State rights and Federal rights has been pretty well argued out already; and when so candid a disputant, and so sincere a lover of the Union as Mr. O'Sullivan gives up the Federal case in despair, we may be sure not much remains to be said for it. We have not, therefore, given our readers any account of Mr. Williams's labours in this field. He proves very well what has been proved already; well what has been proved already; and, of course, it is no fault of his that other writers have anticipated him with the English public.

Le Père Lacordaire.*

OTWITHSTANDING that he has brought consummate ingenuity to the aid of a genuine enthusiasm, M. de Montalembert has failed to show that there was a place for the Abbé Lacordaire, any more than there is for himself, in the political system of modern Europe. The peer is the lay, as the priest was the clerical, representation of an impossible state of society. A legitimist radical and an ultramontane democrat are, at the best, but two well-intentioned anomalies; two living amalgamations of incongruous thought and sentiment which can only be kept out of mischief by being kept out of action. It is no answer to their objectors to point to the fact that the survivor of them is still an enthusiastic liberal and devoted Roman Catholic. We may believe, without any hesitation, that the institution which both M. de Montalembert and Le Père Lacordaire loved and revered next to the Papacy was the British Parliament; but their inability to see the antagonism between the two must still be reserved as a proof of their own eminent intellectual inconsistency. It is useless for men to raise a cry of L'Eglise et la Liberté ! so long as there is nothing meant by l'Eglise but l'Eglise Romaine.

It is not to be supposed that such men as Montalembert and Lacordaire recognize the full effect of the disingenuousness which is contained in a claim for the inclusion of Roman Catholicism, along with all its subordinate institutions, in the toleration of modern times. Its aspirations and its necessities, no less than its antecedents, are fatal to its admission. It cannot be treated with the laxity and indifference which confer so much freedom but so little dignity upon the sects. We may minister, so far, to the pride of Roman Catholicism by confessing that its preeminence exposes it to the imposition of special restrictions.

|

It is well known by all who fear it that the very first condition of its freedom must be the ambition of universal empire. But at the same time it is perfectly comprehensible that the narrow knot of French politicians represented by Lacordaire and his biographer should be unable to see how this allegiance to Rome should injuriously, affect their political freedom at home. Their lot has been cast in an epoch that has been divided into two periods; during one of which there was no religious, and during the other no political life in France. They have, therefore, had no chance of experiencing a conflict which the alternating one-sidedness of this epoch has alone prevented. Had France under Louis Philippe been actively Roman Catholic, or were the country at this moment in the enjoyment of a constitutional government, the incompatibility between L'Eglise and La Liberté would probably be growing gradually apparent even to M. de Montalembert himself. It cannot be said of M. de Montalembert that he is not a student of history, though it is wonderful that his historical speculations should not have taught him all this. Of Lacordaire, however, he himself is fain to confess that he was glaringly ignorant of the past, and did most obstinately decline to acquaint himself with its precedents. Of him, therefore, it may be said, that he proclaimed the possibility of uniting two elements of whose natures and properties he had not informed himself either by theoretical speculation or practical experiment. His radicalism he took from his age, as his biographer con

Le Père Lacordaire. Par le Comte de Montalembert, l'un des Quarante de l'Académie Française. Paris: Charles Douniol, Rue de Tournon 29.

fesses, without inquiry; and in his youth he was a deist of the same conventional type.

"Fils d'un médecin du village," says Montalembert, "il avait, comme presque tous les jeunes gens de ce temps là, perdu la foi au col. lège, et ne l'avait retrouvée ni à l'école de droit ni au barreau, où il compta pendant deux ans parmi les avocats stagiaires. En apparence, rien ne le distinguait de ses contemporains; il était déiste comme l'était alors toute la jeunesse; il était surtout libéral comme la France entière Il partageait les convictions et les généreuses illusions que nous respirions tous alors dans l'air qu'avait purifié la chûte du despotisme impérial."

