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Redemption." The hymns for "Believers | passed over to the brighter side. Suffering," lack the chastened spirit and death and funeral hymns have cheered tender grace of some hymnists, and their mourners in every land. "Hark, a voice tone of triumph must be an unknown ton- divides the sky," has been to thousands the gue to many Christians; but, taken as a first dawn of hope over the dark waters of whole, the hymns in this section are one of bereavement. There is no joy, however the most refreshing fountains which the ecstatic no repentance, however agonizHead of the Church has ever opened for ing no dread, however terrible - no his people in the wilderness. a perennial hope, however ardent - to which C. Wessource of edification, of which none should ley has not given expression. allow themselves to be in ignorance. The The Church of England closed her pulhymns on death and the future state rise to pit against the living preacher. By a happy the victorious tone of 1 Cor. xv. They retribution, the undying voice of the dead have retained the solemn awe of earth, poet sounds alike through her stateliest and blending it with the joyful wonder with her lowliest temples; and his magnificent which the freed spirit enters heaven. The anthem, Hark, the herald angels sing," poet was a worthy son of the saintly mother, the most popular Christmas hymn in the who required her daughters to sing a hymn world, finds a place at the end of the Prayer during her dying moments, and whose last Book. His Easter hymn, "Christ the direction to her assembled family was, Lord is risen to-day. Hallelujah!" approChildren, as soon as I am released, sing priately opens the morning service on Easa song of praise to God." The hymns on ter-day; and his Ascension hymn, "Hail the divine love are inimitable; they com- the day that sees Him rise!"- the finest bine the passion of Crashaw with the ten- in our language — leads the praises of worderness of Gerhard, the fervour of Newton shippers on Ascension-day. It is not with the reverence of Keble. The poet enough that the church from which he was has linked the "recollection" and devo- driven should now hear his voice; but all tion of the elder mystics with the zeal and churches, orthodox and heterodox, accord intense practicality of the revival of his him an honoured place; and the hymns own day. Many critics, failing to compre- sung by the eleven millions of people, who hend the spirit of these hymns, have applied it is estimated form the Methodist societies to them the often perverted term "mysti- of our day, are his, with comparatively few cal." It is not among the critics, but exceptions. among the poor of this world rich in faith, that the truest interpreters of this profoundest of hymnists are to be found.

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Within the limits of a single paper, it is impossible to point out in detail the less known beauties of the Methodist hymnody. Many of C. Wesley's hymns are familiar to us all. We have heard his immortal notes of praise rising as the sound of many waters from the lips of adoring thousands, in such hymns as, O for a thousand tongues to sing," Blow ye the trumpet, blow," "Come, O Thou all-victorious Lord." His strains of triumph are linked for ever with our memories of Christmas, Easter-tide, and Ascension Day; and the Church's expectation of the Second Advent finds its highest expression in the magnificent hymn, Head of the Church triumphant." Jesus, lover of my soul" is as often the earliest language of the spirit's needs, as it is the latest of its trust. Though no hymn is more widely known and loved, the term "popular

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nearly as out of place when applied to it as to the twenty-third Psalm, for we have faltered it into the ears of our beloved on the margin of the river of death; and with its pathetic prayers upon their lips, they have

With the grasp of the last enemy upon him, Charles Wesley dictated the lines:

"In age and feebleness extreme,

Who shall a helpless worm redeem?
Jesus, my only hope Thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart:
Oh, could I catch a smile from Thee,
Then drop into eternity!"

and, shortly afterwards, the Master fulfilled
his latest wish:

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"O that the joyful hour were come

Which calls Thy ready servant home,
Unites me to the church above,
Where angels chant the song of love;
And saints eternally proclaim
The glories of the heavenly Lamb.”

His remains were followed to the grave
by an immense concourse of mourners;
and an epitaph, written by himself for a
friend, fitly marks the tombstone of one of
the first of itinerant evangelists, as well as
the greatest of English hymn-writers.
"With poverty of spirit blest,

Rest, happy saint, in Jesus rest:
A sinner saved, through grace forgiven,
Redeemed from earth to reign in heaven!
Thy labours of unwearied love,

Forgot by thee, are crowned above →
Crowned, through the mercy of thy Lord,
With a full, free, immense reward!"

