be

(1875).

He was at this time on the staff of the Globe, mentioned-Essais de Philosophie (1842); Abéthat brilliant review founded by Dubois in 1824, lard, sa vie et ses œuvres (1845); Passé et présent which waged unsparing and successful war with (1847); St. Anselme de Cantorbéry (1853); Bacon the Restoration. Here he found himself in the (1857); La Philosophie religieuse (1864); and his company of Duvergier de Hauranne, Guizot, two last books, David Hartley (1874), and L'HisJouffroy, Cousin. While with the first three hetoire de la Philosophie Anglaise de Bacon à Locke devoted himself to politics, and took his post without renouncing his independence of spirit in the ranks of the so-called doctrinaire party, he entered upon studies in philosophy by the side of M. Cousin, yet without submitting to his imperious authority. His life was thenceforth devoted almost wholly to these two fields of activity. He brought to each the same prudence, inclining to timidity, but also the same elevation of thought, the same warmth of heart. Having been elected deputy in 1830 by the town of Toulouse, where his father had been prefect, he sat at first on the Right from a reaction against the advanced wing of the Liberal party, which did not draw a sufficiently clear line of demarcation between itself and the Revolutionary party; but when the disturbances had been repressed and order re-established, he passed over to the Left Centre, where he joined with M. Thiers in demanding a more liberal and more active policy.

He was for a brief space Minister of the Interior in 1840 when M. Thiers became Prime Minister, and he distinguished his short tenure of office by the speech, very impolitic it must be confessed for a friend of constitutional liberties, but of a high order of eloquence, in which he advocated and carried the solemn transportation of the remains of Napoleon from St. Helena.

During the eight years that followed he offered a relentless opposition at once vigorous, graceful and sensible, to M. Guizot's barren policy. The Revolution of February, 1848, again threw him into the arms of the Right, for it was ever in the nature of his mind, prone to moderation and capable of calm wisdom rather than of enthusiasm, when the ship heeled over in one direction to throw his weight on the other. Without sufficiently distrusting the recollections and the heirs of the name of Napoleon, he even for a moment showed himself favourable to the Prince President; but he speedily divined his ambitious projects, and offered him an opposition which the blindness of the Montagnards and, soon after, the Coup d'Etat of 1851, rendered unavailing.

Throughout the whole of the period of the Empire, M. de Rémusat held aloof from politics, and devoted himself wholly to his literary and philosophical labours. He made no noise about his opposition to the imperial government, but he was inflexible in his attitude of disdainful, sarcastic, and almost contemptuous isolation. Even in 1870, on the occasion of the changes inaugurated by the Ollivier ministry, he only gave those efforts his half-ironical goodwill, and I still remember with what wise scepticism he expressed his fears as to the impossibility of an absolute government continuing to live by becoming liberal.

The Revolution of 1870 and the misfortunes of

France caused the return of M. de Rémusat to public life. He was summoned by M. Thiers to undertake the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which he showed a clearness of intellect undiminished by the lapse of years. The failure of his candidature at Paris was one of the causes of the fall of M. Thiers. Being afterwards elected in the Haute Garonne, he continued faithful to himself, and contributed to the utmost of his power to the establishment of the Republic, in which he saw, not the political ideal, but the only practical solution in the present state of France.

The most brilliant period of M. de Rémusat's literary activity falls between 1840 and 1860. He was one of the most fertile and most competent contributors to the Revue des Deux Mondes, and some of his most important books, especially L'Angleterre au XVIIIe Siècle, are reprints of a series of articles. He was elected member of the

Academy of Moral Sciences in 1842, and of the French Academy in 1846. Among his works may

As may be perceived, M. de Rémusat gave his preference to England as the subject of his studies. He loved the solid and practical spirit of English philosophers and statesmen. He loved, too, their readiness to accept the teachings of experience, to yield to the demands of public opinion, and to the tendencies of their age. His mind was always open to novelties, but remained ever inaccessible to all impulses which exceeded the bounds of moderation. Exquisitely polite, and kindly in manners and in all the relations of life, he carried into the domain of mind and of ideas the same correctness and the same grace. Faithful to the eighteenth-century spirit of free thought, he yet showed no want of imagination, no anti-religious passion. He detested fanaticism, irreligious fanaticism as well as its opposite. I do not hesitate to say that of all the eminent men whom the France of the eighteenth century has produced, M. de Rémusat was the most completely, the most profoundly liberal.

He leaves two dramas in verse unpublished; one of them, Abélard, of which Sainte-Beuve has spoken in his Port Royal, contains poetic beauties of the highest order. G. MONOD,

GERMAN LETTER.

Gotha: June 3, 1875.

circumstances. Schiller had earnestly advised his sister against the marriage, and was afterwards obliged, for her consolation, to carry on a secret correspondence with her. He remained, however, ever the same to her in friendliness and helpful care until the end. His sister Christophine was in all respects like the poet, her portrait showing very pleasing features in spite of a large mouth. Womanlike, her brother's ideality became in her a deep duty which displayed itself in the most self-sacrificing surrender to an unamiable man, and in inexhaustible cheerfulness and enjoyment of life even to extreme old age. She was also like her brother in the following trait. In the year 1845, that is, when an old lady of eightyeight, she showed a friend a small steel engraving, with the remark: "My work for this summer will be to copy this sheet; it should, however, be three or four times larger, for one generally learns most so." This desire for learning, which verifies the dictum of Solon, strikingly recalls the restless striving and working of the great poet.

