because it is not clearly revealed to us, and partly because it is impossible for us to estimate the hardening effect of obstinate persistence in evil, and the power of the human will to resist the law and reject the love of God." Yet the vehemence with which he asserts that Christianity does not absolutely exclude hope for the future of the very worst of men, must have led many a careless hearer to think that he was asserting that there are good grounds for entertaining such a hope. On the other hand I have no wish to defend against Canon Farrar the unwarranted additions which theologians of different schools have made to what Scripture has revealed on this subject. In his reaction, indeed, against the appalling descriptions of physical torment which some of these writers have given, Canon Farrar uses language which might easily have led his hearers to suppose that he thought any future physical suffering incredible. There have been some who have maintained that the dread of the agony of future remorse is no sufficient deterrent from sin; that this kind of mental pain is scarcely felt by those grosser natures which need most to be kept in check by fear of future retribution; and that even in those who are constituted so as to feel it most acutely, remorse for irremediable injury done to others by our misdoing can be banished from the mind by an effort of will in a way that the pain of a bad toothache cannot. Those who hold these views will be confirmed in them by observing the different ways in which mental and physical pain impress Canon Farrar's imagination. He can contemplate with moderate uneasiness the sinner suffering from the agonies of remorse and from the pain of loss; but that he should endure any pain of sense is a thought too dreadful for him to entertain. Again I heartily join in Canon Farrar's protest against the prominence which certain have given to hell-fire in their preaching. I do so without disbelieving in the doctrine, which I prefer to keep in the background, because I but follow the method of the sacred writers. They do not teach that the wicked shall cease to exist, nor do they teach that they who reject the means which God has here provided for their restoration to virtue and happiness may rely on some means provided hereafter which they cannot resist. Yet they appeal most sparingly to the motives of hope and fear; and their statements as to the sanctions of God's law in rewards and punishments hereafter are addressed exclusively to the reason of their disciples, never to their imagination. As we do not commonly find that to paralyse a man's mind with terror at a danger is the best way of enabling him to avoid it, we have no reason to think that drawing fearful pictures of hell is the best way of keeping men from falling into it. We have no New Testament warrant for throwing any one's mind off its balance in such a way as to unfit him for discharging those ordinary duties of life by which he has been called to glorify God, and for yielding that obedience of love which is so much more noble than any that can be extorted by terror. GEORGE SALMON.

S

ULLIVAN'S “NEW IRELAND."*-When we say that this book is thoroughly Irish, everybody will expect something clever, lively, and amusing, and he must indeed be a dull reader who finds that expectation disappointed. But "New Ireland" is something more than a refreshment for the jaded novelreader. We confidently recommend the book to every student of politics. But, in order to raise no false hopes, let us say at once that it is valuable for the materials it contains, not for the manner in which those materials are put together, or for the inferences which are based upon them. It is a series of sketches, not a history or a political treatise. And this is due, to a great extent, to the rapidity of the composition. No book ever bore more unmistakable marks of haste. The self-evident blunders with regard to dates are possibly due to the printer; but the looseness of style, arrangement, and reasoning are, of course, Mr. Sullivan's; and, in a writer of his ability and experience, they can only be accounted for by the importunity of a publisher joined to the growing pressure of public business. Mr. Sullivan's object is to bring before us the great changes in the social condition and political feelings of the Irish people since the days of O'Connell. The means he employs are a number of scenes, strung together in semi-chronological order, and representing now Irish life and now prominent events in recent Irish history. These scenes are of very various interest. Some are of great, and some of very little, importance; some, it must be confessed, of no importance whatever. It is hard to see for whose benefit Mr. Sullivan dragged in by the ears the story of the "Arbuthnot Abduction," unless he feared-a not unreasonable fear-that the sensational novel was dying of a want of incident.

But though "New Ireland" is imperfect as a history, and sketchy even as a picture of manners, the author shows not only keen insight, but some yet more rare and valuable qualities. Mr. Sullivan's tone in dealing with the delicate subject of the differences between England and Ireland is both kindly and wise. He is far juster to England than the majority of his countrymen. He gives us full credit for our good intentions-for our late but hearty repentance for the misgovernment of centuries; and only blames us-alas! how truly-for the want of sympathy, the ungraciousness which has marred even our good deeds.

"The English are just, but not amiable." In spite of all our fairness, nay, generosity, to other nations, we are intensely disliked. And who can wonder at it who observes the slightly contemptuous manner with which we temper even our kindness, because we cannot enter into the feelings of the stranger, upon whom that kindness is from a sense of duty conferred? With a highly sensitive people like the Irish that air of superiority (which finds its worst expression in the detestable sermonizing of the newspapers) has been sufficient to counteract the effect of many practical benefits. But perhaps we should rather rejoice than lament over a declining evil.

Most joyfully do we read every word that Mr. Sullivan says about the increasing respect and sympathy of Englishmen for the feelings of their fellow-citizens across the Channel. He sees in it a good omen for the cause of Home Rule. We see in it an influence which will make Home Rule unnecessary. But the growth of such sympathy is of more importance than the fulfilment of either hope.

