re-awakened perception of peoples, who condemn all capricious wars and the strife for the extension of material power. Let us rejoice at this ever-increasing tendency: it belongs to the precious fruits of modern civilization; and the more it is confirmed, the more surely will educated Europe advance towards firm liberty. For it has been the continual bloodshed, and the weakening of peoples thereby brought about, which have stopped the progress of pure healthy development. Unfortunately, it has been the fate of the century in which we live to have witnessed the greatest Continental wars that have ever been conducted with levies of immense masses of men. The evil seems now to have attained its highest point, and those in power even seem to feel that a change is necessary. But apart from the question viewed from the point of view of ethics and liberty, and even of the point of view of the so-called European balance of power, we see in the present organization of the pentarchy, that is to say of the relations of the five great Powers, a solid guarantee of peace. When Prussia was still small and little considered, there was only a Government of four in Europe. When, in the year 1856, the peace of Paris was concluded, Prussia was taken into the Conference supplementarily; it was called a great Power, but in fact was only half a one. Now no one will dispute it this rank, as no one can imagine that Italy has become a great Power because she counts 26,000,000 inhabitants. Austria, however, requires only a few years to make conquests at home, which will richly comFensate her for what she lost abroad. That the unwieldy creation called the Bund was not a living and imposing one, was shown by its sad end. We have, therefore, now, for the first time, a real pentarchy before us, the superiority of five real great Powers, a group of four of which can make the outbreak of war absolutely impossible, and a group of three of which forms a superiority of power which makes a general war unlikely. This balance, it is true. could be disturbed by the intervention of America in the affairs of Europe; but so long as America is not hindered in her striving after the acquisition of strong positions on the ocean and the extension of her commercial circle, Russia cannot hope that the great free State will sacrifice her most sacred principles to please her, and help in confiscating the East. The self-consciousness of the French people must have indeed sunken, if it cannot succeed in overcoming the feeling of envy at the military successes of Prussia. With the exception of some accusations in the speeches of Thiers, who still lives in the traditions of the old French policy, we have heard no great, no genuine democratic voice raised to preach war against Germany. The stoppage of military Cæsarism is not lamented by this people. For this people feels itself equal in power to the German, and wishes to compete with it on the ground of progress and freedom. From The Imperial Review. DR. PUSEY ON MODERN SOCIETY. Ar last an Anglican divine of the nineteenth century has preached a sermonnot of a polemical character which has created a sensation. It really was high time that some clergyman or other of the Church of England should pronounce words in the pulpit which his hearers would not, as a matter of course, entirely forget the moment they sallied into the street; and it as is well that the example should have been set by a man of such rare attainments, unblemished life, and invulnerable purpose, as Dr. Pusey. Plain speaking was well enough for Spurgeon, and such like Dissenting vulgarians. A university man could not degrade himself so far as to call a spade anything but an agricultural implement, or to deal out any save emasculated rebukes to people with whom he was on visiting terms. Alienation between pastors and their flocks was, of all things in the world, the most to be dreaded and avoided; and though the latter might endure being assured, in a promiscuous sort of way, that they were miserable sinners, it was not to be expected that they would put up with being rudely told what particular sins they were addicted to, especially by a man whom they were at college with only a few years ago, and whom they were going to meet at dinner the following evening. Dr. Pusey seems to have been oppressed by no such social fears, and hampered by no such elegant scruples, in the sermon which he preached at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, on Ash Wednesday. There was really nothing in it that would be considered very startling by a person acquainted with the occasionally outspoken expositions of the condition of modern society by Père Felix or Père Hyacinthe. us. Dr. Pusey cannot be said to have emu- overtly, and nobody is angry; or, if some lated their excessive bluntness, but he has individual raises his voice by way of protest, laid the rod about the shoulders of modern he is considered a very ill-bred fellow. We society in a style that the fashionable por- refuse virtue even the homage of hypocrisy, tion of it has not experienced from its pas- and yet stoutly deny that we are vicious. tors for many a long year. Commencing As Dr. Pusey says, we have all the shamewith the assertion that there is not a char-lessness, without the simplicity, of savage acter in the Bible more generally detested life. Our ladies dress indecently, and they than the Pharisee, he went on to show that the Pharisee was so vastly superior to the average citizen of our own times, that it was devoutly to be wished he was a more frequent type amongst us. The Pharisee was no adulterer, was ostentatiously charitable, and in every outward respect set an excellent example. He