Neither in death nor life was any national honour awarded to the poet of Methodism. But what avails the wreath of bay or stately burial to him for whom angels have long since woven the amaranth, and whom the Holy Church throughout all the world" has embalmed in her everlasting remem

brance?

ISABELLA L. BIRD.

From The Saturday Review.
ROBIN GRAY.*

And with the likeness we come also to an end of the verisimilitude and naturalness of the tale.

The villain of the book, and the worker of all the mischief to every one, is Nicol McWhapple, the Laird of Clashgirn, an elder of the kirk, a hypocrite, forger, murderer, smuggler, and everything else that is bad. He is a placid, cunning little man, with a small shrunken body and a lame leg; his keen face runs from the high cheek bones to a sharp point at the clean-shaven chin; he has a sallow complexion, a pawky smile, a habit of drooping his eyelids "over his small, pale, ferrety eyes, and occasionally giving his head a jerk forward like a hawk dabbing at his prey." This pleasant person has, it seems, in times past taken in and If the whole of this novel had been equal supported Jeamie Falcon and his mother, to the first volume we should have had to when they came wandering to Portlappock record a real and very striking success. in distress. He tended the mother in her Though based on the decidedly dangerous illness and buried her decently when she experiment of amplifying a ballad so well died, and afterwards brought up Jeamie as known, so perfect in itself, and so pathetic a kind of feeless servant -half son, half as " Auld Robin Gray," it is very satisfactor- servant out of whom good work was got ily done so far; and if we object to this and little given in return. When the lad elaboration of a poem the very simplicity of wants the farm of Askaig, and two years' which stirs our imagination more than any grace for stock, that he may marry Jeanie amount of detail can satisfy, it is because Lindsay, the old lean laird refuses him; so we think the broad suggestiveness of poetry Jeamie thinks he has nothing for it but to go a higher kind of art than the minute par- to sea, Portlappock being a fishing place ticularization which passes by the name of where every man is a sailor. He therefore novel-writing. Also because we think that engages himself in one of Clashgirn's boats, all these second presentations of a well- which is heavily insured, and commanded known story, these aftergrowths from an by Ivan Carrack, a Highland skipper, with old-established stem, are mistakes in them- a more than mortal stolidity of face and selves, and are more likely than not to be character, and an inexhaustible capacity for weak and unsatisfactory. We cannot, how-whisky. Before starting, however, Girzie ever, say this of the first volume of Robin. Gray, almost the whole of which has been worked with great delicacy and skill, and which is as good for the kind of thing as can be.

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We need not repeat the story so far. The leading lines are precisely those of "Auld Robin Gray -two young lovers, with not sufficient means to marry on, Jeamie's sea voyage to make the crown a pound, reports of his death, the father's broken arm, the mother's illness, the cow that was stolen away, and Auld Robin Gray who comes a courting in the day of want, and who is finally accepted under the pressure of poverty and the parents' need. Then Jeamie turns up again, and sees Jeanie at her own home, and with the kiss immortalized by the ballad, they tear themselves away. After this the likeness between the poem and the story is at an end.

Robin Gray. A Novel. By Charles Gibbon, Author of "Dangerous Connexions." 3 vols. London: Blackie & Son.

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Todd, the old fishwife, warns him against joining Carrack and "the Colin." But as she will give him no reason why she says The Colin's doomed," Jeamie only answers, "Toots Girzie!" and takes his own way. When fairly at sea he finds that something is amiss, though he cannot say what. The men look at him coldly; the skipper drinks, swears, and stares with his calf eyes incessantly, and lays some mysterious crooked spell on Jeamie, who, do what he will, can never right himself. Once the ship is set on fire, and Jeamie is "blamed," though innocent; but there is no chance for his position bettering, for McWhapple and Carrack have agreed between them to lose the brig, and Jeamie with her, and the old fable of the wolf and the lamb has to be carried out. But such crimes as murder and arson on the high seas have to be committed cautiously, so that it is a little time before Carrack can succeed in firing the ship, which at last he does, unseen by any of the crew and sus