We have, almost at the same time, received twe biographies of a poet lately deceased. A countryman of his gives, in the first volume of the Posthumous Works of Franz Reuter (Weimar: Hinstorff), a short but lucid sketch of the Mecklenburg poet Adolf Wilbrandt's life and personal characteristics. It is, indeed, well to try to fix the likeness of a remarkable man immediately after his death, for experience teaches that trustworthy tradition is for the most part lost when his contemporaries have died out; but a fitting exponent is not always to be found immediately. Thus, in a book by O. Glagau, Fritz Reuter and his Poems (Berlin: Grote), we find many notices relating especially to the youth and family life, for which we are grateful; but the author's criticism, regarded from the ethical and aesthetical points of view, is unripe and superficial, and a satisfactorily many-sided presentment of the poet remains the task of the future. The writings now published by Wilbrandt will be useful for such a work: more especially the letters by Inspector Brasig, from a conversation-paper edited by Reuter in 1855 and 1856, in which the most original and complete creation of the humourist appears in its first inception. Otherwise, the works of his earlier years are of no importance. It was a hard lot which threw a student of three and twenty into a dungeon as a demagogue and traitor, from which he was only restored to life after many years, sick in body and soul. The saddest consequence of this was that the rich and joyous genius of the unhappy man was crippled in its natural growth, so that he could no longer find a firm footing in study and industry, and was given up by his father as a drunkard and ne'er-do-weel. Thus it is all the more wonderful how the man worked himself up out of this grief and misery, and has from the fullness of his rich and noble nature produced the most glorious results, for which a whole people is grateful. He is the author of works in the hard plain dialect of the Lower German peasants and artisans, in which the healthiest morality and the most ardent piety are united with the most splendid humour, and which are not only a joy and consolation to the aristocracy of culture, but to the poorest and simplest, beautifying and deepening the lives, especially of the latter, in earnestness and cheerfulness. His Ancient History of Mecklenburg will not, in spite of its pleasing introduction, fulfil the varied expectations that have been formed of it; it is a satirical representation of political circumstances, as they now no longer, and, it may be hoped, have long ceased to exist in Mecklenburg. Hence, only Mecklenburgers will understand the bitter truthfulness and genial humour of these wonderful stories, and will be grateful to their poet for these also. The volume closes with a few simple and striking poems of the year of the war 1870.

A second part has appeared of The New Plutarch, Biographies of prominent Characters in History Literature, and Art, edited by R. Gottschall

(Leipzig: Brockhaus), containing Robespierre by R. Gottschall, Maria Theresa by Ad. Beer, and Cavour by O. Speyer. The life of Cavour is admirably written. This man's character and work are delineated with vigour and animation, in all their greatness and originality. The biographer of a contemporary statesman has on the one hand a great advantage in that he need not paint the historical background exhaustively, a task which in a popular exposition requires peculiar powers. On the other hand, it will be difficult for him to guard his judgment from the injustice to which differences of party views and of national character may lead. This is particularly the case with a German in regard to his estimate of religious questions. The saying repeated by the great Italian even on his death-bed, Libera chiesa in libero stato, is at most understood by a German in another sense from that which it bears in the South, while his attitude towards the church is, even if he be a Catholic, essentially different. To him the great stress laid by Cavour upon dying within the pale of the church would, in the case of so great a mind, be hardly intelligible. An ineffaceable difference in the character of the Germans and Romans appears in this, that the one places his religion above all in the inward relation to God, in faith; the other in an outward relation to church and worship. All the more do we feel bound to acknowledge that in this respect also Herr Otto Speyer has rightly and impartially represented the opinion and policy of the great Count. We cannot, alas! pass over in silence the fact that the publisher Gottschall has in the life of Robespierre supplied a contribution in no way worthy of praise. One would, at least, have expected from a publisher who is also a poet, that he would have been led to a correct judgment of this caricature of a man by an artistic abhorrence of his subject; but the style and the descriptions in this biography are careless and colourless, and the hollow phrases of the Dictator about virtue and freedom so greatly impress the author, that he sees in this sanguinary pedant a great apostle of democracy whose festival speeches "have stamped the seal of intellectual significance upon the Revolution." The strangest thing is that such things can still be written after Heinrich von Sybel's History of the Revolutionary Period. It would be superfluous to commend the eminent characteristics of this excellent work, the first part of the fifth volume of which is now ready. It treats of the time of the Congress of Rastatt, the fall of the old system in Italy and Switzerland, the campaign in Egypt, and the constitution of the second coalition. The complicated relations of European politics are unravelled with wonderful clearness; the spread of the Republican propaganda, with its union of perfidious phraseology and brutal force, the peculiar characters of the determining personalities-Napoleon, Thugut, Nelson, and others-are pourtrayed with fine intuition. In this part also of the great work one sees the eminent men and their deeds come out clear and distinct from the mythical haze in which astonishment and hatred have veiled them fold on fold. Especially remarkable in this respect is the criticism on the Egyptian expedition, which Herr von Sybel defends on convincing grounds against the reproach of adventurous action; while the characteristics of Paul the First of Russia form a masterpiece of historical portraiture. All through the fine union of ideal sentiment and critical acumen which distinguishes the Bonn professor is maintained. The volume ends with an extremely sagacious enquiry into the murder of the envoys at Rastatt, which at length affords a certain solution of this gloomy riddle, and proves Count von Lehrbach to have been the author of the murder. If Herr von Sybel, notwithstanding the facts so carefully collated by him, suggests a misunderstanding according to which the above-named diplomat had not exactly intended the murder, but only the ill-usage, of the French envoys, it must, on the other hand, be observed that the in

