Chapter XXXII: Part 32

This charming novel, evidently by a female hand, is written with much grace and variety. The idea on which it is based has the advantage of perfect novelty. The 'little lady' is the child of an inveterate aristocratic gambler called Linders, who lives at Spa and Baden and other places of the same class, and who has a marvellous capacity for 'breaking the bank.' Whether he has a 'Martingale' we are not told, and indeed the authoress occasionally shows that she is quite properly unfamiliar with _rouge et noir_ and _roulette_. But the conception is that this fellow, though on the whole a scoundrel, loves his little daughter Madelon, and that she, following him everywhere, becomes acquainted with the games he plays, and innocently regards gaming as quite a proper mode of making money. The complications herefrom arising are manifold, and are told felicitously: but the writer, who is probably a beginner, is apt to spin out her description and narrative to a rather wearisome length. Rapidity of narration is becoming one of the rarest qualities of modern authorship. That authors are paid for quantity instead of quality sufficiently accounts for this: and the great novel-manufacturers of the day, who turn out a volume a month and find readers for them, must, we suppose, be tolerated: but we cannot help regretting this unsatisfactory prolixity when, as in the present case, there is a pretty and piquant and original story to be told. However, it will be largely read, since it is high above the average of tales of the same order. Of the characters, the best drawn is the great gambler himself; hardly a possible personage, we suspect, but if possible curiously interesting. Madelon in her utter simplicity is very lovely; and she is quite conceivable, since there is no reason why a young girl should see any harm in gambling. Nine people out of ten would be puzzled to say on the instant why gambling is wrong: and the state of society shows that very 'honourable men' (as Mark Antony hath it) can see no harm in the doings at Tattersall's and the Victoria Club. So that a little girl whose father was an astute patrician gambler, should innocently take to _rouge et noir_, is quite intelligible--and a very pretty story is based upon it, with some strongly dramatic scenes therein. By the way, the names of flowers should be properly spelt, especially by lady writers: Westeria (vol. ii. p. 185) ought to be Wistaria, as it was named after Caspar Wistar, professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania.

_Harold Erle._ By the Author of "The Story of a Life."

The author of this poem reveals his high and delicate culture, and not unfrequently a true poetic grace. There are lines, passages, and entire scenes, which suggest the blank verse of Wordsworth. We are not reminded of the introspection and subjective might by which Wordsworth brings under the microscope of his 'inward eye' the beauties of nature and the mysteries of life, but of his bald simplicity, of his religious use of common-place, as well as of his partial inability to appreciate the difficulty which the great majority of the human race experience in perceiving a poetic side of 'common things.' 'Harold Erle' is a singularly painful theme, and one which will not readily lend itself to the Muses. The dangers incident to the marriage of blood relations, and the Nemesis which hereditary insanity imposes on some who enter into the lists of love, are not refreshing matters for contemplation. Blighted affections, the madhouse, and the grave, certainly provide material for high imaginative treatment, but when these strong colours are used chiefly with a view of entrapping us into a philosophic generalization of a universal law of marriage, we are disposed to feel that poetry itself has here degenerated into social philosophy. 'Harold Erle' is a powerful story, but the moral and the motive of it seem insufficient, and the _dénouement_ is decidedly prosaic. The _l'envoie_ of the poem seems to be: 'Young people, do not marry your first cousins; should your parents have been so foolish as to have done this, then, by all the nine Muses, do not marry at all.'

The career of Harold Erle is well told. Certain scenes are portrayed with pictorial power. There are tender touches of consummate grace, and emotions, events, and sacrifices are narrated which show how fertile this unwelcome theme has become in the hand of an accomplished writer.

_Martha._ By WILLIAM GILBERT, Author of 'Lucrezia Borgia,' &c. Hurst and Blackett. 1871.

In the conduct of this story Mr. Gilbert has not stinted his readers in the matter of time. We are furnished with the family history and domestic details of four, if not five, successive generations. Near the commencement of the story we are introduced to a wealthy young spendthrift, who is startled by losses on the turf into propriety, thrift, and marriage. The closing pages of the novel bring us acquainted with the great-grandchildren of this worthy. An extraordinary number of prosy and uninteresting characters--many of them mere dummies--try the patience of the reader. With aggravating minuteness circumstances which have no bearing on the story are laboriously detailed. About a dozen different illnesses or accidents are portrayed at such length as to suggest the notion that a hospital clerk had nefariously introduced into the author's manuscript some pages from his medical note-book. The oracular twaddle of the medical adviser who figures throughout the story is redeemed from common-place only by the presentation of a rather interesting psychological problem which, we presume, may be stated thus: Is it possible on purely physical, or at least subjective, grounds to account for the belief entertained by an otherwise rational person that the phantoms of her departed relatives continually visited her in the great crises of a chequered life? We presume that Mr. Gilbert intends to suggest a strong affirmative. The subject of these hallucinations, called Martha Thornburg, is the only character of the story who possesses the minutest tittle of interest. She is the impersonation of unselfish consecration of life to the good of others, and on two separate occasions in her long life, at considerable intervals from each other, she is represented as enduring the very extremity of human suffering. She becomes a lightning-conductor of all the accumulated misfortune with which the devil of the piece has charged the thunder-cloud that spends its fury on this ill-fated family.

