observances which we have now been advocating. It is vehemently asserted by some, that the result of such a system of teaching is to delude the people into resting in a mere ceremonial religion, a fair outward framework without vitality within, which supersedes and kills the inner life in the soul which it allures. This is a plausible statement. But let us recollect that inasmuch as it is the propensity of man's fallen nature to mar even the most holy things, and turn the best means of good into sources of moral poison-it becomes inevitable in legislating for the multitude that there should be in every system proposed a possible tendency to certain ill effects on which unholiness may fasten, and bring to full effect. Either way some risk must be incurred, and we can but seek to decide which is the lesser and which the greater evil.

In the present instance the distinction seems to us too plain to be mistaken. Be it remembered that the classes whom we would seek to influence by the force of outward custom, are our outcast and ignorant poor. Others more favoured, to whom the sources of Catholic truth are opened even to their very fountain-head and spring, may linger in the avenues of knowledge! but for the hapless people who sit in darkness among us-whether of the twain is preferable? that they should remain in a careless and torpid state because they have no man to tell them of these things, or that they should have a link, though not the best one abstractedly, between them and the truth. Admitting to the very uttermost the danger of a religion of form, admitting that people would rely on the outward ceremonies too much, to the exclusion of efforts at inward purity and discipline of soul,-there will come an hour when, trembling on the brink of eternity, piercing through all the mists of earth to the Light of the Presence to which it is fast approaching, and appalled by its own immortality, the spirit must uprise to demand and seek the Truth it hath never known: then, in that supreme moment,-let us put the question fairly,—which of the two will have most chance of finding in his past experience some aliment whereon to build a faith, wherein to found his hope? He whose soul, wandering in darkness from the cradle to the grave, hath never encountered so much as a faint beam reflected from the great glory of the living truth; or he who in that last agony of search can fly back to grasp at the significant rites and customs that had no meaning for him in the days of his flesh, and fasten, with the keen avidity of his new perception, on the things unseen, of which they were the type and shadow.

ART. V.-Anthologia Polyglotta: a Selection of Versions in various Languages, chiefly from the Greek Anthology. By HENRY WELLESLEY, D.D. Principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford. London: Murray. 1849.

IT requires but little penetration to see that this work is essentially a labour of love. Even without the knowledge which those who are acquainted with Oxford possess of Dr. Wellesley's various accomplishments,-his sympathy with artistic beauty in all its forms, a chance observer would at once pronounce that the Editor is a man who has taken up his subject from the mere pleasure which a devotion to it inspires, and pursued it with a zeal which could hardly be supplied by any other motive short of a high sense of duty, such as one does not expect to find dictating in a question of belles lettres. This enthusiasm does not manifest itself, as is so often the case now-a-days, in elaborate attention to external decorations. Whether the reason is to be sought in the moderation of Dr. Wellesley himself or in the economy of the publisher, the book is much more simply got up than many of its class; for instance, than Milman's Horace, which we so lately noticed, or, to take a yet more cognate example, the Anthologia Oxoniensis. There are no vignettes, no ornamental page-borders; the appearance of the volume is graceful, but nothing more: and the beauty alike of originals and translations is left to be gathered from pages of plain printing, closer than it would have been had attractive typography been the only thing considered. But the internal requirements of the work have been much less sparingly consulted. The Editor has ransacked all sources from which help was likely to be derived; searched not merely previous collections of translations from the Greek epigrams, avowedly so entitled, but other and less obvious places; versions of classical authors, where here and there a flower from the Anthology is to be found incidentally introduced into the notes; nay, even the columns of bygone magazines, with their chaos of fugitive pieces, good, bad, and indifferent; and, moreover, which is the great feature of the publication after all, he has obtained the aid of some of the most distinguished versifiers, Latin or English, that his University has to boast. The result is a book which, whatever we may have to object against either its design or its execution, must secure many pleasing recollections to those who have been engaged in it, and afford much scope for

agreeable relaxation to all who have a taste for the minor elegances, or as modern parlance would call them, the amenities of literature.

Still, it should be remembered that the praise of having performed a labour of love is not necessarily a very high one. Love, however elevating it may be in itself, (we speak as general moralists,) depends for a great part of its worth and dignity on the character of its object. Ought, we were told the other day on very competent authority, is a word peculiarly discordant in love; but though love when fully embraced supersedes law, and is in fact a law to itself, it is not so clear that law has nothing to do with its beginnings. Though it need not, and mostly will not, spring from a sense of duty, it may fairly be required to coincide with it. As we are not dealing with the matter in the gross, we will not stop to defend ourselves from a foreseen charge of having assumed in the very wording of our position the point at issue, but merely remark, that what is true of men and women, is true of things literary. A book is not to be commended merely because it is written or compiled con amore. Any merit in the subject may be enhanced indefinitely by a warm genial treatment: but the devotion of an author to his task does not in the least prove that he ought to have undertaken it at all. Thus, after cursorily satisfying ourselves as to the spirit in which the Anthologia Polyglotta is executed, we are driven back on the previous question, whether the idea of the work is a desirable one; whether the command of Oxford talent which it shows has been discreetly exercised, or no,a profitable employment of labour, or a waste however insignificant. Some may think that it is ungracious to raise the question unless we mean to prejudge it; an imputation which we sincerely beg leave to deprecate. The utility of verse-composition has been so frequently disputed in these days that there can be no delicacy in discussing it, even though our mind were fully made up in its favour. Moreover, Dr. Wellesley himself seems to invite a fair consideration of it, as the first sentence of his Preface speaks of the aim as a laudable one, and almost immediately afterwards, the present Oxford educational crisis is hinted at as giving especial interest to publications of this kind.

