world of matter, nothing which has once come into | fervour of its platform zeal, and the extravagance being can absolutely cease to be. Its form may of its rabid Calvinism. Thirty-six years later the change, its manifestation become impossible, but State was everything and the Church nothing. its essence remains. The sun is behind the moun- Twelve Irish bishops had fallen-the appropriatains, but the stars are in the sky; clouds even and tion clauses were all but carried; even soberthick darkness may have made " one blot of all minded reformers were beginning to believe that the air," but such gloom, even where densest, is but the days of spiritual baronies were numbered; an ineffectual shroud through which the light pene- that a decree had gone forth against palaces and trates at a thousand points. In a world where purple; that the State was about to compel the light has once been, its absolute privation is an most richly-endowed of European Churches to impossibility. So, too, of truth. Once received apply a portion of its surplus wealth to the spiritual amongst men, it becomes, in one form or another, instruction of the worst educated among European a possession for ever-a star which, though it may populations. Fifteen years have elapsed since that no longer be visible in the firmament, yet diffuses era of fallacious promise and frustrated hope, and its beams through space, making beautiful and lo! the Church in this country has sprung up into luminous the atmosphere of human thought. giant proportions, loudly proclaiming its independence of the State, insisting on its divine authority, its apostolical succession, the sacredness of its Popish ritual, and of its inalienable revenues. Precisely the same change has taken place in the. so-called Evangelical Church of Prussia, and in the Episcopal Protestantism of the United States.

It is from inattention to these considerations that men are apt to regard with a kind of despair the perpetual ebb and flow of the great ocean of opinion. The tide seems to recede with a hopeless regularity as far as it had advanced. They forget that the high-water mark is itself perpetually pushing forward, making vast though gradual inroads on all the mounds and dykes of error, imperceptible to a hasty observer, but very manifest to those who keep watch on the phenomena of history as they develope themselves in the rotation of ages.

At the present day it is the common complaint of apprehensive and querulous Liberalism that reaction and retrogression are everywhere in the ascendant. The spirit of progress and free intelligence has, we are told, received a check, and for a time at least must be content with assuming a position of vigilance and self-defence, even in those parts of Europe where its victories have hitherto been most splendid, and its empire has seemed most unassailably secure. It must be admitted that this opinion is not without a certain plausibility. Let us examine some of the foundations on which it rests.

There can be no doubt that, leaving out of sight all merely political considerations, and regarding the matter from a purely moral and psychological point of view, a great change has come over the spirit of European thought within the last generation-nay, within the last decade of the present century. In almost every sphere of culture-in religion, in mental philosophy, in art-the alteration of tendency is startling and complete. At the commencement of the century the papacy lay crouching, and to all appearance utterly crushed, beneath the power of the great infidel democracy. Even twenty years later pious Protestants of an exegetical turn of mind could point to the confusion of the Scarlet Woman and the humiliation of the little horn, as triumphant evidence of their favourite interpretations of Daniel and the apocalypse. We have lived to see a resurrection of the papal power, scarcely, if at all, less formidable than that which in the seventeenth century attested the first enthusiasm and the early successes of the disciples of Loyola. At the beginning of the century the English Protestant Church was either lapsing into rationalism, or dozing in plethoric dignity, or vying with the ultra pietists in the

Now, be it observed that the Anglicanism of Pusey, and the Ultramontanism of Montalembert, differ in this one dangerous respect from the correlative systems of Laud and the Sorbonne. Instead of ignoring the spirit of the age, they study in order to subjugate it. They learn the wants of the time, flatter its weaknesses, comprehend its tendencies, adopt its culture, and speak its language. Philosophy, literature, art, all the modes of spiritual influence have been imperceptibly but surely brought to bear in one continued attack upon the reason, the susceptibilities and the tastes of a cultivated and refined society. In an age of newspapers and periodicals the Press has not been neglected; the man of business may imbibe High Church principles from the same columns which inform him of the price of stocks, and the literary lounger, amid relaxation of light reading, become habituated to modes of thought and peculiarities of expression which may imperceptibly form his mind to the teachings of the Universal Church. Where so much combined and enthusiastic effort is manifest in so many different directions, all converging to one end, it is scarcely possible not to suspect concerted action and deliberate design. Years may elapse before the secret history of this great movement is thoroughly made known, but all conjecture points to the probability that the famous society to which the Roman Church has heretofore been indebted for so signal a measure of restored stability and renovated splendour has not been wholly inactive in that great work of successful revival the rumour whereof is now spreading through all the nations of Christendom.

