminian, were Toplady, the vicar of Broad Hembury, and the gentle
Swiss, John Fletcher, the vicar of Madely. Both argued within the
circle of Scripture. We have outlived all taste for this
pamphleteering kind of controversy. Toplady was the more scholarly and
logical, his style was the more nervous and terse: he also was not
only the more witty but the more wilful, and made his pages sparkle
with a lively wickedness which is wonderful in such a writer upon such
subjects, and especially in the writer of such transcendent hymns as
his. Fletcher was the more sentimental and rhetorical, frequently also
more characterized by a plain and earnest common sense; he was more
spiritual and devout than Toplady, nor would it be possible, we
suppose, to find a sentence in his famous 'Checks' unbecoming the
perfect Christian gentleman, and they furnished material and
ammunition for all the Wesleyan preachers, not only for that day, but
for many years after. The world and the Church, however, now demand
something more concise and firmly-textured than the essays of either,
Toplady or of Fletcher. It is satisfactory also to feel our way to
that higher plain of thought which reconciles the two. If God be
infinite consciousness and thought, can the salvation and trials of
any child of man be unknown to Him? If He be infinite character and
will, can any event happen unpermitted by Him? If He be infinite
power, can any circumstance be unordained by Him? Is He not also
infinitely amiable? It is singular how combatants fetch their weapons
from the same armoury, and tilt Scripture against Scripture; but both
are reconciled in consciousness, and the disciples of Wesley and
Toplady alike find the same reposing rest and assuring trust in the
mercy of God, through faith in the righteousness of Christ.
What shall we say of the Ecclesiastical Polity framed by Wesley? This,
first of all, that he never intended that his discipline should be
regarded as an ecclesiastical polity. Like so many of the fathers of
the Church, he founded an order; he formed a society, not a Church.
He cautions his ministers against calling the society either _the_
Church or _a_ Church. He created a broad organization, but not the
broadest. He always remembered that he was a minister and an ordained
priest of the Church of England; and it was with great reluctance that
he permitted himself to yield to those innovations which the polity of
the Church of England would have opposed; he always desired to regard
his entire fellowship as in communion with the Establishment; his
arrangements for his services were, as far as possible, for times and
seasons when no services were proceeding in the parish churches of the
neighbourhood, and for a long time he attempted to harmonise his
method of worship to the liturgic forms and devotions of the Church.
Lord King's essay on the Primitive Church made him, theoretically, an
Independent; yet, there can be little doubt that had there been a
broader, wiser, and more tolerant _régime_ in the Establishment, the
whole movement might have been included in the corporation of the
National Church; it was surely of God that it was not so. But the
Church of Rome would have known how to avail itself of such a sudden
burst of energy, as in the cases of St. Francis, of Loyola, and
others; the great leader and his disciples would for some time have
been kept in a state of ecclesiastical quarantine, but in the course
of a few years they would have been received, to pour into the mother
Church the fulness of their newly-acquired life. It was a great
evangelistic movement that Wesley originated and sustained; he
perpetually attempted to limit and curtail the ministerial powers of
his preachers; many of them, indeed, became sufficiently restive even
beneath his authority, and were quite unable or unwilling to perceive
the reason of the ecclesiastical refinements he taught and maintained.
Isaac Taylor has urged against Wesley that he founded an irresponsible
hierarchy; he says: 'On the one side stand all Protestant Churches,
Episcopal and non-Episcopal, Wesleyanism excepted; on the other side
stand the Church of Rome, and the Wesleyan Conference. This position
maintained _alone_ by a Protestant body must be regarded as false in
principle, and in an extreme degree ominous.' The position is not
fairly stated. The polity of Rome is absolutely intolerant; she not
merely has laws for conserving her own rights, which she claims as
divine, but she treats with perfect contempt and scorn all reference
to, or respect for, the rights of others. Even Frederick Faber, in his
essay on Philip Neri, in a passage of hearty eulogy on Whitefield,
consigns him to hell, notwithstanding all his usefulness, when he
says, 'St. Philip would have taught him to preach if he had been an
oratorian novice, which, unluckily for his poor soul, George
Whitefield never was.' Such is Rome. It was not so with Wesley
himself, nor has it been so with his descendants. The rubric--if so we
may call it--of Methodist polity has been stringent; too stringently,
perhaps, laws have been enacted against those turbulent spirits,
certain to emerge in all communities, endowed with a strong desire to
take their own way, and to do things merely right in their own eyes;
you are free to do so, says Wesley, but not beneath the sanctions of
our society, unless we approve the action. There has been a strong
desire to gather in and build up, but in a sense in which, perhaps,
Wesleyans have not been singular; 'they have dwelt among their own
people,' their fellowship, in spite of numerous schisms, has been one
of the most perfect, harmonious, and useful in Christendom; but this
has existed with entire respect and good-will to other denominations.
Wesley himself says, one circumstance is quite peculiar to the
Methodists, the terms upon which any person may be admitted into their
society, 'they do not impose, in order to their admission, any
opinions whatever; one conviction, and one only, is required, a real
desire to save their souls; where this is, it is enough, they desire
no more, they lay stress upon nothing else, they ask only, "is thy
heart herein as my heart? if it be, give me thy hand." Is there any
other society in Great Britain and Ireland that is so remote from
bigotry? Where is there such another society in Europe--in the
habitable world? I know none. Let any man show it me who can; till
then, let no one talk of the bigotry of the Methodists.' 'Look to the
Lord, and faithfully attend all the means of grace appointed in the
society.' Such was, practically, the whole of Methodism. So that
famous old lady, whose bright example has so often been held up on
Methodists' platforms, when called upon to state the items of her
creed, did so very sufficiently when she summed if up in the four
particulars of 'Repentance towards God, faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, a penny a week, and a shilling a quarter.' And certainly,
beyond any other scheme or system, the organization of Methodism has
developed the power of the _pence_--that is, the power of the
people--to provide for and to sustain their religious services. The
Rev. Marmaduke Miller, in a letter to the _Nonconformist_ for May
17th, 1871, shows that the various associations in England bearing
Wesley's name, and practically working out his ideas, hold and
provide sittings for 3,500,000 people; they represent the membership
of 624,453 persons; the number of settled ministers is 3,137, and
local preachers 41,456, while the Sabbath-schools represent 1,162,423,
and the teachers 197,163. What a representation of the amazing numbers
of those who call Wesley father! The rules of the Methodist polity,
then, were devised in no insolent spirit; wisely, or unwisely, they
were framed for the conservation of order. Mr. Wesley's object in them
was certainly not ecclesiastical, as he says again, 'I have no more
right to object to a man for holding a different opinion from me than
I have to differ from a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own
hair; but if he takes his wig off, and begins to shake the powder
about my eyes, I shall consider it my duty to get quit of him as soon
as possible.' One cannot but think what might have been, had
Hildebrand been such a man as Wesley; what might the Church of England
have been had Whitgift or Laud held views so broad and tolerant as
these. In effect, his polity said, 'Come amongst us, and we will seek
to do each other good; join some other communion, the Lord be with
you; but if you attach yourself voluntarily to our society, you accept
the conditions of the society.'
The Wesleyans constitute the largest denomination in the United
States, in the form of the Methodist Episcopal Church founded by the
venerable Asbury, the friend and early disciple of John Wesley, and a
man baptized into a like spirit of indomitable endurance, and ardent,
untiring energy. But it may be questioned whether this should be
regarded as a development of Wesleyanism, or a departure from Wesley's
idea of Church government. Certainly much depends upon what we find
implied in the designation of bishop. The Wesleyan bishop in England
is called a 'superintendent;' from a Methodist's point of view the
terms are almost convertible and synonymous, and we have little doubt
that superintendent is the realization of the Scriptural idea of the
bishop--a pastor, shepherd, or overseer. More than this Wesley did not
desire his ministers to be. Had he great prescience? Was it a
far-sighted sagacity which characterized his mind? Acutely he saw the
present want, and met it. Probably he never realized the wholly
independent attitude his followers would assume in the future; and,
like the constitution of England, so the constitution of his society
grew beneath his eye; he scarcely, therefore, made provisions to meet
the demands of an independent Church, or community. He was perpetually
engaged in furnishing expedients; his ideas never seemed to rise
beyond, or to sink deeper than the present work of evangelizing the
multitude, and keeping them awake, and intent on the desire for
salvation. Hence he was utterly opposed to a permanent pastorate; his
ministers were to be perpetually moving; to some desires expressed to
himself for a longer residence, or more continued ministration of some
of his preachers, he gave his most decided negative. It is a matter
still of serious dispute between the Wesleyan and other Church
polities, whether for the health, growth, and well-being of the
individual Church, the permanent pastorate or the itinerant ministry
may be regarded as best. There is something to be said on either side.
We can have no doubt that the Wesleyan polity, while it may minister
something to the life of Churches, and give a pleasant variety, must
be a barrier to the accumulation of learning, and what is more
precious of pastoral influence; and that it offers a strong inducement
to intellectual indolence, to lean upon old resources rather than to
go on exploring new and fresh fields. The Wesleyan polity almost
denies to the minister the position of the pastor. The true pastor of
each separate little cluster in a society is the class leader; he
permanently resides in the town or village; he is familiar with the
conversions, the experiences, the joys and sorrows of each member of
the little flock. Wesley even went so far as to interdict the presence
of his ministers in the classes; and the minister is still, we
believe, as a rule, only occasionally present for the purpose of
distributing the quarterly tickets. But the immediate followers of
Wesley have now elaborated what they regard, and even term, an
ecclesiastical constitution. Its government is regulated by laws
sharply cut and defined for every emergency; they have their
Blackstone, and Coke upon Lyttleton, and probably Mr. Wesley himself
would be somewhat amazed to find such a framework of polity as the
handbook of Methodist ecclesiastical law, in Edmund Grindrod's
'Compendium of the Laws and Regulations of Wesleyan Methodism.' This
defines its 'ecclesiastical courts,' 'powers of the Conference,' of
'district meetings,' of 'local courts,' of the 'committee of
privileges,' and the nature of all its committees and institutions.
Wesleyan Methodism in England, indeed, may be defined as a
constitutional republic, but of the oligarchic order of Venice or
Florence. Its polity constitutes a civil rather than a spiritual
despotism, but it reminds us that men are not much interested in the
government of the Church of their adoption, and that Church
consciousness is very independent of Ecclesiastical organization.
Yet the entire polity of Wesley was popular, and few religions
communities have so successfully cultivated the spirit infused into
it; it was intended to meet the religious instincts of the uncared for
multitudes. Certain words of Wesley illustrate this;--a new chapel was
in the course of erection at Blackburn; Wesley was taken to see it. 'I
have a favour to ask,' he said; 'let there be no pews in the body of
this chapel, except one for the leading singers; be sure to make
accommodation for the poor, they are God's building materials in the
erection of His Church; the rich make good scaffolding, but bad
materials.' 'Observe,' he said again to his preachers, 'it is not your
business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that
society, but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many
sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and, with all your power,
to build them up in that holiness, without which they cannot see the
Lord.' He knew that preaching needs to be succeeded by personal
intercourse; hence he says in visiting Colchester;--'By repeated
experiments we learn that though a man preach like an angel, he will
neither collect, nor preserve a society which is collected, without
visiting them from house to house.' And this is the key to that
comprehensive and all-permeating spirit which constitutes the idea of
Methodism, at once its danger as well as its defence; to become a
Methodist of Wesley's order was to be, and is to be, looked up, and
looked after, and overlooked. It must be admitted that the system
which is so vigorously and watchfully organized, does not leave much
opportunity for the mind and soul to grow: the tutoring and training
hearts and minds to walk alone is a profound study. Nothing of this is
contemplated in the Wesleyan system; freedom of thought has not
usually fared well in the society; minds are too closely interlocked
and riveted, frequently not only with other, but with inferior minds.
It is therefore a community for the poor and the uneducated, or it is
nothing; and if it is not like the Romish system, dangerous by the
possession of an audacious hierarchy, it must be admitted that it may
become so in virtue of a system of spiritual espionage scarcely less
effective than the confessional.
Did John Wesley know human nature? Judging from the effects which have
followed his marvellous course, it would seem so; and if severe in
discipline, and intolerant to human infirmities by his system, he was
most tender and merciful, even to the aberrations and stumblings of
believers themselves. He insisted on punctilious obedience to his
rules, but it was easy to him to forgive all personal injustice to
himself; sometimes it seems almost as if he were even unable to feel
injuries, and probably this was greatly the case: his 'place was on
high, his defence the munition of rocks,' and no soul ever seems to
have been more securely shielded in 'the pavilion,' where spirits are
kept 'in secret from the strife of tongues.' The wicked woman who was
his wife, stole a number of his letters, interpolated parts, and
misrendered certain expressions; and, having been guilty at once of
theft and forgery, she, in conjunction with some of his enemies,
published them. It led to venomous and embittered language in the
newspapers concerning them. His brother, Charles Wesley, was in the
utmost consternation: he went off to Wesley, imploring him to postpone
a journey he was on the eve of taking, that he might stay in London
and defend himself against his enemies. He found his brother as calm
as _he_ was excited:
'I shall never forget,' says Miss Wesley, the daughter of
Charles, 'the manner in which my father accosted my mother
on his return home. "My brother," said he, "is, indeed, an
extraordinary man; I placed before him the importance of
the character of a minister, and the evil consequences
which might result from his indifference to it, and urged
him by every relative and public motive to answer for
himself and stop the publication. His reply was, Brother,
when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my life, did I
except my reputation? No, tell Sally (Charles's wife) I
will take her to Canterbury to-morrow."'
Glorious John had to live down many worse persecutions than this.
Ordinarily, his calm was imperturbable; and yet, divine as this often
seems, it often, too, seems related to a side of character which
almost indicates a defect in human nature. It has been alleged against
him that he was thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children, 'Break
their wills betimes,' he says; 'begin this work before they can run
alone, before they can speak plain, perhaps before they can speak at
all.' The method he adopted at Kingswood school was an illustration of
this entire ignorance of the child's nature. It was not so much a
school as a monastery, its rules were more stringent and hard than
those of a workhouse. It is no wonder that it did not succeed, and
that the whole system of the school had to undergo an entire
modification. That Wesley's design and idea in founding the Kingswood
school was benevolent, wise, and prescient, there can be no doubt, as
also that the diet was sufficient and good; nor can exception be
taken to the rule that the children should go to bed at eight, and
sleep on hard mattresses; but to rise at four in the morning! and
spend their time until five in reading, singing, meditation and
prayer! no play-day and no play-hour permitted, on the ground that 'he
who plays when he is a child, will play when he becomes a man!' When
we read of such an arrangement made for children, the question recurs,
did Wesley know human nature? Or if such a constitution might be
suitable to the human nature of monks and ascetic saints, what
knowledge does it exhibit of the child's heart? We like better to read
an anecdote told of him when at the age of seventy-three--about the
period when the letters alluded to were published. At Midsomer Norton,
when preaching in the parish church he was staying at the house of a
Mr. Bush, who kept a boarding-school. While he was there, two of the
boys quarrelled, cuffed and kicked each other vigorously. Mrs. Bush
brought the pugilists to Wesley. He talked to them and repeated the
lines--
'Birds in their little nests agree,
And 'tis a shameful sight,
When children of one family
Fall out, and chide, and fight.'
'You must be reconciled,' said he; 'go and shake hands with each
other,' and they did so. He continued, 'Put your arms around each
other's neck, and kiss each other;' and this was also done. 'Now,' he
said, 'come to me,' and taking two pieces of bread and butter he
folded them together, and desired each to take a part. 'Now,' he said,
'you have broken bread together.' Then he put his hands upon their
heads and blessed them. The two tigers were turned into loving lambs.
They never forgot the old man's blessing, and one of them, who became
a magistrate in Berkshire, related the beautiful incident in long
afterdays. We love to note those pleasant little incidents in the
man's life, and there are many such. A thousand anecdotes are told of
his benevolence and goodness, and if his life should ever be
adequately written, they will form a more entertaining regalia of
majesty, than we know in the life of any one of the fathers of the
Church.
We are not writing a life of Wesley; we leave unnoticed, therefore,
his more secret and sacred history. We have no space to devote to the
romance of Grace Murray. She was the light of the prophet's eyes; he
proposed to her in marriage, and was gratefully accepted. We read the
story from a very different point of view to Mr. Tyerman, and have
little doubt that Grace sacrificed her own feelings to the vehement
anger and interference of Charles Wesley, to the welfare of her lover,
and to the interests of the society. Wesley beautifully,
affectionately, and ingenuously said, 'the origin of the object of his
affections was no objection to him; he regarded not her birth, but her
qualifications. She was remarkably neat, frugal, and not sordid; had a
large amount of common sense, was indefatigably patient, and
inexpressibly tender; quick, cleanly, and skilful; of an engaging
behaviour, and of a mild, sprightly, and yet serious temper; and that
her gifts for usefulness were such as he had never seen equalled.' He
concluded, 'I have Scriptural reasons to marry, I know no person so
proper as this.' But the union was not to be. If we followed
implicitly the authority of Mr. Tyerman, we should express an opinion
adverse to Grace; but we prefer to ask whether such a woman as she
seems to have been was not moved to the step she took by the highest
considerations, moved by persuasions, by the tempest she was raising
in the societies, and by the not very saintly conduct of Charles
Wesley, who is described in this matter--very well it seems to us--by
Mr. Tyerman, 'as a sincere, but irritated, impetuous, and officious
friend.' Be this as it may, Wesley met her to say farewell. He kissed
her and said, 'Grace Murray, you have broken my heart.' A week or two
after she was married. The two never met again for thirty-nine years.
She long out-lived her husband; and when in London she came to hear
her son preach in Moorfields, she met her venerable lover--lover still
apparently, for the interview is described as very affecting.
Henceforth they saw each other no more, and Wesley never again
mentioned her name. In the whole transaction, so far from any shade
falling on the memory of Wesley, his admirers will, perhaps, be
pleased to find him so related to intense human feelings. No doubt the
marriage would have been an unfortunate one for the society, and the
possession of such a wife as Grace Murray would most likely have been
fatal to, or at least would have greatly interfered with, that
stupendous scheme of apostolic usefulness which he was destined to
create. Seductions of domestic life sadly derange a prophet's work.
Through long years Grace continued a course of Christian usefulness,
and lived and died eminently respected. She lies in Chinly churchyard,
in Derbyshire.
The lady who became the wife of Wesley was the roughest of termagants,
the plague and pest of her husband's existence; and she takes her
place in the foremost rank of the bad wives of eminent men, worthy to
be classed with the wedded companions of Socrates, of Albert Durer, of
George Herbert, or Richard Hooker; she was the most vicious vixen of
them all. It may be imagined, without doing any injustice to him, that
when his letters were stolen, interpolated, and forged by his wife,
for the purpose of injuring his character, the grieving spirit of the
old prophet may sometimes have said, 'Grace Murray would not have done
this.'
Wesley's mind was eminently administrative. It has often been said
that he had in him much that combined the genius of Richelieu and
Loyola--the calm, iron will and the acute eye of the one, the
inventive genius and habitual devotion of the other. He would compare
better with Washington, or the illustrious member of the Wesley family
of our own age, Wellington. His mind was eminently healthy, and may be
said to have been always awake, ceaseless in activity, sleepless in
vigilance. He intermeddled with all knowledge in many languages, and
he compiled and published libraries. He appears to have been almost
wholly indifferent to food; in sleep he was sparing; his frame was
very small, and if this appeared to be a reason against his popular
impressiveness as a preacher, it was a means of his amazing agility.
Look at the remarkable likeness of the man prefixed to the work of
Isaac Taylor; it has been likened to a shrivelled monk of the order of
La Trappe, a face in which sharpness and serenity strive for the
dominion of the features, the dark hawk-eyed intelligence with the
bland smile. The principles which illustrate Wesley's character, and
testify, not merely his greatness, but how it happened that he
achieved so much, may be well presented in some of those brief axioms
which do in fact, as we read the multitudinous events of his long
career, exhibit the pivots upon which his life turned. 'I dare no more
fret than curse or swear.' 'I reverence the young because they may be
useful when I am dead.' 'You have no need to be in a hurry,' said a
friend. 'Hurry?' he replied; 'I have no time to be in a hurry.' 'The
soul and the body,' he writes, in a characteristic letter insisting on
the observance of discipline in his society--'The soul and the body
make a man; the spirit and the discipline make a Christian.' 'Let us
work now, we shall rest by and by.' Such sentences exhibit the secret
of his ubiquitous activity and his power; and such characters are
usually cheerful. A glow of quiet, kindly humour often lightened his
speech, sometimes sharpening into quiet satire. Many anecdotes
illustrate both these attributes.
At eighty he appeared to have the sprightliness of youth, and moved
about like a flying evangelist. Although so clear-sighted a man, he
was too great by far for the epithet 'shrewd.' If people who make
mistakes in judging of character because of their own want of judgment
become suspicious, the fault is chiefly theirs. Wesley was seldom
mistaken in his judgment of particular persons; Charles was often
mistaken. Wesley himself says, 'My brother suspects everybody, and he
is continually imposed upon; but I suspect nobody, and I am never
imposed upon.' Again and again we are reminded how much he lived in an
atmosphere of continual quiet. 'I do not remember,' said the happy old
man, when at the age of seventy-seven, 'I do not remember to have felt
lowness of spirits for one quarter of an hour since I was born.' Of
course it is to be presumed he means that causeless depression which
is usually the result of indolence. At the age of eighty-six he
writes, 'Saturday, March 21st, I had a day of rest, only preaching
morning and evening.' We have seen that in his first days he was not a
radiant and cheerful man; but through his long sunset we know not
where to find such another instance of active spiritual brightness. He
was a serenely happy old man. Sometimes he seems to us as if incapable
of the feeling either of blame or praise, contempt or homage. There
was great strength, as there ever is, in his clearness and stillness
of spirit. Genius is so vague an epithet and quality that we know not
how either to apply it to him or to deny it; but so far as it
represents soul and imagination, great breadth and depth and height of
soul or feeling, it was certainly denied him. On the other hand, he
had a judgment most clear, an apprehension most quick and vivid, and
an enthusiasm as little tainted by fanaticism as any great Christian
leader since the days of the apostle Paul. Reformer as he was, he was
essentially conservative.
As is usual in most religious orders, Popish or Protestant, his spirit
has survived in his society, and the shadow of Wesley falls wide and
far. He lived through amazing changes of opinion with reference to
himself, and before he died, from being one of the most abused and
execrated of men, he certainly was one of the most revered. No foe had
been more rancorous and unjust than Lavington, Bishop of Exeter;
Wesley lived to unite with him in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper
in his own cathedral. He writes, with no bitterness of the man who had
with such bitter ribaldry abused him, 'I was well pleased to partake
of the Lord's Supper, with my old opponent, Bishop Lavington. Oh! may
we sit together in the kingdom of our Father.' At Lewisham he dined
with the eminent Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London. On proceeding to dinner
the Bishop refused to sit above Wesley at the table, saying, 'Mr.
Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world.' Wesley objected
to take the seat of precedence; but the learned prelate obviated the
difficulty by requesting as a favour that Wesley would sit above him
because his hearing was defective, and he desired not to lose a
sentence of Wesley's conversation. It is known that the king had a
great respect for him; and it is to this most probably Wesley refers,
when writing to one of his preachers, advising him to stand his ground
against the vehement opposition of the Bishop of the Isle of Man, he
says, 'I know pretty well the mind of Lord Mansfield, and of _one_
that is greater than he.' In his latter days his movements to and fro
in the country became ovations; not merely did thousands gather to
hear him preach, the streets of towns were lined to look upon him, and
the windows were thronged as he passed along. While in Yorkshire, we
read of cavalcades of horses and carriages formed to receive and
escort him on the way. At Redruth, as he preached in the market place,
the congregation not only filled the windows, but sat on the tops of
the houses. Assuredly, as often as he had been 'persecuted, he was not
forsaken;' he did not die of Crucifixion, but he felt no elation of
spirit, and we see him still the same man that he had been in the
widely different circumstances of cruel and unjust misrepresentation.
It is wonderful to think that at nearly ninety years of age he could
continue to make any effort to preach, but he did so, and he continued
as a tower of strength to the companies he had formed and called
together. But he outlived most of his early contemporaries, friends
and foes. He stood in the pulpit of St. Giles's, in London; he had
preached there fifty years before, prior to his departure for America.
'Are they not passed as a watch in the night?' he writes. Old families
that used to entertain him had passed away. 'Their houses,' says he,
'know neither me nor them any more.' His later letters show that
fervid sentiment for woman known only to loftiest minds and hearts;
this again is entwined with beautiful simple regards for children.
When he ascended the pulpit of Raithby Church, where he was often
allowed to preach, a child sat in his way on the stairs, he took it in
his arms and kissed it, and placed it tenderly on the same spot. Crabb
Robinson heard him at Colchester, he was then eighty-seven, on each
side of him stood a minister supporting him; his feeble voice was
barely audible. Robinson, then a boy, destined to enter into his
ninety-second year, says, 'It formed a picture never to be forgotten.'
He goes on to say, 'It went to the heart, and I never saw anything
like it in after life.' Three days after he preached at Lowestoft, and
there he had another distinguished hearer, the poet Crabbe. Here,
also, he was supported into the pulpit by a minister on either side;
but what really touched the poet naturally and deeply, was Wesley's
adaptation and appropriation of some lines of Anacreon. The poet
speaks of his reverent appearance, his cheerful air, and the beautiful
cadence with which he repeated the lines:--
'Oft am I by women told,
Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old;
See, thine hairs are falling all,
Poor Anacreon, how they fall.
Whether I grow old or no,
By these signs I do not know,
By this I need not to be told,
"Tis _time to live_ if I grow old."'
In 1790 he gave up keeping his accounts; his last entry--exceedingly
difficult to decipher--is characteristic: 'For upwards of eighty-six
years (meaning, of course, rather, sixty-eight, _i. e._, since he came
to have money of his own) I have kept my accounts exactly. I will not
attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction
that I save all I can, and give all I can; that is, all I have. July
16, 1790.' His benevolence indeed was excessive; and Samuel Bradburn
says, 'He never relieved poor people in the street but he either took
off or removed his hat to them when they thanked him.'
The story of the old man's approach towards the gates of the celestial
city is very beautiful, and has often been told. His last sermons are
certainly among his best; the last sermon he printed, on 'Faith the
evidence of things not seen,' was the last he ever wrote, and was
finished only six weeks before his death. It shows how his mind
sustained the altitude of highest power when bordering upon ninety
years of age; it shows also how the dear old man was preening his
wings for a speedy flight. We suppose the last letter he wrote was to
William Wilberforce, on the abolition of slavery--short, but full of
strength--giving to the apostle of freedom his benediction. 'If God be
for you,' he writes, 'who can be against, you? O! be not weary in well
doing! Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His might!'
It was in the City-road that exhausted nature gave way, unable to bear
any more. And what a death it was! He was, indeed, several days in
dying, but there was no pain, only exhaustion; in his wanderings he
was preaching or attending classes, and singing snatches from some of
his brother's, and from Watts's hymns; but he was half in heaven
before he left the earth. His last strain of song was--
'To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Who sweetly all agree;'
but his voice failed, and gasping for breath he said, 'Now we have
done, let us go!' Friends crowded round his bed, and amidst their
words of comfort and love he was passing away. There was no conflict;
only once he rose, and in a tone almost supernatural, exclaimed, 'The
best of all is God is with us!' His brother's widow tenderly
ministered to him; he tried to kiss her, saying, 'He giveth his
servants rest!' Then he repeated his thanksgiving, 'We thank thee, O
God, for these and all Thy mercies; bless the Church and King, and
grant us truth and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, for ever and
ever.' He paused a little; then he cried, 'The clouds drop fatness!'
Then another pause, 'The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is
our refuge!' Eleven persons were standing round his bed as he said
'Farewell,' his last word, at ten o'clock, Wednesday, March 2nd, 1791.
'Children,' said John Wesley's mother, 'as soon as I am dead, sing a
song of praise!' As soon as Wesley died, his friends round his dead
body raised their voices in a hymn, then knelt down and prayed. He was
buried behind the chapel in the City-road, on the 9th of March. So
great was the excitement created by his death, that he was buried at
five o'clock in the morning; before this he had been laid in a kind of
state. Thus Samuel Rogers, the poet, saw him. He says, 'As I was
walking home one day from my father's bank, I observed a great crowd
of people streaming into a chapel in the City-road. I followed them;
and saw laid out upon a table the dead body of a clergyman in full
canonicals, his grey hair partly shading his face on both sides, and
his flesh resembling wax. It was the corpse of John Wesley, and the
crowd moved slowly and silently round and round the table, to take a
last look at that most venerable man.'
John Wesley appears to have been one of the most faultless of mortals:
some of his followers claim for him a rank little short of perfection;
and certainly few for whom such a claim is made, could sustain it so
well. He nevertheless commands high admiration rather than passionate
affection. The sapling he planted has struck its roots far and wide,
still true to the spirit of its illustrious planter, his work has
resulted in a great organization, rather than in a great _soul_. We
have seen that the proportions of Wesleyanism in America are much more
magnificent than in England. English Wesleyanism has narrowed its
boundaries by making the sermons of its founder its legal creed; it is
not so in America, there the Methodists have accepted his fundamental
idea, while they have given room and verge enough for the soul to
grow. Sometimes, beyond all question, Wesley himself was occupied by
the consideration of the shape and the attitude his gigantic society
would assume in future years; but he writes distinctly--'I do not, I
will not, concern myself with what will be done when I am dead; I take
no thought about that.' His was an ever-growing, keenly penetrating,
and widely observant mind, and we cannot but think that he would have
so modified his organization and adapted his discipline, that the
immense institution he founded would have been saved from many of its
ruptures and schisms, and have comprehended a still more extensive
operation than it acknowledges at present. We have no space to enter
into a comparison between American and English Wesleyanism; enough
that the transatlantic child has far outstripped the English parent.
In England, indeed, several powerful offshoots, all, it seems to us,
comprehensible within Wesley's own idea, have divided the field of
labour, which he, perhaps, would have occupied by his organization
alone. But what a variety of sects regard him as their father: the
Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christians, the Wesleyan Association,
the New Connexion, and the Free Methodists; so that, regarding the
immense Church of America, the old Conference of England, and all its
offshoots, it is not too much to say that no single man, in the
history of the Church has ever been the father of such a progeny, so
many are those who in their temple and services are anxious that the
'shadow of "Wesley" passing may overshadow some of them.' In some
particulars, although its numerical strength has ever gone on
increasing, Wesleyanism has not grown since the days of its founder.
Creating such a hymnology as that of Charles Wesley, the glory and
beauty of Methodism, we do not know that since his time it has ever
written a single hymn which has become the darling and the property of
the Church. It has produced in England few Christian poets, no great
hymn writers; certainly none to take place by the side of the lyrists
of its early days. It was born in missionary fervour, and baptized
into the missionary spirit; it has performed abroad a good and
admirable work. To it greatly it is due that the Fiji Islanders, a
race of cannibals, have ceased from their horrible manners and
customs, and have approached the confines of civilization; but
Wesleyanism has produced no great missionaries, and boasts of no vast
achievements like those which are the heraldry of some it would be
easy to name. It has no literature; it has done nothing for
philosophy, with perhaps the exception of the metaphysical shoemaker,
Samuel Drew; with the single exception of Richard Watson it has done
nothing in scientific theology; here and there scholarly men like the
learned Adam Clarke, Spence Hardy, or the recently departed Etheridge,
meet us, but the history of the literature of Methodism would present
only a poor scroll. There must be some reason for this, although we
are not now disposed to inquire where it is to be found; we simply
state a fact. Nor do those who are the immediate followers of Wesley
occupy the fields of labour Wesley prescribed; we apprehend that
Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians would receive the venerable
Wesley's special benediction, and be regarded by him as carrying
forward most efficiently his labours and intentions. Perhaps, if it
were possible for the English Conference to adopt some of the
principles of the American Conference, this great religious
corporation might soon enlarge its field and sphere, so that even
Wesley himself might seem to be the subject of a mighty resurrection.
As time advances, the point of view changes from whence a great man
may be most distinctly seen; as the trees are removed which interfered
with the prospect, so prejudices which prevented due appreciation are
modified. If the subsequent ages do not substantially alter their
verdict, yet so much is added to, or subtracted from impressions,
either by a larger catholicity of judgment or by the accumulation of
additional facts, that new portraits and fresh and more accurate
appreciations are demanded. Ours has been called especially the age of
resurrections: beyond all former times it is the age in which men have
industriously 'garnished the sepulchres of the prophets,' and Wesley's
tomb has not been suffered to fall into ruin; many a loving Old
Mortality re-cuts his name on the stone; and recently, especially,
many able hands have set themselves to the task of faithful and
admiring delineation of the features of the man and his work. Miss
Wedgewood's interesting little volume, if founded upon no additional
information, shows the growing disposition in members of other
Churches to do him substantial justice. As a history of the great
evangelical reaction and revival, her work is inadequate, and we
question very much whether she has qualified herself, either by
sufficient sympathy or sufficient knowledge, to fulfil the
requirements of the larger and more comprehensive title of her work.
Mr. Tyerman's volumes constitute by far the most exhaustive, as they
are certainly the bulkiest, and from many points of view, the most
interesting of the lives of Wesley. He has industriously ferreted out
and brought together a great deal of unpublished or unconnected
material, although much material to which he might have found access
still remains unexamined, acquaintance with which would probably have
modified some of his judgments. The author does not aim at any
remarkable melody of style, philosophic disquisition, or even personal
portraiture; his work is simply an Index Rerum about Wesley. Mr.
Tyerman's judgment is usually characterized by great clearness and
good sense; his pen seems to be always governed by the desire to be
fair and impartial, and for the first time our libraries receive a
full and comprehensive memoir of the great religious teacher and
ecclesiastical statesman, of a life as transcendently above ordinary
lives in its incessant and immeasureable activity, as it was
protracted beyond them in its period of service. We suppose that those
readers who desire a philosophy of Methodism, will still turn to the
pages of Isaac Taylor; and those who desire to read a charming story,
will still find most refreshment in the pages of Robert Southey, or in
the more recent glowing collection of anecdotes in Dr. Stevens's
'History of Methodism.'
ART. VII.--_Mr. Darwin on the Origin of Man._
(1.) _The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex._ By CHARLES
DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., &c. 2 vols. John Murray.
(2.) _On the Genesis of Species._ By ST. GEORGE MIVART, F.R.S.
Macmillan.
The mode of the origin of man is a question of such momentous interest
to intelligent men that it is not easy to handle it with calm
philosophical indifference, or to discuss it dispassionately. It is
true, we have been informed that the conclusions concerning man's
evolution which have been lately taught far and wide are not opposed
to religion, but we have not been favoured with the tenets of that
religion to which an evolutionist may, without inconsistency,
subscribe. We have even been assured that evolution presents us with a
most noble view of the Great Creator, who endowed living matter with
the capacity of change, and subjected it to natural laws; that it
admits the necessity of a directing, intelligent will, and refers all
the phenomena of the universe to God. But those who have recorded this
remarkable discovery have not been careful to make known to us the
attributes of that Deity in whom they trust; and they express
themselves in a manner that is rather vague concerning the limits
imposed upon His power, His will, and His government by what they call
natural law.
The hypothesis of evolution, it has been said, does not touch the
question of the origin of life, for evolution is supposed to begin to
operate only after that mysterious, if not miraculous phenomenon has
been completed. Our readers should, however, remember that quite
recently Sir W. Thomson has relegated to a sphere long since
shattered, the birth of the first living spark which peopled this
earth, and thus we are released from the difficulty of framing an
hypothesis to account for the first particle that lived. But a third
class of evolutionists professes to be able to trace the actual origin
of the living from non-living matter, and even maintains that a series
of insensible gradations has been established between the inanimate
and the living.
These are some of the considerations which are agitating men's minds
in the days in which we live; and Mr. Darwin, in his last work, has
clearly defined the conclusions concerning man's origin which, as he
maintains, we are compelled by the facts of nature to accept, though
he does not indicate, and indeed seems supremely unconscious of the
tremendous nature of the issues raised by his philosophic teaching. 'I
am aware,' says Mr. Darwin, 'that the conclusions arrived at in this
work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious;' but he himself
has failed to discover anything irreligious in the view he has taken.
It is, however, very difficult to form a correct estimate of this
opinion in the absence of any explanation of the meaning which Mr.
Darwin attaches to the terms, religion and irreligion. The religious
views of those who regard man as a being distinct and altogether apart
from brute animals must needs be different from the religious views of
those who look upon him as a mere animal, though it is possible that
the latter conclusion may not conflict with religious beliefs of some
kind or other.
We should not have ventured to offer these remarks upon the religious
aspect of the question had it not been adverted to, and, as we think,
quite unnecessarily, by Mr. Darwin himself; our main object in this
article being to consider the scientific question from the scientific
side.
That man began to be in a very remote past is now freely admitted by
all; but this is perhaps the only one of the many propositions
advanced in connection with man's origin that will be accepted by
different authorities who have considered the question from different
points of view.
Not a few persons still accept the ancient tradition, and up to this
very time maintain, that the idea that man sprang as man direct from
the hands of his God remains unshaken, and that the evidence advanced
in favour of more recent interferences is not only incomplete, but
vague, fragmentary, uncertain, and unconvincing. But while it must be
admitted that the majority of scientific men who have studied the
subject are agreed in the conclusion, that science can point to no
fact at all conclusive in favour of the idea of the direct creation of
man from the dust of the ground, it is by no means so certain that the
scientific evidence advanced in favour of very different inferences is
more convincing, or as worthy of acceptance as their enthusiastic
advocates would have us believe. It cannot be too often clearly stated
that the whole spirit of science demands that scientific conclusions
should rest upon the evidence of facts, and upon facts alone. Evidence
advanced by the scientific observer must be evidence which can be
adduced over and over again; evidence which will bear to be examined
and re-examined in its minutest particulars and with the utmost care.
Nothing is to be taken on trust by the man who would advance real
knowledge, and he who endeavours to convince an audience of the truth
of some new scientific conjecture, by telling it that no other
explanation can be advanced than the particular one that he offers, is
true neither to science nor to himself. It is his business to produce
evidence, not to try to force his own conviction on other minds, and
he should most scrupulously avoid phrases which partake more of the
character of threats than arguments. 'Accept this view, or I shall
regard you as unreasonable, and consider you a savage,' is the
language of a member of an intellectual prize-ring rather than that of
a calm, dispassionate investigator of nature, searching after the
truth for truth's sake.
Into recent discussions concerning the origin of man, much extraneous
matter has been imported, and in many articles acrimonious remarks
have unfortunately been introduced for which little excuse can be
offered; but it appears to us impossible to deny that the conclusion
we arrive at concerning the origin of man may, and probably must
seriously affect our views concerning the nature of our relation to
Deity, and our belief in a future state; but it is surely premature to
allow our convictions to be greatly disturbed by such considerations,
for it is doubtful whether we are yet in possession of sufficient
knowledge to enable us to deduce any definite conclusion upon this
most difficult question. Men who call themselves philosophical and
scientific may laugh at what they call the legends concerning man's
origin, which are received as truths by the unscientific; but much
will have to be added to the evidence already existing in favour of
the arboreal habits of our ancestors, before the notion will be
generally accepted as worthy of serious belief, or as entirely free
from ludicrousness. The reader of science in these days must be
careful not to mistake conjectural propositions, however ingeniously
expressed, for established scientific demonstrations.
Our acceptance or rejection of Mr. Darwin's views regarding the
descent of _man_ will be mainly determined by the conclusions we have
been led to adopt concerning his doctrine of the formation of
different species of animals by natural selection. The writer of this
article, disagreeing, as he does, entirely, with the views adopted by
Mr. Darwin's opponents, would be quite ready to concede the doctrine
of the descent of man from a lower form if he felt convinced that the
evidence adduced was sufficient to prove that even a few of the lower
animals and plants had resulted by development from lower forms. He is
well aware that, both here and on the Continent, many scientific
authorities accept the doctrine of natural selection as applied to
plants and animals, but hold that as regards man the evidence, is
altogether inconclusive. Mr. Darwin evidently wishes his readers to
accept upon faith the dictum that it has really been positively
demonstrated that all species of the inferior animals have been
evolved from some lower beings, for he uses this as an inferential
argument in favour of the doctrine that man, '_like every other
species_,' has descended from pre-existing forms.
We shall not therefore argue, as has often been done, that although
natural selection may be true as applied to animals, it is not correct
as regards man, but shall concede this point, and admit that, if it
could be proved that dissimilar animals had descended from a common
progenitor, we might believe that man's body has been formed in the
same way. But we dispute the evidence hitherto advanced to prove that
even plants as much alike or unlike as the rose and the thistle have
descended from a common plant; and we doubt if sufficient time has
elapsed for effecting the requisite changes in the very gradual manner
in which the hypothesis assumes that they have occurred.
A great array of facts are marshalled before the reader, in order to
produce the impression that the foregone conclusion really rests upon
a very firm foundation; but it is remarkable how frequently
hypothetical inferences are made to do duty for inductive arguments.
Thus Mr. Darwin assumes that because man, like the lower animals, is
subject to malconformations, arrested development, or reduplication of
parts, his origin _must have been_ like theirs. It is, however,
obvious that such an argument begs the question at issue. It is
clearly possible that man's body might agree with the bodies of the
lower animals in these and many other points, and yet be formed upon
altogether different principles; while man and animals might be alike
in these points, without either having been derived as Mr. Darwin
supposes. Again, it seemed scarcely necessary to repeat the
affirmation that there was much in common between the bodily structure
of man and animals, because everyone who has studied the matter ever
so carelessly freely admits that there is, and every child would
acknowledge the fact from his own observation. What Mr. Darwin desires
us to believe is, that this similarity in structure is due to
community of origin; but this is a very different thing. The fact must
be accepted, but the proposed explanation of the fact is, after all,
only an assertion. It has been audaciously said that Mr. Darwin's
explanation ought to be accepted as true if no more probable
explanation be advanced; but surely this is to mistake altogether the
object of scientific inquiry; for it by no means follows that an
improbable hypothesis ought to be accepted and taught as true, because
its opponents are unable or unwilling to propose a new hypothesis
several degrees less improbable. The question for us to determine, is
simply how far the arguments advanced by Mr. Darwin justify the
conclusion at which he has arrived; and it is not good reasoning to
argue that, because the bodily structure of man resembles that of
animals, and the bodily structures of animals resemble one another,
therefore all have community of origin; for it is clear that there may
be some very different explanation of these facts which cannot be
discovered, nor will be until we possess more knowledge of them. We
may accept as a fact the well known general resemblance between the
tissues of different animals and the tissues of man and animals, but
we may deny that this resemblance is sufficiently close to ground upon
it the doctrine that all tissues have been derived from a common
ancestral tissue-forming substance. We quite agree with Mr. Darwin,
that 'man is constructed on the same general type or model with other
mammals,' but we fail to see in this an argument for the doctrine that
he and they have a common origin.
If, however, the tissues, blood, and secretions of man were like those
of animals, that is, if they could not be distinguished from the
latter in ultimate structure and chemical composition and properties,
we should be quite ready to accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion; and not a
few of Mr. Darwin's readers will imagine that such is really the case,
for the language employed almost implies that a very exact likeness
has been proved to exist. Mr. Darwin has, however, been careful so to
express himself as to lead his readers to adopt the inference he
desires, without laying himself open to the charge of undue
persuasion, while professing only to be laying facts before their
unbiassed judgment. In truth, such enthusiasm has been stirred up in
favour of Mr. Darwin's doctrines that the task of criticism has become
unpleasant, and it requires some courage even to offer a hint that
after all they _may_ not turn out to be true. And yet it is not
possible for anyone who has studied anatomical structure to assent to
many of the statements in the very first chapter of Mr. Darwin's book.