There are two villains, at least, among the _dramatis personæ_ so utterly unredeemed by a single ray of goodness as to despoil them of all human interest. The one apparently belongs to the genus rattlesnake, the other to the genus hyæna. Bigamy, fraudulent bankruptcy, forgery, destitution of natural affection, detestable cowardice, attempted fratricide and murder, are a few of the peccadilloes of the more refined devil, who at last dies in his bed; the other, we are thankful to say, hangs himself. The vigorous, prosperous, generous brother of 'Martha,' as well as many other characters, are very faintly sketched, and the principal, if not the sole, interest of the story consists in the misguided goodness of 'Martha,' who covers herself with the suspicion of complicity with the miscreant who had been throughout the curse of her family. However, the mystery is cumbrous in the extreme, and the solution of it by no means artistic. We certainly cannot congratulate Mr. Gilbert on a successful use of his undoubted powers; but we are glad to know that, after all their vicissitudes, Martha Thornbury, her brother, his nephew, and the wife and family of the latter are all doing well. Their furniture is excellent, their wardrobe complete, their bracelets, ornaments, and toys abundant; and we earnestly trust that should any illness or accident befall them, Dr. Wilson will be at hand, not only with skilful treatment, but with ample explanations of all the pathological phenomena.

_Dorothy Fox._ By LOUISA PARR. Strahan and Co.

It is vain to pooh-pooh love stories, so long as the passion itself rules the world so much as it does; the thing that provokes the protest of sensible people is, that love stories are-often so ineffably foolish, as indeed are people who are in love. A thoroughly good love story, high-minded, true-hearted, and sensible, is about as good a service as a novelist can render to her generation. To inculcate noble principles, and inspire noble feelings in the pursuit of the passion upon which the chief social happiness of the world depends, is a work worthy of the highest genius, and demanding the gratitude of all who wish well to mankind. 'Dorothy Fox' is a love story pure and simple. Dorothy is the daughter of a Quaker of the strictest sort, a wealthy hosier, destined to marry Josiah Crewdson, also a well-to-do tradesman; but, as even the primmest and most dutiful Quakeresses will do, she takes it into her pretty head or heart to fall in love with Captain Charles Verschoyle, a poor cadet of a good family, whose mother, Lady Laura, is bent upon both him and his sister making good matches. Charles reciprocates Dorothy's love, and will not marry Miss Bingham's fifty thousand pounds. While Audrey, the sister of Charles, instead of marrying as she ought old Mr. Ford, the millionaire _parvenu_, perversely falls in love against her own intention with Mr. Dynecourt, a poor barrister of ancient lineage. How Lady Laura schemed, and old Mr. Fox was scandalized; how wise and generous old Mr. Ford was, and how noble Josiah Crewdson--his disagreeable sisters notwithstanding--how charming Patience Fox was, and Grace, and John Hanbury, and how beautiful and refined Quaker-life may be, and often is, the authoress has told very charmingly. The characters of Charles and Audrey, with their glaze of worldly selfishness, which melts away like hoar frost under the heat of pure love, leaving an innate and uncorrupted nobleness, are very cleverly delineated; so is Harry Egerton, the rough old squire, with his kind, manly heart.

The story is a very pleasant and a very wholesome one. We trust that Miss Parr will again present to us pictures of Quaker interiors, with which she is so well acquainted. In them her strength lies.

_On the Eve: A Tale by Ivan S. Tourguéneff._ Translated from the Russian by C. E. TURNER, English Lecturer in the University of St. Petersburg. Hodder and Stoughton.

Rather more than a couple of years ago (_British Quarterly_, Oct., 1869) we directed the attention of English readers to the novels of Tourguéneff, in an article in which a detailed account of 'On the Eve' was given. We need not, therefore, do more than refer our readers to what we then said about this very charming little story, which paints Russian life from the interior with the hand not only of skill, but of genius. Its social freedom surprises us, and its indications of easy social vices startle us. Ellen, the heroine, is a very beautiful creature. The translation reads smoothly and brightly. Mr. Turner seems to have done his work well. We are glad to possess this work of a great artist in an English dress.

_Marquis and Merchant._ By MORTIMER COLLINS. Three vols. Hurst and Blackett.

Mr. Collins in this new novel has aimed to portray two of the great social classes that constitute England, and the two that are, perhaps, in more active rivalry, if not antagonism, than any other, and to show that the prejudice is not chiefly with the higher. The Marquis of Wraysbury, whose hereditary seat is at Ashbridge, is a favourable representative of what we are proud to designate our noble aristocracy. Wealthy, generous, liberal, frank, gentlemanly, he is the _beau ideal_ of his class. His son, Lord Waynflete, the hero of the story, is the inheritor of his father's virtues, with a freedom from class conventionalities which is his own, and which permits him, as quite a thing of course, to marry a poor governess.

