we think that some light might be thrown upon the matter from another source. If, at the opening of the ensuing Parliament, some member of the House of Commons, who respects the integrity of official life, would ask the First Lord of the Treasury,1. Whether he was aware that a member of his Cabinet was also a member of the "Liberation Society?" 2. If so, whether he was satisfied that the members of the latter body were neither guilty of conspiracy nor of constructive treason? And 3. Whether he considered that a Privy Councillor's solemn declaration on the faith of a Christian was compatible whith the third proclaimed object of the aforesaid Society? Then the country would either receive from the response some very interesting and valuable information; or, on the other hand, in case silence were persisted in, the country would surely learn this instructive lesson, viz. that some very dangerous political combinations are now secretly, to say the least, permitted in the present Cabinet, which its airy and vivacious chief could not be induced publicly to justify, or even to excuse.

Cathedral Music.

T is not to be wondered at that the majority of our countrymen disparage the services celebrated in our cathedrals, when we consider how often they are performed in a slovenly and perfunctory manner. Nor can we wonder that musicians sometimes seem to look with contempt on cathedral music, when we remember how often it is badly selected and inefficiently performed. If our cathedrals really fulfilled their mission, they would be, as it were, cities set on a hill;" they would set an example, in the matter of music, to their respective dioceses; and that not only of good compositions carefully performed by well-trained executants, but, what is far more important, of sacred song really made into an edifying devotional exercise, and solemnly dedicated to the glory of God. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this mission. England seems now to be aroused to a sense of the enormous value of good music in her Church, to the greatness of the advantages to be derived from the practice of praising God "with the best member that we have," and to the duty of adopting, therefore, every available means of improving the singing in all her parish churches. As evidences of this improved view of the matter, we have only to point to the various Diocesan Choral Associations which have arisen in different parts of the country. The music of our parochial churches is steadily and rapidly improving. But the same rapid improvement cannot be predicated of our cathedrals. This is the more remarkable inasmuch as very often the meetings of the Choral Associations have been held in cathedrals, and have achieved a great success, and yet the regular choir of the cathedral has not been stimulated to any efforts towards improvement, but rather the reverse. Let any one who has attended the late Festival Service of the Lichfield Choral Association compare with it an ordinary Sunday Service in the same cathedral of Lichfield, and we venture to predict that he will find our assertion thoroughly made out. In many cases choirs have been brought permanently together in various small and comparatively unknown churches, which habitually execute music of a calibre far surpassing anything ordinarily heard in the neighbouring cathedral, and not only so, but they execute it in a style and with a spirit which we look for in vain in the larger, older, and betterendowed choir. Now this is a crying shame and reproach, and our cathedral authorities ought to look to it.

Perhaps it may not be amiss, under these circumstances,

if we proceed to hint at a few of the causes which tend to the lamentable results to which we have alluded, and make one or two suggestions for their cure. In the first place, then, cathedral chorister-boys are often chosen out of the lowest of the people. Their style of singing and their pronunciation of the words are therefore vulgar and coarse, and they are for the most part incapable of that refinement of manner which alone can make music really edifying and pleasant to an educated ear; or, if by dint of great labour on the part of the organist or choir-master style, it is almost sure to flow unnaturally and constrainthey are artificially imbued with an imitation of the proper edly, so as materially to damage the effect of their performance. The root of this evil lies in a false economy which denies to the choristers such a liberal education, board, and lodging, as shall induce respectable parents to desire to secure choristerships for their sons. It is true,

