life in it, and the life is gone, and we know not where it is."

Edith sighed heavily. "If there be a heart in Nature," said she, in a light but bitter tone," it is a very unsympathizing heart; perhaps it is more human for that very reason. You go out among the woods and fields when you are happy, and the quivering lights and dancing shadows-the blue sky fretted with bars of silver cloud-the low symphony of bees and waters, bearing up, as it were, the exulting vocal chorus of birds-all these things delight you and tell you that the earth is rejoicing with you. Go out when you are sorrowful, and not a light shall be quenched, not a cloud deepened, not a bird silenced. You are neither missed nor welcomed; there is neither scorn nor sympathy; there is a quiet, changeless indifference to you and all your troubles; and you may die, if you please, and of a broken heart too (if people ever do die of such a disease), and this Mother Nature, as she is satirically called, cares nothing for it. She is just the same and perhaps while your coffin is being let down beneath her greensward, she renews the very same magic effect of light and shade-the same transparent gleam of perishable beauty, which caught and chained your eye the last time you visited her in life. No, no; if I were unhappy I should wish to live in a little dark room, and never see the sunshine!"

"That would be a most scientific method of increasing your unhappiness," replied her friend. "Like the Irishman who said, I will be killed, I will be killed, and nobody shall help me.'"

"You may laugh at it if you like," cried Edith, with unusual petulance; "but ridicule, you know, is not argument. What possible comfort, now, could a man whose heart was really heavy derive from looking at a particular arrangement of forms and colours, or listening to a particular combination of sounds?"

"You might just as well ask what possible melody could be made out of the seven notes of the scale," answered Mrs. Dalton. "But it is folly to try to give a reason for all one's feelings."

"I do not understand you," said Edith; "I don't know on what principle you insist upon having reasons for some things and not for others. It was just the same with Mr. Thornton. Where art or feeling are concerned you seem to recognise mysteries beyond reason, and to believe without trying to understand; but it is not so in anything else; religion, for in

stance

"My dear Edith," interrupted Mrs. Dalton, rather warmly, "you could not make a greater mistake than in attributing to me a want of faith. It is contrary to my nature to doubt. I live by believing. But religion, you know, must not be confined to a few narrow dogmas, or a single bald and oppressive system. It is made up of great ideas, which must pervade everything and be discernible everywhere." "Yes," said Edith; "but it seems to me that you reverse the natural order. You make art include religion, if I may express it so. Now, I should have thought that religion, if it were true, must be the one great system which includes, as well as the one great idea which pervades, everything else. I can thoroughly understand making æsthetics religious; but I don't understand making religion æsthetical."

"It is æsthetical in itself," cried Mrs. Dalton. "It is not we who make it so. What can be so beautiful as truth? The goodness and mercy of God, his great purpose in working out the happiness of man by means of his purification, the full forgiveness of sin, and the gradual emancipation of the soul from its power as it

rises higher and higher in the scale of being, the victory of love, the reign of peace-these are the subjects of our faith. And are they not beautiful?" "They are," replied Edith, gloomily. "But there are a great many other things in the world besides these, which you seem to leave out of consideration. There is the painfulness of obedience,-there is the guilt of sin,-there is the shame of penitence. If these three could be disjoined from their companions, life would be easy enough; but it is not so, they are inseparable. And there is punishment, and grievous affliction, and desolation of heart: these have no place in your system, and yet they are very real. You put away all truths which are not beautiful; and yet it seems to me that you ought to reject all beauties which are not based upon truth."

Nay," said Mrs. Dalton, "the soul is like the body; it needs medicine as well as food, and sometimes even it needs a painful operation. But these, however distressing in themselves, are only the means of restoration to health."

"Follow out the comparison," said Edith. "There are other pains besides those which are sent for restoration. There are diseases which begin in agony and end in death. May not the soul be subject to

these also?"

Amy turned her eyes upon her friend's face with an anxious and inquiring expression, struck by a course of thought so unusual and so sombre. Edith's colour changed as she added, with a forced laugh, "Why do you look at me so? The idea is yours, not mine; I was only completing your simile."

"It is certainly possible," said Amy, "to look so exclusively at the dark side of life as to lose sight entirely of the lights and colours; but it seems to me an unnatural and ungrateful task so to do. Only look around you for one moment, and then doubt, if you can, that God meant his children to be happy!"

