ing Romanza which now precedes the final Rondo. Like all Bennett's compositions, it is characterised rather by melodious grace and exquisite finish than by grandeur or breadth of style. The first movement is throughout extremely pleasing; but the second and third are the gems of the work. The former is one of those quaint old minuets, in slow time, which are by modern composers almost always discarded in favour of the more brilliant scherzo. The delicate grace of the daintilytripping principal theme reminds one of the old ballet-airs of the last century; and the trio, written for the brass instruments alone, is the more effective as these instruments, with the exception of two horns, have been entirely suppressed during the earlier part of the movement. The third movement, the Romanza already mentioned, is a very graceful "song without words" given to all the violas. It is but seldom that this valuable department of the orchestra has any opportunity for special display. Most composers use the viola merely to complete the harmony. Among the great masters Mendelssohn is almost the only one who seems to have appreciated the capabilities of the instrument. quote but one example of many which will occur to those acquainted with his scores-the beautifully subdued and yet rich tone-colour of the accompaniment to the song "Lord God of Abraham," in Elijah, arises from the fact that the melody is almost entirely given to the violas, instead of (as usual) to the violins. In the present Romanza the effect of their employment is no less charming; and a word of special praise ought, in passing, to be given to the gentlemen who played those instruments on Saturday for the really admirable way in which they did justice to the music. The finale of the symphony is the least important portion, and, though full of pleasing matter, calls for no special comment. The performance of the entire work was worthy alike of the music, the band and the conductor.

To

The concert commenced with Cherubini's over

ture to Les Deux Journées, with respect to which it is necessary to make a protest which I have never before had to make regarding any performance at the Crystal Palace. Who on earth was responsible for those additional brass parts which were played on Saturday? Cherubini's score contains only three horns and a bass trombone. Beside these there were introduced two trumpets and alto and tenor trombone, the result being that in the forte passages the brass overpowered every thing else, and the effect was simply distressing. Mr. Manns is such a conscientious conductor that it is impossible to conceive that he was responsible for the alteration; still it was an incompre hensible one. The concluding piece was Beethoven's great Leonore (No. 3) overture.

The vocalists were Mdlle. Johanna Levier and Mr. Sims Reeves. The lady sang the air "Ach, ich fühl's," from the Zauberflöte, and two songs by Mendelssohn ("Frühlingslied," Op. 71, No. 2) and Schumann ("Der Nussbaum"), fully confirming the favourable impression produced by her on her previous appearance at the Albert Hall; while Mr. Sims Reeves gave the beautiful song "Refrain thy voice from weeping," from Sullivan's Light of the World, and Schubert's "Ave Maria," the latter a strange choice for a tenor!

This afternoon Beethoven's Mass in C will form the principal attraction, and Brahms's variations on a Theme by Haydn will also be repeated.

EBENEZER PROUT.

Ar the last Monday Popular Concert Mdlle. Krebs was again the pianist. She selected as her solo Beethoven's Sonata in D, Op. 10, No. 3, and also played, with Mdme. Norman-Nóruda, Mozart's beautiful, though somewhat old-fashioned Sonata in G for piano and violin, and, with the same lady and Signor Piatti, Chopin's piano trio in G minor -this last named work being produced on this occasion for the first time at these concerts. Like most of Chopin's larger works, this trio is inferior

to his nocturnes, mazurkas, and other pieces cast in smaller moulds. The very difficult and brilliant piano part was played to perfection by Mdlle. Krebs, who seems equally at home in all styles. The quartett which opened the concert was Haydn's in G, Op. 54, No. 2, which was given with great effect by Mdme. Norman-Nóruda, Messrs. Ries, Straus, and Piatti, the minuet being encored. Miss Antoinette Sterling was the vocalist.

