between scheme and issue, and "blunt the sharpest intents." As the old moralising poet, modernised by Dryden, puts it— "But see how Fortune can confound the wise, And when they least expect it, turn the dice." Fortune, or fate, is the popularly recognised agent in these reversals and collapses; and subtile philosophers speculate curiously on the plenipotent character of this agency. One such, for example, predisposed to paradox may-be, yet no heedless or hasty penman, affirms, that if you look closely into the matter, it will be seen that whatever appears most vagrant, and utterly purposeless, turns out, in the end, to have been impelled the most surely on a preordained and unswerving track. Chance and change, he goes on to remark, love to deal with men's unsettled plans, not with their idle vagaries. So that, as he argues the matter, if we desire unexpected and unimaginable events, we should contrive an iron framework, such as we fancy may compel the future to take one inevitable shape; for then comes in the unexpected, and shatters our design in fragments. The biographer of Columbus, narrating the story of his shipwreck in 1492, describes him as passing, with his usual excitability, from a state of doubt and anxiety to one of sanguine anticipation, and thus coming to consider his present misfortune as a providential event mysteriously ordained by Heaven to work out the success of his enterprise. At once, therefore, he began to look forward to glorious fruits to be reaped from this seeming evil, and laid his plans accordingly. "Such was the visionary yet generous enthusiasm of Columbus, the moment that prospects of vast wealth broke upon his mind. What in some spirits would have awakened a grasping and sordid avidity to accumulate, immediately filled his imagination with plans of magnificent expenditure. But how vain are our attempts to interpret the inscrutable decrees of Providence! The shipwreck, which Columbus considered the act of Divine favour, to reveal to him the secrets of the land, shackled and limited all his after-discoveries." For it is shown to have linked his fortunes, for the remainder of his life, to this island, which was doomed to be to him a source of cares and troubles, to involve him in a thousand perplexities, and to becloud his declining years with humiliation and disappoint ment. "Le ciel agit sans nous en ces événements, Et ne les régle point dessus nos sentiments." It is instructive to note in the memoirs of Gabriel Naudé, that great scholar's exultant anticipation of the public opening of the library he had mainly helped to form. He must have reckoned on that day as a beau jour for him, the happiest day of his life; and he arranged a fête accordingly, to be celebrated with his most intimate friends. But that very day broke out the public troubles of the Fronde; and barricades in the streets of Paris ill accorded with Gabriel Naudé's cherished hopes. "Ainsi vont les projets humains sous l'œil d'en haut qui les déjoue." The Scotch ploughman-poet, eyeing the mouse and its "wee bit housie, too, in ruin," as turned up by his plough, gave racy utterance to but a trite reflection, when, apostrophising the "wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie," he thus moralised his song: "But, mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain : And leave us nought but grief an' pain, As the good friar in Shakspeare has it, "A greater power than we can contradict well laid and discreetly devised as they seemed to be. And as with the seemingly laudable plans of the prudent, so with the arrogant designs of the self-confident. The enemy said, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them." Thus said the enemy, even Pharaoh's host, on the shores of the Red Sea. But then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord : "Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters." It is but an emphasised reading of the standard text, that the Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought, and maketh the devices of the people of none effect, and casteth out the counsel of princes. Whereas, turning from man proposing to God disposing, "The counsel of the Lord shall endure for ever, and the thoughts of His heart from generation to generation." The same is He of whom it is written that He turneth wise men backwards, and maketh their knowledge foolish. Wordsworth, ever a moralist, moralised his song when, at a critical juncture in the legend of the "White Doe of Rylstone," he interposed this reflection: "But quick the turns of chance and change, And knowledge has a narrow range; And wishes blind, and efforts vain." For a closing variation on the present theme, a worse might be found than this from the play within the play of “Ham·let: " "But, orderly to end where I begun, Our wills, our fates, do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” But, with a slight change of title and text, the same theme is pursued, in the section next ensuing, through another fuguecourse of variations. "A MAN DEVISING, GOD DIRECTING. PROVERBS xvi. 9. MAN'S heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps." Man devises, God directs; man proposes, God disposes. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, and practicable, plausible, easy of accomplishment, and sure of success. But the counsel of the Lord puts a veto on the scheme; and the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. Luther charges it against princes and potentates in his day, that when they take in hand an enterprise, they do not pray before they begin, but set to work calculating: three times three make nine, twice seven are fourteen-so-and-so will do so-and-so-in this manner will the business come to a prosperous issue: "but our Lord God says unto them, For whom then do ye hold me? for a cypher? Do I sit here above in vain, and to no purpose? Ye shall know, that I will twist your accounts about finely, and make them all false reckonings." Says old Alice, in "Mary Barton," "I sometimes think the Lord is against planning. Whene'er I plan over much, He is sure to send and mar all my plans, as if He would ha' me put the future into His hands. Afore Christmas-time I was as full as full could be of going home for good and all; yo has heard how I've wished it this terrible long time. Many a winter's night did I lie awake and think that, please God, come summer, I'd go home at last. Little did I think how God Almighty would baulk me for not leaving my days in His hands, who had led me through the wilderness hitherto." It is very like Rousseau to say, in reference to a fully determined project of his, for the fulfilment of which nothing was wanting but "ce qui ne dépend pas des hommes dans les projets les mieux concertés," that "on dirait qu'il n'y a que les noirs complots des méchants qui réussissent; les projets innocents des bons n'ont presque jamais d'accomplissement." But who can hope for anything like contentment, as Mr. Helps somewhere asks, so long as he continues to attach that ridiculous degree of importance to the events of this life which so many X people are inclined to do? Observe, he bids us, the effect which it has upon them: they are most uncomfortable if their little projects do not turn out according to their fancy—nothing is to be angular to them—they regard external things as the only realities; and as they have fixed their abode here, they must have it arranged to their mind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu assures one of her correspondents that never had she been so little mistress of her own time and actions as since she lived alone; and going on to account for this, she observes, "Mankind is placed in a state of dependency, not only on one another (which all are in some degree), but so many inevitable accidents thwart our designs and limit our best-laid projects." The poor efforts of our utmost prudence, and political schemes, she fancies must appear in the eyes of some superior beings, like the pecking of a young linnet to break a wire cage, or the climbing of a squirrel in a hoop. If to this bit of morality from the greatest of lady letter-writers in England, a parallel passage may readily be cited from the greatest of lady letterwriters in France, there is a characteristic difference, in the tone of religious feeling, conspicuous generally by its absence in Lady Mary's case, but a pervading, though underlying, force in that of Madame de Sévigné. The latter describes on one occasion the "cruel derangement" of her family plans, so nicely arranged, and so ripe for completion; then adds, if with a sigh, with a sigh of gentle resignation, "La Providence le veut ainsi. Elle est tellement maitresse de toutes nos actions, que nous n'exécutons rien que sous son bon plaisir, et je tache de ne faire de projets que le moins qu'il m'est possible, afin de n'être pas si souvent trompée; car qui compte sans elle compte deux fois." How vain, exclaims the author of "Destiny," are all our schemes for futurity! Human wisdom exhausts itself in devising what a higher Power shows to be vanity. We decide for to-day, and a passing moment scatters our decisions as chaff before the wind. We resolve for tomorrow, to-morrow comes but to root up our resolutions. We scheme for our works to remain monuments of our power and wisdom, and the most minute, the most trivial event is suffi |