too far, but it is a guarantee that we shall obtain the tradition pure and undisturbed by hypothetical additions. We learn how the country people still regard the nature amidst which they live, and certain fixed intuitions which still live under the dominion of Christianity stand out in clear and distinct relief. To this it should only be added that these intuitions had in pre-Christian times taken plastic form and personality. As the agreement of the Germanic and Slav customs with those of the Greeks and Romans is often surprising, we may expect very interesting conclusions from the above-mentioned second volume.

It will gladden the friends of archaeology to hear that a specification of the antiques now extant in Rome is to be published from papers left by Professor Matz, to whom a friendly notice bas been devoted in this periodical. It is a catalogue of all the works not brought together in large collections, but scattered about the villas, palaces, courts, gardens, and streets of the city. The completion of the undertaking was only hindered by his great work upon Roman Sarcophagi, and the Director of the Institute has now commissioned a young countryman of the deceased, Herr von Duhn, of Lübeck, to revise and edit the catalogue on the spot.

With regard to modern art, the Catalogue of the Exhibited Paintings and Drawings obtained in the 1874 for the Berlin Museum from the Collections of Herr Barthold Suermondt, by Dr. T. Meyer and Dr. W. Bode (Berlin: Berg and Holten), is worthy of mention. The careful biographical notices, the accurate reproduction of the signatures, and the literary index, render this catalogue a useful auxiliary to any one engaged upon the pictorial art of the Netherlands.

The first half of the second annual issue of the excellent publication edited under the title of Artistic Handicraft by Bucher and Grauth (Stuttgart: Spemann), has appeared in thirty-six numbers. The German-Italian Renaissance in furniture, weapons, and utensils receives particularly ample consideration; but neither the Gothic nor the Roccoco is wanting; the coloured copy of oriental materials is very pretty, and the antique is at least represented by a Greek bronze vase and a Pompeian mosaic.

vestigation before the court-martial makes such an assumption scarcely possible. For it cannot well be admitted that the two officers of the Szekler Hussars interested in the matter would have been promoted to be general and major if their subordinates had been guilty of so great a misunderstanding entailing so many consequences. The son of the celebrated historian, the Professor of Philology at Marburg University, Ludwig von Sybel, publishes a very attractive dissertation on Schliemann's Troy (Marburg: Elwert). It is undeniable that a large number of the public share the belief in which Herr Schliemann began his excavations, that we could, from the information in the Homeric songs, fix the site of the citadel of Priam and the great tower of the Trojans, as easily as we could the situation of Sebastopol from a history of the Crimean War. There are even among the learned many to whom this view is not wholly foreign, as the articles of M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in the latest numbers of the Revue Archéologique, for instance, prove. The narratives of the Homeric singer are used very much in the same manner as a modern staff report. It is, therefore, very right that Herr von Sybel should first of all seek to make it clear that we have to form our conception of Homer, not as an historian, but as a poet. It is, indeed, correctly brought forward in opposition to the belief spread abroad by Schliemann himself, that the antiqui-year ties found in no wise correspond to the cultus depicted in the Iliad. The positive assertions of the author with regard to the newly-discovered town are less satisfactory. He holds it to be the historical Ilion, which arose in the time of Kroisos. This explanation seems to me to account neither for the mass nor for the character of the remains, which both point to a remoter age. It is not credible that here, in the midst of the Hellenic colonies, the culture of the Bronze age should | have maintained itself up to the fourth or fifth century, and as little that such heaps of ruins should have accumulated here in that century. It seems to be beyond all doubt that these remains, weapons, and utensils, belong to an older population related to the Hellenes, which dwelt here before the Aeolo-Achaian emigration, and which we may perhaps best name Dardanian. That the highest stratum immediately under the Hellenic ruins particularly exhibits rude and strange forms, is explained by the lasting occupation of this district by barbarous nations in the seventh and sixth century. Herr von Sybel has only touched these questions in a cursory manner; he has, on the other hand, fully and skilfully elucidated the significance of this treasure-trove in its bearings on the history of art, and more especially the character of this earliest Indo-Germanic ornamentation. Archaeology may expect new light from another side, from the domain of mythology. Herr Wilhelm Mannhardt has written a book upon Wood and Field Worship (Berlin: Bornträger), the first part of which treats of the tree-worship of the Germans and their neighbour-races; he promises us the second part, Graeco-Roman Agrarian Cultus elucidated by North-European Tradition. The work before us gives fresh proof of the indefatigable scientific industry with which the author collects from old and new literature whatever comes to hand in the way of mythical tradition, and it is intelligible that surprising results should be obtained by such comparisons. The most disconnected knowledge of the customs of long extinct nations is often illuminated by a still existing superstition, and the general picture of antiquity stands out clearly from the collation of a hundred mutilated and blotted forms of dead religious intuition. Whether the author has found the right expression for the meaning of mythical forms is doubtful to me: while but a short time since a goddess was recognised in every white woman, Herr Mannhardt carefully avoids giving any particular divine appellation, and speaks at most of a "daemon of vegetation." This reaction seems to me to go