Be this as it may, it is curious to remark how the stream of human opinion has of late been gradually flowing in a direction most favourable to the designs of those who are interested in upholding the twin principles of blind truth and absolute authority. Who that is familiar with the prevalent philosophy of the day can fail to discern its tendency to exalt the Past as an age of earnestness and faith, to vilify the Present as an age of levity and unbelief? Carlyle and Guizot, in other respects

Quousque tandem? for what period is this reaction to endure, and to what point is it to proceed? Such is among the most interesting questions which a watcher of "the tides of time" can address to the Sphinx of Destiny.

separated by an almost infinite distance, both agree of medieval art. But these are the very principles in this. And Carlyle and Guizot have had, may on which the infallible Church can best rear her still have, an extensive though unacknowledged spiritual throne. Hence the revival of her ascendinfluence in the formation of cotemporary opinion. ancy, hence the reappearance in astonished Europe The spirit of the eighteenth century-the spirit of those theories of divine right and political absothat reverences nothing and analyses all things-lutism, whose reign has always been cotemporais brought by both into disadvantageous contrast neous with the ascendancy of the Catholic Church, with that spirit of the middle ages which could ever since the head of that Church has regarded earnestly believe, modestly venerate, and undoubt- the despotisms of Europe rather as the supporters ingly obey. Carlyle, indeed, has never been able of the Catholic faith than as the rivals of the pontito forget that he speaks the mother-tongue offical supremacy. Ferdinand and Schwartzenberg Milton and Cromwell, and was nurtured in the are the correlatives of Cullen and Antonelli. Neinative land of Knox and of Cameron. He has ther produce, both are produced by, the reactionary never, like the eloquent Frenchman, represented spirit which alone renders them possible, and whose the Roman Church as the civiliser and teacher of duration will prescribe the term of their existence. the modern world, nor prostituted his powers to a deification of the principle of authority as opposed to the principle of self-government. But we are not concerned to draw a parallel or point a contrast between the author of "Past and Present" and the author of "Democracy in Europe." We merely wish to show that two of the minds which have had no inconsiderable share in giving a tone and colour to the opinions of the day have been themselves imbued with principles which, consciously or unconscionsly, have helped forward the ecclesiastical and political reaction of the nineteenth century. If from philosophy we turn to literature and art, we shall find the same tendency developed in a more palpable form. Everywhere the nineteenth century, in its protest against the eighteenth, has evoked the ghost of the middle ages as the idol of its preposterous worship. From the delicate homage of the German Overbeck down to the clumsy prostration of our English Pre-Raphaelites, the interval is immense, but the animating spirit is the same. The literature of Young England and the architecture of Pugin have had the same origin and the same tendency. Nay, among the most vehement of the present opponents of the reaction may be found some of its more successful though unconscious promoters. Nor would it be too much to affirm that the medieval fictions of

Victor Hugo, and the medieval histories of Michelet, have had at least as much share in investing the Church of the past with the seductions which to certain minds now prove so irresistible, as the ballads of Lord John Manners, or the "Christian Art" of Lord Lindsay.

Subjectively considered, then, the history of the present reaction is briefly this: that the Church has had the skill to turn to her own purposes a movement which she did not create, but which originated out of that principle which, with Luther's permission, we will venture to call the law of spiritual oscillation. The spirit of inquiry, issuing in universal unbelief; the spirit of selfgovernment, pushed to the verge of irremediable anarchy; the spirit of classic art, degenerating into a mere imitative pedantry-such were the dominating powers of the eighteenth century. Certain thoughtful and cultivated minds, in their impatience and disgust at such results as these, have gradually given themselves over to the dominion of the opposite influences the spirit of unquestioning faith, the spirit of absolute authority, and the spirit

If, in endeavouring to answer this question, we were to regard merely with a superficial glance the present aspect of European society, the result would be a melancholy foreboding for the great cause of human progress. By the grace of standing armies Despotism reigns for the moment supreme; nor is her power anywhere more absolute than in that pseudo republic whose principal achievements have been the restoration of the Pope and the annihilation of the Press. Between the fanatics of Socialism and the fanatics of order, between the madmen who would change everything and the madmen who would change nothing-constitutional Liberalism stands silent and ashamed. Majestic over the social chaos reascends the phantom of the ancient Church. Paramount in Austria, reinstated in Spain, insolent in Ireland, fashionable in France, pushing her conquests into the very heart of Protestant Englandit might seem at first sight that the Papal power is destined to win back in our days all, and more than all, that had been wrested from her in the days of our fathers.

But these anticipations of evil, which not unnaturally suggest themselves to a hasty observer, vanish before a calmer consideration and a more extensive survey.