might fairly be consid red an absolutely model Christian of the nineteenth century; indeed, something rather higher, since he gave a tenth of his sub tance to God; a proportionate return to the Giver of all things which would nowadays be considered very inconvenient. The most detestable character in Scripture, according to Dr. Pusey, is a trifle better than our loftiest type of virtue. When we fall below this, we retain all the self-satisfaction of the former, without any of his merits. In fact, it is the peculiarity of our age to unite the wickedness of the Publican to the self-complacency of the Pharisee. We violate all the Commandments unblushingly, yet it never enters our heads to kneel a'ar off. We thank God that we are not as other men, than whom we are, in many respects, a great deal worse. We pride ourselves upon the virtues to which we have not the slightest just pretension, and we call ourselves a moral people, and a domestic nation, when vice stalks unblushingly abroad, and the reciprocal pledges of conjugal life are frequently as lightly broken as they are frequently lightly assumed. Is the charge true? In all honest seriousness, we much fear that it is. Still more shameless periods than ours can be pointed to in the history of the world, and epochs can be recalled when the public self-complacency was greater. We were better pleased with ourselves fifteen or sixteen years ago-say about the time of the Great Exhibition than we are now, 1851 being the date at which this country's high opinion of itself may be said to have reached its acme. Again, vice was more shameless in the times of Juvenal and De Grammont even than it is in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But we are quite sure that there never was a time in which absence of virtue and absence of self-reproach were so completely and amazingly combined as they are now. The whole world sins know that they do, but they go to church - From The Leader. EMOTIONAL SCEPTICISM. THERE will be found this difference between the scepticism of the past and the scepticism of the present; between the scepticism of Adam Smith, of Voltaire, of Hume, and the scepticism of Renan, of Mill, of George Eliot, of Lewes, and the thinkers in the literature of the modern press. The expression of the former is the protest of reason against religion; the expression of the latter is the protest of the emotions against religion. In Hume, and • more particularly in Voltaire, you will find | by reason to faith are never advanced by an undertone of derision pervading each emotional scepticism. The cultured intelexpression of unbelief. To confirm, for lect has penetrated much further than mere instance, a faith in miracles, precedents or rationalistic misgivings. It rebels against analogies are sought for with the quiet the emotional faith which lies deep in the malice of the seeker who knows that what heart, and which has been ever assumed by he looks for is not to be found. Then the saint as his watchword of hope whilst there is a great reiteration of the very endeavouring the conversion of infidelity. platitudes of scepticism. It is impossible This condition of thought is singularly that the sun could have stood still at manifested by much of the literature of Joshua's command, because and the weekly press. Call it if you will the a page of natural history is given to prove Grecian spirit retransfused into modern its impossibility. The miracles of Moses, thought. Here is the cynical protest of the Apostles, of our Saviour himself, against emotion, be it clothed in whatever are all contradicted by the same means. garb it may. All the virtues of lifeAll is reasoning doubt; doubt that has its those items which go to make up the grand foundation in what is known as "common- embodied creed of the human heart—are sense." The emotions play no part in this fastened upon with the malevolence of the scepticism. The sympathies have not been harshest doubt. The most degrading concultivated in the direction of irreligion. struction that ingenuity can devise is put On the contrary, there is still a sense of upon them. All action is attributed to faith underlying each sceptical protest, so unworthy motives. There is no belief in that there is always the hope left that when the pure, or the honest, or the true. If the great spiritual yearning after the some- beauty is adored, it is for its sensualism, not thing which such kind of scepticism cannot for its spirituality. Logic dogs the steps of subdue, shall come upon the heart, faith sentiment, and silent derision greets every purified by the doubts and shocks through impulse of the emotions. which it has passed shall rise again with roots more embedded and of a growth infinitely more luxuriant. This is the prospect held forth by the scepticism of reason. But no such prospect will be found offered by the scepticism of the emotions. Here is a danger more to be guarded against than hundreds of thousands of pamphlets written with the old reasoning scepticism. Here is an element in modern thought that threatens to sap the very foundations of society itself. It is a scepticism that not only endeavours to demoralise faith by robbing it of its emotional eloquence, but would extend itself into the very heart of society, and confirm the doubt in human goodness that is always prevalent as it is. It is just because the irreligious tendencies of the age are chiefly emotional, that the effects of modern scepticism have to be greatly feared. The examples set by the mode of thought of the great sceptical thinkers of the age will be found fruitfully imitated by gradations of writers, even That the emotions triumph in the end down to a