Edith lifted her eyes; the pomp of sunset had departed, and earth was donning the novice robe of twilight ere she betook herself to the silence and seclusion of night; she was enduring a separation from the life and splendour of day, as the only means whereby the quiet majesty of the congregated stars could be made visible to her. Through the black stems of the elms was seen a space of pale green sky, against which one tiny motionless cloud was suspended, dyed with a faint blush which still lingered from the last kiss of the sunbeams; the upper heavens were spangled with a thousand hues of wan and changeful light, passing through watery gold and soft lilac to the deep calin purple of the zenith, and kindling again into rose colour at the western horizon, where the departed sun had left his monument of glory, transient as human fame. Over the distance lay a lovely haze like that which hope weaves around the future, while nearer objects were clad in a mellow distinctness such as memory lends to the past. Streaks of gold glimmered among the foliage like fragments of light, caught and imprisoned ere sunset. The low murmur of a brook made the silence audible, like the breathings of a sleeping babe.

"Yes!" cried Edith, with that wayward vehemence which takes a kind of pleasure in recognising the omnipotence of sorrow; 66 yes, I can doubt it! This is all very beautiful, and very like happiness-that is to say, it is a thing which we see as a spectacle, but in which we have no part. It shows itself to us, and suffers us to study it, so that we may learn exactly how and where we are most capable of enjoying it, and then it passes by and leaves us.'

66 we

"My dearest Edith," said Amy, drawing her friend's shawl closely round her, and gently embracing her as she did 66 So, you are not sufficiently recovered yet to brave the chilliness of an October evening. Let us go in. And remember," added she, caressingly, have a thousand schemes of enjoyment for your visit here. I am not going to be content with the shabby fortnight which you promised me. We are to read, and walk, and play together; and I am determined not to let you escape me till you have quite recovered your strength and spirits. Godfrey is coming next week, you know; and I expect that it will take at least a month of his society to make you exactly what you

used to be."

"By learning indifference and contentment," replied Amy, "indifference to inevitable evils, contentment with attainable pleasures-never of course intermitting the effort to procure as much of the pleasure, and get rid of as much of the evil as you Few people are such adepts in the art of being happy as I am: I am just like a child—unless I am actually interfered with, I can make myself happy with a stick and a piece of string."

can.

By this time they had reached the hall-door, where they were met by a servant, with the message that Mr. Dalton was arrived, and had sent him to say that it was ten minutes past the usual dinner-hour, and he panied Edith to her room, and hovered about her, talking of a thousand different things, selecting and criticising her costume for the evening, and examining all the little arrangements made for her comfort and convenience.

Perhaps Edith had never felt so utterly miserable as at that moment. The silent and delicate sympathy of her friend made her conscious alike that she had been petulant, and that she had in part betrayed herself. She felt grateful-and yet not softened or humbled, though her high spirit rose into a kind of indignant self-contempt. She defied and disdained her own mental weakness at the moment in which she was suffering from it most acutely. Never had she been farther from opening her heart-yet never so oppressed by the sense of spiritual loneliness. She felt that there was a bitter truth in her words, and she rather exulted in the impotence of the arguments that had been brought forward against it; they had satisfied her before, and seemed consistent and real, but the Ithuriel spear of sorrow turned them into shadows with a touch. She pressed Amy's hand, and thanked her, and then added hurriedly as they walked towards the house,

"We have had a strange conversation for an evening like this, and I don't think, Amy, you have answered my questions satisfactorily. I am only talking speculatively, you know-one likes to turn one's thoughts about, and look at them from all sides. Now it seems to me that there are a great many places in the world, and a great many persons, and the persons are all made so as to fit the places, but all are different, and somehow or other, all, or nearly all, have come to be mismatched. So that each unhappy victim who is fast fixed in his wrong place, with the angles running into him and pinching him, making him as uncomfortable as possible, has a pleasant prospect of the place which would exactly fit him, but into which somebody else has got, who, perhaps, is suffering just as much as he is. And there is no possibility of change or exchange. How do you like my allegory?"