indeed, that in many instances Deans and Chapters have begun to attend to this very important point, but still in most cases they have achieved their object very imperfectly, while in too many instances they have done absolutely nothing at all. It would be a painful thing to inquire in how many cathedrals the boys have no idea of their functions being a religious service. Alas! they sing but too often the most awful words without a glimmering of their meaning-without a thought of Him whom they are addressing with their lips, and all for want of spiritual supervision and guidance, such as the cathedral authorities are surely bound in conscience to provide for them. No wonder these poor lads grow up so often into careless, irreligious men, and through unchecked familiarity with holy things get to look upon all worship as little else but a solemn sham. Would that those whose carelessness and stinginess has wrought so dire a result would think a little more on the frightful spiritual murder of these young souls, which this wretched system involves! But in the next place, the adult lay-members of our cathedral choirs are very often far below the proper mark. Ill-paid, and too much neglected in some places; over-endowed, and therefore too independent and unmanageable in others: they are in either case totally unfit for the peculiar work they have to do. Provincialisms, vulgarity, and false taste, frequently united with the most offensive conceits and stubborn untractableness, too often are met with among these men, and would that this were all; we know of too many instances of drunkenness and other immorality prevailing unchecked and unnoticed, to the scandal of all good Christians, and to the lasting disgrace of the authorities, who through indolence or negligence ignore these things.

Now it is evident that this sad result partly springs from the bad training which these men had when they were chorister-boys; but it is also attributable to insufficient pay, which sometimes induces them to sing the most objectionable music in public-houses, or even in questionable places of entertainment, or else forces them to adopt various trades to gain a livelihood, not always the most respectable. Of course these remarks do not apply to well-paid choirs, such as those in the metropolis and some of our best cathedrals. Moreover, it is certain that a vast improvement has taken place of late years in this particular; still a sufficient number of bad cases remain amply to justify what has here been said. Among the very élite of our cathedral choirmen there are those who sing rather for their own glory than for God's glory, and get into a bad way of looking on the service from a purely musical, or rather professional, point of view, forgetting in a great measure the end and object of all that they have to do. have to do. As a proof of this assertion we need only remark that, with two, or at the most three, exceptions, cathedral choirs would seem to be destitute of habitual lay-communicants among their members; and this, even in the rare cases when the Communion Office is chorally celebrated throughout. Now surely this is a gigantic evil. When we reflect on the bad example thus set to the boys of the choir by their elder brethren, we cannot shut our eyes to its magnitude. Moreover it is notorious that grave exception is continually taken to our Cathedral Service

generally, on account of the irreverent manner displayed by the members of the choir, and that thus one of the Church's most valuable institutions is brought into disrepute. It is very sad to be obliged to say that the charge of irreverence has to be extended, not unfrequently, to members of the Cathedral body who are not lay. If the priest does not "keep his foot when he goeth into the House of God," who shall wonder that those who are not priests do likewise! It is no answer to these observations to point to instances where they do not apply. Even if three-fourths of our Cathedral bodies throughout the country were free from these errors and drawbacks, it would be a grievous scandal if they were allowed to go unreproved and unchecked in the remaining fourth. How then, it may be asked, can an improvement be wrought out? In various ways. First, let the Deans and Chapters seek out regular and steady communicants to be members of their choir; let them pay these men a sufficient stipend to render them in a measure independent of extraneous means of getting a livelihood. Above all, let them look after not only their bodily but their spiritual wants. Let them visit them when sick, advise them when troubled with doubts, console them when afflicted, and, in short, become really their friends and spiritual pastors. By these means much good might be done. Especially, too, let all irreverence and frivolity of manner in Divine Service be at once checked by the hand of authority; and let nothing be countenanced which could tend to engender these evils-such, for instance, as the practice prevalent in London, Dublin, Cambridge, and elsewhere, of allowing the same men to belong to several different choirs, and go from one to the other to sing the same words over and over again, often having to leave the first service for the sake of the second, before the former is finished. If such bad practices were put a stop to, as they easily might be, it is probable that a great increase of reality and earnestness in the performance of the service would ensue.

