feel perfectly safe in extending his principle back to the beginning of things: and Mr. Rogers's argument, even if valid against M. Renan, does not help his own case in the least. : On many points indeed, M. Renan has laid himself open to pretty severe criticism, and on many other points he has furnished good handles to his orthodox opponents. His views in regard to the authorship of the Fourth Gospel and the Acts are not likely to be endorsed by many scholars and his revival of the rationalistic absurdities of Paulus merits in most instances all that Mr. Rogers has said about it. As was said at the outset, orthodox criticisms upon heterodox books are always welcome. They do excellent service. And with the feeling which impels their authors to defend their favourite dogmas with every available weapon of controversy, I for one can heartily sympathise. Their zeal in upholding what they consider the truth is greatly to be respected and admired. But so much cannot always be said for the mode of argumentation they adopt, which too often justifies M. Renan's description, when he says, "Raisonnements triomphants sur des choses que l'adversaire n'a pas dites, cris de victoire sur des erreurs qu'il n'a pas commises, rien ne paraît déloyal à celui qui croit tenir en main les intérêts de la vérité absolue." JOHN FISKE. SONNET. BECAUSE I failed, shall I asperse the End Like that worst foe, a vain splenetic friend? The foremost drop; on, those behind must press. Let my poor body lie beneath the breach. I clomb and fell; who stand on me, will reach. FLORENCE, Aug. 16th, 1866. ALFRED AUSTIN. PUBLIC AFFAIRS. The political campaign has begun this year rather earlier than usual, and some of our most distinguished characters have already been uttering their sentiments on the great topic of Reform, which will leave the country no peace until some settlement of the question has been arrived at. A few years ago republican government was on its trial in America, and its success seemed to be uncertain. There was then a lull in the Reform movement in England, and a very moderate measure would have satisfied its supporters. That time, however, was allowed to slip away, to the regret of many advocates of moderate progress, and now the demands of the unenfranchised are increasing in proportion to the delay. The United States have exhibited a wealth, a strength, an organisation, a temperance and moderation after their great successes, which show that universal suffrage and the freest institutions are compatible with a wellordered state, where life and property are secure, and that an elected president is able to sustain the honour of the country, and to keep up a military and a naval array which can vie with those of the proudest monarchies of Europe. In Europe itself it is important to remark that the three greatest states besides ourselves, France, Russia, and Prussia, are under the form of government which we may call Cæsarain,-namely, a democracy with a monarch at its head, supported by a powerful army. In all these states the aristocracy and the middle classes have but little power. In France the influence of the Bourgeoisie fell with Louis Philippe; in Russia the aristocracy has received a mortal blow in the emancipation of the serfs, which was intended for this purpose, and a middle class can hardly be said to exist. In Prussia the feeling of the people and the institutions are democratic; Bismarck cares little for any particular form of government, and will join the strongest party; and the king, by sweeping away the petty sovereigns of Northern Germany, has given up the doctrine of the Divine right, and virtually made his own crown depend upon his ability to keep it on his head, which, in other words, means the will of his people to let it stay there. In England alone and in Austria are the middle and upper classes still the guiding power of the state. In Austria they have been most unsuccessful and well-nigh ruined the empire; in England their destiny is still for a short time in their own hands. By timely concessions they may lead a willing people; by endeavouring to monopolise power, they will lose their own position, revolutionise a happy country, and destroy the British Empire. The experience of the last ten or fifteen years has not been such as to make people particularly satisfied with the use of power as it has been hitherto deposited. The sympathies of the old Whig ministers are narrow and confined, and they always seemed afraid of promoting men of ability, lest they themselves should be overshadowed. They had a natural affinity to mediocrity, and Parliament, elected by the middle classes, was little more than a lit de justice to register their edicts. The Crimean war was a vast failure, diplomatic, military, and naval; the misgovernment of India led to a most dangerous rebellion which was with great difficulty suppressed, and its misgovernment since that time has led to a chronic state of discontent, not only among natives, but Europeans; add to this the state of our army and our navy, and the glaring deficiencies of our educational system, both for the upper, the middle, and the lower classes, and we have a picture which undoubtedly shows that those who have for many years past enjoyed the immense power attached to the Ministerial offices have not been diligent servants, or thoroughly comprehended the requirements of the nation. It