66

THE Royal Albert Hall concerts were resumed on Thursday week with a grand orchestral performance. The special feature of the evening was the first appearance for several years of Herr Wilhelmj. Of this gentleman we have spoken above; and, as our reporter was unable to attend this concert, we must content ourselves with mentioning that the chief orchestral works produced were the "Pastoral" symphony, the overtures to Guillaume Tell and St. John the Baptist, and Wagner's "Kaisermarsch." On Tuesday evening Israel in Egypt was given. The next of these concerts is to take place this evening (Saturday) and will be a Popular Ballad night. Mdlle. Levier, Miss Antoinette Sterling, Mr. Sims Reeves (who is to sing Blumenthal's Message," and a serenade by Berthold Tours) and Mr. Whitney are the vocalists; and Herr Wilhelmj, who created so great an impression on his reappearance last Thursday week, is to play a Concertstück by Dr. Hiller, for the first time, and a Chaconne (for violin alone) by Bach. Part-songs and madrigals by the Part-Song Choir of the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society, under the direction of Mr. Barnby, complete a very interesting programme. The next orchestral concert will take place on Tuesday, February 2, when several important orchestral pieces (notably Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony) will be performed. delssohn's Italian Symphony) will be performed. Herr Wilhelmj is to play a concerto by F. Hégar, for the first time, and his own arrangements of Wagner's "Albumblatt," and Chopin's "Notturno." Mdlle. Johanna Levier and Mr. Sims Reeves are to be the vocalists. The concert will be con

ducted, as usual, by Mr. Barnby. It is to be hoped that on this new system this excellent enterprise will receive the support which it well deserves.

MONDAY last being the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, a special musical service was given in the afternoon, in accordance with the precedent of the last few years in St. Paul's Cathedral. The engaged. The anthem consisted of a large selecchoir was largely increased, and a full orchestra tion from Mendelssohn's St. Paul, commencing in all the latter half of the first part, and a with the scene of the conversion, and comprising considerable portion of the second part of the oratorio. Thanks to the joint efforts of the organist, Dr. Stainer, and the authorities of the Cathedral, the orchestra seems now to have besions in St. Paul's.

come an established institution on festival occa

A CORRESPONDENT from Glasgow informs us, à propos of the orchestral concerts at present in progress in that city, that last Monday there was to be a grand "Wagner" night, for which Dr. Bülow was engaged as solo pianist and conductor. The programme included Schumann's First Symphony, Beethoven's E flat Concerto, Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia, the overtures to Euryanthe and Tannhäuser, and Wagner's "Huldigungsmarsch ” and "Kaisermarsch." The same programme, with the same band and conductor, is to be subsequently repeated at a concert of the Edinburgh Choral Union.

THE recent success of Handel's music in Paris is directing the attention of musicians in that city to the history of the art in this country, in which all his greatest works were produced. The last number of the Revue et Gazette Musicale contains the first of a series of articles by M. Octave Fouque, entitled "Les Précurseurs de Händel; Coup d'oeil sur l'histoire générale de la musique en Angleterre du XVI au XVIIIe siècle."

THE Committee for the erection of a monument to Auber in Paris have bought a site for that purpose in the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, at the cost of 6,300 francs. The municipality was unable to present them with the ground, as they have no power to make such a concession except in honour of those who have rendered special services to the city of Paris.

THE Neue Zeitschrift für Musik states that both Gade and Brahms have promised large works for the next Birmingham Festival, which takes place in 1876.

parations for the representation of Richard According to the Bayreuth Tagblatt, the prelungen, are so far completed that the times of the Wagner's national piece, The Ring of the Niberehearsals and the date of the festival itself have

been fixed. It is announced that the first rehearsals for the vocal parts will be held with pianoforte accompaniments weekly in the course works, viz., Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, of next July, when the four main divisions of the and Götterdämmerung will be taken separately and in succession. The same parts will be again rehearsed early in August, while it is expected be sufficiently developed to admit of their being that the more difficult scenic representations will tested by the end of the month. The final and complete rehearsals will not take place till June present programme the first definite public repre and July, 1876; and in accordance with the sentations will be held in the first week of August, 1876, in the following order: Sunday, at 4 P.M., the Rheingold will be given; Monday, Die Walküre; Tuesday, Siegfried; and Wednesday, by a long interval, for the rest and refreshment of Götterdämmerung. Each act is to be followed the audience and performers, the latter having pleasant gardens and covered-in summer-houses specially provided for them. The whole course of the representation is to be repeated in the later weeks of August, beyond which the committee have not yet made known their plans.

THE Kölnische Zeitung announces that on March 17 next, the first part of Wagner's Walküre wiil be given at Cologne, under the direction of the Wagner Verein, who are at present busily engaged in completing the necessary preliminary arrange ments.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1875. No. 144, New Series.

THE EDITOR cannot undertake to return, or

to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscript.

