than to endeavour so to live that Christ asm looks more like the enthusiasm of representative and guide of humanity; nor fever than the enthusiasm of health, when even now would it be easy, even for an unbeone considers how it derives its origin liever, to find a better translation of the rule from selfish sources which fail to justify of virtue from the abstract into the concrete its existence, and how it flames upwards would approve our life. When to this we add towards objects, the very existence of which is expressly stated to be involved in a haze of doubt. One cannot but admire and even reverence the nobility of the mind which felt so keenly the sacredness of the glow of disinterested enthusiasm, alien as it was to his philosophy of things, as passionately to welcome it, and eagerly to dwell on the ambiguous and shadowy hopes on which it was most likely to gain strength. It is impossible to feel anything but profound admiration for the delicate love of truth which makes Mr. Mill array so carefully all the halftangible grounds of the hope to which he clings, and yet sadly confess how small individually they seem. Still how strange it is to contrast what Mr. Mill has written concerning the genius and character of our Lord, with his own view of the slender probability of Christ's own beliefs ! — that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he supposed himself to be,—not God, for he never made the smallest pretension to that character, and would probably have thought such a pretension as blasphemous as it seemed to the men who condemned him, but a man charged with a special, express, and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are well worth preserving, and that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief, is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction. Now what is the very stamp of the genius or originality on which Mr. Mill so justly insists in this estimate of Jesus? Is it into divine things which Mr. Mill denot precisely that certainty of insight cides to be wholly unjustified and unjustifiable by his review not merely of Christ's own career, but of all that happened previous to and all that followed that career? Not to refer to the Gospel of John, of which Mr. Mill's estimate is so strangely contemptuous, was he not thinking as he spoke of the profundity and originality of Christ's genius of the calm confidence of "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," "Every And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable plant which my heavenly Father hath of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in not planted shall be rooted up," "Be ye the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of therefore perfect, even as your Father Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose char- which is in heaven is perfect," "Who is acter and idiosyncrasies were of a totally my mother, and who are my brethren? different sort; still less the early Christian Whosoever shall do the will of my writers, in whom nothing is more evident than Father which is in heaven, the same is that the good which was in them was all de- my brother, and sister, and mother"? rived, as they always professed that it was Now, where is the "genius" in such sayderived, from the higher source. But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a ings, if they represented not insight into stamp of personal originality, combined with the truth, but the overmastering might profundity of insight, which, if we abandon of a potent delusion,-if the true state the idle expectation of finding scientific pre- of mind on these subjects should be that cision where something very different was which Mr. Mill delineates in these reaimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, markable essays, the anxious hoardingeven in the estimation of those who have no up of a number of doubtful indications belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the supernatural influence of a Being of the men of sublime genius of whom our of limited power,-"evidence insufficient species can boast. When this pre-eminent for proof, but amounting only to one of genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and the lower degrees of probability" for the martyr to that mission who ever existed upon existence of any God at all? If this be carth, religion cannot be said to have made a so, surely the certainty and simplicity of bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal Christ's insight would be mark, not of genius, but of hallucination, unless, likely of the two,-otherwise Mr. Mill's indeed, the sceptic takes the view hinted own slender "hope" would take the form at by Mr. Mill, that Christ may have of a firm belief. Anyhow, nothing is really been what he assumed himself to stranger than the contrast between the be, i.e., may have had evidence which we language of the admirer, and the lancannot recover of the divine life in which guage of him whom he so profoundly adhe lived. Only