pected only by Jeamie and one other. and they have a scene wherein she bitterly When the boats are lowered and the men reproaches him for his treachery — of which safely seated in them, Jeamie is sent below he has not been guilty. Carnieford on for the log; at the same moment the mainmast topples over, there is a terrible explosion, and the blazing wreck sinks hissing into the water. Of course the lad is assumed to be burnt or drowned, and the boat pulls into shore. When news comes to Portlappock of his loss, the Lindsay distress culminates, and Jeanie marries Robin Gray. But the Robin Gray of the book and the Auld Robin Gray of the poem are not the same men. He of the book is a man of green middle-age but looking younger, a fine, hearty, healthy, Scottish farmer in the prime of life, and one of whom any woman might be fond.. He had seen Jeanie grow up from a wee bit wean to a braw and sonsie lass; and he had loved her once and for all before he was aware of her attachment to Jeamie. When he asks her to marry him she tells him that her heart is in the grave with her dead lover; but she finally consents, since he is willing to take her on her own terms, thankful to get her on any. After the marriage then, when Jeanie has learnt to love her husband dearly and to be calm and happy, come Jeamie's return, the meeting, and the kiss; and then Mr. Gibbon's coda.

reaching home hears the news of his wife's sudden disappearance, and tears back to Askaig like a madman, coming upon Jeanie and Jeamie sitting in the kitchen, the one looking dour and the other disconsolate. Then ensues a tremendous hubbub. The farmer refuses to hear reason, or to believe in the innocence of wife or man. He and Jeamie have a quarrel and a fight; and for one reason or another they all-husband, lover, lang Rob, Wattie the idiot, and Jeanie-rush out of the house, and into the tremendous storm of the night, and all wander right away to the foaming spate of the Brownie's Bite. Here Jeanie hears the sound of trampling and struggling-by a sudden flash of lightning sees two men fighting on the very edge of the abyss; and then a shriek tells her that one has been hurled into the water. An instant after a man stumbles against her; it is her husband, who grips her arm, asks what is amiss, and, when he sees who it is, lets her fall to the earth, and disappears. Some days after this a body is found jammed among the rocks of the fall. The head and face are so battered that they are not recognizable, but the clothes, which are Jeamie Falcon's, leave no doubt as to its identity. He and Wattie Todd the idiot are both missing; but before the corpse is found Girzie has set off on a search for her son, sure that he is away with Jeamie somewhere. When the body is recognized as Jeamie's by the clothes, Robin Gray or Carnieford is ar

Jeanie, sure of his innocence for all that

Jeanie says nothing to her husband of the dead lover's reappearance, but he hears of it from McWhapple, with sly hints, cautions, and inuendoes intermixed. He is annoyed that Jeanie does not confide in him; but she keeps silence to avoid giving him pain, jealous as he is, until such time as she shall know that Jeamie has left Portlap-rested as the murderer. pock. Jeamie does not leave. Wishing to revenge himself on Ivan Carrack for the appearances are so fatally against him, now misery he has wrought him, and knowing bends all her wits to his defence; and that he fired the brig, he stays in the place, among other things- after having made at a desolate out-of-the-way shieling beyond and signed a deposition eminently damaging the Brownie's Bite and up by Askaig, to him she goes off to Clashgirn to watch where Girzie's daft son Wattie, and Lang the old laird, whom, together with Carrack, Rob Keith and his wife, keep him company. she suspects of foul play somehow. She Carnieford, or Robin Gray, straightforward sees him leave the house at dead of night, and generous if jealous, goes over to Askaig and follows him to the beach, where he sigto see Jeamie and make all right with him; nals a brig lying-to in shore. A boat comes but he does not find him; and on that same off, and Ivan Carrack comes in her. He day a strange man comes in the Clashgirn and McWhapple have a talk which reveals gig for Jeanie, with a message to haste much to Jeanie, who is listening in a hollow away to Askaig with clothes, &c., for her hard by. But an incautious movement begudeman is lying there badly hurt, and she trays her, and Carrack seizes her after a is wanted to tend him. It is a wild day, hard chase. He binds her hand and foot, and the "Brownie's Bite" is a grewsome gags her mouth, and takes her with him on torrent; but she gets across the swollen board the brig, where he makes love to her waters safely, if after peril-to find no in his uncouth Highland fashion. The brig gudeman at all, but just Jeamie Falcon. has only two sailors in her one a certain By this time she has found out that she ill-looking Donald; and the other, Grainger, loves her husband better than her old lover, a queer, hirsute, surly fellow, who speaks