It is particularly requested that all business letters regarding the supply of the paper, &c., may be addressed to the PUBLISHER,

and not to the EDITOR.

LITERATURE. Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-1873. By John Earl Russell. (London: Longmans & Co., 1875.)

(Second Notice.)

LORD RUSSELL had the good fortune to have travelled in Spain and visited the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington before he entered Parliament, and to begin his public life at a period when he was no longer likely to be affected by the fatal fallacy which had so deeply compromised the Whig party, and neutralised its just claims on popular support. The notion that Bonaparte was the "child and champion of the Revolution," and that the aggressions of the Empire were in some degree connected with, and justified by, the philanthropic ideas of the great European convulsion, however pardonable in France until the History of M. Lanfrey and the fall of the Vendôme Column, is one of the strongest instances how party feeling can maintain an erroneous impression once implanted in honest minds. And it may be that his recollection of the outburst of national independence at that moment may associate itself with the unqualified admiration with which he regards the Germany of to-day, and on which he believes the best hopes of Europe and the wisest policy of England to rest. It is thus that his views of foreign policy have been consistently far-seeing and liberal, and though, no doubt, he lectured foreign governments too much in a professorial tone, he kept himself above any such personal feeling as induced Lord Palmerston to find satisfaction in the fall of the Orleans dynasty, and to regard with comparative favour the rise of the Second Empire, until undeceived by the annexation of Nice and Savoy. It shows, indeed, his ardent confidence in the liberal future of Europe, that Lord Russell's reminiscences of the oppression of the Holy Alliance do not inspire him with any anxiety as to the result of the union of Germany, Austria, and Russia, "banded together in spirit, if not in form." The interesting, and to most of us novel fact, that before the war of 1870 Prussia had an understanding with Russia to use force, if necessary, to prevent Austria from rendering assistance to France, will increase, if it is possible to do so, the astonishment of the historian at the blindness of French diplomacy. And when Lord Russell expresses his trust that England will defend either Holland or Belgium against any unprovoked aggression, he hardly seems to take into account the magnitude of the forces which

she

may have to encounter. It would have been expected from his general censure of Mr. Gladstone's conduct of foreign affairs that he would have spoken with reprobation of Lord Granville's revision of the Treaty respecting the Russian ports and the Black Sea; but his sense of the impolicy of inflicting that humiliation on Russia, which was shared by other statesmen and doubtfully approved by Lord Palmerston himself, has made him Overlook the inopportunity of the demand, to us at the least uncourteous, and to France most cruel in the hour of her defencelessness and despair.

It is on the questions of the policy of England towards Ireland and of National Education that Lord Russell is most explicit in his suggestions. On both these grave matters he has a full right to speak, and even to teach, for they have been in his thoughts through his whole Parliamentary life, and have affected his political fortunes. Thus, though in his statement of either case there is nothing very new beyond the precision of the ideas and the epigrammatic turn of the expression, the very definite conclusions at which he has arrived have both an individual and general interest, and if the remedies he proposes seem impracticable to us, it does not at all follow that they do so to a statesman who has always looked on his superiority to circumstances as the chief pride of his career.

It must have been a day of justifiable satisfaction to the mind of Lord Russell when the Royal Assent was given to the disestablishment of the Irish Church. His imagination must have taken him back to the time when the most moderate reform of that institution had been regarded as a sacrilege, and when the proposal to transfer some of the revenue of the Church to general purposes of education was urged by himself, Lord Althorp, and Lord Durham, on the Cabinet of Lord Grey, and urged in vain ;to the time when his own increasing influence carried forward the principle of Appropriation, to the extrusion from the Government of Lord Ripon, Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, and the Duke of Richmond, the first of these maintaining

parish was to be regulated by the number of the "that if the revenue of the Church in a particular Protestant population in that parish, then the principle on which alone the Established Church existed was destroyed;

and so onwards to the later date when he overthrew the Government of Sir Robert Peel on the Appropriation Clause. Upon this subject there are two sentences in dif. ferent parts of this volume which deserve consideration. The first is the expression of the belief that

"if this contest had been continued in every session for some forty years, it is probable that little progress would have been made, that parties would have been marshalled against each other every year, and that popular interest on the subjeet would have languished, and perhaps have perished."