"I think there is a great deal of disagreeable truth in it," returned Mrs. Dalton, as they paused on the edge of the sweep to allow a carriage to pass them, which had apparently just left its occupant

"I always pester my favourite guests with a vast deal of superintendence on the first day of their arrival," said she;" afterwards I shall leave you to the bliss of perfect independence, unless you ask for the contrary. Now, Davis, don't be in a hurry—you are not arranging Miss Kinnaird's hair so gracefully as usual." She took the comb from the maid's hand, and began to smooth Edith's abundant tresses herself. "Oh, never mind!" said Edith; "I am afraid of being late."

66

Nay, it is scarcely seven o'clock yet-besides, your toilette will be over before mine, at any rate; and I am determined that you shall look your best. My reputation as a connoisseur depends upon it, you know. There! Davis shall finish your hair, while I tie up your bouquet."

A vase of hothouse flowers stood on the table, and from these Mrs. Dalton proceeded to select the most beautiful, some of which she wreathed around Edith's head, while the rest were arranged in a cluster for her bouquet. She did not go to her own toilette till her friend's was nearly completed.

Edith had never seen Mr. Dalton. She had been ill-too ill to come to Beechwood at the time originally intended, and on the morning of her arrival he was absent. He had gone to some agricultural meeting. She tried to interest herself about him, and to fancy what he would be like, and whether she should like him—she tried, in short, resolutely, and with a temporary, but delusive success, to take it for granted that she was not unhappy-that she could be interested in her friend's concerns just as if nothing had happened to herself-that, in fact, nothing had happened to her, which was to engross her thoughts, and subdue her spirits. With a heart out of which every atom of sunlight was gone, she tried to persuade herself that she could see as at noonday; her light was made darkness, and she shut her eyes steadily, and maintained that the darkness was light. There was something pitiable in the utter helplessness which this voluntary self-delusion betokened. It was like a child hiding its face in fear, that it may not see the rock which is about to fall upon it; the rock falls just the same, and crushes it.

She remembered all the little incidents which had led her to believe that Amy's husband was uncongenial to her, and admired the philosophy

which it derives its special sanctity-can scarcely be called in question. He is, in truth, the leader of a most forlorn hope. His discretion is equally unquestionable, though in a different sense. We do not inquire concerning the quantity or quality of that, of the existence of which in any quantity, how minute soever, we have no reasonable assurance. Let us, however, dismissing as beyond the scope of an article like the present the discussion of the casus belli, examine for a moment the plan of the attack and the nature of the weapons employed.

There is an elaborateness of preparation which led us to expect great things:-a kind of clearing of the ground before starting which seems to imply that Mr. F. Newman intends to go at a tremendous pace when he is once fairly off; and this is, perhaps, not unnecessary, as he appears from sundry indications to have projected taking a cursory view of all questions in science, art, and ethics, with a side-glance at theology, before he has done: our only comment whereupon is, that the view is very cursory indeed -a rapid sketch, in what Mr. J. D. Hardinge, in his work on Art, expressly terms the "bad bold style." Commencing with a contented admission of Bacon's great aphorism, that "Knowledge is power," and drawing therefrom the not very recondite inference that the intrinsic goodness of knowledge is in nowise implied in this assertion, he proceeds to charge the absence of such inference upon Lord Bacon and his followers as a sort of crime, turning round upon them with a very unexpected air of triumph, as though he had caught them in a dilemma; reminding us of the indignant magistrate's rebuke of poor Mr. Winkle for calling himself Daniel when his name was Nathaniel, the mistake having arisen solely from a slight difficulty of hearing in the worthy gentleman himself. Before Lord Bacon can be rebuked for not asserting that knowledge is necessarily and intrinsically good, it must be proved that he believed it to be so. This radical confusion of ideas runs through the whole of Mr. F. Newman's reasoning. In fact, it is almost impossible to discover what he is fighting against. Setting out with the assertion that all knowledge is good, you presently find him in hot pursuit of an ideal theory of some imaginary band of opponents, that knowledge is necessarily evil, which having caught, demolished, and hung up, quite to his and our satisfaction, we are not a little amazed to see him proceeding on the assumption, that by this said demolition he has proved the truth of his original assertion. There is no contending against such logic as this it is only necessary to expose it, lest the unwary reader, deceived by his placid exultation, and omitting to compare the conclusion with the commencement, should go away with the idea that he really has proved his point. When you see a man composedly establishing himself in an easy chair, you are apt to take it for granted that the chair has legs to stand upon.