Existing thus as a radical and a deist, while he simply took the creed of his generation for granted in both matters, he was a man of whom it does not astonish us to hear that he passed with consummate facility and suddenness into a new phase of religious belief :

"Un coup subit et secret de la grâce lui ouvrit les yeux sur le néant de l'irreligion. En un seul jour il devient Chrétien, et le lendemain, de Chrétien il voulut être prétre."

His friends might rejoice over the metamorphosis, and it might in reality have been a glorious product of Divine inspiration or of human impulse; but it was eminently unreasoned. He could not have laid bare to himself the foundations of his Christianity, any more than he could have previously recognized the basis of his Deism. As convention had provided him with the one, spiritual excitement had launched him into the other. That he should have retained his radicalism after he entered the priesthood is not so astonishing as M. de Montalembert seems to think it. It is far stranger that a man who is perplexed by the unwonted conjunction of political liberality and ecclesiastical enthusiasm in his dearest friend should stand forward as the apostle of a similar possibility for the whole of Europe. Lacordaire remained a liberal simply because, from the day of his ordination to the day of his death, the political condition of France afforded no area for the exhibition of an antagonism to the existence of which his eyes were otherwise unopened. Had he been an Italian instead of a Frenchman, he would have had his ignorance enlightened, and have found himself put to his election. As a Roman, or even a Piedmontese, he would either never have become a priest at all, or, having become so, would have lent his glorious eloquence to the faction of De Merode and Antonelli.

If anything were wanting to show how little either Lacordaire or Montalembert understood the bearings of the paradox they strove to promulgate, it would be the similarity which they imagined that they saw between their Roman Catholic France and Roman Catholic Ireland as expressed by O'Connell. Montalembert expressly calls Lacordaire "le descendant et le continuateur de Saint Dominique de Bossuet et d'O'Connell." The Ultramontanism of Ireland and of O'Connell must be taken solely as a manifestation against the Protestanism of England, and, in this, against the political unity of the Empire. In the Irish at large the expression is probably unconsciously made; in O'Connell himself it was, doubtless, deliberate. If all causes of irritation were removed from Ireland, it is more than probable that its enthusiastic Roman Catholicity would cool down into a very suspicious assimilation towards the Protestantism of the dominant island which lies between it and Rome. What O'Connell sought to show, and what Ireland shows now, neither was nor is a deliberate scheme for a combination between the Papacy and Repeal, but merely the intensity and the deeply-seated causes of that incompatibility which gave birth to the struggle for Repeal. Had Roman Catholic Ireland been in a state of complete harmony and good-will with her Protestant sister, no representative son of hers would ever have made an ostentatious journey to Rome; nor would any brigade of her citizens have found themselves in a scrape at Castel Fidardo. As surely as the Ultramontanism of Ireland is a mere symptom of fever, so surely is the astute insincerity of O'Connell no precedent for the passionate incongruity of Montalembert and his friend.

But the worthlessness of Lacordaire as a model does not prevent his having been a glorious and a valuable life. Valuable as an example, for although M. de Montalembert

still believes in him and in himself, France and Europe have learnt the lesson of his ill-success. He has not even a disciple among the Ultramontane clergy. "Et cependant," complains his friend, "chose tristement étrange, lui, le plus grand des prêtres et le plus pur des démocrates, n'a jamais été accepté par la démocratie, n'a jamais été complètement goûté ni compris par le clergé."