school in which abstract reason- that faith is always found lovely and exceling would not have been thought possible. lent, affection beautiful and necessary, love Not the least lively expression of this emc holy and natural- are truths which the tional scepticism finds an emphatic medium history of mankind is perpetually enforcing. for its exposition in the Press; it is in the But hitherto the chroniclers of thought in newspapers that you will read the essentially England - nay, in Europe - have had no modern and latest tone of emotional scep- occasion to indicate the baleful influence ticism expressed; and exercising, as the of what we have ventured to call emotional Press does, an enormous influence over the scepticism. Hitherto the virtues have public mind, wholly apart from the in- never been doubted. Hitherto the sentifluence of its opinion on matters of Statement underlying the irreligion of the reaor of society, so is it kindly innoculating son has never been touched or subdued. the age with those sentiments of our lead- Hitherto there has been a unanimous and ing talkers on religion, which, if left to dif recognised upholding of those redeeming fuse themselves, would not be a quarter so elements in the composition of human napernicious, because they would not be a ture which express the divinity of mortality quarter so intelligible. with a more glorious eloquence than can ever be heard in the trumpeted creeds since the beginning of years. But the observer now is called upon to contemplate the existence of a tone of thought slowly yet The scepticism of the emotions means that educated disbelief which, having exhausted reason, turns and fastens itself upon sentiment. Those objections opposed surely diffusing itself, and finding no contemptible exposition in the literature of weekly thinkers, with which is not to be assimilated even the sensual protest of the Grecian spirit in art as well as in manners against the faith, latent or developed, of the human heart. The end of it all can only be conjectured. It seems given to none to be able to indicate the remedy for a condition of thought more appalling than the great public, the happiness of whose posterity is menaced, can possibly be aware of. Nothing remains but to calmly repose our hopes in the Divine assurance that God works not but for the happiness of His people, and to peacefully believe that out of the corruption and irreligion of one generation shall arise the glory and the devotion of another. WEEKLY CYNICISM. upon the distinct success of priority. The result of all this imitation is seen in the hard tone that will be found to pervade a large part of the weekly press. There is always visible a perpetual effort to sustain a contemptuous view of most things, the existence of which the world has generally been unanimous in regarding as essential to its own well-being. There is a labour going on week by week to excite scepticism in the minds of readers by showing how baseless is all hope where virtue is concerned, by pointing out the fallacy of received opinions upon matters of all social or private happiness. Nor does this kind of weekly cynicism stop here; it will frequently go out of the way to say hard things about religion, though be it confessed the proprietary does not care for this kind of thing half so much as the editors --shall we say, perhaps because it is known that cynical irreligion in a newspaper does not pay? Weekly cynicism has become a habit inFrom The Leader. augurated by the Saturday Review. Unlike most things, however, of which the goodness or the badness is in gradation, cynicism, if it is not good, is almost sure to be found very bad. To be truly cynical argues a profound acquaintance with the world. It implies a capacity for accurate discrimination such as cannot be conjectured unless we turn to the works of our true cynics or satirists. Its smart sayings are wrought not from badness only, nor from goodness only, but from an appreciative commingling of the two, coupled always with the strong sense of life being rather good than bad, and human nature in the gross more virtuous than vicious. How many weekly cynics fulfil these and many other conditions which are known to be too obvious to be worth naming? Here and there you may come across an essay which contains a thought brilliant or witty enough to redeem the whole paper. But. we would like to inquire how often this happens? And, presuming it to happen as often as once a month, we should still like to ask, what is the use of the mass of intervening stuff which worries the better qualities of the human heart without teeth enough to bite them? It seems hard that we are now-a-days never allowed to take a sentimental view of anything. There is such a scepticism abroad as to the existence of real sentiment underlying any action in life, that to consider society from an emotional point of view is to indulge in a contemplation that is almost certain to provoke the ridicule of what is called "hard thinkers." We have got more or less in the habit of thinking in our weekly newspapers that this world is an exceedingly bad world; that all our virtues are nothing more than disguised vices; that love is a mask for design, whether for a sensual or a commercial purpose; that, in short, there is nothing true, gracious, or honorable but that which owes nothing to man. Whether this cynicism be sincere or not it is hard to say. For our part, we suspect it to be nothing more than a habit acquired from that ostensible imitation which is perhaps less a fault than a misfortune in our weekly press. The Saturday Review did not need to be more than successful to excite a spirit of rivalry on all sides. The