Is this very inconclusive proposition intended as an argument, it may be excuse, for the coldness of the Liberal party on this question for so many years, and for its relegation from Parliamentary discussion after it had caused a change of Administration?

Perhaps the real result is to be found in the later passage where, after stating that-"to have quietly removed the most odious and offensive emblem of the corruption and the intolerance of England, the target against which the arrows of Ireland's best archers were always aimed, without disorder, without riot, is a great feat in the history of any statesman; he adds:

"The attempts to remedy this portentous injury without extinguishing the Church, to turn the curse into a blessing, were sure to prove, as Lord Althorp, Lord Durham, and I contended in Lord Grey's Cabinet they would be in 1833, stupendous failures."

How far Lord Russell can trust to the accuracy of those distant convictions it is not for us to say. It certainly does read strangely in the history of modern statesmanship to find that remedies assented to, and even proposed by, leading Ministers should by them have been believed to have been useless palliatives, disturbing the course of English administra tion, and leaving the just grievances of Ireland very much as they were.

But now that the work is done by other, and then opposing, hands, Lord Russell joins in the common disappointment that the turbulent ecclesiastical spirit of Ireland is as unappeased as ever; and that the Protestants, who looked on the Establishment as the main link of their connexion with England, are alienated, without any prospect of Catholic loyalty and content. He draws, indeed, attention to a fact hitherto singularly overlooked, that although the Hierarchy of the future is abolished, and ultimate religious equality secured, yet at the present time the Protestant Church retains all the appearance, and much of the reality, of dignity and wealth, and that it must take a considerable time for priests and people to realise the change in the position. And even when this has come to pass, Lord Russell very reasonably doubts whether the political evils incident on the entire dependence of the Catholic clergy on a poor and excitable population will not still continue to influence and embitter the popular mind; and he is driven to look back to the solution, so often proposed and so long rejected, of the enthe State. dowment of the Catholic priesthood by

Now, he says, the funds are there, avowedly superfluous for the objects to which they have been applied. You speak of giving them to hospitals, to lunatic asylums, or other indifferent institutions : why not use them for the only purpose which can ensure religious satisfaction and national content?

Has Lord Russell, when he makes this suggestion, seriously considered why this has not been done long ago? It has never wanted proposers or advocates among the wisest of Englishmen. It was practicable at the time when Catholic Emancipation was granted, but it was too much for the Duke of Wellington, who said that the one great action was enough for him to undertake, and he could not afford to make it more difficult, It was possible for Sir Robert Peel, at the time that he confronted the angry Protestantism of the country on the question of Maynooth College, and could hardly have excited more violent and unreasoning opposition for a great than for a comparatively

small object of conciliation. It was, lastly, not only possible and practicable, but easy for Mr. Gladstone when in the progress of the Bill for disestablishing the Irish Church, the House of Lords in committee adopted the principle in the most effective and simplest form of securing glebes and houses to the Catholic priesthood. When such opportunities as these have been lost, what hope can Lord Russell himself entertain of the success of any proposal in this direction, by any Minister however powerful. It is no exaggeration to say that the English people in their present temper and thought would prefer a civil war.

The "Suggestions" on the subject of National Education would hardly be intelligible without the knowledge of the deep sense of the indefeasible rights of the religious conscience which has ever been to Lord Russell not only a political conviction, but an hereditary principle of action. In this view it is not surprising that he should sympathise with the scruples of the extreme Nonconformists, and he carries this feeling to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice the whole of Mr. Forster's scheme, rather than maintain the obnoxious provision. He entirely assimilates the grievance to that of the exaction of Church-rates from conscientious Dissenters, and places the demand for its relief on a level with the reclamation which was satisfied by the Act of 1868. On the other hand, he fully approves of Mr. Forster's principle to "supplement the existing education, and not build a new house from the beginning." "Indeed," he adds, "if such had been the attempt, the Government would have been guilty, not only of a large superfluity of grants and much waste, but of great ingratitude." He therefore regards the discharge of this disputed payment, either by a Parliamentary grant, or out of the existing funds of Church schools, as indispensable if the present scheme is to be continued. But the rough sketch which he gives of a plan of National Education really supersedes the whole system of school-rates altogether, and reverts to the Parliamentary grants which were the resource of former times. He would establish some six hundred free schools where the Bible should be daily read, to be maintained by payments from the Consolidated Fund, and he would subsidise sectarian schools, including the Roman Catholic, to the extent of half the yearly cost for ten years to schools built and founded before the year 1870, and of one-fourth of the yearly cost for five years to schools built and founded since that date-the whole to be under the direction of the Committee of Privy Council. The Revised Code should not be permitted or revived, and the teaching of geography and history, and the elementary parts of political economy, should be obligatory in the upper schools, and, in small districts, in the upper parts of the elementary schools. In such an arrangement as this, it is difficult to see where there is any place for any system of rating, which is the great innovation on our former practice, and which is believed to offer such substantial advantages. The main objections to Parliamentary grants for education were the continual discussions to which they gave rise, the uncertainties con