In the face of this universal non-adhesion, why is M. de Montalembert not convinced? The whole world is never in the wrong. There is no instance on record of a generation having been deceived to a man. If ever a cause, good or bad, was fortunate in its advocate, this wild scheme of Radical Roman Catholicism was in Lacordaire. Young, eloquent, undoubtedly endowed with the highest gifts of oratory, which in him had the valuable accession of personal beauty; with the pulpit of Notre Dame at his disposal weekly for upwards of eighteen years; of a temperament as well as an exterior well constituted to attract; and of a reputation for saintliness beyond measure adapted to cement persuasion upon his audiences; of a literary and political fame, moreover, that had been confirmed long before his appearance as a preacher-to what must his absolute failure be ascribed? Surely to the utter impracticability of his subject-matter. The cause he had elected to plead was one that no advocate could serve. He had embarked upon a struggle in the prosecution of which he could gain fame for his ingenuity, sympathy for the faithfulness of his infatuation, reverence for his passionate holiness; but of adhesion none. The men who had grown willing to kiss the hem of his garment still shook their heads at the mention of the Temporal Power. He sowed piety and good works broadcast, and they had their fruit among his hearers. But for the creation of Ultramontanism, in a nation logically set upon political freedom, his genius and enthusiasm were alike powerless. Of the anomaly which he sought to prove normal he himself was almost the solitary impersonation, and, indeed, beyond the biographer who has so faithfully embalmed his memory, it would be difficult to find any other.

Les Misérables.*

VICTOR HUGO is the greatest poet of France, and one of her greatest novelists. There are those who maintain that he is the greatest of living poets. Assuredly, no one except Mr. Robert Browning rivals him in versatility and dramatic power; no one except Mr. Tennyson in rhythm and melody and music. His mastery over so unpoetical a language as the French is marvellous. The most skilful musician may be baffled by a wretched instrument: M. Hugo has not allowed his instrument to baffle him. Some of his lyrics and ballads are not excelled by anything yet written in any language.

M. Hugo, in his sixtieth year, is evidently in the prime of his intellectual life. Les Misérables is unquestionably his finest prose work. We find, however, the same difficulty in accurately estimating the depth and power of his religious convictions that existed forty years ago, when his first poems were published. Is his religion the result of faith or of sentiment? Does he, like Shakespeare, simply reflect the phases of human belief, as a clear pool mirrors the clouds, a mere momentary picture of the sky? In his Odes et Ballades, how strange and bizarre the mixture. Beautiful beyond description, a very page of primeval life, is Moïse sur le Nil, with its sublime conclusion:

"Sous les traits d'un enfant délaissé sur les flots,
C'est l'élu du Sina, c'est le roi des fléaux,
Qu'une vierge sauve de l'onde.

Mortels, vous dont l'orgueil méconnait l'Eternel,
Fléchissez un berceau va sauver Israël,

Un berceau doit sauver le monde !"

Yet the same volume contains ballads, like La Chasse du Burgrave and La Légende de la Nonne, which are morally unworthy of a great poet. This last work of his presents the same anomaly. It is the history of an escaped galley

* Les Misérables. Brussels: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven and Co. London; Hurst and Blackett.

| slave, whose conscience is awakened by the Christian charity of a bishop whom he robs. It is worked out with admirable detail, and may be fitly described as a noble lesson on the possibility of true repentance even in the vilest and most degraded. Yet herewith we get much description of illicit love-much also that an English reader will consider blasphemous. M. Hugo may hold that, in dealing with Paris life, the former was inevitable: but he surely cannot justify the latter. We cannot cite the passages; they are too bad: they show something worse than mere want of taste, and are heavy blemishes in this remarkable work.

For the work is very remarkable. It may perhaps, in its early stage of conception, have been suggested by M. Dumas's Monte Cristo. But M. Hugo's is a far nobler development of the idea. The prisoner of the Château d'If comes back to revenge himself on his persecutors, his power to do so being acquired in an utterly absurd manner. Jean Valjeau does none save deeds of kindness after his conscience is awakened by Monseigneur Bienvenu; and his adventures, strange as they are, cannot be called improbable. The two heroes of the drama-for the work is essentially dramatic-are Jean Valjeau and Javert, the escaped galley-slave and the policeman. All the other characters, definite and distinct as they are, are strictly secondary. Yet each is a marvellous picture. Fautine, the ignorant victim of seduction, whom her maternal love rescues from utter vileness,-Cosette, whose purity has been refined by strange misfortunes,-Marius, the political enthusiast, sincere, dreamy, illogical,-Tholomyès and his friends, young men devoid of heart and brain,—Enjobras and his comrades, youth of a nobler type, impatient of social wrongs, and eager to sacrifice their lives for their ideal republic,-the wonderful group of thieves and scoun drels, each a distinct conception: all these are brought before us with Shakespearian vividness. But the action of the drama is with Valjeau and Javert. Rigour of law contends with freedom of conscience in these two men, The one is personified repentance-the other personified justice. Valjeau, whom the law has made an outcast, acts always nobly and conscientiously: Javert, servant of the law, is a human bloodhound, a thief-tracking machine. One of M. Hugo's ablest critics has questioned the possibility of a forçat's being rendered penitent so suddenly. Es-ce," he asks, " que la main d'un évêque touche plutôt un forçat qu'un honnête homme?"