Mr. Mowbray, who buys an estate at Ashbridge and builds there a splendid mansion overpowering in magnitude, luxury, and appendages of garden, conservatory, &c., and which quite dwarfs the more modest belongings of Ashbridge Manor, is a Manchester millionaire; also a favourable representative of his class--keen, clever, generous, but with some drawbacks of class prejudice and obstinacy, which Mr. Collins paints with an evident gusto. He is the rival of the Marquis in spite of the latter; and the story is made up not unpleasantly of the history of their rivalries, with the issue thereof. Much of the subsidiary delineation is very good. The interiors at Ashbridge Manor, at Mowbray Mansion, at the Orphan Institute, at Mrs. Gutch's, and at delicious Wyvern Grange, are cleverly sketched, in these well-selected contrasts. The subordinate characters; that clever woman, Miss Pinnock, great in Johnsonese; the Bohemian lawyer, Terrell; the learned, gentlemanly recluse, Métivier, full of gipsy and all other lore; and a dozen others, are also admirably delineated. The novel is deficient as a work of art, but only a very clever and accomplished man could have written it. It is somewhat Bohemian in itself, and has an unpleasant vinous flavour--allusions, characterizations, or eulogies on wines occurring perpetually, as if the chief good of man were to have a good wine-cellar and to be a _connoisseur_ of good vintages. The book is, moreover, an odd _mélange_ of all conceivable things; one chapter is devoted to a criticism on Tennyson, another to a criticism on Dickens; verses _apropos_ of everything and nothing abound. Mr. Collins has a marvellous Ingoldsby facility for running off rhymes, and when prose fails him or wearies him, he takes to verse. A diagram of a game of chess, an algebraic equation, and no end of classical quotations, are kneaded like currants into the dough of Mr. Collins's cookery. Not only has he been at a feast of languages, and stolen the scraps, he has evidently carved the dishes for himself. The story is, as we have said, not so well constructed as it might be. It is not always in good taste; it rumbles and rollicks along; but it is very clever and very amusing. It is less melodramatic than Mr. Collins usually is, and is, we think, the best book he has written.

_The Green-Eyed Monster._ By KAY SPEN. Smith, Elder, and Co.

The title of this little book indicates its character. Hugh Barrington falls in love in a railway carriage with Adela Gwynne, a blue-eyed Welsh girl, and marries her. She is of a preposterously jealous disposition, and perversely interprets countless little incidents as justifying her jealousy. The story details the working out of these feelings and their disastrous issues, and the ability of the writer is shown in her psychological knowledge and skill. It is in this point of view very clever. Of course incidents occur with preternatural consentaneousness, and people act and feel in a very infatuated way, setting common sense at defiance, else how would novels get written? But Kay Spen has managed her materials well, and has written an interesting story with a very wholesome moral.

_Jasmine Leigh._ By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. Strahan and Co.

This is a very dainty little story. It is written in an autobiographical form, and narrates the history of a young girl blossoming into womanhood and love, who is abducted by a rough and sordid wooer, whom, nevertheless, she learns to pity, if not to love. It is written with a delicate touch, and is full of graceful and refined feeling. If, as we surmise, it is a first work, it is full of promise.

_Her Own Fault._ By Mrs. J. K. SPENDER. Hurst and Blackett.

Mrs. Spender writes with great care and with considerable strength. Her story is well constructed, and the characters are marked by strong individuality. The story is a stormy one. Sara, who is a very fine creation, is 'a beautiful embodied storm.' Indeed, the defect of Mrs. Spender is, that her strength is not sufficiently calm. Every character is wrought up to the agony pitch: Sara, when she has accepted Rosswith Maxwell--Bryan on the night when he learns his rejection--Lawrence Routh in his suppressed intensity--Charley in her passionate sisterliness--all are wrought up to powerful and exaggerated passion. Mrs. Spender might say with the American young lady after dinner, 'I guess I've piled it on.' The story, however, is vigorous and original, although it is not a very pleasant one. Everybody is to be pitied. Poor Bryan is left with a sentence of death recorded against him.

JUVENILE LITERATURE.

Among children's books of the past Christmas which reached us too late for notice in our New-Year's Juvenile Section, are two or three, altogether too remarkable to be passed over. 'At the Back of the North Wind' (Strahan), and 'Ronald Bannerman's Boyhood,' both by George Macdonald, are two books almost sufficient by their excellences to mark an epoch in juvenile literature. Excepting 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,' no recent work that we can remember is worthy of being compared with the former. In no other of his many books has Mr. Macdonald shown more strikingly the power and delicacy of his imaginative genius. The blending of sober history with the most Puck-like fancies--the underlying thoughtfulness of both--the inlaying of wise reflections, subtly hinted or delicately touched--the blossoming into poetical beauty of almost every position and teaching--the light, graceful hand with which the whole is carried on--the deep, spiritual meanings that transfigure the lightest incidents--altogether constitute a fairy tale the like of which we have rarely seen, and which is as suggestive to the mature as it is amusing to the juvenile. We know youngsters in the nursery who, if they could not literally recite it by heart, would infallibly detect the alteration of a single sentence. Mr. Macdonald has attained to that perfection of excellency which understands the heart of a child. He has made 'Diamond' immortal. 'Ronald Bannerman's Boyhood' (Strahan), is altogether different in conception, feeling, and style. Mr. Macdonald's affluence of fancy is, with perhaps an equal exercise of imagination, subdued to the plain matter-of-fact, no-nonsense-about-it, autobiography of a school-boy. The sympathy with boy-nature is as perfect as in the other volume is the sympathy with child-nature. The narrative is bright, generous, and true--the exact tone of a noble-hearted boy, who has, however, to speak of some of the troubles and sorrows of life. Mr. Macdonald, however, never lacks humour. His description of Mrs. Mitchell, his father's sour housekeeper, and of the Dame School to which Ronald was sent, as well as of Kirsty and the experiences at the farm, is rich and racy in a high degree. Kirsty tells some capital kelpie and other Scotch stories and legends. It is a beautiful picture of childhood, teaching, by its impressions and suggestions, all noble things. 'Chamber Dramas for Children,' by Mrs. George Macdonald (Strahan), are four little plays, good as Hannah More's Sacred Dramas, and amusing as the stories of Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, out of which two of them are constructed. They are cleverly done, and will doubtless do duty in many an acted charade. The 'Tetterby's' is founded upon Dickens's Haunted Man. The 'Snowdrop' is new to us. 'The Boy in Grey' (Strahan), by Henry Kingsley, which appeared in _Good Words for the Young_, together with the above, was thereby subjected to a severe ordeal. It can ill bear the comparison. Instead of the translucent fancies of Mr. Macdonald, it is turgid and confused, and when it would be aërial, produces the effect that sculptured clouds do. Its allusions are often beyond the range of a boy's knowledge; its nonsense limps, and its wisdom is ponderous. We have found it very difficult to understand Mr. Kingsley's meaning. 'Lilliput Lectures,' by the author of 'Lilliput Levée' (Strahan), is again perfect in its way. The lectures are on all sorts of things--social and religious, physical and metaphysical, artistic and commercial. The writer tells us that he writes for no particular age, but aims generally at a childlike way of putting things. Some of the things put are high and mysterious; but then youth has wondrous dreams and speculations, and the happy simplicity of the writer helps youthful thought to climb. Each lecture winds up with some verses such as only the author of 'Lilliput Levée' can write. 'Choice Poetry for Children' (Religious Tract Society), is a small selection of religious and moral pieces by modern writers--of course, of unequal merit, but wisely and suitably chosen. 'The Pearl of Story Books' (Nelson) is a collection for children of Bible narratives in Bible words. 'Mrs. Montmorency's Money,' by Emma Jane Worboise (Clarke), belongs to minor fiction rather than to juvenile literature. Its moral is that 'the love of money is the root of all evil.' As is always the case with Miss Worboise, it is carefully written, and there are clever descriptions and scenes of pathos in it; but it is overlaid with moral, and not so successful in its plot as some of her tales. It is, however, a wholesome and readable story, and its moral is as timely as it is unexceptional.

