Mr. Gladstone. We hear much talk of a new 'cave.' Suppose some alarmed Whig landowners did or do form a cave, what would come of that? We know what came of the cave formed in 1866, under the guidance of men so able as Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman, so influential as the Earl Grosvenor of that day. The secession was made in order to prevent the passing of a very moderate, not to say niggardly, Reform Bill; and it ended in the passing of household suffrage. It ended, too, in the accession of the Reform Ministry which abolished the Irish Church and passed the Land Act of 1870, that very Land Act which is denounced as the source of all the present agitation. The lesson of that time can hardly have been thrown away upon Whig peers and members of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone is strong in his energy, in his inexhaustible eloquence, and in his readiness to receive new ideas; but he is stronger still in the possession of that instinct which is genius in itself, and which enables him to discover long in advance the direction which an unavoidable movement of political or social forces is destined to take, and to put himself in harmony with it. This time he evidently sees that a reform in the conditions of our land-tenure systems is the demand made by the social and political -necessities of the condition at which our civilisation has arrived. The changes to be accomplished will of course be effected most safely and satisfactorily if they are made by a willing combination of all the great representative forces and interests of the country. It would be a solid advantage for Mr. Gladstone, or whatever Liberal statesman may undertake this reform, to have the cordial co-operation of so intelligent and influential a class as the great Whig peers and landowners. But the movement will not stay for the great Whig peers and landowners. It will not wait until they have made up their minds whether to help or to hinder it. With them or without them, it will still go on. Although my views on the land question are decidedly what would be called advanced, I should prefer that, in England especially, the changes to be made should be worked out by a combination of all the great interests concerned, the landowner as well as the landholder; the peer as well as the peasant. But if the landowners, and especially those of the Whig order, choose to stand ontside the movement or try to prevent it altogether, and, wrapping themselves up in the obstinacy of mere class interest, refuse to help Mr. Gladstone in his enlightened and really moderate schemes of reform, then I for one can only hope that he will soon make up his mind to do without them, and to rely altogether upon the assistance of more robust and less prejudiced men.

There are admirers, amateur, officious, and others, who appear to think that it might be a wise stroke of policy for the Lords to pass the Compensation Bill in some emasculated form which yet, owing to the necessity for seeming to do something, the Commons might be

persuaded to accept. Personally I should not much care. I do not much care about the Compensation Bill except as an evidence of good intention. But the territorial aristocracy would gain nothing whatever by a stroke of this kind. No one would be taken in by it. The evil day, as some of them think it, would not be postponed. The Conservatives themselves have acknowledged more than once that a change of some kind is necessary in the land-tenure system of this country. They acknowledged it even by their poor and peddling Agricultural Holdings Act. Of course by making the Act permissive they took away from it all value to the tenant, and indeed all influence of any kind on the land system. But so far as it went it was an acknowledgment that some change was needed, and its introduction was preceded and accompanied by admissions from supporters of the Conservative Government in both Houses that the existing condition of things could not be allowed to remain unaltered. In fact the English land system has long since reached that condition which draws from all parties and all sides and all manner of voices the acknowledgment that something ought to be done. No one who is worth listening to insists any longer that its present state is perfection, and is destined to be perpetual. The only question is, what is this something that is to be done? For myself I have a considerable dread of the sort of legislation which is introduced because the Government or the public or both have found out that something ought to be done. I fear that the Compensation for Disturbance Bill was introduced in this spirit and because of this impulse. I fear that its defects are owing to the hasty manner in which a government is compelled to legislate when it finds that something must be done. Every excuse of course is to be made for the present Government because of the distress which rendered some immediate action necessary. But the Bill bears the evidence of its origin, and is therefore a warning to the Government when they come to prepare a general scheme of legislation as regards England no less than Ireland. We must have for England as well as for Ireland some scheme born of fuller deliberation and wiser counsel than that which comes of the discovery that something must be done. The Whig territorial aristocracy, if any assistance is yet to be expected from them, could undoubtedly play a most important part in assisting and guiding such legislation. The Conservatives, it is to be feared, will recognise but one undivided duty towards such legislation, that of obstructing and perverting it. From them we cannot expect any genuine help towards a settlement of the land question. Left to themselves they would very soon bring the country to a social revolution. The Whig territorial aristocracy, if they are really going to be worthy of their place in history, must assist Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals to avoid that revolution by sound and timely legislation. There is now a great chance for them to regain some of the active and positive influence which they