* New Ireland. By A. M. Sullivan, M.P. London: Sampson Low & Co. 1977.

MOLTKE'S LETTERS FROM RUSSIA.*-These letters contain the account of about four weeks spent by their author at St. Petersburg and Moscow, whither he attended the present Crown Prince of Prussia to the coronation of the Emperor Alexander in 1856. The letters are addressed (as we see from the preface, which contains a very slender biographical notice) to the author's wife, and they are a simple narrative of one lunar month of the hardest sight-seeing ever done by mortal man. What strikes us at once is their minuteness of observation and despatchlike accuracy of description. From the diameter of the hollow balls in the fortifications of Kronstadt to the various colours of the stones in the side-chapel of the Isaak's Church, from the trimmings on an archduchess's dress to the number and shape of the jewels in the Imperial crown, no detail is unworthy to be noticed and recorded. Architecture receives peculiar attention, and it would be easy to construct models of the most striking churches in the Russian capitals from the bare words of Count Moltke. Even more singular than the writer's keenness of observation is his power of remembering what he has observed long before. A considerable traveller, he frequently contrasts what he is describing, not in general effect only, but even in detail, with similar scenes in other lands.

The letters give us a most pleasing impression of the writer's character. His interests are wide and genuine. His power of observation is equalled by his power of enjoyment. Though no defect can escape him, he is full of generous admiration and hearty goodwill for Russia and her people. No German jealousy prevents his desiring for her a truly national Russian development. No professional cynicism damps his warm but discriminating admiration of the Russian soldier. Here and there the stern prose of the narrative is relieved by touches of tenderness and even of pathos, as in the account of the dead Emperor Nicholas, for whose soldier-like greatness Count Moltke feels all a soldier's veneration. The majority of Englishmen will hardly sympathize with him here. But no one, who is not completely mastered by the passions of the hour, can feel anything but pleasure in his warm praises of the Emperor Alexander, one of the best and most conscientious rulers who ever sat upon a throne. The description of the Emperor is one of the few portraits which the book contains, and displays all Count Moltke's characteristic keenness of observation. We notice, especially, in this description the gravity which has since deepened into gloom, and which the writer, rightly no doubt, attributes to the sense of overwhelming responsibility.

"In the hands of no mortal is such unlimited power laid as in that of this man, who is the absolute ruler of the tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth, whose word is obeyed from the Wall of China to the Vistula, to whose call half a million soldiers are obedient, and who even now (1856) has given peace to Europe. May he be victorious in the peaceful conquests he is about to attempt in the interior of his vast kingdom."

No one will expect to find in letters like this a treatise on Russian history, society, or politics. Every one will be startled by the grasp and terseness of the reflections on these subjects, which here and there interrupt for a moment the even course of the narrative. They are thoughts which the writer drops by the way, but which afford us such instruction as can rarely be obtained from the mature and lengthy discussions of our now familiar friend, the scientific traveller," who has lived for many years in the country, and made its history and present condition, social and poli- . tical, his special study." We see here, even more than in the descriptive passages, that intuitive selection of really essential points which is the prerogative of genius. The real grounds of the unity of Russia and the unlimited power of the Czar, the peaceful but unenterprising character of the people, the corruption of the official class, the want of a genuine aristocracy, the gulf between the foreign culture of the upper and the submissive ignorance of the lower orders, the absence of a national civilization, and the absurdity of attempting to supply its place by the political nostrums of the West,-all these things are put before us in the most vivid and simple way and in half-a-dozen pages.

The translation is excellent, and the publishers have done everything to make the book attractive to that numerous class of readers who are fastidious about externals.

VAN LAUN'S HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE.†-Mr. Henri Van Laun is a man who has had the best possible chance of making a literary coup. He has chosen

* Field Marshal Count Moltke's Letters from Russia. Translated by Robina Napier. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1878. + History of French Literature. By Henri Van Laun. 3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.

an excellent subject, and has found a publisher who has given him ample room and presented his work to the world in a creditable and handsome form. He has been invited, in fact, to produce what might have been a great and, for generations, a decisive work on the most attractive literature which the world has to show.

An undertaking such as this, if it is to be successfully carried out, requires very unusual qualifications in the man who undertakes it. He who ventures upon it should be one who has studied French literature for years; one who has read the poets of the South as well as of the North; who is familiar with the vast repertory of the Langue d'Oc as well as with that of the Langue d'Oil; who can write from personal knowledge of trouvères, troubadours, romancists, satirists, dramatists of miracles and mysteries, writers of fabliaux and poets of the chant royal, the ballade, rondeau, villanelle, and virelai: who has had the patience to wade through the courtly verse of Charles of Orleans and René of Anjou: who understands the passage from mediaval to modern times, and can discourse on those who, like Marot, Ronsard, Malherbe, Regnier, and Théophile, occupy that period of transition: who can write of the seventeenth century like Cousin, of the eighteenth like Lacroix, and of the nineteenth like Gautier above all who will bring to his task a clear and readable style, a distinct individuality in criticism, and an independent mind.

