2. CHRISTINA NORTH. By E. M. Archer. Concluded, Macmillan's Magazine, 3. SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE SUN, 579 602 Spectator,. 620 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club THE LIVING AGE with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. AT THY GRAVE. WAVES the soft grass at my feet; Dost thou feel me near thee, sweet? Though the earth upon thy face, Holds thee close from my embrace, Yet my spirit thine can reach, Needs betwixt us twain no speech, For the same soul lives in each. Now I meet no tender eyes Love, I seem to see thee stand Yet, I would not have it thus. Rather would I weep in vain, Hush! I hear a low sweet sound Ah! 'tis but the gathering breeze Love, where art thou? Can'st thou not Or betwixt my soul and thine Has some mystery divine Sealed a separating line? Is it thus then after death, Will our noblest longings seem Hark! the rainy wind blows loud, Herald tempests. Silent yet All the Year Round. NEW STANZAS OF " IN MEMORIAM." - Every student of Tennyson will learn with surprise and pleasure that in the fourth volume of the Library Edition of the works of the Poet-Laureate, some additional stanzas, now published for the first time, have been intercalated between the sections hitherto standing as the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth. The new thirty-ninth section takes up the burden of the famous apostrophe to the yew-tree, which occurs almost at the outset of the poem (section 2). Thus it runs: Old warder of these buried bones, And answering now my random stroke With fruitful cloud and living smoke, Dark yew, that graspest at the stones And dippest toward the dreamless head, To thee too comes the golden hour When flower is feeling after flower; But Sorrow-fixt upon the dead, And darkening the dark graves of men,- The line italicized is an allusion to the opening stanza of the third section. Athenæum. From The Quarterly Review. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: THEIR CUS TOMS, MANNERS AND MORALITY.* Two familiar lines of Burns' are constantly repeated under an impression that the soundness of the thought or sentiment that dictated them is unimpeachable :"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us." The prevalent notion is that others must necessarily see us as we are- through a clear, transparent medium, neither transfigured by vanity and flattery, nor distorted by prejudice and dislike. It is altogether a mistaken notion. People are quite as open to error in judging others as in judging themselves; and the point of view they take up for the purpose is far more frequently determined by misleading influences than by the unsophisticated desire of truth. The best intentions, the most earnest struggle for impartiality, are no guarantee for strict justness of appreciation since we cannot shake off our idiosyncrasy; we cannot, formed as we are, see things or persons with the calm, pure eye of reason. Where, in this world of intrigue, ambition, passion, and caprice, is the admired and envied wit, beauty, orator, or statesman to find the "ithers "who are to serve as the infallible helps to selfknowledge? Is Mr. Gladstone to seek them at the Carlton, or Mr. Disraeli at Brookes'? century; but although the revolutionary changes which each country, except Engcial habits and modes of thinking as well land, has undergone, have extended to soards of superiority remain essentially unas to institutions, their respective standlike. Whilst freely admitting, therefore, that the "enlightened foreigner" may af ford useful hints or warnings, we demur to his jurisdiction when he assumes to constitute a supreme court without appeal; and the enlightened Frenchman, from Voltaire downwards, is peculiarly open to distrust. His fineness and quickness of perception, his rapidity and fertility of association, his range of sentiment and thought, his boldness and vivacity, nay, his very paradoxes and pseudo-philosophy, make him a most entertaining writer of Travels; but he is spoiled as a teacher, and sadly damaged as an authority, by his vanity, his marvellous self-confidence, his false logic, and his ingrained ineradicable conviction that there is nothing first-rate, nothing truly great or admirable, nothing really worth living for, out of France: M. Thiers, the representative Frenchman, would say, out of Paris. A Frenchman and an Englishman were fishing with indifferent success in one of Lord Lytton's ponds at Knebworth, when the Frenchman, who had caught nothing, thus addressed his companion: "Il me semble, Monsieur, que les étangs anglais ne sont pas si poissonneux que les fleuves francais." As the conversation proceeded, it appeared that the only English pond he had ever fished was the one before him, and the only French river, the Seine. Sir Samuel Romilly and a French gen It is the same with communities as with individuals, or it may be worse; for in nation judging nation, there is the national character to affect the judgment, and the general as well as the particular bias to be calculated on. Each has a different and ever varying criterion of merit, considera- eral were discussing a point of equity tion, and morality. "In Spain people ask, law. Sir Samuel Romilly gave his opinion Is he a grandee of the first class? In in opposition to that of General S—. Germany, Can he enter into the Chapters?" Pardonnez-moi, mon cher Romilly, vous In France, Does he stand well at court? vous trompez tout-à-fait je le sais, car In England, Who is he?"