high intellectual tone of this periodical, coupled with its pungency, its satire, and its frequent hitting of truth upon the head for truth, unfortunately, is not easily missed by the misanthropist invited a host of imitators, who conceived that the only way to make a fortune was to copy the Saturday Review. Like most imitators, however, they will generally be found to have neglected to lay sufficient emphasis We shall be glad to see the weekly cynic become an obsolete institution. We shall be glad to see a capacity evinced by him of recognising the necessity of a great deal of what he now ridicules. In discussing marriage we should rejoice to find that, in his opinion, love yet exerts a great influence over people, and that it is not wholly imossible to find two persons willing to be united before God from no other reason at the languid grace and subtle fire of the South; the docility and childlike affectionateness of the East seemed to us sweet and simple and restful; the vivacious sparkle of the trim and sprightly Parisienne was a pleasant little excitement when we met with it in its own domain; but our allegiance never wandered from our brown-haired girls at home, and our hearts were less vagrant than our fancies. This was in the old time, and when English girls were content to be what God and nature had made them. Of late years we have changed the pattern, and have given to the world a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if we had created another nation altogether. The girl of the period, and the fair young English girl of the past, have nothing in common save ancestry and their mother-tongue; and even of this last the modern version makes almost a new language, through the copious additions it has received from the current slang of the day. all than from love of one another. In dis- vied no other men their own. We admired cussing religion, it would afford us infinite satisfaction to hear him confess that there really is such a thing as unaffected piety in the world, and that the sublime religion of Christ is not a gigantic hoax, which it is only given to him (the weekly cynic) to discover and ridicule. In discussing friendship, honour, candour, nobility of mind, it would be a source of great delight to us to hear him declare that all these things are not to be purchased by money. Like most habits, however, we have no doubt that weekly cynicism will expire of itself, sooner or later. As one by one the journals through which the weekly cynic grins his contempt at life, drops, and" with a flash expires, "so gradually may it dawn upon the minds of these individuals that the world will, in spite of them, cling to its own nobility; and that however much it may laugh with them for a time over the virtues they degrade and the faith they despise, it will suddenly one day desert them as bad companions, and return to the old noble instincts which make the world a bright world after all, in spite of the weekly cynic. 66 The girl of the period is a creature who dyes her hair and paints her face, as the first articles of her personal religion; whose sole idea of life is plenty of fun and luxury; and whose dress is the object of such thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavour in this is to outvie her neighbours in the extravagance of fashion. No matter From the Saturday Review. whether, as in the time of crinolines, she THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD. TIME was when the stereotyped phrase, a fair young English girl," meant the ideal of womanhood; to us, at least, of home birth and breeding. It meant a creature generous, capable, and modest; something franker than a French woman, more to be trusted than an Italian, as brave as an American but more refined, as domestic as a German and more graceful. It meant a girl who could be trusted alone if need be, because of the innate purity and dignity of her nature, but who was neither bold in bearing nor masculine in mind; a girl who, when she married, would be her husband's friend and companion, but never his rival; one who would consider their interests identical, and not hold him as just so much fair game for spoil; who would make his house his true home and place of rest, not a mere passage-place for vanity and ostentation to go through a tender mother, an industrious housekeeper, a judicious mistress. We prided ourselves as a nation on our women. We thought we had the pick of creation in this fair young English girl of ours, and en sacrificed decency, or, as now, in the time of trains, she sacrifices cleanliness; no matter, either, whether she makes herself a nuisance and an inconvenience to every one she meets. The girl of the period has done away with such moral muffishness as consideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke. It was all very well in old-fashioned times, when fathers and mothers had some authority and were treated with respect, to be tutored and made to obey, but she is far too fast and flourishing to be stopped in mid-career by these slow old morals; and as she dresses to please herself, she does not care if she displeases every one else. Nothing is too extraordinary and nothing too exaggerated for her vitiated taste; and things which in themselves would be useful reforms if let alone become monstrosities worse than those which they have displaced so soon as she begins to manipulate and improve. If a sensible fashion lifts the gown out of the mud, she raises hers midway to her knee. If the absurd structure of wire and buckram, once called a bonnet, is modified to something that shall protect the wearer's face without putting out the eyes of her companion, she cuts hers down to four |