Contemporary Literature:-Miss Skene's Life of Archbishop Lycurgus, 395-Diocese of Carlisle in Queen Anne's Time, 397-Life and Letters of Luigi Ornato, 398-Gerrit Smith, 399-Text-books of English History, 401-Annotated English Poems, 402— Church's Stories from Homer, 403-A Struggle for Rome, 403-Marmorne, 405- Butler's Life and Habit, 406-Sweet's Phonetics, 406-Proctor's Other Worlds than Ours, 408-Todhunter's Natural Philosophy, 409-Balfour Stewart's Elementary Physics, 411-Balfour Stewart's Physics, 412-Clerk Maxwell's Matter and Motion, 413-Wormell's Thermodynamics, 414-Lockyer's Astronomy, 414-Ball's Astro- nomy, 414-Chisholm on Measure and Weight, 415-Perry on Steam, 415– JUNE, 1878. Facts of Indian Progress. By Professor Monier Williams. II. A Fresh Attempt to Reconcile Determinism with Moral Freedom. By Paul Janet, of 445 Cardinal Manning's True Story of the Vatican Council. By Professor Friedrich. II. Future Punishment: The Present State of the Question, considered in a Series of Papers 520 543 Eternal Hope: A Reply to Many Critics. By the Rev. Canon Farrar, D.D. 569 The Position and Influence of Women in Ancient Greece. By James Donaldson, LL.D. The Indian Expeditionary Force. By Lieut.-General J. L. Vaughan, C.B. The Poor-Law Experiment at Elberfeld. By the Rev. W. Walter Edwards Monian Metempsychosis: A Sequel to the Discussion on Future Punishment. Johnson without Boswell. By William Cyples Paris during the Exhibition. By Lady Verney Mr. G. H. Lewes's Account of Experience. By Professor T. H. Green POSITIVISM ON AN ISLAND: THE NEW PAUL AND VIRGINIA. Those who can read the signs of the times, read in them that the Kingdom of Man is at hand."-PROFESSOR CLIFFORD. THE I. HE magnificent ocean-steamer, the Australasian, was bound for England, on her homeward voyage from Melbourne. She carried Her Majesty's mails and ninety-eight first-class passengers. The skies were cloudless; the sea was smooth as glass. Never did vessel start under happier auspices. No sound of sickness was to be heard anywhere; and when dinner-time came there was not a single appetite wanting. But the passengers soon discovered they were lucky in more than weather. Dinner was hardly half over before two of those present had begun to attract general attention; and every one was wondering, in whispers, who they could possibly be. One of the objects of this delightful curiosity was a large-boned, middle-aged man, with gleaming spectacles, and lank, untidy hair; whose coat fitted him so ill, and who held his head so high, that it was plain at a glance he was some great celebrity. The other was a beautiful lady of about thirty years of age. No one present had seen her like before. She had the fairest hair and the darkest eyebrows, the largest eyes and the smallest waist conceivable ;-in fact, art and nature had been struggling as to which should do the most for her; whilst her bearing was so haughty and distinguished, her glance so tender, and her dress so expensive and so fascinating, that she seemed at the same time to defy and to court attention. Evening fell on the ship with a soft warm witchery. The air grew purple, and the waves began to glitter in the moonlight. The passengers gathered in knots upon the deck. The distinguished strangers were still the subject of conjecture. At last the secret was discovered by the wife of an old colonial judge; and the news spread like wildfire. In a few minutes all knew that there were on board VOL. XXXII. B the Australasian no less personages than Professor Paul Darnley and the superb Virginia St. John. II. Miss St. John had, for at least six years, been the most renowned woman in Europe. In Paris and St. Petersburg, no less than in London, her name was equally familiar both to princes and to potboys; the eyes of all the world were upon her. Yet, in spite of this exposed situation, scandal had proved powerless to wrong her, she defied detraction. Her enemies could but echo her friends' praise of her beauty; her friends could but confirm her enemies' description of her character. Though of birth that might be called almost humble, she had been connected with the heads of many distinguished families; and so general was the affection she inspired, and so winning the ways in which she contrived to retain it, that she found herself at the age of thirty mistress of nothing except a large fortune. She was now converted with surprising rapidity by a ritualistic priest, and she became in a few months a model of piety and devotion. She made lace trimmings for the curate's vestments; she bowed at church as often and profoundly as possible; she enjoyed nothing so much as going to confession; she learnt to despise the world. Indeed, such utter dross did her riches now seem to her, that, despite all the arguments of her ghostly counsellor, she remained convinced that they were too worthless to offer to the Church, and she saw nothing for it but to still keep them for herself. The mingled humility and discretion of this resolve so won the heart of a gifted colonial bishop, then on a visit to England, that, having first assured himself that Miss St. John was sincere in making it, he besought her to share with him his humble mitre, and make him the happiest prelate in the whole Catholic Church. Miss St. John consented. The nuptials were celebrated with the most elaborate ritual, and after a short honeymoon the bishop departed for his South Pacific diocese of the Chasuble Islands, to prepare a home for his bride, who was to follow him by the next steamer. Professor Paul Darnley, in his own walk of life, was even more renowned than Virginia had been in hers. He had written three volumes on the origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in infusions of hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened modern thought. His mind was like a sea, into which the other great minds of the age discharged themselves, and in