There is little to report in regard to poetry. A novel by Paul Heyse appears in the feuilleton of the Cologne Gazette, the action of which is chiefly laid in artistic circles. As it cannot be intelligently read in this form, one must await the end. Adolf Wilbrandt has collected his last year's novelettes into one volume. Among these careful and delicately executed works, I must single out Our Legal Conscience. Its substance is briefly this: A young husband asserts that women have no legal conscience, and makes a bet with his wife that she will, within fourteen days, perpetrate a breach of the law; she, on that very day, deals in paving-stones as ownerless property, is annoyed by fictitious judicial proceedings, and contrives in the end to get herself out of the difficulty. I mention the little story, not because of its importance, but because it belongs to a style which is scarce among us-that of the humorous. Wilbrandt is a native of Mecklenburg, who has lived many years in South Germany, and it is not the first time that his recollections of his native country have given a pleasant humorous colouring to his delineation.

I would rather in the lovely month of May have spoken of new poems, of songs of love and spring, but our lyric Parnassus is ill appointed: most of the poets of the elder generation have ceased to sing, and there is no young underwood. Theodor Storm takes a peculiar position among known lyric poets. A fifth improved edition of his Poems (Berlin: Paetel) has just appeared. Storm is, as a novelist, a much read and much esteemed writer; as a lyric poet he has but slowly become known, perhaps not in spite of, but because of the fact that his songs are full of pure and real poetry. He is entirely wanting in that moral

phraseology, that generally comprehensible rhetoric, which makes so many commonplace poets the theme of the multitude, at least for a short time. These verses will, however, be a lasting ornament to our literature; one proof of this is, that many of them are now extensively known and valued, even where the name of the author is not held in consideration. There is hardly a strophe in this collection that is not written with true feeling, and at the same time with clear intuition, to which are added warm sensibility, deep natural feeling, and, finally, an uncommonly harmonious utterance. The expression is often original and, as it were, newly coined, but never ornate; indeed it sometimes has the simple heartiness of national songs, as in the verses:— Meine Mutter hat's gewollt,

Den Andern ich nehmen sollt," etc. The contents of these poems are as rich as a full human life. The tones of yearning and pleading are rarer than in other lyrics, the expression of true love for a beautiful and tender wife and grief for her death more frequent, while ever above the impressive laments over the transitory nature of all that is earthly, rises the manly earnestness of thought. The fate of his country -Storm is a native of Schleswig-Holsteinhas also personally affected the poet. After the unhappy result of the struggle for freedom in 1848, he was forced into exile, and was only recalled to his native city after the deliverance from the Danish yoke in 1864. Some of his finest songs are devoted to anger against the oppressor and mourning for his lost home; but, to point out at the same time the limits of his talent in his own words:

"Wir können auch die Trompete blasen

Und schmettern weithin durch das Land; Doch schreiten wir lieber in Maientagen, Wenn die Primeln blühn und die Drosseln schlagen, Still sinnend an des Baches Rand."

A great sensation is being made in Berlin by the starring performance of the Court actors from Meiningen, which has gradually attracted the attention of the rest of Germany. The Meiningen stage is a small Court theatre, the management of which, astutely limiting its operations, has given up the opera and concentrated all its strength on the cultivation of the drama. The art-loving Duke, a near relation of the Royal house of England, is still more closely connected through his third wife, who is an actress, with dramatic art, in which he takes the deepest interest, and the original manner in which he himself manages his theatre has given a far-reaching importance to the German stage. Dramatic art in Germany has since the first decade of the present century undergone a rapid decline. The large houses that have been built everywhere have greatly contributed to this. Being constructed with a view to the requirements of great operas, they are far too capacious for the drama, the finer accents of speech are lost in these spaces, the tempo gets slower, owing to the long waves of sound, and the actor is committed to an immoderate expenditure of gesture and motion in order still to produce an effect from a distance. Hand in hand with this goes a régime of virtuosi, which severs isolated leading parts from the context, and distinguished actors labour upon single parts, phenomena analogous to some in England. To this is generally added great carelessness in study, the interest, at almost all theatres, being rather directed to the continuity of the plot of a new piece than to the careful performance of details. Against these faults must be set the pains taken by the Meiningen theatre to preserve so-called historical truth by the most careful costume put together with painful consciousness, also to bring together aids to a more accurate characterisation in dress, in arrangement, in looks and gestures, and here there is too much of a good thing. It further endeavours by most carefully concerted acting, especially in the scènes d'ensemble, forcible changes of tempo, and a sedulous system of study, to obtain results

which shall, up to a certain point, be independent of the talent of a single actor. They have, owing to this realism, succeeded not only in Shaksperian pieces, but also in those of the later German poets, in producing effects the legitimacy of which one cannot for the most part deny, and which occasionally give life to the beauties of the poetry in a way of which the Germans had hardly a notion. It is to be hoped that this peculiar method of representation, which, moreover, follows an English model in its careful mise en scène, and the performances of the Théâtre Français in its best days in the careful elaboration of the dialogue, will bring about a reaction at other German theatres. The good effects are already noticeable in the Theatre Royal at Berlin. How great is the interest with which this recreation is pursued among us may be inferred from the fact that the Emperor William heard Kleist's Herrmansschlacht two days running, at the Theatre Royal, and then at the Meiningen performance, and gave his opinion with much energy on the relative advantages of both methods of acting.