_Brevia, Short Essays, and Aphorisms._ By the Author of 'Friends in Council.' Bell and Daldy.

Most of the writings of Mr. Helps are Brevia. His books are made like Armstrong guns, of welded pieces; and the process would not be a very violent or destructive one that resolved them into the shape of these fragments. We can well imagine them to be not so much chips as prepared blocks for larger works, which the architecture did not admit of, and which, therefore, the author has wrought into independent art forms. They are brimful of thoughtfulness and practical wisdom; always genial, often humorous, they make up a table book of aphorism and apologue, of colloquia, and short essay, independently conceived and gracefully expressed--which among living writers it would be difficult to parallel. They remind us most of Whately; only Mr. Helps is more terse than he. Sometimes reams of discussion are gathered into half a page; sometimes a single sentence contains seeds for reams of discussion. Mr. Helps has given us a volume of 'Aids for Reflection,' which is worthy the study of the most desultory. Most of these short essays and aphorisms have appeared in _Good Words_. We quote one sentence--'Some persons, instead of making a religion of their God, are content to make a God of their religion.'

_Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain._ By JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. Sold only by G. Allen, Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent.

In these letters Mr. Ruskin seeks to teach the workmen and labourers of Great Britain some political economy which we are commonplace enough to think fallacious, and some history which we are not Vikings enough to think otherwise than mischievous. But we are in full accord with him in his desire to lighten the national distress around us, and to exterminate the yahoos of civilization; and if he can show us, as he seems to think he can, some sure method of doing both or either, we will abandon Mr. Mill, and will take our history from Mr. Carlyle. In the three letters already published we have not been able to discover any proposal leading to action, or, indeed, leading to anything at all, except weariness and vexation of spirit. But we are perhaps even now on the verge of the promised land. Mr. Ruskin has become so practical of late years that we are inclined to think he has made a real discovery. But he seems in no hurry to announce it, and delay is naturally tantalizing.

THEOLOGY AND PHILOLOGY.

_Essays, Theological and Literary._ By RICHARD HOLT HUTTON, M.A. (Lond.) Two vols. Strahan and Co.

