accession of Abubeker and of Othman, the future caliphs. Mohammed at length is accepted as the prophet of his family, of the noble and priestly house of Hashem. Abu Talib, his uncle, remains almost alone an unbeliever. And now Mohammed aspires to be the prophet of his tribe." But in effect the "false" prophet is an exception to the rule of no prophet accepted in his own house and country. An American commentator on Shakspeare incidentally expounds that rule, in remarking on the degree to which our sense of truth is impeded or impaired by the pressure on our minds of what is actual and visible and present. A faithful painter may, he observes, portray a human face with all its characteristic expression, and in all its true individuality; and yet the nearest relatives are not only the hardest to satisfy, but, by the very nature of their familiarity with the subject, will often be the worst judges of the likeness. We are all of us, he adds, "very apt to fail in appreciating the best and noblest parts in the characters of those whom we know familiarly, for the thousand familiarities. of common life interpose; and it is sad to think that often it is not until death has hallowed and idealized the character, that we can do it justice." Envy and jealousy, remarks David Hume in treating of the recognition of real genius, have too much place in a narrow circle, and even familiar acquaintance with the person of one thus gifted may diminish the applause due to his performance—that is, among those of his own age and country. Pindar and Æschylus, we are told, left their country because those who were born their equals could not endure to see them rise their superiors. "What a war against the gods is this!" a heathen admirer is made to exclaim: "it seems as if it were decreed by a public edict that no one shall receive from them any gift beyond a certain value; and that if they do receive it they shall be permitted to return the gods no thanks for it in their native city." There are towns so barbarous, remarks Boccaccio, in Landor's "Pentameron," that they must be informed by strangers of their own great man when they happen to have produced one; and would then detract from his merits, that they might not exhibit their

awkwardness in doing him honour, or their shame in withholding it.

Charles IX., on a progress through Provence, sent for Nostradamus, and finding in what slight respect he was held by his countrymen, made a point of publicly declaring, with right royal emphasis, that he should take as a slight to himself the slighting of that philosopher.

In the Journal to Stella, Swift hails with cordiality—for the Dean could be cordial on occasion-the appreciation in polite English circles, by ministers and scholars, of Parnell the poet: "Lord Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily; and it is pleasant to see that one who hardly passed for anything in Ireland makes his way here with a little friendly forwarding." In no unlike spirit and style writes Horace Walpole to Marshal Conway, then travelling abroad: "The honours you have received, though I have so little taste for such things myself, gave me great satisfaction; and I do not know whether there is not more pleasure in not being a prophet in one's own country, when one is almost received like Mohammed in every other. To be an idol at home is no assured touchstone of merit. Stocks and stones have been adored in fifty regions, but do not bear transplanting. The Apollo Belvedere and the Hercules Farnese may lose their temples, but never lose their estimation, by travelling." In another letter we have Walpole exclaiming, "But adieu, retrospect! it is as idle as prophecy, the characteristic of which is never to be believed where alone it could be useful, i.e., in its own country." And once more, in a later epistle, commenting on the darksome aspect of the times : That the scene grows very serious there is no doubt; nor do I assume vanity from having possessed the spirit of prophecy-a most useless talent, as predictions never serve as warnings. We know prophets are not honoured in their own country where then should they be honoured? where they are not known? where probably they never are heard of?" But such notes of interrogation might be multiplied ad libitum.

It is to a professedly common-place philosopher we owe the remark, that while there are families in which there exists a

preposterous over-estimate of the talents and acquirements of their several members, there are other families in which there exists a depressing and unreasonable under-estimate of the

same.

He speaks to his knowledge of such a thing as a family in which certain boys during their early education had it ceaselessly drilled into them that they were the idlest, stupidest, and most ignorant boys in the world; which boys had no sooner gone to a great public school than like rockets they went up forthwith to the top of their classes, and never lost their places there, and afterwards at the university distinguished themselves pre-eminently in honours: "It will not surprise people who know much of human nature, to be told that through this brilliant career of school and college work the home belief in their idleness and ignorance continued unchanged, and that hardly at its end was the toil-worn senior wrangler regarded as other than an idle and useless blockhead." The writer adds an example of his knowledge of a successful author-to be identified of course by some readers, whose relatives never believed, till the reviews assured them of it, that his writings were anything but "contemptible and discreditable trash."