As regards bodily structure and chemical composition, and also minute
structure of tissues, there are points of difference between man and
animals more striking and remarkable than the points in which
resemblance may be traced. So, too, with reference to embryonic
development, resemblance increases the further we go back, and much
more may be proved than Mr. Darwin requires for the support of his
hypothesis. An embryo man is not more like an embryo ape than either
is like an embryo fish. The mode of origin and the development of
every tissue in nature are indeed alike in many particulars, but this
fact, so far from being an argument in favour of the common parentage
of any or all, seems to indicate that all are formed according to some
general law, which nevertheless permits the most remarkable
variations, not solely dependent upon either external conditions or
internal powers.
It has been shown that certain structural characteristics observable
to the unaided eye are common to man and the lower animals, and this
fact has been urged in favour of the conclusion adopted by Mr.
Darwin. Thus, great stress is laid upon the presence of 'the little
blunt point projecting from the inwardly folded margin or helix of the
ear of man.' This is decided to be the vestige of the formerly pointed
ears of the progenitors of our predecessors with arboreal habits, but
nothing is said in explanation of the complete absence of rudiments of
parts which we should expect to find. And surely there may be
differences of opinion as to the bearing of many of the facts
advanced, although Mr. Darwin affirms that their bearing is
unmistakable. The observation that, 'on any other view, the similarity
of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse,
the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, &c., is utterly
inexplicable,' is not complimentary to the ingenuity or conjectural
capacity of those who are to succeed Mr. Darwin; but to assert that
these parts have been formed on the same ideal plan is not a
scientific explanation; it is merely to express an opinion in a very
arbitrary and rather abrupt manner. It may be 'natural prejudice' and
it may be 'arrogance' which leads some to demur to the conclusions
deduced by Mr. Darwin and his friends, and the prophecy[63] at the end
of his chapter may be fulfilled, but it is at any rate premature;
while it is by no means fair to imply that every naturalist who
refuses to accept Mr. Darwin's hypothesis believes that each mammal
and man 'was the work of a separate act of creation.'
As is well known, there are certain diseases which may be communicated
from man to the lower animals, or from the lower animals to man, and
Mr. Darwin tells us that the fact 'proves (!) the close similarity of
their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition.'
Here, again, in what he regards as his proof, Mr. Darwin begs the
question. Such premises afford no justification whatever for the
conclusion arrived at, while the force of the remark depends entirely
upon the meaning attached to the phrase 'close similarity.' We may
assert with truth that there is a _very close similarity_ between the
blood of a rat and the blood of a Guinea pig, and also that the blood
of the rat _differs widely_ from that of the Guinea pig. In the first
assertion, 'close similarity' is used in a sense which does not imply
that 'widely different' is not equally true of the statement to which
it relates. The argument adopted by Mr. Darwin is not an argument in
favour of his conclusion. He might urge with equal force that since
bacteria grow and multiply in many different fluids and solids, these
fluids and solids exhibit a close similarity in structure and
composition; or, conversely, it might be held, that because certain
poisons produce very different effects upon the nerve-tissues of
different animals, therefore the nerve-tissues of these animals must
differ widely in minute structure and chemical composition.
As regards the statements that man and animals alike die of apoplexy,
suffer from fever, are subject to cataract, take tea, are fond of
tobacco, and the like, it is simply astounding that Mr. Darwin should
have advanced them with the view of strengthening his case. The
circumstance almost leads us to infer that he was not altogether
unconscious of the weakness of his own cause. He has been
over-sanguine regarding his powers of convincing his readers of the
truth of any proposition he might think fit to advance. It would have
been more to the purpose to have maintained that, since all mammals
have blood and blood-vessels, brains, and nerves, it is certain that
all mammals must have had a common origin, since it is not possible to
account for the close similarity between these tissues in any other
way.
Nor is it easy to understand how the community-of-origin hypothesis is
assisted by the fact that man and animals are infested by parasites,
seeing that the parasites are as different from one another as are the
species which they infest, and, like the latter, are incapable of
interbreeding, and exhibit specific distinctions of the most striking
kind.
That reproduction and gestation are carried out upon the same general
plan in all mammals is universally known, but it is straining argument
with a vengeance to advance this in favour of their community of
origin, considering the marvellous variations in detail which are
observed in respect of these processes in different and even in very
closely allied mammals.
The fact that man arrives at maturity more slowly than other animals
is met by Mr. Darwin with the cautious observation that 'the orang _is
believed_ not to be adult till the age of from ten to fifteen years.'
This is by no means a solitary example of the very vague observations
which Mr. Darwin admits as data upon which to ground his conclusions.
For want of more demonstrative evidence, he is constrained to accept
the loose statement to which we have alluded; and it must be admitted
that he has displayed considerable ingenuity in making the most of the
utterly inconclusive and sometimes unreliable material at his
disposal; but it is indeed very remarkable that he should consider
himself in any way justified by the facts and arguments to which he
has adverted, in summing up so very definitely and so very decidedly
as he has done on the sixth page of the first chapter of his book. The
italics in the following sentence are our own: 'It is, in short,
_scarcely possible to exaggerate the close correspondence_ in general
structure, in the minute structure of the tissues, in chemical
composition, and in constitution, between man and the higher animals,
especially the anthropomorphous apes!'
Mr. Darwin adduces another argument in his favor from embryonic
development, and proceeds to show that at a certain period the human
embryo is very like that of the dog. He quotes with approval the
remark of Mr. Huxley, that as regards development man is 'far nearer
to apes than the apes are to the dog;' but if we suppose the
resemblance to be far greater than is really the case, it is difficult
to see how the fact would strengthen the hypothesis in favour of which
it is advanced. Because the embryo of a dog resembles that of a man,
therefore both were derived from a common progenitor, seems a very
curious specimen of reasoning, and implies the acceptance of a number
of other propositions which have been and will continue to be
disputed. We are assured that no other explanation than the one
advanced by Mr. Darwin 'has ever been given of the marvellous fact
that the embryos of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, &c., cannot at
first be distinguished from each other;' but as needs scarcely be
said, this circumstance adds no weight to the particular explanation
in question, and does not increase the probability of its being proved
to be true at some future day. According to Mr. Darwin, we _ought_
frankly to admit the force of every argument he thinks fit to advance;
but surely, before doing so, there is no harm in examining the facts a
little more closely. And, first, it would have been desirable to
inquire whether the resemblance was really as great as a superficial
examination by the unaided eye seemed to indicate; next, it should
have been ascertained whether the _differences_ between the animal and
the human embryo were not also very considerable; in which case it
would have been necessary to inquire further concerning the bearing of
the differences demonstrated, upon the hypothesis of the community of
origin of the several embryos, grounded upon the likeness.
But Mr. Darwin does not tell us why he selected one particular period
of development for demonstrating the resemblance between the human
embryo and that of the dog. The likeness was in truth much greater at
a period still earlier than the one selected. Nay, the fact must be
known to Mr. Darwin, that at a very early stage in development we fail
to discover, after the most careful scrutiny, any difference between
the matter which, under certain conditions, will become man, and that
which, under certain other conditions, will become dog, or cat, or
bird, or frog, or jelly-fish, or plant; yet it would be monstrous to
assert that apparent likeness was real identity. It is only during the
later stages of development, as Mr. Huxley affirms, and as has been
well known for fifty years or more, that 'the young human being
presents _marked_ differences from the young ape.' But why is the
reader not told that at a very early period of development these
embryos are not only like one another, but could not by any means at
our disposal be distinguished from each other or from any other form
of embryo matter in nature? The results of the act of living in the
two cases are very different, but the living matter itself seems to be
nearly identical. The material out of which man is evolved is perhaps
exactly like that from which every other vertebrate living being
proceeds, and it does not differ in any ascertained points from that
from which the most destructive morbid growths may be developed. Here,
then, is an argument for the community of origin of everything in
nature. Not only is man's brain developed like the dog's brain, but
the matter in which every one of his organs originates is like that
from which every other tissue in nature is evolved.
But when we come to examine more minutely the tissues of the embryo
man and the embryo dog at about the period of development selected by
Mr. Darwin for comparison, we find very remarkable points of
difference in their minute structure. If we examine particular tissues
by the aid of high microscopic powers, we shall discover points of
difference as well as points in which they agree, and this at every
stage of growth subsequent to the time when the tissues have acquired
their special characters. If, then, from the fact of general
resemblance we are to argue in favour of a common origin, what
explanation have we to offer of the peculiar and constant, though
definite differences between the corresponding tissues of different
animals at corresponding periods of development? Mr. Darwin's
explanation may account for the resemblance between the different
embryos at a particular period of development, but it does not help us
in the least to understand why there should be differences in the
ultimate structure of the tissues at this same period, any more than
it explains the still more remarkable resemblance between different
forms of embryonic matter at every period of life, in health and in
disease.
It is difficult to understand how 'natural selection' can work, unless
we admit that the matter of the germ possesses the property of
undergoing modification. But if modifying power determines the
changes, this must itself be referred to something _inherent_ in the
matter of the germ itself--a primary power of the organism transmitted
from pre-existing organisms. Such a power is, however, inadmissible in
any evolutional hypothesis, and so far from being explained by natural
selection, explains the facts grouped under that head. It is true that
Mr. Darwin does admit the operation of 'unknown agencies' influencing
the nature and constitution of the organism, but he adduces no reason
for supposing that these unknown agencies will be discovered at some
future time, or that they are in any way dependent on natural
selection. If we require 'unknown agencies' at all, we may surely
dispense with natural selection altogether, and attribute the
formation of species to these unknown agencies directly, instead of
attributing it to natural selection and referring natural selection to
the unknown agencies.
It certainly would be an argument of the very highest importance, and
indeed most convincing, if it could be shown that, in their minute
structure, the corresponding tissues of man and animals very closely
agreed. Mr. Darwin affirms that this is indeed the case, and says that
the correspondence in minute structure is so close, especially in the
case of man and the anthropomorphous apes, that it is _impossible to
exaggerate it_. But strange to say, he adduces no evidence whatever in
support of the assertion, although he does not hesitate to make use of
the assumed close correspondence as if it had been demonstrated in the
most unequivocal manner. Mr. Darwin is unquestionably correct in
attaching the very highest importance to this part of the evidence. As
the question of correspondence in the minute structure of tissues
between man and animals has scarcely been touched upon in any of the
numerous critiques which have been written upon Mr. Darwin's
hypothesis, we propose to direct the reader's attention to a few
details of considerable interest, affecting not only the validity of
views concerning, the descent of man, but affecting also the
hypothesis of evolution. It has been already stated that we are ready
to admit the full force of the fact of the close correspondence if
this can be proved; but, on the other hand, if constant differential
characters can be distinctly demonstrated, especially in corresponding
tissues of closely allied species, it must be conceded that the
circumstance will be very damaging to the hypothesis of evolution; for
it is very doubtful if even the very great ingenuity displayed by Mr.
Darwin and his followers would enable them to offer an explanation
which would be considered plausible. It is somewhat significant that
the subject of minute structure, in spite of its great importance
having been freely admitted, has been very lightly touched upon. So
far, evolutionists have fought rather shy of the evidence to be
obtained by a very minute and careful examination of the tissues;
though strongly advocating careful investigations of a general
character, they have been very reticent on the question of microscopic
investigation, and in not a few instances there are indications of an
indisposition to study minute details, as if they feared observation
might be pushed too far, or too much into detail to serve their
purpose. Attention is constantly directed to the general points in
which different species resemble each other, and the reader becomes
fully impressed with the great importance of the argument resting upon
the fact of the strong similarity between man and apes, but no direct
comparison in minute structure between any human and simian tissue is
instituted, nor are any results of such comparisons anywhere referred
to. But if, for example, it could be shown that in their minute
anatomy the tissues of an ape so closely resembled those of a dog on
the one hand, and of a man on the other, as that they could not be
distinguished by the microscope, the fact would be of the highest
importance, and would add enormously to the evidence already adduced
to Mr. Darwin who lays much stress upon the close correspondence
between the tissues of man and animals in minute structure, but never
tells us that such comparison has been actually made by himself or by
others. It is certainly remarkable that a fact which Mr. Darwin
evidently considers of vast importance, and which is capable of being
easily put to the test of observation, should be stated without the
results of a single observation being recorded. Surely an appeal to
actual experiment should have been made in at least a few instances,
which would illustrate not only the close correspondence, but the
absence of differences between corresponding tissues in different
species. This having been done, it should then have been clearly
stated in what manner this correspondence in minute structure favours
the idea of the common origin of distinct species. But Mr. Darwin is
content here, as in many other cases, with asserting the fact as a
fact, and then stating that it helps in an important manner to
establish the truth of the doctrine he advocates.
As this supposed correspondence in minute structure has never, so far
as we are aware, been called in question, we shall occupy some portion
of the space allotted to us in adverting to certain facts of interest,
and shall supplement our observations by some remarks upon the
supposed correspondence, or divergence, in chemical composition
between representative solids and fluids in allied but distinct
species. We must admit, with many other scientific writers, that if
but a very moderate proportion of the arguments advanced by Mr. Darwin
in favour of his conclusions rested upon a really firm basis of fact,
the formation of species by natural selection would be established;
but we have found that in many cases the arguments advanced do not
bear the test of careful analysis, and some assertions crumble into
dust as soon as they are exposed to investigation. We shall find
reason to doubt the validity of Mr. Darwin's inferences concerning
chemical composition, as well as concerning minute structure. Although
undoubtedly, we do discern a general correspondence, the exceptions
are so remarkable, and so far inexplicable upon Mr. Darwin's view,
that we are disposed to think that the argument from it must be
rejected altogether. If we study carefully the minute structure of
corresponding tissues, we shall find that in many instances we are
confronted with the most striking and peculiar differences, which tend
to establish the idea of individuality and distinctness of origin,
rather than that of the community of origin of creatures closely
allied in zoological characters.
The differences in minute details in the case of creatures much alike
are often very remarkable, and well worthy of attentive consideration.
It may be possible to explain some of them by natural selection, but
the way in which this can be done has to be pointed out. Nor is it
easy to see why many individual peculiarities, that could easily be
specified, should exist at all. They are certainly not required by
their possessors, they do not seem either of advantage or
disadvantage, and it is at least conceivable that in minute structure
the tissues of all closely allied animals might exactly resemble one
another. But is it not remarkable that, for instance, almost every
tissue of the newt, frog, toad, and green tree-frog, has individual
characteristics of its own, which could be distinguished by one who
was thoroughly familiar with the microscopic characters of the
textures? In many cases the differences are so wide that they could
not be passed over.[64] In the newt, as would be anticipated, the
elementary parts of the tissues are formed altogether upon a much
larger scale than, in the other animals, and there are individual
differences which are most interesting. The disciples of evolution
might gain some facts in support of their theory by comparing in
minute structure the tissues of the newt and proteus, in which latter
animal everything is on a larger and coarser (?) scale than in the
newt. But would the evolutional hypothesis gain by the application of
such a test?
The nerve-fibres in every part of the body of the newt differ in many
minute particulars from those of the frog, and the muscular fibres of
either animal could be recognised if they were successfully prepared
in precisely the same manner, so that a comparison might be instituted
with fairness. But in these animals not only do corresponding tissues,
exhibit peculiarities, but entire organs are totally different. The
kidney of the frog diverges in so many points of structure from that
of the newt, that the two organs could not be mistaken the one for the
other, even if examined in the most cursory manner. Each individual
tube of the newt's kidney is lined by ciliated epithelium from one end
to the other, while that of the frog is so lined only at the neck. The
Malpighian bodies of the two animals are different, and we believe
that corresponding tissues taken from these organs could be
distinguished from one another. It may be answered, 'This very
instance is in favour of evolution, for the kidney tube gradually
loses its ciliated lining, as we pass from the lower towards the
higher batrachian form. In the latter, only the neck of the tube is
ciliated, while in animals higher in the scale than the batrachia, the
uriniferous tube is perfectly destitute of cilia.' Will the
evolutionist be satisfied with this explanation, or will he suggest
some other?
Again, if we take the skin of the four animals mentioned
above--although it will be seen that there is a certain general
agreement in structure to be recognised, there is not a texture of the
skin which is alike in them all. The cuticle is different, the glands
of the skin are differently arranged, the pigment-cells present the
most marked differences; and individual characteristics are to be
detected in great number by anyone who will study the subject in
detail with sufficient care. We do not, however, suppose for an
instant that Mr. Darwin would be unable upon his hypothesis to offer a
plausible explanation of all these minute points. We are well aware
that this can be done, and in a manner that to some minds may seem
convincing. What we wish to press upon our readers, however, is, that
so far as at this time the argument rests upon a close correspondence
in minute structure, it must be given up, because the asserted close
correspondence in minute structure is not based upon evidence. On the
other hand, actual investigation into the structure of certain
corresponding tissues demonstrates remarkable individual
peculiarities, and these seem to increase in number the more
thoroughly and the more minutely the tissues are explored. What if, in
the case of closely allied species, such structural differences be
demonstrated in every part of the body? Will the fact be urged in
support of a common parentage, or in favour of some different view? It
may be fairly asked, if two closely allied forms have descended from a
common progenitor not far removed from either, why should almost every
tissue and organ in the body exhibit individual peculiarities, not one
of which can be regarded as of advantage to the creature, or as
contributing in any way to its survival? The sensitive fungiform
papillæ of the tongue of the common frog and of the hyla differ from
one another in minute structure, and specimens could be readily
distinguished. Again, it might be asked, why are the hairs of the
shrew different from those of the mole, and why is the disposition of
the nerve-fibres round the hair-bulb even to their minutest fibrils
different in different creatures, all of which possess the particular
hairs called _tactile_, which act as delicate organs of touch? One
would have supposed that the apparatus at the side of the base of a
tactile hair of a shrew would be very like that upon which the tactile
hair of a mole operates, and that the mechanism in both animals would
not differ much from that at the base of the tactile hairs of the
mouse. But the structure of the hair is different in all three, and
the arrangement of the nerves is so different that there would be no
difficulty in distinguishing them from the hair-sac alone. In short,
there are probably very many different forms of tactile organs, in all
of which a hair is the external part, but which organs exhibit
important differences of structure.
If close correspondence in minute structure is to be accepted as an
argument in Mr. Darwin's favour, he will surely hardly venture to
assert that differences in minute structure point to a similar
conclusion, though both sets of facts might be ingeniously used in
support of this eminently elastic hypothesis. If the supposed
correspondence was established, the evolutionist would of course point
to the fact in proof of a common parentage; but if, on the other hand,
the supposed correspondence should be proved to be a fiction, he might
retort triumphantly, 'Only see in what infinitely minute structural
particulars the law of variation by natural selection manifests its
operation!'
How are we to explain the varying form and size of the red
blood-corpuscles in different animals which have been so carefully
examined and measured by Mr. Gulliver? The corpuscles do not vary
according to the size of the animal, nor, unless our views of
classification are utterly erroneous, can any constant relation be
demonstrated between the size and form of the blood-disks of the
creature and its position in the zoological scale. Again, in some
cases, the colourless corpuscles are much larger than the coloured
ones, while in others the very reverse obtains. Moreover, in many
important characters, the blood-corpuscles of animals of the same
class differ remarkably. The writer of this article could multiply
such facts to a great extent from the observations he has been led to
make incidentally, without reference to any hypothesis whatever; but
he feels almost sure that, if a series of observations were made, the
distinctive characters of corresponding textures taken from closely
allied animals would be enormously multiplied. Such minute anatomical
investigation will doubtless be instituted, but at present the leaders
of scientific thought in this country seem to consider that general
observations extending over a wide range of knowledge are preferable.
Mr. Darwin even supposes, or, at any rate, leads his readers to infer
that he supposes, that the investigation of the structural character
of man and animals has been completed, or is nearly completed. It is
evident he would have us believe such to be the case, for he says that
to take any view of man's origin different from his own is to admit
that our own structural characteristic and those of animals are a mere
snare laid to entrap our judgment--as if all our tissues and organs
had been thoroughly and finally explored. We know neither our own
structure nor that of any plant or animal in the world. Mr. Darwin
must surely be aware that the minute anatomy of the body of man or of
animals is not yet in any part fully ascertained. It is possible that,
as Mr. Darwin himself has not worked much at this subject, he may have
been misled by his anatomical friends; but every investigator who goes
into details with due care, and with sufficient accuracy, soon finds
himself compelled not only to correct the facts advanced by those who
have preceded him, but is able to add to known facts many new ones.
There is no reason for thinking that there is any limit to this
discovery of new facts. We may go on discovering for ever, but our
anatomical observations will never be complete; nor must it be
supposed that, even with our present means, our present knowledge of
minute structure is as far advanced as is possible.
Mr. Darwin admits in many instances the existence of certain facts
which he cannot explain by his hypothesis, and in this difficulty he
appeals to our 'belief in the general principle of evolution,' and
suggests that, 'unless we wilfully close our eyes,' we must assent to
a doctrine which he confesses is not proved by the evidence he has
adduced in its support. It is, however, only by wilfully closing our
eyes, and very tightly indeed, and for a long period of time, that we
can hope to force the understanding to accept a belief in the 'general
principles in question.'
The _differences_ observed in the minute structure of corresponding
tissues in closely allied species ought to have more closely engaged
the attention of Mr. Darwin, but he is evidently quite unaware of
either their extent or their number. Had he been alive to these, he
would scarcely have committed himself so fully, or have left so
exposed to attack his argument based on the supposition of close
correspondence in structure. Structural variations in detail are
indeed infinite, and it is extraordinary that Mr. Darwin's assertion
of close correspondence should so long have remained unchallenged.
Whatever may ultimately be accepted as the true explanation of the
fact, it must be admitted that it does not support Mr. Darwin's
hypothesis in its present form.
Structural difference in the tissues and organs of allied species are
not, however, limited to microscopic characters. There are many broad
anatomical distinctions which have never been explained, such as the
absence of a part or organ in an animal very closely related to
numerous other species, in every one of which not only does it exist,
but is largely developed. Such cases may be regarded by the
evolutionist as exceptional, and he may invent some new hypothesis to
account for them. Such facts may be treated as anomalies, and referred
to laws yet to be discovered, upon which correlation of growth
depends. By this old method of overcoming a difficulty, facts which
really tell against the favourite conclusion are made to appear to
tell in its favour; but in science the exception does not prove the
rule. It is clear that very much is thought of the argument from
agreement in general structure between more recent forms and the
ancestral forms from which they are supposed to have descended, for it
has been very pointedly referred to by those who support the
hypothesis of natural selection. If, however, it is proved on more
minute and careful examination that, although there are some points of
resemblance between species, which would render plausible the idea of
a common parentage, there are also striking differences, which
increase in number and importance the more they are sought for, it
will be admitted that the force of this argument is much weakened; and
although, after making allowance for exaggerated expression, we may
admit with Mr. Huxley 'that in every single visible character man
differs less from the higher apes than these do from the lower members
of the same order of primates,' we are nevertheless compelled by the
facts to maintain that there are so very many points in which man
differs from every ape, that the argument in favour of close
relationship based upon correspondence in structure completely breaks
down. In fact, the differences that cannot be accounted for upon the
hypothesis are more important and more numerous than the resemblances
which it is advanced to explain. Of what worth is an argument resting
on the fact of hundreds of representative muscles, tendons, bones, and
eminences on bones, in closely allied species, if the very muscles,
tendons, and bones themselves exhibit minute and constant structural
differences? And if, besides these anatomical differences, we meet
with differences as regards the rate of development--differences in
the order of development of certain tissues and organs--differences in
the structural changes going on after development is complete, what
shall we infer?
It is all very well to explain the presence of muscular variations in
man by the tendency to reversion to an earlier condition of existence,
but it is of the utmost importance in the first place to be sure that
our evidence justifies us in concluding that particular and
exceptional muscles in man representing muscles highly developed in
some of the lower animals owe their origin to descent. This is the
very question upon which proof is wanting. The variations _may_ be due
to descent, but it by no means follows that they _must_ be due to
descent, and it is still more difficult to be certain that they are
not due to the operation of some _undiscovered factor_.
For many years past, naturalists, in their desire to discover the
relationship between the many divergent forms of living things, appear
to have closed their eyes to the remarkable differences which
establish distinct characteristics between very closely allied forms,
and which tend to show that the latter are not so closely related as
the hypothesis of Darwin concludes. What, for instance, is the
explanation of the fact that in no two animals or men are the branches
of the arteries or nerves given off from the larger trunks at
precisely the same points or in precisely the same manner, and why are
variations in the muscles to be detected in each individual
subject?--we cannot call them _accidental_. Will descent account for
the hundreds of variations we meet with, as well as for those
particular kinds which have been minutely described by Mr. Wood and
others, and of which the evolutionists have made so much? Here, as in
many other instances, we find inferences based on a very one-sided, if
not a very imperfect statement of the facts. In order to account for
all the anatomical varieties, it will be necessary again to call in
the help of that 'unknown law' which the advocates of natural
selection invoke when they find themselves in a difficulty.
But we come now to consider whether Mr. Darwin is more correct in his
assertion concerning the close correspondence in the chemical
composition of the tissues and fluids of the different species, than
he is upon the question of minute structure. How is it that we find
specific characters in the blood, bile, milk, saliva, gastric juice,
urine, and other fluids and secretions of nearly related animals? The
blood of the Guinea pig differs in important characteristics from that
of the rat, mouse, rabbit, and squirrel. The most important
constituent of the blood undergoes crystallization, and the form of
the blood crystal is very different in the several members of the
rodent class. By some undiscovered law of correlation of growth,
perhaps, may be explained the curious fact that the blood-corpuscles
of the tailless Guinea pig crystallize very readily in beautiful
tetrahedra, while those of another rodent in which the tail is
remarkably developed take the form of six-sided plates, and in yet
another which possesses only a faint apology for a caudal appendage,
we find blood crystals taking the form of the most beautiful
rhomboids.
The blood of one species will not efficiently nourish the tissues of
another; and in cases in which life is temporarily supported by alien
blood artificially introduced into the vessels, it is probable that
the foreign fluid is gradually destroyed and eliminated, and at last,
entirely replaced by blood which is slowly formed anew in the animal's
own vessels. Not only does the blood of man differ from that of the
lower animals, but the blood of every species of animal differs from
that of every other species.
But if we submit any of the other fluids mentioned above to careful
chemical and physical analysis, we shall find each endowed with
special characteristic properties, and distinguished from the rest by
well-marked and constant characters; and we have reason to believe
that the more minutely such investigation is carried out, the larger
will be the number of divergent characters and properties established.
Mr. Sorby has lately been examining, by the aid of the spectroscope,
many of the colouring matters of the leaves and petals of flowers and
plants, and has demonstrated the presence of a large number of new
substances which can be most positively distinguished from one another
by spectrum analysis. Substances belonging to different plants which
appear to the eye of nearly the same tint, often exhibit very
different characters when submitted to spectroscopic examination.[65]
There seems to be, in fact, no limit to divergence in essential
particulars in cases in which the correspondence is only to be found
in most general and superficial characters. We will recur for a moment
to the question of minute structure as illustrated by plants. If the
reader will be at the trouble of placing under his microscope, one
after another, the petals of any half-dozen flowers of a red or blue
colour, he will soon be able to discover anatomical differences by
which each of them could be recognised independently of its colour.
Moreover, if he studies the subject with sufficient care, he will find
that new structural peculiarities will be demonstrated, of the
existence of which he had no idea when the investigation was
commenced.
Series of facts like those adduced above not only seem to militate
against the acceptance of the doctrine of natural selection in its
present form, but they cannot be contemplated without exciting in the
mind a desire to entertain the hypothesis of fixity of species, or
some derivative hypothesis not opposed to that idea.
Although of late much attention has been given to variation, the
inheritance of variability, and progressive hereditary changes in the
structure of the body, the advocates of evolution have only advanced
statements of the most general kind. They have not entered into
details; they have not suggested at what particular period in the life
of the individual the change in structure occurs. They are silent as
to the precise nature of the change, and the several steps by which it
is brought about; and they say nothing concerning the characters and
properties of the matter, which is the actual seat of the change. It
is not sufficient to show us the bone or muscle, the structure of
which is modified, and to assure us that the modification in question
is due to the law of variability; for the hypothesis deals with the
change itself, and we should be informed concerning the phenomenon
which are antecedent to the change, and the exact circumstances which
determine any particular modification advanced in illustration of the
working of the supposed law. Further, it should be definitely
determined what degree of change suffices to affect the fully-formed
bone and muscle, and whether structural changes occurring at or after
the period of full development of the body are inherited or not. The
reader is probably aware that Mr. Darwin has invented an hypothesis
specially to meet this part of the question--the hypothesis of
Pangenesis. But he has recently remarked that it has not yet received
its 'death-blow'--an observation which excites a doubt whether its
author is not ready to abandon it. This hypothesis was only advanced
tentatively from the first. It is incompatible with a number of facts,
and appears more and more improbable as the phenomena it comprises are
carefully investigated. Many observers well qualified to form a
correct judgment felt almost certain from the very first that
Pangenesis could not be maintained.
Seeing that, at every period of life, matter exists in every part of
the body in at least two very different states, in each of which
different classes of phenomena occur, Mr. Darwin should have informed
us in what particular matter of the body in his opinion the metabolic
property probably resided, and he should have explained at what period
of life the change which was to result in the production of a new
variety or species occurred. He does not, of course, suppose that
fully-formed bone, or muscle, or nerve, changes its characters; nor
would he maintain that in old age, or indeed long after adult life had
been attained, any great alteration of structural form was possible.
If, then, it is only in the plastic state during the early period of
development that the changes surmised to take place can occur, the
author of the hypothesis should either have given more information
upon the details, or he should at the least have shown that
microscopical observation had yielded no facts adverse to his
doctrine; and something surely should have been suggested concerning
the nature and origin of the inherent metabolic property, or tendency,
or capacity, which is assumed by the terms of the hypothesis.
It should, however, be stated here that many evolutionists repudiate
entirely the idea of any peculiar property under any circumstances
influencing matter in the living state which does not influence it in
the non-living condition, for the acceptance of the idea of such
property would involve an answer to the inquiry as to the nature and
origin of the property assumed, and it would have to be shown when and
under what circumstances it was acquired by the matter. The
evolutionist believes only in the properties which belong to matter as
matter, and which are coexistent with the matter itself. The admission
of an inherent property peculiar to the living state of matter, almost
amounts to the admission of a vital power; but such an hypothesis, it
need scarcely be said, would be incompatible with the doctrine of
evolution. But physical evolutionists who persist in attributing all
the phenomena of living beings to physical agencies only, ignore the
most important changes occurring in every form of living matter. Again
and again, they repeat the statement that the changes in living matter
are molecular; but this is merely a word which is perfectly
meaningless as applied to the changes in question, since the
'molecule' is undefined, has not been described, and is quite unknown.
The very same authorities acknowledge that conclusions not based upon
evidence cannot advance science, or be looked upon as scientific, and
yet, with an inconsistency that is extraordinary, they state with
confidence that they understand the nature of these changes. But they
have not been able to learn anything of them whatever by experiment,
nor can they discover any means of imitating them in matter in the
laboratory. The changes in question are quite peculiar to living
matter; they occur in all living matter, but in living matter only.
These changes differ entirely from any other changes of which we have
any cognizance. Nothing surely can be more illogical or unscientific
than to assert that actions about which we know nothing are of the
same kind or nature as actions which are understood, and can be
brought about whenever we will. Yet physicists, chemists, and indeed
most scientific men, have fully committed themselves to the dogmatic
creed that the phenomena of living matter are, like all the other
phenomena of nature, due to antecedent physical change. There are no
physical phenomena to which they can point, that in the remotest
degree resemble the actions peculiar to living matter.
Variation itself is quite peculiar, and as far removed from any
physical change as is possible to conceive. The extent of variation,
and of variations inherited from ancestors, is perfectly marvellous.
Such variations are carried out during that plastic period of life
when the body consists almost entirely of living matter, and occur in
every individual of every species of animal and plant that is known.
Each is _like_ its predecessors, but not one is in any part _exactly
like_ the corresponding part of any predecessor. No two individuals
were ever formed exactly alike in all particulars. Nay, it is doubtful
if any two vital actions that have taken place in nature have been
perfectly alike in all points.
That variation occurs in the plastic matter of the organism, while the
formative process is taking place, is a truism, for no two noses or
fingers, or other parts, have been seen so much alike as not to be
distinguishable from one another; nay, it is not supposable that any
two should be found precisely similar. Perfect identity in structures
of such complexity is indeed hardly conceivable, unless many facts
known in connection with tissue formation are utterly ignored. But, on
the other hand, it is equally inconceivable that capacity for
variability should be manifested in such a manner and to such an
extent as to lead to the production of a proboscis in place of a nose,
or of a talon in lieu of a finger. Hence, therefore, we must admit
that this capacity works within certain, though at this time not to be
accurately defined, limits. When, therefore, Mr. Darwin maintains that
similarity of pattern between the flipper of the seal, the wing of the
bat, the hand of the man, &c., is due to divergence in structure
during gradual descent from a common progenitor, does he not beg the
question at issue, and by implication assume an extent of variation
far exceeding that which is possible within the period of time which
he is disposed to think may have elapsed during which the hundreds or
thousands of transitional forms have been slowly progressing towards
perfection of type? Undoubtedly, if he could show one or two
gradations between the paw of the bear and the flipper of the seal, or
between the foot of the mole and the wing of the bat, he would have a
powerful argument indeed. But the mind fails to realize the
possibility of the transitional forms whose existence is assumed by
the hypothesis. A thing half bear and half seal, or half mole and half
bat, would be an incongruity which we have no right to assume ever
existed in the flesh, if indeed it is not absurd to suppose it
possible. If such a creature were born, it would die, and the very law
of natural selection supposed to operate in favour of its development
would render certain its destruction without offspring.
Variation in the living world seems to be indeed infinite, but
nevertheless, so to say, restrained within limits. When we come to
study variation in any particular species, we marvel at the
extraordinary extent of change to be observed without any approach
being recognized towards the nearest allied species. The human face
may vary, we may say, infinitely, but without in the slightest degree
approximating the face of a monkey or any other animal. The animal
face and features may vary infinitely within the animal limits without
manifesting the slightest approach to the human countenance, or even
to that of any other species of animal. Any species of monkey might
become modified in many different directions without making any
approach to the human form. The ass might change for ages, and yet be
something very different from a horse, and so on in other cases. The
most degraded savage exhibits no approach to the ape, any more than
the most highly developed species of monkey exhibits any nearer
approach to man than the very lowest member of its class. There are
human variations, monkey variations, ass variations, &c., without end,
but there is no evidence of any variations occurring in one species
which tend to show that it possesses any intimate relationship with
any different species. The facts hitherto discovered, and considered
by Mr. Darwin to support the view that we have descended or ascended
from monkeys appear to us, therefore, to be very inconclusive and
unsatisfactory. We are quite ready to consider patiently every
argument that evolutionists can adduce, and if we think the case
proved, we are fully prepared to admit it, but when told that we
_must_ accept the doctrine, we distrust our would-be teachers. In the
suggestion of the alternative, 'accept this hypothesis or none,'
there is the suspicion of a threat which ought to be received with
indignation. The world may be wanting in scientific knowledge and
acumen, but it will never submit to dictatorial science. The world is
quite ready to be taught, and to learn, but it will not endure a
tyranny enforced by persons who choose to call themselves,
philosophers, and who claim to be scientifically infallible. The world
knows something of the history of scientific controversies, and will
listen with caution, but it rejects upon principle the application of
scientific tests, and refuses point blank to subscribe to any articles
of scientific belief, or to acknowledge an infallible scientific head.
After all that can be said against evolution has been uttered, there
remains the defence that the hypothesis _rests upon a vast array of
facts_--anatomical, physiological, geological--and 'it is scarcely
fair,' it may be urged, 'to expect that a generalization which
explains so much, should fully account for every slight divergence of
structure that can be rendered evident by exquisitely minute and
careful investigation.' But surely a view of such wide general
application as this is held to be by its supporters ought not to fail
when tested by particular facts of general observation. Unfortunately,
Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not adequately supported by the very facts
upon which he relies for proof; for out of the multitudes of living
beings now existing upon the earth, he cannot select any two species
whose differences and resemblances can be fully accounted for by the
hypothesis which he holds to be universally applicable, and to account
for the origin of every species from the monad to man. What must be
the ultimate verdict passed upon a doctrine aspiring to universal
application, which seems satisfactory only when vaguely applied, and
which utterly fails when tested by the individual particulars that are
comprised in the generalities? We may be like the savage, as Mr.
Darwin suggests, but we are by no means convinced by the arguments
adduced by him that man is the co-descendant, with other mammals, of a
common progenitor, nor can we admit that certain structural
peculiarities of man's bodily frame are to be looked upon as 'the
indelible stamp of his lowly origin.'
All naturalists will agree in believing that there is some truth in
the doctrine which Mr. Darwin has so thoroughly espoused, but there
will be the greatest difference of opinion concerning the acceptance
of many of his propositions; while it must be confessed that the more
minutely and carefully we analyze the data upon which some of his
conclusions rest, the less satisfied are we that they should be relied
upon. Indeed, there is reason to think that at least one of his
subordinate hypotheses, Pangenesis, will certainly have to be
abandoned as untenable. As we have before remarked in this article,
neither Mr. Darwin nor those who think with him appear to realize the
illimitable possible additions to scientific knowledge, and
consequently the continued change in scientific opinion, the
abandonment of old hypotheses, and the development of new ones. Never
in the history of science have such startling hypotheses been
successively advanced as during the last twenty years. Few have stood
the test of one quinquennial period, and not one has been retained in
its original form. The sentiment, as expressed by Mr. Darwin, 'We are
not concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth,' is a
favourite one with scientific men, but the truth has not yet been
arrived at. Is scientific truth ever to be reached? The nearer we seem
to get to actual scientific truth, the more quickly does it recede
from us; and it has happened but too often that when we thought to
have grasped it, we find it far away, and that what in youth we
thought to be scientific truth, afterwards, but long before we have
reached old age, is proved to be scientific error.
In conclusion, therefore, we must remark, that while the hypothesis
fails in individual cases to which it has been applied, it is
incompetent to explain numerous facts known in connection with every
particular plant or animal in existence. But, further, the general
facts ascertained by careful and more minute investigation into the
anatomy and physiology of any two closely allied species, such, for
example, as the hare and the rabbit, the rat and the squirrel, the
Guinea pig, or the hyla and common frog, are inexplicable upon the
doctrine of natural selection, even if the time were extended far
beyond the limits which upon other grounds it is not permissible to
suppose it to stretch. Nay, the series of changes believed to occur
during the formation of species by natural selection cannot be
conceived by the imagination, unless multitudes of facts which have
been demonstrated and can be confirmed by anyone who will take the
trouble to do so are completely ignored. That man is like an ape, bone
for bone, muscle for muscle, &c., is only a flourish of rhetoric
unworthy of anyone who professes himself to be an observer of nature.
The remarks which have been made in respect to animals apply with
marvellously greater force to man himself, for no matter how the
evolutionists may strain the force of the analogies existing between
man and animals, there are transcendent differences which no sophistry
can explain away. We may allow Mr. Darwin and his friends to draw on
time as largely as they may desire, we will permit them to strain to
any extent they like the argument that the ape differs in far greater
degree from the lower animals than he does from man himself, and we
could yet succeed in exposing the improbability of the favoured
hypothesis by discussing with its advocates its insufficiency to
account for one single characteristic, such, for example, as the
possession by man of the power of expressing his ideas. It is surely
not likely that the attempt to found a general argument on the nature,
mode of origin, and formation of all living beings, upon the points in
which they exhibit some resemblance to one another, without showing in
what manner the argument in question would be affected by the
characters in which these same beings differ from one another, will
much longer be regarded as a triumph of inductive reasoning, or
considered to be in accordance with the spirit of science or true
philosophy.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] 'But the time will, _before long_, come when it will be thought
wonderful that naturalists, who were well acquainted with the
comparative structure and development of man and other mammals, should
have believed that each was the work of a separate act of
creation.'--Vol. i. page 33.
[64] An evolutionist who reads these lines may, perhaps, exclaim,
'What, then, do you maintain that the frog, toad, newt, and green
tree-frog, were each the work of a separate creative act?' To which
question we reply, 'By no means; but, nevertheless, the minute
structure of the tissues does not permit the inference that these
creatures have community of descent.' It is very curious that Mr.
Darwin and many of his supporters seem to think that all men who do
not support evolution must believe in separate creations.
[65] 'Proceedings of the Royal Society,' vol. xv., p. 433
(_Philosophical Magazine_, vol. xxxiv., 1867, p. 144); _Quarterly
Journal of Microscopical Science_, vol. ix., 1869, pp. 43 and 358;
_Monthly Microscopical Journal, vol. iii., 1870, p. 299; Quarterly
Journal of Science_, new ser., vol. i., 1870, p. 64.
ART. VIII.--_The Session._
The wearisome assertion that the last session of Parliament has been a
'barren' one, has become a sort of political axiom among a large
section of the community. Writers and speakers innumerable assume it
as a self-evident fact, which no sane person would dream of disputing.
It is, nevertheless, our serious intention to dispute it, and,
moreover, to prove that the session, so far from being utterly barren,
has produced a legislative harvest of more than average fruitfulness.
Putting aside the last two sessions, and that which witnessed the
triumph of free trade, we have no hesitation in saying that no session
since the first Reform Bill has produced so many measures of equal
importance as the last session. It would not be difficult to point to
session after session during that period which, for any good the
country has derived from their labours, might as well have never been.
But no one can say that with truth of the session that has just gone
by. On the contrary, we believe that it will be regarded a few years
hence as one of the most important sessions of this century. To those
who choose to echo an unreasoning cry, rather than take the trouble
to think for themselves, this will, no doubt, appear a wild assertion.
But what are the facts? The present Parliament was elected chiefly for
the purpose of settling the Irish question, and the sessions of
1869-1870 were devoted almost exclusively to the affairs of Ireland.
The Irish Church Bill and the Land Bill, however, having been settled,
there seemed to be a kind of general understanding that the session of
1871 should be given up to the consideration of English, or at least
imperial interests. Ireland accordingly hardly occupied any place in
the programme of the session. And yet, in the very region where it was
expected, as a matter of course, to be peculiarly barren, the session
of 1871 has borne a crop of goodly fruit. Let us glance at a few of
the Irish measures of the session.
'It is the very ancient privilege of the people of England,' says
Edmund Burke, 'that they shall be tried, except in the known
exceptions, not by the judges appointed by the Crown, but by their own
fellow-subjects.' Trial by jury has probably exercised more influence
than any other institution in moulding our national character, and in
impressing on it especially that inborn reverence for law which has
become proverbial. But with that singular perverseness which has
characterized all our dealings with Ireland for centuries, we not only
imposed our own institutions on that unhappy country, but we imposed
them shorn of all that which made them precious to Englishmen. This is
true in an aggravated sense of trial by jury. The very essence of
trial by jury is, as Burke has observed, that the accused 'shall be
tried, not by the judges appointed by the Crown, but by his own
fellow-subjects.' But how did we carry out this principle in Ireland,
in the case of political prisoners in particular? By simply ignoring
it. We retained the name and the forms of trial by jury, but we so
perverted its intention and spirit, that what Englishmen regard as the
_palladium_ of their liberty became in Ireland the symbol of every
species of injustice and wrong. When it was an object with the
authorities of Dublin Castle to secure the conviction of a prisoner,
they never hesitated to pack the jury that tried him. Names which
ought to have been on the panel were systematically and arbitrarily
excluded, and the jury-box was filled with men of whom it might have
been predicted with tolerable certainty beforehand that they would
bring in a verdict of guilty. Let us illustrate our argument by a
typical example. In 1844, the Government of the day succeeded in
getting a verdict of guilty against Mr. O'Connell, a man of whom
Macaulay has declared truth that 'the place which he held in the
estimation of his countrymen was such as no popular leader in our
history, I might perhaps say in the history of the world, has ever
attained.' If ever there was an occasion when the Government should
have been scrupulously careful to administer justice fairly, it was
the trial of O'Connell; for the eyes not only of Ireland, but of all
Europe, were upon them. But so inveterate had the habit of managing
verdicts become in Ireland, that on a crucial occasion, when trial by
jury itself might be said to be on its trial, the authorities
shamelessly packed the jury which sat in judgment on the great
tribune. Twenty-seven names were omitted from the panel which ought to
have been on it. And then from 'this mutilated jury-list,' as Macaulay
indignantly calls it, forty-eight names were taken by lot. 'And
then'--we must tell the rest of the story in Macaulay's burning
language--
'And then came the striking. You struck out all the Roman
Catholic names; and you give us your reasons for striking
out these names, reasons which I do not think it worth
while to examine. The real question which you should have
considered was this: Can a great issue between two hostile
religions--for such the issue was--be tried in a manner
above all suspicion by a jury composed exclusively of men
of one of those religions? I know that in striking out the
Roman Catholics you did nothing that was not according to
technical rules. But my great charge against you is that
you have looked on this whole case in a technical point of
view, that you have been attorneys when you should have
been statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with
you; but not the noble spirit of the law. The jury _de
medietate linguæ_ is of immemorial antiquity among us.
Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is accused of
stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit
is decided by a mixed body of six Englishmen and six
Dutchmen. Such were the securities which the wisdom and
justice of our ancestors gave to aliens. You are ready
enough to call Mr. O'Connell an alien, when it serves your
purposes to do so. You are ready enough to inflict on the
Irish Roman Catholics all the evils of alienage, but the
one privilege, the one advantage of alienage, you deny him.
In a case which of all cases most required a jury _de
medietate_, in a case which sprang out of the mutual
hostility of races and sects, you pack a jury all of one
race and all of one sect.... Yes, you have obtained a
verdict of Guilty; but you have obtained that verdict from
twelve men brought together by illegal means, and selected
in such a manner that their decision can inspire no
confidence.'--(Macaulay's Speeches, p. 314.)
Now let it be observed that this system, which treated the Roman
Catholics of Ireland as aliens in their own country, and at the same
time denied them the rights and privileges of aliens, has been in
force up to this year. And yet many on this side of the Channel are
innocently surprised that the Irish people have no great reverence for
English law, and no great love for British institutions; and so they
rashly conclude that the only way to govern such a lawless race is by
the strong arm of power. But the simple fact is, that the Irish from
time immemorial have been remarkable for their love of justice. To
this fact their bitterest enemies bear witness. In that category may
certainly be reckoned Sir John Davys, Irish Attorney-General under
James I.; yet this is the testimony which he bears:--'There is no
nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent
justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the
execution thereof, although it be against themselves, so as they may
have the benefit and protection of the law when upon just cause they
do desire it.' 'The truth is,' he adds, 'that in time of peace the
Irish are more fearful to offend the law than the English, or any
other nation whatsoever.' That simple expression, 'in time of peace,'
explains the whole matter. English law has unfortunately too often
presented itself to the people of Ireland as a cruel enemy, against
which it was a duty and a necessity to wage a chronic warfare; and it
is no great marvel if they take some time to learn that their enemy of
yesterday has suddenly become their friend. We have no faith in sudden
political conversions, especially in the case of nations; and we do
not despair of Mr. Gladstone's legislation for Ireland, because we
find that its healing properties are percolating but slowly through
the crust of inevitable prejudice which it had to encounter. We must
persevere in the good work, and Mr. Gladstone has shown his
earnestness in the ungrateful task of conciliating Ireland by passing
last session several measures of great importance to the welfare of
that country. Chief and foremost among them is the Juries (Ireland)
Bill. It is an elaborate piece of remedial legislation, though it
passed through Parliament without exciting attention, and it cannot
fail to produce an excellent effect in Ireland, as its character
becomes gradually known. It will no longer be possible for the most
violent partisan to pack a jury in Ireland, and we may reasonably
trust that in process of time Irishmen will learn to appeal to English
justice with a confidence to which they have been so long strangers.
Another Irish measure of great importance which received the sanction
of the Legislature last session is the Local Government (Ireland)
Act. Its clauses are thirty-two in number, and its object is to amend
the law relating to the local government of towns and populous places
in Ireland. It is not necessary to go through its provisions, but we
may say that their general effect is to make all illegality and
corruption in municipal elections and in the elections of local
commissioners impossible, or at least perilous; to put a stop to
anything like jobbing or any corrupt expenditure of public money by
the governing bodies of towns; to extend to Ireland, with the
necessary modifications, the provisions with regard to the public
health which prevail in England; and to empower the governing bodies
and ratepayers of all towns in Ireland to obtain lands at a cheap
rate, to unite or separate districts, and to alter rates. Another
clause of the bill empowers the Lord Lieutenant, with the approval of
the Treasury, to create a new Local Government Department of the Chief
Secretary's office, 'the salaries of such persons to be paid out of
the moneys to be provided by Parliament for such purpose.' The
tendency of the whole bill is to develop the faculty of
self-government throughout Ireland, and to give the country 'home
rule' in the only sense in which that boon would be practicable or
beneficial. What is needful above all things is to instil into the
minds of the Irish people habits of self-reliance and a respect for
English law; and the two bills which have elicited these observations
are most valuable contributions to that result. Viewing them in all
their bearings, we are bold to say that if the session had produced
nothing else, these two bills alone would have redeemed it from the
reproach of being a 'barren' session. In the election campaign of
1868, Mr. Gladstone described Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as a
great upas tree which was casting its baleful shadow over the whole
land; and ever since he has been in office he has set himself
vigorously and with unwearied patience not merely to cut down the
wide-spreading branches of that fatal tree, but to root up one by one
the noxious growths which flourished beneath its friendly shade. The
Jury Bill and the Local Government Act are the natural fruits of the
Church Bill and the Land Bill. It would have been impossible to pass
them while Protestant ascendancy existed. Other Irish bills have been
passed this session which, though of less importance than those we
have named, have a very practical bearing on the well-being and
conciliation of Ireland. Yet all these measures have been simply
ignored in the various criticisms of the session which have come
under our notice. As if, forsooth! the prosperity and contentment of
Ireland were not of the last consequence to the empire at large.
So much for the work of the Government in the field of Irish
legislation. Let us now turn to its tale of successful measures in
matters of English and imperial policy.
The Army Bill demands, of course, the first and chief place in our
review; and we must remark, _in limine_, on the singular ill-luck
which overtook the Government in introducing it. During the autumn and
winter of last year, the country very generally, and even
passionately, demanded a large scheme of army reorganization. Radicals
and Conservatives differed, no doubt, in their views of what was
desirable in a good scheme of army reform. The latter wished merely to
supplement and improve the existing system, which they considered as
near perfection as could reasonably be expected. The former were not
quite agreed among themselves. Some had a hankering after the Prussian
system, and some preferred the Swiss. But Conservatives, Whigs, and
Liberals were all agreed on one point, namely, that Mr. Cardwell's
scheme ought to be a large and comprehensive one, and that a large and
comprehensive scheme involved expense. The Conservatives wished that
expense to go towards the enlargement and perfecting of the old
system. On the other hand, the Liberals, as a body, demanded the
abolition of the purchase system, and the development of a new system
in its place. But all admitted the necessity of a considerable
expenditure, and there was a general acquiescence throughout the
country in the prospect of an increased income-tax. Meanwhile Bourbaki
made his fatal march to the frontier, Chanzy's army was defeated and
scattered, and Paris was obliged to capitulate. The preliminaries of
peace were agreed upon soon afterwards, and the Eastern question,
which Prince Gortschakoff had reopened in so insolent a manner, was in
a fair way to a pacific solution.
The return of calm after so violent a storm in the political firmament
soon began to tell on English nerves; the panic which prompted, during
the bewildering achievements of the German armies, the cry for an
efficient scheme of army reform subsided by degrees as the danger of
war receded from our shores, and even 'The Battle of Dorking' failed
to impress the British taxpayer with any fear of an imminent invasion.
The consequence was, that by the time Mr. Cardwell laid his scheme
before Parliament, the enthusiasm for army reorganization had cooled
down to the temperate, and among some philosophical Radicals, even to
the frigid zone. The measure of the Government was admitted on all
hands to be thorough and comprehensive, and it received the cordial
acquiescence of the country. But the panic was over, and, as a
consequence, there was an absence of that enthusiastic support which
enables a minister to defeat summarily anything like an attempt at an
organized system of factious opposition. Had the Franco-German war
ended two months earlier than it did, it is questionable whether the
Government would have received sufficient encouragement to attack the
purchase system, considering the expense which its abolition entailed
on the country. There can be no question that if Mr. Gladstone had
taken up the subject and made it his own, as he did the Irish Church
Bill and the Land Bill, he could at any time have commanded such
support from the country as would have carried all opposition before
it. One or two rousing speeches from him, exposing the manifold evils
of the purchase system, and explaining the plan of the Government,
would have done the thing. But the misfortune of Mr. Cardwell was that
he elaborated and matured his scheme at a time when the country was
prepared for almost any expense that would give us an army which would
secure the safety of the empire, and enable us to hold our proper
place in the councils of Europe; and that he propounded his scheme
when the looming spectre of increased taxation appeared a more
tangible evil than the danger of a foreign invasion. The Opposition
availed itself adroitly, if not very patriotically, of the turn of the
tide, and wooed the aid of the extreme Radicals by the cry of
extravagant expenditure. Nor did it cry altogether in vain. There are
a few Radicals in the House of Commons who cannot forgive Mr.
Gladstone for being a Christian. That a man of his commanding genius
and varied acquirements should still retain the faith of his childhood
is an enigma to them. But that he should ever presume to baulk their
efforts to sap and overthrow its foundations is an offence to them;
and, if the truth must be told, they would far rather have a leader of
the Epicurean type of Lord Palmerston or Mr. Disraeli. One or two of
these pseudo-Liberals have been practically in opposition all through
the session, and we shall be curious to see how they defend themselves
before their constituents when the day of reckoning comes. One fact at
all events is certain: it was in a great measure through the help
which they gave to the Opposition that the session has not been more
fruitful than it has been. Whenever the Opposition wished to waste a
night in purposeless debate, the manoeuvre was sure to be seconded
by this handful of Voltairean Radicals below the gangway.
Such are the circumstances under which the Government introduced their
Army Bill. But it is impossible to appreciate the importance of that
bill, or to understand the virulence of the opposition which it
encountered, without glancing at the evil which it sought to remedy.
When the Government resolved to ask the assent of Parliament to a
large scheme of army reform, they found themselves hampered and
fettered on all sides by the purchase system. The army was enclosed in
a network of vested interests which it was found impossible to break
through for the purpose of effecting even so slight a reform as the
abolition of the ranks of ensign and cornet. It had, in fact, ceased
to be the property of the nation, and was no longer under the control
of the sovereign. It had become mortgaged to the officers, and it was
absolutely necessary to get it out of pawn before it could be
effectually dealt with. In short, the purchase system must cease to
exist, or all ideas of army reorganization must be abandoned. Does
anyone think this too strong a statement of the case? Let him consider
the history of the purchase system, and he will think so no longer.
We have been told _ad nauseam_ that the purchase system has been the
mainstay of the British army. The bravery of our officers, their
well-bred manners, their discipline, even their patriotism and
loyalty, have all been ascribed to the magic of the purchase system,
and so has the _esprit de corps_ of the men. Now it seems to us that
there is a hitch in this style of reasoning, inasmuch as it implies
that the things which happen to exist together are necessarily related
to each other as cause and effect. The officers of the British army
may be all that their admirers declare them to be,--on that point we
shall have something to say presently--but it by no means follows that
the purchase system is the cause of their excellence. Nearly all the
merits which are claimed for the purchase system were conspicuous in
the German army in the last war; yet the purchase system is unknown in
the German army, and, in fact, in every army in the civilized world,
England alone excepted. Nor, indeed, does it embrace the whole of the
English army. The navy and the marines, the artillery and the
engineers know it not. Its advocates are therefore forced to this
dilemma: they must deny to the navy and to the non-purchase corps of
the army all those qualities which they claim as resulting from the
purchase system, or they are bound to admit that those qualities are
independent of the purchase system, and may continue to exist without
it. For our own part, we have no doubt whatever that the many
admirable qualities of the British officer are not only independent of
the purchase system, but that they remain in spite of it; for the
purchase system, as it has been in practice among us, is essentially a
demoralizing system. We say as it has been in practice among us,
because the purchase system and the illegal custom of paying more than
the regulation price for the value of commissions have been proved to
be inseparable. This has been demonstrated by the Royal Commission
which examined into the subject last year. The payment of
over-regulation prices has been forbidden in every variety of form for
more than a century, but it has grown and prospered on its
prohibitions. On a revision of the prices of commissions, in 1766, by
a board of general officers, a royal warrant was issued, which
contains the following stringent order with respect to over-regulation
prices:--'We having approved of the same (_i. e._, the prices
recommended by the board), our will and pleasure is, that _in all
cases where we shall permit any of the commissions specified therein
to be sold_,[66] the sum to be paid for the same shall not exceed the
prices set down in the said report. And all colonels, agents and
others, our military officers, are hereby required and directed to
conform strictly and carefully to the regulation hereby laid down and
established, upon pain of our highest displeasure.' In 1772 and 1773,
some other royal warrants were issued, prohibiting over-regulation
prices in equally peremptory terms. Still the unlawful traffic went on
unchecked, and in 1783 another step was taken to put a stop to it. A
general order was issued by the Commander-in-Chief requiring every
officer, in sending his application for leave to dispose of his
commission at the regulated price, 'solemnly to declare, on the word
and honour of an officer and a gentleman, that nothing beyond the
price limited by his Majesty's regulations was stipulated or promised,
directly or indirectly, and that no other mode of compensation or
gratuity was in contemplation of the parties, or should be given or
accepted in respect of such sale or purchase.' A similar declaration
was required of the officer desiring to purchase. He 'expressly
pledged his word and honour as an officer and a gentleman that he
would not, either then, or at any future time, give, by any means or
in any shape whatever, directly or indirectly, anymore than the
regulated price.' The commanding officer of the regiment was further
required to declare that he verily believed the established regulation
with regard to price was intended to be strictly complied with, and
that no clandestine bargain subsisted between the parties concerned.
This prohibition was extended to cases of exchange from half-pay to
full-pay, and from one corps to another. The commanding officer was at
the same time ordered to transmit the names of such officers in the
regiment as were willing to purchase in succession; and in cases where
the commanding officer recommended a junior for promotion over a
senior's head, he was to give his reasons for such recommendation. It
appears, therefore, that in establishing the rule of seniority,
tempered by selection, in regimental promotion, Mr. Cardwell has
simply revived an item of military reform attempted about ninety years
ago. But not to dwell on that, the general order from which we have
been quoting went on to clench its prohibition of over-regulation
prices in the following explicit language:--
'His Majesty has, by the advice of his board of general
officers, been further pleased to declare his determination
that any officer who shall be found to have given, or to
have stipulated, or promised, directly or indirectly, to
give anything beyond the regulated price, in disobedience
to these his Majesty's orders, or by any subterfuge or
equivocation to have evaded the same, _and to have thereby
shamefully forfeited his honour as an officer and a
gentleman, shall be dismissed from his Majesty's service_.'
Still the evil went on. Officers found means of evading the law and
escaping punishment, apparently without any prejudice to their honour
as officers and gentlemen in the eyes of the profession. Three years
later, therefore, that is, in 1786, another attempt was made to compel
British officers to keep their solemn and plighted word of honour; for
it came to that. A circular letter was addressed by the Secretary of
War to colonels of regiments, forbidding officers about to retire to
make any stipulation as to their successors, and insisting that they
should sell out or exchange 'in favour of such persons as his Majesty
should think fit to approve.' For it was discovered that by leaving
officers at liberty to select their successors they found means to
elude the strict orders prohibiting over-regulation prices.
In 1804, two circulars were issued by the Commander-in-Chief, one
addressed to army agents against the secret traffic in respect to
commissions, carried on with officers of the army; the other to
commanding officers of regiments, giving them precise directions,
which were to be strictly observed, in the purchase and sale of all
commissions. This paper states that 'his Majesty's regulations in
regard to the sums to be given and received for commissions in the
army,' had 'in various instances been disregarded.' The previous
orders on the subject are therefore repeated, and then 'the
Commander-in-Chief thinks proper to declare that any officer who shall
be found to have given, directly or indirectly, anything beyond the
regulated prices, in disobedience to his Majesty's orders, or to have
attempted to evade the regulations in any manner whatever, will be
reported by the Commander-in-Chief to his Majesty, in order that he
may be removed from the service.' Up to this time, and for three years
more, the prohibition of payments in excess of the regulation price
rested entirely on royal warrants and regulations. In 1807, however, a
clause was inserted in the Mutiny Act, making it a misdemeanor for any
agents to traffic in the sale of commissions, since 'great
inconvenience had arisen to his Majesty's service,' from the fact that
'much larger sums than are allowed by his Majesty's regulations are
often given and received for commissions, and great frauds committed.'
This is the first Parliamentary condemnation of over-regulation
prices, and it will be observed that the enactment applies to army
agents only; officers are not included. But in the year 1809, an Act
was passed for the 'Further Prevention of the Sale and Brokerage of
Offices,' and in that Act Parliamentary sanction is given for the
first time to the various prohibitions of over-regulation prices by
royal warrant. Not only was an officer to be immediately cashiered who
paid, received, or connived at the payment of over-regulation prices,
but further, 'as an encouragement for the detection of such practices,
such commission so forfeited shall be sold, and half the regulated
value (not exceeding £500) shall be paid to the informer.'
It is not necessary to follow the various alterations which the Mutiny
Act underwent in 1815-1829, for they are of no great importance. But
it is time that we should take stock of our inquiry thus far, and
endeavour to gauge the influence of the purchase system on the
character of the officers affected by it, as attested by competent
witnesses. It is obvious that up to the period at which we have now
arrived, that is, up to the year 1829, the payment of over-regulation
prices was found to be practically inseparable from the purchase
system. Nothing could have been done to stop it which was not done,
except the detection and condign punishment of the offenders. The
Sovereign, the Commander-in-Chief, the War Secretary, and Parliament,
all set their faces against the illegal traffic, and fulminated
threats and penal enactments against it; but all their efforts proved
unavailing, because there was an evident conspiracy among the general
body of officers to defeat the law, and, it is sad to add, to
dishonour their own word. For let it be remembered that the officer
who sold, and the officer who bought, and the commanding officer of
the regiment in which the transaction took place, were all required
'solemnly to declare,' and did 'solemnly declare on the word and
honour of an officer and a gentleman,' that, 'neither directly nor
indirectly,' had anything been paid or stipulated for beyond the
regulated price. And yet it was notorious that officers were
constantly in the habit of evading all their engagements 'by
subterfuge or equivocation,' and were thereby habitually violating
their plighted word, or, to quote again the language of the royal
warrant, 'had thereby shamefully forfeited their honour as officers
and gentlemen.'
Now, we should be inclined to say, _à priori_, that a system which
encouraged and enabled officers in the army to 'shamefully forfeit
their honour as officers and gentlemen,' could not fail to have a
vicious and demoralizing influence, not only on their professional
character as officers, but on their whole ἦθος as men. The Duke of
Wellington has often been quoted in recent debates as having said that
he had an army 'which could go anywhere and do anything.' No doubt the
Duke of Wellington succeeded, by dint of hard fighting, and the rare
qualities which he possessed as a commander, to manufacture such an
army out of the materials that came to his hand; but that was by no
means the kind of army which the purchase system gave him. On the
contrary, he was continually complaining, up to Waterloo, of the
ignorance, the stupidity, the insubordination, and, in short, the
general inefficiency of his officers. He could trust them in nothing,
he said; for they either could not understand and execute his
commands, or they deliberately disobeyed them. And in some cases he
found them shirking their duties, and asking permission to return to
England on trivial pleas. But it will be better to let the Duke speak
for himself. On the 15th of May, 1811, he wrote to the Earl of
Liverpool a letter, in which he expresses great vexation at the escape
of 1,400 of the enemy, although he had 'employed two divisions and a
brigade to prevent their escape,' and 'had done everything that could
be done in the way of order and instruction.' And then he goes on to
add:--
'I certainly feel every day more and more the difficulty of
the situation in which I am placed. I am obliged to be
everywhere, and if absent from any operation something goes
wrong. It is to be hoped that the general and other
officers of the army will at last acquire that experience
which will teach them that success can be attained only by
attention to the most minute details, and by tracing every
part of every operation from its origin to its conclusion,
point by point, and ascertaining that the whole is
understood by those who are to execute it.'
In another letter to the Earl of Liverpool, dated July 20, 1811, he
recommends
'the adoption of the rule which I have made in respect to
staff appointments attached to the British army, viz., that
those who hold them shall receive no emolument on account
of them if absent from their duty on account of their
health for a greater length of time than two months, unless
their absence should have been occasioned by wounds.'
He thinks that this rule will probably be considered harsh, but he
insists on it as necessary, on account of 'the abuse of sick
certificates.' In a letter dated 29th September, 1811, and also
addressed to the Earl of Liverpool, he uses the following strong
language:--
'I must also observe that British officers require to be
kept in order, as well as the soldiers under their command,
particularly in a foreign service. The experience which I
have had of their conduct in the Portuguese service has
shown me that there must be an authority, and that a strong
one, to keep them within due bounds; otherwise they would
only disgust the soldiers over whom they should be placed,
the officers whom they should be destined to assist, and
the country in whose service they should be employed.'
Again:--
'The ignorance of their duty of the officers of the army
who are every day arriving in this country, and the general
inattention and disobedience to orders by many of those who
have been long here, increase the details of the duty to
such an extent as to render it almost impracticable to
carry it on; and owing to this disobedience and neglect, I
can depend upon nothing, however well regulated and
ordered.'--_Letter to Lieut.-General Hill, Oct. 13, 1811._
At Freneda, on the 19th of February, 1813, he issued the following
general order:--
'The commander of the forces is concerned to be obliged to
notice such repeated disobedience to orders _on every
subject_. It might have been expected that in a case in
which the convenience of the officers themselves was the
object of the orders issued, they would have been obeyed;
but the general officers and commanding officers of
regiments may depend upon it that until they enforce
obedience to every order, and see that the officers under
them understand and recollect what is ordered, those
subjects of complaint must exist.'
The following letter shows what the Duke meant when he said that he
had an army that would 'go anywhere and do anything.' In the rank and
file he had splendid material, but here is his description of the kind
of officers which the purchase system gave him:--
'I have received your letter of the 5th, and I am sorry
that I cannot recommend ---- for promotion, because I have
had him in arrest since the battle for disobeying an order
given to him by me verbally. The fact is, that if
discipline means habits of obedience to orders, as well as
military instruction, we have but little of it in the army.
Nobody ever thinks of obeying an order; and all the
regulations of the Horse Guards, as well as of the War
Office, and all the orders of the army applicable to this
peculiar service, are so much waste paper. It is, however,
an unrivalled army for fighting, if the soldiers can only
be kept in their ranks during the battle; but it wants some
of those qualities which are indispensable to enable a
general to bring them into the field in the order in which
an army ought to be to meet an enemy, or to take all the
advantage to be derived from a victory; and the cause of
these defects is the want of habits of obedience and
attention to orders by the inferior officers; and indeed, I
might add, by all. They never attend to an order with an
intention to obey it, or sufficiently to understand it, be
it ever so clear, and therefore never obey it when
obedience becomes troublesome, or difficult, or
important.'--_Letter to Colonel Torrens, dated July 18,
1813._
Two more extracts from the Duke of Wellington's correspondence must
suffice for this part of our survey:--
'I really believe that, with the exception of my old
Spanish infantry, I have got not only the worst troops, but
the worst equipped army, with the worst staff, that was
ever brought together.'--_Letter to Earl Bathurst, dated
June 25, 1815._
In the same letter he goes on to complain of an officer who 'knows no
more of his business than a child, and I am obliged to do it for him;
and, after all, I cannot get him to do what I order him.'
For the following extract we are indebted to an able pamphlet entitled
'The Purchase System,' by the author of 'The Second Armada:'--
'Our officer is a gentleman.... Indeed, we carry this
principle of the gentleman, and the objection of
intercourse with those under his command, so far, as that,
in my opinion, the duty of a subaltern officer, as done in
a foreign army, is not done at all in the cavalry or the
British infantry of the line. It is done in the Guards by
the sergeants. Then our gentleman-officer, however
admirable his conduct in the field, however honourable to
himself, however glorious and advantageous to his country,
is but a poor creature in disciplining his company, in
camp, quarters or cantonments.'--_Letter of Duke of
Wellington, dated April 22, 1829._
Our inquiry has now led us to this result. The purchase system and the
abuse of over-regulation prices have been found to be so bound up
together that all efforts to destroy the one while retaining the other
have always ended in the most signal failure; and the demoralizing
influence of the whole system was such that the officers of the
British army were in the habit of 'shamefully forfeiting their honour
as officers and gentlemen,' and were utterly incompetent, the Duke of
Wellington being witness, to fill the most ordinary duties of their
profession. In none of the extracts, however, which we have quoted
from the Duke of Wellington's published despatches does he directly
attribute the evils of which he complains to the purchase system, with
its inseparable concomitant, the payment of over-regulation prices.
His mind was too much occupied with the daily labour of correcting the
faults of his officers to find time to analyze the causes of which
those faults were the natural offspring. Here and there, however, we
find indications that the inefficiency of his officers and the system
of purchase were in his mind intimately connected. This, at all
events, is the sense in which we read the following extract from a
letter to the Commissary-in-Chief, dated November 6, 1810:--
'I may be wrong, but I have objections to all those rules
which prevent the promotion of officers of merit. It is the
abuse of the unlimited power of promotion which ought to be
prevented; but the power itself ought not to be taken, by
regulation, from the Crown, or from those who do the
business of the Crown. By these regulations we are
undermining as fast as possible the efficiency of the
Government. There is no power anywhere of rewarding
extraordinary services or extraordinary merit; and, under
circumstances which require unwearied attention in every
branch and department of our military system, we appear to
be framing regulations to prevent ourselves from
commanding it by the only stimulus--the honourable reward
of merit.'
It is plain that this criticism strikes at the very root and essence
of the purchase system; nor is it the only criticism of the kind that
the Duke of Wellington has left on record. In March, 1824, the
Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York, submitted to the Duke of
Wellington, then Master of the Ordnance, three plans of military
reform which he had in contemplation. Those plans, unfortunately, are
not given, but we gather from the correspondence between the Duke and
Major-General Sir Herbert Taylor, that it was proposed, among other
things, 'to stop all regimental promotion by purchase, and on the
retirement of an officer the successor to be selected by the
Commander-in-Chief from the general mass.' It is impossible, without
having the whole correspondence before us, clearly to make out what
the Duke's views were on this point; but it is obvious that this part
of the scheme is in the fullest accord with the opinions expressed by
him in the passage last quoted; and we may therefore presume that, if
he could have seen his way to any fair and practicable plan for
abolishing purchase, he would have given it his support. But, however
that may be, one thing is beyond all doubt--the Duke of Wellington
condemned absolutely and peremptorily the payment of over-regulation
prices. Witness the following passage in his letter to Sir Herbert
Taylor, dated 'London, 17th March, 1824:'--
'I would forbid any brokers to interfere, and would declare
the determination of the Commander-in-Chief to recommend to
his Majesty to cancel the grant of any commission granted
in consequence of any negotiation with them. I would
likewise recommend to his Royal Highness to declare to the
army his determination to recommend to his Majesty to
cancel any commission granted for which it shall appear
that the officer appointed to it has paid more than the
regulated price, and to dismiss from his Majesty's service
any colonel or commanding officer of a regiment who may
appear to have forwarded or recommended such appointment,
knowing that more than the regulated price had been, or was
to be, paid for it.'
'I am afraid,' he adds despondingly, 'that much of what I above
proposed is difficult to carry into execution, and, as I have above
stated, it may be impossible to prevent the evil altogether.' In his
reply, Sir Herbert Taylor reminded the Duke that the payment of
over-regulation prices was already forbidden by Act of Parliament, and
that the prohibition was sanctioned by the imposition of penalties
which were, in fact, severer than those suggested by the Duke. 'But
in either case the difficulty is to establish the proof, without
which the promotion could not be cancelled, nor the officer himself,
or those parties to the transaction, dismissed the service.' What
stronger proof could we have that the illegal and immoral traffic in
over-regulation prices clung, as an inseparable parasite, to the
purchase system, and could be destroyed only by cutting down the trunk
which supported it?
We have now arrived at the year 1824. Up to that time the regulation
was still in force which obliged every officer who was in any way
concerned in any step of regimental promotion to declare on his solemn
word of honour as an officer and a gentleman that he was not, directly
or indirectly, privy to any payment made or stipulated for beyond the
regulation price. But this pledge was deliberately and systematically
violated. 'Upon this point,' says the Duke of Wellington, in the
letter to Sir Herbert Taylor already quoted, 'I believe we are all
agreed, as likewise that the certificate upon honour is useless; that
it is commonly signed whether the contents are known to be true or
known to be otherwise, and that on this ground alone it ought to be
discontinued.' Now let the reader just pause for a moment, and
consider what this implies. It means that the officer who retired, the
officer who succeeded him, and the commanding officer of the regiment
in which the transaction took place, all pledged their word and honour
as officers and gentlemen to a declaration which they knew to be a
lie. Nor were they a small minority who so acted--a minority looked
down upon by the general body of their brother officers as men who had
disgraced themselves. On the contrary, this practice of dishonouring
their plighted word was all but universal wherever the system of
purchase prevailed. At the very time when the Duke of Wellington was
bringing this serious indictment against the truthfulness and honour
of British officers, there was a debate going on in the House of
Commons on the Mutiny Act; and it was proposed to abolish the
certificate upon honour, on the ground that there was 'scarcely one
case in ten in which officers received their commissions at the
regulated price.' 'Scarcely one case in ten' in which British officers
did not violate their word of honour and subscribe their names to a
lie! And to perpetuate a system which produced this result, some two
hundred gentlemen in the House of Commons and a majority in the House
of Lords had recourse this session to tactics which, but for the
resolution of the Premier, would have wasted the best part of the
session, and brought an amount of discredit on Parliament from which
it might have found it hard to recover. But more of that anon. In pity
to the frail virtue of the British officer, the certificate upon
honour was abolished in April, 1824, and has not since been revived.
But the illegality of over-regulation prices was at the same time
reaffirmed, and the same penalties, which had proved so unavailing,
were reiterated.
This is briefly, but substantially, the history of the question up to
this year. 'The result of our inquiry,' says the Royal Commission of
1870, 'is that the payment and the receipt by officers of the army of
any sum in excess of the regulated price for the purchase, sale, or
exchange of commissions is expressly prohibited by the Act of 49 Geo.
III. c. 126.' Indeed, it was impossible that the commissioners could
have come to any other conclusion. The facts are too plain to admit of
more than one interpretation; and, moreover, the courts of justice had
already ruled the point. In a case that came before him in 1855, the
Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer decided that an undertaking by an
officer to give up his commission in a regiment in consideration of a
sum of money promised him beyond the regulated price, was an illegal
transaction, and brought the parties concerned within the provisions
and penalties of the Act of 49 Geo. III. c. 126. This construction of
the Act was confirmed, in 1862, by the Court of Common Pleas. Yet this
illegal practice has lived and thrived up to this very year, in spite
of all the attempts made at various times to put it down. 'We have no
reason to doubt,' says the Report of the Royal Commission of 1870,
'that it prevailed from the time when the prices of commissions were
first fixed in the year 1719-20;' and 'experience has shown that the
most explicit prohibitions and the most stringent regulations have
utterly failed to prevent or even check the practice.' Is there need
of further evidence to prove that it was impossible to destroy the
illegal and degrading practice of over-regulation prices without the
entire abolition of the purchase system?
We have seen how completely the officers reared under the purchase
system failed in all the requirements of their profession during the
Peninsular War. Is there any reason to believe that the same class of
officers would come scathless out of a similar ordeal now? Doubtless,
the officers of the British army have participated in the general
advancement of society in knowledge and in other respects during the
last fifty years. But has their improvement been in anything like the
same ratio as that visible in other professions? We seriously doubt
it. We believe, indeed, that we have now a far larger proportion of
able and highly-trained officers than we had when the Duke of
Wellington expressed the opinions which we have quoted. Still, taking
our officers in the aggregate, we believe that they are far below the
standard even of respectable competency. This, at all events, is the
frank confession of a distinguished officer, who happens, in addition,
to be a strenuous upholder of the purchase system. In his evidence
before the Royal Commission on military education in 1869, Lord
Strathnairn declared as follows:--
'These mistakes (which he had just mentioned) consist in
officers giving the wrong words of command, and being
unable to execute necessary, and often the simplest
movements. Some officers of long standing, and even
commanding officers, are ignorant of the simple but
important detail, the difference between a change _of
front_ and a change _of position_.... Movements are learnt
by rote for the occasion.... Hence, at my inspections, in
India as well as in Ireland, of regiments, when I have
asked officers the object of evolutions in the book, or
called on them to perform simple strategical movements
adapted to them, I have found that they are ignorant of
their use or the advantage to be derived from them in
operations.... As officers are uninstructed in the first
principles of practical or field operations and movements,
they are equally in the dark as to those of a higher order,
or which are _connected with ground_.... The whole course
of my evidence goes to prove that, owing to a mistaken
system of education and training, and want of reward for
merit, the absence of proper qualifications, of course with
exceptions, exists in all grades, including that of
commanding officers.'
These opinions do not greatly differ from those which the Duke of
Wellington expressed in Spain sixty years ago, and we believe that
they would be confirmed by every competent authority; indeed, they are
abundantly confirmed in the voluminous Blue Book from which we have
extracted them. Now, this professional ignorance is a much more
serious matter in our time than it was when the Duke of Wellington was
fighting against the armies of Napoleon; for in the scientific mastery
of his profession the British officer of that day was probably not far
behind the officers against whom he was pitted. On both sides the art
of war was learnt, for the most part, in the field, and under the
tuition of the two great captains of the age. There is very little
doubt that, but for the genius of Wellington, the Peninsular campaign
would have ended, as far as the British army was concerned, in
disaster and ignominy. But the conditions of warfare have been greatly
changed since then. Arms of precision, and other improvements in the
mechanics of war, have an increasing tendency to diminish the value of
individual dash and pluck, and to exalt in a relative proportion the
importance of professional skill. The most admirable combinations on
the part of a general may now, much more easily than heretofore, be
defeated by the bungling of a subordinate. The intelligence and
precision with which superior orders were executed by the youngest
subalterns in the German army during the late war was a theme of
general admiration; and is it not clear that an army equal to the
German in all other respects, but inferior to it in this all-important
point, must have been inevitably worsted? But subalterns are the raw
material out of which generals are made, and it stands to reason,
taking human nature as it is, that when you take from men the ordinary
incentives to exertion, they are not likely to arrive at any high
degree of excellence in their calling. A system which promotes the
indolent rich dullard over the industrious poor man of brains, is sure
to damp the energies of both: of the one because his money enables him
to obtain without labour what he covets; of the other, because he
knows that, without money, industry and brains are of no avail. The
Duke of Cambridge, in his evidence before the Royal Commission of
1870, stated, as the result of his experience, that rich young men,
having fewer motives for exertion than others, would not take the
trouble to excel in their profession. But rich young men are precisely
the class of officers who are cherished by the purchase system--men
who join the army for a few years as a fashionable pastime, but who
have never had any serious intention to make the profession of arms
the business of their life. It is notorious, on the other hand, that
the purchase system keeps in subordinate ranks many men who have
genius to command armies. Now and then they come to the surface in the
general sifting which real war occasions, but only after much mischief
has meanwhile been done by the incapacity of those whom the accident
of having a heavier purse had placed over their heads. The Indian
Mutiny discovered the talents of Sir Henry Havelock, who had been
purchased over so often that he was constrained to speak thus of
himself in his fifty-sixth year:--'The honour of an old soldier on the
point of having his juniors put over him is so sensitive that, if I
had no family to support, and the right of choice in my own hands, I
would not serve one hour longer.' Lord Clyde, in his evidence before
the Commission of 1856, says:--'I have known very many estimable men,
having higher qualities as officers than usual, men of real promise
and merit, and well educated, but who could not purchase; when such
men were purchased over, their ardour cooled, and they frequently left
the service; or, when they continued, it was from necessity, and not
from any love of the profession.' In fact, Lord Clyde was himself a
conspicuous example of the mischief of the purchase system. He had
several times been purchased over, and, but for the Crimean War, it is
probable that he would never have commanded an army.
Where, indeed, can we find a stronger argument against the purchase
system than in the Crimean war itself? The gallantry and endurance of
men and officers alike were beyond all praise. But when that admission
has been made, what else can be said with truth in praise of that
campaign? Was it not, all through, one dreary series of military
blunders and general mismanagement unrelieved by one single ray of
military genius engendered by the purchase system? A French General is
said to have characterized the British troops at Inkerman as 'an army
of lions led by asses.' Whether the epigram was really uttered by the
General in question, or was one of the inventions of the British camp,
it certainly expressed a very general feeling both at home and in the
Crimean army.
Another objection to the purchase system is, that it sets a premium on
cowardice. According to a return furnished by Messrs. Cox and Co., who
are agents for twenty-one regiments of cavalry, and one hundred and
twelve battalions of infantry, exclusive of the household cavalry and
brigade of Guards, the following is a correct statement of the
regulation prices and over-regulation prices of commissions in the
cavalry regiments for which they are agents:--
Regulation. Over-regulation. Total.
Cornet £450 -- £450
Lieutenant 250 £575 825
Captain 1,100 2,006 3,106
Major 1,400 1,600 3,000
Lieut.-Colonel 1,300 1,794 3,094
_______ ______ _______
£4,500 £5,975 £10,475
It appears from this statement that the average over-regulation price
paid in the cavalry is more than double the present regulation price.
In the infantry of the line the over-regulation price is not so high
as this, but it is nevertheless considerable; and the upshot of the
whole matter is that, according to the estimate furnished from Messrs.
Cox's office, the sum of £3,577,325 is at this moment invested by
officers in their commissions over and above the regulation price. In
other words, the army, as we have already observed, is mortgaged to
the officers by a long-established system of illegal traffic; and no
reform was possible till that system was destroyed root and branch.
But our immediate object is to show that the system really puts a
premium on cowardice, or, at least, on a dereliction of patriotism.
Let us take the case of the colonel who has paid upwards of £10,000
for his commission, and let us suppose him to have a family, but to
have no private fortune. A war breaks out, and he is ordered on
foreign service. He dies from one of the numerous causes--other than
wounds which are incident to a soldier's life in a campaign--and the
consequence is that his investment of £10,475 is lost for ever to his
family. The only exception to this hard fate is the case of an officer
killed in action, or dying within six months of wounds received in the
face of the enemy. And even in that case the hardship is only
mitigated, not redressed; for the families of such officers are not
allowed to receive more than the value of the regulation price of the
commission. We thus see that at the very moment when the officer's
mind ought to be most free from all disturbing influences, it is, in
reality, likely to be distracted between two conflicting duties: the
duty of making provision for his family on the one hand, and the duty
of sacrificing his life, if need be, for his Queen and country on the
other.
Nor is death in the fulfilment of his duty the only event which
involves the forfeiture of the money paid by an officer in excess of
the over-regulation price. He may be dismissed from the service or may
receive a hint to retire quietly on condition of being permitted to
sell his commission. In either case he loses the value of his
over-regulation investment. The same thing happens in the case of an
officer promoted to the rank of a major-general on the fixed
establishment. He cannot recover any portion of what he has paid for
his commissions.
Other illustrations might be given, such as the case of officers
placed on temporary half-pay in consequence of a reduction in the
establishment; but enough has surely been said to show the utterly
indefensible character of the purchase system, and to prove that no
efficient scheme of army reorganization was possible till the system
was swept clean away. Our main purpose, however, has not been to
demonstrate the irretrievable badness of the purchase system, but to
draw the attention of our readers to the astounding fact that, for the
sake of perpetuating this rotten system, an organized attempt, almost
unparalleled in the annals of Parliament, was made by an Opposition in
a hopeless minority, to defeat by factious means the declared wishes
of the majority, and so to waste the best part of the session. The
scheme of the Government, on the motion for its second reading, was
submitted to a prolonged and exhaustive debate, and on the last night
of the debate, when it was evident that it would be carried by an
overwhelming majority, the leader of the Opposition made a speech for
the purpose of persuading his followers that, however imperfect the
bill might be in details, its _animus_ was so good as to entitle it to
a favourable consideration in committee. 'The _animus_ of the measure
is purely good,' he said, 'and the proposal of the Government is the
first attempt to weld the three great arms of the country--the
regulars, the militia, and the volunteers--into one force.' The
amendment was accordingly negatived without a division.
But by-and-bye Mr. Lowe produced his unpopular and unstatesmanlike
budget, and Mr. Disraeli saw his opportunity. In the middle of March
he ventured to ridicule the purchase system as
'Very much belonging to the same class of questions as a
marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Each side is
convinced that their solution is the only one absolutely
necessary for the welfare of society; while calmer minds,
who do not take so extreme an interest in the subject, are
of opinion that, whatever way it may be decided, it is
possible that affairs may go on much the same.'
Two or three weeks later, when Mr. Disraeli wanted to rally the
colonels around him in his attack on the Government, he suddenly
turned round and defended purchase with the zeal of a fanatic. And
then began, under the sanction of the Opposition leader, that series
of Fabian tactics which wasted so much of the session, and which, if
not opposed to the letter of parliamentary usage, were certainly at
variance with its spirit. It has hitherto been understood that the
principle of a bill is affirmed on its second reading. Now the
cardinal principle of Mr. Cardwell's bill was the abolition of
purchase in the army, and it was affirmed by the House of Commons
without a division. Yet the question of purchase was fought again,
fiercely, over every clause, almost over every word of the bill in its
passage through committee. When one amendment was disposed of, it
suddenly appeared again in another shape by some ingenious abuse of
the forms of the House.
At last, however, the Bill left the House of Commons, and was
presented to the House of Lords in the middle of July. There it was
met, on the part of the Opposition, by the following amendment:--
'That this House is unwilling to assent to a second reading
of this bill until it has laid before it, either by her
Majesty's Government, or through the medium of an inquiry
and report of a Royal Commission, a complete and
comprehensive scheme for the first appointment, promotion,
and retirement of officers; for the amalgamation of the
regular and auxiliary land forces; and for securing the
other changes necessary to place the military system of the
country on a sound and efficient basis.'[67]
Either the amendment was insincere on the face of it, or it betrayed
the most culpable ignorance. Lord Northbrook had, in fact, anticipated
it in a speech of remarkable ability, in which he showed that the Duke
of Richmond's amendment was simply inept. For the scheme of the
Government fulfilled all the conditions required by the amendment,
except in the matter of retirement; and that was one of those details
which could not have been put into a bill beforehand, but must be
dealt with in the light and under the guidance of experience. The bill
was supposed to have been so mutilated in its passage through the
House of Commons, that nothing remained of it except the naked
proposal to abolish purchase. But the plain fact was, as Lord
Northbrook pointed out, that the provisions which had been dropped did
not affect the bill vitally, or even materially. One was an extension
of the Enlistment Act--a matter of no importance; another related to
the ballot for the militia--also of no immediate importance; and the
third of the abandoned provisions was that which empowered counties to
raise money for supplying militia barracks. In all other respects the
bill reached the House of Lords in the shape in which it had been
introduced in the House of Commons, and the proposal to postpone the
consideration of it till more information was furnished was obviously
nothing more than a device for saving the purchase system, with all
its evil and all its scandal, for at least another year. The amendment
was carried, however, by a majority of twenty-five.