† This was writ- j'ai, lu Blackstone ce matin-même." ten towards the middle of the eighteenth 66 *Notes on England. By H. Taine, D.C.L. Oxon, &c. Translated, with an Introductory Chapter, by W. F. Rae. Second Edition. London: 1872. En Espagne on demande, Est-ce un grand de la premiere classe? En Allemagne, Peut-il entrer dans les chapitres ? En France, Est-il bien a la cour? En Angleterre, Quel homme est-il ?" (Helvetius.) Nor let any one fancy that the national character is materially altered by the crushing defeats they have sustained, or the unparalleled humiliations they have undergone at the hands of conquerors who, in weighing the ransom, ruthlessly threw the sword into the scale. M. Thiers is already preparing to play Camillus to Prince Bismarck's Brennus; and no speaker in competitor of four remarkable the debate on the army made a more tell- Prévost-Paradol, Edmond About, Sarcey, ing hit than the Bishop of Orleans when and Weiss. After taking the degree of he declared that Germany was not a great Doctor of Letters, he gained the prize ofnation, but simply a great barrack. The fered by the Academy for an essay on same (under existing circumstances) par- Livy, and attracted much attention by a donable petulance and irritability will oc- series of articles in the leading journals casionally break out when England and and reviews, followed by a volume entitled the English are discussed; for the French "French Philosophers of the Nineteenth have not forgiven, nor are soon likely to Century," in which M. Cousin was uncereforgive, our neutrality during their worst moniously held up to censure and ridicule. hour of trial. "To be sure," observed a M. Taine's "History of English Literadistinguished Frenchman to an accom- ture," published in 1863, is described as plished and ready-witted English woman of the event of the day and the illustration rank, "it was foolish in us to hope better of the year. The sensation it created may things from a nation of shopkeepers." be estimated from the fact that it was "These popular sayings was the well-singled out by a committee of the Academerited retort -"are frequently desti- my, and unanimously recommended for a tute of any solid foundation: we have been special prize, valued at about 4000 francs; in the habit of calling you a nation of but when the time arrived for confirming soldiers." the recommendation, the Bishop of Or The M. Taine, the last Frenchman of emi-leans the same who gave voice to the nence who has written fully and freely on prevalent feeling against Germany — veheEngland, has evidently struggled hard to mently denounced the book as impious and shake off the common weaknesses of his immoral, declaring that the author had alcountrymen; and if not quite so success-leged virtue and vice to be products like ful as could be wished in this respect, he sugar and vitriol- that he had denied has produced a curious and interesting free will-that he had advocated pure book-a book, however, in which just fatalism-that he had depreciated the views and sterling truths are rather indi- ecclesiastics of the middle ages, exalted cated than developed, whilst the most val- the Puritans, and (to crown all) pointedly uable trains of thought are not unfre- praised the English Prayer-book. quently suggested by the paradoxes. The Bishop was seconded by M. Cousin, who spirited English version of this gentle- eagerly seized the occasion for displaying man's "Notes" is prefaced by "A Sketch the proverbial charity and toleration of of his Life and Career," and "An Outline the philosophic Christian; and the reportof his Method of Criticism;" from which er of the committee, quailing before their we learn that he has gone through a capital combined authority, withdrew the recomcourse of training, and discovered sundry rules or principles which wonderfully simplify the processes of observation and reflection to the traveller. Born in 1828, and a pupil at what was then called the College of Bourbon, he was the comrade and * We have read with regret in the "Revue des deux Mondes" of June 1st an article from the pen of M. E. Duvergier de Hauranne, in which, not content with blaming our neutrality, he speaks of the malveillance of England towards France in her difficnlties. The sale of Dame Europa's School," (according to the publisher) exceeded 180,000; and as the literary merit of the book was by no means remarkable, this enormous circulation must have been entirely owing to its falling in with the popular feeling of the time. There cannot be a more decisive proof of English sympathy with France. mendation without a word. The injustice of the Academy was in part repaired by the University of Oxford when it conferred the honorary degree of D.C.L. on M. Taine: his principal title to the distinction being the self-same book; which has now taken rank as a standard work in European literature. It is stated to have been the fruit of six years' close study, during which he paid frequent visits to England and collected materials for his Notes," which were revised and completed after his last visit in 1871. M. Taine's method for he insists that it is not a system is one among many proofs of the irresistible force with which stances."