not to drive, their pupils; to allure and win, not to coerce and constrain them. Winsome womankind is mistress of the like arts. Those of the sex who are winsome, it has been said, with their plastic manners and non-aggressive force, always have their own way in the end. "They coax and flatter for their rights, and consequently they are given privileges in excess of their rights; whereas the women who take their rights, as things to which they are entitled without favour, lose them and their privileges together." Kitely's advice is good, in “Every Man in his Humour,” and of general application : "But rather use the soft persuading way, Whose powers will work more gently, and compose The imperfect thoughts you labour to reclaim ; More winning, than enforcing the consent.” The first bishop sent from Iona for the Northumbrian Church was Corman, a man described by Dean Milman as of austere and inflexible character, who, finding more resistance than he expected to his doctrines, in a full assembly of the nation sternly reproached the Northumbrians for their obstinacy, and declared that he would no longer waste his labours on so irreclaimable a race. A gentle voice was heard : “Brother, have you not been too harsh with your unlearned hearers? Should you not, like the apostles, have fed them with the milk of Christian doctrine, till they could receive the full feast of our sublimer truths ?" All eyes, it is added, were turned on Aidan, a humble but devout monk; and by general acclamation that discreet and gentle teacher was saluted as bishop. The same historian describes Aldhelm of Malmesbury, in minstrel's garb, arresting the careless crowd of churchgoers on a bridge they must pass, and having fully enthralled their attention by the sweetness of his song, anon introducing into it some of the solemn truths of religion; thus succeeding in winning to the faith many hearts, which he would have attempted in vain to move by severer language, or even by the awful excommunication of the Church.* When Fenelon was * The history of Latin Christianity supplies abundant examples, more or intrusted by Lewis the Fourteenth with a mission to Poitou, to convert the Protestants, he refused the aid of dragoons, and resorted to suavity of persuasion alone as an instrument of conversion. Of the Protestant missions in the west of Ireland, complaint has been made of their being conducted too offensively, like raids upon heathendom: the Romanist, who might possibly open his bosom to the warm rays of charity, only folds the cloak of his hereditary faith more closely round him, when assailed by the bitter wind of a propagandism which seeks its way to the heart by violence and insult.* It is at once, on the one part pleasant, on the other painful, to find the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, who had ever been the fast friend of Whitgift, frequently expressing his disapprobation of the primate's severity against non-conformists, and his wish that the spirit of gentleness might win, rather than severity." And being here on Elizabethan ground, let us less pertinent. Columban and his disciples are characterized as having had little of the gentle and winning perseverance of missionaries: they had been accustomed to dictate to trembling sovereigns; and their haughty and violent demeanour provoked the pagans, instead of weaning them from their idolatries (iii. 106). So of Boniface (v. 167): it was in the tone of a master that he commanded the world to peace, a tone which provoked resistance. "It was not by persuasive influence, which might lull the conflicting passions of men, and enlighten them as to their real interests." Contrast with these the temper and policy of Pope Eugenius III. (iii. 407), whose "skilful and well-timed use of means more becoming the head of Christendom than arms and excommunications, wrought wonders in his favour;" and who, by his gentleness and charity, gradually supplanted the senate in the attachment of the Roman people: "the fierce and intractable people were yielding to this gentler influence." On a later page we come across the able portraiture of our Henry II., as drawn by a churchman who was warning Becket as to the formidable adversary he had undertaken to oppose : "He will sometimes be softened by humility and patience, but will never submit to compulsion," etc. Ariste a raison when he counsels Geronte, in Gresset's "Le Méchant," as the bien plus sage course of dealing with a difficult subject, "Que vous le rameniez par raison, par douceur, Que d'aller opposer la colère à l'humeur." "Such access as Protestantism has gained to the minds of the Catholics in Ireland, it owes, not to the thunders of any missionary Boanerges, but to men like the [late] Archbishop of Dublin [Whately], and the Dean of Elphin, who have taken a very different course, and presented Protestant Christianity to their neighbours in a very different form."