We, who remember the Pharisee and the publican-who remember how the thief upon the Cross saw suddenly before him the glorious vista which leads to Paradise-who remember how Mary Magdalene was pardoned-are not disposed to quarrel with M. Hugo on this ground. And the good bishop's charity to Jean Valjeau was of a nature which an honest man could not have received from him: he took in the convict when every inn refused the bishop's plate in his possession, Monseigneur him-and, when the police brought back the ingrate with declared that he had given it to him. Such a proceeding may seem irrational; and it is worse; but it is in keeping with the good prelate's character as sketched by M. Hugo; and its result, we maintain, is in no degree forced or improbable. between Valjeau and Javert is scarcely defensible. It is Still, the moral of the great antagonism which exists revolutionary. M. Hugo would set conscience above law. But what is law, save the conscience of the majority? site, and that which the greater number believe right beWhere men are congregated, an established code is requicomes law. And law is often unjust-although not often so flagrantly as in Valjeau's case. For stealing a loaf, when in a state of starvation, he suffered nineteen years at the galleys-five years in the first instance, but prolonged by his attempts to escape. We have already noticed the difficulties in which he was placed by his position as a liberated convict. liberated convict. Possibly our own ticket-of-leave men are in similar perplexity, and are often driven into renewed crime by the impossibility of earning their livelihood honestly. Still the conscience of the people must be supreme over the conscience of the individual. Law must rule. As our social arrangements become more complete,

injustice will approach the minimum: but while men are human, while there is shadow upon earth as well as light, there will assuredly be some injustice. Often the man who deems himself most just is in reality most unjust. And even the "just," are to be "made perfect" before they tread the streets of that city whose glittering turrets arise in "the land which is very far off."

"Cœlestis O Jerusalem,

Mansura semper Civitas!"

But M. Victor Hugo is revolutionary-in theology and ethics as in politics. In his most famous novel he makes one of his characters exclaim-" The printing-press will efface the cathedral." Typography shows no symptoms of destroying architecture as yet-although the former is in its most brilliant state, and the latter by no means brilliant. It may be that the men who built our great cathedrals could not have written good newspaper articles; it is equally certain that neither the leader-writers of printinghouse square, nor any of their contemporaries, can build as those men built. M. Hugo seems, however, to believe, not only that typography must efface architecture, but also that conscience must destroy law. The first is as strange a belief for a poet as the second for a philosopher; M. Hugo is both. Does he not think the church of Saint Ouen at Rouen something finer than the Constitutionel? Can he not see that to set conscience above law would only be possible if all men were perfect, whereas all men are imperfect?

