idle fable and corrupt rites, and that God has by no means 'left himself without a witness' among these thronging myriads of His children. It is a strange reflection that among the departed whom we look to meet hereafter in the land of souls, the followers of Buddha must outnumber all the rest of that Company of Heaven to which we shall be admitted by

The shadow cloaked from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.

Before quitting these interesting volumes, we must beg to question one remark of the author. His fact is no doubt correct, but the inference he draws from it seems to us seriously erroneous. The modern doctrine of the slow development of humanity through tens of thousands of years from lower types of animal life, is affirmed by Professor Müller to be exploded by the discovery of philologists, that language, so far as it can be traced back, is always human and rational, and always in a state of development. The idea,' he says (vol. ii. p. 8), of a humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained again.' And why? Because the earliest work of art wrought by the human mind, more ancient than any literary document, and prior to the first whisperings of tradition-the human language-forms an uninterrupted chain from the first dawn of history down to our own times.' First, the Professor asserts, there was a period (to which he gives the name of Rhematic) when a language was spoken containing the germs of Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan speech. Then, in successive periods, these three divided and subdivided into all the languages of Europe and Asia: a Confusion of Tongues occupying some five thousand years, and going on at the present time.

no

But this slow evolution, and multiplication of species of language, is, if we mistake not, precisely analogous to that very development of animal species which the geologist traces in the successive strata of the earth's crust, and on which he founds his theory of progressive life. He also finds at the earlier periods, simpler forms; but forms even then beautiful and appropriate; and as he advances, he finds these forms of animal and vegetable life multiply in number and increase in complexity of organisation. The very ground of his argument is, that such appears to have been the order of succession, and not the reverse process. That the first discovered relics of language are not senseless, but rational, and grammatically organised, is more against the theory of human development than that the earliest known fossils are not chaotic lumps, but remains of organisms obviously well adapted to the conditions under which they once had life. In neither case have we reached the bottom of the strata. There may well have been a long succession of ages (on Darwin's hypothesis there was an immensely extended succession of ages) between the first existence of man and Professor Müller's Rhematic period of languages, or before any period of which, from the nature of the case, we can recover a trace. According to Professor Müller's own account, in another essay,' the first development of monotheism took place when together with the awakening of ideas, the first attempts only were being made at expressing the simplest conceptions, by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and most unwieldy’a Saurian or Megatherium sort of language in short, compared to agile Greek and stalwart English. We cannot possibly get below this to very earliest formations or azoic

the

rocks of language (if such there ever were), for the period to which they should belong could leave no relics behind, save such as we believe we have actually found, namely, bones and stone weapons. Surely the fair conclusion to be drawn from the facts is precisely the converse of that which the Professor has stated, namely, that in human Language, as in all other fields of inquiry, the evidence in favour of a slow progress from simple to complex, from the lower forms of life to the higher, is altogether complete and overwhelming?

Three modes of creation alone are imaginable:

A Retrograde Creation, ever falling back, like the works of human hands, from cosmos to chaos-the Creation of a Toy.

A Stagnant Creation, finished from the first and unchangeablethe Creation of a Stone.

A Progressive Creation, ever unfolding in beauty and joy-the Creation of a Flower.

Of these three, God has chosen that His world should be of the third order. Who is it that will say, He has not chosen well?

F. P. C.

超

THE

THE Reform Bill had passed the Lords. The British Constitution had been abolished. X, Y, Z, and myself, stout Tories all, felt that the time had come to shake the dust off our feet. We determined unanimously to leave town.

Tupper will be poet-laureate,' said Z, who writes poetry himself. 'They'll put Beales on the bench,' said X, who belongs to the Middle Temple.

'Bradlaugh will be the new Bishop,' said Y, who is a perpetual curate in the Midland Counties. 'And the authoress of The Gentle Life will get a place in the Royal Household, nurse-in-ordinary to the Princesses, perhaps,' said the writer of this essay. Our city of refuge is on the banks of―let us call it the Ilyssus. On one of the most exposed seaboards of this stormy island the hard line of granite rocks suddenly breaks off, and is succeeded by undulating ranges of sandhills, through the midst of which the Пlyssus winds. The sea-water flows through a narrow channel far up into the mainland, and when the tide is full a land-locked lake, partly salt water, partly fresh water, fills up the interstices between the mounds of sand and bent. Then the fisher unscrews his rod and takes himself off to other occupations. But when the tide has ceased to flow and the lake begins to empty itself into the sea, and the river birds to return to the weedy banks which gradually show themselves above water, he returns to what is after all the real interest of his life. From the man of one book the schoolmen's litany prayed God to deliver them; but the absorption of the true fisher in his gentle craft is the most exclusive of passions. From February till November he haunts the banks of his favourite

river; he curses the sunshine which the husbandman loves; his evening prayer is for rain; at night he dreams of salmon-heavier than any mortal man ever gaffed. During winter he caresses his flies, studying them lovingly as a lover studies his mistress's dimples, or busks new ones for the returning spring. As the artist sitting over his town fire in the dim December twilight, takes out his sketch-book and feels his heart leap within him at the remembrances which it rouses of July sunshine flooding visionary glens, and murmurs of the mountain brooks, so the angler's soul is stirred when he looks upon his flies. He reads the papers, perhaps, but he takes little interest in their most stirring contents. Wars and rumours of wars break with a distant and alien murmur upon his ears, and a French revolution or an American war are the passing follies of the day. Knowing as he does that a ten-pounder is lying at the neck of Charlie's Pot, and that a skilful cast may lure him from his retreat under the Black Rocks, what can the death of a king, or the fall of a monarchy, be to him?

And this is one of the angler's most secluded and charming haunts. The tide is out and the fishermen are at their work. There, three light-coated figures scattered along the river,-one up to the arm-pits in the middle of the stream in conflict with a gigantic trout-are our friends X, Y and Z. X is the combatant; Y contemplates the struggle from the bank; Z is calmly engaged in sketching the scene, like the great painter, who in the horrors of a storm on ship-board, stuck to his colours. Then there are other fishers:-the long-necked heron is watching the smaller trout which congregate in the deep pool below the rapids; the wild duck whistles