refrained from doing it, sincerely, I may tell you, on the ground that this admired life of mine was precious. I will heap no more clumsy irony on it: I can pity it. Do you see now how I stand? I know that I cannot rely on the king's luck or on the skill of his generals, or on the power of his army, or on the spirit in Lombardy: neither on men nor on angels. But I cannot draw back. I have set going a machine that's merciless. From the day it began working, every moment has added to its force. Do not judge me by your English eyes-other lands, other habits; other habits, other thoughts. And besides, if honour said nothing, simple humanity would preserve me from leaving my band to perish like a flock of sheep."

He uttered this with a profound conviction of his quality as leader that escaped the lurid play of self-inspection which characterised what he had previously spoken, and served singularly in bearing witness to the truth of his charge against himself.

"Useless!" he said, waving his hand at anticipated remonstrances. "Look with the eyes of my country; not with your own, my friend. I am disgraced if I do not go out. My friends are disgraced if I do not head them in Brescia-sacrificed!-murdered! -how can I say what? Can I live under disgrace or remorse? The king stakes on his army; I on the king. Whether he fights and wins, or fights and loses, I go out. I have promised my men— promised them success, I believe !-God forgive me! Did you ever see a fated man before? None have plotted against mc. I have woven my own web, and that's the fatal thing. I have a wife, the sweetest woman of her time. Good night to her! our parting is over."

He glanced at his watch. "Perhaps she will be at the door below. Her heart beats like mine just now. You wish to say that you think me betrayed, and therefore I may draw back? Did you not hear that Bergamo has risen? The Brescians are up too by this time. Gallant Brescians! they never belie the proverb in their honour; and to die among them would be sweet if I had all my manhood about me. Shall I call down Violetta d'Isorella ?"

"Yes; see her; set the woman face to face with me!" cried Merthyr, sighting a gleam of hope.

"And have the poor wretch on her knees, and the house buzzing?" Carlo smiled. "Can she bear my burden if she be ten times guilty? Let her sleep. The Brescians are up :-that's an hour that has struck, and there's no calling it to move a step in the rear. Brescia under the big eastern hill which throws a cloak on it at sunrise! Brescia is always the eagle that looks over Lombardy! And Bergamo! you know the terraces of Bergamo. Aren't they like a morning sky?

Dying there is not death; it's flying into the dawn. You Romans envy us. Come, confess it; you envy us. You have no Alps, no crimson hills, nothing but old walls to look on while you fight. Farewell, Merthyr Powys. I hear my servant's foot outside. My horse is awaiting me saddled, a mile from the city. Perhaps I shall see my wife again at the door below, or in Heaven. Addio! Kiss Luciano for me. Tell him that I knew myself as well as he did, before the end came. Enrico, Emilio, and the others tell them I love them. I doubt if there will ever be but a ghost of me to fight. beside them in Rome. And there's no honour, Merthyr, in a ghost's fighting, because he's shot-proof; so I won't say what the valiant disembodied I may do by-and-by."

He holds his hands out, with the light soft smile of one who asks forgiveness for flippant speech, and concluded firmly: "I have talked enough, and you are the man of sense I thought you; for to give me advice is childish when no power on earth could make me follow it. Addio! Kiss me."

They embraced. Merthyr said no more than that he would place messengers on the road to Brescia to carry news of the king's army. His voice was thick, and when Carlo laughed at him, his sensations strangely reversed their situations.

There were two cloaked figures at different points in the descent of the stairs. These rose severally at Carlo's approach, took him to their bosoms, and kissed him in silence. They were his mother and Laura. A third crouched by the door of the courtyard, which was his wife.

Merthyr kept aloof until the heavy door rolled a long dull sound. Vittoria's head was shawled over. She stood where her husband had left her, groping for him with one hand, that closed tremblingly hard on Merthyr when he touched it. Not a word was spoken in

the house.

GEORGE MEREDITH.

THE THEORY OF MISSIONARY EFFORT.

It is a lesson of experience that a full-grown tree cannot be transplanted without great risk from the place where it has grown to another. It will either die altogether, or else wither to the ground ere it can take root in the new soil, to throw up sickly shoots of its own after long delay.

This may be taken as an illustration of what I cannot but term a fundamental error in the popular theory of modern missions. It illustrates the impossibility of transplanting successfully a fully developed creed or church into a foreign land. It is an exotic, and is sure to die down to the ground ere it has a chance of becoming acclimatised. Starting from this suggestive illustration, I wish to examine from a reasonable point of view a probable theory of missionary success. It will not be expected that the subject should be considered in this place in its higher or spiritual aspect. Like all great movements, and, indeed, it may be said, like all great duties, there is here a Divine and a human side. There is a hidden spring, but there is an exhibited agency; and in a place where it is not suitable to do more than strongly acknowledge the existence and the necessity of the hidden spring which gives the power, it may yet be usefully attempted to analyse and study the agency by which that concealed power may practically be best applied.

It is probably only a small section of the public that really believes modern missionary effort to be a grand success. No one can speak of "nations being born in a day," as in earlier times. Few can deny that the Church's efforts to extend her borders have been met with many stern repulses; and there are many, among whom the writer is one, who deem that this fact should lead us to review and possibly to reconstruct our theory of missionary effort. It is but honest and right to look facts fully in the face. The truth cannot be kept for ever hidden by exaggerating occasional successes, so as to obliterate more frequent defeats.

