which was barren in results through the dogmatism of the Church as to the matter of philosophy and the dogmatism of Aristotelianism as to its form, we come to modern times. The Renaissance and the Reformation broke away from authority and returned to experience, but the leaders in these movements did not expound the philosophy of the principles by which they were guided. They acted upon them without seeing them. The justification of experience was the work of the philosophers.

"Descartes," says Professor Caird, "was the first modern who realized the extent of the problem of philosophy, the first who took his stand with confidence on the ground of criticism prepared by Christianity. His aim was, in the first place, to bring into clear and distinct consciousness each of the elements that go to make up the world of experience, in order that in the second place he might discover the inner link of connection that binds all these elements together. These two processes constitute his method. He begins with analysis, abstraction, distinction, setting each element by itself, and fixing it with the utmost definiteness in its separate nature. He ends with synthesis, relation, unity-showing, or at least attempting to show, that the elements thus rent from each other are necessarily connected together. His merit is to have shown the nature of the problem

of modern philosophy. That the first attempt to solve that problem was insufficient and crude, is no more than might have been expected."

Locke's influence was more destructive than constructive. In his writings we find an individualism that has lost its first sanguine hopes, and become conscious of its limitations. The tone of Descartes is self-confident: "What is truth must show itself to me." The tone of Locke is cautious and distrustful: "I must take care to assert nothing as truth which cannot show itself true to me." This was not very much, and Locke is considered as not altogether consistent as to the mode by which that little is acquired. Sense is sometimes regarded as affording a real knowledge of objects which are independent of sensation, and at other times as if it were a mere mental affection which reports nothing, and is related to nothing but itself. In other words, Locke makes the knowledge of the objective reality impossible, or assumes a knowledge of it independent of the sensations of the individual, and by this means explains these very sensations themselves. Berkeley, who is called Locke's greatest disciple, took the sensationalist theory of knowing and used it as a weapon against the materialistic theory of being. Hume, more thorough than either Locke or Berkeley in the sphere of individualism, could not get beyond states of consciousness.

After noticing Leibnitz and Wolff, the Professor comes to Kant. At the end of the chapter on "The Problem of the Critique," Kant's treatment of the problem of knowing is thus summed up :

“The Critique is, in Kant's language, not metaphysical, but transcendental, although it must necessarily be, to a certain extent, metaphysical, in order that it may be able to solve the transcendental problem. In simpler words, Kant seeks to discover our à priori ideas; not for their own sake, but as the ground of our knowledge of objects. He endeavours to show that knowledge is possible only through à priori synthesis, and to determine the nature and limit of this synthesis. By means of the criteria of necessity and universality (though these alone, as we shall see, are by no means sufficient for the purpose) he finds out the à priori elements of conception and perception. This forms the first part of his work, or, in his own phraseology, the metaphysical exposition and deduction of those elements. But this discovery has to him no value for itself apart from the transcendental deduction, by which it is proved that just these, and no other à priori ideas, are the foundation of all our knowledge, and that, in their connections with each other, and with the consciousness of self, they constitute that systematic unity of intelligence which seems to reflect, because it is itself the source of the objective unity of the world."

We have tried to give an account of the scope of this volume, so far as it could be done, in a brief space. We may add, that no account of Kant's philosophy has ever appeared in England so full, so intelligible, and so interesting to read as this work by Professor Caird. It is the English book on Kant.

T

"GLAN-ALARCH." *

L

HIS is a fine poenr, a story of considerable power being told in it with unusual literary finish. Glan-Alarch, whose name furnishes the title, is an old Welsh bard, attached in ancient fashion to the royal house of Eurien, whose young prince is the hero of the poem. Readers will necessarily be reminded of Scott's Last Minstrel." But if either a certain similarity of pathetic figure in this case, or a general prevailing type of personages resembling the characters in Mr. Tennyson's Idylls, led any one to call Mrs. Pfeiffer a copyist, they would do her much wrong. There is a true originality in the detailed execution on every page The story itself relates the domestic woe befalling the young prince from his easy simplicity (morally noble, but intellectually weak)—becoming the prey of a splendidly beautiful, craftily sensual Lady Bronwen ; a lovely maiden, by name Mona, being outrivalled by her, and disappearing with a suddenness of tragic effect which is a striking instance of skill in construction, but happily re-appearing towards the close, when the fortune of the young prince and his house has mingled itself with the fate of his country-Bronwen and a base lover finding a disastrous ending in one of the incidents of patriotic war.