is with feelings floating through the public mind such as we have just endeavoured to describe, that the autumn campaign opens to agitate for Reform. Mr. Bright of course leads the van, and the reform demonstration at Birmingham was a great success. The question as to the actual numbers which assembled there matters little, whether there were two millions or twenty thousand, because the shops were all shut, every man, woman, and child went that could go, and the sympathy with the movement was complete. Mr. Bright's speech was admirably suited to his audience, clear, simple, and convincing, working out one or two prominent positions which it was impossible to gainsay. Mr. Lowe, he said, as the true Tory leader and guider of the great journal which virtually turned out the late Ministry, had libelled the working classes, and his words should be hung up in every workshop, to show how false were the only grounds on which what Mr. Bright called the Derby principle of exclusion of the working classes was founded. Then came a passage, very telling, because true :-“ If any of you take ship and go to Canada," he said, "he will find the Derby principle utterly repudiated; but in Canada there is no uprooting of institutions and no distinctions of property, and there is no absence of order, or loyalty. If you go to Australia, you will find that this Derby principle is unknown; yet there reigns order as there is in this country, contentment with the institutions of the colonies, and regard for law and for property. If you go to those great and glorious colonies of this country, the United States of America, there you will find the people exhibiting all the virtues which belong to the greatest nations on the face of the earth. As you come to Europe, you will find in the republic of Switzerland, in the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, in Norway and Sweden, in France, and now you are about to witness in Germany also, a wide-spread exercise of the franchise hitherto in our time unknown in this country; and neither emperor, nor king, nor noble believes that his authority, or his interest, or his greatness, or the happiness of any one of his countrymen, will be jeopardised by the free admission of the people to their constitutional privileges. In Germany a vote is to be given to every man of twenty-five years of age and upwards; so that if we were to propose a measure that would give a vote to every man of twenty-five years and upwards in this country, we should not be in advance of the great country of Northern Germany which is now being established. What is it that we are come to in this country, that what is being rapidly conceded in all parts of the world is being persistently and obstinately refused here in England, the home of freedom, the mother of parliaments?" The cause of reform has been promoted by this speech, and the success of the Birmingham meeting will probably lead to many others of a similar character. Mr. Gladstone also, while spending a few weeks in scenes familiarised to him by his old friendship with Sidney Herbert, received a congratulatory address and a most flattering reception from a very crowded meeting of all classes at Salisbury. In acknowledgment he made a temperate speech, defending his own conduct about Reform, and while admitting that he might have committed faults in the past, which he would endeavour to avoid in the future, yet repudiated "all half-hearted modes of speech and action which are undoubtedly in favour with certain portions of the community." Mr. Gladstone had the good taste to spare poor Mr. Marsh in his own city, and to treat his successors to political power with fairness, at any rate in words. "If a good, honest, effectual measure is proposed by those now invested with the responsibilities of government, let us embrace it with all our hearts, looking first and foremost of all, above and beyond all, to the satisfactory solution of the question, which has assumed a magnitude far above everything personal, far above everything connected with the immediate interests of party, which has become national and imperial in the truest sense." Whether the Liberal party when Parliament meets will think any measure of reform proposed by Lord Derby to be "good, honest, and effectual," remains to be seen; but statesmen in England, as elsewhere, always gain in power by seeming to rise above the distorting fogs of party. It has been a reproach to public men of late years that they have appeared to fight more for place than principle, and have clung to their offices when strength has failed them and old age should have suggested to them a retirement from active struggles. We have no longer men like Wellington and Lansdowne, who, enjoying universal honour, and looked upon as dispassionate counsellors of the sovereign in the last resort, were each contented that he should in old age, ævo summâ cum pace frulitur, semota ab nostris rebus sejunctaque longe," but each old minister likes to work now up to the last hour of his existence. Of course this does not apply to Mr. Gladstone, now in the zenith of his splendid career, but he, too, has been accused of clutching too eagerly at every party advantage, and even attacking the absent. The fairness and good humour of his Salisbury speech are signs that the right balance of his mind is restored after the severe trials he has undergone, and