This fabric of restored despotism glitters, vast and imposing to the eye of the distant spectator; but is its architecture sound? are its foundations secure? Does it rest on the hearts of its subjects, or on the swords of its soldiery; on the firm reverence of instinctive loyalty, or on the hireling support of Prætorian camps? Ask this question of Vienna, Paris, Naples, Rome, Milan, the only present reply would be an ominous silence; when that silence is next broken the answer will be terrible as death and decisive as destiny. So again of those far-vaunted triumphs of Popery and Puseyism. Let those who boast them remember that the days of Cromwell followed swift upon the days of Laud, and that the Church of the Jesuits was swallowed up by the republic of the philoso phers. Let them consider, too, that these boasted victories have been chiefly won over the sophisticated victims of a sickly and decrepit state of society. The tedium of artificial life and the feeble

ness of over-culture have contributed to swell the clopædia and the Terror, is creative and beneficent. ranks of a Church whose ceremonial observances Its mission is not only to destroy but to upbuild. afford a refuge from ennui, and whose claims of " Ecrasez l'infâme"-"Mort aux aristocrates" are infallible authority save the labour of speculation. no longer its watchwords. Its ideas are grand, But on the sound and vigorous Protestantism of its problems are practical. Its home policy is the middle and lower classes, modern Catholicity, simply "a due adjustment between labour and the whether Roman or Anglican, has made no impres- produce of labour." Its foreign policy is comprised sion whatever. Nay, it is a notorious fact that, in the formula, "The United States of Europe." both in Ireland and Italy, the secessions from To produce by a wise combination of the two Rome amongst the great body of the people have great principles of competition and association a of late out-numbered, beyond all measure of pro- more equable distribution of wealth, and to put an portion, the loudly-heralded conversions which end for ever to that barbarous system of interhave been too hastily accepted as conclusive evi- national warfare which has so long been the curse dence of a great Catholic revival. of Europe, such are the true objects to be pursued by the great party of progress through the sole means of free discussion and extended education. Those who pursue these things are moving with the order of the universe; those who oppose them are struggling against it. What the issue will be can be no secret to those who have watched even with a very moderate degree of attention the progressive development of modern civilisation.

We cannot, then, persuade ourselves that either political absolutism or Roman reaction can be of any long date in this rife period of the world's manhood. The age of steam-presses, and electric telegraphs and peace-conventions, is not an age which can much longer be tolerant of military despotisms and infallible Churches. The Liberalism of these later years, unlike that of the Ency

THE GHOST-SEER OF TRESILLION.

BY C. A. M. W.

"It is wonderful," said Dr. Johnson, "that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it, but all belief is for it."

From earliest infancy I had been regaled with marvellous legends by an old Irish nurse; but her tales were so very wild and wonderful that I soon learned to discriminate truth from fiction. I retained, however, an impassioned desire to meet with some individual who had personally come into close contact with a real spectral visitant; it was always, "A friend of mine had a friend who told me so and so;" or, "A person of strict veracity related this to me;" but I wished to speak face to face with a person who could solemnly say, "I myself saw or heard so and so."

The realisation of my wishes certainly came upon me by surprise, and in a form I least expected. During a lengthened sojourn in the west of England, two native ladies of our acquaintance dropped in to drink tea, bringing their workbaskets and also their niece, a fat, good-humoured damsel, whose blowsy cheeks and hearty laugh gave no indication of a ghost-seer. Yet she it was who was doomed to stamp my faith in the supernatural, even by the impress of her own experience.

our incredulity and hardness of heart, which no authenticated accounts of the "phantom ships," "Gabriel's hounds," "corpse-candles," or "headless miners" could soften, they put forth their sturdy niece, the blooming Lovday, to awe us into due decorum by relating an awful episode in her own career. After much solicitation the girl complied, yet not without tears and a paler cheek than she was wont to exhibit. She frequently became our guest from this period, and I had many opportunities of canvassing the truth of her relation, but always without being able to arrive at any other conclusion than that it was in truth" strange, passing strange, beyond the dreams of our philosophy.'