which all the slight discrepancies of the philosophy of the present century mingled together and formed one harmonious whole. He criticized everything; he took nothing on trust, except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august terrestrial destinies. And in his double capacity of a seer and a savant, he had destroyed all that the world had believed in the past, and revealed to it all that it is going to feel in the future. Nor was he less successful in his own private life. He married, at the age of forty, an excellent evangelical lady, ten years his senior, who wore a green gown, grey cork-screw curls, and who had a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. Orthodox though she was, Mrs. Darnley was yet proud beyond measure of her husband's world-wide fame, for she did but imperfectly understand the grounds of it. Indeed, the only thing that marred her happiness was the single tenet of his that she had really mastered. This, unluckily, was that he disbelieved in hell. And so, as Mrs. Darnley conceived that that place was designed mainly to hold those who doubted its existence, she daily talked her utmost, and left no text unturned to convince her darling of his very dangerous error. These assiduous arguments soon began to tell. The Professor grew moody and brooding, and he at last suggested to his medical man that a voyage round the world, unaccompanied by his wife, was the prescription most needed by his failing patience. Mrs. Darnley at length consented with a fairly good grace. She made her husband pledge himself that he would not be absent for above a twelvemonth, or else, she said, she should immediately come after him. She bade him the tenderest of adieus, and promised to pray till his return for his recovery of a faith in hell. The Professor, who had but exceeded his time by six months, was now on board the Australasian, homeward bound to his wife. Virginia was outward bound to her husband. III. The sensation created by the presence of these two celebrities was profound beyond description; and the passengers were never weary of watching the gleaming spectacles and the square-toed boots of the one, and the liquid eyes and the ravishing toilettes of the other. There were three curates, who, having been very quick in making Virginia's acquaintance, soon sang at nightfall with her a beautiful vesper hymn. And so lovely did the strains sound, and so devotional did Virginia look, that most of the passengers the night after joined in a repetition of this touching evening office. The Professor, as was natural, held quite aloof; and pondered over a new species of bug, which he had found very plentiful in his berth. But it soon occurred to him that he often heard the name of God being uttered otherwise than in swearing. He listened more attentively to the sounds which he had at first set down as negromelodies and he soon became convinced that they were something whose very existence he despised himself for remembering-namely, Christian hymns. He then thought of the three curates, whose existence he despised himself for remembering also. And the conviction rapidly dawned on him, that though the passengers seemed fully alive to his fame as a man of science, they could yet know very little of all that science had done for them; and of the death-blow it had given to the foul superstitions of the past. He therefore resolved that next day he would preach them a lay-sermon. At the appointed time the passengers gathered eagerly round him -all but Virginia, who retired to her cabin when she saw that the preacher wore no surplice; as she thought it would be a mortal sin to listen to a sermon without one. The Professor began amidst a profound silence. He first proclaimed to his hearers the great primary axiom in which all modern thought roots itself. He told them that there was but one order of things, it was so much neater than two; and if we would be certain of anything, we must never doubt it. Thus, since countless things exist that the senses can take account of, it is evident that nothing exists that the senses cannot take account of. The senses can take no account of God; therefore God does not exist. Men of science can only see theology in a ridiculous light; therefore theology has no side that is not ridiculous. He then told them a few of the new names that enlightened thinkers had applied to the Christian Deity-how Professor Tyndall had called him an "atom-manufacturer," and Professor Huxley, a "pedantic drill-sergeant." The passengers at once saw how demonstrably at variance with fact was all religion, and they laughed with a sense of humour that was quite new to them. The Professor's tones then became more solemn; and, having extinguished error, he proceeded to unveil the brilliant light of truth. He showed them how, viewed by modern science, all existence is a chain, with a gas at one end, and no one knows what at the other; and how Humanity is a link somewhere; but, holy and awful thought!-we can none of us tell where. "However," he proceeded, "of one thing we can be quite certain: all that is, is matter; the laws of matter are eternal, and we cannot act or think without conforming to them: and if," he said, "we would be solemn, and high, and happy, and heroic, and saintly, we have but to strive and struggle to do what we cannot for an instant avoid doing. Yes," he exclaimed, "as the sublime Tyndall tells us, let us struggle to attain to a deeper knowledge of matter, and a more faithful conformity to its laws!" The Professor would have proceeded; but the weather had been rapidly growing rough, and he here became violently sea-sick. "Let us," he exclaimed hurriedly, "conform to the laws of matter and go below." Nor was the advice premature. A storm arose, exceptional in its suddenness and its fury. It raged for two days without ceasing. The Australasian sprang a leak; her steering gear was disabled; and it |