Here I am, an Irish brother,
Will you give me your hand?
Let us hatred cast away,
Be our prayer night and day,
May love yet make a nation of our
Fatherland.

The following is from a fine poem, entitled "Onward":

The world rides on through misty spaceI live me in the night,

And throw a lighted torch to trace

The morning's coming light. And fearsome things from rock and tide, Pass still before my eyes; But with the world, through space I ride, To dwell in cloudless skies.

Our quotations may conclude with a sturdy ballad:

HUGH BRENNAN.

Hugh Brennan was a ploughman stout,
His heart was always gay,

From end to end the year to him

Was one sunshiny day.

Said he "The King upon his throne,
In station's rather high;
But is the King upon his throne,
A happier man than I?"

'Tis true my coat is common stuff,
'Tis Mabel's home-spun frieze,-
'Tis true my tastes are very low,

But human groans and cries
Break not my slumber thro' the night;
I wake without a sigh,-

I'd rank him, Mabel dear, a King
Who'd slept the same as I.—

My Mabel-she has eyes of blue,
And ringlets chestnut brown;
If crowns be precious things, by Jove,
She ought to wear a crown!
For Mabel, she is beautiful!

Kings for her smiles might sigh;
She has a ploughman for her lord,

That ploughman-faith am I !

This should be excellent for a Penny Reading, or would make a capital bass song.

The Oxford Bible for Teachers. Facsimile series. London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press Warehouse.

Bibles don't disagree, of course, but who shall decide when they agree too much? Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode and Mr. Frowde appear to have fallen into a disagreement, arising out of a too complete agreement between the Teachers' Bibles published by their respective houses. When a demand arose for an edition containing a very library of biblical reference by way of appendix, it appears that Mr. Frowde first advertised an announcement in detail of his valuable series, upon which editors were engaged; whilst the other firm, making use amongst other matter of some taken from an old Oxford Bible, were able to get their edition through the press a little more quickly. Mr. Frowde has now added such new features as an account of aquatic animals, geology, metals, and precious stones of the Bible, a list of words obsolete or ambiguous, of words used symbolically, &c. These Bibles contain a concordance, an index, a dictionary, maps, and notes and tabulated lists too numerous to mention. The word "fac-simile" in the title of the series signifies that the Bibles of the different sizes are printed so as to correspond page for page throughout. One familiar with the place of a text in the splendid quarto edition would find it in the identical relative spot on the tiny page of pearl type. Altogether the study of the Bible - in a certain way -seems being made almost too easy. A saying ran, "Cross of wood, bishop of gold; cross of gold, bishop of wood." Let us not add "Bible of ease, reader of sloth; Bible of toil, reader of understanding."

IN days when the world's business is brisk, and daily life is active, most men, or at least most Englishmen, theorise little. They are glad to take things as they are, and make the most of them.

But when bad times come, and there is little to do, and less to be got for what is done, a different phase sets it. Change of circumstances, and the depression caused by disappointments, make the hardest and most practical mind turn in upon itself and become more imaginative. The business nature in its normal mood may scorn and look down upon the poetic nature; but, after all, is the poet guilty of any wilder changes of fancy, any more inexplicable shifts of emotion, than are shown in the frequently recurring state of things called panic? The panic of a mob in a theatre must contain a whole Iliad of feelings if they could but be analysed. The dumb panic of sedate men of business is almost as terribly romantic, and, like any wave of the unforeseen, may be full of disastrous consequences.

When such distrust is at its height, and the usually thoughtless crowd is ready to jump at any

theory, then come in the doctrinaires, the dealers in panaceas and infallible specifics, the crotchetmongers of every kind. When the last great trade depression was upon this country, imaginative uneasiness worked itself up at last into white heat, and decided that the sources of the apparently endless advance of ruin must be probed and exposed once for all by a Royal Commission. This done, the remedy, it was supposed, would immediately appear. But it was forgotten that even a Royal Commission is composed of nothing more than men of like faculties with ourselves, while those who were suffering most were therefore more likely to be deeply investigating into the reasons why. And it was not known that, at the very moment of the wildest alarm, trade, as it afterwards proved, had insensibly turned, and the good things of commerce were advancing towards England upon the wave of a wonderful prosperity.