C. ALDENHOVEN.

SELECTED BOOKS.

General Literature and Art.

ANSTED, D. T., and R. G. LATHAM. The Channel Islands.
Allen. 168.
GOWER, Lord Ronald. Handbook to the Art Galleries (public
and private) of Belgium and Holland. Low & Co. 5s.
PAUL POTTER, Eaux-fortes de, reproduites et publiées par
Amand-Durand. Texte par Georges Duplessis. Paris :
Goupil.

POUGIN, A. Boieldieu, sa vie, ses oeuvres, son caractère, sa
correspondance. Paris: Charpentier. 3 fr. 50 c.
WATTS, W. L. Snioland or Iceland, its Jökulls and Fjalls.
Longmans. 7s. 6d.

History.

ALBANESI, F. L'inquisizione religiosa nella Repubblica di Venezia. Venezia: tip. Naratovich.

BEER, A. Zur Geschichte der oesterreichischen Politik in den J. 1801 u. 1802. Oesterreich u. Russland in den J. 1804 u. 1805. Wien: Gerolds Sohn. 3 M.

BEGHELLI, G. La Repubblica Romana del 1849 con documenti
inediti ed illustrazioni. Vol. II. Lodi.
BENVENUTO, M. Il duca d' Ossuna o tre anni di pessimo governo.
Milano.

GRUNAU'S, S., preussische Chronik. Hrsg. v. M. Perlbach. 1.
Lfg. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. 5 M. 60 Pf.
HIRSCH, S. Jahrbücher d. deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich
II. 3. Bd. Hrsg. v. H. Bresslau. Leipzig: Duncker &
Humblot. 9 M.
MIGNET, F. Rivalité de François Ier et de Charles-Quint.
Paris: Didier. 15 fr.
WENGEN, F. v. der. Die Kämpfe vor Belfort im Januar 1871.
Leipzig: Brockhaus. 12 M.

Physical Science, &c.

BAENSCH, Die Sturmfluth an den Ostsee-Küsten d. preussischen Staates vom 12.-13. Novbr. 1872. In meteorolog. u. hydrotechn. Beziehg. Berlin Ernst & Korn. 10 M.

DE GOEJE, M. J. Das alte Bett des Oxus Amû-Darja. Leiden:
Brill.

PFEFFER, W. Die periodischen Bewegungen der Blattorgane.
Leipzig: Engelmann. 7 M.
STEINDACHNER, F. Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Chromiden d.
Amazonenstromes. Wien: Gerolds Sohn. 4 M.
SYMONS, G. J. British Rainfall, 1874. Stanford. 58.

Philology.

NALOPAKHYANAM, or the Tale of Nala. Ed. T. Jarrett. Cam10s. bridge University Press. WICHERT, G. Ueb. den Gebrauch d. adjectivischen Attributes an Stelle d. subjectiven od. objectiven Genetivs im Lateinischen. Berlin: Weidmann. 2 M. 40 Pf.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE LATE SIR GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY.

June 7, 1875.

In the obituary notices of my friend, the late Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, his chief claim to the gratitude of posterity-the discovery of the steamjet as a means of enormously increasing steampower, of ventilating mines, &c.-has been generally overlooked in favour of several minor claims, such as the invention of the Bude light, the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, &c. This has probably arisen from the mistaken notion that G. Stephenson discovered this power. But Stephenson never claimed to have done this, though Mr. Smiles, in his Life of Stephenson, claimed it for him. Stephenson, indeed, had previously discharged the waste steam through a pipe in the funnel, but it was Gurney who thought of so forming and placing the pipe that the cone of

discharged steam should expand exactly to the breadth of the funnel, and lift the entire column of air and send it forth at the full rate of the discharging steam; thus producing the draught which was the one absolute and otherwise impossible condition of working locomotives at high pressure, and consequently at high speed. Should any of your readers be curious about the evidence and details of this, perhaps the most important discovery of recent times, they can consult Sir Goldsworthy Gurney's Account of the Invention of the Steam-Jet or Blast, and its application to Steamboats and Locomotive Engines. C. PATMORE.

ON WENTWORTH'S UNPUBLISHED SPEECH.

4 Gordon Street, W.C.: June 7, 1875. The Daily News of the 5th instant contains an article on the recently discovered speech of Wentworth, which is fair and candid in its apprecia

tion of the inferences to be drawn from the new

evidence, especially in pointing out that a change had already taken place in December, 1628, in the point of view from which Wentworth regarded questions in dispute between the Crown and the people. He looks upon these now from the royal, and not from the popular side. On the other hand, the writer sees in the frankness with which Wentworth expressed his opinions, a strong proof that he was not a vulgar turncoat.

In both these inferences I entirely concur. But the writer has, I think, omitted to consider circumstances which go far both to diminish the extent of the change, such as it was, and to explain how it came about.