Two graver fallacies pervade this portion of the discourse, which we shall simply indicate, and leave it to the reader's discrimination to detect more fully. The first is forgetfulness, or implied denial, of the great truth that we have an unchangeable and unerring standard of right and wrong, not erected by any succession of efforts on our own part,-not developed out of the working of human sciences and systems, but given to us by God as a trust for which we must answer, and a test by which we ought to try our actions here, as they will assuredly be tried by it hereafter. The question, therefore, whether direct

religious and moral instruction shall or shall not be an integral part of national education, is not, to Christians, a question of wisdom or folly, but simply one of faithfulness or unfaithfulness to duty. And this seems to be the real answer to Mr. F. Newman's second fallacy, which is at first sight somewhat more plausible. It is the old principle attributed to the Jesuits in another shape, the judging the means by the end. He points to admitted and deplored immoralities, and taxing them upon the system employed for their prevention, demands the abandonment of that system. Just as though you should counsel a farmer not to sow this year because last year's harvest was unproductive. Not so: labour we must; and if our labour fail, we must not diminish or intermit, but, on the contrary, double it. It is true we must examine diligently, lest the cause of the failure lie in the inefficiency of the labourers; we must concentrate and regulate our efforts; we must arrange our plans and economize our power. But we must never fold our hands and sit idly; neither must we waste all our time in enriching the soil, and trust to Providence to sow the crops. The seed is in our hands, and woe be to us if we sow it not! The reverse side of this argument is likewise employed by Mr. F. Newman, and it is equally fallacious. Apparent good may arise out of the abandonment of duty, just as apparent evil often springs from adherence to it; but the duty remains unaltered.

In judging actions and their results we are too apt to forget that Providence is constantly working to bring good out of evil; the good result is of the mercy of God, the evil action was of the guilt of man, and he is just as responsible for it when it is overruled for good as when it is allowed to produce evil. The character of the pupil may remain uninjured by the defects of his education, but this does not take from the guilt of the teacher. We have a standard set up -a task imposed, and we have no right, for any reason of expediency, how plausible soever, to forsake the one or neglect the other. Where the result seems inconsistent with the means employed, either in good or in evil, our business is to take it as a trial of faith, and go quietly on, doing our duty in the best manner we can. It may be as well, however, to mention that Mr. F. Newman, having announced with oracular decision that the former excesses of our universities were chargeable upon their system of moral and religious instruction, or rather were occasioned by the fact that they gave moral and religious instruction at all, proceeds, with a cool adjustment of cause and effect which would make the fortune of a natural philosopher, to assure us that the present improvement of tone and conduct has nothing whatever to do with that system, and must not be supposed to have any connexion with it. Now really this seems a little unfair, even in Mr. F. Newman. virulent nurserymaid that ever aggravated infancy, would not maintain a child was always naughty on purpose and never good except by accident. The redoubtable Mrs. MacStinger herself is the only embodiment of this species of reasoning that we have met with, before Mr. F. Newman. After this, sneers at blindness, bigotry, or prejudice, come with rather an ill grace from his pen.

The most

The next paragraph which demands our attention contains a vivid and poetical sketch of the miseries of medieval barbarism, for which Mr. F. Newman, having more suo assumed the fact, proceeds more suo to assign the cause. This he conceives to have been the prevalence of sorcery and the malignant temper of

the enchanters by whom the weapons of the Black Art were wielded. We were a little startled by the novelty of this view, and felt disposed to inquire for a moment whether we were not reading a fairy tale or an allegory, instead of a speech delivered at the opening of a great educational institution. But the happy delusion did not last. The manner in which our author applies the lesson, derived from this mode of contemplating the past, to our own times, is so striking that we must indulge ourselves in an extract.

"If the study of sorcery had been public and free to all, it could not much longer have seemed evil; but while it was uncertain how many possessed this wonderful science—what was their relative proficiency-and up to what limits their power extended, no man could speculate even on the probability that the bad designs of the one would be checked by the virtue or the interests of the other. Thus it was not the knowledge, and the power derived from it, at which human nature shuddered, but the appropriation or monopoly of it by a few, who constituted a secret brotherhood, perhaps in league against the rest of their species. Such precisely is the nature of the dangers to be feared," &c.

