next thing I heard of the dear good creature was that she had finished her course. I kept the sad intelligence to myself, for my heart was too full to allow me to speak of my loss. . It seems dreadful, but unbelief had so chilled my soul that I could no longer indulge the sweet thought of an immortal life even for the soul of my good Christian mother. . . I sought for comfort in a Godless and Christless philosophy, but sought in vain. I tried to extort from nature some word of consolation, but not a whisper could I obtain. I tried to forge some theory of my own that might lessen the gloom in which I was rapt; but my efforts were fruitless. I had reached a sad extreme. I had lost all trust in a fatherly God, and all good hope of a better life. I had come near to the horrors of utter Atheism. And the Universe was an appalling and inexplicable mystery. And the world was a dreary habitation; and life a weary affair; and there were times when I wished I had never been born. Life had become a burden rather than a blessing; and there were seasons when the dark suggestion came to throw it down."

Joseph Barker, whose words I have quoted, does not rank amongst the scientific and philosophical celebrities of the day; but he was a man of strong mind, of studious habits, and of varied knowledge; and his history stands out as an impressive warning to men who have throbbing hearts within them, against the Atheism which leads the soul away from "the fountain of living water" to the hewing-out unto itself of "cisterns, broken cisterns which can hold no water."

I can understand how the problem of the world, as seen to-day, and as it has been seen for many an age, may present itself to some orders of mind under aspects strongly antagonistic to faith in an all-wise Creator, and in an all-kindly Providence. The existence of evil has confounded many a noble intellect, and agonised many a sensitive soul. Jean Paul Richter revealed this agony in his terrible Atheistic Vision. Tennyson has revealed it in his equally terrible poem of Atheistic Despair. Joseph Barker has shown to us, in his autobiographic testimony, how the poem of the one is no fiction, and how the vision of the other might well be accepted as a reality. But our philosophical Atheists are of another mould. "Science, falsely so-called," has frozen the finer, humaner elements of their nature. What little heart they have shuts itself up within the hard limits of a narrow intellect, where the expansions of a manly faith, and hope, and joy are impossible. Such voluntary incarceration is mysterious, and still more mysterious is the contentment which is too often associated with it. Happily, men in general have an intuitive conviction that they have been made for a better life than thisa life which may be illuminated with a Divine wisdom, which may

he disciplined into a Divine holiness, and which may partake of a Divine joy. With all the practical irreligion that abounds around us, most men will be disinclined to say, "There is no God, and death is an eternal sleep."

BETA.

The Life and Speeches of Mr. Bright.*

R. BARNETT SMITH'S "Life of Mr. Gladstone" has been so complete a success that a similar" Life of Mr. Bright" is a natural and almost a necessary sequel to it. In works which may be regarded as companion volumes he has depicted the career of the greatest Liberal statesman and of the greatest Liberal orator of the nineteenth century. We are not sure of the wisdom of publishing extended Lives" of men who are still living. As a rule, it is better to wait until we can receive their "Memoirs," and be made familiar with matters which cannot, and ought not, to be disclosed during their lifetime. A public career brings men into contact with so many of their contemporaries, and affects so many and such opposite interests, that it is difficult, before it has reached its close, to speak of it with impartiality. The judgment we form of it is so apt to be swayed by personal predilections and prejudices that, except for practical and inevitable purposes, it is unwise to obtrude it. Any one who compares Mr. Smith's volumes-admirable and effective as they are-with Mr. John Morley's "Life of Richard Cobden" will at once be struck with the difference between them. Mr. Morley is, of course, the master of a terse and graceful style, and possesses a breadth of knowledge, a subtilty of thought, and a clear, penetrating judgment, such as few even of our best writers have attained. In these respects it would be unfair to compare Mr. Smith's work with his. But there is another point of difference which arises from the inevitable limits of Mr. Smith's design, and a reference to which involves no disparagement. Except in a few particulars relating

* "The Life and Speeches of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P." By George Barnett Smith. In Two Volumes. London: Hodder & Stoughton,

to Mr. Bright's ancestry and birth, to his youth and education, which have apparently been supplied by members of his family, Mr. Smith has gathered his information from public sources-extracts from speeches in Parliament and public meetings, letters in the newspapers, and, here and there, perhaps from the reminiscences of observers. Mr. Morley, on the other hand, has been able to avail himself of private journals and correspondence; letters of Mr. Cobden to his wife and children, to Mr. Bright and various other friends, as well as of letters written to Mr. Cobden. Such sources of information are indispensable for the formation of a full and impartial judgment of a man. We can scarcely understand his "moral dynamic," the depth and intensity of his master principles, apart from them; and yet we cannot have access to them during his lifetime. In many of Mr. Cobden's letters there is a delightful frankness and ease. In touches of a single line the man himself is made, by his own unconscious act, to stand before us. We see him in his simple nobility and strength, and understand more of his real greatness than we could learn from all his formal speeches and all public records combined. There are also in Mr. Cobden's "Life" various letters of Mr. Bright's; two or three of a similar character to that which is given in Vol. I., pp. 334-336, would go further to complete our estimate of " the great tribune of the people" than an extended collection of his addresses. But, thoughmany such letters must be in existence, the time for publishing them has not yet arrived, and for them, as well as for those minute personal details which neither delicacy nor respect for our great men would wish to have now disclosed, we must wait; and if there be those whose prying curiosity renders them impatient of such restrictions, may they have a "long and weary wait"!