once had in the political life of these countries. For a long time they have been content to be merely passive; and now there are voices, chiefly indeed coming from Conservative ranks, which urge them to try a negative influence, an antagonistic influence, to set themselves in opposition to the Liberal and forward movement on this land question. No doubt it would be a very convenient thing for the Conservatives if they could make a catspaw of a certain section of the Whigs. But this arrangement will hardly, I think, be effected. The position which the Conservatives would have the territorial Whigs now to take up was virtually abandoned by the party when Lord Hartington made his memorable declaration during the debate on Mr. Chaplin's motion for an agricultural commission. Lord Hartington frankly admitted that the existing system of land tenure in this country had broken down. Many attempts were made afterwards to give an exaggerated interpretation to his meaning, and Lord Hartington found it necessary to make some explanation. But what he meant to say and what he said alike acknowledged the fact, plain to every one outside the sphere of territorial Conservatism, that some change must be made in the relations between landlord and tenant in England, if the rural population are to be admitted to share in the development and improvement which are open to every other class. Political forces, as well as social and economical, are destined to act in the same direction. Not even the slowest of Tory squires, if he thinks over the matter at all, has any doubt that a large extension of the county franchise is one of the near and certain reforms. The county franchise will unquestionably, within a very short time, be put upon a level with the franchise in boroughs, and then the rural labourer will be permitted to have a say in the political business of the country. If that change be made before any alteration in the land laws of England, it seems hardly necessary to point out that the land reform will probably be somewhat deeper and wider in its character than it would be if undertaken at present. Even from selfish motives, the most prudent course which English landlords could take would be to endeavour to get the inevitable land reform put into shape before the county franchise is so expanded as to admit the rural labourers to a vote. It would be wise on their part to assist and even to hasten the reform, instead of trying to delay it. Delay must to a certainty mean greater change in the end.

JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

RECENT LITERATURE.

[Compiled by W. MARK W. CALL-ALFRED CHURCH-H. G. HEWLETT CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM-WILLIAM MINTO-JAMES PAYNG. J. ROMANES-F. W. RUDLER-LIONEL TENNYSON-and E. D. J. WILSON.]

THEOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS.

The Religions of China: Confucianism and Táoism described and com-
pared with Christianity. By JAMES LEGGE, Professor of the Chinese
Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. (London:
Hodder and Stoughton.)

A POPULAR exposition of the Religions of China, by the Oxford Professor of the language and literature of that mysterious land, will deservedly attract numerous readers to the study of its instructive pages. Dr. Legge has so familiar an acquaintance with the subject of which he treats that a certain deference to his judgment is a homage justly due to his superior attainments. Occasionally, however, we suspect that his representations are modified by the influence of religiously orthodox prepossession. Rémusat, the first occupant of a Chinese Chair in Europe, detected, in the three monosyllables Î, bî, weî, the Hebrew word Jehovah. From such philological hallucinations Dr. Legge is happily free; but is it certain that the zealous missionary's theological proclivities do not bias him in favour of the conclusion that a refined 'monotheistic faith was coeval with the Founders of the Chinese nation'? The argument based on the primitive characters for heaven and lordship is subtle and ingenious, but does not convince us. Accepting his interpretations, we should still question the inference. A Power may be Supreme and personal, yet not the only God, not the God of the Christian monotheist. In a lecture, from many of the critical judgments in which we widely dissent, a comparison is instituted between the religions known as Confucianism and Tâoism and the religion of Christ. Protesting against the view which degrades the former into a moral system of political theory, Dr. Legge insists that the primitive monotheism of his ancestors was never abandoned by Confucius, who, while sacrificing to spirits and the dead, still prayed to Heaven as a personal being. Tâoism, which is both a religion and a philosophy, did not exist till after the commencement of the Christian era. Originally a heap of superstitions, it has been developed under the influence of Buddhism into a system of Rationalism. At present it seems but imperfectly understood, and Dr. Legge's own researches are avowedly such as cannot satisfy critical inquiry. The forms resemble those of Buddhism. It has a Trinity parodying the three logical abstractions of that religion, in its speculative construction of the three Holy Ones, the Gods of Void-existence. It boasts also of an obscure metaphysic, a moral philosophy, a metempsychosis, a purgatory, an everlasting hell, and an 'Infernal Majesty.' The existence of God, though not formally denied, makes no part of its creed. For the moral and social elevation of the Chinese, Dr. Legge, while denouncing' the ambitious and selfish policy of so-called Christian nations,' looks to the adoption of Christianity and its triumph over the ancient religions of China.