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The italics are our own. This idea is very awful. It is impossible to contemplate without trembling the nearness of a danger so mysterious. A secret brotherhood in league against the rest of their species! It makes a reviewer's flesh creep to have to copy such a sentence. And a few lines lower, the prophet speaks more plainly, and gives us a straightforward warning against turning the academic clergyman into a professor of the black art." Heaven forbid that any Englishman should ever make such an attempt! We can fancy the consternation of the reverend subjects of the metamorphosis, as the spect of their probable fate begins to open upon them. What nerves must the man require, to whose gifted eyes the terrific vision just revealed itself! We wonder whether Mr. F. Newman ever sleeps nights.

pro

pro

Our fears are, however, relieved by the smiling picture which our orator presently offers us of the Utopian felicity of these favoured times. Man, who began life as a monkey, seems to be fast developing into an angel. Wars and tumults have ceased, and their renewal is no longer within the limits of bability. The reign of Peace, Love, and Liberty, has actually begun upon earth. Stay-was there not a faint cry from Algeria? Has opium so effectually soothed the Chinamen into slumber, that they have no voice to protest against the conclusion? Is Caubul forgotten? Are there no stiffened corpses of slaughtered Sikhs drying in the Indian sun? Away with such unsavoury reminiscences! Mr. F. Newman is ready with his answer-somewhat allegorically shaped, as usual. “The British Association," says he, "is the great fact which typifies-(what?)-which typifies THE STATE OF THINGS." With this delicious vagueness we are quite content. It must mean something, and as we are quite unable to discover what, we gladly accept it as meaning whatever Mr. F. Newman may please.

By this time we are pretty well accustomed to the lecturer's manner of dealing with fancies as facts, and facts as fancies, and are, therefore, not quite so much astonished as we otherwise should have been at his next grand coup de théâtre. He is overtaken in a metaphor, and he makes the most of it. We give the passage entire :

"Break down the walls of exclusiveness; let the wind of heaven play through the dark chambers of pretension; pour the natural light into the desks and drawers of

official technicality; and a healthier, sweeter breath soon comes forth from professional halls, when scholastic and traditionary lore is forced to endure the gaze of strong native intelligence. ALL THIS IS NOTORIOUS."

The last sentence of the quotation is the one which amazed us. It is not then, as we at first held it to be, a somewhat clumsy complication of metaphorical which has actually happened, and which is now expressions it is a simple description of something matter of notoriety. We are a little puzzled by the phraseology, but we endeavour to receive it with that absolute submission of the understanding which must always be the first step required of Mr. F. Newman's pupils. What a subject for a picture! Imagine the ancient walls of Cambridge levelled with the ground, and the venerable master of Trinity, fit representative of "scholastic and traditionary lore," confronting Mr. Francis Newman, the allegorical embodiment of "strong native intelligence," among the ruins! We wonder which of the two would first stare the other out of countenance. Yet, if all tales be true, Dr. Whewell has a vigorous mode of repelling intruders from the precincts of his dominions, which might lead Mr. F. Newman to think twice ere he encounters it.

One word more, and we have done. Mr. F. Newman says that he dares scarcely allude to the beneficial action of increasing knowledge on religious sentiments, "lest he should offend against the proprieties of the place." The expression is singularly well chosen. There is, we hope, scarcely a place to be found in England, against the "proprieties" of which an exposition of the "religious sentiments" which could lead to such principles as are propounded in this discourse, would not offend. And among the many causes which, under God, have conduced to this state of public opinion among us, we hold that the tone and temper fostered by the system of collegiate instruction, bequeathed to us by our fathers, and very imperfectly followed out by ourselves, stand in the foremost rank. Long may they continue as they are; the only change which we wish to see is a fuller Restoration!

We have no quarrel with Mr. F. Newman, beyond the subject of the present article. His personal chabe blameless, and his talents of a high order. But it is absolutely necessary to show, that when a man sets himself to oppose the first simple dictates of conscience and the plain law of God, no degree of amiability can render him respectable, no amount of genius can save him from being ridiculous.

A TALE OF FLORENCE:

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE YOUTHFUL LIFE OF DANTE

ALIGHIERI.

L.

"Dante was born at Florence, in the year 1265. He met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grew up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account of this."-CARLYLE, Hero Worship.

It was on one of the first days of spring, in the year 1274, that a festive meeting of friends was gathered together in the palace of Folco Portinari, one of the richest citizens of Florence, then exulting in the strength and life of her new-found liberty.