In the presence of what is considered to be a missionary church in Ireland, the proportion of successful to futile missionary effort seems to the impartial observer very small indeed. It is with no desire to disparage what has been done that this is said. The lovers of our ecclesiastical system and of the creed of the English Church cannot refuse to admit that the borders of that Church have been extended in certain directions to a pleasing and satisfactory degree;-for example, in the promontory of Dingle, and in the district of West Connaught. This extension is best marked by the unques

tionable fact of the creation of numerous new congregations, and the erection and endowment of not a few new churches. We have the authority of the late Bishop of Tuam, once anything but a zealous advocate of missions, for saying that whereas "five-andtwenty years ago the greatest number of churches in West Connaught district was 7, congregations 13, and clergymen 11, there are now in the same space of ground 57 congregations, 30 churches, and 35 clergymen. There has, therefore, taken place within that district during twenty-five years, a total increase of 44 congregations, 23 churches, and 24 clergymen." (See an Appeal from the Bishop of Tuam, dated January, 1865.)

But allowing the fullest value to these facts, the proposition seems unshaken that the proportion of successful to futile missionary effort on the part of the Irish Church is very small indeed; while if to the instances in which efforts have proved useless the cases in which they have not been made at all be added, the result becomes still more dejecting in the eyes of those who believe that one of the chief aims of the Irish Establishment is the promoting of missions to the Roman Catholic Church. To look, however, to the more distant and, perhaps, more generally acknowledged scenes of Protestant missions, it can scarcely be denied that for a considerable number of years, the friends of our existing societies have been in the habit of pointing with great enthusiasm to the successful planting of Christianity in New Zealand as one of the most unquestionable indications of Protestant missionary success. Not a pulpit, not a platform but rang with the great "fact" that Christianity had subdued the hostile feelings of those noble but savage tribes; that it had banished cannibalism, and reduced to a minimum intemperance, cruelty, and superstition; and that, in point of fact, the state of New Zealand was a standing proof that, judging the principle by the fruit, we had carried on our Evangelistic labours on a true theory, and with eminent and assured success.

It is again with no desire to decry those enthusiastic hopes, and to damp those ardent convictions, that a critic points his finger to that land and says, "Look at it now. Where is the subduing of cruelty? Where the victory over intemperance and lust? Where the abolition of cannibalism? Where the overthrow of superstition? The

(1) "There are 100,000 professing Christians in New Zealand," said the Rev. Mr. Whiting, at the Conference on Missions, in Liverpool; adducing the fact as a proof of Missionary success. "It is worthy of observation," says the Rev. W. P. Walsh, Donnellan Lecturer, Dublin, 1861, "that the Missionary fields which have eventually proved most fruitful were originally the most unpromising. In New Zealand, the Society Islands, and Sierra Leone, which may be regarded as the most flourishing mission stations in the world, the missionaries toiled incessantly for years before a single convert was brought in." And again, Mr. Walsh says, "New Zealand, cannibal and idolatrous, has come to sit, like the dispossessed demoniac, at the feet of Jesus" (pp. 145, 147).

light shining there so lately seems at least for a time to have suffered a horrible eclipse."

The chapel-going Baptist negroes of Jamaica afford the latest addition to the list of marked exceptions to the too hasty rule that the adoption of Christianity by the heathen has abolished the savage propensities of their former state, and induced a popular regeneration. But it is by no means necessary-by no means sufficient-to review only those missionary fields wherein vast backsliding has disappointed and damped the hopes of the laborious preachers of the faith. To the eye of the impartial and reflecting the negative aspect of the subject is yet more suggestive. For one country where the cross, once planted, has been thrown down or desecrated, we can point to many where it has not been found possible to erect it all, or at least to plant it in such a manner as should furnish the slightest hope that it could be left to stand alone without the prop of extraneous help in money or missionaries. If report speaks truly, there are to be found in many Indian missions a large number of so-called converts whose attachment to the new faith can be explained on grounds much less satisfactory than that of mature conviction. There are accusations of a "hothouse" system-of the multiplication of old hangers-on, whose allegiance is rendered questionable by an inspection of the alms list of the missionary churches. Besides this, there is no denying that on the most favourable estimate the proportion of those Christianised, even outwardly, to those unshaken in their belief of their established superstition, is almost infinitesimal. It is said by the societies that this is the result of the paucity of workers. But it may be asked, what is the proportion in the most successful fields of labour of those who have been under instruction to those successfully influenced? What is the proportion of converts even in the missionary schools, such as in the Robert Money School at Bombay, or in the smaller institutions at other mission stations? Surely of all places the missionary schools offer the fullest opportu nity of testing the value of our present system without let or hindrance.

I need scarcely pursue this portion of the subject, because I believe it is pretty generally felt that, in spite of the undeniable devotion of many a missionary to the cause for which he sacrifices his home, his life, his prospects,-in spite of the almost apostolic labour of not a few self-denying and true men, such as Martyn, Bishop Wilson, Ragland, Fox, and Judson, whose honour and whose crown it is not for man to take away, the result, viewed on the whole, is as I have stated: the successes, on the most hopeful computation, are absolutely infinitesimal when brought in contrast to the necessities of the world at any given moment; how much more when it is considered that generations are slipping away into the