tingent on the condition of the public revenue, the difficulties of the general application of any forms of education to the circumstances of different localities, and the want of that identification between local taxation and local interests which enables this country to bear cheerfully so large a weight of public expenditure for particular purposes. A National Education is now inaugurated and is spreading itself throughout the kingdom with a rapidity and facility which its warmest advocates could hardly have anticipated, and except for the partial clamour, which Lord Russell justifies, is gradually dissociating itself from our political and religious differences. Unless some unforeseen change occurs in public opinion there is far more probability that before long the slight anomaly which is contained in the Nonconformist objection will somehow be remedied, than that so great a work, the fruit of so much earnest zeal for the good of mankind, and so much disinterested endeavour, should be superseded or destroyed. Indeed the mind of the reader of this chapter cannot fail to be impressed by the conviction that here Lord Russell is speaking ab extra, without that real knowledge of the truth of the position of affairs which belongs to those who have mixed in the conflict of opinion and partaken of its hopes and fears. If he had done so, as no doubt he would have done had the discussion fallen within the range of his own political activity, there is little doubt that Mr. Forster would have found in him a resolute supporter, and might, perhaps, have derived from his mature judgment some counsel which might have anticipated and removed a difficulty that has now grown into such undue proportions.

Towards the conclusion of the volume Lord Russell reverts to the subject of Parliamentary Reform, and referring to the probability of a still further extension of the suffrage, invites the statesmen of the future to consider a project which certainly has been somewhat forgotten, namely :

"The Government of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging, as it was publicly declared at Westminster, December 16, 1653, at which time and place his Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, took a solemn oath for observing the same.”

As this great document can hardly be well known to many of Lord Russell's readers, unless they have the good fortune to possess the facsimile printed for private circulation by the late Mr. MacCulloch in 1867, it would have been well if he had inserted it in his Appendix, and enabled them to judge of the value of his recommendation. With a good word for the Republic which, if it had continued, "John Milton and Algernon Sidney would have contributed to support, the one with his extensive learning, the other with his high spirit, and both by their lofty and unblemished characters," he utters a fervent and humble prayer for the maintenance of that hereditary monarchy, under which we enjoy as large a scheme of popular freedom as any of the ancient Republics ever devised." It may, therefore, be assumed that it is to the portion alone of the Act that affects the popular representa

tion that he desires to refer. If this plan should find favour with future reformers, we should have triennial parliaments, four hundred members for England and Wales, not more than thirty for Scotland, or for Ireland. Other peculiarities of the scheme are the large preponderance of County representation, the fewness of the towns returning two members-only twentytwo in the whole-no town in Wales returning members except Cardiff and Haverfordwest-and the appearance of the names of Leeds and Manchester, then in the commencement of their growth and importance, but not destined to acquire their fair rights till after the lapse of a hundred and seventynine years. We shall not, at any rate, revert to the exclusion of all " who do or shall profess the Roman Catholic religion," and there might be some difficulty in applying the test "that the persons who shall be elected to serve in Parliament shall be such (and no other than such) as are persons of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation." The County Franchise was given to "all and every person and persons seized or possessed to his own use of any estate real or personal to the value of two hundred pounds" a tolerably high qualification when the dif ference in the value of money is considered, and not very susceptible of application to our times and circumstances.