The subject is renewed in the ensuing section, on the text of a prophet's non-acceptance in his own country.

I

THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.

ST. LUKE iv. 24.

T was with the emphasis of a "Verily I say unto you," that our Lord prefaced the assurance that no prophet is accepted in his own country. The speaker spoke from bitter experience. For neither did His brethren believe in Him. It was when He was come into His own country, and taught in their synagogues with a wisdom that astonished them, and wrought mighty works of a kind that bewildered them, that His own countrymen set about asking if this was not the carpenter's son? was not His mother the well-known Mary? were not

James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas, His brethren? and His sisters, were they not all near at hand, and known as such? Whence then had this-ouros (indefinitely contemptuous)-all these attributes? And they were offended, scandalized, they found a stumbling-block in the condition of Him and His. A double answer was vouchsafed them: the significant restriction of wonder working, for He did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief; and the more direct reply, in so many words, that a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.

Montaigne adverts to this man, or that, having been a miracle to the world, in whom neither his wife nor his servant has ever seen anything remarkable: "Few men have been admired by their own domestics '—a sentence to which point and popularity have been given by the epigrammatic form of it, due to Marshal Catinat. "No one," Montaigne continues, "has been a prophet, not merely in his own house, but in his own country, as the experience of history shows. It is the same in matters of no consequence. . In my country of

Gascony they look upon it as very droll to see me in print. The farther off I am read from my own home, the better I am esteemed; I am fain to purchase printers in Guienne,-elsewhere they purchase me." Ben Jonson takes note of the greater reverence paid to things remote or strange to us, than to much better, if these be nearer, and fall under our sense. "Men, and almost all sorts of creatures, have their reputatïon by distance. Rivers, the farther they run, and more from their spring, the broader they are, and greater. And where our original is known, we are the less confident; among strangers we trust fortune." Lord Evandale, in Scott's "Old Mortality," discerns at once the "extraordinary qualities" of Henry Morton, which had escaped the notice of his kinsfolk and friends: "You have not been long in learning all his extraordinary qualities, my lord," says old Major Bellenden. "I, who have known him from boyhood, could, before this affair, have said much of his good principles and good nature; but as to his high talents"-further on that head deponent saith not. The

opinions of relatives as to a man's power, Dr. Wendell Holmes declares to be very commonly of little value; not so much because they sometimes over-rate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; as because, on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. Vile habetur quod domi

est, Seneca tersely says.

Edmund Burke, in early life, was not happy at home—there being none among the household on Arran Quay to sympathise with his dreams and his aspirations. "He might think himself a genius," says one of his many biographers, “but it was not to be expected that his own relations should yet think him one." Describing his position and influence in Lord. Rockingham's administration, Mr. Macknight observes that it is, after all, a man's own relations who generally look with the least confidence on his long wrestle with adversity, and are most astonished when the tide turns, and a great victory succeeds to what had seemed to them a mere hopeless toil. "To some of the Irish Nagles on the Blackwater, the news that Edmund had been taken into the confidence of the great Whig Lord Rockingham, must have seemed as extraordinary as it did to Joseph's brethren that he should have become so great a man in hostile Egypt."

Son pays le crut fou, says La Fontaine, of a Greek sage; mais quoi! aucun n'est prophète chez soi. Of Joan of Arc, and her early mental struggles, a French historian writes: "It behoves her to find in the bosom of her family some one who would believe in her this was the most difficult part of all." Nonrecognition, disparagement, cold obstruction. Societies and families, as Goethe says, behave in the same way to their dearest members, towns to their worthiest citizens. Consuelo advising Anzoleto to quit Venice, reminds him that "no person is a prophet in his own country. This is a bad place for one who has been seen running about in rags, and where any one may come to say of you, 'I was his protector, I saw his hidden talent, it was I who recommended him and procured his advance.'" Descartes had to support with philosophic pa

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