The Government was thus placed in a most awkward dilemma. They had the
choice, on the one hand, of accepting the practical rejection of the
bill for a year; and the consequence of doing so would have been as
follows:--The exhaustive discussion of the subject in the House of
Commons would have been thrown away; all the plans of the Government
for the reorganization of the army must have remained in abeyance for
at least another year; and the interests of the officers would in the
meantime have been needlessly sacrificed, for in such a state of
uncertainty the value of over-regulation prices would probably have
fallen to zero. Moreover, we should have had such an agitation
throughout the country as would, almost to a certainty, have made it
impossible for any Government to offer a second time the very liberal
terms which officers are now enabled to secure. The Opposition
denounced the compensation which the Government offered to the
officers as wasteful expenditure, and if the short-sighted vote of the
House of Lords had not been set aside, the country would have taken
the Opposition at its word, and have refused to sanction so much of
the increased expenditure as was caused by the payment of
over-regulation prices. Purchase would have gone inevitably; but the
officers would have lost more than half the compensation which is now
secured to them. And for this they would have had to thank their
injudicious champions in both Houses of Parliament. The Government has
literally 'saved them from their friends.' Earl Russell and the
Marquis of Salisbury fired up with indignation when this warning was
whispered in their ears during the debate on the second reading of the
Army Bill. 'It had been suggested,' said the former, 'that if the
amendment were carried the proposal of the Government to compensate
officers for what was called the over-regulation price would be
withdrawn; but he must say that that seemed to him to be an incredible
supposition.... If compensation for over-regulation prices was just in
March, 1871, it could not be unjust twelve months later.' With all due
deference to Lord Russell, we think that time _is_ an element in the
case, and that an offer which was just this year might be unjust next
year. It would have been the duty of the Government to consider the
will of the country as well as the interests of the officers, and to
take care that the former did not suffer by any undue consideration
for the latter. A man who refuses a more than equitable offer by way
of compensation for a loss incurred in an illegal manner, has no right
to complain if the offer is not repeated, more especially if he has
received fair warning of what is likely to be the consequence of his
refusal.
But, whether just or not, the plain truth is that the House of
Commons would not have sanctioned a second time the payment of
over-regulation prices. In the interest of the officers themselves,
therefore, in the interest of the House of Lords also, but, most of
all, in the interest of the army and of the nation, the Government was
bound to avail itself of any legal means which might enable it to
prevent the mischief that could not fail to follow from the rash vote
of the House of Lords. Ministers accordingly advised the Queen to
abolish purchase by royal warrant, which was at once done. This has
been called a _coup d'état_, and a display of 'high-handed despotism.'
But no one whose opinion is worth anything has ventured to question
the legality of the act. Sir Roundell Palmer, whose absence from the
House of Commons at the time was supposed to indicate his disapproval,
has given the high sanction of his authority, not only to the
legality, but to the advisability, under the circumstances, of what
the Ministry had done. But though the legality of the act has not been
disputed, a chorus of voices in and out of Parliament have pronounced
it 'unconstitutional.' It is not easy to see the distinction. An
unconstitutional act we take to mean an act perpetrated in violation
of the constitution. But what part of the constitution has been
infringed, either in letter or in spirit, by the exercise of the royal
warrant in the abolition of purchase in the army? The purchase system
was created by royal warrant, nor has it ever rested on any other
sanction. Constitutionally and legally, therefore, all that was
required for its abolition was merely the withdrawal of the warrant
which gave it existence; and that is precisely what has been done.
Constitutional or legal objection there is none that can bear a
moment's examination, and the whole matter resolves itself into a
question of expediency. Those who consider the purchase system the
mainstay of the British army will, of course, be of opinion that it
was highly inexpedient to abolish it. Others, however, who prefer to
look at the question in the light of facts rather than of theory and
sentiment, will say that it was expedient to abolish at the earliest
moment in which it could legally be done, a system whose history is
such as we have described, and the continuance of which for another
year, after all that had taken place, would have been fraught with
evil to public morality, and have effectually prevented in the
interval all possibility of reorganizing the army.
But the sting of the royal warrant abolishing purchase in the army lay
doubtless in the fact that it was only exercised after the consent of
Parliament had been previously asked, and (by the Lords) refused. And
if this humiliation had been put upon the House of Lords wantonly, and
without sufficient cause, the Government would have merited very
severe censure. But was there not a sufficient cause? In the first
place, the abolition of purchase was part of a large scheme, which
embraced, _inter alia_, a very liberal offer of compensation for the
extinction of the vested interests which the officers of the army had
illegally contracted. It seemed, therefore, more respectful to the
House of Commons, which was asked to vote the money, that the scheme
of the Government should be submitted to it in its integrity; and
there is no doubt, we apprehend, that if the House of Commons had met
the second reading of the bill by a vote similar to that which was
carried in the House of Lords, the Government would have bowed to the
decision. But the question assumed quite a different aspect after the
bill had been affirmed, in all its essential features, by decisive
majorities in the House of Commons. It was then in the power of the
Government to abolish purchase by royal warrant, and to send the bill,
thus disencumbered of its bone of contention, up to the House of
Lords. But the Lords would certainly have resented such treatment even
more indignantly than they did the subsequent rescinding of their
vote. So the bill was presented to them as it left the lower House;
and they met it, not by a direct negative, not even by an amendment
affirming the expediency of retaining the purchase system, but by a
motion for delay. The debate which followed, however, clearly showed
that the majority in the upper House were in reality fighting, not for
more information, but for the retention of the purchase system. The
consequence of yielding to their injudicious vote would therefore have
been simply the waste of a precious twelvemonth; for everybody
admitted that the purchase system was doomed, and could not survive
another year. But it would have been much more satisfactory if it
could have been abolished by Act of Parliament, for its resurrection
would have been a moral impossibility; whereas, as matters now stand,
it may be revived any moment by the same process which has for the
time destroyed it. This consideration alone seems to us to be a
sufficient justification for the course which the Government took. The
abolition of purchase by Act of Parliament was the more excellent way,
and the Government was right in trying it before availing itself of
its last resource in the royal warrant. And certainly the officers
are the last persons who ought to complain of what has been done; for
there can be little doubt that if the Government had begun by
abolishing purchase it would have found it hard, in the absence of a
_quid pro quo_, to persuade the House of Commons to sanction the
swollen estimates which compensation for over-regulation prices
necessitated. The Lords, too, if they would only consider the matter
calmly, would see reason to be grateful to a Government which has
rescued them from much obloquy and from a most dangerous agitation. It
is hardly an exaggeration to say that the rejection of the Ballot Bill
and of the Army Bill in one session would have gravely imperilled the
existence of the House of Lords, at least in its present form. But the
unavoidable mortification which the Government was compelled to
inflict upon it served to appease the public resentment, and even to
create a certain degree of sympathy in favour of our hereditary
legislators.
The limits of our space forbid us to do more than notice very
cursorily the remaining Ministerial achievements of the session. We do
not know what others may think, but our own opinion is that the
University Tests Bill is at least as important a measure as the
Divorce Bill, which was about the sole legislative triumph of the
session of 1857. To the readers of the _British Quarterly_, at all
events, that session will not appear a barren one which has thrown
open to Nonconformists the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Nor
will the working classes quarrel seriously with a session which has
given them the Trades' Unions Bill. The repeal of the Ecclesiastical
Titles Bill may be considered a small matter. But the passage of it
through Parliament consumed the best part of a session, and disturbed
the peace of the three kingdoms. It was, moreover, a stride backward
in civilization, for it was one of those attempts, against which
Nonconformists have always protested, to defend the truth by the
carnal weapons of penal legislation. It was also the commencement of a
retrograde policy towards Ireland. When the Queen visited that
country, and on several other occasions, the territorial titles of the
Irish Roman Catholic bishops were freely recognised in official
documents. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill made them penal, and the
result was what men of sense predicted at the the time. The bill
became a dead letter; for it was systematically violated, because it
was too absurd and too antagonistic to the principles of religious
liberty to be enforced. There was a moral fitness in its repeal, under
the Premiership of Mr. Gladstone, for his was the great speech which
exposed its mischief and its incongruities when it was passing through
the House of Commons.
The Ballot Bill can hardly be reckoned among the achievements of the
session, since it has failed to become law; but it is certainly one of
the achievements of the Government. It was carried through the House
of Commons by overwhelming majorities, and it is not the fault of the
Government that it is not now on the statute book. The Ministry was
blamed for pressing it on, knowing that the Lords would reject it; but
the Ministry had no such knowledge. On the contrary, there was some
reason to believe that the Peers would have been satisfied with
thwarting one of the capital measures of the session. But even if the
Government had felt morally certain that the Lords would reject the
Ballot Bill, we still insist that they were bound to go on with it.
Nothing did so much to damage the prestige of Parliamentary
Government, and to exasperate the working classes against the old
Parliament as the _dolce far niente_ policy of the Palmerstonian
_régime_. Lord Palmerston's adroitness consisted mainly in combining
the maximum of liberal promises with the minimum of liberal
fulfilment. He took up measures to conciliate the more Liberal of the
electors, and dropped them to conciliate the majority of the House of
Commons. More valuable, therefore, even than the passage of the Ballot
Bill into law, is the assurance which the conduct of the Government
has given that it was thoroughly in earnest. But it was contended in
influential quarters that the sincerity of the Government was
sufficiently evinced by the second reading of the bill, and ministers
were accordingly advised to suspend all further progress of the bill,
and resume it again at that stage next session. Besides other
objections to that proposal, it is enough to say of it that it is
founded on a misconception of the powers of the Government. It is the
simple fact that the Government had no power to do what it was so
persistently advised to do. A proposal was made in 1861 that some
power of that kind should be given by statute to either House of
Parliament. But the House of Commons rejected the proposal on account
of 'the grave and numerous objections' to it, and particularly because
'this suspending power in either House of Parliament, if exercised at
its own discretion, would be at variance with the prerogative of the
Crown.'
Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill has been considered one of the chief
failures of the session; and we do not wish to conceal our opinion
that there were some tactical blunders in the management of it; but
they were blunders which are in a great degree excusable by the
peculiar circumstances of the session. It was, in our humble judgment,
a blunder to introduce such a bill without a determination to deliver
a decisive battle upon it; for the introduction of the bill roused the
opposition of a powerful and thoroughly organized class interest,
while the withdrawal of it alienated those to whom the Government
looked for support. Mr. Bruce's excuse, and it is so far valid, is
that the unexpected tactics of the Opposition in respect to the Army
Bill wasted so much of the session that there was no opportunity to
fight the battle of the Licensing Bill as he had intended to have
fought it. The bill itself appears to us to be a fair compromise, and
we have no doubt that it was calculated to do much good. The brewers
and publicans have gained a victory for the moment, and they have the
satisfaction of having beaten the Government candidate in East Surrey;
but their victory is likely to prove a Pyrrhic one. It has opened the
eyes of the public to the ruin which the excessive indulgence in
intoxicating drinks is causing, and the more the question is
discussed, the less reason will the publicans have for rejoicing over
the defeat of Mr. Bruce's bill. The yearly sum spent on intoxicating
liquors in the United Kingdom has now reached the enormous and
portentous figure of £110,000,000, and the annual committals for
drunkenness amounted in the year 1869 to 122,310. These are frightful
facts; and if the interests of the publicans stand in the way of a
thorough remedy, so much the worse for the interests of the publicans.
Let the Government take away the licensing power from the magistrates,
and commit the question to the management of local boards elected by
the ratepayers, and we will undertake to say that the publicans will
be checkmated politically in the first place, and that we shall
witness, in the second place, a rapid decrease in their unholy
traffic. Before dismissing the subject, however, it is right to remind
our readers that Mr. Bruce's bill did not perish utterly. A portion,
and a very valuable portion, of it is now law, and will effectually
check the increase of public houses, and at the same time help to
diminish the number of those already existing.
We have now glanced through the principal measures of the session, and
we confidently ask whether it is not true that both in respect to the
quantity and the quality of the work done it will bear a favourable
comparison with the large majority of Parliamentary sessions during
the last forty years. And yet it cannot be denied that the Government
has incurred a certain amount of unpopularity. How is this to be
explained? A general answer may be given, to the effect that a Liberal
Government which is in earnest is sure to incur some degree of
unpopularity; for its _raison d'être_ is to attack abuses wherever it
may find them. Its business is to do what is best for the nation at
large in the first place, and to consider the interests of particular
sections of the nation in the second place. But the interests
concerned, as was natural, view the matter in a different light. They
object to be relegated to the second place, for they prefer their own
welfare to that of the nation, and, like the brewers the other day,
are ready, whenever their pockets are menaced, to subordinate the
interest of their party to that of their trade. The Government, to use
a common expression, has 'trodden on the corns' of several powerful
interests, and has thereby incurred their resentment. But it must be
owned that it was from Mr. Lowe's budget that the Government received
its first serious blow. Our own opinion is that incompetent as it was
the budget attracted to itself a good deal of unmerited obloquy. But
we feel bound, at the same time, to express our conviction that if Mr.
Lowe knew human nature better, or took less pains to exasperate it, he
might have produced a budget which would have strengthened instead of
weakened the Government. As it was, the Government never quite
recovered the prestige which Mr. Lowe's financial blunders had lost
them. Then came a series of naval disasters, for which the Government
was somehow considered responsible, though it really had no more to do
with them than it had with the eruption of Vesuvius.[68] Then the
persistent cry of extravagant expenditure, raised by the
Conservatives, and echoed by their small band of allies among the
Radicals, had some effect. Yet there never was a more dishonest cry.
Though the present Government came into office in the end of the year
1868, the naval and military estimates for the ensuing year were
prepared by their predecessors, and they reached the respectable
figure of twenty-six millions sterling. And this, be it remembered,
was in a period of profound peace. Mr. Gladstone's Government had to
prepare the estimates for 1870, and the result showed a reduction from
£26,000,000 to £21,000,000, with a marked improvement, at the same
time, in the efficiency both of the army and navy. It is true, that in
consequence of the complications arising out of the Franco-German war,
two millions more were added to the estimates in the course of the
summer. But no Government can be held responsible for expenditure
caused by unforeseen emergencies: and, moreover, the expenditure in
question was demanded by the country generally, and cannot in fairness
be laid at the door of the Government. The upshot of the whole matter,
however, is that the Government now in office reduced, on the first
opportunity, the estimates of their predecessors by upwards of
£4,000,000, and that, in spite of the expenditure occasioned by a
gigantic Continental war, and a thorough reorganization of the army,
the estimates are still considerably below the figure which the Tory
Government reached in the midst of an universal peace abroad, and in
the absence of any extraordinary expenditure at home. And yet Tory
politicians, in and out of Parliament, have rent the air with their
cries against the 'wasteful and extravagant expenditure' of the
Government. Were it not for the war on the Continent, and the cost of
abolishing the purchase system, and putting the army on a new basis,
it is not too much to say that the navy and army estimates of this
year would have been £7,000,000 lower than those which the
Conservative Government bequeathed to Mr. Gladstone. We believe,
however, that the exceptional expenditure of this session is neither
'wasteful' nor 'extravagant.' It is like the wise outlay of a skilful
husbandman who drains and manures his barren land, in the sure
confidence that it will repay him tenfold. The new basis on which the
Government is reorganizing the army will give us in a few years a
force which will free us from the recurrence of those periodical
panics which make us the laughing-stock of other nations, and which
always involve for the time being a large, but perfectly useless,
expenditure. Already our navy is admitted, even by the political
opponents of the Government, to be more than a match for all the
navies of the world put together; and, under the wise administration
of our present rulers, the army also will soon be in a condition to
maintain our just influence abroad, and make the invasion of these
isles a practical impossibility.
On the whole, then, we believe that the unpopularity which has
overtaken the Government this session, is for the most part,
undeserved; and we believe in the next place that the unpopularity is
mainly confined to certain political cliques and class interests,
which the Government, in the prosecution of its plain duty, has
unavoidably offended. Through a combination of these causes, a general
election at this moment might lose the Government a score of seats all
over the country; but it would not seriously shake its position. The
nation has not lost its confidence in Mr. Gladstone, and it will think
twice before it makes up its mind to exchange him for Mr. Disraeli.
The journal 'written by gentlemen for gentlemen' has recently told us
in one of its oracular manifestoes, that 'the whole London press has
become thoroughly suspicious of Mr. Gladstone's strength and fitness
for the place which, for the want of any tolerable competitor, he
holds at his own discretion.' We have heard and read this sort of
language before. 'The whole London press,' or rather that portion of
it which is fortunate enough to receive the _imprimatur_ of the
_Pall-Mall Gazette_, pronounced the same verdict on Mr. Gladstone five
years ago. And the result was, that those confiding politicians who
trusted in the sagacity of 'the whole London press' either lost their
seats in Parliament, or had to sit on the stool of repentance and vow
eternal allegiance to Mr. Gladstone. Let those, therefore, who mayhap
are contemplating a repetition of the same experiment meditate on the
history of the Adullamites, and be wise in time. The country has its
eye on that knot of atrabilious Liberals whose voice is that of Jacob,
but whose hands are the hands of Esau. They may declare, _ore
rotundo_, that they have no confidence in Mr. Gladstone. Let them have
a care lest the next general election prove that the country has no
confidence in them.
To sum up, then, the claims of the Government during the past year on
the continued confidence of the nation. It succeeded in limiting the
area of the war between France and Germany, and, while upholding the
dignity of the country, preserved to us the blessings of peace. By
the treaty of Washington it has laid the foundation of a cordial
understanding and a lasting friendship with the great American
Republic. It has passed several measures for the benefit of Ireland
which will surely help, as they become thoroughly understood, to lay
the demon of disaffection in that impulsive, but not ungenerous
people. Then what shall we say of the Army Bill? Its importance is
gauged by the unparalleled resistance which it encountered in
Parliament, and in times less exacting than the present its success
would have made the fortune of an ordinary administration. On the
other hand, the Trades' Unions Bill, the University Tests Bill, the
Repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and the Local Government
Board Bill, (a most valuable piece of legislation) are the quality of
bills which ordinarily constitute the work of a session. And, in
addition to these outward and visible signs of ministerial toil, the
separate departments of the Government have, each in its place, done
an immense amount of that kind of work which makes no appeal to public
notice, but which is none the less valuable because it works in
silence. The Poor-law Board, the Admiralty, and Mr. Cardwell's
department have all laboured incessantly, and the fruit of their
labour is already becoming visible in the better management of our
workhouses, and in the increased efficiency of our army and navy. Nor
must we forget the excellent reforms which Mr. Monsell has already
made in the Post Office, and which entitle him at no distant day to a
seat in the Cabinet. We maintain, therefore, that the Government may,
without any remorse, sit down with a good conscience to frame the
programme of the coming session. The only serious danger which they
have ahead of them is the question of Irish education; and that is a
question which can well wait awhile. But if it must be tackled next
session, we see no reason why the genius which solved the church and
land questions should not be equal to solving that of education also.
The danger of the Government lies in the inconsistent conduct of the
Opposition, who advocate the application to Ireland of principles
which are totally opposed to those for which they contend in the case
of England. Still, it does not appear to us that the question of Irish
education presents any insurmountable difficulty, provided the same
statesmanlike principles are brought to bear upon it which have
already solved the vexed problems of land tenure and religious
equality. In short, a good budget and a moderate programme will enable
the Government to make the next session--we will not say more
fruitful, but--more popular than the last.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Let the reader notice, in passing, the passage which we have
italicised. We shall consider the exercise of the royal warrant by the
Government hereafter; but it may be observed in the meanwhile how
completely the above passage justifies (what, indeed, was not
seriously denied by any competent authority) the legality of Mr.
Gladstone's measure. The purchase system is there made absolutely
dependent on the continued permission of the royal will. The moment
that permission is withdrawn, the purchase system ceases to be. The
Queen simply withdrew the royal warrant which authorized it, and there
was an end of the matter legally and constitutionally.
[67] The Duke of Argyll questioned the constitutional character of
this amendment, and not without reason, as trenching on the royal
prerogative, acting through the responsible ministers of the Crown.
'Parliament has a right to call for full information in regard to
military matters, for the purpose of enabling it to vote with
discretion and intelligence. But this right must not be held to
justify an unreasonable interference in respect to the details of
military administration.'--_Todd's Parliamentary Government in
England._ Vol. i. p. 328.
[68] Mr. Göschen is certainly much to be pitied. If a first class
man-of-war is driven at midday on a well-known rock he is held
responsible for the disaster, and if he inflicts condign punishment on
the culpable officers, he is accused of unjust and arbitrary conduct.
Indeed, some of our Conservative friends have not hesitated to say
that Mr. Göschen exceeded his power in superseding the peccant
admirals in the Mediterranean. Such an opinion is in the teeth of
legal authorities. Let us quote one of the latest and best known:--'It
is essential to the constitution of a military body,' says Mr. Todd
('Parliamentary Government in England,' vol. i. p. 326) 'that the
Crown should have the power of reducing to a lower grade, or of
altogether dismissing, any of its officers from service in the army or
navy at its own discretion, _and, if need be, without assigning any
reason; such power being always exercised through a responsible
minister, who is answerable_ for the same, if it should appear to have
been exercised unwarrantably and upon an insufficient ground.' So well
established is this rule that it was decided by the Court of Queen's
Bench, in the case of Dickson _v._ Viscount Combermere, that the
discretionary power of the Crown to remove officers is so absolute
that even if an officer had been tried by a court of inquiry and
acquitted, the Crown was justified in removing him from office upon
the advice of a minister responsible to Parliament.
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.
_Short Studies on Great Subjects._ By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. Second
Series. Longmans, Green, and Co.
Many of these papers, those especially which have appeared in the
magazine which Mr. Froude has recently edited, and those delivered as
addresses, will be fresh in the recollection of general readers, and
they will be glad to possess them in a permanent form. Like Mr.
Kingsley, Mr. Froude is not so much a constructor as an expositor of
opinion; but he has some rare qualities for exposition, and his
emotional and moral fervour especially give a great charm to his
advocacy. His defects, moreover, like Mr. Kingsley's, are those of a
rhetorician, and severe historical students gravely impugn his
accuracy in details, while dispassionate judges seriously condemn his
somewhat vehement special pleadings. The papers are some of them
political--'England and her Colonies;' 'Reciprocal Duties of State and
Subject;' 'The Colonies once More,' 'England's War,' 'The Eastern
Question;'--some social--'Education;' 'A Fortnight in Kerry,' in two
parts--singularly separated in the volume by half a dozen other
papers; 'On Progress,' a striking paper, which appeared in a recent
number of _Frazer_, and attracted much attention;--and some
ecclesiastical and theological--'Calvinism,' 'A Bishop of the Twelfth
Century'--an interesting account of brave hearted Bishop Hugo, Bishop
of Lincoln, and builder of the Cathedral; 'Father Newman on the
Grammar of Assent;' 'Conditions and Prospects of Protestantism.' That
Mr. Froude has strong partialities and prejudices, sometimes betraying
him into an untenable advocacy, if not into historical paradox, his
greatest admirers must admit. The first volumes of his history read
like an eloquent counsel's brief--we are oftener charmed than
convinced. The later volumes are more judicial, although both the
partisans of Elizabeth and of Mary Queen of Scots have fair cause of
demur to both the coloring of his portraiture and to some of its
details. With rhetorical historians we never feel quite safe. The
advocate is always more fascinating than the judge--they appeal to
wholly different faculties. Macaulay, Froude, Kingsley, all lack, only
in different degrees, the severe historical spirit which Hallam and
Freeman so ably exemplify. One of Mr. Froude's critics has subjected
his account of Bishop Hugo, derived from Mr. Dimock's 'Magna Vita,' to
a minute, and we must say damaging historical criticism, which
produces an uneasy feeling about Mr. Froude's historical writing
generally--especially when we have not at hand means of verification.
Mr. Froude's habit of mind tempts him to round unqualified assertions,
and to hasty generalizations, especially when he is justifying a
foregone conclusion. Another dangerous tendency of his mind is to
themes which either through imperfect knowledge or sectarian habit he
is but little qualified for treating. Few readers of the 'Nemesis of
Faith,' one of Mr. Froude's earliest publications, would feel much
confidence in his dispassionate treatment of any theological question;
and yet theology is the fatal basilisk to which he seems irresistibly
attracted. It was with a startled feeling--half amusement, half
annoyance--that we saw announced the theme which his perverse genius
characteristically fixed upon for his Rectoral Address at St.
Andrew's. No man can possibly give a satisfactory account of Calvinism
who is not sympathetically a theologian; and Mr. Froude is not only
not this, but theology in any form excites him as a red rag excites a
bull. Calvinism, above all theological creeds, might be supposed
antipathetic to him. We naturally, therefore, anticipated a Quixotic
assault upon the Scottish windmill, and imagined the sensations of the
professors and alumni of St. Andrew's on the announcement of his
subject; for Mr. Froude to undertake to discuss Calvinism in its very
metropolis was a chivalry that could be redeemed from its
foolhardiness only by its success. Mr. Froude has not succeeded. He
boldly avows himself a _quasi_ champion of something which he calls
Calvinism, but which really has very little to do with the system of
theology which is known by that designation. We tremble at the bold
generalization of his eulogy, and wonder to see men and systems having
so little in common brought within their range. It is the exordium of
a rhetorician, not of an historical critic. Notwithstanding,
therefore, his great literary merits, a fine historical vein, and
broad illustrative generalization of a very masterly character, the
result is not very satisfactory. Mr. Froude clearly sees that in
Calvinism, or its philosophical equivalents--for he finds the latter
where the former is unknown, as, for instance, in Parsecism and
Judaism, Stoicism and Mahommedanism--there is something very strong
and noble; only we suspect that he has confounded what he calls
Calvinism with the moral sense or conscience. What this is, he essays
to show by historic illustrations gathered from the six or eight great
religious movements of history; but he hardly succeeds. The facts are
indubitable, but Mr. Froude does not furnish their philosophy. Of
course he knows that Calvinism is a great deal more than mere history;
he would, no doubt, admit that it is a very pronounced and
uncompromising metaphysical theology. If it is not this, it is
nothing; but of this he does not attempt to give any account. On the
contrary, he formally eschews it, and he certainly has no very great
sympathy with it. His historic conscience is forced to admit the
strength, persistence, and nobility which the ideas of Calvinism have
in all ages inspired. They have uniformly produced the noblest
morality, the most heroic faith, the most illustrious characters and
movements of their age; they have constituted the great religious and
regenerating force of history, the permanent counteractor and
corrector of formalism, selfishness, mendacity, and slavishness--the
force that has sporadically gathered in all times of lassitude, and
that Mr. Froude thinks our own present condition needs for its
regeneration. But he admires and wonders without love; he has strong
things to say against it. Hence his paper is written with a _nec cum
te nec sine te_ feeling. It produces the impression of one who sees
men as trees walking; who aims at something worth hitting, and misses
it; who has been attracted by the true waters, but to whom it might be
said, 'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' We
have no sympathy with the logical excesses of Calvinism, but it
involves substantially the only true and noble philosophy of religion.
It is the theology of the almost universal Church; and its noble
inspirations and achievements deserve not only all the eulogy that Mr.
Froude bestows, but eulogy of which he does not dream. If Calvinism be
not a theology, it is nothing; and yet Mr. Froude proposes to the
professors and students of St. Andrew's to discuss Calvinism, while he
carefully disavows all theological questions. How oddly _to them_ his
address must have sounded! History as a _hortus siccus_; a drama--the
grandest ever played out on human stage--evacuated of convictions and
passions; the profoundest metaphysical and spiritual theology
sufficiently accounted for by mere history. Mr. Froude's thesis
demanded that he should have examined the metaphysical ideas involved
in Calvinism, and demonstrated their practical, moral, and spiritual
power. This he has not even attempted. He does not seem even to have
conceived of it. So again, Mr. Froude altogether misses the philosophy
of theology involved in Dr. Newman's 'Grammar of Assent.' He cannot
even speak of Butler's great work without altogether misrepresenting
it. We suspect that he is constitutionally incapable of even
apprehending metaphysical problems. While he sneers at physical
science, he regards theological science as a blind superstition.
Nevertheless, Mr. Froude's volume is worthy of a place on the shelf of
his history.
_The National and Domestic History of England_. By W. H. S. AUBREY.
Vol. I. J. Hagger.
Of the historian, as of the poet, it is emphatically true _nascitur
non fit_. A rare combination of qualities is essential to a historian
of the first-class--patience to accumulate information, learning to
appreciate it, philosophy to interpret it, and imaginative eloquence
to incarnate it. Great histories are more rare than great poems.
Histories are of two classes--those which are written directly from
original sources, and which are historical authorities; and those
which are intended for popular uses, and avail themselves of the
results of original investigation, as historical authorities have
determined them. Mr. Aubrey's work belongs to the latter class; and
is entitled to rank very high in it. In the commendation which we
think it just to bestow upon him, we are not to be understood as
comparing him with Grote, or Hallam, or Freeman, or Froude, or Masson;
but, as gathering into a pleasantly-written and skilfully-constructed
work, the results of modern historical investigation, his history of
England is by far the best we possess. To indomitable painstaking, he
adds the careful judgment of a well-informed student, and of strong
common sense. His work is the fruit of many years' assiduous labour.
Mr. Aubrey, as might be expected, belongs to the school of historians
which holds that the history of a nation is a great deal more than the
history of its monarchs, court intrigues, and wars; and he endeavours
to put his readers in possession of the springs and characteristics of
the social life of the people, of which the most ample knowledge of
the former class may leave us in utter ignorance. The influence of
monarchs, statesmen, politics, and wars, upon the social life of a
people, is necessarily great, and formerly was much greater than it is
now; but probably at no time was it so exclusive as the impressions
derived from ordinary histories would lead us to suppose. The
government of a country, and the policy of a court, except under
conditions of republican freedom, are a very imperfect index of the
condition and character of the people. Mr. Aubrey pays a just
compliment to Sir. Charles Knight's 'Pictorial History of England,' as
being the first considerable and systematic attempt to present the
social history of the English people. But the conclusions of history
have been almost revolutionized since the 'Pictorial History of
England' was written. The calendaring of State papers, and the opening
of State collections at Simancas, Venice, and elsewhere, have thrown
floods of light upon imperfectly understood events. Mr. Aubrey, too,
has greatly improved upon the literary style, as well as upon the
artistic illustrations of Mr. Knight's great work. His style is quiet
and lucid; it never rises to eloquence, or is inspired by passion; no
masterly historical groups or biographical portraits are presented by
him; but he tells his story with a simple, even excellence of pleasant
narration. If he does not greatly excite his readers, he never wearies
them. The first volume brings down the history to the time of Richard
II. Instead of references in the margin, Mr. Aubrey gives us a general
list of the authorities which he has consulted; it is formidable
enough, occupying a dozen pages, and comprising between 600 and 700
works. Some of the omissions from it, however, are notable; Mr.
Longman's 'Edward III.' for instance, and Professor Creasy's 'History
of England.' The salient points in this period are the characters of
Edward the Confessor, and Earl Godwin, Harold, and William of
Normandy, Becket, and Edward III. Mr. Aubrey forms, on the whole, a
just estimate of these men. The plan of his history precludes
disquisition, but the positions he assumes are warranted by the most
recent criticism; he justly remarks that neither men nor their doings
are 'to be regarded in the light of modern opinions and convictions,
excepting in so far as these are inherently true.' We commend
especially Mr. Aubrey's careful and discriminating estimate of the
quarrel between Henry II. and Becket, as a crucial test of his
intelligence and fairness. Here, as throughout, Mr. Aubrey enhances
the value of his book by well-selected quotations from historians like
Mackintosh, Milman, and others. The great period of Edward III.--the
_fons et origo_ of so much of our English constitution and modern
greatness--is well treated; and the great questions involved in the
French war, the rights of Parliament, and religious liberty, are
intelligently discussed. We should add that the work is profusely
illustrated. In addition to ordinary wood engravings and fac-similes,
portraits and autographs, chromolithographs and well-executed steel
plates are introduced, together with carefully-constructed maps and
plans. The illustrations are scenes and incidents, views of places,
dress, manners, sports, houses, furniture, coins, seals, and medals,
coats of arms, weapons, and ships, caricatures, monuments, and tombs.
Altogether, we may, so far as this first volume goes, commend Mr.
Aubrey's work as, in its completeness, ability, and spirit, fully
justifying its title as a 'Family History of England,' and
incomparably surpassing any other of its class.
_View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages._ By HENRY HALLAM,
LL.D. Incorporating in the text the Author's latest Researches, with
Additions from recent Writers, and adapted to the use of Students. By
WILLIAM SMITH, D.C.L., LL.D. John Murray.
Dr. Smith has done a great service by including in his series of
students' manuals this admirable edition of Hallam's first great work.
Originally published in 1818--not in 1816, as Dr. Smith says--it
rapidly passed through successive editions; the eleventh and last of
which was published in 1855. During these years the author not only
accumulated many corrections, but also a body of supplementary notes
equal in bulk to one-third of the original work. 'Reluctant to make
such alterations as would leave to the purchasers of former editions a
right to complain,' and having thoroughly revised the third edition,
six subsequent editions appeared without alteration. After the ninth
edition, the supplementary notes were published separately in 1848. In
the tenth edition (1853) they were included. The copyright of the
original edition has recently expired, and has been reprinted in a
cheap form, but without either the revision or the supplementary notes
of the author's later editions. Comparatively, therefore, it is of
little worth. Dr. Smith has not only reproduced Hallam's latest
edition, he has incorporated all of the notes that could be
incorporated, inserting at the end of each chapter such information as
could not conveniently be interwoven with the text. For this students'
edition some of the less important remarks have been abbreviated, and
the references to authorities omitted. Valuable additions, moreover,
have been made by the editor, for which the student will thank him.
Among those are the Statutes of William the Conqueror, the Charter of
the Liberties of Henry I. and Magna Charta, together with genealogical
and other tables, and certain items of information from books which
have appeared since Hallam wrote. A good reference index is also
added. More than this concerning so well-known a work we need not say;
too much we scarcely could say.
_Cameos from English History: the Wars in France._ By the Author of
the 'Heir of Redclyffe.' Second Series. Macmillan & Co.
The very skilful way in which Miss Yonge selects the chief incidents
of her episodes, and groups around them such subordinate matters as
may be necessary for a complete historic picture, has given to the
first series of her 'Cameos' a popularity which the second will not
fall short of. Miss Yonge is executing a gallery of historic
compositions that have individual completeness enough to make them
interesting, and connection enough to make them instructive. Without
any affectation of originality in the sources or methods of her
narrative, she skilfully uses the materials and conclusions of the
best historical authorities, and thus provides for young people and
for general readers a historical manual, the ability and interest of
which will convey a vast amount of information to readers whom more
pretentious works would fail to attract. This second series is almost
entirely occupied with the French wars. Beginning in 1330 with the
romantic conquests of Edward III. and the Black Prince, it narrates
the strange solecism of English rule in France, and ends in 1435 with
the still more romantic mission of the Maid of Orleans, and the
Congress of Arras, and the extinction of the English cause in France.
We cannot speak too highly of the care, good sense, and literary skill
with which these historic cameos are cut. The most romantic
incidents--battles such as those of Crecy and Poitiers, achievements
such as those of Joan of Arc--lose nothing in the artistic setting of
the author, while the least interesting are made attractive by it. A
more fascinating and instructive book, as we can testify from our own
well-thumbed copy of the first series, and from the eagerness with
which the second has been seized, could not be put into the hands of
young people.
_Life of William Cunningham, D.D., Principal and Professor of Theology
and Church History, New College, Edinburgh._ By ROBERT RAINY, D.D.,
and the late Rev. JAMES MACKENZIE. 8vo. Nelson and Sons. 1871.
As long as the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 is
remembered, the name of Dr. Cunningham will be indissolubly associated
with it. The Free Church party, to which he belonged, was rich in
eminent men at the great crisis. Chalmers, of course, towered over
all the rest as its man of many-sided genius. Candlish was its popular
champion; Hugh Miller was its journalist; Buchanan its ecclesiastical
statesman; Guthrie its orator and wit; Murray Dunlop its jurist. Dr.
Cunningham, however, as a dogmatic theologian and master of Church
principles, long occupied a place by himself in the councils and the
inner life of his Church, and we cordially welcome his memoir.
The volume is the work of two successive biographers. Rather more than
one-third of it had been prepared by the late Rev. James Mackenzie,
when, his untimely death interrupted his labours; the rest of the book
is written by Dr. Rainy, who, once a pupil of Cunningham's, was
afterwards his pastor and most intimate friend, and is now his
successor in the Chair of Historical Theology. Mr. Mackenzie's portion
is picturesque and lively. The story of the disruption conflict, which
it embraces, has already been told, by Dr. Hanna in his life of
Chalmers, in a way that can hardly be equalled, but the version here
given is at once elaborate and fresh. Dr. Rainy, who continues the
life from 1843 till its close in 1861, has executed his task with
judgment and loving fidelity, and with so entire a mastery of all the
bearings of his subject that his chapters will have a permanent value
for the members of the Free Church as a contribution to her history.
The outward incidents of Cunningham's life are soon told. Born at
Hamilton in 1805, he lost his father in early childhood, and was
brought up by an admirable mother. At the age of fifteen he entered
the university of Edinburgh, where he remained eight years. At
twenty-five he was ordained to one of the largest churches in
Greenock. Thence, four years afterwards, in 1834, he was translated to
Trinity College Church, in Edinburgh. Quitting the Establishment in
1843, he visited America on a public mission, and on his return was
appointed to the Chair of Apologetical Theology in the Free Church
College. In 1845, he succeeded Dr. Welsh as Professor of Church
History, and on the death of Dr. Chalmers, in 1847, he became
Principal of the College, retaining, however, his Professorship.
From his very boyhood, Cunningham was wont 'to scorn delights and live
laborious days.' In one long vacation, before he was seventeen, he
read eighty volumes, among them the whole of the Iliad in Greek,
Barrow on the 'Pope's Supremacy,' Taylor's 'Ductor Dubitantium,' and
the like. Such studious habits adhered to him through life. 'He reads
Greek and Latin,' says his biographer, 'in immense quantities, and
French in great abundance.' It was only a strong judgment and a
wonderful memory that prevented his enormous reading from overloading
his powers of mental digestion. At first, metaphysics attracted him,
but soon theology became his favourite field. Up to the age of
eighteen his sympathies were with the 'moderate' or high-and-dry party
in the Scottish Church; but about that time his mind underwent a great
and blessed spiritual change, which, as it was brought about by the
influence of evangelical truth, naturally led him to join the
evangelical party.
As a preacher, he was decidedly successful during the four years of
his ministry at Greenock. In Edinburgh his gifts were buried in an
almost inaccessible and gloomy church, and his sermons became dry. The
ten years' conflict, however, called forth all his powers. The annual
general assemblies of those days furnished an arena for high debate
unequalled in the history of Scotland. Judges of the supreme courts,
eminent lawyers, physicians, merchants, and landowners, sat on their
benches as elders, along with the flower of the Scottish clergy. The
audience was only limited by the breadth to which galleries could be
carried. The questions at issue, first, the spiritual rights of the
people in the formation of the pastoral tie, and, growing out of that,
the spiritual independence of the Church itself, affected all classes
of society, and interested Dissenters as well as members of the
Establishment. Amidst these scenes Cunningham proved himself--
'No carpet knight so trim,
But in close fights a champion grim,
In camps a leader, sage.'
Both his biographers labour to describe his power as a debater, but in
truth there must have been something indescribable about it. 'As you
heard him,' says Dr. Rainy, 'you were yourself working at the
question, not with your own faculties, but with Cunningham's, and were
possessed with the same intense moral perceptions.... This effect was
due to the personality of the man put into his speech, to his
intensity, and his vehemence.... The absence of all rhetoric, except
that which sparkled red-hot from the forge at which the workman was
labouring contributed to the same effect. To the same result conduced,
and that very powerfully, his manifest scorn of foul play, and the
manliness and fairness of his battle.' The testimony also is adduced
of Mr. Murray Dunlop, late member for Greenock, who, after long
experience both of the General Assembly and of Parliament, said,
'There is no man in the House of Commons that approaches to
Cunningham.'
The disruption, to Cunningham and his associates, was a political
defeat, but it was even more than a moral victory. It seems destined
to secure the triumph of their principles in Scotland as it has
powerfully helped to introduce them into Ireland. Now that a
generation has passed away, we see the strange spectacle of the
Scottish Establishment agitating for the abolition of patronage, and
we hear her divines boasting of spiritual independence as if a
satisfactory concordat on the matter had already been concluded with
the State. Dread of another disruption is manifestly the only
concordat that exists.
It was in the Chair of Historical Theology that Cunningham found his
true sphere of continuous labour. As a lecturer, an examiner, a
director of young men's studies, and a critic of their productions, he
was unsurpassed in his time. Dr. Rainy considers that he was even
superior to Chalmers in the power of producing the feeling of
obligation in the minds of others. His own personal godliness, and his
solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his students, showed itself
quite spontaneously both in the classroom and out of it. Youths who
trembled at coming under the jurisdiction of the great controversialist
were delighted to find him in private intercourse as gentle as a lamb,
and they yielded themselves all the more readily to the mastery of his
influence. Hundreds of his old pupils are now in the ministry,
scattered all over Scotland, and are to be found here and there in
England, Ireland, America, and the colonies; and it may safely be said
that few of them ever mention his name without affection and
reverence.
Yet with all his gentleness of nature, Cunningham was a born
controversialist. He was quite conscious of this himself. When a
student of divinity, he said to a friend. 'If my life is spared, it
will be spent in controversy, I believe;' and the event went far to
justify the prediction. With true Christian magnanimity, he would at
once apologise, and that in public, for unwarrantable expressions
dropped in the heat of debate; and in one of his later tractates he
says, 'We have some apprehension that the controversial spirit is
rising and swelling in our breast, and therefore we abstain,' &c.,
as if he were applying the curb; but the temperament remained. Part of
the last decade of his life was embittered by a controversy within the
Free Church itself, which separated him for a time from some of his
oldest and dearest friends, and made him the object of unwarrantable
attacks on the part of others. His spirit was chastened and purified
by the ordeal. In the beautiful record given by Dr. Rainy of his last
days on earth, we read that two hours before his death he said, 'I am
done with all controversies and all fightings now; I am at rest for
ever.' Then raising his hand, he very emphatically said twice, 'From
the rage of theologians, good Lord, deliver us.' Thus adopting one of
the dying sayings of the gentle Melancthon.
After his death, Dr. Cunningham's literary executors published two
large volumes of his lectures on 'Historical Theology,' and two
additional volumes of his 'Essays and Reviews'--the one on the
'Reformers and their Doctrines,' the other on 'Church Principles.'
These works are no unworthy monument of his vast learning, of his
logical power, and of the depth of his own convictions. Dr. Rainy, in
the volume before us, has very ably explained and defended
Cunningham's method of teaching theology and the history of dogma, but
we wish he had descended more into particulars, showing the growth of
Cunningham's own mind as a theologian, and the comparative importance
assigned by him to certain truths and views of truth at an earlier and
a later period of his life. It is somewhat unsatisfactory to be told
that on visiting Oxford in his later years Cunningham said musingly to
a friend, 'I am more of a bigot and more of a latitudinarian than I
used to be.'
_Journals kept in France and Italy from_ 1848-1852; _with a Sketch of
the Revolution of_ 1848. By the late NASSAU WILLIAM SENIOR. Edited by
his Daughter, M. C. M. SIMPSON. 2 vols. Henry S. King and Co.
Mr. Senior's journals suggest some curious speculations concerning the
writer, and the order of literati to which he belongs; and they are a
contemporary record of some facts which may be regarded as a
contribution to history, and of some speculations which, after twenty
years, it is interesting to test by events. Mr. Senior apparently
aspired to a distinguished place in the class of writers more
prominent in French literature than in English, who contribute, for
the use of the historian and for the gratification of the gossip,
_mémoires pour servir_. With considerable literary ability, he
contributed essays to the Edinburgh and other reviews, two or three
series of which have been published. He wrote a treatise on political
economy, which evinced considerable power of philosophical thinking,
and considerable knowledge of economical science, but which fell just
short of classical authority. He was a Master in Chancery, and a
well-informed man of the world. He had an extensive acquaintance with
literati and politicians, which he sedulously cultivated. Probably,
had he chosen to concentrate his intellectual powers and to
subordinate his general knowledge, he might have produced works which
would have taken an honourable and permanent place in literature. But
the difficulty we feel in saying in what department of thought he
would have succeeded the best, indicates the versatility which made
him a clever man, and hindered him from becoming a profound one. He
belonged to the literary class of which, perhaps, Southey may be
regarded as _facile princeps_. Probably a man does best when he
follows spontaneously his own literary instinct; and Mr. Senior, in
becoming a very able chronicler and critic of the opinions of others,
has avoided the fate of a second-rate publicist. It is difficult to
find an exact type that may represent his special function and
quality. His work is the work of a Boswell, only generally applied,
and done with far more intellectual power, but at the cost of that
exactness of record which is Boswell's great charm. All Mr. Senior's
reports of the opinions and conversations of others are reproduced in
his own mould of thought. Although he had apparently that peculiar
kind of very bad memory which forgets nothing, yet clearly he does not
reproduce the _ipsissima verba_ of the interlocutors: while their
sentiments are exactly conveyed, it is a version 'according to Mr.