After Death. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead and their Relationship to the Living. By HERBERT MORTIMER LUCKOCK, D.D., Canon of Ely, &c. Second edition. (London, Oxford, and Cambridge: Rivingtons, 1880.)

THE testimony of primitive times respecting the state of the faithful dead is the subject of a learned treatise by Dr. H. M. Luckock, bearing the impressive title After Death. As a fragment from the history of the human mind, as a registration of the feelings, longings, and beliefs of early Christian ages, it possesses some value even for those who do not share its author's creed. Patristic, liturgical, and monumental evidence on such speculation and sentiment is carefully examined; many curious facts and traditions are related, and the legitimate conclusions, or what the author deems such, are placed intelligibly before the reader. To the Vincentian canon of Universality Dr. Luckock attaches an importance which we cannot concede, and, in conformity with its principles, regards with favour the doctrine of a spiritual purgatory or purification of the soul during the intermediate state, accepts that of the Intercession of the Saints, but discountenances the practice of appealing to the dead in prayer.

Scotch Sermons. (London: Macmillan, 1880.)

Not only is Religion entering into this equivocal partnership with German metaphysics, but the old Theology is undergoing a purifying or, it may be, a destructive transformation. Even the dogmatic intolerance of Scotland is shaken by the mighty rushing wind of the New Pentecost. An illustration of this spiritual commotion may be found in a volume of sermons by clergymen of the Church of Scotland, which many will welcome as a Presbyterian manifesto of the Liberal section in that Church. Without any surrender of what is now regarded as the essential truth of Christianity, these heralds of the 'Second Reformation' spiritualise and refine the old doctrines in the interest of the 'undeveloped kingdom of righteousness and love and truth,' claiming entire freedom for the examination of all scientific, philosophic, and critical problems. A belief in miracles is no longer necessary, we are told, to entitle a man to bear the name of Christian. The dogmas of scholastic theology, the descent of man from Adam, the fall of our first parents, the imputation of guilt to their posterity, the eternal perdition of the unregenerate, the plenary inspiration of the Bible, are cited as instances of dogmas which the leaders of modern theological thought regard as specially untenable. With a positive acceptance of or general sympathy with these latitudinarian views, the hostility of the writers to scientific materialism or agnosticism is very decided.

Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of Ancient Egypt. Delivered in May and June 1879 by M. LE PAGE. RENOUF. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1880.)

A LUCID and comprehensive account of the religion of ancient Egypt is offered us by M. le Page Renouf in the Hibbert Lectures for 1879. Critical, expository, and constructive, these Lectures, which are six in number, exhibit the results of the long and laborious investigation of the students of the Egyptian past. In the lecture on the antiquity and characteristics of the civilisation of Egypt, M. Renouf explains by what means an Egyptian chronology is constructed, and by what tests it is insured; inscriptions checking or corroborating inscriptions, and the Royal Lists, so called, being verified by monuments. Numerous geological investigations demonstrate, or all but demonstrate, the existence of the human race in Egypt in prehistoric time. The Egyptian monarchy itself was anterior to B.C. 3000. M. Renouf, rejecting the opinion once universally received, that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, declares that the Exodus of the Israelites cannot be brought lower down than B.c. 1310: the date of the Great Pyramid he carries back to B.C. 3000. We regret to find that the absolute dates of M. Biot and others,