But it is time to say a few words on a particularly musical part of the subject. English Cathedral music, of the best school, requires not only good solo-singers, but a good chorus-a good body of voices. Many cathedral choirs only consist of eight or ten boys, and six men-(that is, one to a part on each side)-and of these six men only three attend on ordinary week days. No wonder flimsy solos and duets take the place of good solid choruses, when such inadequate numbers are to be the performers. Twelve men daily is the very least number that can really do justice to the highest style of music. We say daily, because such music never can be well done except by a body of voices accustomed to sing constantly together. But such large choirs cost money; hence their rarity. We are driven at length to the conclusion that after all the root of this evil, as of other evils under the sun, is an indisposition to spend money; the whole matter, in many ways, at last resolves itself into a question of parsimony versus liberality. Is there any chance just now of wiping away this reproach? Let us hope so.

Irish Revivalism.

ORE than three years have now elapsed since Revivalism first developed itself in the North of Ireland. Time, therefore, has been given it to bring forth its due fruit, and we may now fairly claim to test the whole movement by its results. We shall perhaps best do this by considering the manner in which it first developed itself, the means used for its propagation, and the effects then produced on those who were subjected to its influence.

The religious habits of the Presbyterians of Ulster are especially favourable to the introduction and furtherance of such a system. Extempore prayer and preaching form the staple of the religion of that province. Congregations are clustered round individual ministers, and on

their popularity much of their stipend depends. Should any of them displease a member of his congregation, he quickly transfers himself to another and more acceptable preacher. This interchange is continually going forward; and it inevitably follows that if the minister wishes to live he must conduct his ministrations in accordance with the popular will. He cannot withstand it; were he to attempt to do so his meeting-house would quickly be emptied, and he would thus be deprived of the means of existence.

The truth of this was remarkably shown at the beginning of the Revival. Presbyterian ministers who were at first opposed to its extravagancies, and unwilling to lend their influence to its support, were obliged by the power of public opinion to become leaders in the movement and exponents of the popular will.

We cannot wonder, then, that in such a soil the baneful plant of Revivalism rapidly grew and flourished. Everything was favourable to its development. Where religion consists principally in the excitement of popular preaching the people are ever ready to hear and receive "some new thing.' No sooner, therefore, was it reported that in the neighbourhood of Ballymore persons who had hitherto led careless, godless lives had been suddenly converted, and that the conversion was manifested in outward and bodily acts, and that the converted had at once found "joy and peace in believing," than the excitement became general, and the greatest anxiety was manifested to witness this miraculous change, and to partake in the blessings it was supposed to confer.

The public mind being thus prepared for its reception, the movement spread with wondrous rapidity. Each new convert was at once exalted into a saint. He was forthwith deemed fully qualified by his conversion to preach, exhort, and convince the gainsayers. When "the Revival" was to be introduced to any new town or district it was by means of converts such as these that the work was accomplished. If the ministers of religion approved they were associated with them in it, but if not, their consent was deemed unnecessary, and it was carried on without them. Revival began with "success." Revival converts, with vehement voice and animated gesture, thundered forth their experience, frequently denouncing all who had not, like themselves, received the physical seizure as doomed to eternal destruction. The effect thus produced on the ignorant and simple-minded can hardly be appreciated except by those who are fully acquainted with the class in question. They were told and believed-believed with all their hearts-that their salvation depended on their "getting the Revival" or being "struck." Night and day, with unabated energy and fervor, they prayed that this mark of the Divine favour might be bestowed upon them. They wandered from meetinghouse to meeting house, from prayer-meeting to prayermeeting, till they caught the prevailing influences and "struck." Then all was well. They were numbered amongst the saved. Their salvation was certain. Their reward secured. From sinners they had passed once and for ever into the ranks of God's elect. The Spirit had visibly marked them as His own, and what was man that he should gainsay that which God had wrought?

were

This fearful delusion, instead of being repressed, was encouraged by those whose duty it was to expose it. In a pamphlet, published shortly after the Revival began, by a Presbyterian minister, and addressed by him to his hearers, the bodily manifestations are there referred to; the language and grammar of the original are given verbatim :— "These results, in the first instance at least, from the sudden and novel operation of the Spirit upon the soul, whereby the conscience of the quickened is made afraid by the remembrance of past sins, and from the devil being thus aroused to assault them with great violence, overwhelming them by their convictions,' as their feelings are more generally termed. Hence the choking sensation, the heavy burden upon the heart swelling in distress, sometimes convulsing the whole frame and making every joint tremble so as to produce bodily weakness and pros

tration. This prostration is always accompanied, if not partly occasioned, by a vehement, desire to pray for, when the perspiration streams from the person, and the body shakes like an aspen leaf, the hands are generally clasped with convulsive energy and raised aloft to heaven, showing that the soul, in terrible misery, is agonising prayerfully for pardon and peace from the Saviour God.