Senior.' One thinks again of Crabbe Robinson. What he was in a more
literary and limited sphere, Mr. Senior was in his wider sphere of
statesmen, diplomatists, and politicians. Mr. Senior's methods remind
us of the 'interviewing' of American reporters. A highly gifted,
well-informed, agreeable, and brilliant man, he was a welcome addition
to every society. Princes, statesmen, and political leaders found
pleasure in his conversation, and in the information concerning
English opinion and feeling that he was able to impart. He
assiduously prepared himself for making the most of his
opportunities. He sought introductions wherever he went, and had the
rare faculty of using them to the greatest advantage. Clearly, he knew
how to put questions without being intrusive, how to conciliate
sympathies without offensive toadyism, and how to make his note-taking
purpose well understood without loss of dignity, and apparently--but
of this we are not quite sure--without either shutting up his
informants, or making them talk with a view to the record. He has
aimed at whatever degree of literary renown attaches to men like
Beaumarchais, De Grammont, and Pepys, and he will probably be quoted
as a witness to contemporary facts and opinions when he is remembered
for nothing else. It is not everyone who could submit to the
conditions of such a function, or who could be successful in it. Mr.
Senior's success is almost perfect. He is not a describer of men and
manners--he has neither dramatic nor pictorial faculty; he is simply a
chronicler of contemporary opinions. The value of his book, therefore,
depends primarily upon the character of those to whom he had access.
In this it leaves little to be desired. These journals kept in France
and Italy are rich in the affirmations and opinions of the leading
personages in these countries--of men who were chiefly making their
history. It is impossible even to attempt an enumeration of the
illustrious men with whom Mr. Senior freely conversed. The editor of
his journals is so embarrassed by their riches, that he not only
suppresses all mere travellers' impressions, observations, and
descriptions, but reserves for separate publication the conversations
with De Tocqueville, with whom Mr. Senior was on intimate terms. This,
we think, however interesting as a contribution to the biography of De
Tocqueville, is very injurious to the historic value of the journals.
An account of the Revolution of 1848 and of the _coup d'état_ of 1852,
which chronicles the opinions of men like De Beaumont, Fauchet,
Dunoyer, Gioberti, Circourt, and Horace Say, and systematically omits
those of De Tocqueville, the greatest political philosopher among them
all, is surely Hamlet with the part of the Prince omitted. Better have
omitted the Italian journal, and have presented complete the opinions
of French events which he was able to gather.
Nevertheless, the journals are remarkably rich in both incident and
opinions, which, as communicated by political leaders themselves, may
be implicitly accepted as authentic. Perhaps the thing that will
chiefly strike the reader is the singular lack of political prevision
which characterizes the forecasts of even the ablest statesmen. The
surprise and violence of revolutionary incident probably disorder the
faculty of the political philosopher, as well as disarrange the
ordinary sequence of things. Whatever the cause, save in things
palpable to ordinary thoughtfulness, few of the anticipations of
statesmen here recorded have been verified. We have noted some dozens
of instances of political sagacity utterly at fault, which justify
this general remark, but our space forbids us to cite them.
Mr. Senior's journals in France begin about three months after the
abdication of Louis Philippe; but he gathers up a tolerably complete
account of the circumstances attending it, and of the opinions formed
concerning it. A letter of General Bergeaud gives a military account
of the overthrow of the constitutional throne, and attributes it to
defective military preparations, and to vacillating purposes:--'If I
had had the command a fortnight before, things might have passed
differently.' True! but would that have secured respect for the
time-serving king, or have given high-mindedness and dignity to the
shuffling policy of his time-serving minister? Of what advantage would
it have been to avert the revolution of February, if its provocatives
had been left to gather afresh? This policy of expedients has been the
ruin of the French nation; as De Beaumont justly said to Mr.
Senior--'In France we are not good balancers of inconveniences. _Nous
sommes trop logiques_. As soon as we see the faults of an institution,
_nous la brisons_. In England you calculate, we act upon impulse.'
Mr. Senior throws much interesting light upon the conduct and motives
of Lamartine in his brilliant and meteoric career, equally sudden in
its kindling and its extinction;--possible, surely, only in France. De
Beaumont seems to us to do more justice to Lamartine than Mr. Senior
himself does. 'He thinks that Lamartine has managed foreign affairs
honestly and ably, with an earnest wish for peace, but that the rest
of his conduct has been vain, selfish, and timid. Ten days ago he
would have been elected President by acclamation, now he would be
chosen only to keep out somebody worse.' Whatever Lamartine's vanity
and weakness, he must, we think, have credit for patriotic purpose. A
mere selfish man would surely have pressed his enormous advantage very
differently.
Much interesting light is also thrown upon the singular and
incongruous character of Louis Napoleon. Certainly our estimate of him
is not enhanced; his narrow, intriguing selfishness, his puerile
fanaticism, and the diabolical unscrupulousness of his _coup d'état_
of December 2nd, seem to justify all that his worst enemies have said
about him. A singular incident is recorded. The colonel of one of the
regiments to be employed on December 2nd was absent on the previous
night a few miles from Paris. An aide-de-camp of St Arnaud was sent to
summon him. He owed his success in life to Changarnier. As he passed
Changarnier's door he thought that this mysterious summons must have
something to do with the _coup d'état_ which everybody was expecting.
He got off his horse, and rang the bell. The porter, probably in bed,
did not answer. Second thoughts suggested to the aide-de-camp that to
tell Changarnier would be a breach of duty. He rode off without
ringing again. Had Changarnier been warned, the _coup d'état_ might
have been prevented, and the subsequent history of France might have
been different.
Read in the light of the history of France during the last twelve
months, Mr. Senior's volumes have a singular and instructive
interest. The conclusion to which they force us is a melancholy
one;--the French seem to have learned nothing, and to have forgotten
nothing, but to be simply whirled in a chaotic circle of furious
revolution and delusive order. 'The instant,' says M. Bastiat, 'three
Frenchmen meet, they talk of nothing but extending French influence
over Europe, and vote by acclamation for a military expenditure;' a
singular comment upon which is the recent determination by M. Thiers
and his Government to raise the French army to 500,000 men. In 1849,
Mr. Senior was present at a meeting of the Assembly; Jules Favre
attempted to read a letter from Rome stating that the French prisoners
had offered to serve in the Roman army; a scene of indescribable
confusion followed, some saying that, whether true or false, the ears
of Frenchmen ought not to be disgusted with such statements. General
Leflô protested against letters being read from a French tribune,
which _insultent le drapeau_. 'You tell us that the enemy has taken
one of our colours. You know it is impossible, for only five hundred
men are said to have fallen on our side; but before a colour could be
taken whole regiments must have died.' This was received with
enthusiastic applause, and Jules Favre was not permitted to read the
letter. De Beaumont is right, the French are too logical--even for
facts. 'The French,' said Dunoyer to Bancroft, 'utterly misconceive
the purposes for which a Government ought to exist, and if that
misconception continue, they will fall from revolution to revolution,
and from distress to distress, till they end in bankruptcy, anarchy,
and barbarism. They think that the purpose of Government is not to
allow men to make their fortunes, but to make their fortunes for them.
The great object of every Frenchman is to exchange the labours and
risks of a business or a profession or even a trade for a public
salary. The thousands of workmen who deserted employments at which
they were earning four or five francs a day to get thirty sous from
the _ateliers nationaux_ were mere examples of the general feeling. To
satisfy this desire, every Government goes on increasing the extent of
its duties, the number of its servants, and the amount of its
expenditure.'
Sumner told Mr. Senior, on the authority of the Minister of War, that
'Persigny was going to Berlin and Vienna to ask for Belgium and the
Rhine and Egypt, giving Hanover to Prussia, Wallachia and Moldavia and
the legations to Austria, Constantinople to Russia, and Piedmont to
the Prince of Leuchtenberg.' This was confirmed by Beaumont, who said
that when he was French Minister at Vienna, in 1849, Schwartzenberg
showed him pretty nearly the same propositions made by Persigny.
What hope can there be for a people so flippant, so superficial, so
unscrupulous! One is almost thankful for the destruction of a power
whose only law is that of selfishness and opportunity.
Mr. Senior's journals in Italy are scarcely less interesting; only
they seem to belong to bygone centuries. The King of Naples and the
Duke of Tuscany were in power, the Pope was recoiling into a despot,
Charles Albert was staking and losing his crown at Novara, and Louis
Napoleon was occupying Rome.
Mr. Senior's journals are choke full of interest--a social comment on
public history which future generations will peruse with greater
eagerness than ourselves.
_Life and Letters of William Bewick_ (_Artist_). Edited by THOMAS
LANDSEER, A.R.A. Hurst and Blackett.
Mr. Landseer is not so careful as he should be to tell us that his
hero is not _the_ Bewick whose engravings are amongst the glories of
the English school. True, William is not Thomas, and Mr. Landseer
somewhat ambiguously suggests the distinction by appending in a
parenthesis the word 'Artist' to his name; but Art knows only one
Bewick, and the lustre of his surname may well make careless readers
oblivious of his Christian name. Mr. Landseer does not tell us whether
there was any relationship between the two northern men, less remote,
that is, than the ancestry of whom Scott reminded William. The absence
of affirmation leads to the conclusion that there was not; as,
doubtless, William would have been proud of a family connection with
Thomas. William Bewick, then, of whose existence we frankly confess we
were ignorant until we made our acquaintance with him in Mr.
Landseer's book, was, notwithstanding, a man and an artist of
respectable ability, whose memoir and letters are interesting chiefly
for their anecdotes and characterizations of people more illustrious
than himself. His father was an upholsterer in Darlington, sorely
disquieted by the artistic tendencies of his son, who bravely
struggled against the genius of upholstery, and dared the paternal
prognostications of beggary, and the stern refusal to give him any
help in his artistic aspirations. He went to London almost penniless,
pleased Haydon, who saw him drawing at Burlington House, and became
his pupil, as were also George Lance, William Harvey, Sir Edwin
Landseer, and the brothers Charles and Thomas Landseer. He struggled
hard for existence, became a pupil at the Academy, so far won the
approbation of Sir Thomas Lawrence as to be commissioned by him to
copy some of Michael Angelo's figures in the Sistine Chapel; and
greatly delighted him by his execution of the 'Sybil,' somewhat less
by that of the 'Jeremiah.' The President intended to present these
copies to the Royal Academy for the benefit of future students, but
died when only four of them were completed. These were sold with his
effects, and, with other copies made by Mr. Bewick, are hidden in some
collection, or scattered among many. The difficulties of procuring
them were very great; and we agree with Mr. Landseer in his regret
that they are not secured for public inspection and use. Mr. Bewick
seems to have had peculiar skill as a copyist. Goethe gave him a
commission to execute copies of some of the figures in the Elgin
marbles. A head painted by him was mistaken for a Murillo by both
Wilkie and Calcott. His 'Jacob and Rachel' was exhibited in London,
and won encomiums from men whose praise was almost fame. Mr. Bewick
seems also to have been a skilful portrait painter, or rather
sketcher, for he usually asked only a couple of sittings from the
notable men whom he sought to include in his portfolio. Thus, he
sketched Hazlitt, Scott, Brewster, Jeffrey, Professor Wilson, Mrs.
Grant of Logan, Jamieson, McCulloch, Liston, the Ettrick Shepherd, Dr.
Birkbeck, Lord Norbury, O'Connell, Lady Morgan, Maturin, Shiel, and
many others. To these he easily procured introductions, and his
artistic ability induced them to sit to him. He seems to have been
singularly successful, and his personal agreeableness and social
abilities seem to have won greatly upon all who thus made his
acquaintance.
Hence he became acquainted with a large number of persons celebrated
in literature and art. These he carefully Boswellized, drawing their
portraits with the pen as well as with the pencil, and telling
interesting anecdotes concerning them. Hence these volumes, consisting
chiefly of his journals and letters, are a rich repertory of
reminiscences of notable men, which, like Senior's journals in other
circles of life, will have a permanent interest and value as the
records of an intelligent contemporary observer. Mr. Bewick's literary
style is somewhat inflated, and his story-telling is somewhat prolix;
it is not therefore easy, within our limits, to pick out any of the
plums of the really dainty feast that he has set before us. With
Haydon and Hazlitt, Bewick was on terms of personal friendship, and of
both he presents lengthened and interesting sketches. While, of
course, fully conscious of Haydon's faults, he was bravely faithful to
him. Haydon was very kind to Bewick. The latter was moneyless, and
Haydon had only £5. 'However,' says he, 'I'll let you have five
shillings, that will help a little.' He likewise offered to guarantee
a quarter's living at an eating-house. Haydon took no fees from his
pupils, but repaid himself in a characteristic way. He induced his
pupils to put their names to accommodation bills, and Bewick was so
implicated that when the smash came he 'found it impossible to deliver
himself from the difficulties which beset him in consequence of the
desperate state of Haydon's affairs.' Bewick sat as model for the head
of Haydon's 'Lazarus,' he being at the time opportunely ill. Wilkie,
otherwise a clumsy figure, had very fine hands. Taking hold of them,
Haydon said one day, 'Look here, Bewick, these are what I painted my
"Christ's" hands from. Wilkie's hands are the only parts of his person
that are like his pictures. They are made for fine execution; my hands
are very good, but they are not so tremulously nervous,--so delicate
or refined. These will never paint _large_ works with power, nor will
mine ever paint small pictures with sufficient delicacy and
refinement. You would never suppose that these hands would have such a
miserable mess upon the palette as you see there (looking down at
Wilkie's dirty palette). Wilkie's hands were copied for the _real
mother_ in my picture of "Solomon," and it has been said that they are
the most tender and expressive part of the whole picture.' Wilkie's
hands were artistically _close_ as well as symmetrical. Haydon, hard
up, as usual, went to Kensington to ask his friend for the loan of £5.
'I was struck with his blank expression of face; if I had given him a
blow he could not have been more staggered. I knew he had received
some hundreds for his last work, and I _ought_ to have done the same.
Wilkie put his hand to his mouth, and pressed his under lip between
his finger and thumb, like one of the figures in his "Rent-Day," and
drawled out in cold Scotch that he "raaly couldn't" let me have it. I
said, "You can't, eh?" He replied, "No, _indeed_ he could not." I was
silent--numbed; my young heart, warm then in the feelings and
sentiments of friendship, had received a shock. I felt my cheek hot
with the blush of wounded pride and disappointment, and could only
say, "I am sorry for it;" and, wishing him a good morning, left him to
himself and his hundreds.' Haydon was an awkward leech; but
considering their friendship, this was a little too bad of Wilkie. On
his way home, an eating-house keeper was more generous. To eat was a
necessity. Haydon, who had dined at the place often, went in
therefore, and after his dinner 'my hand went into my empty pocket in
make-belief, and I said, "Oh, I've forgot my money to-day, I will pay,
you to-morrow!" Just as I put foot upon the step of the outer door, a
gentle tap on my shoulder stayed my progress, and I was very civilly
invited by the keeper of the eating-house to walk into his room, as he
wished to speak to me. I returned with him. He then shut the door, and
after apologising for the liberty he was taking, said he had read in
the papers how badly I had been used with regard to my picture
("Macbeth," which Sir G. Beaumont had returned because Haydon had
increased its size), and that if dining there, or living entirely at
his house, would be any convenience to me, he should be quite
delighted, and I might pay him when I was able. I agreed to dine there
for the future, with many thanks for this noble, disinterested
kindness.' It is pleasant to add that when, shortly afterwards,
'Solomon' sold for eight hundred guineas, Haydon paid all his
creditors, the generous eating-housekeeper included; and, still more,
that his friendship for Wilkie still continued. 'I did not let trifles
of this kind come between us to mar our mutual satisfaction in the
pursuit of our beloved art.'
We regret that we cannot extract Bewick's interesting descriptions of
Hazlitt, nor his exciting account of an evening with Ugo Foscolo and
Wordsworth--the best picture in the book--when the passionate Italian
declaimed his poetry before the philosophic Lakeist; and in Haydon's
small parlour, greatly to the peril of Wordsworth's nose, especially
when, in the extraordinary discussion which followed, Foscolo clenched
his fist in the poet's face. Amusing anecdotes of Wilkie, especially
one of his visit to Castle Howard, and of Lord Carlisle's indignation
at the thought that he wanted to dine with _him_--'What does the
fellow mean? Does he want to dine with _me_? I think my steward or
housekeeper might content him;' interviews with Curran, Lord Norbury,
O'Connell; two visits to Abbotsford, introducing anecdotes and
characteristic traits of Scott; a visit to the Ettrick Shepherd;
sketches, anecdotes, gossip concerning dozens of notables in
literature and art; letters and journals from Rome and Naples, with
anecdotes of Gibson, whose friendship he secured, and who modelled his
bust; correspondence in leisurely age with his friend Davison
concerning art and artists, with the various methods and merits of the
latter, make up two volumes of the most interesting _ana_, which few
will be able to throw aside until they are finished. It is pleasant to
add that Mr. Bewick acquired a competence, built a house and a picture
gallery at Darlington, and although for some years a valetudinarian,
died in a good old age, greatly respected by a large circle of
friends.
_Life and Adventures of Count Beugnot, Minister of State under
Napoleon I._ Edited from the French by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Two vols.
Hurst and Blackett.
Jean Claude Count Beugnot lived through the entire period of the
French Revolution. He was born early enough (in July, 1761) to have
attained to maturity at its actual outbreak, and to have some
intelligent recollection of its immediate antecedents. He lived long
enough (until June, 1835) to see its course and issue, and to judge
its effects under three succeeding monarchs--Louis XVIII., Charles X.,
and Louis Philippe. No life could have been more exactly timed for a
complete experience of it, and perhaps no life could have been better
circumstanced for an intelligent and just appreciation of it. As a
minister and a courtier, he was eminent enough to stand within the
circle of confidential knowledge, but not so eminent as to be a leader
of parties, so as to be blinded by their passions, or to share their
fate; as a politician, he was clever enough to fill offices, and to be
employed in affairs of importance, but not so clever as to be the
victim of great and blinding ambitions. He was, moreover, flexible
enough to serve under Louis XVI.--at any rate, as a loyalist member of
the States General of 1789, and of the Legislative Assembly of 1791,
and to suffer imprisonment during the Reign of Terror; to be Prefect
of La Seine Inférieure, and Administrator of the Grand Duchy of Berg
under Napoleon; to be Minister of the Home Department under the
Provisional Government; and to serve under Louis XVIII. in various
important offices--first, as one of the three commissioners selected
by the King in the commission for the preparation of the Charter of
1814, next as Director-General of Police, next as Minister of Marine
Affairs, next as Postmaster-General. In 1819, a Royal ordinance
summoned him to the Chamber of Peers, but before it could be
countersigned the ministry resigned, and he did not take his seat
until 1830, a few months before the revolution which placed Louis
Philippe on the throne. The retrospect of such a man must have been
something like that of Noah and his sons. He was a good administrator,
a fair Parliamentary orator, an admirable drawer-up of State papers, a
cautious, respectable, able coadjutor; ranking, relatively with men in
English political history, like Sir J. Graham or Lord Halifax. His
literary ability was considerable, as these memoirs prove, but it was
not so great as to cause his ambition for original authorship to
disqualify his talent for reporting or recording what he heard and
saw. He was of the literary type of Mr. Nassau Senior, only with far
better opportunities of knowing; and instead of merely reporting the
sayings and doings and opinions of others, he aspired to
quasi-historical memoir writing, which throws the information that he
had such rare opportunities of possessing into an independent
narrative form, which is to all intents and purposes history, only
with the episodical freedom of journal writing. Perhaps no man, unless
it were Talleyrand himself, could have told us so much of the secret
history of his times, and Talleyrand could not help writing fiction
instead of history. Count Beugnot, as portrayed by himself, produces a
feeling of high respect and esteem. He was sincere, honest, and
faithful; he was a consistent Liberal, who had respect for authority,
and felt it right, in the interests of liberty, to accept whatever
Government was in power; he was, moreover, bold and faithful,
sometimes in circumstances of great personal peril. We do not feel
towards him as towards Mirabeau, or Talleyrand, or Lamartine, or
Guizot. He was not positive enough or brilliant enough to excite
either high admiration or great antagonism. He was a safe politician,
an honourable man, and a literary mediocrity of the very highest
class, but no more.
It is impossible to exaggerate the rich materials of these volumes.
They lack the aristocratic gossip of the memoirs of St. Simon; they
have not the melodramatic excitement or literary brilliancy of the
historical romances of Lamartine; they are destitute of the
doctrinaire philosophising which characterizes Guizot; but they are
most interesting and sober recitals of what may be called the social
history of the Revolution, in many of its byways, as well as at its
centre. Almost every page is a romance, revealing--sometimes pitiably
and ignominiously--the secret springs of great transactions, the
littleness of great men, the selfishness of patriots, the intrigues of
politics, the little wisdom with which the world is governed. Count
Beugnot, moreover, possesses the rare qualities of truthfulness and
fairness. He manifestly tries to tell us the truth, and with great
shrewdness and justice he endeavours to present both the defects and
excellencies of the monarchs under whom he served. He has generous
words for Napoleon, does full justice to his superb genius, while he
exhibits his hard coarseness and selfish, unscrupulousness, and
clearly discerns the fatal defects which led to his fall. He respects
Louis XVIII., his refinement and his wit, while in a very quiet way he
exhibits his intense heartlessness and selfishness. He penetrates the
unprincipled, intriguing character of the Orleans Princes, and
prepares his readers for their fall, which he did not live to see. He
appreciates, too, with much of the judicial power of an Englishman,
the character of the French nation, and the fatal defects which keep
it in almost a chronic state of eruption. It is impossible to cull
from the rich repertory of these pages. We can only indicate a few of
the points of interest. A native of Bar-sur-Aube, Count Beugnot became
acquainted with the notorious Madame de Lamotte, the heroine of the
'Diamond Necklace,' who in 1762 (a misprint, surely, for 1782) took
refuge in Bar-sur-Aube, on escaping with her sister from the Convent
at Longchamps. The two young ladies were descendants of the Baron de
Rémi, a natural son of Henry II., and claimed the estates of their
family, the only thing which it had preserved being its pedigree. The
king had granted to their father a pension of £40, and to the girls
£24 each, besides placing them gratuitously in the Abbey of
Longchamps, near Paris, with a view to the honourable extinction of a
family which had troublesome claims. Madame de Surmont took compassion
upon them, and Mademoiselle de St. Rémi fascinated M. de Surmont, and
married his nephew, M. de Lamotte. The part of Madame de Lamotte in
the amazing story of the 'Diamond Necklace' is told at great length,
as also are many details of her history, M. de Beugnot being on terms
of intimacy with her, and more than once coming into perilous contact
with this strange tragedy. To her and Cagliostro three chapters are
devoted; both are admirably sketched, and many illustrative anecdotes
of them are told. The Cardinal de Rohan had faith in Cagliostro and
'the Duke de Chartres (Egalité), at whose court it had been decided no
longer to believe in a God, but who was quite inclined to believe in
Cagliostro.' Beugnot helped Madame de Lamotte to destroy her letters
on the night of her arrest. 'Here it was that, casting cursory glances
over some of the thousands of the letters of Cardinal de Rohan, I was
sorry to see what a wreck the delirium of love, exaggerated by the
madness of ambition, had made of this wretched man. It is fortunate
for the Cardinal's memory that these letters have been suppressed, but
it is a loss to the history of human passion. What an age was that
when a prince of the Church did not hesitate to write, to sign with
his name, and to address to a woman, letters that a man of our day,
who had the least self-respect, might begin to read, but would never
finish!' This story, in the light which it throws upon the condition
of France, forms a kind of prelude to the personal history of Beugnot,
who is first elected a Deputy to the States General. Curious things
are told of Marat, who 'was then only a professor of physic, and made
a crusade against the sun, declaring that it was not the fountain of
light, and found persons senseless enough to listen to, and even to
commend him.'
A characteristic story of the _hauteur_ of the old French aristocracy
is told of Madame de Brionne, who, at the time of the first
insurrection of Paris, was advised by the Bishop of Autun to go and
spend some time in a little provincial town, where she would not be
known. 'A little provincial town!' she replied, 'Oh, M. de Perigord, I
can be a peasant if you please, but never a bourgeoise!'
Louis XV. blamed the Archbishop of Narbonne for his inordinate love of
hunting. 'My Lord Archbishop, you are a great hunter; I know something
about it. How can you forbid your priests from hunting if you spend
your life in setting them an example of it?' 'Sire,' he replied, 'for
my priests, hunting is their own vice; in my case, it is the vice of
my ancestors.' 'My Lord Archbishop,' said the King on another
occasion, 'they say that you are in debt, and, very deeply.' 'Sire,'
was the reply, 'I will ask my steward about it, and have the honour of
informing your Majesty.'
In October, 1793, M. de Beugnot was imprisoned in the Conciergerie,
where, and at La Force, he remained until the fall of Robespierre, in
daily danger of death, but, strangely, escaping it. Of the interior of
prison life during this period he gives vivid sketches; describes his
fellow-prisoners--many of them illustrious for rank, talents, or
virtues--and the incidents connected with the daily death delivery of
one or more of them. It is a vivid and powerful sketch of a notable
interior. This section of the work is a series of carefully executed
sketches of notable persons, especially of the leading Girondists,
including a full-length portrait of Madame Roland. He says, 'I more
than once made this reflection, that death on the scaffold only causes
horror to the generality of men, because they compare it with a state
of peace, of enjoyment, and perhaps of happiness they are
experiencing; but death considered from the depths of a dungeon, or
what is more, death when the whole existence is changed into torture,
is no longer the height of evils, but their remedy.'
Here we must leave M. de Beugnot. The subsequent portions of his book
are even more important and interesting, as the author himself rose to
eminence, and came into closer contact with the great movements of
history. Every page teems with interest, not only to the historical
student, but to the general reader. Miss Yonge has done good service
in translating this important work, especially at this juncture, when
the spiral cycle of French destiny has again brought its revolutionary
tragedy. It is needless to say that she has executed her task well,
although she might, in one or two places, have still further exercised
her power of excision.
_The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs._ Notes of a Journey to British
Guiana, with a review of the System and of the recent Commission of
Inquiry. By the Author of 'Ginx's Baby.' Strahan and Co.
The conditions of coolie emigration from the East Indies to the West,
although attracting but little attention from the general public, have
been regarded anxiously by politicians and philanthropists, who know
how easily enormous oppression and cruel wrong may shelter themselves
under legal forms of emigration, and what a peculiar field for
unscrupulous cupidity is constituted by the transmigration of helpless
Hindoos and Chinese to British plantations in British Guiana. That
great abuses have been perpetrated admits of no doubt, but happily
facilities of knowledge and of redress are much greater than in the
old days of slavery; and experience has made the British public and
the British Government susceptible and suspicious so that long
continuance of wrong is not possible. A Mr. Des Voeux, formerly a
stipendiary magistrate in Demerara, now an administrator in St. Lucia,
at the close of 1869 addressed a letter to Earl Granville, the
Colonial Secretary, representing the state of the coolie emigrants 'to
be little other than that from which not many years ago the tillers of
the same soil were redeemed by our generous fathers. Seduced from
India or China by false promises (so he seems to have averred), not
duly notified of the legislation which would affect their relations
when they reached the field of labour, assigned without due caution on
the part of the executive to the power of unconscientious masters,
wronged by the law and against law, daily injured, and unable to
obtain redress because of combinations between unjust magistrates,
hireling doctors, and manoeuvring planters, dying unrecked and
unreckoned (I have tried faithfully thus to sum up this man's
charges), such a fifty thousand British subjects anywhere existing
would heat the sympathies of English hearts to boiling point.' Earl
Granville consequently appointed a commission of inquiry, and two
philanthropic societies, 'The Anti-Slavery,' and 'The Aborigines
Protection Society,' induced no doubt by the humane sympathies and the
great descriptive power of 'Ginx's Baby,' engaged Mr. Jenkins, who is
a barrister, to go out as counsel to watch proceedings on their
behalf--'to represent the coolies in this inquiry.' 'I accepted and
held their retainer as a counsel, not as a partisan.' This volume is
his report. It is, we must confess, simply a blue-book; but little of
the dash and humour and graphic description of 'Ginx's Baby'
characterize it. His clients are distant; his employers required exact
statements of facts and figures. It is a law case, and not a romance.
It is full of valuable information, but useful information is
interesting only to politicians and philanthropic societies. Mr.
Jenkins is not dull--he is most so when he tries to force the fun;
ordinarily, he is as graphic in description and as picturesque in
statistics as his subject-matter will permit him to be. Everywhere he
is intelligent and apparently most solicitously impartial. In the
descriptive parts of his book he suffers by comparison with the
graphic power of Mr. Kingsley's 'At Last,' yet fresh in the memory of
all readers. The book is to be accepted, therefore, simply as a
blue-book of useful information. The question is one of interest and
importance; it affects our national honour and philanthropy. It is
'whether an artificial system for the transfer of the swarming hives
of Eastern Asia to the needy plains of the tropical West can be
formed, organized, and conducted with results equally efficacious to
the capitalists and beneficial to the emigrants.'
Although Mr. Jenkins thinks that Mr. Des Voeux's statement, made
under fear, as he says, of a coolie rising, are exaggerated, and that
his examination before the commissioners 'proved to be of a very
unsatisfactory character,' that he had written 'a very long and
serious letter, with the honestest of intentions but with the least
business-like of performance,' he thinks that there was a necessity
for the inquiry, and that 'the severe animadversions on Mr. Des
Voeux's conduct, in the report of the commissioners, was beyond the
proper sphere of their duty;' also that, 'on one or two points,
absolute justice does not seem to have been done him in the report.'
Mr. Jenkins describes his voyage out, several farms which he visited,
the proceedings before the commissioner, the organization for
emigration in India and in British Guiana, with the management of the
emigration office, indentures, registers, &c., women and marriages,
emigration laws, remedies against employers, wages, medical
inspection, &c., illustrating each by facts, anecdotes which may not
be always facts, and various details. He also traces the growth of the
coolie system from the time of the abolition of slavery, and discusses
the apprenticeship and other provisions for its regulation. The home
Government has refused to subsidize the emigration; hence it has been
in a state of chronic feud with the colony. The details given by Mr.
Jenkins in his appendix, under the head 'Review of Emigration,' are of
a very grave and ominous character. First he tells us that 'every
importation of African blood, whether aboriginal or West Indian, has
from the first regularly disappointed its promoters; the causes 'lie
partly in the character of the negro, partly in the incapacity of the
old labour system for adaptation to a state of things in which the
labourers had become free.' In 1839, a society was formed to procure
emigrants without the aid of the State; 2,900 labourers were obtained
from Barbadoes, and thirty from the United States. The emigrants were
speedily absorbed into the mass of village population. In 1841, bounty
was paid on 8,098 emigrants, chiefly Portuguese, from Madeira and
Brazil; the mortality was appalling, and under an act of disallowance
in October of the same year, public emigration came to an end. In
1844, Acts were passed providing for Chinese and coolie emigration,
and the next year 563 emigrants came from Calcutta, and 225 from
Madras. In the following year nearly 6,000 Portuguese emigrants
arrived, together with 1,373 from Calcutta, and 2,455 from Madras.
They were 'ravaged by disease, and literally decimated year by year in
the process of acclimatization.' Between 1845 and 1851, 18,707
Madeirans had been imported. The census of 1851 showed that only 7,928
were in the colony; some, however, had returned to their native
country. The quinquennial increase in the number of Indian emigrants
arriving during each of the four periods 1851-1855, 1856-1861,
1861-1865, 1806-1870, is represented by the figures 9,000, 14,000,
18,000, and 24,000. In 1853, besides the Indians, 647 Chinese were
added, and in the seven years 1859-1866, about 12,000 more. The
Chinese have proved very valuable emigrants. About 10,000 Barbadians,
12 Portuguese, and 2,500 Africans, made an estimated rural population
of 92,466. The death-rate is very high, never less than 10 per cent.
The proportion of women to men among the coolies in British Guiana is
as 10,000 to 29,000, among the Chinese as 2 to 114. The detailed evils
resulting from this, given in Mr. Jenkins's chapter on the subject,
are appalling. Mr. Jenkins also quotes from the _Pioneer of India_ an
ugly story concerning Jamaica emigration agents, who attempted in
India to carry off some twenty women by force, whom they had got into
confinement; and were defeated only by the energy of the Rev. Mr.
Evans. Although women are almost useless as labourers, it is a
suspicious fact that the fee for each woman recruited in India is
seven rupees, while that for a man is only four. We cannot discuss the
various points of emigration policy advocated by Mr. Jenkins; we can
only thank him for directing public attention to a matter so deeply
affecting our colonial future on the one hand, and our national honour
on the other.
_Westward by Rail; a Journey to San Francisco and Back, and a Visit to
the Mormons._ By W. T. RAE. Longmans, Green, and Co.
In a new introductory chapter to this second and cheaper edition of
his book, concerning which, on its first appearance, we spake with
strong and merited commendation, Mr. Rae gives additional information
concerning the Mormons, and the effect produced upon Mormonism by the
new railway, by the Mormon revolt under Mr. Godbe and the sons of
Joseph Smith, and by the vigorous policy of the United States
Government. Mr. Rae does not think that it has sustained much damage
by either. Brigham Young said that he did not 'care anything for a
religion which could not stand a railroad.' Mr. Godbe's reform is
brought under suspicion by its commercial motive, and was checkmated
by Brigham Young giving the electoral franchise to women. The chief
perils to Mormonism are the successful assertion of the control of the
Mormon militia by Governor Schaffer, and some decisions of Chief
Justice McKean securing absolute impartiality between Mormon and
Gentile in the law courts, refusing to naturalize any aliens who are
polygamists, and refusing to legalize certain donations of public land
made by the Mormon Legislative Assembly. The recent census gives a
population in Salt Lake City of 17,246 persons, in the territory of
Utah of 86,786, both much below the calculation of the Mormons
themselves.
Mr. Rae also gives the latest information concerning gold and silver
mining in the States of California and Nevada, and the territory of
Utah, and concerning the development of traffic on the Great Pacific
Railway.
_Canoe Travelling: Log of a Cruise in the Baltic, and Practical Hints
in Building and Fitting Canoes._ By WARINGTON BADEN-POWELL. With
Twenty-four Illustrations and a Map. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The canoe achievements of Mr. McGregor--and perhaps even more the
graphic way in which they have been described--have provoked much
emulation, and bid fair to raise canoeing into one of our
characteristic national recreations, like yachting and Alpine
climbing. Mr. Baden-Powell records a remarkable achievement of 400
miles of canoeing in the Baltic. Starting from Gothenburg in the
Cattegat, on the western coast of Sweden, he and his companion took
their two canoes up the river Gotha, and across the large inland lake
Wevern, 100 miles long, which they crossed in a steamer; then through
the West Gotha Canal, and across the Lakes Wicken and Wettern, Boven,
Roxen, and Elen, with their connecting canals, to the Baltic; then
along the north coast of the Baltic, with its innumerable islets, and
up the Oxlo Sound to Stockholm. From Stockholm they went by steamer to
Gothland, Carlsharm, and Malmo, from which place they crossed in the
canoes to Copenhagen, thence by railway and steamer to Ketson, Kiel,
and Hamburg, where, after some short river canoe excursions, they took
steamer to England. The account of the voyage is little more than a
log of sailing experiences, with slight touches of description of
people and places; but it will be read with interest by all who are
fond of boating, and by many who are not. The second part of the book
is purely technical, and furnishes data for the construction of
canoes.
POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.
_Balaustion's Adventure: including a Transcript from Euripides._ By
ROBERT BROWNING. Smith, Elder, and Co.
Mr. Browning's pastimes are characteristic enough. This new poem he
calls a May-month amusement, in the very graceful dedication in which
he explains its origin; but still we have the personal qualities as
predominant as elsewhere. The Countess Cowper, it appears, urged him
to give a version of a play of Euripides, 'of that strangest, sweetest
song of his, Alkestis;' and Mr. Browning gallantly set himself to the
task. But well may he say, in a slightly different sense from what he
meant it, though truly in no disparagement of his own originality,
'_Euripides might fear little; out I, also, have an interest in the
performance_; and what wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in
another and far easier sense, its nearest possible approach to those
Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at
your feet?' Had it not been for the skill with which Mr. Browning
invents dramatic expedients to aid him in relieving and toning down
the contrast which would inevitably have been felt between the direct
and sunny simplicity of the Greek, and his own wayward, imperative
many-moodedness--to coin a phrase--something of the grotesque would
assuredly have mingled itself with this performance. But, though the
clear wine has been poured into a coloured glass, ornamented with
design all too florid, it is presented to us by so sweet a hand that
we often forget the contrast in the singular grace of the maidenly
face and figure. Balaustion--wild pomegranate flower--has in her
something of the Greek; but she has also an ineffable touch of our
modern time. Her image comes as that of a reconciling spirit between
Mr. Browning and the old Greek poet, in such a manner, as suffices to
divert the mind from a too exclusive devotion to particular points.
The necessity that rests on Mr. Browning to first of all create a
series of media through which any circumstance or event may be seen,
comes out most strongly here, where the subject-matter seemed least of
all to admit of it. The triumph of Mr. Browning's genius lies in this,
that in some sort he justifies his own injustice to those Greek
qualities of unvarying clearness and grace of outline. Goethe, in his
'Helena,' celebrated in significant style the marriage of the Greek
and Gothic spirit, and he even condescended under allegorical figure
to point at individual poets. Had he lived to read 'Balaustion's
Adventure,' he would have found in it a valuable instance. Mr.
Browning is Greek in the fresh simplicity of his feeling; but Gothic
in the necessity he is ever under to see his thoughts reduplicated in
the shade and sunshine of many different moods or minds. Hence the
lyrical spirit and the peculiarly dramatic form of his work; and so it
is in this 'Adventure.'
The girlish simplicity of Balaustion, the Rhodian maiden who recites
the play, and her capacity for pure unalloyed devotion--for she twice
saves her friends by her patriotism and love of poetry--justify, in
part at least, what appear to be inconsistencies in Mr. Browning's
rendering; such, for example, as the lofty idealisation of the
character of Admetos. It is just such as a fresh enthusiastic girl
would, out of her own maidenly conception, impose on a hero of her
own, thrown into such tragic circumstances of those of Alkestis. Thus,
even where we are most induced to criticise, the figure of the teller
comes in to warn us; but after all, the modern poet, by virtue of his
dramatic medium, has reached a truer conception than that of
Euripides, or has illumined his conception by letting full upon it the
freer lights of earlier time. But clearly, the transcript from
Euripides, in the hands of Mr. Browning, undergoes a strange
transformation. It is not alone that lines here and there vary very
much from the original, and that expressions are amplified or departed
from; it is that on the old Greek thought a wholly modern conception
of love, and of life and death, is superimposed, and a dim doctrine of
spiritual compensation interwoven with it, which is quite alien to
Greek feeling. Something, however, may be said for the fact that we
have here really a reminiscence of a former telling, in which,
naturally, much of the halo that rests on the past, simply because it
has 'orbed into the perfect star,' would unconsciously well up round
the recollection, and colour the incident. All this, of course, shows
Mr. Browning's supreme art in dramatic expedient; but some of the
expressions of Herakles and not a few utterances of Admetos, are
almost too distinctly spiritualistic to pass muster in the connection
in which we find them. For example, this:--
'Since death divides the pair,
'Tis well that I depart and thou remain
Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh:
Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more,
So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh,
Read yet awhile, a very flame above
The rift I drop into the darkness by,--
And bid remember, flesh and spirit once
Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake.
Never be that abominable show
Of passive death without a quickening life,
Admetos only, no Alkestis now!'
Mr. Browning, in quoting the verse from Mrs. Browning, sufficiently
indicates the spirit in which he would read the Alkestis; but clear it
is that he might have chosen from the earlier poets passages far less
likely to give rise to the contradiction which we have spoken of, and
which cannot but be more or less felt in this instance. In Euripides,
we see the first fatal symptoms of the skepticism and materialism
which finally overtook the Greek stage. There is a good deal of
casuistry in his expedients, which often the stage-play (of which Mr.
Browning has decisively got rid) helped him to conceal. The old honest
belief in the myths was beginning to fade and weaken, and had already
become pretty much a thing for the theatre. Mr. Browning has aimed at
idealising Euripides--at elevating him, as it were, to the point at
which Greek myth will reflect the rising lights of modern ideas. But
it is inevitable that scholars should feel that there is a lack of
solid foundation for the rendering. To those who choose to receive Mr.
Browning's Alkestis implicitly, it can only be a thing of beauty and
of noblest meaning. So far as it is Greek, it gives the earlier rather
than the later conception; but it has wrapped the Greek ideal in a new
atmosphere of spiritual truth. If Mr. Browning had chosen the Alkestis
of Euripides for the sole purpose of proving his wonderful dramatic
capability, and his power of involving himself in a theme and so
transforming it, he could not have found a better, that is to say, a
more difficult, subject. In Greece the husband existed for the State,
the wife for the husband, and the conjugal relation was little
relieved by sentiment. Euripides celebrates the mere triumph of this
Greek wifely duty--no more; but how exquisitely does Mr. Browning make
Balaustion play chorus, so as occasionally to give opportunity for the
infusion of his own transcendentalism. Sometimes, however, Mr.
Browning shows fine capacity for catching the Greek grace and
unconscious sensuousness of conception. Nothing could be more faithful
than this:--
'For thee, Alkestis, Queen!
Many a time those haunters of the Muse
Shall sing thee to the seven-stringed mountain shell,
And glorify in hymns that need no harp,
At Sparta when the cycle comes about,
And that Karneian month wherein the moon
Rises and never sets the whole night through:
So too at splendid and magnificent
Athenai. Such the spread of thy renown,
And such the lay that, dying, thou hast left,
Singer and sayer.'
We take it for granted that our readers, either directly or
indirectly, have got some notion of what we may call the machinery of
the poem. When the Rhodians revolt because of the disastrous failure
of the Nikian expedition against Syracuse, Balaustion urges her
friends not to throw off their allegiance, but--
'Rather go die at Athens, lie outstretched
For feet to trample on, before the gate
Of Diomedes or the Hippadai,
Before the temples and among the tombs,
Than tolerate the grim felicity
Of harsh Lakonia.'
She urges them to go to Athens, and they set sail. When they are blown
out of their course she encourages them to new effort by singing
poems; and when they are cast on the Syracusan coast, she wins the
suffrages even of the Syracusans by her recitations. She tells her
friends, just when she is about to be happily wedded, of this her
early adventure, and recites the 'whole main of a play from first to
last,' which was associated in her mind with such strange, glad
memories.
And this is Mr. Browning's way of reproducing Euripides to us. Nothing
could be more characteristic than this performance. It is full of
dramatic subtleties; yet ever and anon the pure naturalness and
simplicity of Greek life break through upon us with subduing force
from the strange relief of contrast. One of our poets, in a very
clever _jeu d'esprit_, spoke of Mr. Browning as 'thinking in Greek.'
This poem proves, in a certain respect, how true was the
characterization. But if Mr. Browning thinks in Greek, then it is most
often to the low, sad undertone of modern doubt, question, and
perplexity. The sunshine that is cast over this whole adventure is
what most entitles it to be called Greek, though there is far too much
suggestion of shadow, in the shape of perilous speculation, in the
background.
_Faust; a Tragedy._ By JOHN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. Translated in the
original metres by BAYARD TAYLOR. Strahan and Co.
All translators of first-class poetry have a difficult series of
problems to solve; but we are disposed to think a version of 'Faust'
in the original metres is about the most arduous task a man could set
himself. We would almost rather attempt 'The Birds' of Aristophanes.