Of the materials at his command, Mr. Smith has made diligent and judicious use. He has presented a full-length portrait of Mr. Bright as he has appeared to his contemporaries, and there can be little doubt that the future biographer will be under great obligations to his honest and painstaking researches. He has kept himself strictly within the limits which natural reserve and good taste prescribe. He discards formal criticism, and contents himself with the plain narrative of the historian rather than with the pleadings of the advocate or the decision of the judge. Mr. Bright is one of the few men who can allow the story of his life to speak for itself. For more than forty years he has laboured assiduously for the

elevation of the people, for the extension of civil and religious liberty, and the removal of monopolies in Church and State; and though in the earlier part of his career he was subjected to gross abuse, and is still sneered at by ignorant and shallow-minded politicians who are unable to appreciate his greatness, there is scarcely any other statesman whose course has been so uniformly consistent, and whose principles-long resisted and denounced-have been so completely adopted by the responsible advisers of the Crown.

To give an outline of Mr. Bright's career is no part of our present purpose: the barest mention of the following facts must suffice. He was born at Rochdale on November 16, 1811; was educated at various schools in Rochdale, Ackworth, York, and Newton; entered his father's business at the age of fifteen; allied himself with Mr. Cobden in the Anti-Corn Law agitation in 1841; entered Parliament as member for the city of Durham in 1842; was elected as member for Manchester in 1847, and continued to represent it until 1856, when he and Mr. Milner Gibson were rejected on Lord Palmerston's appeal to the country after the adverse vote in the House of Commons on the Chinese War; was returned for Birmingham, in a manner which reflects equal credit on "the Metropolis of the Midlands" and its illustrious representative, in 1857; became a member of Mr. Gladstone's first Government in 1868 as President of the Board of Trade, from which post he was compelled by illness to retire in 1870. On his recovery he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and this post he holds in Mr. Gladstone's present Administration.

Mr. Barnett Smith not inaptly remarks that if Mr. Cobden might be described as the Paul, Mr. Bright was the Apollos, of the AntiCorn-Law League. In the beautiful address delivered by Mr. Bright when he unveiled the statue of Cobden at Bradford, he remarked that there were many others who, in those early days, fought the battle of Free Trade. "We were not even the first, though afterwards, perhaps, we became the foremost before the public." He told on the same occasion how he was induced to give himself up to the great cause with which his name is inseparably associated. The circumstances were these :

"At that time I was at Leamington, and on the day when Mr. Cobden called on mee-for he happened to be there at the same time on a visit to some relations -I was in the depth of grief-I might almost say of despair-for the light and

sunshine of my house was extinguished. All that was left on earth of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called on me as my friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with words of condolence. After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.' I accepted his invitation. I knew that the description he had given of the homes of thousands was not an exaggerated description. I felt in my conscience that there was a work which somebody must do, and therefore I accepted his invitation, and from that time we never ceased to labour hard on behalf of the resolution we had made."

There was something almost apostolic in the mission on which these two men then entered. Their evident sincerity and earnestness, their unwearied exertions in committee-rooms and on the platform, their long journeys, involving so much thought, and toil, and sacrifice, made an impression on the people which was without parallel in our political annals. Mr. Bright was a more powerful speaker than his friend. With the same strong vehemence of feeling and homeliness of expression, Mr. Bright had a finer and more melodious voice, a more copious vocabulary, and an imagination of more kingly power. Mr. Morley, in discriminating between the two friends, has said:

"Mr. Bright had all the resources of passion alive within his breast. He was earried along by vehement political anger, and deeper than that there glowed a wrath as stern as that of an ancient prophet. To cling to a mischievous error seemed to him to savour of moral depravity and corruption of heart. What he saw was the selfishness of the aristocracy and the landlords, and he was too deeply moved by hatred of this to care to deal very patiently with the bad reasoning which their own self-interest inclined their adversaries to mistake for good. His invective was not the expression of mere irritation, but a profound and menacing passion. Hence he dominated his audiences from a height, while his companion rather drew them along after him as friends and equals."

The repeal of the Corn Laws is but one of many subjects to which Mr. Bright has devoted his strength. His first recorded speech was made in connection with a series of lectures delivered by Mr. J. Silk Buckingham, at Rochdale, on Egypt, Palestine, and India. He was also an advocate of the temperance movement, took a bold stand in opposition to Church rates, and pleaded for the abolition of capital punishment. In the House of Commons he was from the first an unflinching advocate of electoral reform, and to him, more than to