* they are pronounced to be what they appear, that is to say, isolated and separated. But the facts communicate between themselves by the definitions of the groups in which they are comprised, like the waters in a basin by the summit is an act of that ideal and general man around of the heights whence they flow. Each of them whom are grouped all the inventions and all the peculiarities of the epoch; the cause of each is some aptitude or inclination of the reigning model. The various inclinations or aptitudes of the central personage balance, harmonize, temper each other under some liking, or dominant faculty, because it is the same spirit and the same heart which have thought, prayed, imagined, and acted; because it is the same general situation and the same innate nature which have fashioned and governed the separate and diverse works; because it is the same seal which is differently stamped on differing matters. None of these imprints can alter without leading to an alteration in the others, because if one change it is owing to a change in the seal.” speculative minds of the higher order are | royalty of God, the distance appears infinite and tempted into theorizing. Bentham con- impassable; there is no apparent connection. tended that the credibility of witnesses The facts are so dissimilar that at first sight was reducible to a science. Sièyes, in a moment of expansion, exclaimed to Dumont, "La politique est une science que je crois avoir achevée." If Mrs. Trollope heard aright, Prince Metternich said to her, "I believe that the science of government might be reduced to principles, as certain as those of chemistry, if men, instead of theorizing, would only take the trouble patiently to observe the uniform results of similar combinations of circumAnd what are they to do next but theorize? Just so M. Taine. His royal road for arriving at the essences, the elemental truths, the final causes, the collecting links, of all things, is (to use his own words) "wholly comprised in this remark, that moral matters, like physical things, have dependencies and conditions." Take an individual writer, poet, novelist, or historian, and carefully study his works. They will all be found marked by "a certain disposition of mind or soul, a certain All this sounds very ingenious and very array of likes and dislikes, of faculties and eloquent, but we do not see what good failings in short, a certain psychological can be fairly expected to come of it, unless, state, which is that of the author." Then as suggested by Mr. Rae, it should induce pass in review his life, his philosophy, his ethical and æsthetical code, i.e. his general views about the good and the beautiful, and you will find that they all depend upon one another; "you will be able to prove logically that a particular quality, violence or sobriety of imagination, oratorical or lyrical aptitude, ascertained as regards one point, must extend its ascendency over the rest." What is true of the individual is true of a nation and an age -the age of Louis XIV., for example. Religion, art, philosophy, the family and the State-industry, commerce, and agriculture - have all some common principle, element, or ingredient might all be traced to the same moral and intellectual bent or tendency: - "Between an elm of Versailles, a philosophical and religious argument of Malebranche, one of Boileau's maxims in versification, one of Colbert's laws of hypothec, an ante room compliment at Marly, a sentence of Bossuet on the "Vienna and the Austrians," vol. ii. p. 11. a nicer observation and more careful estimate of facts. What Condillac said of rules is applicable to M. Taine's method or system: like the parapet of a bridge, it may hinder a person from falling into the river, but will not help him on his way. Indeed it is more likely to lure him out of it in will-o'-the-wisp fashion and land him in a slough; for the odds are that he will draw on his imagination for his dependencies and conditions; that the facts will be made to fit the theory, instead of the theory being based upon the facts; that he will take for granted the connecting link or family likeness between the sermon and the compliment, the religious argument, the maxim of versification, and the elms. It will be seen, as we proceed, that M. Taine attributes many points of national character, good, bad, and indifferent, to the same cause as the exuberant growth and rich foliage of our trees: that he accounts on the same principle for the large feet of our women and the intemperance |