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Be hate that fruit or love that fruit,

It forwards the general Deed of Man,
And each of the many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan;
Each loving his own, to boot.

I am named and known by that moment's feat ;
There took my station and degree.

So grew my own small life complete,

As nature obtained her best of me-
One born to love you, Sweet!

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So the earth has gained by one man more,

And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too;
And the whole is well worth thinking o'er

When autumn comes: which I mean to do

One day, as I said before.'

This man has in the largest sense of the word sowed his soul alive by knowing the day of his visitation; by recognising before it was too late the golden thread let down from Heaven, to be a clue through the labyrinth of earth;—just as the two in Youth and Art' lose the soul by letting the day pass, and leaving the thread untouched. She marries a rich lord; he is a knight and an R.A.; and surely this is success and completeness of life. Perhaps they try to think it so; but all the time they are well aware that the angel of opportunity once offered them a better gift, and that they 'missed it, lost it for ever.'

What we said concerning a new standard of values being introduced by the apprehension of an upper breaking in upon the lower darkness is best elucidated in the noteworthy poem entitled An Epistle,' containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician.' Karshish in his travels in Palestine comes upon the resuscitated Lazarus, and studies him keenly. To Lazarus the great revelation has come not in the blinding flash which dazes a man so that perhaps he doubts the thing he has seen, but in four days of steady illumination. And what is the result?

The man is witless of the size, the sum,

The value in proportion of all things,

Or whether it be little or be much.
Discourse to him and prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,

And of the passing of a mule with gourds-
'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling fact—he will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness,

(Far as I see) as if in that indeed

He caught prodigious import, whole results;
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes!
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross purposes.

Should his child sicken unto death-why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,

Or pretermission of his daily craft—

While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child

At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear.'

It will be seen that the life of Lazarus has been thrown out of balance, as it were, by the fullness of knowledge, too great to be fruitfully utilised in the cramped conditions of earth. The thought, ‘It should be,' is backed by the other thought, ‘Here it cannot be'; and there is little for him but to wait

'For that same death which shall restore his being

To equilibrium, body loosening soul,

Divorced even now by premature full growth.'

He has sight in a world where it is appointed to us to walk not by sight, but by faith-where we may not know, but only realise that there is something to be known. As Rabbi Ben

Ezra says

For more is not reserved

To man, with soul just nerved

To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:

Here work enough to watch

The Master work, and catch

Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.'

But even these glimpses of the Master's working, these hints. of the heavenly craft will in their measure change our

estimate of the comparative worth of things. We shall not, like Lazarus, be thrown out of harmony with our human environment; we shall still feel the throbbing of every human emotion; we shall recognise with calm delight the order which is the earthly correspondence of divine law; we shall exult in the impulse towards freedom which is, at its best, the stirring within us of that life of God which is a union of perfect liberty with perfect righteousness;-but it will be with the purged eyes of those who have beheld things transfigured by that upper sunshine which reveals their true nature, their real significance, those who-perhaps on a mad journey to some Damascus of mistaken duty-have seen a light and heard a voice, and been thenceforward not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.'

ART. VIII.-SCOTTISH PATRIOTISM AND SCOTTISH POLITICS.

1. The Local Government Board (Scotland) Bill, 1883.

2. A Rectorial Address, delivered before the Students of the

University of Edinburgh, Nov. 4, 1882. By LORD
ROSEBERY. Edinburgh, 1882.

3. Address by Lord Rosebery at Edinburgh, July 21, 1883, on being presented with the freedom of that city.

4. Scotland's Version of Home Rule. By W. SCOTT DALGLEISH. Nineteenth Century for January, 1883.

ΟΙ

N the 21st of August, the Local Government Board (Scotland) Bill was rejected on the Second Reading in the House of Lords, by a majority of forty-seven votes to thirty-one. Before this decision was come to, the leading advocate of the measure, both in the Upper Chamber and on Scottish platforms, gave the members of his own Order this warning, 'If you think fit to reject this Bill-and I am far from saying that the Bill is perfect-I can only say that those who support it must appeal from the judgment of this House to the judgment of those

whom this Bill chiefly affects. It is in the interest of Scotland that it should be passed. It is the desire of Scotland that it should be passed, and I venture to say that the expression of opinion in Scotland as to the fate of this measure, if your Lordships think fit to reject it, the expression of opinion not as to the measure itself, but as to the principle it represents, will convince your Lordships that you make a great mistake, in judging public opinion in Scotland by the opinion of this House, if you think that it is hostile to this Bill.'

The same

day the House of Lords rejected the Irish Registration Bill, and, on the following forenoon, the Premier was asked by Mr. Parnell what were the intentions of the Government in respect of that measure. Mr. Gladstone at once replied that the Bill would be brought forward early next session and pressed upon the consideration of Parliament. Sir George Campbell then put a similar question as to the Scottish Bill. Mr. Gladstone's reply was significant: My hon. friend will see, I am sure, that the Local Government Board (Scotland) Bill is a measure of general political expediency. The other measure, besides being a measure of general political expediency, is a Bill to supply an obvious demand of justice.' This remark has been taken, and no doubt correctly taken, to mean that while Government are resolved to press forward the Irish Registration Bill next session, they have not come to any such resolution in respect of the Scottish Local Government Board Bill, because they do not consider it of equal importance.

It will be well to take the statements of Lord Rosebery and Mr. Gladstone together, for, between them, they throw some light on the prospects of the defeated measure. Speaking distinctly and emphatically in the name of its champions in Scotland, the late Under-Secretary for the Home Department said that it was the desire of Scotland,' that is, of course, of the people of Scotland in the wide, constitutional and only proper sense, that the measure should pass, that there would be an appeal to the public opinion of Scotland from the House of Lords in the event of its rejection, and that the expression of that opinion would prove such rejection, so far as it professed to reflect the Scottish mind, to

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be a mistake. In other words, there is to be an agitation in Scotland during the Recess in favour of the Bill, or at all events of what Lord Rosebery calls its principle.' Unless there is some such agitation, and unless it indicates the desire of Scotland' to be unmistakeably to the effect that this or an equivalent measure of general political expediency' should pass, the Government, as Mr Gladstone's statement clearly indicates, do not pledge themselves to urge it on the consideration of Parliament.

A word or two as to the desire of Scotland' in regard to the defunct measure, and the expression of opinion in Scotland as to its fate,' by way of clearing the ground for argumentation upon its principle.' It will be admitted that the desire of Scotland' in respect of matters affecting its national well-beingtake, for example, political reform, the abolition of the corn laws, the establishment of a national system of education, the overthrow of the late Beaconsfield Government-has hitherto expressed itself by large, influential, and enthusiastic public. meetings. It will further be admitted by the advocates of the Scottish Local Government Board Bill, that between the introduction of the measure and the discussion on the second reading in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, the desire of Scotland' might have been, but was not, indicated in this unimpeachable and convincing way. Lord Rosebery said 'every great municipality in Scotland has petitioned in favour of this Bill,' but he did not say that a majority of the Scottish municipalities had so petitioned, or that even the 'great' municipalities had shown enthusiasm for the measure. It may further be said that when the members of the petitioning Town Councils were elected, this question was not before their constituencies, which have consequently not had an opportunity of letting their desire' be made known. It is a commonplace with observers of the socio-political signs of the times, that Town Councils do not reflect what is best in the nation in respect of desire' or of anything else. Thus, Mr. Herbert Spencer, than whom it will probably be allowed there is no greater living expert in Sociology, says, Town Councils are not conspicuous for either intelligence or high character.

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