and superintending the work of destruction." The property was sold for a mere song. "A Belgian bought a piece of ground, church and all, for nineteen pounds ten shillings." Foreigners were the chief buyers --for all who had money among the Mexicans belonged to the Conservative party, and would have nothing to do with the business, as they feared incurring excommunication: the Liberals, in most cases, had nothing to give. Thus the sale of the Church property, immense as it was, brought hardly any thing into the treasury: the Government had in the same year to raise a loan of a million of dollars for the most pressing needs of the public service. In fact, some of the admirers of the Government of Juarez defended him on the ground that he did not desire to enrich the country by the spoils of the Church, but simply to destroy and uproot the latter. In Mr. Bullock's travels in the provinces the Liberals appear simply as freebooters. They organise bands who levy black mail on the country proprietors: an estate pays them, for instance, 2000 dollars down, and 200 a month, and thus purchases immunity from their visits. Whenever they appear, they ransack and ruin every thing; and during the ascendancy of Juarez the higher and richer classes were obliged to live in towns, and abandon their country estates altogether.

As our common ideas of Mexico are formed almost exclusively from what we read of its troubles in the newspapers, many Englishmen will be surprised to hear of the existence of a large class of wealthy, noble, intelligent, and cultivated Mexicans. On the other hand, if we were to form our notions of the country from the specimens of its natives whom we meet occasionally as travellers, or as temporary residents in England, we should find it equally difficult to understand the wretched political and social state to which Mexico has been reduced. There are hundreds of Mexicans as enlightened, as well educated, as courageous, as capable generally of the management of affairs as the average inhabitants of any Christian country: and yet it is perfectly true that no Christian country has ever had a more miserable history than Mexico since it became independent of Spain. The fact seems to be, that though they are themselves the greatest sufferers from the anarchy and insecurity which is the normal political state of the country, the wealthy, educated, and intelligent classes take no part whatever in public affairs. There is almost material among them for a powerful and dominant aristocracy such as that of England; but they leave the conduct of the country to adventurers, legal or military, who think of nothing but enriching themselves and their friends during the short tenure of office, which is all to which they can hope to aspire when their intrigues are successful. The Mexicans, astonishing as it may seem, do not appear to be as yet fully awake to the indispensable necessity of an entire change of system, and the follies and miseries of so many years have left results behind them which make it almost impossible to apply a remedy to the evils of the country. The army, for instance, is perfectly encumbered with officers whose rank and emoluments have been conferred on them as the rewards of political service, or have

been simply usurped in times of trouble. The roads and other public works have been allowed to fall out of repair, and nothing has been done to make up for the dilapidations and destructions of so many years of revolution. Of course neither trade nor finance can flourish under such a state of things: it is all in vain that Mexico possesses those unrivalled resources and capabilities of which we hear so much. It would appear to be almost hopeless to look for a revival of public spirit among the classes really capable of helping the Emperor Maximilian in his attempt to organise the country. His arrival, as Mr. Bullock tells us, was hailed with intense joy by all who desired peace and order, and trade revived with the return of confidence at the beginning of his reign. His ecclesiastical policy soon disgusted many: but at the time of Mr. Bullock's visit, he was still considered as the only hope of the country. Mexicans, however, of the better party, seem, like their brethren elsewhere, to look to others to do for them many things which they ought to do for themselves: and, after all, the Imperial experiment was a foreign importation, and supported by foreign bayonets. The Mexican ministers and generals seem one by one to have fallen off from the Emperor. A few months ago, his Ministry consisted of three persons only, two of whom were Frenchmen: and the guardianship of the palace of Chapultepec was intrusted to Zouaves, instead of the Mexican Guard of Honour.