but little, keeps himself in the shade, and has a habit of concealing his face as much as he can. But to this man Jeanie appeals for protection; and though his odd ways leave her in doubt as to whether he will aid her or not, he nevertheless inspires her with confidence. She is so sure that her husband did not murder Jeamie Falcon, and so sure too that Clashgirn and Carrack have had a hand in the deed, that she would give her life to get back to Portlappock, if only she could right Robin while there is yet time. After a brief season of suspense, during which she is locked up in the cabin knowing nothing of what is going on above, she finds herself at Portlappock, with Grainger in charge of the brig, and Donald and Ivan Carrack prisoners in the hold.

lately shown. She would scarcely have upbraided the lover for the sake of the husband so bitterly as she did, if she loved him as she is assumed to have done. One or the other is painted in too strong colours, and the alternation is both too sudden and too extreme. The character of Girzie Todd is admirable in the beginning, though afterwards she too goes off into turgidity and extravagance; but McWhapple and Ivan Carrack are melodramatic monsters without much lifelikeness, considering their circumstances. It is a pity that so delightful an opening should have so unsatisfactory a continuance and ending; but it only shows how much more difficult it is for Mr. Gibbon to construct a good plot than to work pleasantly and well on one already made to his hand.

From The Saturday Review. GENERAL JOMINI.

And now everything comes to light. Grainger is Jeamie Falcon disguised, and the rightful possessor of Clashgirn, which McWhapple, as his father's trustee, agent, and friend, had filched from him, the proofs of his rightful possessorship lying with Girzie Todd; the poor daft idiot Wattie is the murdered man, and murdered by Ivan Carrack, with Clashgirn's connivance; Ivan is Girzie's brother, and McWhapple is the father of the boy, so that father and uncle together have compassed the death of the son of the one and nephew of the other. The laird and the skipper are arrested, and the laird dies in his cell, but the skipper is banged, wanting more drink; Jeamie travels, and finally marries a young lady of his own station, and one better fitted for the Laird of Clashgirn than poor Jeanie would have been, which is doubtful; and after a long time of severance and probation, Robin and Jeanie come together again, the birth of a young Carnieford helping in that desir-dustrious and impartial pen. It is true that able result.

AMONG all the soldiers who had seen and shared Napoleon's victories General Jomini had the highest reputation as a theorist, and he had hardly any superior in practical knowledge of the art of war. He was one of the few remaining actors in the great scenes of the first years of the present century. His youth and early manhood were active and eventful. His middle life was laboriously studious. His old age was spent in honourable repose. After surviving by many years the French Emperor and his Marshals, his career, like theirs, has become a portion of that history which has been in great part written by his own in

the name of Jomini hardly appears in the record of any campaign, for it was his part to plan what others executed. But in the most glorious pages of French military history is written the name of Ney, and Ney never performed Napoleon's orders so effectually as when they were interpreted for his guidance by the military intuition of his chief of staff, Jomini.

This, then, is the outline of the story, and it is a curious patch-work of idyllic tenderness and wild sensationalism. Nothing can be quieter than the first volume, nothing more upheaped and strained than the last two. It is as if they had been worked by different hands, and they produce the same effect as a badly matched piece of cloth. Two things strike us as scarcely Like many other soldiers of European natural in the treatment one is, that reputation, Jomini was by birth a Swiss. Girzie Todd should have kept so religiously He was borne in the village of Payerne, in the secret of her son's parentage for all the canton of Vaud, in the year 1779. His those years, seeing that a slip of this kind desire for a military career would have cardoes not tell much in Scotland against any ried him, according to the custom of his man, especially if unmarried, and seeing countrymen, into the service of one of the also that it is scarcely possible to hide such Great Powers, and it happened that he a thing in a country place; and the other is, chose what was in those years the winning that Jeanie's sudden attachment to her side. Perhaps his talents would never have husband alternates rather inharmoniously been discovered in Germany, and at any with her passionate love for Jeamie, only so rate they were employed and appreciated