These volumes are likely to take a high place in English literature, and to measure and expound the influence which their author has for many years exerted on the higher thought of our generation, through the periodical press. He has submitted a selection of his more elaborate essays to final revision, and has brought them together with much skill and felicity of arrangement. The two volumes are, in fact, two separate works of exceeding interest, the one bearing on the highest forms of modern literature, and the other on the theological and philosophical speculations of the last twenty years. The polish and finish of the revision have excised the genial humour and delicate satire which have characterized some of Mr. Hutton's critical efforts, but they have not altered the substance or modified the tone of these remarkable papers. In almost all of them it is easy to trace the hand of the accomplished publicist, who has acquired the faculty of seizing one main characteristic of the poetry or philosophy, political career, or moral tendency he is wishful to examine, and having made himself master of this, is resolved to establish or illustrate it at his leisure. He decides on a good working hypothesis to account for the composition of a great poet, or the spirit of a remarkable book, and leisurely sits down to transform his hypothesis into a true induction. When Mr. Hutton brings Wordsworth, or George Eliot, or Ernest Rénan, or Henry Rogers into his field of view, he seems to say to himself, 'some explanation is possible of this congeries of spiritual phenomena,' and he forthwith attacks the problem with the enthusiasm of a naturalist, and often with the penetration of a true philosopher. He exhibits great insight, and his speculation is always worthy of attention, but it too much resembles the bar of sunshine gleaming through an aperture in a shutter, which throws an intense light on some portions of a painted chamber but leaves other portions in hazy and dubious shadow. We heartily thank him for the vivid image he has drawn, and for the key he has often given us to the intellectual treasures of some of our greatest modern thinkers; but we do not feel that he has adequately solved all the problem, or has definitely formulated the mental life or calibre of either the poets or theologians whom he passes in review. Thus almost all that he says of Wordsworth is nobly and truly said. There is consummate ability in his reply to Hazlitt's 'thorny praise,' in his comparison of Wordsworth and Tennyson, and in his method of proving the thesis with which he starts, viz., that the charge against Wordsworth, of 'profundity and transcendentalism,' sprang from the same root as that which declaims against his 'unintelligible fuss about common feelings and common things.' Still, in his anxiety to establish this position, Mr. Hutton appears to us to overstate the frugality of Wordsworth's genius, and to exaggerate the poet's habit of making a very minute modicum of incident furnish all the material he needed for the exercise of his imagination and the development of his vast subjective energies. The entire series of ecclesiastical sonnets, as well as those which were dedicated to national independence, cover a prodigious field, and make no inconsiderable demand upon the reader's knowledge, as well as upon his sympathy. In the description of the retreat from Moscow, Wordsworth surely chose a theme big enough for the historic imagination of Scott, and he dealt with it in an as objective a fashion, with Dryden's fire and Shelley's pomp of style to boot. Again, in Mr. Hutton's profoundly interesting paper on the 'Poetry of the Old Testament,' there is a principle which is full of force, and our author's working hypothesis will and does explain a great deal. He urges with eloquence and beauty of illustration, that 'faith in the glorious destiny of the nation, and the overseeing providence of God as the power which had wrought out that destiny,' are the two roots of the Hebrew traditionary poems, and he sees these roots in all the efflorescence of the glorious tree; but while there is truth in the remark that this double idea underlies and absorbs the significance of all the Hebrew poet's references to the beauty of nature, and much also of the tragic human interest of the life that was being lived by the prophets, there is some niggardliness in failing to acknowledge how the very fringes of the tabernacle that enshrined both the nation's destiny and the Divine presence are glittering with touches of refined gold, and how much nearer an approach the few Hebrews made to the modern conceptions of the transcendent and pathetic beauty of nature, than all the Greeks and Romans put together.

If the Hebrews rose to the stupendous idea of the universe being but the shadow of Jehovah's might, and believed that the light was the skirt of His raiment, that the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, were the work of His fingers, that the 'seven stars and Orion,' the 'sweet influence of Pleiades,' and 'the morning spread upon the mountains,' were alike declaring His glory, there is sufficient evidence in the abundance of their imagery and the sweetness of their song, that they exulted in as well as beheld the primal beauty. Interesting and demonstrative as Mr. Hutton's essay is, he leaves a range of facts unaccounted for. The gorgeous imagery of Ezekiel, when in parabolic fashion he sees the analogies between nature and national life, the idyllic, perhaps dramatic grace of the Song of Songs, and the genuine lyrical cry of large portions of the minor prophets and Psalms, seem to us to transgress the canon of our author.