Mr. Taylor, hitherto known as one of the choicest writers of that
variety of English prose which has developed itself across the
Atlantic--a variety which is what gardeners call a 'sport'--is not
quite up to the great work he has undertaken. He is not a sufficiently
subtle metrist to echo the delicate melodies which lurk in Goethe's
simplest forms of rhythm; nor does he always faithfully reflect
Goethe's ideas--which, though twisted into recondite form, are usually
simple reproductions of archaic axioms. It is the highest compliment
you can pay Goethe, to say that there is nothing new in him. He
iterated ancient truths in forms that suited his own era. He was like
a mighty tree, bearing fresh foliage every year, but always the same
old oak that cast cool shadows on the lawns of Eden. Nothing can be
more certain than that absolutely new ideas must be false ideas; but
it is equally certain that a man of great genius does infinite good by
thinking out old ideas afresh, and presenting them in a form that
suits his generation. There is not much in 'Faust' that there is not
in 'Job' (which some authorities deem the oldest poem in existence),
and there is much in 'Job' which there is not in 'Faust.' But 'Faust'
was a necessity of the age, for all that. And even Bailey's 'Festus,'
a very crude and washed-out variation of the theme, did good in its
time.
The deficiencies we have indicated in Mr. Taylor's work are more
visible in the second part of 'Faust' than in the first. In both they
are painfully observable. Take Gretchen's song, 'The King in Thule:'
we select the first, second, and fifth stanzas:--
'There was a king in Thule
Was faithful till the grave,
To whom his mistress dying
A golden goblet gave.
'Nought was to him more precious;
He drained it at every bout;
His eyes with tears ran over
As oft as he drank out.
* * * * *
'Then stood the old carouser,
And drank the last life-glow,
And hurled the hallowed goblet
Into the tide below.'
Herewith we venture to compare the same stanzas, in a boyish
translation of our own, made when we had a vision of translating
'Faust':--
'There was a king in Thule, the ancient sea beside;
His love a goblet gave him upon the day she died.
'At festival and banquet he loved that cup of gold,
For many a dream it brought him of the sweet days of old.
* * * * *
'The aged king arises; a mighty draught drinks he,
Then hurls the golden-goblet away into the sea.'
Some of Mr. Taylor's expressions in the few lines we have cited are
unpoetic, and some are unintelligible; for example, what is to be
understood by the old king's drinking 'his last life-glow?' Rhyme is
of course answerable for the barbarism.
Now let us take the first four lines of 'The Prologue in Heaven'--the
song of Raphael, the Archangel. Thus Mr. Taylor:--
'The sun-orb sings in emulation,
'Mid brother spheres, his ancient round--
His path predestined through creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.'
This is awkward and unpoetic. The sun 'singing a round' makes one
think of
'Three blind mice--
See how they run!'
Here is Dr. Anster's version of the same lines:--
'The sun, as in the ancient days,
'Mong sister stars in rival song,
His destined path preserves, obeys.
And still in thunder rolls along.'
Shelley writes:--
'The sun makes music as of old
Amid the rival spheres of Heaven,
On its predestined circle rolled
With thunder speed.'
Again, let us place in parallel the final lines of Raphael's song.
Taylor:--
'The lofty works, uncomprehended,
Are bright as on the earliest day.'
Anster:--
'Mysterious all--yet all is good,
All fair as at the birth of light.'
Shelley:--
'The world's unwithered countenance
Is bright as at the birth of day.'
Mr. Taylor's liability to mistake Goethe's meaning--a liability shared
by most translators, because the poet is really simple, when they
fancy him only an utterer of enigmas--is curiously shown by his
rendering of a famous line:--
'Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.'
Goethe meant simply this, 'Man errs when he strives'--calm is both
power and joy--leave the great movement of the world do to its work,
and be passive in the hands of the Creator. His faith was in repose.
Well, Mr. Taylor gives us the renderings of nine translators, none of
whom have approached the simplicity, and only one or two the meaning
of the original.
_Ex. gr._:--
'HAYWARD.--Man is liable to error, while his struggle lasts.
ANSTER.--Man's hour on earth is weakness, error, strife.
BROOKS.--Man errs and staggers from his birth.
SWANWICK.--Man, while he striveth, is prone to err.
BLACKIE.--Man must still err, so long as he strives.
MARTIN.--Man, while his struggle lasts, is prone to stray.
BERESFORD.--Man errs as long as lasts his life.
BIRCH.--Man's prone to err in acquisition.
BLAZE.--L'Homme s'égare, tant qu'il cherche son but.'
To which let us add:--
BAYARD TAYLOR.--'While man's desires and aspirations stir,
He cannot choose but err.'
One would like to know what becomes of the _original metres_, when a
line of eight monosyllables is transmuted into two claudicant lines
that run to sixteen syllables. By the way, we must remember one other
rendering:--
SHELLY.-- ... 'Man
Must err till he has ceased to struggle.'
But even Shelley has not quite caught Goethe's meaning. This is
excusable, as we know that Shelley's German was imperfect.
Our ultimate judgment on Mr. Bayard Taylor's effort is simply this: it
is a worthy piece of work, but it does not, and cannot stand as
representative of 'Faust,' for the two reasons already assigned. Mr.
Taylor cannot fathom Goethe's meaning, and cannot catch his music.
_The Breitmann Ballads._ By CHARLES G. LELAND. Complete Edition.
Trübner and Co.
Mr. Leland has found it necessary to protest against spurious
Breitmanns, and to say that his only authentic ballads are contained
in this volume--a testimony at once to both the popularity of the
ballads and the value of this edition. The various parts of the volume
are very unequal in merit, but 'Hans Breitmann in Italy' is equal to
the best work of the author, and attests his varied attainments. We
have already done justice to the ballads, and need only quote his
advice to the Pope:--
'"Tonitrus et cespes!" dixit Johanes Breitmann.
"Si veritatem cupies, tunc ego sum der right man;
Percute semper ferrum dum caldum est et _malleable_,
Nunc est tuum tempus te facere _infallible_.
'"In nostra America quum Præses decet abire,
Die ultimo fecit omne quodposset imaginire.
Appointet ambasciatores et post-magistros,
Consules et alios, per dextros et sinistros.
'"Quum Rex Bomba ista Neapolit--anus,
Compulsus fuit to shin it--ut dixit Africanus--
Fecit ultimo die ducos et countos, vanus.
(Inter alios McCloskey, tuus Hibernicus chamberlanus.)
'"Et quia tu es; ut credo; ultimus Poporum,
Facis bene devenire, quod dicitur High Cockalorum--
Sei magnissimus _toad in the puddle_, ite caput, magnamente;
Et ERITUS SICUT DEUS, nemine contradicente!
'"Unus error solus, Sancte Pater commisisti.
Quia primus _infallible_ non te proclamavisti,
Nam nemo audet dicere: Papa fecit quod non est bonus.
Decet semper jactare super _alios_ probandi onus.
'"Conceptio Immaculata, hoc modo fixisti,
Et nemo audet dicere unum verbum, de isti:
Non vides si infallibilis es, et vultis es exdare,
Non alius sed _tu_ solus hanc debet proclamare."
'"Figlio mio," dixit Papa; "tu es homo mirabilis,
Tua verba sunt mi dulcior quam ostriche cum Chablis,
In tutta Roma, de Alemania gente,
Non ho visto uno con si grande mente.
Ver obenedetto es--eris benedictus,
'"Tibi mitterem photographiam in qua sum depictus,
Tu comprendes situatio--il punto et gravamen.
Sunt pauci clerici ut te. Nunc dico tibi.--Amen."'
_The Member for Paris: a Tale of the Second Empire._ By TROIS-ETOILES.
Three vols. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The purpose of this very clever book is to give a picture of the
political and social state of France during the early period of the
Second Empire, the period immediately subsequent to the _coup
d'état_--the period of the Crimean War, and of the _Crédit Mobilier_.
Anything more shrewd in observation, more competent in knowledge, more
healthy in judgment, more caustic in refined sarcasm, more sparkling
in style, it is difficult to imagine. The thread of story upon which
these sketches are strung is of the slenderest. Raoul Aimé was Duke of
Hautbourg, on the Loire, whose head shared the fate of those of so
many of the old aristocracy in 1793, and whose estate was sold for a
mere song to an attorney. Raoul Aimé's son went into exile, married
the wealthy daughter of an English slave-owner, with whose money he
bought back the estate, returned to France with Louis XVIII., and died
a Minister of State. His son was accidentally killed in the streets
the day after the _coup d'état_ of 1851, his nephew, Manuel Gerald,
being heir to his title and property. A sturdy, and noble-hearted
Republican, Gerald cannot take possession of estates purchased with
the money of a slaveholder, or live in France under the _régime_ of
Napoleon III. He lives, therefore, in comparative poverty in Brussels,
and distributes the large revenue of his estates in charities. His two
sons, Horace and Emile, enthusiastically ratify their father's
repudiations, and study law in Paris in order to practise as
barristers. The father, however, wisely refuses to accept the verdict
of his sons as final, puts into their hands a deed conveying the
estate to them, and puts them upon a probation of five years, at the
end of which their decision is to be given. The two young men enter at
the bar, take modest lodgings in the house of a haberdasher, and
become the heroes of the story. Their characters are finely
discriminated. Horace, the elder, is full of fine generous impulses
and virtues, but has certain social weaknesses that render him
incapable of the austere, not to say Quixotic virtues of his father.
Emile, who is subordinate in the narrative, is less brilliant than
Horace, but studious, solid, modest, and Spartan; both brothers,
moreover, are affectionate and filial. The interest centres on Horace,
who makes a brilliant _début_ in defence of a press prosecution, and
becomes famous; is returned deputy for Paris, becomes acquainted with
M. Macrobe, the great financier, the founder and chairman of the
Crédit Parisien; is so far entangled by him as to marry his daughter
Angelique, notwithstanding a deeper passion for Georgette, the
haberdasher's daughter; writes brilliant articles, makes effective
speeches, passes through various phases of Parisian life, and
ultimately, after his father's death, determines to claim the dukedom.
Almost every class and aspect of the venal life of Paris during this
humiliating period is made to pass before us, the chief personages
being portraits from life, easily cognizable by anyone moderately
acquainted with history: indeed, the names of some are but very thinly
disguised. Thus, Jules Favre is Claude Febre, M. Thiers is M. Tiré, M.
Arsène Houssaye is Arsène Gousset, Mr. Worth is Mr. Girth, Blanqui is
Albi. Journalist, Republican, Legitimist, and Imperial, notably the
renowned correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, who is everywhere and
knows everything; politicians, lawyers, novel writers, financiers,
aristocrats, bourgeoisie, Parisians, and villagers, are presented in
careful portraiture--evidently from life--the whole being done with
very great literary skill and brilliancy. The story, slight as it is,
and notwithstanding the somewhat melodramatic incidents of the
struggle between Horace and Albi at his father's grave, and the death
of the former and his wife on the day they take possession of the
estate, indicates great powers of novel writing, if the writer be so
minded. Nothing can be more skilful, discriminating, or beautiful than
the delicate contrasts in character between the two brothers, Horace
and Emile, the two girls Georgette and Angelique, the two patriots
Horace Gerald and Nestor Roche; or more masterly than the way in which
the working of Imperial institutions is exhibited. The marvel is that
any despot, in such a position of moral isolation, and with such
unscrupulous and reckless methods of tyranny and corruption could, for
eighteen years, have maintained himself upon the throne of France. The
fact speaks volumes for the condition to which unscrupulous rulers and
blind revolutions may reduce a great people. The writer's intimate
acquaintance with the interior of French life, whether the court life
of Paris, or the village life of Hautbourg, the legal life of the
Palais de Justice, or the bourgeoise life of commercial travellers,
and Parisian shopkeepers, is manifest in every sentence, and is
something unique. The book is a gallery of portraits, in a series of
social sketches eminently original and clever. A genial and
high-minded Asmodeus, in a vein of delicate sarcasm, reveals a state
of things which all were assured of, but which very few could picture.
Here, with graphic realism, and yet with perfect delicacy, its
terrible rottenness is indicated. In his very different field, and
with a very different genius, both in quality and degree, the author
of "The Member for Paris" has been as eminently successful as MM.
Erckmann-Châtrian. We trust that the writer, whom we can scarcely err
in identifying with the author of the brilliant French sketches which
have appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, will work yet more fully the
mine of which he has given us these specimens.
_Behind the Veil_. By the Author of 'Six Months Hence.' Smith, Elder,
and Co.
It is an undoubted weakness in a writer of fiction when the interest
of the story is made to depend upon a succession of exciting
situations and tragic catastrophes. There was in this writer's former
work a weird interest in the strange psychological problem which he
set himself to work out, and which was done with a considerable degree
of power and promise. In the present story sensational incident
abounds, and is not earned off by morbid psychology. Here, as in the
former work, the interest centres upon a murder--surely human life is
varied enough for a fresh source of interest. The story opens with a
railway accident, in which the hero is well-nigh killed, and, in his
delirium, awakens certain suspicions about his antecedents, the
pendant picture of which is a scene of murder in the Australian bush.
After his marriage is broken off he nearly dies of typhus fever, in
the delirium of which he removes the suspicions which had gathered
round him; and Jessie, his betrothed, nearly dies of a ruptured
blood-vessel. Twice he is found by Beresford in a remote part of
Wales--the chances of finding him there being a hundred thousand to
one, while the plot is carried on by a dozen most improbable
coincidences. Then James his brother, who in fleeing from justice has
slept in a railway truck, apparently rides to his death in a furnace,
into which, by automatic action, it is likely to deliver him; but by a
refinement of feeling, resembling that of a cat with a mouse, he is
made to jump off and over a precipice, only to die a few hours after
in the custody of the police, who are in pursuit of him for
murder--having confessed himself guilty, first of the murder, then of
the crime of blocking the railway, to cause the death of his brother.
In addition to all this, Jessie's brother dies of consumption, and a
seaside acquaintance is half killed by cardiac asthma. Now we have no
objection to a reasonable amount of the tragic, but thus to fill a
novel with it is simply repulsive, and is defective art. A good plot
should be constructed like a Chinese puzzle, and, like a Chinese
puzzle, taken to pieces. The Author of 'Behind the Veil' simply breaks
the puzzle after cleverly putting it together. There can be but little
good, and a very inferior land of interest in such melodramatic
stories; we get too impatient even to be amused, and we cannot rank
very highly the writer who chiefly depends upon them. The best parts
of 'Behind the Veil' are its dialogues and letters--especially those
of Jessie and Flo--which are very spirited and clever; as is also the
schoolboy slang of Conrad. If the writer would trust himself to a
novel of character he would, judging from these, succeed well. The
characters themselves, too, are well conceived and discriminated,
especially those of the mother and the two sisters. Noel Arlington is
too galvanic to be natural or interesting. Beresford is better, and
has two amusing foils in Smith, the pianoforte tuner, and Pinthorne,
the curate--both of which are very clever caricatures. The literary
power evinced is considerable; the love-making is well-nigh perfect,
although we do not quite like a man of thirty-five and upwards
marrying a girl of fifteen. The writer ought to do good work; and
will, if he will only emancipate himself from a vicious school, depend
less upon blue lights, and more upon natural human developments. His
book is one in which, while the defects hinder perfect sympathy, the
excellences are too distinctive to permit us to lay it aside.
_Fernyhurst Court; an Every-day Story._ By the Author of 'Stone Edge.'
Strahan and Co.
If the author of 'Behind the Veil' has gone to the one extreme, the
author of 'Fernyhurst Court' has gone to the other. Although her work
belongs to the higher and more thoughtful school of character, and
although it is written with the delicacy, beauty, and power that
challenged attention and excited expectation in 'Stone Edge,' it has
not movement enough to sustain its characters. The artistic structure
is loose, although upon the artistic finish much careful pains is
bestowed. More of the evolution of a story would have prevented the
tendency to run into inordinate descriptions and to desultoriness
which has sometimes wearied us. The book is a thoroughly good one--it
could not be otherwise from the pen of its author--but like 'Benoni
Blake,' upon which we have offered some criticisms in another place,
it might have been better. Whatever the skill of touch and the effects
of colour, the first great requisite of a picture is composition; so
the first great work of a novel writer is a story--and story there is
none in 'Fernyhurst Court.' Its studies are chiefly of women, and are
apparently intended to exhibit the causes of wifely unfitness and
motherly failure, in little defects of temper and unselfishness. Some
half-dozen thoroughly disagreeable women are delineated--none of them
wicked, but all unloveable through little naggings, or little
selfishnesses. We confess that we could have dispensed with one-half
of them, and could have desired the substitution of two or three
contrasts like May. Milly is an improvement upon Dickens's Dora, but
Lionel's chances of happiness are not great. The moral of the story is
a wholesome one if the girls will but take it; but we confess we
should like to see the authoress devoting her fine perception of
character, and her great descriptive powers, to a work architecturally
great, as well as artistically beautiful.
_Her Title of Honour._ By HOLME LEE. Henry S. King.
This charming biographical fiction is constructed upon the outline of
Henry Martyn's history, which it clothes with imaginative flesh and
blood, incident, conversation, and motive; so far, that is, as the
actual history does not supply these. The authoress has been very
faithful to biographical fact; her religious sympathies, moreover,
have enabled her to enter with great appreciation into the purposes
and motives, the hopes and fears, the fluctuations and resolves of
that heroic life. The result is an imaginative story that is probably
more true to actual life than the ordinary biographies of Henry Martyn
are; for imaginative genius--faithful, as here, to ascertained facts,
even the minutest--can represent men and women much more truly and
vividly than a mere common-place biographer who is restricted to
literal fact. The conception of Eleanor's character, generous and
loving, and yet falling short of needful heroism, is not only very
fine, but is, perhaps, the true explanation of the great
disappointment in Martyn's career. Personal and local names are
changed so as to give greater freedom of treatment to the artist, but
they are easily identified--Truro with Pengarvon, Salisbury with
Craxon, Eleanor Trevelyan with Lydia Grenfell. We scarcely need say of
a book of Holme Lee's writing that it is carefully finished, and
redolent of a refined and beautiful soul. We have no more accomplished
or conscientious literary artist. The fine touches of characterization
of which the book is full, give it a great charm to cultivated minds.
The broken-off purposes of Henry Martyn's life give novelty to the
course and issue of the story, and significance to the moral which
wise preachers often proclaim, that tangible achievement is not the
greatest end or influence of a life. Henry Martyn may have applied
great scholarship and refined intellectual powers to work, which
ordinary literati would have done even better, but the consecration of
ordinary powers would not have filled the Church and the world with
such an influence.
_Benoni Blake, M.D., Surgeon at Glenaldie._ By the Author of 'Peasant
Life in the North.' Strahan and Co.
'Peasant Life in the North' won for its author a respectful attention
to whatever else he might publish. Few sketches, of contemporaneous
writers, surpass or equal the racy characterizations and subtle human
tenderness of 'Muckle Jock,' the mild Rhadamanthus doom of 'The
Dainty Drainer,' or the perfect admixture of refined passion and
rustic roughness of 'The Mason's Daughter.' 'Benoni Blake,' therefore,
excited expectations which it will both gratify and disappoint. Let us
have done with the grumbling first. Of course the subjective
characteristics of this author were to be anticipated. No one could
have looked for a novel in the style of Charles Lever or Wilkie
Collins from him. Subtle analysis, quiet description, and a certain
vein of sentimental and philosophical reflection and comment were to
be expected. We will not say that in these rather than in crowded
incident and dramatic representations the chief genius of fiction
lies. Every man in his own order. 'Charles O'Malley' is, in its way,
as good as 'The Transformations;' but we may say that the greatest
achievement of genius is a just equilibrium between the two, and this
the author of 'Benoni Blake' has not maintained. His work is a
photograph rather than a story, a photograph of the kind that presents
the same face in four aspects of it. The effect is like looking
through an album containing only different photographs of the same
person. The art is very beautiful, and the effect for a little while
very charming, but one gets tired before the second volume, and wishes
that 'Benoni Blake' would do something, or that somebody would do
something to him. We get as tired of his simple inertia as he of the
simple facile sweetness of Bessie's kisses. There is, moreover, a
little too much about kissing; the sweetness of kisses is better
suggested than described. The author has made the mistake of expanding
a sketch, such as might have found a place in 'Peasant Life,' into a
book--story it scarcely is--and he has done this by repetitions and
reiterations of substantially the same situation and sentiments. This
probably is an unconscious revolt against mere sensationalism, for the
writer is clearly capable of spirited dialogue and of inventive
construction. We are not, however, quite sure of the limit of this
power. Neither the peasant dialogues nor the conversations of educated
persons have much variety; the latter, indeed, if we except the brief
episodes at Fanflare Lodge and of the flirtation with Miss Shawe, are
almost wholly substituted by descriptions. We are told what the
characters are--they do not unfold or exhibit themselves. The author
has, however, a minute acquaintance with the provincial thought and
speech of the Scottish peasantry; their racy humour, pawky shrewdness,
and quaint prejudices, are admirably described. John, the minister's
man, and Nannie, his female counterpart, are genuine types;--John's
leal affection comes out very nobly in the proffer of his hoarded
savings. So, in a somewhat higher grade, are Mr. Bowie, the 'paper
minister,' and Miss Robison. The conversation between Mr. Bowie and
John, as the latter drives home the former, is the raciest bit in the
book; but all this runs in a very narrow groove. There are, too,
certain mannerisms, which recall unpleasantly reminiscences of the way
in which Thackeray buttonholes his readers and takes them into his
confidence, which had better be avoided, as also a covert, although
not ill-natured, vein of sarcasm, which leaves you in doubt whether
the writer is in jest or earnest; in which again, the influence of
Thackeray is a little too perceptible. Decidedly, too, the puff
indirect, in reference to the opinion of the _Saturday Review_ on
'Peasant Life in the North,' is in bad taste. Altogether, there is a
lack of the _ars celandi artem_, a certain artificialness, and
self-conscious mannerism that mars the effect of the book. The writer
is apparently ashamed of his gentle sympathies, and tries to appear
cynical.
It is easier, however, to speak of defects than of excellences, and
the manifold and great excellences of 'Benoni Blake' alone justify us
in saying so much about its defects. The former are a minute knowledge
and love of nature, a keen insight into the fluctuations and
inconsistencies of human nature, a sympathetic tenderness for its
sorrows and loves and pure joys, hearty enjoyment of its humour and
pathos, and a quiet realism, exquisitely flavoured with sentiment,
which portrays life as an accomplished artist paints a portrait, with
just that idealism which adorns character without falsifying it. The
character of Benoni, gentle and good but not heroic, drifting into
virtue rather than fighting for it; that of Bessie, tender, yet
resolute; lowly yet great in self-sacrificing power; trustful as
worship, yet sensitive and very refined in feeling, and capable of
being helped, as her friend Miss Robison helps her--are both admirably
done: so is the contrast between the two ministers, Mr. Blake and Mr.
Bowie. There is, however, something unnatural and improbable in the
relative feeling of father and son, and we are sorry that Miss Robison
should fall into the arms of a selfish and vulgar fellow like Bowie.
The Fanfare family are also well portrayed. Altogether there is great
power and greater promise in 'Benoni Blake.' It exhibits the fine
elements of Scottish life in its lowlier walks, with a degree of
ability that equals that of the author of 'Robin Grey.' It is full of
beautiful lights and shades, tender touches, and racy humour, great
truthfulness, and delicate discrimination. It does not fulfil the
promise of 'Peasant Life in the North,' but had not that appeared
first, it would be the promise of much better things to come.
_A Harmony of the Essays, &c., of Francis Bacon._ Arranged by EDWARD
ARBER. English Reprints. London: 5, Queen-square, Bloomsbury.
Mr. Arber has here furnished us with one of the most curious and
interesting books even of his rich series. His ample bibliography
leaves no point necessary for elucidation untouched. It includes Dr.
Rowley's 'Life of Lord Bacon,' Ben Jonson's testimony, Aubrey's
gossip, 'A Prologue on Varieties of Species in Literature, with
special reference to the Essay and its Natural History;' a general
introduction concerning Bacon's literary character in connection with
his personal history; a bibliographical catalogue and tabular return
of the various editions of the essays, with an account of
translations, &c. Nothing, indeed, seems to have escaped the industry
of this prince of modern bibliographers. But the chief interest of the
volume is its harmony of different texts. The texts selected are--I.
The Editio Princeps, published 1597. II. Second edition, 1598; these
two editions being almost identical. III. A volume preserved among the
Harleian Manuscripts, containing interlineations and corrections in
Bacon's own hand. IV. Second revised text, published 1612. V. Final
English edition, 1625; usually regarded as the standard edition, but
nevertheless varied and corrected by Bacon. These texts are printed by
Mr. Arber in four parallel columns, Nos. I. and II. being identical in
the first column, and Bacon's final corrections of No. V. being
appended in foot-notes. The different works included in Mr. Arber's
volume are:--I. A Harmony of the first group of ten Essays. II.
'Meditationes Sacræ,' Latin text with English translation. III. 'On
the Colours of Good and Evil.' IV. A Harmony of the second group of
twenty-four Essays. V. A Harmony of the third group of six Essays. VI.
A Harmony of the fourth group of eighteen Essays. VII. The Fragment of
an Essay on Fame. We scarcely need point out the great literary
curiosity which this harmony of the essays constitutes, nor the means
which it affords of studying Bacon's painstaking 'file,' and its
illustration of his own saying, 'I alter ever when I add, so that
nothing is finished till all be finished;' the significant comment of
the great master on 'easy' writing. The perfection of Bacon's essays
is the result of nearly forty years' continuous labour.
_Publications of the Early English Text Society._ Trübner and Co.
1871.
46. _Legends of the Holy Rood; Symbols of the Passion and Cross
Poems._ Edited by RICHARD MORRIS, LL.D.
47. _Sir David Lyndesay's Works. Part V. The Minor Poems of Lyndesay._
Edited by J. A. H. MURRAY, Esq.
48. _The Time's Whistle: or a Newe Daunce of Seven Satires, and other
Poems._ Compiled by R. C., Gent. Edited by J. M. COWPER, Esq.
_Extra Series. XIV. On Early English Pronunciation, with especial
reference to Shakspeare and Chaucer._ By ALEXANDER J. ELLIS, F.R.S.,
F.S.A., &c., &c. Part III.
The present issue will more than satisfy the members of this valuable
Society, and we can scarcely doubt that the publications of which it
consists will attract to it more subscribers.
Dr. Morris's collection of 'Legends of the Holy Rood' will be welcomed
both for the examples which it furnishes of the English language, as
written in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and
still more for its exhibition of one of the most interesting of the
Christian legends, in several of the forms in which our forefathers
were accustomed to hear it. The learned editor has prefixed to the
collection a summary of the incidents of the legend in its various
forms, and many who do not care to grope their way through the
legends themselves, may be delighted and instructed by this sketch of
a work of pious imagination which, while it amuses by its quaintness,
can hardly fail also to strike the mind of a reader of the present day
with admiration at the intensity of feeling, the abandonment to
belief, and the wealth of spiritual apprehension, under the influence
of which the story must have grown. To those who are unacquainted with
the forms of Christian thought and feeling in the 'ages of faith,' and
may wish to acquire some knowledge of it from original sources, under
competent guidance, no better aid could probably be recommended than
that afforded by this volume.
Nearly half of the volume containing the minor poems of Lyndesay is
occupied by a preface by Professor Nichol, giving a sketch of Scottish
poetry up to the time of Sir David Lyndesay, with an outline of his
works. Some of the poems are amusing. That entitled 'The Justyng
betuix James Watsoun and Jhone Barbour,' has a ring of humour,
reminding us of Burns; but, on the whole, these pieces do not give a
very high impression of the poet's power. The expression is better
than the matter.
The author of 'The Time's Whistle' is unknown, but his present editor,
Mr. Cowper, appears to be inclined to identify him with Richard
Corbet, successively Bishop of Oxford, and of Norwich. Whoever he was,
he hated well Papistry and Puritanism, as well as the grosser vices of
his day, which seem to have been those of most days. The blows of his
satire do not lack force, though they may delicacy of epithet, and his
judgments on others are made from the firm ground of a supreme
self-satisfaction. It is noteworthy how, just after the golden days of
Queen Bess, the age appeared to its censors as evil as that of Queen
Victoria does to ours. The attitude of High and Dry Churchmen towards
Papist and Dissenter also appears in these verses just as we are
familiar with it, and the vices castigated are those of all times.
There is, however, one exception, in the description given of the
ignorant frequenter of bookstalls, who sought to make himself appear a
man of learning by poring over and seeming to read authors whose
language he did not know. The description of him is very amusing. In
some of the smaller poems the writer shows poetic feeling, especially
in reference to the beauties of nature, expressed in graceful verse.
The third part of Mr. Ellis's valuable work on 'English Pronunciation'
is a vast mine of information and suggestion concerning the great
subject he is attempting to treat. This part contains, besides Mr.
Ellis's own writing, and the passages from authors which he prints for
the purposes of his arguments, reprints of several early tracts on
pronunciation and phonetic writing, and a pronouncing vocabulary of
the sixteenth century, compiled from several authors of that age. We
venture, however, to think that Mr. Ellis will need an interpreter to
make the fruit of his labours available to any but those who can
wholly devote themselves to the study of his subject. His 'Glossic,
or New System of Spelling,' and 'Key to Universal Glossic,' by means
of which he seeks to express the many sounds of human language, are,
to say the least, very hard to be understood. The problem is,
doubtless, a most difficult one, and Mr. Ellis's signal qualifications
to deal with it are so well known that we can do no more here than
acknowledge gratefully this further contribution of his learned labour
in a field of unknown fertility, little cultivated, and painful to
till: while we at the same time point out the hindrance we find in
deriving all the benefit from his work which we believe it is capable
of affording.
THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOLOGY.
_History of Protestant Theology, particularly in Germany, viewed
according to its fundamental Movement, and in connection with the
Religious, Moral, and Intellectual Life._ By Dr. J. A. DORNER,
Oberconsistorialrath and Professor of Theology at Berlin. Translated
by the Rev. George Robson, M.A., Inverness, and Sophia Taylor. 2 vols.
Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1871.
Dr. Dorner is already well known in this country by the translation,
published by Messrs. Clark, in their Foreign Theological Library, of
his admirable and exhaustive work on the 'Person of Christ,' as a
theologian who unites profound and extensive learning with spiritual
insight, rare intellectual acumen, and earnest piety. The translation
of his 'History of Protestant Theology,' now published, will be hailed
as a welcome boon by all thoughtful students of Christian doctrine. It
cannot fail to increase and extend the high estimation in which the
author is held, and must lead to what is peculiarly needed at the
present time, the formation of deeper and sounder views of the great
principles involved in the religious and intellectual movement of the
Reformation. The original work came out about five years ago, as one
of a series of Histories of the Sciences, undertaken by the Historical
Commission of the Royal Academy of Science at Munich, under the
auspices of the King of Bavaria. It took at once a high position in
the recent theological literature of Germany. The companion work of
the series, 'a History of Catholic Theology,' by Dr. Werner, is
admitted, even by Roman Catholic reviewers, to be decidedly inferior
to it in scientific depth and thoroughness. Unquestionably a history
like this, so intimately pervaded by the true spirit of a living
Protestantism, which enables one clearly to understand the course of
evolution pursued by the doctrinal systems included under that name,
deserves to be regarded as 'a classic, both in respect of matter and
form.' We cannot, however, add _in respect of style_; for it must be
admitted that Dr. Dorner, like most of his countrymen, is very little
solicitous to recommend his thoughts by arranging them in an
attractive dress. His sentences are too often cumbrous and intricate,
sometimes even to obscurity, and require a degree of attention in the
reader that is rather fatiguing. Still there is a vigorous pulse in
them, and an exact propriety in the language, by which the mind is
stimulated and satisfied, so that when we have got to the end of a
chapter or division, and look back on the road we have travelled, we
feel as we might after a laborious climb which has rewarded us with a
noble prospect.
The distinctive excellencies of Dr. Dorner's history appear to us to
be the following:--First of all, as might be expected, it is marked by
depth and thoroughness of learning. The investigation is carried out
over the whole field, embracing all the sections and national branches
of Protestantism, with their subdivisions, from the time of Luther
onwards to our own day. So far from confining his review to the
Lutheran communities of Germany, ample space is assigned to the
leading representatives of opinion in the Reformed or Calvinistic
churches of France and Switzerland, Great Britain, and North America.
These are all taken up in due order, analyzed, and classified
according to their respective tendencies. The schools of Germany, no
doubt, receive the largest measure of attention, but there is a good
reason for this in the fact which the author says will be owned by
all, 'that the strength of scientific Protestantism, both in
exegetical, historical, and systematic theology, rests in Germany.' He
follows up this claim, however, with an ingenuous confession of the
weakness and shortcomings of the German Churches, in comparison with
those of other countries, in the practical and moral application of
Protestant principles. The accounts given of the different systems,
their origin, method of inquiry, and influence, are very complete and
faithful. They show a wonderful capacity to grasp the contents and
scope of widely different forms of thought and speculation, together
with admirable skill in the exposition of them, so as to make even
their abstruse portions intelligible. There is none of the dryness and
heaviness that is often complained of as attaching to the discussion
of the dogmas of a bygone age; but the vivid force of a subtle and
active mind runs through and enlivens the whole. Some writers on those
subjects remind one of a spiritless cicerone leading you through
avenues of ruins, pointing out each object with the wearisome and
formal minuteness of a catalogue; but our author is like one who
resuscitates the spirit of the past, and who can throw a human
interest around the fallen columns and deserted halls, awakening
sympathy with the men who reared them and made them their home. In
this respect he reminds us of the great Church historian, Neander. The
gift is certainly one of rarer occurrence among theological writers
than in the class of general historians.
This feeling of interest which is breathed into the discussions and
controversies of the past, is closely associated with what we conceive
to be the cardinal excellence of this history, stamping it with real
scientific worth. We refer to the instinctive skill and fidelity
displayed in tracing out the inner and formative principles of each
movement, defining the limits and relations of each, and with keen and
well-practised judgment determining the degrees of validity that
should be assigned to them. This process is carried out by the author,
not under the influence of some philosophic assumptions--which have
too frequently been set up as a regulation standard in this kind of
criticism--but in a spirit of Christian enlightenment and evangelical
experience. Everywhere we mark the union of reverence for divine
authority with the manly assertion of spiritual freedom in an honest
search after truth. Hence his mode of judging those theories of
religion which are most divergent from his own views, and antagonistic
(as we should say) to Scriptural orthodoxy, is free from all
narrowness, prejudice, and bitterness. He does not pronounce upon them
according to their deviation from certain human formularies, but seeks
to indicate the relation which they hold to ascertained laws of
intellectual and spiritual progress. He shows how, in several
instances, erroneous as they were, they formed a natural and partly
justifiable revolt from the injurious impositions and restrictions of
a barren orthodoxy, and led many to a healthier and more fruitful
cultivation of the intellect and of the spiritual faculty. We have
never read a delineation of the deep-seated causes which occasioned
the birth and growth of Rationalism, so instructive and admonitory--we
might add so impressive--from its candour and tenderness, as that
which is given in the second volume of this work. Hagenbach's valuable
history of the same phenomena is indeed composed with great fairness
and ability, and is presented in a more popular method and style; but
from that very cause it deals more with the superficial and obvious
aspects of the case, and lacks the spiritual depth and completeness of
Dorner's diagnosis. The study of both histories, however, should be
combined; for each supplies what is wanting in the other. We require
to conjoin with the scientific analysis of principles and tendencies
which we have here, the striking pictures of men, society, and events,
which enliven the pages of the more popular writer. In Dorner's view,
the aberrations of Rationalism formed a needful stage, though an
unhappy one, in the purification and elevation of Protestant theology,
which has come forth from it enlarged and liberalized in its scope,
better adapted to the wants of humanity, and more directly based on
just and firm foundations. Accordingly we find that, while he does not
look upon error with cool philosophic indifference, he can expose it
without severity, or any approach to denunciation. He detects the
elements of forgotten truths, which are often mixed up with it;
perceives the openings by which it liberated and brought into play
those faculties of our nature which had been unwisely fettered and
suppressed; and shows how, by the fermentation which it stirred in the
inert mass, it contributed to an ultimate reform both of theology and
religion. In short, in this history we are not only guided to the
sources of the stream in the healthy uplands of a new spiritual
life--that region of experience which was the birthplace of the
Reformation--but it is followed down in its various windings till it
becomes hemmed in and imprisoned by artificial reservoirs; we see it
gradually undermining, and at length bursting through the barriers,
carrying with it for a space wide-spread ruin, till the flood
subsides, and it begins once more to flow with deeper and ampler
current in its proper channel, fertilizing the surrounding fields. All
that now remains, perhaps, is to have patience till the waters become
clearer, more limpid, freer from sediment and wreck; and care must be
taken to keep up and strengthen the natural embankments, that the
river may nowhere diffuse itself into a sluggish, unwholesome
swamp--an expanse of shallow sentiment where boundaries are lost, and
the current of action is imperceptible.
The work is in two volumes, and is divided into three books, the first
of which occupies the whole of the former volume, embracing three
divisions. The first presents a most interesting account of the
preparatory forces, intellectual and spiritual, which were at work in
the Protestant Reformation period. This sketch is necessarily rapid,
yet it is remarkably complete and accurate. The Papal Church of the
Middle Ages departed from the true idea of Christianity 'in not
subordinating herself to the spiritual renovation of the nations, but
setting up the principle of [Church] authority, and lordship, of its
own end and highest good,' which led to all the spiritual blessings
and ordinances of the Church being 'transferred into instruments of
ecclesiastical power and hierarchical rule.' Thus, religion was
changed in its very essence. Its blessings ceased to consist in
personal fellowship with God, and assumed a materialistic and
impersonal character. Mysterious influences and powers belonging to
the Church and the clergy were made to constitute the riches of
Christianity; and so piety, robbed of its personal end, attached
itself to the visible altar, and to other sensible things. An ethical
personal holiness was exchanged for a material relation, dependent on
ceremonies. This is the radical error of all sacramentalism. The more
sincere, who were anxious about their personal salvation, could not
rest satisfied in such a system. Dr. Dorner--after discussing the
relations of the Mediæval Church to the questions of man's salvation,
to truth, and to the sphere of the civil power, which it strove to
subjugate; and having traced the influence of Anselm, Aquinas, and the
Schoolmen upon doctrine--treats briefly of the Latin and German
mystics, showing how they sought direct communion with God, by
contemplation and self abnegation. Their defects and excellencies are
ably analyzed. Among the pioneers of the Reformation a high place is
assigned to John Wessel, because of the prominence he gives to
evangelical faith in the Mediator. When the representatives of the
Biblical principle, in this preparatory stage, are introduced, it is
shown how Wycliffe advanced it in alliance with the scientific and
moral factors; but some injustice is done to him in respect of his
doctrinal views, which the translator, Mr. Robson, has carefully
corrected in one of the valuable notes with which he has enriched this
volume. The treatises of Wycliffe, edited by Dr. Vaughan, in 1845,
prove beyond question that the cardinal doctrines of grace were
clearly apprehended and taught by the English Reformer.
In the second division, the Reformation itself is handled, as it
appeared in Germany and in Switzerland, together with the various
phases and relations it assumed up to the time of the Wittenberg
Concord in 1536. A leading place is, of course, given to the character
and experience of Luther, and the strongest light is thrown upon the
fact that the movement in his case, and in Calvin's as well, had its
origin in a great spiritual conflict and personal change. It was in
seeking for and in obtaining the assurance of pardon, and in the
experience of a power renovating the heart and life, bringing the
whole man into communion with God through Christ, that Luther rose to
the conception of faith as a divine principle uniting the soul to the
Saviour, and freeing the believer, not only from the terrors of
conscience and the moral impotency of the will, but from all
subjection to human authority in divine things. This is justly exalted
by Dr. Dorner as the _material principle_, and the moving force of the
Reformation; this is at once its life and its law. It is by the
harmonious working of this element, in a normal conjunction with the
_formal principle_ which sprung out of it, and which derives from it a
solid application--viz.: The recognition of the divine authority and
inspiration of the Scriptures,--that the life of the Reformation is
fully and healthily developed. Both the evangelical systems of
doctrine, the Lutheran and the Calvinistic, owe their characteristic
excellencies to the interaction of these two principles which gave
them birth. Their improvement, and the prosecution of the truths they
contain, must spring from the same source. It is only by the renewed
mind and heart of the believer, enlightened and guided by the Spirit
speaking through the Word, that the doctrines of Christianity can be
apprehended and embraced. Christianity is the salvation of God, and
can be understood by none but those who personally appropriate its
blessings through the Spirit by a living faith in the Redeemer.
Throughout his history, Dr. Dorner never allows us to lose sight of
that fact. The controversies, the declensions, the errors, the
revivals, which he follows out in long array through the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, are so many instructive,
admonitory, or cheering illustrations of this fundamental law of
Protestantism. There is no security for the material principle when
separated from the formal, while the formal is emptied of life and
fruitfulness if divorced from the material principle, _the new life of
faith in the soul_. A divine, child-like faith in the heart, owning
and yielding to divine authority in the Word, is the secret of safety
and progress. That will give us at once Scriptural orthodoxy, and true
freedom.
Space fails us, or we would fain have touched on the contents of the
second volume, which, in some respects, is the more interesting of the
two, from the account it gives of English Deism, and the rise and
progress of German Rationalism. The critical analysis of the views and
influence of Lessing, and the way in which Schleiermacher's system is
drawn out and displayed, appear to us especially worthy of admiration.
Towards the close of the work, the state of theology in England
receives some attention; but here we are disposed to note, not only
the meagreness of the information supplied, but in one case its
inexactness. We refer to the introduction of the late Dean Mansel's
argument in his 'Hampton Lectures,' given in p. 494, which the writer
(we humbly conceive) has quite misapprehended in some important
points. Further, it is most inaccurate to say that Mansel was
'triumphantly encountered by Maurice, and Professor M'Cosh, of
Belfast.' Anything more crushing and scathing than Hansel's
examination of Maurice's 'Strictures,' which are a mere farrago of
fantastic misrepresentations and hysterical outcries, we never read.
Between M'Cosh and Mansel there is no real opposition; it is in
language rather than in substance that they differ, and as M'Cosh'
himself says, he 'would rather agree with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr.
Mansel, than any metaphysicians of the past or present age.'[69] This
mistake, however, is but a slight speck on the lustre of so great a
production, and may readily be excused in a foreign writer, who can
hardly be expected--though he be better acquainted with our theology
than most foreigners--to look at a controversy of this kind from our
point of view.
Both translators deserve high commendation for the manner in which
they have executed their laborious task. Mr. Robson's part is marked
by great exactness, which at times becomes too closely literal; Miss
Taylor's performance is more smooth and flowing, but in some of the
metaphysical portions a doubt occurs as to whether the author's
thought has been precisely seized. Yet, in many a paragraph we have
admired the facility with which the lady has worked her way through
rather abstruse speculations and involved periods. We tender both our
most hearty thanks for the service they have rendered the theological
public, and would beg most strongly to commend the work to all
scientific students of our common Protestantism.
_The Witness of History to Christ._ Five Sermons preached before the
University of Cambridge; being the Hulsean Lecture for the year 1870.
By the Rev. F. W. FARRAR, M.A. Macmillan and Co.