For the further particulars of a skilfully arranged story, we must refer our readers to the book itself. But we may say that a complete circle of personages is conceived and delineated with distinctness; a certain skill in grouping making contrast of character itself amount to a kind of plot. One can feel that from such personal vicinage only mischief must arise. Mona, Modwyth, and (in spite of his prolonged inactivity at first) Eurien are noble figures. But, looked at technically, the presentation of Bronwen, her character being made more complex by her craft, is a still greater success. It is a brilliant picture of the merely physical charm in a woman, the interest being sharpened into a continuous intensity by its being foreseen throughout that Bronwen's low selfish moral nature will bring about a tragical issue. Several times the incidents are arranged with striking dramatic effect. For instance, in the interruption of the State Council by Mona, in the interview subsequently between Mona and Bronwen, ending by the former's sudden fall over the cliffs, and, again, in the tournament scene, where Eurien lets himself be vanquished.

Many examples of pictorial skill might be named: the sudden appearance of the armed knight in the hall early in the poem-Mona as seen in the mist—all the tournament scenes, to the banquet with which they end-Eurien in his ecstasy-the final discovery of Mona in the cave-the mustering of troops at Garth-and the march of the Welsh army beneath the arching rainbow. Incidentally, on two or three occasions, the mountain landscape is effectively sketched. The verbal excellence often rises very high, unusual vividness of phrase ascending more than once into a sublimity of descriptive expression. Often, too, the thinking is of a very subtle character, amounting to fine analysis. In so far as the work fails it is in the lyrics, which seem to ask more music of flow; and, it may be, that the ending catastrophe is not made large enough, the victorious battle with the Saxons not being seen. But the book is a distinct and valuable contribution to modern poetry, and gives promise that, if only this high effort is sustained in future work, Mrs. Pfeiffer has a fair chance of one day "herding with the immortals."

* Glan-Alarch: His Silence and Song. By Emily Pfeiffer. London: Henry S. King and Co., 1877.

PIRACY IN BORNEO AND THE OPERATIONS

OF JULY, 1849.

EXACTLY a century ago, in the year 1777, a Mr. Macmahon

published in London a work entitled "The Candour and Good-nature of Englishmen Exemplified, in their deliberate, cautious, and charitable way of characterizing the Customs, Manners, Constitution, and Religion of neighbouring Nations, of which their own authors are everywhere produced as vouchers; their moderate, equitable, and humane mode of governing States dependent on them ;" and so forth.

I give a specimen of the mode in which the title is developed in the work:

“You, also, you harmless natives of the Empire of Hindostan and its dependencies, who are become happy by falling under the dominion of a certain good-natured European country, you too, I mean such of you as are not yet slaughtered or starved, will bear witness to the gentleness, aversion to famine-creating monopolies, ignorance in the arts of treachery and barbarous rapacity, of Englishmen" (p. 75 n.).

Such

The want of even-handed justice, which this author rebuked in the nation, he may have exhibited himself. But a genial tone, an equitable frame of mind towards other countries, is, perhaps, not among the national virtues. Nineteen hundred years ago it was said, Visam Britannos hospitibus feros.* a tone, such a frame, as I have named, is certainly not characteristic in general of those who undertake to guide public opinion at its centre in the metropolis, and who unhappily are taken on the Continent of Europe as its authentic and exclusive organs. Some London newspapers of very limited circulation will coolly inform Europe what the British people will do and what

VOL. XXX.

*Hor. Od. III. iv. 33.

they will not, while yet not one Englishman in two hundred is so much as aware of their existence; and while there are journals in the country, having ten or twenty times as many readers, which are never noticed in foreign prints. Nothing can be more absurd, though few things are more mischievous, than that the newspapers of the toilette and the clubs should presume to declare the feelings of the nation.

An Indian gentleman writes to me, under date May 21, 1877 :"You have said a great deal recently about the tyranny and oppression of the Turks; but what will you think or say, when you hear about the cruel treatment of the natives of India by your own countrymen? We cannot complain of the injustice that we have been suffering from, because our mouths are closed."