:

We wish we could say that we had been able to find these qualifications in Mr. Van Laun. One lays down the book, taken up with so many hopes, with a feeling of real regret. The writer is conscientious and laborious: he has accumulated a vast quantity of facts: he gives a vast number of opinions: he quotes a vast number of illustrative passages, but the facts contain mistakes which belong to second-hand work: the opinions are those of others: the illustrative passages are the commonplaces of previous critics. Everywhere we find proofs that Mr. Van Laun has read about French literature: he comes to his task with a whole library of critics before him. Here is a reminiscence of the "Causeries du Lundi:" here a passage from Nisard: here an inspiration from Geruzez, but nowhere Van Laun: nothing to show that the writer has formed for himself any clear conception of the authors he is treating of, or any distinct idea of their place in literature beyond what the critics have told him. We cannot go into details, but we may note, by way of illustration, his extraordinary blackening of Jean de Meung, by far the most original and vigorous writer of satire of mediaval France; and we may fairly ask whether a French writer, who had ever read Marot and could appreciate one who is, in a sense, the best of French poets, could dismiss him in three or four pages with the laboured generalities of Mr. Van Laun. Later on, again, the author excuses himself from describing in detail the work and personnel of the famous Pleiad. But if we cannot find a full account of that most remarkable movement in a history of French literature, where are we to find it? Among the disappointing things in the book are the translations. As most of the pieces given had been translated with more or less success by previous writers, there is the less reason for attempting a new version in the baldest possible English, line for line, verbally, and, in a way, faithfully. Remembering that Mr. Van Laun's English is never certain, and too often of the kind which makes havoc of such elementary usages as that of the English word some (des pommes some apples, see French grammar), the grotesque nature of certain remarks following the transla tions may be imagined: "This is fine," "This is magnificent,' ," "This is beautiful." Lastly, it is not necessary in a history of French literature to attempt at the same time a history of the French nation.

And so, we have still to wait for a genuine English history of French literature: those who want a guide to their study of the subject will prefer to consult the original critics rather than listen to their echoes in Mr. Van Laun's pages; and as regards the author himself, what ought to have been a grand coup is a coup manqué.

THE WORKS OF RABELAIS.*-Almost every Frenchman of letters feels it his duty at some period of his career, to contribute something of his own to the ever-growing library which bears evidence to the greatness of Rabelais. He has, indeed, been considered from every possible and from every contradictory point of view: as a religious reformer, as an infidel, as a Protestant, as a theorist in education and morals, as a scoffer at all things human and divine, as an ardent humanist, as a scholar, as a botanist, as an architect, as a physician. Books have been written

* Rabelais et ses (Euvres. Par Jean Fleury. Paris: Didier et Cie.

because it is not clearly revealed to us, and partly because it is impossible for us to estimate the hardening effect of obstinate persistence in evil, and the power of the human will to resist the law and reject the love of God." Yet the vehemence with which he asserts that Christianity does not absolutely exclude hope for the future of the very worst of men, must have led many a careless hearer to think that he was asserting that there are good grounds for entertaining such a hope. On the other hand I have no wish to defend against Canon Farrar the unwarranted additions which theologians of different schools have made to what Scripture has revealed on this subject. In his reaction, indeed, against the appalling descriptions of physical torment which some of these writers have given, Canon Farrar uses language which might easily have led his hearers to suppose that he thought any future physical suffering incredible. There have been some who have maintained that the dread of the agony of future remorse is no sufficient deterrent from sin; that this kind of mental pain is scarcely felt by those grosser natures which need most to be kept in check by fear of future retribution; and that even in those who are constituted so as to feel it most acutely, remorse for irremediable injury done to others by our misdoing can be banished from the mind by an effort of will in a way that the pain of a bad toothache cannot. Those who hold these views will be confirmed in them by observing the different ways in which mental and physical pain impress Canon Farrar's imagination. He can contemplate with moderate uneasiness the sinner suffering from the agonies of remorse and from the pain of loss; but that he should endure any pain of sense is a thought too dreadful for him to entertain. Again I heartily join in Canon Farrar's protest against the prominence which certain have given to hell-fire in their preaching. I do so without disbelieving in the doctrine, which I prefer to keep in the background, because I but follow the method of the sacred writers. They do not teach that the wicked shall cease to exist, nor do they teach that they who reject the means which God has here provided for their restoration to virtue and happiness may rely on some means provided hereafter which they cannot resist. Yet they appeal most sparingly to the motives of hope and fear; and their statements as to the sanctions of God's law in rewards and punishments hereafter are addressed exclusively to the reason of their disciples, never to their imagination. As we do not commonly find that to paralyse a man's mind with terror at a danger is the best way of enabling him to avoid it, we have no reason to think that drawing fearful pictures of hell is the best way of keeping men from falling into it. We have no New Testament warrant for throwing any one's mind off its balance in such a way as to unfit him for discharging those ordinary duties of life by which he has been called to glorify God, and for yielding that obedience of love which is so much more noble than any that can be extorted by terror. GEORGE SALMON.