A few of these cases have assumed a trance-like or ecstatic form, accompanied for a time, often so definite as to be determined precisely by the persons under its influence, and varying from one day to seven, by dumbness, deafness, or blindness, a kind of spiritual somnambulism and clairvoyance. . . These are external accompaniments which the Lord permits, and which He doubtless uses in some way to promote His own glory; and even when they result physically in disease (the italics are not our own) we should recognize their divine origin."

Can we wonder that under leaders such as these the wildest extravagancies of fanaticism were developed as the movement went on?

By these means a most erroneous, but powerfully operative, public opinion was created and strengthened and supported. The Revival grew apace. Meanwhile there was rapidly growing up amongst the multitude a dislike and even repudiation of authorized ministrations. Sacraments and means of grace were esteemed of little worth by men who deemed their every action directed by the Spirit of God. Revivalist teachers pointed with complacency to the fact that their commission to teach was directly from God, and that ordained ministers had nothing to do with the success of the movement. Armed with this self-imposed authority, the saved sinner at once presented himself to the public, not only to announce his own deliverance, but also to urge the necessity of a similar physical change on all whom he addressed. It mattered not whether their previous lives had been moral or immoral, self-denying or sensual, it was boldly declared that this physical change they must experience if they would be saved. Once possessed of it, they were taught that their bodily condition was the direct and visible sign of the Holy Spirit having worked salvation in the soul.

Archdeacon Stopford in his admirable pamphlet, The Work and the Counterwork, has clearly shown that these physical effects were produced by some natural agency akin in its phenomena to hysteria, and this opinion is borne out by the remarks of Dr. Carson, of Coleraine, himself a strenuous advocate of the Revival, who has observed"that the most illiterate convert who had himself been affected had far more power in producing the manifestation in the audience than the most eloquent and touching speaker. There did not seem to be any proportion between the words uttered by the speaker and the results produced." By means such as these the Revival was rapidly propagated from town to town and village to village throughout the greater part of the Presbyterian districts of Ulster. Prayer-meetings prolonged, in many cases, to a late hour of the night, (one, for example, at Monreagh, at which a hundred persons were struck," lasted till three o'clock in the morning), were held in almost every cottage. Those who had been present at them returned home together singing revival hymns as they proceeded a custom which before long produced the worst results. For a time great good seemed to have been effected; the attendance at public worship was largely increased, and Presbyterians did not fail with all authority to declare that the success of the Revival amongst them was a direct proof from God of the truth of Presbyterianism.

The words of Dr. Gibson, the headmaster of the Presbyterian General Assembly in Ireland, on this subject, are worthy of especial remark. In a sermon preached before the assembly on July 2, 1860, on the occasion of resigning his moderatorship, he said: "The present Revival was a conversion of sinners, and if they wanted a proof of the truth of the doctrines and polity of the Presbyterian Church, they had it in the Revival. Upon whom had God showered down His blessings? upon the Presbyterian Church. It was her pastures He had watered,

and made green and flourishing. Some wished to represent that the Revival was breaking down distinction of creeds, inasmuch as they said that God was pouring out His Spirit on all Churches alike. Such was wholly incorrect. rect. God had blessed the Presbyterian Church; thus giving a proof that in her Jehovah took delight. The Presbyterian Church did not substitute, for the supremacy of Christ, succession and confirmation and other forms and rituals of man's invention, but took His own Holy Word as their standard; and God had given them and the world in the Revival a proof of the truth of Presbyterianism."