During panic, reproaches are piled upon the practical men of business for neglecting theory; the theories that are being offered the while for their acceptance being such as that of the connection

of the recurring spots in the sun with the periodicities of famines and trade depressions. Business men, that is to say, are to regard our great luminary as a sort of meter by which to regulate their enterprise; and the merchant, before committing himself to any considerable undertaking, must look at the largest clock in the world to see whether it is the right time to begin. The agriculturist, in his regard of the seasons, and his homely prognostications of what is likely to befal him in the way of harvest, has been looking at the minutehand only. He must now train his senses to a larger and keener view, and take in the meaning of the almost invisible motion of the hour-hand-a hand that moves round only in a cycle of years. The theory is pretty and plausible, but how shall his mode of adoption of it be explained-in time enough and with certainty enough to do him any service to the desponding tinker, or the tailor who cannot obtain payment of his little account? Or how shall the theorist approach the butcher and the baker, who are reaping more profit than ever; or the candlestick maker, who is looking with dismay at the uncanny electric light?

Our present commercial system. is so complex, that theorists for the most part are able to approach it from many different sides, and to see only a little piece at a time. One sees one set of circumstances and cries over-production; another studies another set and declares an opposite view-too little work done. One says the rate of wages paid to the operative has done the mischief; another attributes it to the lavish expenditure of the master. One cries we are beaten by cheap labour; another, we are lagging behind while others have been advancing in skill. One says that the telegraph has rendered unnecessary

the former large holdings of sur plus stocks, and that these must be worked off before the average demand can again come into play. Another view is that stagnation is due to antiquated machinery of business being attempted to be used when the conditions to which it was once suitable are entirely changed. Another says free trade is all a mistake, and we must revert to antiquated theories of protection. Who can decide for himself amidst such a chaos of views? All that the trader can do is to work on at the best he can, or deal in what he can, and wait patiently as his fathers had to wait before him. These forefathers no doubt bore their yoke more meekly, being without that intense modern appre hensiveness which makes a time of trouble come before it comes, and last after it is gone.

In one respect our modern greater openness to impressions can aid us in a way in which our forefathers had not an equal advantage of profiting. The history of past ages has been gradually unfolding for us during recent decades; not only have the chronological sequences of departed dynasties, which from a business point of view profit little, been explored, but the real thoughts of ancient peoples, and the chronicles of their actual, even of their domestic life, have been disclosed.

History, not theory, is the true antidote to panic; theory is really more appropriate to times when enterprise is burning for some new world to conquer, than to a day when a general pecuniary visitation is likely to produce only too much introspection, and so to make the foot falter in the most ordinary undertaking. History is the best disposer to steadiness and sobriety of mind that we have it in our power to turn to. The panic feeling, in its exaggerated form, is that

the world is coming to an end at once; history shows how very slowly and interruptedly it has moved, with breaks and pauses severer far than any present retrogression, which the actual proximity of a trouble and our excited imagination may cause to loom too largely and darkly upon us.

From the hustling of a certainly overstrained competition, men's minds are apt to turn to the contemplation of some pretty ideal of ancient socialism or communism, as a golden age from which they have somehow wandered. To their fancy, pictures of life of this tranquil order can readily be found in the records of old-fashioned times. Nothing can be a greater delusion. Unfortunately it is not

Truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is re

membering happier things; else we might fairly argue, conversely, that to endeavour to live in memory the life of our Aryan ancestors, the noblest race of the ancient world, would bring us quite a thrill of gladness, for there is indeed little in it that, if we were fairly put to it, we should not sorely shrink from taking in exchange for even the most blighted career of our own.