Lord Russell's allusion to this interesting but somewhat obsolete effort at Reform of Parliament, therefore, may be attributed not to any very precise notion of the applicability of this incident in our constitutional history to modern times, but to that peculiar inclination, mainly personal, but not without relation to his Whig breeding and associations, to regard our political life as an historic whole, dependent upon great continuous principles, and little moved by special circumstances or individual men. It is thus that the politicians of our day have heard his frequent allusion to Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights with something of irreverent amusement, and have hardly done justice to that admirable harmony of thought and feeling which has given so much completeness and integrity to his life. It is with this impression that every Englishman will close this volume, and welcome it, not only as a valuable accession to our public annals, but as a testimony of the lofty aims and honest purpose that are compatible with strong party feelings and aristocratic impressions in such a nature as Lord Rus sell's, and under the happy conditions of the society in which his lot has been cast.

HOUGHTON.

The Life and Letters of Rowland Williams, D.D.; with Extracts from his Note Book. Edited by his Wife. In Two Volumes. (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1874.) DR. ROWLAND WILLIAMS, in spite of some failings, was a remarkable man, and since his name must figure in every history of the Anglican Church, and his book on Hinduism and Christianity may possibly, in time, obtain some influence, which, however, is rarely achieved by prize works, it is the duty of those contemporaries who knew him best to take care that he occupies his proper place

be told, of which we can only give part. Coming, as the big mongrel did, from the dear old home, the Rectory of Ysceiviog, the brute was to be cherished at Lampeter, was to share the Vice-Principal's room and board, being his one ewe-lamb, at least until that peerless wife, whom he had met by chance at Heidelberg, should take the favourite's place. So man disposed, but the result was otherwise. On the first day Llew did not wait to be helped to his dinner, but he helped himself, taking for his share the whole leg of mutton. Now Rowland Williams was not the man to be treated in this way either by a Bishop of Salisbury or by a cur, however big. So he did battle at once, and thus scored another escape from death, in addition to many, the series of which had begun even in infancy, when a Welsh Sangrado bled him habitually to cure debility! However, if the dog did not kill his master, neither did his master kill him, poor Llew being reserved for a worse fate.

There is one fault to be found with the book over and above the misprints, which are frequent and annoying. This is the substitution of the dash (--) for proper names. Of course this must be done sometimes, but it need not be done as a rule, and apparently for no better reason than an inability on the part of the authoress or printer to make them out. But good as the book is, on the whole, the photograph of Dr. Williams, which it contains, is the best part. A truer likeness never was produced.

R. W. ESSINGTON.

Voltaire et la Société Française au XVIII. Siècle. Voltaire et J. J. Rousseau. Par Gustave Desnoiresterres. (Paris: Didier, 1874.)

M. DESNOIRESTERRES publishes this year the sixth volume of his long-sustained and exhaustive history of Voltaire. Again he reaches throughout that uniform degree of unusual and useful merit which the skilful execution of the earlier numbers of his series has prepared us always to expect from him. We have before called attention in these pages (Aug. 15, 1872) to the eminent degree in which M. Desnoiresterres possesses all those qualities which go to the making of an excellent biographer. He writes with ease and good breeding; he selects with superior intelligence from the vast mass of materials which lie at his disposal; he handles his matter with just judgment and discretion; and although he zealously explores every source of information, he keeps in place and order the varied crowd of details with able generalship, so that the reader, always interested, is never wearied or oppressed. There is yet another point especially worthy of notice, and that is the attitude of what may be called friendly impartiality which M. Desnoires terres maintains towards his subject. He is perfectly honest, yet never unkind. He does not shrink from telling us clearly the ignoble facts of the famous quarrel with the President des Brosses (chap. iii.) about fourteen loads of wood which Voltaire had most certainly burnt, and for which he obstinately refused to pay, but at the same time he lets us see how this apparently niggardly ob

a

the scene.

stinacy had its source in springs which nourished some of the larger and more splendid virtues which distinguished his hero. We are made to feel that connexion exists between the headed, fiery persistency which he sometimes showed in resenting a fancied wrong done to himself, and the noble tenacity of purpose and singleness of conviction which he displayed in his unselfish endeavours to right the wrongs of others. In the same spirit of fair dealing M. Desnoiresterres treats of Voltaire's attitude and action in religious matters. He never permits the special shade of his own sentiment on these subjects to betray him into an illiberal estimate. Though he clearly indicates his own distaste for the flippant blasphemies by which Voltaire and his frères constantly outraged the bounds of good judgment and good feeling, he does not emphasize it unnecessarily, but accounts these offences rather (as in truth they were) weapons hateful in themselves, the use of which was well nigh justified by the desperate nature of the situation in which they found themselves.