The Revival was thus justly claimed by the Presbyterians as their own. The truth of their doctrine and polity was staked by these moderators upon it, and they cannot blame a discriminating public if they conclude from the evil results of the Revival that neither the Presbyterian doctrine or polity is of God.

It was not to be expected that such a disturbing movement could arise without producing a considerable effect upon the Church. Yet the impression thus created was far less than is usually supposed. Some few clergy unhappily there were, who, during the Revival, joined in union prayer-meetings with dissenting ministers, and took part in public demonstrations with them, but many of those who thus acted, have since seen good reason to repent having done so. The great body of the clergy, however, applied themselves earnestly to take advantage of the anxiety that was manifested for religious instruction, which is the one and only good point of the Revival, and multiplied the services and ministrations of the Church, and the result was an increased attendance both at Divine Service and Holy Communion. But, notwithstanding the earnest endeavours of its promoters, revivalism took no root within the fold of the Church. In its calm and sober worship, in its discouragement of all excitement in religion, in its emphatic declaration of the necessity of a rightly authorized commission to the due exercise of the ministerial office, Revivalism found no hold, and having vainly but pertinaciously endeavoured to obtain a lodgment within the bosom of the Church, it retreated to a more welcome and congenial home amongst the sectaries which summoned it.

It can never perhaps be asserted with truth that any earnest religious movement, from whatever quarter it proceeds, is an unmixed evil. However greatly the bad results may predominate over the good, there is generally some good effected by its instrumentality, if not directly, at least indirectly. So was it with the Revival. So is it with any signal visitation of God, such as cholera, or any prevalent disease. The careless are for the time awakened, the negligent aroused to think of the future, and, if due impression be made whilst their hearts are softened, permanent results may follow. But in the case of the Revival the evil results far outweigh the apparent good. An outward reformation of morals for a time ensued, but sooner than the summer cloud it has passed away, and left behind it a reaction which has already produced the bitterest fruits. Let us hear on this point the testimony of Mr. Isaac Nelson, a Presbyterian minister in Belfast, and the only one we believe who has had the boldness publicly to resist the popular will. "The Revival," says he, in The Year of Delusion, written in answer to Dr. Gibson's Year of Grace," was made to rest for its reality on certain extraordinary conversions which have since proved false and wicked-the consequence being an immensely increased immorality over Ulster. Now, will Dr. M'Corle meet us on this assertion, or put it to the test of statistics? We know he will not; he dare not. The morality of the Presbyterian people has been ruined by Revival.'

Such is the result of the Revival on Presbyterianism, one of their own number being the judge. Yet this is not the only way in which the religion of the provinces can suffer from the Revival. It has shaken to the foundation the belief of many in the necessity of sacraments and authorized ministrations, and of this feeling the Baptists and Plymouth Brethren have not failed largely and effectually to avail themselves. They have gathered in a rich harvest

from amongst the Revivalists. Take one case as an example. A Presbyterian minister, of much influence in the neighbourhood where the Revival first began, has by it been transformed into an active and energetic Baptist preacher, and his tongue and his pen are now incessantly employed in attacking the peculiarities of his former coreligionists, and so successful has he been, that he has gathered together a Baptist congregation, and built a Baptist meeting-house in a town where neither existed before. Many of the earlier Revivalists, whose mental calibre could not withstand the excitement of the movement, have found a permanent home in lunatic asylums; whilst multitudes of others, puffed up with spiritual pride, have fallen into worse diseases than that of the mind. Many who three years ago were distinguished as Revivalist preachers of the purest and most sanctified kind are now drunkards, thieves, and immoral livers; and one, to our certain knowledge, is now lying in prison, charged with being concerned in a late cowardly and barbarous murder. Since the Revival began seduction has prevailed to an extent never known before, as the large increase in the number of illegitimate children so fully proves; by it the sectarian spirit of the Presbyterians has been embittered and intensified, as their eager union with their dissenting brethren in England, in celebrating the Bicentenary of 1662 by an order of the General Assembly, has so lately shown. Has party spirit been diminished by it? Let Derrymacash and the monster Protestant meeting of September 17th and its consequent results reply. Has drunkenness or immorality decreased in the district where it chiefly prevailed? The very contrary is the fact. Judged therefore by its results the Revival movement of 1859-60 must be considered not as a refreshing stream of God's grace,' have not hesitated profanely to call it, but as a withering blight which has parched the ground which it seemed to refresh, and has left behind it fruits the full bitterness of which will never be truly known till the day of doom.