Mr. Farrar's object in his Hulsean Lecture is to examine the moral and
intellectual causes of modern unbelief. This he does in five
lectures--the first demonstrating 'the Antecedent Credibility of the
Miraculous;' the second affirming 'the Adequacy (for reasonable
conviction) of the Gospel Records;' the third setting forth, from the
facts of its history, 'The Victories of Christianity;' the fourth and
fifth on 'Christianity and the Individual' and 'Christianity and the
Race,' demonstrating the transcendent and transforming moral power of
the religion of Jesus Christ, as a presumptive argument for its
truthfulness--the whole being a cumulative argument, demonstrating
that Christianity is the Divine and supernatural truth of God, which
it professes to be. Mr. Farrar is necessarily restricted in these
several lines of argument, by the limits of a spoken discourse devoted
to each, to a few salient points, and to an indicative mode of
argument; and we, of course, can follow even him but a very little
way. The first, and fundamental question in the controversy between
sceptical science and religious faith is the credibility of the
supernatural. We do not think that Mr. Farrar has carried the
intellectual argument further than it has hitherto been carried, or
than perhaps it can be carried. Whatever theologians may say, it
revolves in a circle. Science refuses to be represented by men like
Strauss, who begin all argument by the _petitio principii_ that the
supernatural is antecedently incredible and absolutely impossible--for
a more thoroughly unscientific position cannot be conceived. Nothing
is antecedently impossible to true science; by the very conditions of
it, it is restricted to the demonstration and interpretation of actual
facts. Concerning the possible discovery of unknown facts it can say
absolutely nothing. The question really is, Have the alleged
supernatural facts of Scripture been demonstrated? Nor is it enough
that science can urge nothing in disproof--the _onus probandi_ lies
with those who affirm. What then is the scientific value of the
testimony to the alleged miracles of Scripture? First, it has to be
admitted that the testimony is furnished solely by Scripture--that is,
by the book which the miraculous is adduced to authenticate. Next, it
can scarcely be denied that the chief strength of the Scriptural
evidence lies in the transcendent moral qualities of Scripture. It is
not the miraculous that authenticates the holy doctrine; it is the
holy doctrine that authenticates the miraculous. The miraculous is
affirmed by Prophets, Evangelists, and by Christ; and it is a moral
impossibility that these should affirm falsely. We, therefore, who did
not see the miracle, but only receive it on testimony, accept the
testimony because the witnesses are unimpeachable. The actual
beholders did not; to them the miracle was the credential of the
teacher; but to us the teacher is the credential of the miracle. From
which it follows that science will never accept the evidence of the
miracle until it has accepted the unimpeachableness of the
witnesses--that is, it must accept the truth and holiness of Jesus
Christ before it will believe His miraculous works. Mr. Farrar,
therefore, is perfectly justified in affirming that 'modern scepticism
has not advanced one step further than the blank assertion, as regards
the inadequacy of testimony to establish a miracle;' but, on the other
hand, he must admit that beyond the assertion of the book, theology
has not advanced a single step to demonstrate its occurrence. The mere
intellectual argument must be left there, and the decision must turn
upon the unanswerable moral demonstration--first, of the Scriptures
themselves, and, above all, of the perfect character of our Lord; and
next upon the history of Christianity in its progress through the
world, and its contact with the philosophy and the moral phenomena of
human life. Mr. Farrar does not deal with the moral evidence of
Scripture, but he deals very effectively with the moral evidence which
Christian history furnishes. The victories of Christianity are
illustrated by the conditions and issues of its conflicts with Judaism
and Paganism. Judaism without the Church, and Judaism within, and
Paganism in its eclectic revival, its brilliant literature, and its
ruthless persecution. What is more, it had to contend with the
pseudo-Christianity of Constantine. 'Little, indeed,' says Mr. Farrar,
'did Christianity owe to that trimming emperor and unbaptized
catechumen--that strange Christian, indeed, who placed his own bust on
the statue of Apollo, and thought the nails of the true cross a
fitting ornament for the bridle of his charger, and on whose
extraordinary figure the robes, so besmeared with gold and crusted
with jewels, could not conceal the Neronian stain of a son's and a
consort's blood!' Then followed its conflicts with the Northern
barbarian invasion, with Mahometanism, and with the internal
corruptions of the Papacy. Thus, in its material and moral victories,
Christianity witnesses to the truth and power of its Divine Founder's
words. In the chapters in which Mr. Farrar demonstrates its triumphs
over individual hearts and lives, and its total influences on the
social life of nations, his facts are well selected, and his reasoning
is unanswerable. Mr. Farrar's book evinces immense reading. His
quotations are almost in excess of his text, and are gathered from the
most diverse sources, from Ignatius to Lord Derby's speech at Glasgow.
The impression is of a man who has collected his opinions rather than
evolved them by processes of independent reasoning--only there is the
impress of a strong hand upon the whole. Mr. Farrar is master of his
quotations. His lectures are rhetorically eloquent, sometimes too much
so for their character and purpose; but his arguments are well
arranged, and his book is really a valuable contribution to modern
Christian apologetics.
_Modern Scepticism._ A Course of Lectures delivered at the request of
the Christian Evidence Society. With an Explanatory Paper by the Right
Rev. J. ELLICOTT, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Hodder
and Stoughton. 1871.
The present volume is an interesting sign of the times. Those who love
our common Christianity more than they love the ecclesiastical systems
which have so often interfered with their co-operation in Christian
work, here stand side by side to advocate positions common to them
all. The general diffusion of an atmosphere of sceptical speculation
which has not only crept over the outworks but has invaded the very
citadel of the Christian faith, has received great augmentation from
the mutual antagonism of some Christians, and from the unhappy
concessions of others. If nothing more had been gained for the cause
of Christian truth than the juxtaposition of these essays in one
volume, with the assurance thus given to the world that the most
distinguished dignitaries of the Church of England hold common ground
with learned Congregationalists and Wesleyan divines on the
fundamental bases of religious faith, the Christian Evidence Society
might be fairly congratulated on the success of its enterprise. There
is an intrinsic value in the re-assertion of the deep convictions of
cultured men and genuine Christians, touching the very foundation of
religious thought. When a volume of 500 pages professes to cover the
controversies that have been stirred during the last half century on
the very nature of evidence, on the presence of design in nature, on
the pantheistic and positivistic interpretation of the facts of the
universe, on the relations of science and revelation, on the nature of
miracles, on the gradual development of revelation, on the historical
difficulties of the entire Bible, on the mythical theories of
Christianity, on the credential value of the Pauline Epistles, on the
character of the Lord Jesus, and on the totality and adequacy of
Christian evidences; it is obvious that these topics must many of them
be touched, rather than discussed; approached, rather than developed.
The reader of these discourses is not supposed to be a convert to the
doctrines of either Mr. Darwin or Auguste Comte, of Professor Tyndall
or M. Rénan. Those who have plunged into the rapid current of
materialistic philosophy, or have mastered the details of positivism,
or become thoroughly familiar with the 'higher criticism' of Germany,
will not be diverted from their opinions by these popular and
interesting addresses. But there is a large class of educated young
men and cultivated women who are at the present moment staggered by
second-hand _rechauffés_ of various scepticisms, who are fascinated by
the audacity of modern doubt, and relieved from ugly fears by the
confident assertions of triumphant students of history and science,
who relish the boisterous breeze of these cloudy uplands of
speculation, and take greedily any assurance which wars with old
prejudices and threatens to uproot old systems or institutions. There
are, moreover, multitudes of busy men who have no time to study these
various forms of scepticism, but who are made miserable whenever they
have time to think, by the thickly flying shafts of the enemies of
Christianity. To these classes we conceive the volume before us may be
of great service. Everywhere we discover honesty of purpose, sympathy
with the doubter, an endeavour on the part of thoughtful and learned
Christian teachers to put themselves into the position of the
inquirer. There is comparatively little dogmatism, there is very
considerable beauty of illustration, and there breathes throughout
the whole volume a healthy vigorous faith. Several of the
distinguished writers have discoursed on themes on which they were by
previous well-known labours, entitled to speak. Thus the Archbishop of
York has discussed the purely philosophical question of 'design in
nature;' Dr. Rigg has handled Pantheism; and Dr. Stoughton the nature
of miracle. Professor Rawlinson has reviewed the 'Historical
Difficulties of the Old and New Testaments,' and the author of the
'Jesus of the Evangelists,' the Rev. Charles Row, has given us the
pith of the argument of that deeply interesting volume. For our own
part, we think Mr. Row's essay is by far the most complete and
satisfactory attempt in the whole volume to grapple with a great
subject, and to add something to the considerable literature of the
mythical theory. The Bishop of Ely has also approached the fascinating
question of 'Christ's teaching and influence on the world' with
fulness and sweetness of exposition. We trust the volume, which is in
every way attractive, will lead to more thorough investigation of the
great steps of this high argument, and will result in deeper and more
hearty appreciation of the bases of religious faith.
_Freedom in the Church of England._ Six Sermons Suggested by the
Voysey Judgment, Preached in St. James's Chapel, York-street. By the
Rev. STOPFORD A. BROOK. London: Henry S. King.
This little volume contains many things--Doctrinal, Ecclesiastical,
and Social--put with much freshness and power, albeit with some
rashness, upon which much detailed criticism might be bestowed. The
doctrinal sermons on the Atonement and Original Sin would necessarily
demand for their adequate criticism a space equal to that which they
themselves occupy. They lay down positions that must be tested--first
by Scripture, next by general principles of moral philosophy, and
lastly, by the doctrinal standards of the Episcopal Church. We do not
of course attempt to test them. Gladly recognising in them much that
is eternally true, much that is profoundly philosophical, and much
that commands our admiration for its intellectual acuteness and
vigour, we make only one or two remarks concerning them. First,
scarcely any attempt is made to show the harmony of the views
propounded with the doctrinal statements of Scripture; they are
evolved out of the depths of the author's own moral consciousness,
which is perfectly legitimate; only his anxiety to justify them to the
standards of the Episcopal Church rather than to the statements of the
Christian apostles, is not so legitimate and satisfactory for a simple
inquirer after truth, however necessary for a Churchman. The two great
factors of all true doctrine are surely the Divine revelation and
man's moral consciousness. It is the misery of doctrinal Church
standards that they necessarily rule so much of a man's thinking. We,
outside the Episcopal Church care but very subordinately about the
harmony of a clergyman's views with his Church Articles; we care very
much about the harmony of his teachings concerning atonement and
original sin with Divine revelation and the eternal truth of things.
As the result of the whole argumentation, we can say, only, that if
Mr. Brook's conclusions respecting the congruity of his teaching with
the standards of his Church be satisfactory to himself, the acute and
fearless author of the arguments themselves is a mystery to us. To us
it is a painful illustration of the influence of an embarrassing
position upon freedom and coherence of thought. Mr. Brook seems to us
to contradict categorically the explicit teaching of his Church, both
about original sin and the Atonement. Concerning his views on original
sin we have to say (1) that with the ninth article before us, it is to
us utterly incredible that the men, most of whom, Mr. Brook admits,
held the same doctrine which he 'rejects with dismay and horror,'
purposely left their statement so undefined as to admit of views so
opposed to theirs as Mr. Brook's. If they did, all the worse for them
and their article. (2) Mr. Brook altogether fails, in our judgment, to
justify, by his attenuated exposition of the 'fault and corruption of
our nature,' the strong expression of the article 'it deserveth God's
wrath and damnation.' (3) Mr. Brook's answer to the question 'Why
should God have made us with this wrong twist?' is simply 'Because God
wanted humanity,' and not 'a new angelic nature in which there should
be no effort, no contest, no dramatic possibilities.' The only
conclusion that he leaves open to us is, that whatever original sin
is, it is a created part or condition of our nature--that is, God
creates us in a condition that 'deserveth God's wrath and damnation.'
Mr. Brook's view of original sin may be the true one, but this is the
result to which he brings us by applying to it the test of the ninth
article.
Concerning the Atonement, Mr. Brook's theory is, that Christ was the
ideal man, in whom union with God was gradually developed--being from
'the moment of his birth potentially His, as the whole growth of the
oak is in the acorn.' That the merit of His suffering consisted in His
perfectly identifying himself with the sorrow of mankind; 'losing the
consciousness of Himself and of His own pain, through the intensity of
His sympathy with us,' He threw himself 'into the whole sense of this
vast human suffering, and so realizing it as His own, offered it up to
the pity and love of God.' 'In this way He took unto himself our
suffering, and suffered for it; in this way He represented in that
hour unto the Father, by means of the perfect self-forgetfulness of
love, all the spiritual pain of the world's absence from God.' 'God
sees in Christ the ideal of humanity, the whole race as sinless, as
one with himself;' 'the innocent suffered, through love, the pain
which comes of sin.' 'He passed from feeling as a man, to feeling as a
representative man.' 'He lost all thought of self in awful realization
of the sin of the whole' world.' 'God saw, in the absolute
self-sacrifice which enabled Christ to lose himself in love of man,
and to bear the burden of the sin of man in passionate sympathy with
the awfulness of the burden, the highest reach of human virtue, the
highest ideal of human sacrifice realized;' and, 'as He took into
himself and into union with himself, the humanity of Christ, so He
took into himself and into union with himself the humanity which
Christ represented. This is the reconciliation of God to man, the
forgiveness of men's sin by God. This is the objective side of the
Atonement.' 'With existing humanity God, though pitying and loving it
as a Father, could not, because of its sin, unite himself fully. But
when humanity in Christ had fulfilled all righteousness, and displayed
itself as wholly at one with God's life of self-sacrifice, God was
then able to unite himself to it, to take it up into Himself.' 'To
believe in Christ is to look upon his life and death of
self-sacrifice, and to say with a true heart, "I know that this is
true life; I accept it as mine. I will fulfil it in thought and
action, God being my helper."' From this theory of atonement Mr. Brook
deduces universalism. 'The whole race being in Christ, is now by right
redeemed, righteous, at one with God. But it is not redeemed,
righteous, or at one with God, in fact. It is still struggling with
sin, still wandering away from its inheritance, still rejecting its
rights. But that which has been done in God is done for ever: and
man--every soul of man--_must_ become in fact what they are now by
right. And though no thought may count the years, yet all humanity
shall at last be made coincident with that ideal of it which exists in
God in Christ.'
Concerning this theory, we remark, that while very much that is said
by Mr. Brook about the sufferings of Christ is beautifully true, yet,
as a theory of the Atonement, it is (1) to our conception, utterly at
variance with the doctrine of the Prayer Book, and with the theories
of its compilers. It is for lawyers to say whether under such
standards such a divergent theory is legally tenable--we can only say
that we should not like to shelter a moral contradiction like this
under a legal possibility. (2) Whatever may be the merits of the
'forensic theory' which, says Mr. Brook, 'I utterly deny and
repudiate,' 'it outrages our idea of God; it makes him satisfied with
a fiction;' this martyr theory of an ideal humanity suffering in
Christ, infinitely surpasses it in unreality. If the forensic theory
involves a legal fiction, this involves a moral fiction--which is not
only unthinkable in the domain of moral realities, but which, so far
as we can think, contradicts our deepest moral instincts. If there is
to be a fiction at all, which we think there need not be, we
infinitely prefer the legal fiction of Aquinas. No! whatever the true
theory of Atonement, this is not it. We can understand a federal
headship of humanity, which obtains for it fresh probation and fresh
privileges, but we cannot understand a federal headship which gives a
_quasi_ spiritual character, and which induces in God an unreal moral
estimate.
In passing from this doctrinal part of the book, we may ask why Mr.
Brook represents David as being from early morning until noon in
ascending the Mount of Olives, the summit of which may be easily
reached from St. Stephen's Gate in half an hour?
The first sermon here printed, however, although the last preached,
naturally challenges our chief attention. It discusses the question of
'Freedom in the [Established] Church' _apropos_ of the bearing upon it
of the judgment in Mr. Voysey's case. We note one or two points in it
only. First Mr. Brook says 'that the restrictions upon liberty of
thought, which he deprecates, would soon make the Church into a narrow
and bigoted sect.' The phrase, omitting the adjectives, has become a
kind of formula with Churchmen of Mr. Brook's school. We have
frequently tried to apprehend this attempted distinction between a
Church and a sect, but we are unable to do so; and we should
unaffectedly feel that Mr. Brook had laid us under a great obligation
if he had given us a distinct and intelligible definition. What is a
Church, and what is a sect? and wherein lies the differentia of the
two? In what sense is the Episcopal communion a Church and not a sect,
that is not equally true of the Presbyterian and Congregational
communions? Will Mr. Brook accept the definition of a Church given in
the 19th Article? 'The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of
faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the
Sacraments be duly ministered,' &c.? If so, then he can deny the
designation 'Church' to every congregational ecclesia--only by
impugning its 'faithful' character, its preaching or its sacraments.
Is it the criterion of a Church to be without formulated dogmas--or to
have doctrinal standards from which her clergy have indefinite liberty
to dissent? In the former case the Episcopal communion is not a
Church--in the latter, Congregationalists or Presbyterians might
easily become a Church, by according liberty of dissent from their
standards. The only thing that hinders among them the laxity of
subscription and interpretation which Mr. Brook claims for his own
Church is that they really believe in their beliefs, and make fidelity
to them a matter of conscience. We should be glad to know the exact
variation of the theological compass that converts a sect into a
Church. Or does Mr. Brook regard a National Establishment as the
criterion of a Church? Then he unchurches the Church of Rome in
England, the Episcopal Church in Ireland and Scotland, and prepares
for the unchurching of Episcopacy in England ere long. If universality
be the criterion, then Episcopacy cannot claim it. If to be the
largest religious body in a country be the criterion, then what is
Episcopacy in Scotland, Ireland, or Wales? If the criterion be
catholicity of spirit towards those who differ from us, we fear that
neither historically nor actually could his own Church make out a very
unequivocal claim. We have really looked at this rhetorical
distinction on all sides, and are unable to apprehend it; and yet it
is perpetually flung at our poor Nonconformist heads as a missile that
is as potent as David's sling and stone.
Is it worthy of intelligent and candid men, such as Mr. Brook, to use
controversial terms, with a view, if possible, to affix a reproach, to
which no intelligible meaning can be attached? In our view of it every
Church is a sect, in the good sense,--in the sense of being but a
section of the universal Church; and any Church, however large or
however small, established or unestablished, with fixed dogmas, or
with flexible ones, may be sectarian, in the bad sense, of being
exclusive in its claims, intolerant in its recognitions, and exacting
in its conduct. It is for members of the Established Church of England
to ask themselves of which of the ecclesiastical communities of the
kingdom these are the most characteristic features. We can scarcely
believe our eyes, when we read, 'In the assent of all to these
doctrines, and in the common love of all to God in Christ, and in the
common love of the body to which they belong, co-existing with an
almost endless variety of individual views about these doctrines,
consists the unity of the Church of England.' Is it then, really so,
that all the Church feuds and litigation from Tract 90 to the Purchas
judgment--the Hampden and Gorham cases, the 'Essays and Reviews'
warfare, the Ritualistic riots, the Liddel case, the Colenso
controversy, the Machonochie, Voysey, and Purchas cases, with the
pamphlets and sermons, the schisms and hatreds of the three great
parties within the Establishment, which for the last forty years have
kept the religious world in a state of intense excitement, that all
these things are the phantasmagoria of a bad dream, or the amiable
reciprocations of brotherly respect and Christian affection? Is there
any Church in Christendom with such a polemical history or at the
present moment so hopelessly and bitterly schismatic? How, in the face
of the English people, such a sentence could be written by a man like
Mr. Brook, is simply inscrutable; 'They do,' he says, 'work together
remarkably well.' 'There is no body of men more united than the
English clergy;' but he makes this fatal admission, 'Destroy the
connection of the State with the Church, and all that vanishes at
once. All the several parties begin quarrelling, and split up into
sects.' Then where is the vaunted unity, and what is the moral worth
of the legal bond that unites such discordant elements?
Mr. Brook propounds once more the old crippled fallacy, 'By right
every Englishman is a member of the National Church. It is of his own
free choice that he rejects that right.' But what if he
conscientiously disbelieves in that Church--and holds that in
establishing it and requiring national assent to it, both Church and
State have gone beyond the domain of the things that are Cæsar's into
that of the things that are God's? This, the real gist of the whole
matter, is carefully avoided. The Jews used the same argument against
the Christians; the Inquisition of the Romish Church against
Protestants. The essential injustice lies in maintaining any
established Church in a divided nation; and in the attempt to control
a man's religious conscience by any civil law or institution
whatsoever. Is it not simply childish to affirm, with England as it
is, that the parochial clergy 'feel as representatives of a National
Church, that all within the range of their several districts--no
matter what and who those are--dissenters, non-church-goers, infidels,
are their responsibility, and are given into their spiritual care by
the nation.' No doubt they do; but does anybody else feel it? is not
this the impertinence which one half the nation so resents? Mr. Brook
is too candid not to see that all this is the theory of a by-gone
state of things, and that the very mention of it now excites ridicule.
Accordingly the word 'ought,' and its equivalents do yeoman's service
throughout this sermon. It is indeed a discourse upon what a National
Church _ought_ to be, rather than upon what the National Church
actually is. So far as we understand Mr. Brook, there _ought_ to be
almost every conceivable diversity of religious belief in the
community, and the National Church _ought_ to be so vague in its
dogmas, or so flexible in their interpretation, as that its clergy
_ought_ to represent them all. And to this the argument must come.
With very many of Mr. Brook's subordinate remarks we cordially agree.
He is thoughtful and catholic-hearted, and has a keen perception of
much that is beautiful in Christian doctrine and life. But the task
that he has set himself is simply an impossible one. He wishes
contradictories, perfect freedom, and distinctive dogmas; a definite
Church character, and an indiscriminate inclusiveness; the
prerogatives of a supreme Church, while only the fragment of a nation;
which itself again is only a small part of Christendom. There is in
Mr. Brook's direction no possible way out of the embarrassments,
unrealities, and self-contradictions of the English Episcopal Church.
* * * * *
_Human Power in the Divine Life; or the Active Powers of the Mind in
Relation to Religion._ By Rev. NICHOLAS BISHOP, M.A. Hodder and
Stoughton.
The author of this book has attempted a difficult task, viz., to
exhibit in philosophical language the synthesis of the divine and
human in the new life. With profound reverence for God's revelation
and with great insight into the life of God in the soul, he has
discussed the function of the human will in Repentance, Faith,
Conversion, Sanctification, Christian Perfection and its Limits, in
Preaching and Prayer, and in relation to Divine Providence. The range
of thought is very wide, the mode of treatment very stimulating and
fresh. It would be difficult in a brief notice to convey an adequate
idea of the book. Some of the most difficult problems are broached,
and much light is thrown upon them. There are gems of thought
scattered through the discussion which nevertheless form a distinct
and integral part of the argument. Thus 'God's plan of instructing man
seems to be from the lower to the higher forms of thought. The nearer
the instruction can accommodate itself to the sense or to the simpler
acts of the intelligence the more likely it is to succeed. It must
begin with the concrete and rise by slow degrees, to abstract truth.
Christ, as revealed in His gospel, is the nearest possible approach to
this. He is to the weakest mind the simplest possible concrete truth,
and He is also to the strongest mind the greatest possible
abstraction.' Again, 'If man could repent without the Divine Spirit,
his repentance could not be divine; and if the Spirit could produce
repentance without man's co-operation, it could not be human; but upon
God's plan it is perfectly human and perfectly divine--so perfect that
it could not be more divine if man were completely passive in it, nor
more human if the Spirit exercised no power in it.' With the
fundamental principle that 'the divine life is a developed spiritual
consciousness,' the writer has said much that is most refreshing,
stimulating, and practical, and we strongly commend this volume to
those who are seeking a higher life, and would find help and
consolation by an approximate _rationale_ of that life.
_Ten Great Religions; an Essay in Comparative Theology._ By JAMES
FREEMAN CLARKE. Trübner and Co.
Mr. Clarke has made an interesting and earnest endeavour to establish
some of the principles of a science which is likely before long to
occupy a high place in human thought. He has, moreover, shown decided
skill and considerable learning in his view of the salient features of
Brahmanism and Buddhism, in his summary of Confucianism and Tæpingism,
in his sketch of Persic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, and Græco-Roman
religions, and in his estimate of Judaism and Mahometanism. The
materials were ready to his hand in rich abundance, and he has set
forth the leading ideas of each of these great forms of faith with
commendable modesty and fine critical tact. The strong point he makes,
and in which we entirely agree with him, is--that Christ and
Christianity recognise the age-long witness to certain great truths
embodied in these ethnic faiths, that Christ is the fulfilment of the
prophetic visions which the founders of these varied religions
beheld;--that Christianity is the answer to the problem of Brahmanism,
the _pleroma_ of the faith of Sakya-muni, and the complement to all
the speculations of Egypt, Athens, and Scandinavia;--that Christianity
contains all that is living, all that is true to God and nature and
man, in any or all of these religious systems, and a great deal
more;--that it has absorbed many of them, and will eventually solve
the continuity, and embrace the devotees of them all in its catholic
fulness. He claims to find the highest evidence for the truth of
Christianity in this,--that while all other forms of faith have been
more or less one-sided, ethnic in their range, and local in their
influence, Christianity meets the need of every kind of race and
generation of mankind. The 'symphony of religions' is to him the
pledge of the eternal excellency, the indisputable supremacy, and the
absolute truth of Christianity. He will not admit that other religions
are 'natural' and that this alone is 'supernatural;' that other
religions are excogitated by the human intelligence, this alone
'revealed' from heaven; others the work of lying impostors, this alone
preserved from human frailty; others 'human religions,' and this
alone a 'divine' religion. All truth is divine with him, and all such
truth as has been intuitively perceived by great ethnic religious
teachers has been 'revealed' to them by God, the one God. But he
maintains the great position that all other religions are limited in
their range of thought, and in their adaptability to man; while
Christianity includes within itself the sum of all religious truth,
the nexus of all justifiable religious tendencies, the correction of
all extravagances, the answer and solvent to all human inquiry. As we
have said, Mr. Clarke holds here positions with which we sympathize
and which we have often advocated. But while we admit with him, the
significance of the ethnic religions, the truth uttered by Sakya-muni
and found in the Vedas, there is to our ear an exceeding bitter cry
for help and teaching and deliverance, coming out of the very
constitution of the heathen culture, and revealing itself in the
religious rites and in the literature of the East, to which he seems
comparatively indifferent. He is afraid of compromising the dignity
and majesty of human nature, or of saying anything offensive to its
unaided and unregenerated powers. To our view, human nature is in a
much more diseased and miserable condition than he admits; and we hold
that there was a specialty in the vision and faculty given to Hebrew
prophets, and possessed by the Great Master, which make them differ in
kind from those of the sages of India, Persia, or Greece. Though he
furnishes the facts with great fairness and skill, he seems strangely
unwilling to admit the grand difference between Hebraism and
Ethnicism, viz.: that in the one case, God is represented as seeking
and finding his people, pleading with their unwillingness and
disloyalty, unveiling to them his own glorious name, and in the other
cases men are 'feeling after God if haply they might find him, though
he is not far from any one of them.' The argument of Mr. Clarke,
moreover, is in our opinion, truncated and paralyzed by the extremely
low view that he entertains of the person of our Lord, and of the
essence of that very monotheism which has won the victories to which
he points with Christian exultation. There is no disrespect cast upon
the faith of nineteen-twentieths of Christendom, it is simply ignored;
and his Christianity is, after all, little more than 'the morality
touched by emotion,' of which we have heard a good deal lately. We
believe that a sounder and larger view of Christianity itself would
supply wards to the key here used by Mr. Clarke, which would enable
him to unlock many more of the mysteries of human life. We thank him
for the work he has done, so far as it goes, and can agree with him
that the philosophy of missions will lie very much in the direction of
comparative theology.
_Sermons for my Curates._ By the late Rev. THOMAS T. LYNCH, Minister
of Mornington Church, London. Edited by Samuel Cox. Strahan and Co.
Twelve months ago, in calling the attention of our readers to one of
the latest volumes of Mr. Lynch's sermons, we ventured to predict
that when it was too late, the world would find out that a prophet
had lifted up his voice in the heart of modern London, comparatively
disregarded; and now a ministry exercising transcendent influence over
a few sympathetic minds, the spiritual work of a great poet and
philosopher, the subtle wit, and delicate humour, and piercing satire
of a gifted man are things of the past. We have lost him. We, and many
others beside ourselves, are by this volume made to feel how
incalculable that loss is. Hundreds of busy men, and hasty critics,
will, we are satisfied, feel a species of pang when they discover the
realities and the significance of this volume. Here was a man
suffering from the agonies of angina pectoris, precluded by dire
necessity from conducting two services on the Sunday, and out of the
sheer love which he bore to his little flock, in the course of three
months of bitter suffering, producing for their use and advantage a
series of services, each including two prayers and a discourse which,
to say the least, no one but Thomas Lynch could have originated. Mr.
Cox's preface is painfully affecting. We might have expected, if he
had not forewarned us to the contrary, that these pages would have
shivered in sympathy with the intense agony under which they were
penned. On the contrary, they sparkle with life and beauty, with
cheerfulness and Christian hope. There is less of their author's
well-known quaintness, less abundant illustration; he seems more
intent upon the pure thought, and the logical concatenation of idea
than had been customary with him. There is much sweet reasoning with
despondency; there is an absence of all controversial atmosphere;
there is not a trace of bitterness, nor a morbid thought about either
God or man, but there is great fulness of heart and gentleness of
soul; and these are the only signs the printed page reveals of the
almost unutterable physical distress in which they were produced.
Although neither these nor others of Mr. Lynch's published sermons can
be called doctrinal deliverances, and though they deal with the life
of faith, rather than with its essence or its object, yet they will be
singularly valuable, and even indispensable to one who wishes to
understand the doctrinal position of their author. Produced in the
manner to which we have referred, they are above and beyond criticism.
We accept them reverently; we commend them heartily and tenderly to
our readers.
_The Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament: A Study for the
Present Crisis in the Church of England._ By the Rev. G. A. JACOB,
D.D., late Head Master of Christ's Hospital. Strahan and Co.
_Churches and their Creeds._ By the Rev. Sir PHILIP PERRING, Bart.
Longmans, Green, and Co.
Few things in modern controversy are more astounding, and cause more
scandal to Nonconformists than the unwarrantable assumptions and
unscholarly arguments of their Anglican opponents. We scarcely
hesitate to say that such a work as Mr. Blunt's 'Ecclesiastical
Dictionary--while evincing most patient research and abundant
knowledge--contains more arbitrary assumptions and illogical
conclusions than all the works on ecclesiastical controversy which
Nonconformists have published during the present century. Had a
Nonconformist been guilty of a tithe of such, every ecclesiastical
newspaper in the land would have poured out upon him its jubilant
ridicule. In any other science than theology such a treatment of facts
would be simply impossible. We are sadly forced to the conclusion,
that in the judgment of certain Churchmen, Sacramentarianism, and even
an Episcopal Establishment, are religious truths so vital, that the
very investigation of evidence is presumption of a reprobate mind, and
no testimony of history or conclusion of reason is valid against them.
It seems, at any rate, as if it were the first of religious duties so
to manipulate facts and reconstruct history as to compel testimony in
their support. For ourselves, we sorrowfully affirm that, speaking
generally, we have lost all confidence in the conclusions of Anglican
scholarship, and feel it imperative to test every citation and every
assertion before we can attach the slightest argumentative value to
it.
It is refreshing, therefore, to meet with the work of an Episcopalian
clergyman equally conspicuous for its learning and for its fearless
honesty. Dr. Jacob's work is one of those productions, rare, alas!
which impress the reader from the beginning that he is in the hands of
a man whose supreme solicitude is to ascertain truth--who permits no
ecclesiastical prepossessions or interests to influence his
conclusions; who however much he may love Plato, loves truth more. Dr.
Jacob is an Episcopalian by conviction and preference--he does not
utter a word that either questions the one or impugns the other; and
yet he has written a book which is a patient, scholarly, and
dispassionate investigation into the Ecclesiastical Polity of the New
Testament, from the conclusions of which only men who contend for the
divine right of Presbyterianism or Congregationalism, and possibly of
Episcopalianism, will dissent. Since Archbishop Whately's 'Kingdom of
Christ,' no such thorough treatment, and candid an examination of
Church questions has appeared. To the fearless candour and acuteness
of Whately, Dr. Jacob adds a habit of minute and patient scholarly
investigation, which supplies the evidence upon which his important
conclusions are reached. Had all ecclesiastical controversy been
conducted in his spirit there would still be--as there ever will
be--Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists; but these
would have regarded their Church differences as preferential modes
rather than as divine rights; and Christendom would have presented an
aspect of harmonious diversity instead of one of sectarian assumptions
and animosity. For ourselves, we most heartily thank him for his book,
which, if there were any hope at all from the fanatical sectarianism
of what is known as Anglicanism, would be the best eirenicon of these
latter days. We cannot do better than try briefly to indicate a few of
Dr. Jacob's conclusions, the more especially as our general accord
with them calls for little criticism. 'In the apostolic writings, the
word ἐκκλησία is never said of a _country_ or _nation_. It is always
the church in a city or town. Neither is it ever said to be the church
_of_ any given town, but always _in_ or _at_ the place.' 'Whenever the
Christians of a country or nation are spoken of collectively, the word
is always in the plural number, as "The churches of Galatia," &c. 'Hence
national churches, however justifiable and desirable in certain periods
of national life, are not divine nor apostolic institutions--their
propriety rests altogether on the ground of general expediency and
public advantage; and to attempt to furnish them with a higher
sanction by arguments drawn from the theocratic government of the
Jewish people seems to me to savour but little of sound reasoning, and
to confound together some of the distinctive characteristics of two
widely different dispensations.' 'Neither is the word ever applied to
a _building_ or a _place of worship_,' 'nor does it ever mean
Christian ministers as distinguished from the general body of
Christians.' The Catholic Church in its visible form includes any
number of Christian societies, which, as far as human authority is
concerned, are independent of each other.'
'The Episcopate, in the modern acceptation of the term, and as a distinct
clerical order, does not appear in the New Testament, but was gradually
introduced and extended throughout the Church at a later period.'
'Timothy at Ephesus, and Titus in Crete, are never called "bishops,"
or any other name which might indicate a special order or ecclesiastical
office; their commission was evidently an exceptional and temporary
charge, to meet some peculiar wants in those places during the
necessary absence of St. Paul.' 'There is evidence of the most
satisfactory kind, because unintentional, to the effect that Episcopacy
was established in different churches _after the decease_ of the
apostles who founded them, and at different times.' 'The custom of the
Church, rather than any ordinance of the Lord, made bishops greater
than the rest.' Dr. Jacob attributes the idea of a priesthood in the
Christian Church to the combined leaven of Jewish and of Pagan
influences; and in this he differs from Professor Lightfoot, who
attributes it exclusively to Pagan influence. 'Tertullian is the first
Christian author by whom the Church ministry is directly asserted to
be a priesthood.' Dr. Jacob undertakes to prove the proposition--'That,
according to Scripture truth, the _Christian ministry is not a
priesthood_, and Christian ministers are not _priests_, are not
invested with any sacerdotal powers, and have no sacerdotal functions
to perform.' The proof is wrought out in detail, with great amplitude
of evidence, acuteness of argument, and to an irresistible conclusion.
We should deal unfairly with it were we to attempt either citation or
summary. The points of the argument are: 1. That the Christian Church
was moulded upon the form of the synagogue, which had no altar; and
not upon that of the temple, which had no pulpit. 2. The equality of
privilege or standing-ground in Christ which Christians of all orders
or degrees possessed. 3. The position and argument of the Epistle to
the Hebrews. 4. The remarkable _omissions_ concerning a priesthood of
the New Testament, which Dr. Jacob contends is '_an insuperable bar_
to all sacerdotal assumptions, inasmuch as a positive and express
appointment of divine authority is imperative.' A further argument is
derived from the nature of New Testament ordination, which is fully
discussed, and shown to confer, not _power_, but authority _quoad
hoc_. 'Authority it gives according to the order and constitution of
each church, but no other power than was possessed before, or
afterwards, by whatever means obtained.' 'Those, therefore, amongst
ourselves who contend that spiritual power is given by the act of
ordaining, if they are not merely misunderstanding the word and using
it in a sense which does not belong to it, are brought to the
assumption, that it is not a power producing effects which are seen
and felt in the hearts and lives of men, but one much more secret and
unappreciable in its working;--the power, as it is alleged, of
conferring divine grace through the sacraments, thus making the effect
of the sacraments to depend upon something in the administrator,
instead of the ordinance of Christ.'
'The authority to appoint Church officers was inherent in every duly
constituted church, as the natural right of a lawful and well
organized society.' Hence presbyters were competent to ordain, which
Hooker also admits ('Eccl. Pol.,' vii. 14). 'The government and
ordinations of Presbyterian churches are just as valid, Scriptural,
and apostolic, as our own.' 'A priest, indeed, whose office is to
stand between God and man must be specially called by God; but a
pastor and teacher and administrator of sacred things in a
congregation of Christian men who have access to God through the
priesthood of Jesus Christ, whatever inward call he may require, needs
no other outward appointment to his office than the authority of the
church in which he ministers.' 'Neither apostle nor presbyter in the
primitive church, so far as we know, pronounced absolution upon those
who had confessed their sins for the purpose of conveying to them a
grace from God, which otherwise they would not have had; nor is there
anything in the New Testament to show that the declaration of God's
forgiveness has any greater efficacy from the mouth of an ordained
presbyter, than from that of any ordinary Christian.' 'The clergy, not
being a priestly caste, or a mediating, sacrificing, absolving order,
but Church officers appointed for the maintenance of due religious
solemnity, the devout exercise of Christian worship, the instruction
of the people in Divine truth, and their general edification in
righteous living, are the acting representatives of the church to
which they belong, and derive their ministerial authority from it.'
'The Christian ministry was requisite, not on account of any spiritual
functions which could not otherwise have been lawfully discharged; but
for the sake of the solemnity and regularity which are essential in a
religious and permanent society. There was no spiritual act which in
itself was of such a nature that it might not have been done by every
individual Christian.' Hence Dr. Jacob concludes that neither of the
sacraments demand imperatively the administration of a minister. 'As
at the Jewish Passover any person might preside, usually the master of
the house--this was probably the case in the earliest times in the
Christian Church.' At the celebration of the Eucharist, 'Church
members,' moreover, 'might depose their presbyters.' 'It is evident
from the New Testament that questions of dogmatic theology are to be
considered by lay members of the church, as well as by the clergy; and
that no Christian man is to resign his reason or apprehensions of
religious truth, any more than his conscience, to the judgment of his
pastor.' When ministers teach false doctrine 'it would necessarily be
the duty of every Christian to refuse their teaching.' 'In the
apostolic age, and during the time when Christian worshippers met in
private rooms, or in edifices of a simple style, there was no
distinction made between different portions of the building, men and
women were not separated in the congregation; neither was any form of
consecration then used, or any particular sanctity or reverence
attached to the place. The sanctity was in the worshippers who met
together in the Saviour's name, and the reverence was given to His
spiritual presence, which had been promised to those who should be
thus assembled.' 'The consecration of churches with formal
solemnities, which were supposed to impart a sacredness to the place
and building, does not appear until the fourth century.' 'As no forms
of prayer of apostolic authority are given in the sacred record, nor
any command from the apostles as to the use or non-use of such forms,
this is an open question to be decided by every church for itself;
each church having a full right to act according to its discretion and
deliberate judgment; but no right at all to condemn or disparage the
opposite practice which another Christian community may prefer.' 'I
think it is perfectly certain that in the earliest period of the
apostolic age a fixed and prescribed liturgy could not have been
used.' 'All the evidence directly deducible from the New Testament is
against the use of such formularies in the apostolic age.' 'This, very
briefly expressed, is the sum and substance of the contemporary
patristic testimony; and it points us conclusively to the third and
fourth centuries, and not to the apostolic age for the distinct
appearance and growth to maturity of formal liturgies in Christian
churches.' 'There is in the New Testament no trace whatever of any one
of the annual days of hallowed commemoration which are now celebrated
in Christian churches.' Equally decisive are Dr. Jacob's arguments and
conclusions against anything like sacramental grace in the ordinances
of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. 'There is not the slightest
intimation that the validity of the Sacrament (of the Lord's Supper)
depended upon any ministerial power or act, or that any Christian
minister had the power of conferring sacramental grace through his
administration of it.' 'There is not the slightest intimation that
any change whatever was effected in the bread and wine, or that any
power or virtue, natural or supernatural, was infused into them. They
are not even said to be "consecrated," but only to have a blessing or
thanksgiving offered over them. There is not the slightest intimation
that our Lord Jesus Christ is in any sense present _in_, or _in
conjunction with_ the consecrated elements; or that His presence in
the believer's heart at this service is different in kind from His
presence in him at prayer, or in any other spiritual communion.'
The conclusions which Dr. Jacob has reached are those which every
severe and impartial historical student must come to--which any legal
testing of evidence must necessarily compel. They have our hearty
concurrence. Dr. Jacob, as we have said, is, by conviction and
preference, an Episcopalian; our convictions and preferences induce us
to reject Episcopacy as having been almost uniformily and inevitably
inimical to the freedom and spirituality of the Church. On some minor
points, moreover, which are not important enough for remark here, we
differ from his conclusions; but as a _vade mecum_ of the
Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament we are well contented to
accept his book--we know of none, indeed, comparable with it; and we
cordially commend it, not only to the Anglicans, Evangelicals, and
Broad Churchmen of his own ecclesiastical body, with a strong desire
to know what replies they will give to it, but we recommend it to all
Congregational and Presbyterian ministers, as equally full of learned
fidelity to truth, of just recognitions of the liberty wherewith
Christ has made us free, and of broad, loving charities, which alone
can secure, and which are sufficient to secure, the unity of the
Church of God.
Sir Philip Perring's book is of a very different character--loose,
garrulous, and impetuous; but yet it contains many good things. It is
the production of one of those men of restless ingenuity--not
unfrequently found in all Churches--whose impulses are good, whose
intentions are true, whose utterance is fearless, but who yet want the
closeness, self-control, and exact logic which give opinions their
just influence. The book is a hotchpotch, made up of papers on
miscellaneous subjects--an 'Address to Conformists and to
Nonconformists,' on their respective faults and differences; 'A Hint
to Bishops,' urging them to call a council, and agree with their
Nonconformist brethren; 'Regulations of Public Worship,' advocating
liberty for Congregational gifts; 'Expenses of Public Worship,'
condemning pew rents and the offertory alike, and advocating
occasional collections; 'Episcopal Ordination;' 'Non-Episcopal
Ordination,' condemning the dogma of apostolical succession; 'The
Baptismal Service,' 'Everlasting Damnation,' 'Biblical Revision,'
'Passages in the Gospels revised,' 'Gospel accounts of the
Resurrection harmonized,' 'Silver Filings,'--a Collection of Aphorisms
and Sentences. Nonconformists have but little reason to complain of
Sir Philip's volume; his chief adjurations are directed against his
own Church, and he denounces in it assumptions, errors, and abuses
which have been the _raison d'être_ of Nonconformity. We are not let
off without rebuke; but our sins are light in comparison. On some
points we plead guilty. Nonconformity is, no doubt, amenable to the
reproach of undue sectarianism and unnecessary division. We are too
prone to party shibboleths; it is the characteristic sin which our
necessary nonconformity has generated. The evils which Sir P. Perring
rebukes, however, some of which he exaggerates, are evils of human
nature, not of Nonconformity as such. By God's grace we trust to amend
them. He is in error, however, when he says 'we wage a continual
warfare for participation in endowments,' to a fair share of which he
is just enough to say we are entitled. We may forgive a State
Churchman for failing to understand that we really have a strong
objection to endowments, and should deem them a spiritual injury to
our Churches; and yet, if he would look at Nonconformist history,
especially at the history of Regium Donum, he might be assured of the
fact. Our contention is not for a share of endowments; but that
endowments of one particular Church or of any number of Churches, out
of the property of the entire nation should, as an essential injustice
and as practically a prolific source of mischief, altogether cease. We
object to national endowments for religion _per se_, whoever may
participate in them, as being necessarily inequitable and inexpedient;
neither can we see the religious right or wisdom of acquiescing in the
wrong which the Established Church is doing. We are under religious
obligations to put an end to all wrong done to ourselves and others.
We do not interfere with the Episcopal Church as such--we concede to
it all the liberty we claim ourselves; we object to the National
Establishment as a wrong to all Nonconformists--that is, to one half
of the nation; and as citizens, we feel that we have the civil right,
and are under religious obligations to seek at the hands of the
Legislature the redress of this wrong. Can Sir P. Perring understand
the difference between finding fault with others, and seeking to
emancipate ourselves? Righteousness must come before peace is
possible, and it is consistent with the highest religiousness and the
most perfect charity to seek it.
_Ante-Nicene Christian Library_:--
_Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to_ A.D. 325. Edited
by Rev. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D., and JAMES DONALDSON, D.D.
