for a new system and form of life on the other, had got into their veins. Obedience, discipline and order, and all the established sanctities of home and family, of law and government, were to them tyrannical prejudices of the past. To both these weary souls the conditions of Revolution lasted all their lives long; they never got out of that fatal atmosphere. Even what they loved became repulsive to them when it was associated with the idea of duty. The fantastic freedom of a classic Faun, to roam where it would, to enjoy as it would, to dart away at every impulse, was in Shelley's ethereal nature, only half human and altogether irresponsible' (iii. 129).

་

We demur to these last phrases. A Faun' is not a particularly ethereal' conception, and there was nothing of heavenward aspiration in such a 'nature' as is here described; and to call it 'only half human and altogether irresponsible is surely to use 'unreal words.' What Mrs. Oliphant means, we presume, is what Principal Shairp has expressed in the suggestion that Shelley 'was in some way deficient in rational and moral sanity,'' an hypothesis which one is glad to accept. 'Byron,' proceeds Mrs. Oliphant, was of the earth, earthy-a totally different kind of being. He followed the law of his appetites and senses, without any doubt on the point that it was bad to do so, but with a braggart's pleasure in the badness, as a proof of his courage and power of rebellion against heaven itself, which he was never unwilling to appease privately by acknowledgment of his insubordination. His was in every way the lower side of the great

rebellion.'

6

Mrs. Oliphant concludes the chapter with this sentence:

'By this time, perhaps who can tell?—these changed and perfected voices, in fullest harmony and measure, are preparing for us the songs to be sung in heaven' (iii. 131).

This is to touch somewhat too lightly on a very solemn and awful theme. What have we to do with speculating as to the position of two such souls before the Eternal Justice and Mercy? Let us say this only, that they and 'all souls are His;' and let us remember that those who have had opportunities which were denied to men so richly endowed, and so easily withdrawn (as Mrs. Oliphant remarks) from the training of a wide experience, cannot hope to take part in the 'songs' of the next life, unless in this life they recognize His service as their freedom.

We must leave unnoticed several figures which pass before the readers of Mrs. Oliphant's third volume. Many pages

1 Aspects of Poetry, p. 232.

are very amusing, and some recall the, welcome memory of our first acquaintance with Miss Edgeworth's Irish tales (now, we fear, almost unknown) and with Miss Austen's Pride and Prejudice, or, dearer still to our taste, with the inexhaustible charm of her Persuasion. Passing on to graver matters, we find the special advantage of Mrs. Oliphant's guidance in the vivid personal touches which point beyond the passionless austerity of Hallam's work to the four bereavements which desolated his home; or tenderly remind us that Lingard, the 'honest and dignified partisan,' was a 'humble priest, with his little flock about him, saying his Mass in his village chapel; retiring among his books, interrupted, perhaps, in the middle of a chapter to carry salvation to some sick bed; putting away the Cardinal's hat, with perhaps a touch of fine impatience, as an interruption to "the progress of my History." There is a lively picture, too, of the quaintnesses and weaknesses of Bentham, followed up by an account of 'the Utilitarian theory,' which has been contributed by C. F. Oliphant,' and from which we quote a few words.

1

'That its tendency to increase the general happiness is an element, and a considerable element, in the goodness of an action, no one would venture to deny ; but Sir James Mackintosh, with the bulk of modern philosophers, while acknowledging this, yet made the distinction that, while the idea is inseparable from our notion of moral approbation, it is entirely and easily to be distinguished from the sources of our moral action,' &c. (iii. 360).

Three or four pages are given to the ‘astounding training' of John Stuart Mill, who is described as 'one of the strangest compounds of human qualities and paradoxes which the world has known . . . . whose rigidity of second nature, the art and influence of his father, never ceased to jar against, yet never overcame, the docility and softness of the first.' In that father, one of the most unloveable of men, the solemn pedantry of the philosophical Scot was united to a systematic educational tyranny, without ruth or thought for the flesh and blood he was straining,' yet, from his own standpoint, well intended. Mrs. Oliphant just glances at his unbelief: we may add that it was not a dogmatic atheism, but a formulated agnosticism; that it was probably intensified by recoil from Calvinism; that it involved a hatred of religion

1 But when we are told that Lingard 'died before anybody had dreamed that Cardinal Archbishops would flourish again in England' (p. 301), we must observe that Mrs. Oliphant, at p. 366, dates his death in 1851, the year after the restoration of the 'hierarchy.'

as the greatest enemy to morality;' and that it was inculcated on his son with a vehement absolutism which would go far to determine the latter's posture of mind upon the subject. It is with regret for the early death of one who had already done good service to the cause of faith, and who was a contributor to our own pages, that we refer to a paper on the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, by Walter R. Browne, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.1

The last chapter in Mrs. Oliphant's work is devoted to theologians; but there was not much theology in the period which she had undertaken to survey. She has something to say about the Evangelical school, which in the beginning of the century ... was supreme;' and she notes with the halfamused air of a student of 'the curious intricacies of nature' the combination, in their typical men, of very unworldly sentiments with a 'prosperous, luxurious, enjoyable life . . . in a pleasant commotion of congenial society." She describes the object of William Wilberforce in his Practical View--the awakening of a real sense of Christian truth and duty in the well-to-do and upper-class people, whose professions were belied by their easy-going irreligiousness. And here she remarks, with a touch of her delicate, half-veiled sarcasm—

