freedom, sir; and the sun of freedom will rise over Russia also; and in the number of liberated nations who will raise the song of thanksgiving to God, not even the Russians will fail. So let the house of Austria trust to his Czar. The people of Hungary and myself, we trust to God!

XIII.-GLADSTONE ON THE AFFAIRS OF GREECE.
(GLADSTONE.)

The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, M.P., the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born in Liverpool, in 1809, of a Scottish family settled there. His career at the University of Oxford and in Parliament has been one of distinguished success.

In consequence of the Greek government refusing to pay the demands of some British subjects who had suffered pecuniary loss in Athens by the violence of the mob, Admiral Parker, with the Mediterranean fleet, was ordered to blockade the Piraeus. An inquiry was raised on the subject in Parliament, and, on the 27th of June 1850 Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech, from which the following is an extract:

AND now I will grapple with the noble Lord [Palmerston] on the ground which he selected for himself, in the most triumphant portion of his speech, by his reference to those emphatic words, Civis Romanus sum. He vaunted, amidst the cheers of his supporters, that under his administration an Englishman should be throughout the world what the citizen of Rome had been. What then, sir, was a Roman citizen ? He was the member of a privileged caste; he belonged to a conquering race,-to a nation that held all others bound down by the strong arm of power. For him there was to be an exceptional system of law; for him principles were to be asserted, and by him rights were to be enjoyed, that were denied to the rest of the world. Is such, then, the view of the noble lord, as to the relation that is to subsist between England and other countries? Does he make the claim for us, that we are to be uplifted on a platform high above the standing-ground of all other nations? It is, indeed, too clear, not only from the expressions, but from the whole spirit of the speech of the noble viscount, that too much of this notion is lurking in his mind; that he adopts in part that vain conception, that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly, of abuse and imperfection.

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among the other countries of the world; that we are to be the universal schoolmasters; and that all those who hesitate to recognise our office can be governed only by prejudice or personal animosity, and should have the blind war of diplomacy forthwith declared against them. . . . .

Sir, the English people, whom we are here to represent, are indeed a great and noble people; but it adds nothing to their greatness or their nobleness that, when we assemble in this place, we should trumpet forth our virtues in elaborate panegyrics, and designate those who may not be wholly of our mind as a knot of foreign conspirators. When, in'deed, I heard the honourable and learned gentleman the member for Sheffield glorifying us, together with the rest of the people of this country, and announcing that we soared in unapproachable greatness, and the like, I confess I felt that eulogies such as those savoured somewhat of bombast; and thought it much to the honour of this House that the praises thus vented seemed to fall so flat; that the cookery of the honourable and learned gentleman was evidently seasoned beyond the capacity and relish of our palates. ...

Sir, I say the policy of the noble lord tends to encourage and confirm in us that which is our besetting fault and weakness, both as a nation and as individuals. Let an Englishman travel where he will as a private person, he is found in general to be upright, high-minded, brave, liberal, and true; but with all this, foreigners are too often sensible of something that galls them in his presence; and I apprehend it is because he has too great a tendency to self-esteem—too little disposition to regard the feelings, the habits, and the ideas of others. Sir, I find this characteristic too plainly legible in the policy of the noble lord. I doubt not that use will be made of our present debate to work upon this peculiar weakness of the English mind. The people will be told that those who oppose the motion are governed by personal motives, have no regard for public principle, no enlarged ideas of national policy. You will take your case before a favourable jury, and you think to gain your verdict; but, sir, let the House of Commons be warned-let it warn itself —against all illusions. • There is in this case also a course of appeal. There is an appeal, such as the honourable and

learned member for Sheffield has made, from the one House of Parliament to the other. There is a further appeal from this House of Parliament to the people of England. But, lastly, there is also an appeal from the people of England to the general sentiment of the civilized world; and I, for my part, am of opinion that England will stand shorn of a chief part of her glory and her pride, if she shall be found to have separated herself, through the policy she pursues abroad, from the moral supports which the general and fixed convictions of mankind afford—if the day shall come in which she may continue to excite the wonder and the fear of other nations, but in which she shall have no part in their affection and their regard.

No, sir, let it not be so: let us recognise, and recognise with frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong; the principles of brotherhood among nations, and of their sacred independence. When we are asking for the maintenance of the rights which belong to our fellow-subjects resident in Greece, let us do as we would be done by, and let us pay all the respect to a feeble state, and to the infancy of free institutions, which we should desire and should exact from others towards their maturity and their strength. Let us refrain from all gratuitous and arbitrary meddling in the internal concerns of other states, even as we should resent the same interference if it were attempted to be practised towards ourselves.

XIV.-MAN BEFORE THE FALL.

(DR. R. SOUTH.)

Dr. Robert South, one of the ablest of the clergy of his own day, was the son of a London merchant. He was born at Hackney in 1653, and died in 1716. He was a keen supporter of the "divine right of kings."

THE understanding, the noblest faculty of the mind, was then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and as it were the soul's upper region,-lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections. It was the leading, controlling faculty; all the passions wore the colours of It did not so much persuade as command; it was

reason.

not consul, but dictator. Discourse was then almost as quick as intuition; it was nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; it could sooner determine than now it can dispute. Like the sun, it had both light and agility: it knew no rest, but in motion; no quiet, but in activity. It did not so properly apprehend as irradiate the object; not so much find as make things intelligible. It arbitrated upon the several reports of sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not like a drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing their verdict. In short, it was vegete, quick, and lively; open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and sprightliness of youth: it gave the soul a bright and full view into all things; and was not only a window, but itself the prospect. Adam came into the world a philosopher; which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names. He could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties; he could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn in the womb of their causes; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents, his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction. Till his fall, he was ignorant of nothing but sin; or at least it rested in the notion, without the smart of the experiment. Could any difficulty have been proposed, the resolution would have been as early as the proposal; it could not have had time to settle into doubt. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his inquiries was an eʊρηka, an eʊрηка, the offspring of his brain, without the sweat of his brow. Study was not then a duty, nightwatchings were needless; the light of reason wanted not the assistance of a candle. This is the doom of fallen man, to labour in the fire, to see truth in profundo,—to exhaust his time, and to impair his health, and perhaps to spin out his days, and himself, into one pitiful, controverted conclusion. There was then no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining for invention; his faculties were quick and expedite; they answered without knocking, they were ready upon the first summons; there was freedom and firmness in all their operations. I confess, it is as difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred

up with the same infirmities about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant bred up in the obscurities of a cottage to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But by rating positives by their privatives, and other arts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, rarities, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the relics of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present. And certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepit, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

XV.-MAJESTY OF CHRIST.

(W. ARCHER BUTLER.)

William Archer Butler, D.D., one of the most accomplished and profound scholars which the Church of England has in modern times possessed, was born near Clonmel, Ireland, in 1814, and died in 1848, at the early age of thirty-four.

ON such a subject as this, what can one say which is not unworthy? It is far vaster than our vastest conception, infinitely grander than our loftiest; yet, overpoweringly awful as it is, how familiarity reconciles us to hearing it without awe! Perhaps even the overpowering greatness of the subject makes us despair of conceiving it. All the wonders of God fall deadly on unfitted minds. And thus men learn listlessly to hear words, without even an effort to attach ideas to them; and this is not least the case with those who dispute the most bitterly about the lifeless words