from any confident be- mires, on divine subjects. The former lief of this kind Mr. Mill is wholly shut is the language of hesitating feeble hope, out, for if he held it confidently, he must hope of a low order, but which neverthehold with precisely equal confidence the less warrants the attitude of enthusiasm existence of the supernatural being whom and the glow of a poetic aspiration. The Christ revealed. Yet if he thought it a latter is the language of an absolute mere possibility that Christ spoke of vision, of calm certainty, which warrants what he knew, when using the language no such feverish emotion, but only unof knowledge instead of the language of doubting trust and happy devotion. Will surmise, surely he ought to think of not the potent ferment which Mr. Mill the "genius " of Jesus, as he calls it, has cast into the boiling cauldron of modonly as of a very small possibility of the ern thought, end in making it seem far same order. On Mr. Mill's view, Christ more reasonable to accept the quiet lanwas either a great genius, or had a won-guage of implicit faith, than the impasderful aptitude for grand hallucinations, sioned language of an idealizing dream the last being to him much the more at once excited and despondent? constantly urgent danger. If the improve- Ir has been generally assumed that the extinction of the Maori race in New Zealand is only a matter of time, and the great decrease in the estimated numbers of the native population between 1848 and 1870 was pointed to as evidence of a painful but inevitable and indisputable fact. Since the restoration of peace, however, in the North Island there are signs of a counter-current of influences that may effectually combat the ravages of imported disease and the vicious habits in which the Maoris have shown themselves too apt pupils of the worst class of European settlers. A Hawk's Bay newspaper says that the idea that the Maori race is rapidly dying out is FLEET Street, the most literary thorougherroneous, as any one can see by the large pro- fare in London, has lost another of its ancient portion of children to be found at those kaian- landmarks. The reading-rooms in Peele's gas remotely situated from European settle- Coffee House are closed. On the 10th of last ments. As long as the Maoris were kept in a month a placard on the well-known door in constant state of excitement by intertribal dis- Fetter Lane announced that, as "the proprie sensions and intermitted warfare with the tors had other uses for the rooms, they would colonists, their numbers were not only greatly cease to be used as hitherto." For very many thinned, but the proportion of births to deaths years the newspaper rooms of this tavern were gave little promise of a long continuance of the largely patronized by journalists and others. race. These evidences of a moribund condi- If any one wanted to consult a file of the tion have given place to others, which show Times, he was referred to Peele's; if any one that no expenditure of colonial revenue for wanted to see a country newspaper, he went native purposes could be made to better ad- as a matter of course to Peele's; in matters of vantage than in educating and civilizing Ma-disputed dates or doubtful facts, there was no ori children. We must not forget that one of the most obvious and in some aspects most perplexing results of the orderly and equitable rule we have established in India is a multiplication of mouths to be fed and of hands to be provided with work that threatens to be a source of permanent embarrassment, if not of place so accessible and none more cosey. In fact, Peele's was an institution of the country. Another newspaper room, in which "files of all the papers will be regularly kept," has been opened in Fleet Street; but it will be long before it rivals the celebrity of dead-andburied Peele's. IV. CHARLES I. AND HIS FATHER. V. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. Thomas Hardy, author of "Under the WILL it pain me there forever, Will it leave me happy never, Will my soul grow never purer? Will the mist-wreaths and the cliff-gates from When the journey's guerdon waits me behind those hills of gold? Alas! the clouds grow darker, And the hills loom ever starker, Across the leaden mist-screen of the heavens dull and gray. Thou must learn to bear thy burden, This weary, weary gnawing of the old dull Until the daybreak cometh and the shadows pain? Will the sweet yet bitter yearning, That at my heart is burning, Throb on and on forever and forever be in vain? O weary, weary longing! O sad, sweet memories thronging From the sunset-lighted woodlands of the dear and holy past! Oh hope and faith undying! Must my lot among the shadows forevermore be cast? Shall I never see the glory That the Christ-knight of old story flee away! HOPELESSNESS. St. Paul's. LONE wandering with the woe within me hushed, No whit the less my sorrow stings and smarts, For the keen feeling, the keen sense, is crushed Into my heart of hearts. My sky of life is