To the best of my recollection, I will give it in her own words, as follows: "I am one of a large family, and my father is a farmer well to do in the world, besides being a hill-preacher. I have never been far away from my father's dwelling near the Land's End, and this is the longest journey, to see my aunts, I have ever taken. We were all brought up in the fear of the Lord; but we knew no other fear, nor were any idle fancies tolerated. My father had an old and valued friend, a clergyman of the Established Church; but difference of tenets did not prevent their loving and frequent intercourse. This gentleman was a bachelor, and resided in a lonely parsonage, situate beside a wide and unThe winter winds were howling, and the rain sheltered grave-yard, wherein stood the mouldering pattered against the casement, and, ensconced in church, round whose tower the ivy hung in rich a warm room beside a bright fire, the ancient dames festoons, and beneath whose eaves the owls found discussed many startling narratives with infinite a congenial home. This kind old man often came gusto and satisfaction. But their reminiscences to see us, for our homes were not more than ten made us laugh so heartily that, a little nettled by miles apart; he would then take me on his knee,

and call me his dear child, whispering that all he | timid, though we knew not of what; and I felt had would one day be mine. I was his decided ashamed of myself for such unnatural nervousness, favourite, on account of my likeness to our deceased Tammy soon slept, but I had no inclination to mother (for my father has a second wife); he had close my eyes. I lay thinking of the departed, wished to marry our mother when he was a young-thinking of his glorified state, yet sad and sor ster, before she knew my father; but she had de- rowful as became my frail humanity, when his cided on never wedding any save a hill-preacher, peculiar footfall sounded quite distinctly in the and her destiny was soon after fulfilled. Old Mr. room above. I knew it instantly; for, as I have D― had been constant to his first-love and to her said, it was peculiar and heavy. I felt no fear, sweet memory; but he was so sincerely a Christian and I even thought that I should be glad to see that my father, though a fortunate rival, was re-him again. I heard the opening of every drawer garded by him as a beloved brother.

and cupboard, accompanied by noisy rummaging. The last time I ever beheld our venerated friend Presently the footsteps descended the stairs, and in life was in my father's house at evening-tide, came down the long passage leading to the chamwhen with unusual solemnity he declared before the ber I was in; slowly, very slowly they advanced. assembled family his determination to constitute My heart began to throb violently, but I knew the me legally his heiress; and his parting words were, door was well secured. Noiselessly he came "God bless you, my darling; and mind the silver through it; it never opened. The figure was teapot and the twelve silver spoons are yours, Lov- swathed in its shroud, and one hand, extended, held day, and 8001. besides, in the bank at P—. I'll a taper. This taper threw no light on the objects make a will directly, or Thomas will grasp all, and around, only on the apparition, which stood out as then, mark me! I shall not rest in my grave." a ghastly, dim white picture in the black setting of This said Thomas was Mr. D's brother, also midnight, framed in darkness. It opened the unmarried; a wealthy but selfish individual, resid-closets and wardrobes of this room also, piteously ing at P――; the dispositions and principles of the brothers were so opposed that they found it better to see as little of each other as possible; Mr. Thomas D—— having amassed a fortune by usury, while our reverend friend deprived himself of many comforts in order to heap up treasure" where the moth doth not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal."

I saw him trot away on his long-tailed pony as the darkness gathered around, muffled up in neckcloths and overcoats, for the drenching mist was falling over the hills, and on the houseless roads. Next day, my father was hurriedly sent for; old

Mr. D had been found dead in his bed.

I intreated to be allowed to accompany him, and permission was accorded; more particularly as Tammy, the ancient housekeeper, was quite alone, and needed some one to console and cheer her. I shared poor Tammy's couch, and the funeral was appointed to take place in five days' time. Mr. Thomas D― arrived from P———, and numerous visitors from far and near, as is the custom at our funeral ceremonies; the open shed at the side of the church-yard being filled with vehicles on the day of interment.

6

moaning, and shaking its head, oh, so dismally! They were all found open and disarranged afterwards. It then approached our bed, slowly gliding nearer and nearer till quite close, when I distinguished the earthy musty smell of the coffin cerements, of corruption, and the damp_grave. I was horror-stricken then, and I woke Tammy. She fixed her eyes on the unearthly visitant, screamed loudly, Master's come back!' and fell from the bed on the opposite side to where the apparition stood, in a paroxysm of terror. At the same moment, just as I was about to address it, the figure sunk gradually down through the floor, still continuing to moan and shake its head in token of disapproval, and we were left in darkness, the first time in my life that darkness and silence had ever appalled me. My father heard a noise, and he came presently to ascertain the cause. He found everything in confusion, drawers, closets, and cabinets open; and his suspicion was, that thieves had done it all. When I revealed the true state of the case he received the knowledge with grave solemnity, but made no remark.