Intellectual Moonshine.

as some

EW systems," says Sir E. B. Lytton, in last month's Blackwood, "will replace for a time even those of the Novum Organum and Principia. But two thousand years after that victory, the Novum Organum and Principia will again be re-aired and well dusted, and set up in the schools as the only sound system; they will then be called novelties, 'approximating towards perfection.'" Every one who has scanned the march of philosophy will acquiesce in the justice of this statement-so humbling, yet so true. Nature seems to advance, like the typhoon, in cycloidsthe old principles ever re-appearing, but under different circumstances; but mental science proceeds simply in circles. One system gives place to another, only in due time to re-appear. Libraries have been written upon philosophy, and yet by one who could give a lifetime to the subject -a single volume of moderate size could be made to set forth the substance of all that has been written: so many of these writings are mere revivals or repetitions, or elaborate disquisitions upon differences which, if not wholly phantasmagorial, could at least be expressed in half-a-dozen

lines.

As few men are conversant with the old schools of philosophy, or with any schools but those in fashion in our own country, we need not be surprised to find that the present age is as indiscriminating as its predecessors. Ignorance is the parent of novelty. The systems which seem new in mental science to our English world nowa-days, are nothing better than very old ones "re-aired and well dusted," and invested with the appropriate apparel of the age. A hundred years ago, Hume, Condillac, and Helvetius were the great exponents, of their times, of the creeds of Scepticism and Materialism-creeds often confounded, but widely distinct. Excepting his arguments Excepting his arguments against the genuineness of the miracles of the Bible

arguments utterly antiquated now by the advance of psychological knowledge the writings of Hume are to be regarded simply as efforts to show that human knowledge is a much more uncertain and limited thing than ordinary people believe. Hume did not set up a system: he criticised. In fact, his writings are, in spirit, entirely opposed to the elaboration of philosophical systems, and are directed to the limitation of beliefs. Helvetius, on the other hand, was a system-maker par excellence. His Système de la Nature is one of the most elaborate and beautifully-written expositions of Materialism ever penned. Life, soul, thought, passions, are all, according to him, results of our bodily organization and circumstances. Doubtless, it would have been humbling to him and to the other materialistic philosophers of his age and country to know that seven centuries before their time the same creed had been not only worked out, but was the fashion in China under the learned dynasty of Soong!

The French Revolution of 1789 is said by its admirers to have inaugurated a new epoch; to have been the commencement of a new world. It at least made an end of an old one. It buried the infidel school of the Encyclopedists, from which it sprung. In our own country, as well as in France, the nineteenth century saw a new spirit arise both in religion and in literary speculation. For the last fifty years heterodox speculation has been almost in abeyance: men did not speculate much at all, and when they did speculate they kept very near to the orthodox track. But within the last year or two we have been witnessing the commencement of another circle of thought. Mr. Buckle has expounded with great ability his views of history, endeavouring to prove that there is really no Free-will, but only Necessity, in those actions and characteristics of nations which make up their history. Mr. Bain, on the other hand, and those others who belong to the school of what is called the Association Psychology, while rejoicing in speculation still more heterodox, prides himself on having discovered a system which reduces Free-will and Necessity to meaningless terms, and denies altogether that there is any such thing as Con

science.