Mr. Bullock points out one cause of difficulty to the Government which, it would seem, must be fatal to all attempts at keeping order, unless backed by immense and widely-spread forces. Mexico is an unwieldy country, with provinces far too distant from the capital to be easily managed from it. Though a large slice of territory was sacrificed after the American war, Mexico is still nearly four times as large as France: and, for purposes of government, which requires rapid and ample means of communication between the capital and the departments, and a perfectly organised system of strong control from the centre-at least in default of that public spirit which makes local and municipal administration so easy to the Anglo-Saxon race -it may almost be said to be forty times as large. A writer in a late number of the Revue des Deux Mondes (Sept. 15), who is well informed as to the course which events have taken since the arrival of the Emperor Maximilian, and who proposes a plan by which the Empire may be preserved so as to grow into a great and powerful State, after the departure of the French troops, begins by suggesting that the frontiers should be drawn in. He would abandon the three southern states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and Yucatan, as well as five more on the north and west, Durango, Cohahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Cinaloa. The three on the south are poor and unhealthy, the five on the north very poorly inhabited, exposed to Indian invasions, almost deserts. From this general statement, however, he excepts the state of Sonora, which is rich, though less rich than expensive to keep. Central Mexico would then remain, with eleven states. That such a suggestion should be seriously made, and should appear so reasonable if the Empire is to be maintained and organ

ised, is certainly a proof how unmanageable it is in its present bulk. Possibly we have here the best prospect of the future of Mexico. It seems doubtful enough, to say the least, whether the Emperor Maximilian, supposing him to be reconciled with the Holy See and the Church party in the country which he governs, can maintain himself at all under the enormous disadvantages which will beset his position when foreign aid is withdrawn. But if his Government should continue, and be able to support itself by the loyalty of a population which it may have freed from anarchy and perpetual revolution at the price of a certain amount of very un-Mexican vigour and severity, it would be no very fatal calamity to it to have to part with some of its outlying provinces for the sake of making its territory more manageable and its frontier more defensible.

2. Many travellers in the Peninsula of Sinai have told us of the wonderful multitude of inscriptions on the rocks which hem in the valleys through which their road has lain,-inscriptions covering in some places the whole face of immense cliffs, so deeply cut as to prove both the skill and the labour employed to produce them, and sometimes to be traced in spots which could only have been reached by ladder or scaffolding. As no theory as to the language or languages in which these inscriptions are written has as yet obtained universal acceptance, we are deprived of the most certain of all evidences as to their origin. It is perhaps idle to discuss extrinsic probabilities while so all-important a point is yet doubtful; for, were the language to be settled hereafter beyond dispute, the conclusions formed on every other ground would have to be brought into conformity with the decision of this question. Still, the subject is very interesting, and a well-written Lecture by Mr. George Bentley* gives an opportunity of recalling the present state of the ques

tion.

The Sinai Inscriptions are first mentioned by Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the time of Justinian. Cosmas visited them with some Jews for his guides, and seems to say,—though Dr. Stanley denies this,— that they believed them to be the work of the Israelites during their long sojourn in the Peninsula of Sinai. Montfaucon published a translation of the work of Cosmas at the beginning of the last century since his time they have been discussed by various critics, English and German. Pococke was the first to bring home any copies of the inscriptions: in 1840 a selection was published by Beer in Germany, who also deciphered them on the supposition that the language was a dialect of Arabic. The most prominent English writer on the subject is Mr. C. Forster, who contends strongly for the Israelitish origin of the inscriptions, and has also his own way of reading them in harmony with his theory. Two other theories, however, are in the field. Dean Stanley and Beer suppose the writings to be the work of Christian pilgrims to Sinai and other holy places: while Professor Tuch, of Leipsic, who pub

*The Rock Inscriptions in the Peninsula of Sinai: an Inquiry into their Authorship. By George Bentley. London, 1866.

lished his conclusions in 1849, agrees with Beer as to the language, but assigns them to Pagan pilgrims to Serbal.