by France. Yet he was obliged for some service, and placed his sons in it. One of years to be content with a commercial situ- his daughters married in Russia, and two ation, and it was not until he had become in France, and he died last week near known as a military writer that he obtained Paris. Among all the soldiers of fortune, an appointment on the staff of Marshal as they used to be called, that his country Ney. The first two volumes of his Treat- has produced, he was the most distinguished, ise on Grand Military Operations were pub-and perhaps he was the last; for public lished in 1804, and in the five following opinion now condemns the employment of years he served with Ney in the campaigns mere mercenaries, and the hardy youth of of Ulm, Jena, Eylau, and Spain. When Scotland or Switzerland cannot seek, as Napoleon directed the corps of Soult and they used to do, the service of whatever Ney against Sir John Moore, it may be prince or potentate promised the most libsupposed that Jomini was with his chief. eral reward to valour and fidelity. But Napoleon checked the march of Ney, It might be hastily assumed that Jomini's considering Soult's corps sufficient to drive literary power was greater than his generMoore to his ships; and thus Jomini did alship. But if his opportunities of service not see any actual collision of English and in the field had not been limited by jealFrench troops. He had seen almost every-ousy of his foreign origin, he might have thing that war could show. He was sent been himself a marshal, instead of being from Spain, by Ney, to Napoleon, whom the head which guided a marshal's hand. he found in occupation of Vienna, and with Napoleon owed much to Ney, and Ney in whom he remained until the war with Aus- turn owed much to Jomini. Ney could tria was finished by the battle of Wagram, in July 1809. For the next three years he was occupied at Paris in writing the history of Napoleon's campaigns. When war broke out with Russia, he did not wish to fight against the Emperor Alexander, from whom he had received handsome offers of employment, and therefore he solicited from Napoleon a civil government. But being made Governor of Smolensk, and the French army having begun its disastrous retreat from Moscow, his military capacity was necessarily exercised. At the Beresina he was employed, in conjunction with the Engineer-General Eblé, to select points for the erection of bridges for the passage of the army. Next year he was appointed to his old post as chief of the staff of Marshal Ney; and he gave advice, in anticipation of Napoleon's order, which, if it had been promptly and fully carried out, would have made the battle of Bautzen a victory like that of Friedland. Ney recommended him for the promotion which he had well deserved; but by the jealousy of Berthier, the chief of Napoleon's staff, who had always been his enemy, this promotion was refused, and he was even charged with incapacity and threatened with arrest. Hereupon he quitted the French service for that of Russia, so that he began the campaign of 1813 on one side and finished it on the other. When France was driven within her frontier, his influence with the Emperor Alexander saved Switzerland from absorption by Austria. He was at Paris in 1815, and so warmly opposed the execution of his old leader, Ney, that it was proposed to strike his name from the list of Russian generals. But he continued in the Russian

and would do anything, if only he knew what was wanted, and this Jomini could always tell. One of the most brilliant conceptions of Napoleon was the battle of Friedland, but that conception might have been formed in vain if he had not had Ney to execute it. As we read Jomini's description of this battle, we imagine him riding by the side of Ney, and comprehending at a glance the fault of Benningsen's position, and the movements by which Napoleon prepared to profit by it. Before these movements were complete it was five o'clock of a summer afternoon, and in order that Ney's attack might be effective it was neeessary that it should be prompt and vigorous. If Napoleon's orders miscarried, Jomini could supply them; if they arrived, he could explain and enforce them. One of the difficulties of Jomini's career was the hostility of the wife of Ney, to whose ears came reports, spread by injudicious friends of Jomini, that her husband's most successful operations were advised by his chief of staff. These reports were probably only too true. We do not know how far Jomini contributed to Ney's success at Friedland, but we can hardly doubt that he was present at the battle which he has so clearly described. We do know that he was present six years afterwards at Bautzen, and he has shown us what Ney did and did not to make that place another Friedland, although the plan of his work did not permit him to inform us how far his own advice was taken. In the work to which we now refer Napoleon is made by Jomini the narrator of his own exploits. My manoeuvre," says he, "accomplished its object. The Allies reinforced Milaradowitsch in the

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