finest grain, is progressive, and in consequence is, at times and in places, out of keeping with itself. Thorough consistency is given only to stagnant or at least stationary intellects, and is achieved only by those which have completed and closed the cycle of their march. Other working and striving minds-and no mind is so incessantly groaning in travail as Mr. Gladstone's -have the inconsistent views of the past and the present at once within them--the opinions of their youth and those of their maturity-the doctrines they have inherited alongside of those they have formed for themselves-the beliefs they have not yet examined and discarded as well as those which, after infinite agonies of thought perhaps, they have substituted for the ancestral ones.

Now, it seems to us that in some respects the mind of Mr. Gladstone is in this transition state-a state too philosophic, and too commendable from a philosophic point of view, to be fitted for signal success in the arena of party conflict in a country where party conceptions are so narrow and intolerant as in England. The Tories cannot understand that a statesman trained in their school, and still clinging to so many of their most cherished creeds, so deeply imbued with the chivalry and poetry which half unconsciously underlies, inspires, and sometimes ennobles their political sentiments, should yet have gone so far in the direction of democracy, and have given the sanction of his words to some of the most questionable doctrines of the extreme popular party. They cannot quite forgive either the thorough-going comprehensiveness or the signal success of his free-trade policy, or his utter and merciless negation of traditional principles as well as practice in this matter. They feel that he belonged to them by nature and of right; that if he had remained with them, his genius and his oratory would have cast a halo of beauty as well as an entrenchment of logic round their favourite prejudices and convictions; while his administrative powers and his practical sagacity would have kept them abreast of the new discoveries and achievements and irrefutable theories of the day. And they cannot pardon the progress which has carried over such unrivalled abilities and splendid rhetoric to the opposing camp, and turned what should have formed their lustre and their guide into their sharpest scourge and their most formidable danger. The idea of an Oxford scholar and an enthusiastic Churchman leading and embellishing the hard, cold, fierce, narrow, swelling, advancing ranks of the Radicals, is at once intensely bitter and perplexing to the country gentlemen, and lies at the root of much of that personal animosity and wish to inflict gratuitous defeat and wounds which has shone out conspicuously during the past two sessions, and which is one of

the most dangerous feelings a party leader can excite in the breast of his opponents.

The difficulty of Mr. Gladstone as leader of the Whigs arises in part from the same causes, and in part from others less creditable to the party. He is necessary to them, but he is not of them. He carries away too much of the spoil, as well as too much of the honour, of victory, and has too predominant a voice in the decision of the details and the purposes of the campaign. Moreover, they distrust him, and naturally cannot help doing so. His sympathy with the people is different in grain as well as in depth from theirs; it is more essential; it is less formal; it is both more passionate and more practical. He is at once more zealous than the purest Whig to confer real political power upon the masses, and more anxious than the most benevolent of the feudal Tories to ameliorate and soften their material condition. His creed has nothing of the woodenness of the old Whig formularies, and they feel that in the day of conflict his heart will be rather with their auxiliaries than with themselves. Hence they can never fairly abandon themselves to his guidance or follow his lead with enthusiasm or with faith.

As for the Radicals, he alternately excites their devotion and their fury. He is too large and too wide to be quite intelligible to them. They perceive, too, that they cannot coerce him; and Radicals will never steadily or cordially obey any leader whom they cannot bully. They believe, however, that they shall have Mr. Gladstone some day, but they are aware that they have not got him yet. The poetry as well as the philosophy of his nature has still too much hold upon him for their purposes. Moreover, he has far too much of the old Adam still lingering about him to command the full and frank allegiance of several among the elements of which their party is composed. The orthodox Dissenters, so powerful among the men of advanced opinion, cannot endure the proclivities of the High Churchman. The thoroughly religious Liberals-we mean those whose religious views are thoroughly liberal, and whose sense of justice is revolted by the bare shadow of intolerance-cannot forgive his opposition to Mr. Coleridge's bill for throwing open the universities to men of all creeds. His progressive mind has not yet reached this stage of progress. The philosophic as well as the iconoclastic Liberals are disgusted with his arrière and somewhat country-gentleman views on primogeniture and the descent of intestate property, as shown in his speech and vote on Mr. Locke King's bill last year. On the whole, the Radicals look upon him as a great card, but not a sure one.

In fine, then-and we may rejoice that it is so—Mr. Gladstone is more qualified to serve his country than any one of the

recognised corps d'armée into which politicians are divided. He must always be the real soul and inspirer of any party or parliamentary combination he may join, but a more skilful, because a more temperate and flexible, leader in the field might easily be found. Meanwhile, we are all proud of his genius and full of attachment and admiration for his character; a character the faults, quite as much as the grandeur, of which have contributed to its singular hold upon the popular mind.