-Saturday Review, xi. 71. note Mr. Froude's reference to the diverse procedure of Cecil and Throgmorton in their several dealings with the queen,she being one of the many strong-willed people, on whom menaces and reproaches operate only as a spur. Cecil understood best Elizabeth's disposition. "By 'practices,' by 'byeways,' as he afterwards described it, by affecting to humour what he was passionately anxious to prevent, he was holding his mistress under delicate control; and he dreaded lest his light leading-strings should be broken by a ruder touch." As with the queen, so with her people. When Catherine de Medici expressed astonishment to Sir Thomas Smith, at a certain deference paid by his sovereign to the nation she ruled, "Madam," he replied, "her people be not like your people; they must be trained by douceur and persuasion, not by rigour and violence." The greatest of Russian empresses emulated in this respect the greatest of English queens. Indeed, her tendency to indulgence was imputed to Catharine II. as a fault, advantage being taken of her constant reluctance to punish. But how far greater things did she, on the whole, achieve with her subjects, exclaims Mr. Herman Merivale, "thus gently led, than those of her predecessors and successors who employed on them in such abundance the more forcible methods of government!" Mr. Freeman, in the course of showing that Harold's way of bringing in the proud Danes of the North to his obedience was not exactly the same as William's way, describes him as determining, with that noble and generous daring which is sometimes the highest prudence, to trust himself in the hands of the people who refused to acknowledge him. "These his enemies, who would not that he should reign over them, instead of being brought and slain before him, were to be won over by the magic of his personal presence in their own land.” To apply what the Gaulish ambassador says of a great Roman in Jonson's tragedy, "This magistrate hath struck an awe into me, And by his sweetness won a more regard The Antwerp authorities had reason and experience on their side when they sought to persuade the Prince of Parma, in 1585, that the hearts of, not the Antwerpers only, but of the Hollanders and Zealanders, were easily to be won at that moment: give them religious liberty, and "govern them by gentleness rather than by Spanish grandees," and a reconciliation would speedily be ensured. Two years later, but then two years too late, we find the prince averring that he liked "to proceed rather by the ways of love than of rigour and effusion of blood." This was in answer to Queen Elizabeth, who, at a previous juncture, angrily derided any "slight and mild kind of dealing with a people so ingrate," and was all for corrosives instead of lenitives for such festering wounds. Rulers, who fail to secure what they wish by gentle means, are apt very soon to resort to the less excellent way; like Chilperic, the "Nero of France," coaxing the Jew Priscus to turn Christian; first employing argument, then trying blandishments, and anon taking to more powerful reasoning by throwing the Jew into prison. Tytler remarks of the "violent instructions" enforced by Henry VIII. on his envoy to James V., that had the overbearing Tudor adopted a suaver tone, a favourable impression might have been made; but the King o' Scots was "not to be threatened into a compliance with a line of policy which, if suggested in a tone of conciliation, his judgment might have approved," and his unwounded sense of self-respect have consented to carry into effect. 66 Simon the glover, in Scott's story of medieval Perth, is well described as watchful over the tactics his daughter employs towards Henry Smith, "whom he knew to be as ductile, when influenced by his affections, as he was fierce and intractable when assailed by hostile remonstrances or threats." Par un chemin plus doux, says a shrewd counsellor in Racine, vous pourrez le ramener; whereas les menaces le rendront plus farouche. Archbishop Whately deprecates the bullying and browbeating system in vogue with certain barristers, and declares it to be a mistake as a means of eliciting truth: he cites his own observation of the marked success of the opposite mode of questioning, and maintains that, generally speaking, a quiet, gentle, and straightforward examination will be the most adapted to elicit truth; the browbeating and blustering which are likeliest to confuse an honest, simple-minded witness, being just what the dishonest one is the best prepared for. "The more the storm blusters, the more carefully he wraps round him the cloak which a warm sunshine will often induce him to throw off." We are told of Dr. Beattie, in his relations as a professor with his class, that his sway was absolute, because it was founded in reason and affection; that he never employed a harsh epithet in finding fault with any of his pupils; and that when, instead of a rebuke, which they were conscious they deserved, they met merely with a mild reproof, it was conveyed in such a manner as to throw, not only the delinquent, but sometimes the whole class into tears. Fielding's boy-hero is at once in tears when the kind squire takes him in hand, instead of the harsh tutor; his "guilt now flew in his face more than any severity could make it. He could more easily bear the lashes of Thwackum than the generosity of Allworthy." Mrs. Fry used to bear eager record of the docility she had found, and the gratitude she had experienced, from female prisoners, though the most abandoned of their sex: kind treatment, even with restraint obviously for their good, was so new to them, that it called forth, as Sir Samuel Romilly says, 66 even in the most depraved, grateful and generous feelings." life is the picture Mr. Reade has drawn of the actress, of a young wife coming to her as a supplicant, instead of inveighing against her,—coming with faith in her goodness, and sobbing to her for pity: "a big tear rolled down her cheek, and proved her something more than an actress." another of his books he illustrates the truth that men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them, better than they can those gentle appeals which rouse no anger, but soften the whole heart. "The old people stung True to the effect on the |