In the first place the opposition which he sees between Wentworth's resolution in the preceding session "to vindicate our ancient liberties," &c., and his later declaration that he who "ravells forth into questions the right of a king and of a people, shall never be able to wrap them up again with that comeliness and order in which he found them," does not involve any direct contradiction. In the one place Wentworth maintains that it is good both for king and people that men shall not be forced to pay loans and imprisoned without having any trial whatever, or any chance of being heard in their own defence. But though he speaks strongly on this point, and wishes that there may be a law compelling the judges to liberate a prisoner when no cause is shown, he is remarkably careful not to "ravell forth into questions the right of a king and of a people," giving his opinion that circumstances may arise when the King would have to override the laws whatever they might be, and refusing to associate himself with those who wished to take up the Petition of Right if the Lords refused their consent to it, and hinting that he would be no party to any attempt to push it on if the King refused his consent to it. The only pressure he consents to put upon the King is the exercise of the undeniable right of refusing subsidies. His position is not unlike that taken by Bacon in his early conflict with Elizabeth, of which Mr. Spedding has given so lucid an ac

count.

If, however, the speech of December has its roots in principles professed in March and April, there has plainly been a development on one side and a drawing back on the other. In any explanation of this the mere fact of accession to office must count for something, involving as it did a far greater change in point of view than is implied in crossing over nowadays from the Opposition to the Treasury benches. But in addition to this, circumstances had occurred which were certain to produce a profound impression upon Wentworth's mind. His words about "ravelling forth into questions" have a direct application to that which had taken place in the House of Commons after the granting of the Petition of Right, and which might possibly take place again in the coming session. In declaring that the King had no right to tonnage and poundage without a Parliamentary vote, the Commons

had doubtless spoken in accordance with a fair interpretation of old Acts of Parliament. But those Acts had been interpreted in another way by the judges, and apparently to escape this difficulty the Commons had fallen back upon the assertion that the levy of these duties was forbidden by the Petition of Right, a statement which I believe to have been absolutely without foundation. But whatever may have been the legal value of the opinion of the Commons, a decision in their favour would have amounted to a political revolution. A deficit of 120,000l. or 140,0007. in a revenue of 600,000l. at the most, meant the necessity for the Crown to capitulate without reserve. The Commons would be absolute masters of the situation, might not only dictate the policy of the executive as they do now, but might-as they had in fact already done by absolving merchants from the payment of these duties-set aside a judicial decision by the simple resolution of a single political assembly. At the same time they had announced their determination to prohibit all utterance of religious opinion diverging from the Calvinistic standard, a determination which admits of some justification under the special circumstances of the time, but which was not likely to be satisfactory to Wentworth.

If Wentworth may be fairly believed to have been repelled by the late proceedings of the Commons, he may also be fairly believed to have been attracted by the recent proceedings of the King. When this speech was delivered in York, Charles had already made up his mind to withdraw his extreme pretensions about tonnage and poundage, and had issued that declaration prefixed to the Articles of Religion which, whatever its value may have been, was plainly intended as a compromise.

In

Such are the circumstances under which Wentworth spoke. He was, no doubt, as the writer in the Daily News says, "clearly on the path which led him, once a prisoner in the cause of resistance to forced loans, to aid the exaction of ship money when that exaction suited the ends of the 'soverain Judge of us all.'" But, unless I am mistaken, what I have now said will show that in attaching himself to Charles he may very well have been actuated by a belief that the high view which he took of Charles's authority was the right one. fact, this view, though pushed to extremities by Wentworth, was very much the same view as that previously taken by Bacon, and not altogether unlike that subsequently taken by Cromwell in the days of the Protectorate. If any one wants to see that view in a modern dress he will find it expressed in Mr. F. Harrison's recent work on Order and Progress. The modern writer has, of course, before his eyes limitations which Wentworth would never have thought of; but in his distrust of the incapacity of a representative assembly for the direct work of government, he touches the feeling which seems to me to have been the mainspring of Wentworth's SAMUEL R. GARDINER.

career.

PEPYS' DIARY.

23 Sussex Place, Regent's Park : June 7, 1875.

Mr. Bell says: 66 Will Mr. Bright assert that, in learning the cipher, he did not use Mr. Smith's labours as the key? I most emphatically assert that in learning the cipher I did not use Mr. Smith's labours as the key. I obtained my knowledge of the cipher quite independently of Mr. Smith, and from quite a different source.

Mr. Smith received his knowledge of the cipher from the late Lord Grenville. There is an interesting letter stating that fact in the Illustrated London News, written shortly after Lord Braybrooke's death, more than twenty years ago, by Mr. Ralph Neville-Grenville.

I gained my knowledge of the cipher from a book in the Pepysian Library, containing, among other ciphers, one by Shelton, which is the cipher used by Pepys, not that mentioned by Lord Bray

brooke in the Life of Pepys, "known by the name of Rich's system," which has several letters different from Pepys' cipher. I only gave the book about three weeks ago to Professor Adams, of Cambridge, who wanted it in order to decipher a valuable MS. by Newton. If I had used Mr. Smith's labours as the key, I might have fallen into the same mistakes with him.

Mr. Bell says that he claims the book, minus the mistakes, as his copyright, on the ground that he paid for the exclusive right of printing it for a term of years. The only answer necessary for that statement is the old proverb, Caveat emptor. MYNORS BRIGHT.