A prejudice against an increased cultivation of ornamental scholarship is not necessarily utilitarian, in the low and vulgar sense of the word. Utility, indeed, as people are beginning to see, is a term of many shades of meaning: and there is no paralogism more frequently heard than that which uses it in one way in the premises and in another in the conclusion. Usque ad nauseam we are told that this is a utilitarian age, and

so far rightly. It is true, too, that those who first introduced the expression as the watchword of their philosophy did almost as much as they could to discredit it. The simplest form which it takes, we suppose, is the Cur quis non prandeat hoc est of Persius's brute-creature of a soldier--the assertion that every path which does not converge more or less directly to a good dinner, as its focal point, is to be avoided by a prudent man. In the same spirit we still see prophets of a golden age of material prosperity, agreeing with Dr. Strauss that the genius of Christianity and the genius of railroads are convertible things. These, however, are not without their truth, as it may be safely asserted that the existence of physical evil is one great impediment to the removal of moral evil, though logic may not require, and religion absolutely forbid us to add, as a corollary, that the better men's bodies are the better their souls are likely to be. Ascending higher, we find that Utilitarianism is no reproach at all, but rather a positive praise. It resolves itself into a reaching after some end-such an end as that proposed by Bacon--the glory of God and the relief of man's estate. Nor can we see how, on a moral or religious hypothesis, any one can divest himself of a regard to this end, and wish to be looked upon solely as the artist or the litterateur. No doubt a difference is to be made in the degree in which reference is had consciously to the primary object according to the precise nature of the secondary one. The ludicrous pictures which common sense draws of the mind and manner of a man who should desire to feel himself, in the most trivial as well as in the gravest matters, to be acting on an immediate sense of duty, are at once confirmed, if not anticipated, by the moral sentiment of reality. S. Paul cannot have meant that the spirit in which we eat and drink should be precisely the same in degree as that in which we perform the most solemn acts, though it may be impossible to overrate the value of being reminded that no matter in any way connected with man can be simply and purely indifferent. So we may be glad to observe that an Oxford writer on Logic has omitted, in a second edition, a Southeyan address to his 'small book,' bidding it to go forth and do the work of the Church. Still, if we mistake not, the omission does not argue that he is one whit less sensible of the moral responsibility of publishing even a treatise on pure reasoning, but only that he has learnt not to waste expressions of enthusiasm which may be wanted on higher occasions. If he had judged that he could be more usefully employed than in elaborating a new theory of Judgments, he would doubtless have seen it right to relinquish the work; putting it forward, he has already professed his utilitarian purpose, and need not

make any formal proclamation. In fact this temper of Utilitarianism is found precisely among those who are most ready to congratulate themselves upon their freedom from it. The mere literary man has the cui bono fever upon him in one of its worst forms. So far as it might lead him to ask himself how he can most benefit his fellows, he is happily free from it so far as it brings every aspiration down to a low standard,-the standard of personal enjoyment,-beyond which it is not worth while to go, he will hardly be able to plead exemption. The evil lies in a want of proper estimation of high ends; and the remedy is to be found not in ignoring ends altogether, and seeking in each pursuit no object beyond itself, but in clearly understanding their relative positions, the lower being in all cases looked upon as means to the higher.

There can be no doubt that the taste for verse composition which characterised the most distinguished men of Oxford some time back, is now very much on the wane. It is at least a couple of hundred years old-perhaps more, for we really cannot afford to examine the point minutely-as a reference to the names which adorn the Musæ Oxonienses will at once prove. The height of its prevalence was unquestionably during the last century; a fact which was to have been expected from the literary character of the period in other respects. Whatever may be the merit of the Latin verses produced in England from the times of the Civil War to the Restoration-and those who recollect Cowley, himself a habitué of Oxford, though educated at Cambridge, will not be disposed to undervalue it— the intellectual temper of the men who gave a tone to their generation was not exactly classical. Platonism and scholastic subtlety were in possession of the living poetry of the country; and productions in a dead language either partook of the same spirit, or existed as something external, and consequently unreal. But to the era of Anne and the Georges the cultivation of classical versifying was congenial and appropriate. The increased attention bestowed on style had at last been rewarded with success by the establishment of a more or less definite standard in verse and prose. Form and matter were brought into harmony by a process which strict analysis might, perhaps, resolve into a raising of the one and a lowering of the other. The weight and effect of the weapons might have been diminished; but at any rate men knew how to use them perfectly. It is just an atmosphere like this, serene and untroubled, if not quite transparent, which is most favourable to the growth of a merely imitative art. Addison is the type, and a very pleasing one in his way, of an eighteenth century litterateur; and he was a great proficient in Latin verses. Passing over