This Association Psychology is really a very old affair. We willingly admit that Mr. Bain has brought to his task an admirable knowledge of modern science, and that his work is one of unquestionable ability. But, we repeat, it is a very old question in a new garb; and, whatever may be the value of the work in its details, it seems to us that, so far as regards the principles which it seeks to establish, the labour in its composition has been thrown away. A definition of terms is the first duty of a mental philosopher, and a clear conception and remembrance of this definition is indispensable in the reader. Now, when we hear, as a very momentous affair, that a system of socalled philosophy denies the reality of conscience and of abstract truth, we reply-" Very likely; but what is the denial worth? Or rather, what is it that is denied?" It is all very well for schoolboys to write themes about "absolute truth;" but every one who is versed in mental science knows that absolute truth, in the sense ascribed to the words by metaphysicians, is a chimera-vox et præterea nihil. Tell this to an ordinary person, however, and he will be dreadfully shocked, and will think you worse than an infidel. Why? Simply because he has never thought of the subject, and vaguely attributes to "absolute truth" a meaning entirely different from that held by the metaphysicians, and which if they did hold they would never question the reality of the thing signified. The metaphysician denies one thing, the bulk of mankind believes he denies something entirely different. And, misled by the importance which ordinary people attach to his doctrine, the metaphysician in turn deludes himself with the idea that he has propounded something very important. And yet the whole affair is-as commonly happens in metaphysical questions-mere moonshine.

Take, for example, Mr. Bain's denial that there is really such a thing as conscience. Good people, when they hear of such a denial, naturally turn up the whites of

their eyes, and consider Mr. Bain as a very bad character. But the great mass of mankind will hear of it, and go on with their habits and beliefs just as before. Practically, they will treat it as a matter of no moment; and, theoretically, we venture to think they would be no less entitled to do the same. This "association" theory is one of which the present and past generation heard a good deal forty years ago. Lord Jeffrey treated beauty just as Mr. Bain now treats truth. There was a portion of truth in his lordship's theory, just as there is, to a smaller extent, in Mr. Bain's. In morals, as in æsthetics, the power of association is undeniable and no one thinks of denying it. What was peculiar in Jeffrey's theory is that he makes all beauty, as Bain does all virtue, a perfectly arbitrary thing, dependent entirely upon association of ideas. Jeffrey denied that there was an aesthetic faculty, just as Bain denies that there is such a thing as conscience, or moral faculty. A glorious piece of moonshine. Ask Lord Jeffrey, "Do not men take cognizance of beauty?" and his lordship would have answered, "Yes, of course they do." Ask Mr. Bain, "Do men not judge of right and wrong?" and he must equally answer in the affirmative. What more do we want? What matter whether you call it a faculty or not-a conscience or not? We judge of beauty and ugliness, of virtue and vice,-Bain and Jeffrey admit, and of course must admit, that we do so; what they deny is what few persons question, what still fewer care about, and what is of no practical importance to any

one.

Morals and manners vary in different countries. What is reckoned a vice in one country is regarded as a virtue, or is tolerated as legitimate, in another. But from that to deny that man has a moral sense is absurd. One might as well deny that there is a colouring matter in the human hair because it is black in one nation, and white, red, or brown in others. Accordingly, when Mr. Bain affirms that there is no such thing as truth, and no such faculty as conscience, all that, on his own premises, he is entitled to say is, that men's sense of right and wrong varies to a great extent all over the world. And who doubts it?

How our sense of right and wrong arises, and how it operates, is a different question. Mr. Bain maintains that it is simply an affair of education and habit. Conscience, he says, is a mere "imitation within ourselves of the government without us." This is not an explanation; it is simply removing the difficulty a stage further. For, admitting, for argument's sake, that in general terms we might define conscience as "an imitation of the government without us," how does that "government without us" itself arise? Is it not directly the product of the conscience of the whole community? Unquestionably it is. Since, then, we have thus a conscience in individuals, and a conscience in entire communities, we think that any one of a timid mind who has been frightened by Mr. Bain's denial that there is any such thing as conscience, may very comfortably go to sleep in the assurance that, after all," there is no harm done"-except to those who cannot discriminate between words and things.