This

THIS treatise is a valuable contribution to the discussion of ethical questions in this country. Whatever value may be attached to the results arrived at, moral science cannot but profit by such a full and careful collection of the vota of the most popular systems, and such an impartial exposure of all the ȧropía that rise from comparing them together. Mr. Sidgwick has produced a not unworthy imitation of those preliminary discussions of opinion with which Aristotle prefaces his constructive philosophy. praise must, however, be limited by the remark that, though his knowledge of ethical remark that, though his knowledge of ethical philosophy is wide and accurate, his view of all but the English writers seems to a certain extent external and unappreciative. The method he has adopted of criticising the tems of morals not individually, but in large classes, has led him to assume too easily the adequacy (with one important exception) of the prevailing English classification of doctrines, and to force all systems into it by a somewhat Procrustean process. The result

sys

is, that the full meaning of negative or ascetic theories, like those of the Stoics, is not discerned, that although Kant has been carefully studied, the bearing of his restatement of the moral problem is only partially apprehended, and that Spinoza and the later German writers are almost entirely neglected.

The purpose of Mr. Sidgwick is indicated by his title. He finds that all schools of moralists have spent their efforts too much on establishing their first principles, and too little on showing the results of the development and application of them :—

"The modern Epicurean reasons closely and scientifically when he tries to persuade us that it is useless to aim at anything but pleasure; but when we are persuaded, so far at least as to be strongly interested in learning his theory of pleasure and its conditions, we are disappointed to find his treatment become suddenly loose and popular. The Intuitionist spends unnecessary words in convincing us that we have moral intuitions; but when we ask him what then are the rules that we intuitively know?' his answers seem almost wilfully vague. What Descartes writes of the older books which his teachers set before him may be applied to most orthodox treatises on Ethics: 'Ils élèvent fort haut la vertu, mais ils n'enseignent pas assez à la connaître.'"-P. 13. Mr. Sidgwick therefore attempts to examine not so much the logic by which the logic principles are established, as whereby systems of duty are developed in conformity with these principles. For the of this examination he however finds purpose two things necessary-first, an assumption as to the general nature of the subjectmatter of ethics; and secondly, a classification of the different specific views of that matter on which systems have been founded. The assumption is that there is something objectively right and reasonable, something "which Reason prescribes and urges us to do either absolutely or as a means to an end apprehended as ultimately rational," or, in other words, that Reason is capable of supplying a motive for action. This assump

tion at once involves the denial of the doctrine which seems to be held by many writers of importance, that desire is always for pleasure, and even that, in Mill's language, we desire a thing in proportion as we find it pleasant" :

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"On this view," says Mr. Sidgwick, the notions right' and wrong' would seem to have no meaning except as applied to the intellectual state accompanying volition; since, if future pleasures and pains be truly represented, the desire must be directed towards its proper object. And thus the only possible method of Ethics would seem to be some form of egoistic Hedonism." Exception might perhaps be taken to the statement that even egoistic Hedonism would be possible if Reason were reduced to the rôle of a spectator. For even Egoism supposes that Reason can supply a motive for action, in so far as it determines the desires of special pleasures by the general idea of the self as a permanent subject to be satisfied. And thus already in this system there is room for that division between the special desires and the rational principle of action which is expressed in the words "right" and "wrong." Mr. Sidgwick, however, adopts Butler's way of meeting the difficulty. He points out the confusion involved in saying that we always act with a view to pleasure, because we are

always said to do our pleasure or what pleases us even when the result of our act is pain. Such language, he says, expresses only "the determination of the will in a certain direction." The natural appetites, and again the social affections, must exist in us ere we can have pleasure in their gratification, and hence they cannot be in the first instances desires for pleasure. We cannot have the pleasure unless we desire the object in the first instance for itself. Hence it is no abnormal phenomenon that the moral end prescribed by reason should in the first instance have to be sought for itself, and that the pleasure of virtue should only be obtained on the express condition of its not being the object sought. "It is merely another illustration of the psychological law which is exemplified throughout the whole range of the desires."

What seems to be wanting in this explanation is a clearer distinction between the desires of a self-conscious and rational being and the appetites of animals. In a rational being it is scarcely possible that pure appetite-appetite quite undetermined by the thought of self and of an object-should exist. As so determined, appetite becomes the desire of an object, which may be regarded as an end in itself if we identify ourselves with it, or may be regarded as a means to pleasure, as an end, if we do not. In the latter case, however, there is a peculiar contradiction between the primary extraregarding desire and the secondary desire of pleasure, of which the "fundamental paradox of Hedonism" I shall say something afterwards. In all cases, however, desire, so far as it is determined by the rational nature of man, implies a sense of defect of that to which, at the same time, the self is regarded as necessarily related, and without which its existence is incomplete; it implies, in short, self-identification with an object. Hence, whether the object be pleasure or no, the attainment of it, or any step to it, must have a pleasure in it, and we can say that the martyr in undergoing his pains is, equally with the selfish voluptuary, doing what pleases him. For pleasure, so far as it is determined by reason, is the attainment of an object with which the self is identified.