It is easier to attack any one of these theories than to find perfectly satisfactory arguments for that one which we may wish to establish in its place. The idea that the Israelites, a vast multitude, among whom there must have been many skilled workmen, sojourning for so many years in the neighbourhood of Sinai, would write their names, their history, their prayers, or their epitaphs on the rocks around their camp, commends itself to us at first sight as highly probable. This, however, seems all that can be said for the theory maintained by Mr. Forster and advocated by Mr. Bentley: unless, indeed, the mode of decipherment invented by Mr. Forster should be accepted by other scholars. Then there is the fact to be accounted for, that these inscriptions are found on the eastern side of the Peninsula as well as on the western, and therefore, it appears, out of the line of march of the Israelitish host. Moreover, we understand, though Mr. Bentley has not noticed the fact, that the writings are found on rocks all the way up to the summit of Serbal. This would seem to be against the notion that they are records of the passage of the Israelites. Dean Stanley seems to maintain their Christian origin mainly from the presence of crosses in some of the writings: but he appears to have observed rather carelessly, for his statements as to the frequent occurrence of the cross are contradicted by other travellers. Mr. Bentley's argument against him on the ground of the improbability of the existence of so vast a number of inscriptions, the work of Christian hands, at the time of Cosmas, has also much force. The Pagan theory seems to have the best evidence in its favour. There seems to have been a prevalent worship of the five planets on the top of Serbal, and there are some traces of it to be found in the curious paintings found in the Basilidian catacomb at Rome. This worship would account for the track along which these inscriptions are found, though it is still somewhat difficult to understand their great multitude, the skill and labour with which many are cut, and the height above the ground at which they are sometimes placed.

3. The author of Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family,* and various other apparently similar works, has a facile and fluent pen, and as much kindliness and geniality as is consistent with the task of celebrating, through a small library of quasi-historical tales, the deliverance of Christendom from Popish ignorance and error. He -or she?—has mostly avoided the sensational and melodramatic effects that usually form the staple of Protestant tales in which monks and nuns figure to any great extent. He shows some appreciation of Catholic piety; and old Catholic hymns, many of which are very fairly translated, take up so large a space in these volumes, that a hasty inspection of them might lead an unwary purchaser to carry them home as profitable reading. The writer's notions of the mental

* Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family. By the Author of "The Voice of Christian Life in Savoy," &c.

disquietude that must necessarily assail every Catholic who has a tender conscience, or listens to the voice of God within him, are very much like those of Mr. C. Kingsley, but the book is free from the immodesty as well as from the bitterness that overflows from his pen. The author before us has worked, with a little more originality than is common, the now well-used method of giving extracts from the journals of intelligent observers through a considerable period of history. What kind of history it is that these Chronicles represent will be evident from the selection of D'Aubigné and Foxe as the authorities. Ranke's History of the Reformation is indeed referred to along with Luther's works and D'Aubigné's as supplying materials; but it is evident that the facts are chiefly taken from the latter work. Even that most absurd passage about Luther's surprise at lighting by accident on a Bible, and discovering that there was actually more in it than the Gospels read in church-which Maitland made so famous from the accident of its presenting itself to him on a bit of waste paper, while he was engaged in writing his learned work on the Dark Ages-is here reproduced as fresh as ever, and without a hint of its containing any thing but acknowledged facts. This is quite enough to show that the author is greatly wanting in that acquaintance with standard historical criticism which is absolutely essential to any one who undertakes to write on such periods as that embraced in this work. This, however, is not all. The ignorance not only of Holy Scripture, but of the most essential parts of Christian teaching, in which our forefathers in the faith are supposed in these records of the past to have been plunged, is still more strikingly depicted. Eva Schönberg, an orphan cousin of the young Cottas, and—until she begins to learn Lutheranism—a charming and lovely creature, was taught by her father a passage out of a good book, of which she can only remember, "God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son." No one can tell her the rest of the verse, or has the least idea where the words are to be found. Her cousin, who has been saying the canonical hours for more than seven years, and has been six months a novice in Luther's monastery, is surprised and delighted to find the passage in St. John. But he will not communicate his discovery to her for fear of perplexing her, since it is evident that the words cannot mean what they would naturally mean. Theology, he muses, teaches that penance and confession and other things are necessary for salvation, whereas, out of theology, believing would mean trusting, having reliance, and nothing else. Why, if this were so, praying and reading the Bible should not be as superfluous as going to confession, does not strike him or the writer. In the Sketches of Christian Life in England, by the same author, a very old and devout priest, who must have repeated every year more of Holy Scripture in saying Office alone than most Protestants read in their lives, is, in like manner, full of amazement and delight at hearing a little child repeat portions of Wycliff's Bible, which let in sufficient light into his soul to enable him to die happily. Any hint that God really loves His children, that Christ made atonement for sins, or that there is any chance of pleasing Him