It

The English translation of M. Victor Hugo's work can only be characterized by one epithet-abominable. should have been intrusted to a man of some ability. To begin with, the translator, whose name is Wraxall, apologizes in his preface for making two omissions. One is M. Hugo's chapter on Cambronne's reply when asked to surrender the other is an essay on the monastic system, which Mr. Wraxall thought might be misapprehended in England, M. Esquiros thinking otherwise. Now, we hold that in the case of a book like Les Misérables no such omission should be tolerated. M. Hugo is an artist; every line which he writes is an integral part of his design. If Mr. Wraxall had chosen to abridge the work, it would have been otherwise. He might then have omitted the account of Waterloo, of the French Revolution, the essay on Argot, and much else which does not in any way help the progress of the story. But, translating Les Misérables for an English public, he had no right to omit a word. This is not all; he does not even tell the truth about his omissions. "With these two very slight omissions the work is perfect." The first of these "slight omissions" is a chapter of six pages; the second is eight chapters, and extends to forty-four pages; and there are others unacknowledged. A whole chapter is omitted, vol. ii. p. 127, with the heading Christus nos liberavit. Did Mr. Wraxall leave it untranslated because he could not understand its beauty and its pathos? Again, vol. viii. p. 290, the loverhymes made by the young students as they waited at their barricade are entirely ignored. A gentleman who cannot translate poetry has no business with a book of Victor Hugo's. These are important omissions: others more trivial we have noticed, which decidedly detract from the value of the translation. There are, moreover, many examples of mistranslation and vulgarity. To render into English the lyrical epigrammatic antithetic prose of France's greatest writer is no easy task. After reading the original no possible translation could content us. But Mr. Wraxall does not trouble himself to write even intelligible English. He talks of a "large gilt general's epaulettes"-which reminds one of the auctioneer's hogany lady's work table." Again, here is a sentence: "What there is below man distinguishes there through the mist what there is beyond man.' A high reward might safely be offered to any one who could annex a meaning to this sentence, yet the French is perfectly clear. This is only one example out of many which might be given of the translator's absolute helplessness when the author departs from the ordinary track of thought. We regret that M. Hugo's great work did not fall into abler hands.

ma

Large as the revenue under this branch had become in preceding years, the year 1861 has produced a further increase of fire revenue, the premiums having attained the sum of 292,402/., being an increase in a single year of 29,4251.

The fire revenue has more than doubled in the last six years, the total increase being upwards of 160,000l., an advance by natural expansion, which is probably without parallel.

The government returns of duty place the Royal, as respects increase of business, at the head of the offices.

LIFE BRANCH.

The prominent feature is the increase and great amount of the new

business transacted by this Company, the sum assured under new policies alone for the past year amounting to 521,101.; exceeding, by 70,000l., the new insurances of the preceding year, which again had shown a great advance on its predecessors.

This large amount of business (and upon which the current year shows a yet further advance), is believed to result from public confidence, and from the signal advantage the life branch possesses in being

so lightly burdened, the fire branch, from its magnitude, bearing by far the larger share of the general expenses of management, an advantage few companies possess to the like extent.

The total paid-up Capital and Accumulated Funds of the Company were certified by the Auditors to amount to 846,000l.

October, 1862.

PERCY M. DOVE, Manager. JOHN B. JOHNSTONE, Secretary.

THE TEA TRADE.

[ANNUAL CIRCULAR.]

THE

ROYAL BANK BUILDINGS, Liverpool, October 1st, 1862. HE inducement and protection at present given to Enterprise and Capital in the interior of the Chinese Empire are such that we may look for a most abundant supply of Tea this Season. Both " Royalists and Rebels" have become rivals in their endeavours to give increased security to the British Merchant.

We copy from the "China Overland Trade Report," China, 26th July. "Silk is abundant at Shanghai, and Teas at Hankow, Kewkiang and Foochow. The number of Steamers plying on the Yangtsze River excites unfeigned astonishment. Rates of freight have, however, materially declined, and appearances would warrant the conclusion that there is an excess of competition in the Trade."

GLOUCESTERSHIre Banking CoMPANY

Cheltenham.

NATIONAL BANK OF SCOTLAND BANK OF ENGLAND

Glasgow.

ROYAL BANK

Liverpool.

-Amounts paid into any of

the above Banks, on our account, advising us of the same, will be duly passed to credit. Remittances can also be made direct to us by Bankers' cheques, Postoffice Orders, &c.

Your obliged and faithful Servants,

ROBT. ROBERTS & COMPY.
Tea and Coffee Salesmen.

Near the Exchange.-LIVERPOOL.