Mr. Sidgwick, in the second place, proceeds to classify the systems of morals. If it be allowed that there is something that reason prescribes, that something must either be an act or acts to be done, or it must be an end to be sought. Hence we find moral systems divisible into those that are guided by the idea of Right or an absolutely prescribed law, and those that are guided by the idea of the Good or an absolutely prescribed end. The former are generally called Intuitional, and the latter might be called Utilitarian systems, though the name has usually been employed in a more limited sense. The ends conceivable as absolutely prescribed are the perfection or the happiness, either of the individual or of mankind. But this list may, according to Mr. Sidgwick, be considerably reduced. Perfection is either wholly or partly virtue, and hence to regard it as the absolutely prescribed end is equivalent to the adoption of that form of intuitionalism in which the acts prescribed to be done are

all brought under one general principle. For it is almost a matter of indifference whether we put this absolute principle in the form of a law to be observed, or of an end to be sought. (In fact, Kant states his principle in both forms.) Then, again, the difference between the system based on the idea of the good of the individual and that based on the idea of the good of mankind, is only worth taking into account when that good is defined as happiness or greatest pleasure. For even perfect benevolence may from one point of view be regarded as piλavría, since the benevolent man regards the good of all as his own. And "Egoism, if we merely understand by it a method that aims at selfrealization, seems to be a form into which almost any ethical system may be thrown, without modifying its essential characteristics." We have therefore only three systems to examine: Egoistic Hedonism, Intuitionalism, and Utilitarianism, the last name being confined to the system based on the greatest happiness" principle.

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On this classification it may be remarked that, though Mr. Sidgwick holds that the very notion of morality implies action with a view to ends determined by reason, yet he does not mean by this that in the conception of man as a rational or self-conscious being is already involved the conception of the end of his action. He has only partially appreof his action. He has only partially apprehended what Kant means when he says that reason should will nothing but itself. What the expression suggests to him is simply that there is an intuition or unreflected judgment of reason that a certain end should be sought or a certain act should be done. He does not indeed, like Hume, regard reason as a mere formal power, that is, a mere power of calculating what should be done to attain the ends which are fixed for us by passion and desire. Yet, on the other hand, he does not conceive reason as constituting a motive and determining an end for itself a motive and an end which we can perceive to be involved in the very nature of the rational being as such. Some passages seem to point to such a conception, but all that is clearly stated is that we as rational beings feel immediately and intuitively that some course of conduct should be followed, or that some end should be sought. What Mr. Sidgwick falls back upon therefore is something like an instinct, though it be an instinct of reason. Reason, in short, is conceived, not as producing any content from itself, but as taking up and stamping with its approval some of the matter presented to it by passion. And the immediate judgment thus given by reason is not seen to be involved in the nature of reason, but is taken as a fact which we cannot further explain. It is this way of looking at things that causes the weakness of the assertion of reason as a principle of morals by the Intuitional school in this country; and Mr. Sidgwick, even in his idea of "philosophical " Intuitionalism, does not seem to get beyond it.

The first system that presents itself for examination is Epicureanism, or Egoistic Hedonism. Without directly discussing the truth of the principle, Mr. Sidgwick asks whether, and under what conditions it will be possible to frame a complete and selfconsistent system of rules in accordance

with it. The method generally, though not universally, employed for this purpose by Hedonists is empirical, but there are several presuppositions necessary to its success. It presupposes, in the first place, that all pleasures and pains have a definite quantitative relation to each other; that, as Paley says, "pleasures differ only in duration and intensity," and that the intensity is capable of being balanced against their duration. Further, it presupposes that we are capable of measuring the quantity of pleasure; and this, again, seems to involve that we carry with us in our consciousness some kind of ideal standard or measure of pleasures and pains that is not greatly affected by the changes of life. Lastly, it implies that we can, by aid of deliberate forethought and calculation, add to the number of our pleasures. For it has been maintained by some, that the habit of introspection and calculation itself is destructive of the pleasure it would secure, and by others, that there are many, and these the highest, pleasures which cannot be had except on condition that our desire is for other objects than pleasure. There is much subtle observation and criticism in Mr. Sidgwick's remarks on these different points. Perhaps, however, he has not quite clearly stated the initial difficulty of a calculus of pleasures. Speaking e.g. of the modes in which the Hedonist may explain away the preference of some pleasures as qualitatively superior to others, he suggests that in these cases it is "not the feeling itself that is preferred, but something in the circumstances under which it arises; and that "if we separate in thought any state of consciousness from all its objective circumstances and conditions, and contemplate it merely as the transient state of a single subject, it seems impossible to find in it any other preferable quality than that which we call pleasantness, as to which the judgment of the sentient individual must be taken as finally valid." No one need dispute such a truism; but how, we may ask. is it possible to make a pleasure taken in this abstraction the subject of a judgment at all? If I abstract from all the circumstances that give character to a pleasure, I may be able to say "I feel more pleasure now than I felt a moment ago," but I cannot say what pleasure I feel without bringing back these circumstances. As "transient states of a single subject" I cannot characterize pleasures at all. My judgments in regard to pleasure must, therefore, be judgments not simply that plea sure A is superior to pleasure B; but that the pleasure given by this object is superior to the pleasure given by that object. This seems a simple point; but it appears to me that the principal errors in Mr. Sidgwick's reasonings about the summum bonum are caused by his not seeing it, or, at least, not seeing all that is involved in it. Our judgments upon pleasures, then, are judgments with regard to certain relations between objects or circumstances and the sensitive subject. Are there such permanent relations? Mr. Sidgwick points out the difficulties into which we fall when we try to find them. How is it possible to construct a scale of pleasures that holds good at all times? The "felicific" quality of objects (to use a word coined by Mr. Sidgwick) is constantly vary ing. Food to the starving man will outweigh