"As if to corroborate my statement, an ancient serving-man, who had been busied about the stables I saw the remains lowered into their last dark until a late hour, after the departure of the funeral home, I heard the hymn sung, and I believed guests, in crossing the grave-yard near the spert that the dear departed was singing with the angels where his dear master was freshly interred, saw a in paradise. With the exception of two or three shadowy form in white raiment glide amid the individuals, who remained late at the parsonage green mounds as if coming from the house, and with my father, all the guests dispersed that after-sink suddenly down beside the new-made grave. noon. Mr. Thomas D- returned to P, The figure held a light in its hand, which shed o taking with him all the valuables he could collect, radiance save on itself; and the eyes were as the silver tea-pot, spoons and all, together with some eyes of Mr. D, but dead and fixed looking. bank notes. There was no will; he was the heir, The man, affrighted, darted into the kitchen of the and his proceedings were summary. My father pur parsonage, and at once sought my father. He posed our returning home on the following day. The made this awful incident a matter of prayerful dis chamber I shared with the housekeeper was at the cussion for many weeks; the apparition never end of a long passage, and beneath the one lately appeared again, and the silver tea-pot, and the occupied by the deceased. She secured the door-twelve silver spoons, also the 8001, remain in the for the scenes of the day had made us both rather possession of Mr. Thomas D

of P; for

though my father thought it proper to represent the circumstance to him, he only laughed and gave no credence to it, for he is a worldly, scornful man. I must confess that I have often wondered why our dear departed friend did not visit him in the spirit, and tax him with the injustice he was guilty of. But mayhap that restless ghost could not leave the homestead which for forty years had afforded a peaceful shelter to its corporeal body; nor the precincts of consecrated ground, o'ershadowed by the holy house of prayer; nor the narrow home where the worm claimed its lawful prey. But of such incomprehensible mysteries it does not become me to speak. I do not attempt to reason or to argue on the subject, but merely relate the simple fact, of which there are two living witnesses beside myself."

Here is an instance which decides the question of a re-appearance after dissolution, though it be but once during the term of five thousand years! What would the learned doctor have said to our fair Cornish acquaintance? Ah, methinks

A man convinced against his will,
Is of the same opinion still!

John Sanders had lived from his youth, upwards, with my own father, and proved a valuable, trustworthy and attached domestic. He was a silverheaded man when he narrated the ensuing cir

(

"I fell on my knees, for the voice was as the voice of my absent master, and the sigh sounded as a death-sigh. I continued on my knees trembling for a space, engaged in prayer; for the awful warning I had heard made me fear that my master was no more. I wrote a memorial of the fact on a leaf in my pocket-book, and that very day I called on four gentlemen, friends of my master, telling them my anxiety and apprehension. They all, with one exception, laughed at my superstitious nonsense; but the gentleman who formed the exception looked grave and uncomfortable, and copied into his own tablets my memorandum, wherein the hour of the day, the day of the week, the month and the year were specified. He mentioned, however, having received a cheering letter from my master a day or two previously, saying he was in perfect health, and announcing his hope of a speedy return. In due time accounts arrived that my dear master had died at C——, the fatal fever few hours illness. When the dates were compared, of the country having carried him off, after but a they agreed minutely."

John Sanders exhibited to me the leaf of his pocket-book containing the treasured record, which had now become a precious relic, “gazed at through tears."

With awe and reverence I handled it ; nor can I doubt, that when the dying in his agony called on this faithful servant, time and space were annihilated.

From that distant land of strangers, a sigh and a tone were wafted by the winged Shadows, swift as lightning's play, subtle as electricity, and which, like mesmeric power, or any other unfathomable mystery of our nature, is little comprehended, even by the most ardent and studious inquirer.

To return to our poet and his works. The Count sip. Those only who are acquainted with the Platen was among the most persevering_anta-morbid desire for universality of knowledge and gonists of Heine. He, Augustus Count of Platen Hallermünde, was the poor descendant of a noble and wealthy family. Trained up to a soldier's profession, and educated in "camps and courts," as he says in one of his poems, the Count Platen left his career to devote himself to the study of science and literature; and although of a maturer age than the majority of the students at the University of Tübingen where he matriculated, he became distinguished among them by habits of industry and the acquisition of a superior scientific education, for which neither his former profession nor his rank furnished any precedent. His familiarity with the works of the master-minds of almost all European nations was surprising, and he was, moreover, deeply read in the classics and in Eastern literature-two sources of knowledge of which Heine had never done more than take a

genius which possesses the modern Germans, and which has spoiled the making of some of their greatest men, can understand the secret heartburning which Heine must have felt when he found himself assailed by a man whose talent, though it lay in a different direction, was at least equal to his own, and whose erudition and smoothness of numbers overshot the mark of his boldest endeavours. Heine, it must be confessed, was neither a classic scholar nor a successful student of Eastern languages and antiquities. His knowledge of the classics was exactly tl at of most German youths, who leave school for the freedom of the University, with a hearty disgust for the Grecian gods and goddesses, and with a firm resolution to forget the lessons which might have helped to form and to enlighten their minds had it not been for the pedants who taught, and in whose clumsy hands