'It is to be feared that to Wilberforce that broad and conciliatory treatment which translates the time-worn language of Christianity into the phraseology of its philosophical opponents, by way of betraying these latter tenderly into something like faith, or approval at least, would have appeared flat blasphemy. He would have had no understanding for the process which turns the love of Christ into the Enthusiasm of Humanity. The society which he addressed was not one which required such methods. It was as much Christian as orthodoxy required. . . . What made the heart of the good man burn within him was to see how completely it could ignore the creed it held. . . . The insidious idea that it did not much matter what a man believed, so long as he did believe sincerely, and lived a life in accordance with his principles, was to him a poison terrible to contemplate' (iii. 377).

In this latter sentence, however, we see a different form of evil from the spiritual apathy which had made an orthodox belief to be like salt that had lost its savour; for it is the idea of popular Latitudinarianism. The remaining pages of this chapter are taken up with the religious careers of Dean Milner, Simeon, Robert Hall, Chalmers, and Irving. Simeon's devotion to the service and love of Christ' is duly recognized, while his collection of 'skeleton sermons' draws forth some

1 Published by the Christian Evidence Society in 1874.

banter. Hall, whom some readers will know best through Lord Lytton's Caxtons, is described as a man of 'the most dauntless heroic nature.' It seems odd to call Chalmers 'the great Dissenter;' but he is also estimated as 'a primitive prophet, a medieval leader, and a Scotch Borderer;' and his language on 'the modesty of true science' tempts Mrs. Oliphant to remark that he 'might have been less certain' on that point 'had he lived to our day.' We gladly conclude our extracts with her striking description of Irving as having 'no sense of any limit save in that withholding of God's grace which is the most terrible of punishments, the saddest proof of man's indifference or unwillingness to seek His aid.'

Quotations less numerous than those in which we have been led to indulge would give our readers a fair impression of the beauty and energy of Mrs. Oliphant's style, and also, we must add, of its peculiar delicious humorousness, and of a pathos the more impressive because its tone is so subdued. She can, indeed, write exquisite English, but occasionally a slight degree of carelessness is observable. We have noticed one or two cases in which, for instance, 'he' occurs in a dependent clause where the grammar requires him.' Here and there, too, there is an inaccuracy, as when Louis XIV. is referred to as the father, instead of the great-grandfather, of Louis XV. (i. 18); or when some words of S. Peter are attributed to S. Paul (i. 83). Sacred poetry is not much to Mrs. Oliphant's taste; in a gentle sort of way she grudges the popularity which 'the multitude,' or 'simple-hearted religious crowd,' awards to it (ii. 352, 383); in speaking of Heber and of Milman she does not name the hymn for Trinity Sunday, and seems insensible to the merits of the Fall of Ferusalem and the Martyr of Antioch.

We conclude by thanking the accomplished authoress for a work which surpasses many a novel in charm and interest, while it fulfils the requirements of a serious Literary History.

ART. II.—THE TEXTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF

GREEK LITURGIES.

I. Liturgiarum Orientalium Collectio. Edited by E. RENAUDOT. (Francofurti ad Monum, 1847. A Reprint.) 2. Introduction to the History of the Holy Eastern Church. By J. M. NEALE. (London, 1850.)

3. Analecta Ante-Nicæna.

(London, 1852.)

4. Liturgies Eastern and Western. Edited by C. E. HAMMOND. (Oxford, 1878.)

5. The Greek Liturgies, chiefly from Original Authorities. Edited by C. A. SWAINSON. (Cambridge, 1884.)1

A VAST advance has been made in England in the last half century in the study of Liturgiology, both Eastern and Western. Ancient MS. Service Books have been edited with care and copiously illustrated. Mediæval Missals and Breviaries have been reprinted under the auspices of Literary Societies and University Presses. Liturgies 'ad normam hodie acceptam,' always accessible as far as the Western Church was concerned, were difficult to procure in the case of the Oriental rites until they were placed within every student's reach by the more or less recent editions of Renaudot, Neale, Bunsen, Hammond, and Swainson, the full titles of whose works have been prefixed to this Article.

We desire to call special attention to the last-named work, not only because it is the most recent, but because it has struck out a new path, making important investigations possible, and putting important conclusions within our reach. The previously-named editors, with the single and partial exception of Bunsen, had, so far as Greek Liturgies go, merely reprinted the texts of earlier and scarcer editions without testing their accuracy, or collating fresh manuscripts. Dr. Swainson, with the aid of able Continental coadjutors, has not only tested the accuracy of the labours of his predecessors, and given us finally-corrected transcripts of certain well-known MSS., but he has either printed or collated, for the first time, a considerable number of earlyand late-medieval MSS. of importance.

We present a résumé of his labours in this respect,

1 Throughout the following pages the fourth book in the above list is referred to as H., the fifth book as S.