One of the volumes before us consists of eighteen theological essays, admirably classified. They start from the moral and religious significance of Atheism; they proceed to show the insufficiency of the scientific and positivistic explanation of our moral relations. The Pantheistic hypothesis is displayed in its strength and its weakness. The question, 'What is revelation?' is then handled, and Mr. Maurice is vindicated and Dean Mansel demolished. In another essay the historic problems of the fourth Gospel are discussed with great candour and success. 'The principles of evidence' are illustrated in their application to the 'Doctrine of Incarnation,' which our author, like Mr. Baring-Gould, would hold, even if the New Testament should pass out of existence. Two papers on M. Rénan's recent works, and a vehement attack upon the evangelical doctrine, under the irritating title of 'The Hard Church,' are followed by an estimate of the relative position of the 'Romanists, Protestants, and Anglicans.' Several of these papers were published in the _National Review_, and one of them forms part of a series of essays entitled 'Tracts for Priests and People.' We acknowledge great obligation to Mr. Hutton for many of these dissertations. We sympathise most profoundly in the general estimate he forms of the position of the Atheist, the Positivist, and the Pantheist; and we are confident, after again perusing his examination of 'the historical problems of the fourth Gospel,' that though we differ from him in many details, and regret that he should find it necessary to relinquish the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, it is the noblest and most triumphant vindication in the English language of this stronghold of Christianity. In the graceful preface to the first volume, in which Mr. Hutton acknowledges his debt of obligation to Mr. Maurice, he sums up in a sentence the living principle of Mr. Maurice's writings. There, as elsewhere, too much credit is given to a key; too much of a jet of light is thrown upon a portion of Mr. Maurice's theology. We do not believe that this great and suggestive writer can be crushed into a proposition. Still it does cover much of the speculation associated with Mr. Maurice's name. It is as follows:--'All beliefs about God are but inadequate intellectual attempts to justify a belief in Him, which is never a merely intellectual affirmation, but rather a living act of the spirit, by no means confined to those who consciously confess His presence.' The paper entitled 'What is Revelation?' and part of the argument entitled 'The Hard Church,' are expansions of this principle, in vehement opposition to the philosophy of Hamilton, as it was applied by Dean Mansel to theological problems. We think that we may give Mr. Hutton credit for having made the difference between Dean Mansel and Professor Maurice more obvious than those distinguished men ever succeeded in making it appear for themselves; but we imagine that he has forced them into more irreconcilable antagonism than they are themselves conscious of, and has effected this by a slight exaggeration of the position of each disputant. We sympathize with Mr. Hutton far more than with Dean Mansel, in his general philosophical opinions; but this vehement scolding and irate horror caught from Mr. Maurice seems to us perfectly misplaced. Surely, surely the 'living act of the spirit,' by which man knows the only true God, the intuition of God by the eye of the soul, the transcendental conclusion or conviction of the whole intelligence, the bound heavenwards of the sanctified imagination, the 'real assent' to super-sensuous, extra-logical, metaphysical facts, all of which processes are aided by the facts and words of Scripture, by the recorded life of Christ, by the sublime utterances and confessions of the creeds, will not be rejected by Dean Mansel. They are differently described but thankfully acknowledged. What Mansel seems to us to imply is that these processes do not solve the contradictions which are involved in the logical effort to formulate the infinite; the knowledge they supply is approximate rather than exhaustive, regulative rather than absolute; a spiritual apprehension rather than scientific comprehension. The intuitions of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Maurice are far more numerous and intense than Dean Mansel's. Our author has more confidence in his direct experiences of truth than Dean Mansel has. The living God is more visible, more accessible to some minds than others, and these want less help and fewer manifestations to penetrate the mystery; but we do not see why Mr. Hutton should be so wrath with Dean Mansel for the position that 'the faculties in man furnish the conditions of constructing a philosophical theory of the object presented.' 'The object presented' is not the living and infinite God, but the finite manifestation and unveiling of his perfections through a certain series of human experiences. The criticism of Mr. Hutton shows that he is attributing to the words 'philosophical theory' more than it is meant by Mansel to carry. It is just because Dean Mansel cannot form a theory of the underlying 'infinite' and the 'abysmal deep' of human personality, that he is content to theorize about that which is presented in the person and voice and known history and character of a human being. It is because the infinite baffles and confounds us, and refuses to come under the formal laws of thought, that Mansel and Hamilton made a virtue and a science out of the recognition of our nescience, and would confine their theorizing to that which was manageable and apprehensible; but the entire philosophy of the unconditioned turns on the presence in our consciousness of these stupendous factors, unlabelled and untheorized. It appears to us that the conflict narrows itself to the name to be given to our personal relations with the transcendental and eternal realities in which both disputants profoundly believe; and therefore we do not for one moment think that this summation of Dean Mansel's position would be accepted by him. Can Mr. Hutton really mean that Dean Mansel would deny that we can be 'conscious of God's presence with us, conscious of the life we receive from Him, conscious of what He really is, and in the same, indeed, even in far higher sense than that in which we are conscious of what human beings are?' We heartily agree with Mr. Hutton in his denunciation of the idea that the moral nature of man is fundamentally different from the moral nature of God, that the goodness and mercy of God's being must be essentially different from the goodness and mercy in a human will, and that the 'revelation to us of the very character and life of the Eternal God' has been made by the 'purification of human vision,' and is 'the history of the awakening, purifying, and answering of the yearnings of the human spirit for a direct knowledge of Him. It proceeds from God, and not from man.' He details with clearness and force the spread of this 'revelation,' the human condition of it, and the widely diffused material of it, in the instincts and regrets, and secret hopes and fears of universal man. 'The revelation through Christ fulfilled ... the desire of all nations, by revealing the living power in man, by which human nature is wrought into His likeness.' But in his defence of this position he appears to us partially, if not utterly, to ignore the new life given to our humanity in Christ. 'Grace' seems on this theory rather to be a development of dormant powers than the conference of a new tendency, and 'Christ' to become rather the name of a sleeping but universal divineness in all humanity, which is at length realized to the conscience, rather than to be the personal source of all the life. The 'Father,' in the theology of Mr. Hutton, is a living God, as against the Pantheistic tendencies of modern science; but we are not sure--and few things would be farther from our wish than to misrepresent him--that the Christ and the Spirit of God are distinguishable from the voice of universal conscience and the hidden and better nature of the (not fallen but) ever aspiring child of the living God.