all with clouds o'erdrawn, And night draws round me now that day is gone Sir Galahad, my hero, saw folded round his A night no wakening, dusk-dispelling dawn sleep? The full, completed beauty With which God gilds dull duty For hearts that burn toward heaven from the everlasting deep From that conflict ceasing never, From the toil increasing ever? Will ever rise upon. Hope's luminous fingers I no longer see, Pointing me where to go with guidance kind, Doomed evermore to roam despairingly, From the hard and bitter battle with the cold Alas for me, poor me, whose scalding tears, and callous world? Will the sky grow never clearer ? Where the golden city glitters in its rainbow mists impearled? Wept inwardly, burn to my bosom's core ! Whom life can reach with aught that life endears No more, ah, never more! Chambers' Journal. forms of song, the amatory, the didactic, the literary and artistic, the witty and satirical, and others. The poems themselves have occupied the leisure of men of eminence in the modern world, and were "favourite objects of study with Erasmus and his friend Sir Thomas From The Edinburgh Review. ENGLISH FUGITIVE SONGS AND LYRICS. IN poetry and creative art the ancient world left little or no room in which the modern could demonstrate its superiority. Science has multiplied the appliances for the diffusion of knowledge, and invenMore." tion has achieved many and extraordiChesterfield, it is true, denary triumphs, but the individual mind nounced the Greek epigrams in his has not shown itself capable of higher letters to his son, but against his solflights of imagination than those of the old itary testimony - which in this matter is poets. In these later centuries we have of no particular weight is to be set that seen but one poet capable of sustaining of Cowper, Johnson, and many other the mantle of Homer. And the superior- men of equally opposite temperaments, ity of the ancients is equally undoubted to whom they were a solace and a delight. when we consider those slighter efforts Lord Neaves (himself no mean proficient in verse which are confessedly of a somewhat ephemeral character, and meant principally to embody only the feelings of the age in which they are written. Horace was the best writer of light lyrical verse whom the world has seen, while, at the same time, he was something much greater and higher. But regarding him in this passing reference mainly as a poet of society, what higher compliment can we pay to a poet of our own time than to say that he is truly Horatian in spirit, or writes with the Horatian pen? But Horace himself was not the father of this fugitive poetry. The Roman poet acknowledges that Anacreon was its originator; but whether that be so or no, the Anthology is full of excellent examples of it, and the earliest known specimens now in existence were left by the Greeks. Nec, si quid olim lusit Anacreon, in the art of gay and gaillard rhymes) observes, in his very graceful little volume, that "from the time of Martial the epigram came to be characterized generally by that peculiar point or sting, which we now look for in a French or English epigram, and the want of this in the old Greek compositions doubtless led some minds to think them tame and tasteless. The true or the best form of the early Greek epigram does not aim at wit or seek to produce surprise. Its purpose is to set forth in the shortest, simplest and plainest language, but yet with perfect purity and even elegance of diction, some fact or feeling of such interest as would prompt the real or supposed speaker to record it in the form of an epigram! though it is true that, particularly in the later period of epigrammatic writing, these compositions, even among the Greeks, assumed a greater variety of aspect, and were employed as the vehicle of satire or ridicule, as a means of producing hilarity and mirth." It would be Great proficiency was attained in all tedious to trace the gradual developments 1. London Lyrics. By FREDERICK New Edition. London: 1874. Locker. 2. The Courtly Poets from Raleigh to Montrose. Edited by J. HANNAH, D.C.L. London: 1870. 3. The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed. With a Memoir by the Rev. DERWENT COLERIDGE. London: 1864. and changes in this kind of verse from the days of the first Greek writers to the time of Horace. The latter, however, seems to have conserved many of its best elements, and to have added others which gave him so distinctive a place that, even more than his predecessors in the art, he 5. Lyra Elegantiarum. A Collection of some of has become a type for modern poets. the best Specimens of Vers de Société in the English His imitators for the most part serve but Language. Edited by F. LOCKER. London: 1864. to denote the painful difference there is 6. Two Centuries of Song. With Critical and Biographical Notes by WALTER THORNBURY. Lon-between the founder of a style and he who attempts to copy it. Our purpose is 4. The Greek Anthology. By Lord NEAVES. Edinburgh: 1874. don: 1866. |