The volume before us opens with the advent of Mdlle. Corneille at Ferney, an episode in Voltaire's life which should ever be held in honourable memory. In this adoption of an unknown girl, whose only claim to his notice was her descent from a brother of the great Corneille, Voltaire gave evidence of the most uncalculating generosity. The varied obligations entailed by the due support of the burden which he had thus taken upon himself he fulfilled with unselfish and faithful zeal. For the course of her education, and finally for her suitable establishment, the most discreet provisions were made; nothing was omitted, nothing was forgotten which the care of a wise and affectionate father could have supplied. To the arrival of Mdlle. Corneille succeeds the affair of the curé of Moens, and here again we have (as M. Desnoiresterres happily says) the Voltaire "des bons jours.' The cure of Moens was an excellent priest, who, disturbed by the news of the presence of three younger men in the house of a favourite female parishioner, and desirous of preventing the possibility of scandal, armed a troop of honest peasants with bludgeons, and, thus accompanied, set upon the three youths and successfully accomplished the feat of beating them within an inch of their lives. In order to make sure that the party were quite incapable of further mischief, the affair was concluded by trampling on their stomachs, after which they were left with the parting injunction, "to die like Huguenots "-i. e., without the sacraments. The relations of the youths were too frightened to resent the injury. Voltaire constituted himself their champion, and declared his intention of procuring for M. le Curé an "emploi dans les galères.' But the clergy came to the rescue with the Bishop of Annecy at their head (the bishop, indeed, was of opinion that the curé had been guilty only of a somewhat ill-considered zeal), and so obstinate a defence was made that Voltaire was reluctantly obliged to relinquish his hope of rewarding the curé according to his deserts, and to rest contented with an award of "quinze cent livres, sans détriment, bien

Mr. Morley, in his chapter on Voltaire at Ferney (p. 327), has shown a force of true insight in stating the causes which made the quarrel between these two men inevitable. He seizes the essential nature of the antago nism which slowly developed itself, and which had its origin, not in accidents of popular rivalry, but in the very quality of their respective genius and character. It is a remarkable testimony to the justness of Mr. Morley's judgment that M. Desnoires. terres (who works on quite another line and method) furnishes us as he groups his facts with precisely the illustrations suitable to the different stages of Mr. Morley's argu. ment. Rousseau, as Mr. Morley tells us, thought, or rather felt, with passionate sentiment about the wrongs and misery of suf fering men and women, while Voltaire's single object was to reinstate the under standing in its full rights, to emancipate thought. He never contemplated a social revolution, and M. Desnoiresterres (p. 238) remarks, in commenting a letter written by him to D'Alembert in 1757 :

"Voltaire, qui n'aspire qu'à l'affranchissement du genre humain, mais qui ne suppose point que l'on puisse se passer de laquais, exclut, comme on le voit, la canaille de sa république. La vérité n'est pas faite pour les classes inférieures qui peuvent aller à la messe et au prêche, même au grand avantage de leurs maîtres.'

Voltaire, indeed, was, on the whole, eminently successful; as M. Thiers has said, "on pardonne volontiers à un ordre de choses dans laquelle on a trouvé place." This success in itself was an eyesore to Rousseau. As long as he himself was obscure, as long as he was unambitious of literary distinction, he could give himself up without afterthought to the sentiments of pleasure and admiration with which certain works of Voltaire inspired him. When, however, he too too became famous, the irritable vanity which coated the natural moroseness of his temperament was aroused, and Voltaire was hated as a rival (Desnoiresterres, p. 83)-a rival who was enjoying in his native town the place which of right was his, and from which he was virtually excluded. In 1756 Voltaire's poem on “Le Désastre de Lisbonne " appeared, and a Genevan pastor applied to Rousseau as the champion best fitted to refute the theory which it contained, and which was of so flagrantly impious a nature. Ronsseau thus called into the arena warmed to the fight, and closed the letter which he addressed to Voltaire on this occasion with an open declaration of his hate. After this the obliga tions of friendship no longer existed, and when the Nouvelle Héloïse appeared Voltaire spoke his mind frankly, but he does not seem to have gone beyond the limits of his real convictions. "The very language of