Of the disintegration of the Conservative party at the hands of Mr. Disraeli we have already spoken, and need say no more. The time has scarcely come for an analysis of the character and career of the ministerial leader. The sage of old said, Let no man be pronounced happy till his death. The sage of to-day may say, Let not Mr. Disraeli be considered known till his career is closed. Meanwhile, it seems clear that in securing to his party its present temporary lease of power, he has effectually destroyed its cohesion and virtually sapped its strength. He has damaged its prestige and impaired its self-respect to a degree which it will take some years to make fully manifest. If it is ever to recover its position in the nation's confidence, it must be under some other chief. Some of its ablest and noblest men can never serve with him again. Lord Cranborne, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel are alienated for ever; and Sir John Pakington, Sir Stafford Northcote, and the Dukes are poor compensations. Lord Derby has declared that he will never take office again, and Lord Stanley does not belong to the Conservatives at all. What will be the future of parties in this country no man can foresee. Meanwhile for the first time for two generations the nation is without a leader. Hitherto we have always had some one whom the people as a whole looked to as their guide, one whom they especially trusted and admired, were willing to obey, and regarded as a refuge in the day of perplexity and trouble. For a time it was the Duke of Wellington who filled this great place in the nation's eye; then Lord Grey in a measure; then Sir Robert Peel; and after him Lord Palmerston. Now there is no one, and in the trying times before us the want will be severely felt. Can we, as Mr. Carlyle suggests, make a Queen Bee?

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

DECEMBER 1867.

ART. I.--1. The First Age of Christianity and the Church. By JOHN IGNATIUS DÖLLINGER, D.D. Translated by HENRY NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A. Second Edition. 8vo. London, 1867.

2. The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple of Christ : An Introduction to the History of Christianity. From the German of JOHN J. I. DÖLLINGER. By N. DARNELL, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1862.

3. The Formation of Christendom.

ALLIES. 8vo. London, 1865.

Part First. By T. W.

4. Address on the Place of Ancient Greece in the Providential Order of the World. Delivered before the University of Edinburgh, November 3, 1865. By the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 8vo. London, 1865.

WHEN the publication of Tillemont's Church History in its first projected form was stopped by the interposition of a hostile censor, the author evaded this opposition by casting the work into two divisions, of which the first, now known as the Histoire des Empereurs, was held exempt from the supervision of the censorship, being regarded as unconnected with theology. The History of the Emperors,' therefore, was freely permitted to appear. But the second, and much more important division, the Histoire Ecclésiastique, fell immediately under the censor's jurisdiction; he still interposed against its appearance without correction a stern and immoveable obstat; and probably there are very few out of the many writers and scholars who have drawn their stores from this vast repertory of original historical materials, who are aware that it is only to the indirect expedient adopted by the Chancellor Bucherat, in appointing a new censor, that the world is indebted for the publication of the immortal work of Tillemont.

VOL. XLVII.-NO. XCIV.

R

This diversity of treatment pursued in regard to what are in reality but portions of the same work, was of course founded upon a principle, which at that time, and afterwards, found general acceptance, namely, that there is in human affairs a sharp and distinctly defined line of demarcation between the sacred and the profane, on either side of which it is possible to collect and marshal the facts and incidents of the two several spheres, and to deal with each as involving a separate interest, guided by a distinct class of motives, and directed towards an independent object and aim.

In point of practical policy, this principle is easily intelligible in that age of conflict of the Church and State jurisdictions, and as a part of the system of the Grand Monarque, the great assertor of the independence, if not the supremacy, of the latter. It followed in fact, almost naturally, from those relations of the two powers which it was the object of the practical portion of the so-called Gallican Liberties' to define and assert; which the higher Roman Catholic school of later times regards as scarcely disguised Erastianism, and which even the most colourless mind can hardly consider other than an incongruous combination of two mutually repellent elements.

On the other hand, intellectually considered, it is difficult to conceive how such a principle could ever have been accepted in the age that received with applause Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History, which is by its very essence the exponent of the opposite principle. The leading idea of that memorable discourse is not merely the oneness of all history, divine and human, but even the providential subordination of the latter throughout all time; and its object is to exhibit, as if in one vast panoramic picture, the scheme of the interwoven destinies of the world; to point out the marvellous unity in variety' with which, through every age, circumstances the most opposite, motives the most conflicting, characters the most irreconcilable, have worked together into one balanced and harmonious whole; sacred and profane, philosopher and barbarian, the rude Scythian and the cultivated Greek, each in itself, yet each for all the rest :

'All things with each other blending,

Each to all its being lending,

All on each in turn depending.'

It is strange to meet in the same age, and almost side by side, with this grand, though occasionally overstrained, conception, a theory like that of the French censorship, which draws so sharp a line between political and religious history, that it even regards as a thing quite apart from the general narrative of the