Even though Mr. Bain's system be substantially a materialistic one, there is extremely little body in it. In some of the reviews of his work we have been amused to see the grandiose airs of impartiality assumed by men who evidently were incapable of judging at all. Orthodox theologians and critics are invited, in terms which insinuate their great unwillingness to do so, to meet Mr. Bain's system and heresies fairly; but we should like to know what there is to meet. Even were we to accept all his facts and arguments-which is much more than we can honestly do we should come to the ordinary belief after all, and establish the reality of that moral sense which he is desirous to explain away.

However substantial Mr. Bain's book* may be in its details, its conclusions are eminently vapoury. For example, he thinks his system sweeps away such terms as Necessity and Free-will; whereas, to any ordinary intellect, his meaning just leaves the matter as it was, and as it is * The Emotions and the Will. Parker, Son, and Bourn.

ever likely to be. He thinks it a discovery to say that man acts from motive, and motive alone. A mighty discovery truly-who doubts it? And then he maintains that the only thing which determines man's motives is this influence of association, which he exalts as the primum mobile of human nature. But this is plainly inadequate. Two men, though similarly trained, if placed in similar circumstances, will act differently. There are diversities of mind and body which exist previous to any association -which descend to us from our parents and grand-parents to the third and fourth generation. Organization and circumstance, then, determine the motive-not circumstance (or association) alone. Now, we have yet to learn that man can order for himself all the circumstances (or associations) of his life; and most assuredly he cannot choose for himself the organization which he receives at his birth. Here, then, is necessity again. And the opposite doctrine of free-will is just as little swept away. Mr. Bain's discovery (!) that man acts from motive does not help us one jot. Our wonder is how any man of sense could ever imagine that it had any such potency.

One bit of moonshine more, and we have done. It is another "discovery." Mr. Bain makes the announcement that, in the process of analysis which he adopts, man's very "self" disappears. When emotion, volition, and intellect have been thoroughly examined, and their phenomena taken away, Mr. Bain finds no residuum which answers to this term, and, indeed, no residuum whatever. Very truly: but what did he expect to find? This "discovery," of course, is regarded as throwing doubt upon the immortality of the soul-or, rather, on the existence of any such thing as soul at all. Yet it is utterly impotent to justify any such deduction, and the whole "discovery" is one of the weakest crotchets that ever entered into the brain, one of the silliest wind-bags that ever deluded the eye, even of a metaphysician. What does it amount to? Take everything from anything, and nothing remains. Is that new? Did any man out of Bedlam ever doubt it? Or does any one who is not bound for that asylum attach to it the importance, or deduce from it the inferences, which are attributed to it by the "Association Psychologists?"

Statute-fairs.

N most English counties, though not in all, certain fairs are held, not for the buying of cattle, but for the hiring of servants, who, with rare exceptions, are farm-servants. These fairs are variously known by the names of Statutes, Hirings, and Mops. A little more than a century since, the last word was written " Mapp," "which was but another form for "Mop," a useful household article which is correctly traced by Johnson to mappa, the sudarium, or handkerchief with which a person now "mops" his heated face, and which was formerly dropped by the Roman Emperors as the signal for the commencement of the ludi circenses, hence termed Mappa. Thus, the vulgar term "Mop" for a Statute-fair may, after all, be derived from the public games of the ancient Romans; while the Statutes themselves certainly date back as far as the reign of Edward III, when legislative enactments were passed for the regulation of servants' wages. Hence, Statute-fairsat any rate, in the generality of cases-have an older origin than was attributed to them a few years since by the Rev. Nash Stephenson, in his paper on the subject read before the Liverpool meeting of the Social Science Association, wherein he assigned their rise to enterprising landlords who got them up for their own benefit. It is true, that publicans, as a matter of business, are among the foremost supporters of these Statutes; but they were among the old institutions and customs of the country, and, as such, are depicted by Isaac Bickerstaffe in his Love in a Village.

Lady-day, May, and Michaelmas, are the seasons for these Statutes; but, as in the case of the " May Hirings,"