Each of Mr. Hutton's papers deserves careful study; we regret that we cannot even refer to more than one other, and this, moreover, one to which we cannot fail to take certain exceptions. It is entitled 'The Hard Church,' a 'degraded phase of the Church of common sense.' It is the Church whose logic has been supplied by Whately, whose metaphysic has been elaborated by Dr. Mansel; one of its most 'merciless and slashing captains' is seen in Professor Henry Rogers, and Mr. Binney caught its exact spirit in his lecture addressed to young persons on the possibility of 'Making the best of both Worlds.' 'Its heroes,' we are told, are 'latitudinarian but not catholic in the tone of their theology.' It has no sympathy, no heart, offers 'no divine reconciliation of contradictory yearnings;' it glories in 'hard sense,' and 'dismisses from view all those fluctuating elements of human life which do not seem deeply imbedded in the average notions of average men.' Its representatives scold away all individuality, denounce the eccentricities of positive faith, and are, in short, 'the most mischievous section of Christendom.' All this is introductory to a tremendous attack on Mr. Rogers for the pitiless severity with which he introduces a thoroughly sceptical mind, seeing no _intellectual_ standing-place in a 'shallow Deism,' and more consistency in thoroughfaced Positivism or Pantheism, and more hope too, because he is sure that at the very bottom of the abyss, the heart will spring upward and the conscience will rise in rebellion. Mr. Hutton should remember that 'the real and deep Theism, holding by prayer, near to Christianity,' was not the intellectual position condemned by the author of 'The Eclipse of Faith;' it was a Theism that is or was in a fluent and changeable condition, a Theism that had, in deference to certain loudly-vaunted principles of reasoning, relinquished Christianity, and spoken of the moral character of Jesus--to put it mildly--with disloyalty if not with disrespect; it was a Theism trembling on the verge of Atheism, yet boasting itself to be a spiritual religion. Methods of thought may surely be harmless in some regions, and deadly in other spheres. It is not hardness but goodness which exposes the worthlessness of the method. This seems to us to have been the work of Mr. Rogers. We are not called upon to defend Mr. Rogers's strong way of putting certain things, but we think that Mr. Hutton has not shown him a more excellent way when he speaks of his 'throttling art,' and would give you to believe that he is a spiritual garotter, rather perhaps of the Antæus proportions, who has at last found a Hercules. Mr. Hutton appears to us to be too angry to see the genuine humour as well as rather grim pleasantry with which Mr. Rogers has represented the enemies of the Christianity infinitely dear to him as destroying each other. The doctrine that 'Christianity is against the grain of human nature,' is spoken of as demonstrating the truth that 'the Hard Church has a hard Master.' Nothing surely is more true than this language of Mr. Rogers, and we are astonished that Mr. Hutton thinks he replies to this estimate of Christianity by saying that Paul told the Athenians that they were 'seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.' Our author is generally quite ready to admit the complexity of human nature, the multiplicity of the forces that are moving it. The same apostle who thus spake to Athenians, said to Galatians, 'Brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the Cross ceased.' We can conceive of no more satisfactory response to the position here assailed than that so often attributed to Lord Palmerston, 'that all children are born good.' We suppose Mr. Hutton must endorse it. The paper on 'Romanism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism' cannot be discussed by us here for want of space. Its delicate insight into 'root-principles,' and formulated tendencies, is another illustration of the author's disposition to generalise, and to cast pencils of coloured light upon the parts of a theme, or of a system of thought. With the general estimate of _Luther_ we have not much to contend against, except that no reference is made to the objects or reasons of his faith. The unlimited, ecstatic, violent confidence in an unproved, transcendental fact, with nothing but personal intuitions to guide the triumphant _trust_--itself a Saviour--may be apparently proved from certain table-talk of Luther, but is a very imperfect exhibition of Luther's position. Why, by implication, should all whom Mr. Hutton calls 'pseudo-Protestants' be supposed to deny the indispensable necessity of an entire moral surrender of the whole nature to the will of God? With some of those whom Mr. Hutton thus denounces, as for example, Bishop Bull and all who agree with him, faith is identifiable with moral surrender to the will of God; in the view of others, as proved by almost all the Protestant confessions, it is inseparably associated with saving trust. Where, we ask, is 'the bibliolatry which relegates the Holy Spirit to the province of explaining the Bible,' except in a small section of Scotch divines, whose hard and artificial lines have long since shown a tendency to vanish away? Mr. Hutton seems to try to take from those whose joy and crown it is to speak of trust in a present Christ their most distinctive feature; because here and there a logical theologian may use scholastic or forensic phrases in his theorizing, it is ungenerous to say that 'the passionate faith of Luther is degraded into the acceptance of an artificial contract,' or that 'the orthodox theory of substitution excludes the purifying influence of spiritual union with Christ.' The best reply that we can make to Mr. Hutton's contemptuous allusion to Dr. Candlish is to call his attention to Dr. Candlish's sermon on 'His servants shall serve Him,' and to the greater part of his Commentary on the first Epistle of St. John. Would that our great thinkers succeeded in learning more of each other's mind! There are a hundred other questions raised by Mr. Hutton on which it is tempting but difficult to dilate. We cannot part from him, however, without assuring him that we believe these volumes will gain what they richly deserve--a high place in English literature. Our remarks have been somewhat critical and dissatisfied, but we are anxious to express, notwithstanding, the exceeding admiration which we feel for these eloquent and noble essays. It is often most instructive to see how the position we occupy shapes itself to the intelligence of one who is only in partial sympathy with us.

_First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth._ Essays on the Church and Society. By J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

This volume consists of ten essays: the first four are entitled 'The Doctrine of the Infallible,' and contain Mr. Brown's exposition of the inquiry--What is truth? a brave and full exhibition of the answer to that question given by the infallible church; a criticism of the Protestant dictum that an infallible book is adequate to the solution of every great moral and spiritual problem; and in the last place a passionate vindication for the free spirit of the possession of the true infallibility. Two essays then follow, of considerable speculative interest, under the titles of 'The Natural History of Antichrist,' and 'The Christian Commonwealth.' The volume is completed by four lecture essays on the 'Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' the intellectual, social, ecclesiastical and theological revolution which has unrolled itself during the twenty-five years of Mr. Brown's fruitful and stimulating ministry. We have said enough to indicate the comprehensiveness and multifariousness of the theme which our author has here investigated. It is as though he had taken his stand on some high promontory which overlooks a boundless sea of thought, and with well practised, almost prophetic eye, taken in the vast expanse, the rolling tides, the brooding storms of the great highway of the nations; here a very maelström of confusion and wreathing agony, where equatorial and arctic currents blend in driving mist and fierce agitation, and there a dreamy outlook of serene though glittering colour; now, the breaker and the wreck and then the ark of refuge, the busy craft, the haven of rest. Few writers of the present day appear to us to take a larger view of men and things, and though his senses seem painfully acute to the moan of distress and the shriek of the torment, yet few appear to hear more distinctly the sound of the Master's voice, or to see more clearly the triumphant form of Him who holds that ocean in the hollow of His hand.