if he continues the same tone he will find many friends flock back to him, who were somewhat scared by his apparent democratic thoroughness. In our opinion, Mr. Grant Duff, in his clever speech at the Elgin boroughs, gives us the right cry at this moment when he exclaims, "Educate, educate, educate." It is one in which all parties can join, and the advantages of education are eminently apparent in the conspicuous examples of the United States, Scotland, and Prussia. It seems, however, that in Scotland the system has flagged, and requires renovating; a people which has profited so much by it is sure to do what is needed. But if Scotland be in need of improved education, what shall we say to England; and how shall we answer the severe strictures of Mr. Matthew Arnold in his letter to the Celts at Chester? Well may he say, "When I see the enthusiasm which these Eisteddfods can awaken in your whole people, and then think of the tastes, the literature, the amusements of our own lower and middle class, I am filled with admiration for you. We in England have come to that point where the continued advance and greatness of our nation is threatened by one cause, and one cause above all; far more than by the helplessness of an aristocracy whose day is fast coming to an end; far more than by the rawness of a lower class whose day is only just beginning; we are imperilled by what I call the Philistinism' of our middle class. On the side of beauty and taste, vulgarity; on the side of morals and feeling, coarseness; on the side of mind and spirit, unintelligence. This is Philistinism. No service England can render the Celts by giving you a share in her many good qualities can surpass what the Celts can at this moment do for England by communicating to us some of theirs." We believe there is great truth in these observations, and we commend them to the attention of Mr. Grant Duff, who we believe did this country the service of moving for the commission of inquiry into middle class education, the report of which Mr. Matthew Arnold is now employed in drawing up. As the heavy, sluggish Anglo-Saxon was immensely benefited and raised by the admixture of the lively and poetic Normans after the conquest, so an increased intercourse with the livelier Celtic races will raise our imaginative without injuring our solid business qualities. It is one of the advantages of a really free country that we have the opportunity of reading or hearing all that is to be said on every side of a great public question, so that if we do not examine it under every aspect, "cast in the light of many minds,” it is our own fault. As we have had Bright, Gladstone, and others telling us of our defects, and pointing to the future, so we have men like Laing and Roebuck, laudatores temporis acti. Mr. Laing is very cautious in what he says, as he sits for a Liberal constituency, but the tone of his mind is evidently rather to hesitate in taking steps which may lead to giving too much power to the masses. He says he became more conservative in India, because he saw how easily the empire might be imperilled, and how necessary it is to have strong and uniform action at the centre of power. The Oldham carpenter who writes to the Times in the name of the working classes, without intending to answer Mr. Laing, does answer the objection which he raises. "Suppose the Times," he says, "and the Saturday Review were to persuade the present constituencies to abdicate for thirty years in favour of the artizan class, and also to persuade the Whigs that their mission is accomplished, does any one suppose that at the end of that time we should be a third-rate naval power, or that a Prussian army could waltz round a British one?" There would be no danger of the working classes wishing to see the army and navy reduced, and they are quite as fond of empire and fighting as any class of her Majesty's subjects. The Times thinks they would be rather too warlike; and at the time of the Crimean war no class was more enthusiastic than they were for proceeding to extreme measures. They certainly would not tolerate inefficiency in high places, and the "Carpenter's" admiration of Gladstone is owing to this cause. "Gladstone," he says, never fails. His opponents, and even his friends, may give to his measures that hybridous character which mars their success; but let him be the leader of a party able and willing to support him, and British politics will soon break through that shroud which now seems to suffocate the nation." Mr. Roebuck, as usual, thought everything perfect since 1832 except the Whigs; but was obliged to admit, in order to please his constituents, that some reform was necessary because asked for. The most important event that has occurred in FRANCE during the last fortnight is the removal of M. Drouyn de Lhuys from the Foreign Office, and the appointment in his place of the Marquis de Moustier, the French ambassador at Constantinople. Such an event, occurring a few weeks after the negotiations with Prussia for the rectification of the French frontier, and just before the period fixed for the final accomplishment of the September Convention, has naturally given rise to a great deal of conjecture. That it is entirely without significance it would of course be folly to pretend; but it seems to us that in these speculations too little weight has been attached to the fact that in France |