The Aryan household, or clan, was no pretty idyllic association, where love and affection reigned, and all were independent and equal and harmonious. It was, as recent investigators, from Sir Henry Sumner Maine to Dr. Hearn* of Melbourne, have made plain, a sort of religious joint-stock company, in which the managing director held supreme and arbitrary power. There is no idea of profanity in our illustration; the highest religious functionary in an

Aryan community now existing on a remote tableland in Southern Hindustan is the milkman; and when a sly European once crept at night into the temple, all the insignia that he could find belonging to the ascetic priest were the simple apparatus of the dairy.

In archaic society there existed neither politics nor economics; there was no law, no state, and-worst of all, at least from our point of view-there was no individual. The eldest male of the line presided over each clan of associated households, and the customs of which he was the instrument, whether they clashed or not with what we know as individual will, were the immovable law and bondage of every unit in the corporation. The clan was the individual, and, if we have competitive strife and even hatred. at times one with another, the clan had not only absence of sympathy for everything outside its own narrow circle, but its absolute indifference towards members of other households was not infrequently developed into active hostility and the feud of blood.

The connecting link that bound the family together was not sweet affection subsisting between its members, but their common relation (evidenced by the custom of setting apart sacred portions from the common meal, and by the worship of the hearth) was found in their unanimous attitude towards the lares or spirits of their departed ancestors, who were still regarded as constituting the heads of the family and guides of the house

hold.

Marriage was compulsory, and subject to the direction of the household tyrant for the time being. Over the labour of his

Melbourne: G.

subjects, whether boys or grownup men, his power was absolute. A man could not make a will-he had nothing of his own to dispose of. A woman was in perpetual tutelage-she might be under her father, she might be under her husband, she might be under a distant male relative, provided the power of the clan vested in him. The House Father might expose his children after birth, he might sell his son, he might establish his wife's guilt in his own tribunal, and with perfect legality kill her -with perfect legality, that is to say, according to clan law, which was the only law.

A Semitic sect, the Essenes, in certain respects resemble more the popular notion of communal life; but their bond of union was religious. And without some strict attachment to an ideal, the professed object of which is

the

destruction of individual selfishness, no community can hang together for a generation. With human nature as it is, and in a process of constant replenishment with human stuff endowed with the same lack of alertness to any call but that of selfishness, it cannot be expected that such a society should become multitudinous; and indeed history shows that religious communities have been both rare and limited, and in their constitution very eclectic and select. A few intense spirits may lead for a time, by their personal influence charming a dull generality to rise above and beyond itself; but before any large bulk of mankind. is seized upon, the second generation of followers is slipping back into easier life and becoming little more than nominal, or is lost in quibbles and quarrels upon the meanings of its own misunderstood doctrines. So far as a few thousand years of history give their lesson, the mass may be moved up a

little, now in one direction, now in another, but is never wholly rapt by any super-terrestrial idea. As this is the earth, why should any other event be expected? A vast horde arrives here, is put through certain exercises, and retires. In one era some things are done better than others. A great tradition is passed on from one period to another, a perhaps far greater acquirement is lost. In the whole range of the past nothing can be found absolutely satisfactory, nothing more suitable to us than our own times. What we call civilisation has its advantages; if we indulge in the communistie dream, to approach which we have first to know how to find rest in a self-denying religion, not in an alluring sloth, we find ourselves at the outset face to face with certain unpleasantnesses, trivial indeed, but enough to turn back any but the most earnest. With the Essenes, for instance, even their clothes were in common. They had a store of rough cloaks in the winter, and in the summer cheap garments without sleeves; and when anyone wanted one, he went to the box and took it, presumably putting it back at the end of the season for which it was suited.

The whole movement of modern societies, as Sir H. S. Maine puts it, being one from status to contract that is from being born to a position to making it for oneself

it is open ground for theory to determine whither we are going, if we follow the direction of the last thousand or two of years. The small remains of feudal customs-entail, the respect paid to the elder son, the reverence of servant for master, the power of position by birth-seem to be slowly vanishing; who can tell what free combinations are to come, when society shall consist