Ireland and America offer examples of countries whose estrangement from us has been, in other days more than at present, promoted or maintained by a temper of suspicion, arrogance, censoriousness, or contempt. But in no instance that I am aware of has it been so mischievously or so violently exhibited, as at the present juncture with respect to Russia. Journals, and men, and classes of men, who never said a word for Poland or for Hungary as long as only Poland and Hungary were in question, have become ultra-sentimental, and super-humanitarian, with regard to the misdeeds of Russia, now when Russia, is engaged, from whatever motives, in the righteous and noble work of giving effect to the decisions of united Europe, and of relieving the races subject to the Ottoman Turks from an intolerable and most debasing oppression. Nay more, though there is no evidence to show that in the campaign against the Yomud Tartars the Russian soldiers took a single life after actual and very sharp battle ceased, the most violent language is used, not only by the few totally unscrupulous journalists still to be found here and there among us, but among popular writers whom we must credit with the most honourable intentions. So for example Captain Burnaby, who seems to have visited Khiva not until the third year after the Russian expedition, gives a series of frightful statements, and winds them up with the words, "hell was let loose in Turkomania."* And yet he does not so much as quote any authority whatever. Indeed he pens his sweeping denunciation after having "studied"† the work of MacGahan on the Khivan campaign, which is founded on personal experience and sight, and is diametrically at variance with these statements.

I have been rebuked by Lord Grey, in a published letter, for claiming allowances on behalf of Russia in her dealings with subordinated races, and for refusing them to Turkey; a country which, in the opinion of Lord Grey, has better claims to such

allowances. But I have never claimed that any allowance whatever shall be made on behalf of Russia in respect of any misdeeds which she is reasonably believed to have committed. I have endeavoured to hold up to reprobation* in a particular instance (that of Khiva) wilful and shameless calumny; and I have in Parliament denounced as a shabby piece of conduct the publication by the Government at this particular moment of the Polish reports, while we advisedly keep back, in certain cases, official reports on misdeeds of our own; adding, however, that I rejoiced to see any misdeeds of any Government to its subjects brought into the light, whatever I might think of the method employed. But as for Lord Grey's doctrine of allowances on behalf of tyrants and misrulers, be they who they may, I repudiate it as utterly out of place, nay, as ruinously wrong, so long as the question is one of prevention. Were I an historian, awarding praise and blame on a retrospect of a chain of events, and endeavouring to supply the means of a final estimate of moral characters, then indeed the mind could not lean too much towards liberal allowance for circumstances, and for the temptations that they bring. And Lord Grey is quite pardonably ignorant that, in an endeavour to supply my friends and fellowparishioners in the country with a little of the information which is so deplorably wanting on this subject, I did state with some largeness the grounds of allowancet to be made for the Turks, though I have never done it for the Russians. But my aim in Parliamentary debate, and in all such writings as I have addressed to the world at large, has been the stoppage of the mischief. The description of the acts, which is requisite for this purpose, may

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, Nov. 1876.

† See a Lecture delivered at Hawarden on the work of Miss Mackenzie and Miss Irby, dated the 16th January, 1877, and republished as a Tract by the Eastern Association, Canada Buildings, Westminster :

"In conclusion, let me say, I have had to use very hard words about the Turks. I have hardly said a good word for them, except that their soldiers are brave and sober. But let me say this to cover the whole: The Turks are what circumstances have made them, and depend upon it that if a lot of us were taken and put in their circumstances we, either individually or as a race, would soon cease to do even the limited credit to the Christian name that we now bring to it. They exercise a perfectly unnatural domination over their fellow-creatures; and arbitrary power is the greatest corruptor of the human mind and heart. There is nothing that can withstand it. Human nature requires the restraint of law. There is, unfortunately, no restraint of law in Turkey, and in the sight of God and man, much as these Christians are to be pitied, perhaps the Turks, who are the victims of that system, are to be pitied still more. The very worst things that men have ever done have been done when they were performing acts of violence in the name of religion. That has been the unfortunate position of the Turks, as a race that not only has conquered, but has conquered in the sacred name of religion. The corruption that results from such a system as that is deep and profound. Mahometans, where they manage their own affairs, and have not got the charge of the destinies of other people, can live in tolerable communities together, and discharge many of the duties of civil and social life. In certain cases, as, for instance, in the case of the Moors of Spain, they have exhibited many great and conspicuous merits. It is not the fact, that their religion is different from ours, which prevents them from discharging civil duties. Do not suppose that for a moment. It is not because they are in themselves so much worse than we are. God forbid that we should judge them. It is that this wretched system under which they live puts into their hands power which human beings ought not to possess, and the consequences are corruption to themselves, and misery to those around."