We think this volume is unquestionably the noblest production of Mr. Baldwin Brown's pen. In refinement and elevation of style, in high sympathy with the good and the noble side of that which he condemns, in readiness to learn from his opponents, and to see himself and his own position with their eyes, amounting to what some may deem almost a dangerous concession to the misconception of the free spirit entertained by both the Romish doctor and the apostle of science, coupled with outspoken and brave utterance of unpopular truth, this volume will hardly find its parallel in modern times.

We cannot attempt more than to touch on a few points. We are inclined to think that the paper on 'The Natural History of Antichrist' is not only the most original and suggestive portion of the volume, but that it is, in fact, the pivot, or the centre of the entire argument. Our author has drawn a comparison between 'Babel,' 'Babylon,' and 'Babylon the Great,' and has shown how the hoary legend of man's first endeavour to establish a worldly and human independence of the Supreme will, found its counterpart in the subsequent efforts to produce the four world-wide monarchies of pre-Christian times, and again, in the towering system of Pontifical rule, the rise, triumph, and fall of which are seen in the visions of Patmos. He has discussed with consummate eloquence and brilliancy of touch, the analogies which link these three manifestations of the spirit of antichrist, and how God's providence has undermined them one after the other by a like energy of the individual conscience and the free spirit. The paper on the 'Christian Commonwealth' provides a delicately-sketched theory of the true relation between the governing and the Christian spirit. Mr. Brown admits, nay, contends, for the fact that the Church and the State in their last significance and highest development are one, and argues with great ingenuity that a supposed alliance between the Church and the State, as between two contracting parties, is essentially unchristian; it is, moreover, 'an exceedingly low and false conception of the true character of the National Establishment, and is quite unsupported by its early history.' He acknowledges the difficulty of realizing the Christian idea in any Christian State, and asserts 'that the Gospel has still a missionary function in every State in Christendom; men have not only to be helped to live by it, they have to be persuaded to believe in it;' but 'that the idea of a National Church whose rulers are clergy, which shall have the whole spiritual interests of the community in charge, having its own ordinances, officers, and laws, of which it is the only lawful custodian and administrator, lending a Christian character to the State by its alliance, and deriving material countenance and support from the State in return, is simply anti-Christian. The only National Church is the whole community which has been redeemed by Christ, and on which, and in which, He is working as the head of the Church in a thousand ways, of which theologians of all parties little dream.'

Mr. Brown differs from many Nonconformists in holding the competency of the public assemblies of a Christian State to deal with spiritual matters, and would prefer to have such regulation as the British Parliament might supply to religious belief and life to that of any 'spiritual synod that he is acquainted with;' but he considers that a body like the British Parliament may and must 'abstain from all attempt at legislation on certain subjects, because they know that they would only mar them if they were to touch them with their legal fingers.' He does not think that domestic sympathies and affections, the higher intellectual life of the community, or the religious life of the people, are palpably beyond the sphere of a government, but that they are beyond 'their power. One shudders to think of the costly, wasteful, pompous, grasping, titled, beneficed, wealthy and bigoted thing which has been presented during three hundred years to the English people, as the visible embodiment of His kingdom, who was the incarnation of tenderness, compassion, purity, patience, gentleness, and love. The Establishment principle, under the most favourable conditions, seems to run directly counter to the fundamental principle of the spiritual government of men as we watch it working through all the ages. It belongs to the age of stagnancy and deadness, is vested in the old and decaying order, is doomed, and must die.' The theoretical admission of competency, coupled with the trenchant disavowal of power to deal with the higher regions of the social and religious life of the people, reminds us of the ground taken for some years by a large section of the free kirk of Scotland. There is no practical difference between the views held by Mr. Brown and by the bulk of Nonconformists; his condemnation of the Establishment principle is at least the result of experience, and appears to be final.

As Christianity and the Church are the form and life of the truth, Mr. Brown has prepared the way for his discussion of both by his discourses on the infallible. The first paper, entitled 'What is Truth?' exhibits with painful intensity the anguish, even the torment that accompanies the search after this hidden treasure. Expressing, as we suppose, the feelings of others rather than his own, the signs of the times rather than his own heart-throbbings, his language almost amounts occasionally to a wail of despair: nor does he, in the discourse which is entitled the 'Intellectual Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' exonerate the Christian teachers of the present day from the charge of augmenting that despair. After clearly expounding the theory of the Positivist, and showing how in its isolation it fails to satisfy the need of either the intelligence or the heart of man, he boldly charges theology and the Church with the sin of giving to science such a representation of God as to induce it to do without him. In his extreme anxiety to do justice to the scientific spirit, Mr. Brown appears to us to do some injustice to the age-long yearning after truth which has characterized theological science. Perhaps he does not sufficiently take notice that the mental faculties which are quite adequate to secure the broadest generalizations of science are insufficient to furnish us with some of the chief data of theology. He speaks with perfect confidence of 'common ground in our Christian belief for us and the leaders of the intellectual progress of men.' We believe that this common ground will be found only when the methods of theology and the methods of science are alike seen to be incomplete; but a difference of method in the two regions there must ever be.