_Vol. XIX. The Seven Books of Arnobius adversus Gentes._ Translated
by A. H. BRYCE, LL.D., D.C.L., and HUGH CAMPBELL, M.A.
_Vol. XX. The Works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of
Alexandria, and Archelaus._ Translated by Rev. S. D. F. SALMOND, M.A.
And _Syriac Documents, attributed to the First Three Centuries_.
Translated by Rev. B. P. PRATTEN, B.A. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
The editors of this valuable series of translations are resolved to
furnish the English reader with nearly all the Christian literature
of the first three centuries. The volumes before us are singularly
important. The celebrated books of Arnobius _adversus Gentes_ reflect
the intense antagonism which the _monstra horrendaque_ of heathenism
had excited in pure-minded and thoughtful men. There is exceedingly
little of the peculiar form of Ante-Nicene Christianity to be gleaned
from this _apologia_; there is hardly a reference either to the Old
Testament or the New, or to any distinctively Christian doctrine, but
there is the most elaborate impeachment of the popular faith. The
incredible obscenity of the mythology of Greece and Rome is drawn out
in revolting detail, and is the sufficient reply to the maddened
hostility of heathen persecutors of Christians. Arnobius repudiated
the allegorical interpretation which had been put by philosophers upon
popular legend as a flimsy expedient to condone intolerable impurity,
and he drags out the sensuous earthworm, slime and all, into the
light. The same spirit of uncompromising detestation of the impurities
of heathenism that is conspicuous in the 'Apology' of Tertullian and
the 'Octavius' of Minucius Felix pervades this treatise, which yet, by
its philosophical arrangement and fulness of detail, has gained for
Arnobius the reputation of being the Christian Varro.
The translations of the genuine and spurious works of Gregory
Thaumaturgus are executed with great care, and contain the panegyric
on Origen, as well as the _metaphrase of Ecclesiastes_. One of the
most interesting things in the volume is the 'Disputation between
Bishop Archelaus and Manes,' which, for its picturesque surroundings,
and for the insight it gives into the activity and intensity of the
Manichæan faith, and the mode in which this great heresiarch was met
by the early Christians, is of immense value. The translations of the
Syriac documents, though acknowledged to have been done with Dr.
Cureton's translations open before the editor, are claimed by him as
an independent translation. The extent of these obligations are
differently estimated by Mr. Pratten and some of his critics; at all
events, they are a valuable addition to the series of the 'Ante-Nicene
Library.'
_The Story of Hare Court._ Being the History of an Independent Church.
By JOHN B. MARSH; with an introduction by the Rev. A. RALEIGH, D.D.
Strahan and Co.
This is an admirable specimen of a class of books that we should like
to see greatly multiplied. The history of many a Nonconforming Church
would be the best defence of its existence, and the best evidence of
its vitality. The Hare Court Church dates from the Commonwealth, some
of the illustrious names of which were connected with it, and with its
first pastor, George Cokayne, notably Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, Lord
Mayor Tichborne, ancestor of the family just now attracting so much
notoriety--who also signed the death-warrant of Charles I., and Lord
Mayor Ireton, brother of Cromwell's famous Colonel. The Communion
plate now in use by the Church at Canonbury was presented by Sir
Bulstrode Whitelocke and Sir Robert Tichborne. Cokayne was also a
friend of Milton and of Bunyan, who died in the house of Mr. John
Strudwicke, one of Mr. Cokayne's deacons. The church has a great
history, and both in the distinction of its present honoured pastor
and in the noble achievements of the church itself it will perpetuate
its honourable traditions.
_The Moabite Stone; a fac-simile of the Original Inscription, with an
English Translation, and an Historical and Critical Commentary._
Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with a Map of the Land of Moab.
By CHRISTIAN D. GINSBURG, LL.D. Reeves and Turner.
The discovery and interpretation of the Moabite stone equal, and in
some respects surpass in importance and interest, those of the
celebrated Rosetta stone; these thirty-four lines, which have been
exposed to the chances of Bedouin ignorance and way-side accident for
nearly as many centuries, throw unexpected light upon both the history
and language of the Old Testament. The relations of Moab and Israel
were very intimate, and the Biblical records of these are very
perplexing. Thus we find David, who was of Moabite descent, and whose
parents had been sheltered by the king of Moab, for some inscrutable
reason, waging a bloody war against this hospitable monarch, and
slaughtering two-thirds of his subjects. It has been assumed that for
nearly a century the Moabites were tributory to the Israelites, but
the Moabite inscription implies that they had during this period
thrown off the yoke, and were conquered again by Omri. Dr. Ginsburg
thinks that Solomon granted their liberty, as there are several
indications of his friendly feeling. The inscription is a record of
the successful attempt of Mesha, king of Moab, circa B.C. 936, to
reconquer the territory and rebuild the cities anciently subjugated by
the Israelites, 2 Kings iii.; these they retained for upwards of a
century and a half, until in the time of Ahaz the 'burden of Moab' was
pronounced by Isaiah. (Isaiah xv., xvi.) Mesha, this triumphal tablet
tells us, made Dijon his fortified capital, and erected this memorial
in it. He took from Nebo 'the vessels of Jehovah' and dedicated them
to Chemosh, giving the important and entirely novel information that
the Jews had a house for the worship of Jehovah in Nebo, beyond
Jordan. The mention of the name of Jehovah on this tablet is
remarkable, implying that at that time it was commonly pronounced by
the Israelites--that is, the sacred Tetragrammaton had not then ceased
to be used. This superstition, Dr. Ginsburg thinks, was introduced by
the Alexandrine Jews.
The linguistical interest of the stone consists in the fact that it is
the only pre-Maccabean original written in a language almost identical
with the Biblical Hebrew. It is older than two-thirds of the Old
Testament. Its bearings on the Masoretic text, therefore, are
profoundly important and interesting; these Dr. Ginsburg discusses.
The important fact emerges that the Hebrew words were divided by
points, and the verses by vertical strokes. A system of original
punctuation is thus virtually demonstrated, confirming the Masoretic
division. The palæographical importance of the Moabite stone is
equally great. It is, by a century and a half, the oldest alphabet of
its character that we possess; it is three centuries older than our
most ancient inscription, the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar. The
characters are the so-called Phoenician, from which the Greek,
Roman, and other European alphabets are derived. We have thus 'the
veritable prototype of modern writings,' for all the twenty-two
letters are here. All these points Dr. Ginsburg evolves and elucidates
with great scholarship and ingenuity. He narrates fully the history of
the discovery of this remarkable monument by the Rev. F. Klein; of the
foolish and fussy, and, as it proved, disastrous jealousy and
selfishness of the French Consul, M. Clermont-Gonneau, and of its
destruction by the Bedouins. The volume is one of almost romantic
interest. Dr. Ginsburg has wisely written for the comprehension of
even unlearned readers. His volume supplies not only a fac-simile of
the stone, the various translations of it already made, but a full
exposition of its manifold significance. It is a wonderful
corroboration of Old Testament authority.
_Palestine: its Holy Sites and Sacred Story._ By JOHN TILLOTSON. Ward,
Lock, and Tyler. 1871.
The history of the Jews, in the form in which we have it in the Old
St. Clair Testament, is a medley. The absence of chronological
arrangement in the books, the positive inversion of the order of
events within the limits of the same book--sometimes the brief account
of some reigns, the interruption of the story by long episodes, the
want of any means of correlating the prophets with the monarchs in
whose reigns they prophesy, combine to confuse the reader; and in
addition to this, the history is absent altogether for the 400 years
immediately before Christ. As a consequence, the Bible history is but
little studied by young people, and for a hundred lads who can readily
run through the list of sovereigns from Egbert to Victoria, or Clovis
to Napoleon, there is hardly one who can distinctly enumerate the
succession of the kings of Israel and Judah. The Bible history seems
far off and shadowy, and needs to be made near and real; it is passed
over for lighter literature, and needs to be invested with the charms
of a story; Palestine geography is neglected, while its relations with
the sacred story are close and living, and a graphic description of
the physical features of the country should always accompany an
account of the events which occurred in it. In those parts where the
Biblical narrative is detailed and connected through a few
chapters--as in the history of the patriarchs, or that of David and
Solomon, of Elijah and Elisha--it _is_ read with interest by the
young; so that if we give continuity to the entire account, we may
expect to create interest in the entire book. We are therefore
indebted to those who reduce the elements to order, and present us
with a connected history of Palestine, like the history of any other
country, as Dean Stanley has done in his 'Lectures on the Jewish
Church,' and Milman in his 'History of the Jews.' Those works,
however, are learned and expensive, and Stanley's book still wants the
concluding volume; so that a cheap popular history for young people
was a desideratum. The author of the present volume has long held a
position in general literature, and in this history of Palestine, as
well as in the Bible Dictionary which preceded it, he shows so much
knowledge of Biblical matters, and so much talent in dealing with
them, that his death, which took place before a copy of this book
could be placed in his hands, will be much regretted by many. In the
preparation of his book he has no doubt availed himself of the labours
of his predecessors; though at the same time he has put himself into
his work, and his fine, healthy, genial, and sympathising spirit is
exhibited in every chapter. In critical and scientific matters many
will disagree from some of his conclusions, as, for instance, when he
accepts Ussher's chronology, places Job earlier than Abraham, makes
the bed of the Dead Sea the site of Sodom, attributes Ecclesiastes to
Solomon, and ignores a deutero-Isaiah. It is better, perhaps, that
these questions should not all be discussed--nor without discussion be
decided adversely to common belief--in a book intended for young
people: else the author here and there shows his capacity to weigh the
evidence on both sides of a disputed matter. For the same reason, it
is well, perhaps, that while the natural and human sides of marvellous
events are made prominent, the question of the supernatural is not
formally discussed, but the very language of the Old Testament is
often quoted and left to make its own impression. In addition to the
Old Testament, the writer makes considerable use of Josephus, and
sometimes borrows from tradition, though more sparingly than does
Stanley. His style is more simple than Stanley's, his language more
homely; he writes in the present tense, and so gives the events a
dramatic interest; he makes old acts and practices understood by
running references to that which is analogous in modern society, and
finishes a portrait or a description with an apt quotation or proverb.
In historical parallels and allusions, the book abounds. For instance,
with reference to Abram's position in idolatrous Chaldæa, when John
Knox, bound as a galley slave, was wearily tugging at the oar in
French waters, he is said to have seized on a wooden image of the
Virgin. 'This a mother of God!' quoth he, 'she is fitter for swimming
than for being worshipped;' and so he flung her into the river. Abram
was more discreet. One day, when his father was away from the
_atelier_, he took a strong hammer and knocked half the idols to
pieces. When Terah returned and inquired the cause, Abram told him the
gods had fallen to fighting as to which was the greatest, and in the
battle had reduced themselves to the sight he saw; Terah, who would
not give up his faith in their vitality, was forced to silence (p.
14). With regard to Israel's passage of the Red Sea, at low tide the
sea may be forded at Suez, as Napoleon and his officers forded it on
horseback; yet the tide comes in with a mighty flood, such as
well-nigh overwhelmed Napoleon and his officers when re-crossing to
Suez (p. 52). When Saul took a yoke of oxen and hewed them in pieces
and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of
messengers, saying, 'Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after
Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen!' the challenge spread, with
extraordinary rapidity from family to family, from tribe to tribe.
Like the fiery cross of the old Highlanders, the signs were borne
along, and the people responded with one consent:--
'Fast as the fatal symbol flies,
In arms the huts and hamlets rise;
From winding glen, from upland brown,
Then poured each hardy tenant down:
Nor slacked the messenger his pace--
He showed the sign, he named the place;
And pressing forward like the wind,
Left clamour and surprise behind.' (P. 110.)
We trust that the author will succeed in his object of awakening a
deeper interest in the holy sites and sacred story of Palestine, and
in quickening a desire to know more about both.
_On a fresh Revision of the English New Testament._ By J. D.
LIGHTFOOT, D.D., Canon of St. Paul's, and Hulsean Professor of
Divinity, Cambridge. Macmillan and Co. 1871.
The substance of this work was read by Dr. Lightfoot to a clerical
meeting before the Revision Committee had held its first session. The
publication of the volume will do good service. The author introduces
his discussion by a clear _résumé_ of the circumstances which led to
Jerome's revision of the Latin Bible, and he then recounts the
difficulties and suspicions that were engendered by the proposals
which issued in the production of the authorized English version. It
is curious to find that the criticisms and fears which disturb good
people in the end of the nineteenth century are almost identical with
those which greeted the translators of the seventeenth century. Dr.
Lightfoot vindicates 'the necessity for a fresh revision of the
authorized version.' Though he here traverses ground which has often
been canvassed, the argument has never been more strongly or more
adequately presented. It consists of a careful and condensed
exposition, first of the textual defects and 'false readings' of the
English version; it goes on to enumerate the 'artificial distinctions
created' by an arbitrary variety of translation of the same Greek
words, and the 'real distinctions obliterated' by the reverse process
of using the same English word as the representative of several
different Greek words. Our author accumulates further proof of the
fact that many of the niceties of Greek grammar were not known to our
translators, that they were foggy in the extreme as to the use of the
definite article and the aorist tense, as well as to the fundamental
modifications effected in the meaning of verbs by the 'voice' in which
they are used. He is particularly happy in showing the inconsistency,
confusion, and utter lack of definite principle on which 'proper
names' are introduced into the English New Testament, and in this and
other ways shows that the time is come for a thorough revision of
blunders which often conceal truth and beauty, and interfere with the
vivid impression which the words of Jesus and his apostles ought to
produce upon the English reader. The chief and only criticism we feel
disposed to express is, that in many scores of places Dr. Lightfoot
indicates the obvious blunder of the English version, but does not
show us how he would find a remedy. Dr. Lightfoot argues that there
need be no violation whatever of this 'well of English undefiled;'
that in the matter of Greek scholarship we are never likely to have a
larger body of men competent to execute the work, and to criticise it
when done; and that a revised translation will not now be exposed to
the affectations and Latinisms that might possibly have disturbed such
a work as this at the commencement of the present century. Our author
speaks, moreover, with grateful satisfaction of the fine spirit which
has been expressed and consecrated by the actual co-operation of the
revisers.
FOOTNOTE:
[69] See his work on 'The Intuitions of the Mind,' pp. 228 and 229,
and compare his criticism of Maurice in the same work, p. 496.
SERMONS.
_The Religion of the Present and the Future._ Sermons preached chiefly
at Yale College, by THEODORE D. WOOLSEY. (New York: Charles Scribner
and Co.) The name of the venerable and honoured President of Yale
College is well known on this side the Atlantic. His authority as a
jurist has been often cited in our international disputes with the
United States. His articles on the _Alabama_ question have probably
done as much as anything to convince his countrymen that there were
two sides to it, and to induce the temper which has happily led to the
recent convention. In the United States he is universally regarded as
_facile princeps_ on all questions of international law. Connected
with Yale College for forty years, its President for twenty-five, he
has just retired from the latter office into private life, carrying
with him a degree of public respect and of personal affection such as
few men are permitted to win. This volume is a record of his more
pastoral relations to the professors and alumni of Yale. None of his
predecessors, not even Dr. Dwight, have won more religious respect and
affection. His dignified and yet gentle wisdom, his high purity and
deep spirituality, and especially the affectionate sympathy called
forth by his unusual domestic sorrows--for, like Archbishop Tait, his
children have been taken from him more than one at once; his last
bereavement was two daughters, who died last December, in Jerusalem,
within two days of each other--these have gathered round his name and
his home a peculiar reverence, love, and influence on the part not
only of many hundreds of young men who have been under his care, but
of many thousands of his countrymen besides. This volume is a memorial
of his College-chapel preaching, compiled at the request of members
of his classes. It consists of twenty-five sermons on ordinary but
diversified Christian themes; all, however, indirectly having respect
to a collegiate audience. The circumstances of the publication place
the volume beyond our criticism, and were there anything in it to find
fault with, we should simply refrain from commendation. As it is, we
do not hesitate to say that its qualities of thoughtful, earnest,
catholic, practical religiousness, combined with finished scholarship,
high-toned simplicity, and cultured grace, are of a very high
character--every word is pure gold. We trust that it will find its way
into the hands of English readers. We cannot forbear transcribing the
elegant, touching, and characteristic dedication--'To those who have
now and then heard my voice in the pulpit of Yale College, and
especially to the graduates who have gone forth from these halls,
leaving me here until now, when my time of graduation is nearly come,
I affectionately inscribe these discourses as an acknowledgment of the
respect and love which they have shown me.'--_The Training of the
Twelve; or, Passages out of the Gospels, exhibiting the twelve
Disciples of Jesus under discipline for the Apostleship._ By the Rev.
ALEXANDER B. BRUCE, Broughty Ferry. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.) Mr.
Bruce has hit upon a good idea, and has wrought it out in a stronger
manner than his preface, which is somewhat fussy and egotistical,
gives promise of. He selects for elucidation the passages in the
Gospels which set forth our Lord's relations with the Twelve, and
examines them in the light of his great purpose to teach and train
these selected men as the founders of his Church and the Apostles of
his religion. Mr. Bruce's treatment is homiletical rather than
scientific, most of his chapters having evidently done duty in the
pulpit. He is, however, an intellectual and well-read expositor. If
there be nothing in his discoursing that is very penetrating; neither
is there anything inane. His predominant characteristic is sound,
practical common sense. He belongs to the school of Dr. John Brown.
His book is too big. An octavo volume of 550 pages is a great
undertaking for a reader, unless redeemed by originality, or power of
vivid presentation. Mr. Bruce is thoroughly orthodox, even according
to Scottish standards. But he is not blind. He has clearly thought for
himself, and he puts the result with intelligence and independence. It
must, however, have been a difficult task to speak of our Lord's
doctrine of Sabbath-keeping, and to refrain from a rebuke of the
Sabbatarianism into which some of his own countrymen have fallen,
which is surely as superstitious and burdensome as that which our Lord
rebuked; but Mr. Bruce has achieved this. His remarks on liturgies,
which, he thinks, are for private rather than public use, are moderate
and wise. Indeed, Mr. Bruce holds the balance in most things very
fairly. As we have said, a more profound, scientific treatment of his
subject is conceivable. At the hands of a man like Neander, for
instance, it would have received it; but as a practical exposition,
conducted on a high level of common sense, the book is a very good
one. It touches on multitudinous questions, and always intelligently
and wisely. Sometimes Mr. Bruce does not quite get to the heart of the
matter, as for instance, in the section on Peter's sifting. The true
nature of the crisis is brought out by Whateley, in his 'Lectures on
the Apostles,' much more fully and distinctly. But the book is worthy
a place by the side of Dr. Brown's expository volumes.--_Young Men and
Maidens; a Pastoral for the Times._ By J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A. (Hodder
and Stoughton.) These sermons are only partially designated in this
title, for in addition to the two on young men and women, a third is
devoted to 'our elders.' What Mr. Brown has to say to these will be
anticipated by all who know his writings. His intense earnestness
almost irresistibly takes a monitory form. He stands in the midst of
his generation, like a Hebrew prophet, saying noble and eloquent
things; but he would speak more effectually if he spoke in a more
hopeful spirit of faith. There is evil enough in our life, God knows!
but there is also much good, more, perhaps, than ever there was; and
the most effectual of all inspirations in the battle with evil is the
inspiration of faith. Is it not saying too much of any vice among us,
that 'England is likely to die of it'? This is a rhetorical
exaggeration from which the good dissent, at which the evil laugh. Mr.
Brown's very intensity betrays him into this characteristic fault. Few
men, however, speak better things; and those three sermons cannot fail
to stimulate nobly all into whose hands they fall.--_Sermons_, by the
Rev. FERGUS FERGUSON, Dalkeith. (Edinburgh: Andrew Elliott.) We have a
dim recollection of reading some newspaper paragraph anent the heresy
of Mr. Ferguson, and some proceedings taken thereupon by the
Presbytery of his Church; and in this volume Mr. Ferguson prints a
request of 450 members of his congregation for the publication of it,
on the ground that such a charge was brought. We have utterly failed,
either to recall the nature of the charge, or to gather it from the
request, or from Mr. Ferguson's preface. We had no alternative,
therefore, but to examine the sermons themselves with the eyes of a
lynx-like orthodoxy. We have done so, selecting such as from their
subject seemed most likely to betray the cloven-foot. Our sagacity is
at fault. We have found nothing even suspicious, but only the sermons
of a strong, intelligent, devout man, everywhere fresh, and everywhere
wholesome and stimulating, occasionally fanciful in their ingenuity;
as for instance, in the sermon entitled the 'Centre of the Universe,'
the idea of which, derived from his position between two thieves, is
that Christ is the centre of the visible and invisible worlds, and of
the interstice between the two. We very heartily commend these true
sermons of a true man. God help the orthodoxy that is intolerant of
such teaching as this!--_Sermons_, by JAMES MCDOUGALL, Pastor of the
Belgrave Congregational Church, Darwen, Lancashire. (Williams and
Norgate.) Mr. McDougall's sermons are remarkable for their
independence and strength--a wonderful contrast to the puny pietisms
that are so often put forth under the name of sermons. Conceived in
unconventional modes, expressed in unconventional, albeit sometimes
rugged, phrase--_e.g._, 'eld-time,' 'age-lasting,' and similar
terms--they have a breadth, vigour, and independence that are quite
refreshing, and that are as creditable to hearers as to the preacher.
Mr. McDougall lays hold firmly upon the incarnation, but seems to
attribute the expiation of Christ unduly to it, rather than to his
death upon the cross. Doubtless, the entire human life of our Lord
enters into it; but the language employed by Mr. McDougall is
distributed and guarded compared with the enthusiastic emphasis given
to the cross by the sacred writers. This, however, may be merely
accidental. Perhaps the finest sermon in the volume is that on
Christian Theism, suggested by the British Association addresses of
Professors Huxley and Tyndall. With a feeling of true theistic
conservatism, Mr. McDougall seeks for points of sympathy rather than
of difference, and while uncompromising in his own religious
recognitions, is courteous and sympathetic towards those who fall
short of them. Readers of Mr. McDougall's sermons must feel great
respect for the Church that can produce such men, and rejoice in their
teaching.--_The Companions of St. Paul._ By JOHN S. HOWSON, D.D., Dean
of Chester. (Strahan and Co.) Dean Howson has made the sphere of
Paul's life pre-eminently his own. It is the field of literary and
theological culture to which he has devoted the best energies of his
life. Beside his life of the Apostle, written conjointly with Mr.
Conybeare, he has published, as a Hulsean lecture, 'The Character of
St. Paul: a Series of Papers on the Metaphors of St. Paul;' another on
'Scenes from the Life of St. Paul.' Now he portrays the companions of
St. Paul, Barnabas, Lydia, Luke, Apollos, Titus, Phoebe, &c. Dean
Howson is not a very fervid writer: he presents us with no glowing
pictures; but all that scholarly care, clear good sense, and elegant
simplicity can do, he does. Everything that he writes is instructive
and interesting. These sketches, especially of subordinate and
little-regarded characters will have a special value to all curious
about the bye-ways of Scripture history.--_Synoptical Lectures on the
Books of Holy Scripture._ First Series. Genesis--Song of Songs. By the
Rev. DONALD FRASER, M.A. (James Nisbet.) Mr. Fraser has attempted to
work out a very good idea. We quite agree with him as to the
pernicious effects of the proof-text system, as inducing fragmentary
knowledge, capricious interpretations, and arbitrary dogma. Preaching
from sentences was a thing unknown to the early Church. Mr. Fraser has
attempted to bring the whole scope of a book of Scripture within the
compass of a pulpit lecture. Perhaps a medium course, the treatment of
a single narrative or subject, would have been best. We do not think
that he has succeeded greatly. He has necessarily extended historical
exposition at the cost of religious instruction. It is, of course,
important to understand the Bible; but understanding the Bible is not
an end in itself; the preacher fails when the meanings of the Bible
are not applied either formally or by necessary suggestions to
practical religious life. It is no sufficient justification of a
preacher dealing with an audience of living souls that he has
explained the Bible to them. Mr. Fraser's discourses are necessarily
too much like a table of contents to be of much practical religious
use. On the other hand the popular character of spoken addresses
deprives his book of scholastic value. The points of difficulty, some
of them, at least, are popularly touched, and judgment is pronounced
upon them, generally in the light of sufficient reading; but Mr.
Fraser settles nothing. His chapter on the canon is very superficial.
We cannot but think that these exercises would have been more suitable
for a Bible-class than for sermons. Sometimes, as in the lecture on
Ruth, Mr. Fraser, in his desire to be practical, is driven to
allegorizing. Mr. Fraser, however, has failed only comparatively, and
in what is intrinsically impracticable. There is great positive value
in his synthetical attempt, in the habit of broad general views which
it necessitates, and in the exhibition of the successive links of the
grand chain of the revelation of God. Men sceptically inclined, and
men not sceptically inclined, who feel deeply and painfully, literary,
scientific, and religious difficulties in connection with the
Pentateuch and the Jewish histories, will be impatient with Mr.
Fraser; but those who feel no such difficulties will be benefited by
his generalizations, the more because they proceed upon intelligent
conclusions of his own.--_Vital Truths from the Book of Jonah._ By a
Labourer in the Lord's Vineyard. (S. W. Partridge and Co.) Those
addresses make no pretence to scholarly criticism; they are simply
practical exhortations by a lady to a Sunday class of young women,
delivered without notes, and written down from memory. Accepting them
for what they profess to be, they are to be commended as calculated
for practical religious usefulness. Criticism of their positions would
be out of place; the history is wholly subordinated to spiritual
uses.--_Sermons preached at Auckland, New Zealand._ By SAMUEL EDGER,
B.A., London. Second Series. (Bartlett.) Mr. Edger has produced a
second series of very thoughtful and interesting sermons, but, to our
mind, has spoiled them by a sour, angry, impertinent preface. Why
arrogate so exclusive a monopoly of Christian feeling, intelligence,
and candour? Why impute vulgar and base motives to all chapel-goers?
Why strive so hard to appear heterodox, and not succeed very well
after all? Many of the discourses are full of fine feeling and
ingenious speculation.--_Sermons chiefly on Subjects from the Sunday
Lessons._ By HENRY WHITEHEAD, Vicar of St. John's, Limehouse. (Strahan
and Co.) We have only commendation to give to these sermons, and
commendation of a high character. We do not mean that they indicate a
very high degree of mental power, or that they deal with high
theological speculations. Their great merit is not that they run along
lofty levels of thought, but that they are sermons eminently adapted
for ordinary hearers, and yet as eminently satisfactory to the most
cultured. They are simple and easy, giving no impression of effort;
but they are full of a quiet, natural thoughtfulness, spirituality,
and suggestiveness, which are eminently adapted to the nurture of the
spiritual life. Intuitively, Mr. Whitehead apprehends the spiritual
significance of things. Every incident is presented in its spiritual
root and fruit. The sermons are consequently full of a fine
catholicity of spiritual sympathy, which, while it is infinitely above
all mere ecclesiasticism, is very refreshing and very winning. The
little volume is a genuine help to all that is best in the spiritual
life.--_Sermons preached in Rugby School Chapel in 1862-1867._ By the
Right Rev. FREDERICK TEMPLE, D.D., Lord Bishop of Exeter. Second
series. (Macmillan and Co.) Dr. Temple published his first series of
Rugby sermons immediately after the publication of 'Essays and
Reviews'--that indirectly he might vindicate himself from the wild
charges of heresy and infidelity brought against him. They were
published, therefore, exactly as they had been preached. This second
series has presumably been more specially prepared for the press. They
are distinctively sermons to boys, and their characteristics are a
penetrating and direct practicalness--informed by a rare intuitive
sympathy with boy nature--its keen perception of reality and
earnestness, its equally keen sympathy with what is noblest in
sentiment and feeling. Avoiding all doctrinal disquisition, Dr. Temple
is in every sermon intensely practical--doctrine, however, apparently
ordinary evangelical doctrine, being implied--as for instance in the
sermons about 'Abiding in Christ' and 'The Comforter.' It is needless
to say that Dr. Temple looks at things in a fresh, unconventional way,
and puts things with cultured vigour. The sermons would be better were
the motive-force of the evangelical element more present, but they are
stimulating and instructive, in the best sense.
_Body and Mind; being the Gulstonian Lectures for 1870._ By Dr.
MAUDSLEY. Macmillan and Co.
In reading the volume before us we have been forcibly reminded of the
truth of the statement made by Lecky, in his 'History of Rationalism,'
that 'the discoveries of physical science form a habit of mind which
is carried far beyond the limits of physics;' for Dr. Maudsley, while
professing to confine himself within the domain of physiology, is
constantly pronouncing on psychological matters, and that, too, with a
dogmatism which is quite as genuine as that against which he
repeatedly protests. We admit that, from his general intelligence and
culture, he is eminently qualified to judge of psychological subjects,
but not as a professed physiologist. As long as he keeps to his own
science, we are prepared to listen to his statements, and to bow to
his authority; and when discoursing on these topics he is always
clear, interesting, and instructive; but whenever he meddles with
mental facts, those qualities seem to forsake him, and he involves
both himself and his readers in a maze. After perusing a previous work
of Dr. Maudsley on a kindred subject, we were quite prepared for a
violent tirade against metaphysical psychologists, and are therefore
not surprised to find them abused in terms which are neither very
correct nor very scientific. In the preface he says, 'The
physiological inquirer into mind may, if he care to do so, justly
protest against the easy confidence with which some metaphysical
psychologists disdain physiological inquiry, and ignore its results,
without having ever been at the pains to make themselves acquainted
with what these results are, and with the steps by which they have
been reached.... The very terms of metaphysical psychology have,
instead of helping, oppressed and hindered him (the physiologist) to
an extent which it is impossible to measure; they have been
hob-goblins, to frighten him from entering on his path of inquiry;
phantoms, to lead him astray at every turn, after he has entered upon
it; deceivers lurking to betray him, under the guise of seeming
friends tendering help.' Again, 'Without speculating at all concerning
the nature of mind, I do not shrink from saying that we shall make no
progress towards a mental science, if we begin by depreciating the
body; not by disdaining it, as metaphysicians, religious ascetics, and
maniacs have done, but by labouring in an earnest and inquiring spirit
to understand it, shall we make any step forwards,' &c. We deny the
correctness of these statements, in their application to psychologists
of the present day. There was a time, it is true, when the old
dualistic principle was supreme, when mind and body were regarded as
two distinct essences, formed and developed by entirely different
agencies, and adapted to each other for a time by some intelligent
power distinct from and superior to both; but as regards the present
time, of which Dr. Maudsley is here speaking, we do not hesitate to
state (if we may take the writer as a fair representative of his
class) that the metaphysical psychologists, who disdain physiological
facts, are neither half so numerous nor so bigoted as the
physiological psychologists, who pour contempt on psychological
science, without ever having acquainted themselves with its results,
and do not hesitate to express their disdain for the testimony of
consciousness, the only direct evidence we can ever possess in
psychical matters. Surely the masterly treatise of James Mill, the
voluminous expositions of Professor Bain, and the far more acute and
comprehensive analyses of Herbert Spencer,--all of whom regard mental
phenomena as so necessarily and essentially springing out of physical
conditions, that very little room is left to insinuate, even the
mildest form of spiritualism between them--are a sufficient refutation
of such assertions as the above. Is it a truly scientific procedure,
because the old dualistic hypothesis proved dull, incorrect, and
unfruitful, to refuse the evidence of self-consciousness, and to treat
with contempt all psychological inquiry?
Dr. Maudsley lays great emphasis on the close connection between the
mind and body; this is, in fact, the foundation-stone of the whole of
his fabric. We fully admit their intimate union, and their mutual
action and reaction on each other. Nay, more, we can conceive of
mental operations only in conjunction with some corporeal form; but we
nevertheless refuse to be shut up to the alternative that all mental
phenomena are strictly and absolutely dependent on physical
conditions, and to set aside all questions respecting the nature of
the mind as wholly futile and transcendental. Is it not much nearer
the truth to regard the mind as the formative principle, pervading and
adapting the body as its instrument, to its own nature and
requirements? Again, we fully admit that the author does not attach
too much weight to the statement that the abnormal phenomena of mind,
omitted by the earlier philosophers, as well as the normal, should be
included in a complete system of mental analysis, and that both should
form a part of the same inquiry. But this has been done (and
successfully we think), even by psychologists. Does Dr. Maudsley
ignore, or is he unacquainted with, the labours of Herbart, Beneke,
and J. H. Fichte, which do ample justice to this department of mind?
Would it not be well for him to take them into his counsel? We come
now to that which is in some respects the most important part of the
work, viz., where it treats of the well-known phenomena of reflex
action. In dealing with this subject, Dr. Maudsley's method is to
proceed from the lower nerve-centres to the higher, and to explain the
latter as developments of the former; to show that in the highest
nervous centres, the hemispherical ganglia, the organic properties,
and the various processes are essentially the same as in the lowest,
and that in all the different centres of action there is a simple and
necessary change in response to the external impulses. He sets out
with an examination of the 'purposive' movements of a decapitated
frog, from which he deduces the conclusion, 'that actions bearing the
semblance of design may be unconscious and automatic.' After remarking
that faculties are not innate in the case of man to the same degree
and extent as in the lower animals, and have therefore to be acquired
by education, but that when acquired they become as purely automatic
as the primitive reflex actions of the frog, he adds another
conclusion, 'that acts consciously designed at first, may, by
repetition become unconscious and automatic, the faculties of them
being organized in the constitution of the nerve-centres, and they
being then performed as reflex effects of an external stimulus.' Here
we expected to meet with a careful distinction drawn between
automatic, voluntary, and volitional movements, and a cautious
handling of the explanations and teachings of these facts; but we are
disappointed. Many explanations of them have been given. According to
some, the second conclusion is an explanation of the first; the
education of the 'sensory and motor nuclei,' in conjunction with the
law of inherited qualities, may make it conceivable that the various
'purposive movements' of the decapitated frog represent the
experience of its ancestors applied to purposes of self-preservation.
Others have ascribed the purposive faculties to a creative mind,
external to the organization, which chose its own instruments with a
view to its own ends. Others, again, have held that there is a twofold
life of the soul--a pre-conscious and a conscious; that the
pre-conscious manifests itself not simply in the building up of the
organization, but in all 'instinctive' action, and in all the
involuntary workings of the intelligence. Lastly, granting that there
is no _opposition_, but only a distinction in _degree_ between the
conscious and unconscious activities, is that mode of procedure above
all question, or is it not rather contrary to experience, to regard
the mental changes which respond to external stimulus as the mere
result of an outer mechanical and necessary influence exerted upon the
soul? Is it not more correct to consider the mind, by virtue of its
original powers as reacting independently, and that, too, with purpose
and design--not simply within the province of self-conscious thought,
but also in the unconscious region of our mental activities? Dr.
Maudsley does not even discuss this question, but with a dogmatism
which equals that of any of the metaphysical psychologists, he assumes
that the only explanation of the conscious and voluntary is to be
found in the unconscious and involuntary acts. On page 17, he tells
us, 'The highest functions of the nervous system are those to which
the hemispherical ganglia minister. These are the functions of
intelligence, of emotion, and of will; they are the strictly neutral
functions. The question at once arises, whether we have to do in these
supreme centres with fundamentally different properties and different
laws of evolution from those which belong to the lower nerve-centres?
We have to do with different functions certainly, but are the organic
processes which take place in them essentially different from, or are
they identical with, those of the lower nerve-centres? They appear to
be essentially the same: there is a reception of impressions, and
there is a reaction to impressions, and there is a registration of the
effects both of the impressions and of the reactions to them.' He then
defines on this principle the various mental operations as follows:
'The impressions which are made there--_i.e._, in the higher nervous
centres--are the physiological conditions of _ideas_; the feeling of
the ideas is _emotion_, for I hold emotion to mean the special
sensibility of the vesicular neurine to ideas; the registration of
them is memory; and the reaction to them is _volition_. _Attention_ is
the maintenance of the tension of an idea, or a group of ideas, before
the mind; and _reflexion_ is the successive transference of energy
from one to another of a series of ideas.' Precluded from assuming the
co-operation of mind, and barred from appealing to self-consciousness,
we are at a loss to understand where he gets these definitions from.
There are things included in them which physiology alone could never
discover. For all we know, a microscope may reveal a 'vesicular
neurine,' but surely not a 'group of ideas.' But all this is eclipsed
by his interpretation of memory, on pp. 19-20 (space will not allow us
to give the passage entire), where he says: 'A ganglionic centre,
whether of mind, sensation, or movement, which was without memory,
would be an idiotic centre, incapable of being taught its functions.
In every nerve-cell there is memory, and not only so, but there is
memory in every organic element of the body. The virus of the
small-pox makes its mark on the constitution for the rest of life.'
'And so,' he adds, 'is the scar of a cut on a child's finger; the
organic element of the past remembers the change which it has
suffered.' Again, 'the more sure and perfect memory becomes, the more
unconscious it becomes.' In our opinion, it would be difficult to find
a greater confusion of ideas than this passage contains. If, as Dr.
Maudsley implies, memory is to be assigned to any ganglionic centre,
whether accompanied by consciousness or not, then a rose has a memory
of its being budded, an apple-tree of its being grafted, the earth of
its being ploughed--in fact, every material thing which bears the
impression of any action upon it whereby its future destiny will be
affected, is endowed with memory. If we accept the statement that 'the
more sure and perfect memory becomes, the more unconscious it
becomes,' then it seems the more memory we have the less we remember.
In the former statement the author seems to confound memory as a
conscious act, and the sign by means of which the conscious act is
performed; and in the latter to give an undue extension to the term
memory--viz., that we _remember_ all which under certain circumstances
we might recall, but have really forgotten; and is therefore equal to
potential memory.
These confusions and contradictions establish the one-sidedness of the
method of investigation. The author has expended all his efforts on
the search for some single force which would afford adequate
explanation of all known phenomena. He has attempted to account for
the product of two factors by means of one, and the least important of
them. Physiology tells us that there is a contrivance for the
transmission of impressions from the tips of the fingers to the brain,
and that certain physical changes ensue, but here physiology comes to
a standstill. Further than this physiological investigations cannot
carry us. There is an impassable gulf between it and the facts
beyond--the facts of consciousness. Consciousness knows nothing of the
action of the brain and of the motor nerves. Dr. Maudsley has tried to
bridge the chasm by physiology alone; in that he has attempted the
impossible. Professor Tyndall, in the Report of the British
Association, says: 'The passage from the physics of the brain to the
corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a
definite thought and the definite molecular action in the brain occur
simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor
apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by
a process of reasoning from the one phenomena to the other. They
appear together, but we know not why.' He denies that any acquaintance
with the action of the brain can show how 'these physical processes
are connected with the facts of consciousness.' The dissecting knife,
the forceps, and the microscope can render us no aid here. In the
paper on 'Life or Vitality,' the next greatest mystery to that of
consciousness, we find the same tendency and attempt to account for
all its phenomena by a combination of forces, necessary laws, nerves,
and muscles. Here, we are tempted to quote from Huxley's 'Lay
Sermons,' page 373; when men 'begin to talk about there being (or as
if there were) nothing else in the universe but matter and force and
necessary laws, and all the rest of their "grenadiers," I decline to
follow them.' When treating of the physical causes of insanity, Dr.
Maudsley is always interesting and instructive, and this work so far
will be gladly accepted as a valuable contribution to the alleviation
of this darkest and most blighting of human ills.
_The Public School Latin Grammar._ Longmans, Green and Co. 1871.
The very appearance of this book is decidedly unattractive, and we
fear that much of its contents cannot fail to intensify one's first
impressions. It consists of 540 duodecimo pages, crammed with matter
enough to fill two volumes of the same dimensions. It bears all the
marks of an attempt to put the greatest amount of information into the
smallest possible compass, and, as a natural consequence, its pages
are over-crowded, and its contents much more dull and unreadable than
even a Latin grammar need be. From the same cause, we presume, we have
frequently an appalling number of facts strung together, without the
enunciation of any well-defined connecting principles to guide and
assist the student in retaining and applying them; and that, too,
while professedly aiming, by systematic arrangement and philosophical
definitions, to bring into active exercise the reflective faculties.
It thus becomes chargeable with the faults of most of the older
grammars, which burdened the memory without quickening the intellect.
In addition to these general features of the work, we have noticed
that almost every subject is broken up into divisions, and
subdivisions, which are endless in number and far from definite in
character. They are enough to frighten the most courageous student at
the outset, and to bewilder him in his studies. Examples of this are
furnished on almost every page. Take, _e.g._, pp. 55-6, the gender of
consonant-nouns and clipt I-nouns, which are divided into three
classes, denoted by A, B, and C. A is again divided into (1), (2), and
(3), and (1) is again subdivided into (a) α, β, and (b) α, β. B and C
also undergo a similar dissection. Again, the pronouns are divided
into six classes, the sixth being universalia: the universalia are
again subdivided into five, called--relativa, libitiva, distributiva,
inclusiva, and exclusiva.
The adverbs are, first of all, divided into nine classes; and the
ninth, consisting 'of various logical adverbs used to modify
discourse,' is further divided into six kinds--the significative, the
concessive, the dubitative, the corrective, the affirmative, the
negative; a division which, if logically tested, will be found as
faulty as the much-criticised categories of Aristotle. In fact, if
there be as many principles as there are divisions in this book, the
student may justly conclude that Latin grammar is as boundless as the
ocean. For the same feature in syntax see the division of simple
sentences on p. 252.
Our readers, if they have had the patience to follow us thus far, will
have observed the occurrence of many new grammatical terms in the
quotations we have given; which is another characteristic of this
volume. They can be counted by the dozen, of which the following will
serve as specimens:--Phonology, or sound-lore; and morphology, which
the author renders _word-lore_; trajective adjectives, quotientive
adverbs, factitive and static verbs, annexive relativa, oblique
complement, circumstantive entheses, synesis, &c. The author has aimed
at a revolution rather than a reform. Novelty, however, should
constitute no objection to a terminology, provided it justifies its
own existence by its superiority over the old. The advantage of the
new terms should be such as to compensate for the trouble of learning
what they mean. We do not hesitate to say that in the 'Public School
Grammar' novelty has been carried to excess.
Once more we have observed great irregularity in the amount of
explanation given in different subjects; disappointing us both by its
abundance and deficiency; _e.g._, we have the origin and history of
cases explained by the ordinary diagram, as well as additional
explanation; but there is no explanation of mood, tense, and
conjugation. We are also informed in a foot-note that the names given
by grammarians to the cases are ill-chosen, but the meaning of the
terms--_e.g._, of genitive and accusative, is not interpreted. We
turn, accidentally, to the verbs, and we are told that _possum_ is
from _pote-sum_, and that _pote_ is from _pati_, lord, whence Greek
πόσις ποτνία (lord, lady); that _fero_ is from _bhar_, Gr. φερ; but of
_volo_, which comes between, we have no such explanation. Of this verb
the author only says that _vis_ is for _vol-i-s_, and _vult_ for
_vol-i-t_, but he omits to add that _vellem_ and _velle_ are for
_vellĕrem_ and _vellĕre_. The above we consider to be some of the main
defects of this work. A grammar brought out under such auspices as the
one before us, cannot fail to have many excellences. No doubt it meets
one of the great wants of the times--viz., a manual of convenient
size, and easy of reference, presenting a fuller account of the
structure of the language than the ordinary class-room grammars, and
containing, in a condensed form, the best results of the linguistic
discoveries of modern philologists. The syntax is copious, and
carefully arranged, and every important rule is illustrated by a
profusion of well-selected examples, in which the idiomatic
characteristics of Latin are clearly exhibited. One of the greatest
merits of the work is the vast amount of classical Latinity embodied
in its pages, taken directly from the best classical authors. The
Appendix, treating of 'Latin Orthography,' Latin 'pronunciation,'
Affinities in the 'Aryan family,' 'Umbrean' and 'Oscar dialects,' &c.,
furnishes valuable information to the advanced student. It is, in
fact, a complete and comprehensive manual containing the most recent
and useful information on all subjects coming within the province of a
Latin grammar.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Volume LIV - July and October, 1871" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.