dogmass of Christianity, and the upper classes its practice, the cause lies very much in the impossible and unlovely presentment of Christian dogmas and practice which is offered by the most important part of this nation, the serious middle class, and above all by its Nonconforming portion. And since the failure here in civilisation comes not from an insufficient care for political liberty and for trade, nor yet from an insufficient care for conduct, but from an insufficient care for intellect and knowledge and beauty and a humane life, let Liberal statesmen neglect for the cure of our present imperfection no means, whether of public schools, now wanting, or of the theatre, now left to itself and to chance, or of anything else which may powerfully conduce to the communication and propagation of real intelligence, and of real beauty, and of a life really humane.

Objects which Liberal statesmen pursue now, and which are not in themselves ends of civilisation, they may have to pursue still, but let them pursue them in a different spirit. For instance, there are those well-known Liberal objects, of legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, of permitting dissenters to use what burial-services they like in the parish churchyard, and of granting what is termed Local Option. Every one of these objects may be attained, and it may even be necessary to attain them, and yet after they are attained the imperfections of our civilisation will stand just as they did before, and the real work of Liberal statesmen will have yet to begin. Some Liberals misconceive these objects strangely. Mr. Bright urges Parliament to pass the Bill legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, in order that Parliament may affirm by an emphatic vote the principle of personal liberty for the men and women of this country in the chief concern of their lives.' But the whole institution and sacredness of marriage is an abridgment of the principle of personal liberty in the concern in question. When Herod the tetrarch wanted to marry Herodias his brother Philip's wife, he was seeking to affirm emphatically the principle of personal liberty in the concern of his marriage; and we all know him to have been in the wrong. Every limitation of choice in marriage is an abridgment of the principle of personal liberty; but it takes more delicacy of perception, more civilisation, to understand and accept the abridgment in some cases than in others. Very many in the lower class in this country, and many in the middle class the civilisation and the capacity for delicate perception in these classes being what they are-fail to understand and accept the prohibition to marry their deceased wife's sister. That they ought not to marry their brother's wife they can perceive, that they ought not to marry their wife's sister they cannot. And so they contract these marriages freely, and the evil of their freely committing a breach of the law may be more than the good of imposing on them a restriction which in their present state they have not perception enough to understand and obey. Therefore it may be expedient to legalise amongst our people marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Still, our

civilisation, which it is the end of the true and noble science of politics to perfect, gains thereby hardly anything; and of its continued imperfection, indeed, the very call for the Bill in question is a proof.

So, again, with measures like that for granting Local Option, as it is called, for doing away the addiction of our lower class to their porter and their gin. It is necessary to do away their addiction to these, and for that end to receive at the hands of the friends of temperance some such measure as the Bill for granting Local Option. Yet the alimentary secret of the life of civilised man is by no means possessed by the friends of temperance as we now see them either here or in America; and whoever has been amongst the population of the Médoc district, in France, will surely feel, if he is not a fanatic, that the civilised man of the future is more likely to adopt their beverage than to eat and drink like Dr. Richardson. And so too, again, with the Burials Bill. It is a Bill for enabling the Dissenters to use their own burial services in the parish churchyard. Now we all know what the services of many of the Protestant Dissenters are; and that whereas the burial service of the Church of England may be compared, as I have said somewhere or other, to a reading from Milton, so a burial service, such as pleases many of the Protestant Dissenters, may be likened to a reading from Eliza Cook. But fractious clergymen could refuse, as is well known, to give their reading from Milton, or any reading at all, over the children of Baptists; and the remedy for this was to abolish the rubric giving them the power of such refusal. The clergy, however, as if to prove the truth of Clarendon's sentence on them, a sentence which should be written up over the portal of the Lower House of Convocation-Clergymen, who understand the least, and take the worst measure of human affairs, of all mankind that can write and read-the clergy, it seems, had rather the world should go to pieces than that this rubric should be abolished. And so Liberal statesmen must pass the Burials Bill; for it is better to have readings from Eliza Cook in the parish churchyard, than to have fractious clergymen armed with the power of refusing to bury the children of Baptists. Still, our civilisation is not really advanced by any such measure as the Burials Bill; nay, in so far as readings from Eliza Cook are encouraged to produce themselves in public, and to pass themselves off as equivalent to readings from Milton, it is retarded.

Therefore do not let Liberal statesmen estimate the so-called Liberal measures, many of them, which they may be called upon to recommend now, at more than they are worth, or suppose that by recommending them they at all remedy their shortcomings in the past, which consist in their having taken an incomplete view of the life of the community and of its needs, and in having done little or nothing for the need of intellect and knowledge, and for the need of beauty, and for the need of manners, but having thought it enough to work for political liberty and free trade, for the need of expansion.

Nay, but even for the need of expansion they have not worked adequately. For the need of expansion in men suffers a defeat when they are over-tutored, over-governed, sat upon, as we say, by authority military or civil. From such a defeat of our instinct for expansion, political liberty saves us Englishmen; and Liberal statesmen have worked for political liberty. But the need of expansion suffers a defeat, also, wherever there is an immense inequality of conditions and property; such inequality inevitably depresses and degrades the inferior masses. And whenever any great need of human nature suffers defeat, then the nation, in which the defeat happens, finds difficulties befalling it that cause; and the victories of other great needs do not compensate for the defeat of one. Germany, where the need for intellect and science is well cared for, where the sense of conduct is strong, has neither liberty nor equality; the instinct for expansion suffers signal defeat. Hence the difficulties of Germany. France has liberty and equality, the instinct for expansion is victorious there; but how greatly does the need for conduct suffer defeat! and hence the difficulties of France. We have deep and strong the sense of conduct, and we have half of the instinct for expansion fully satisfied, we have admirable political liberty and free trade. But we have inequality rampant, and hence arise many of our difficulties.

For our present state, as I have elsewhere said, may be summed up in this: that we have an upper class materialised, a middle class vulgarised, a lower class brutalised. And this we owe to our inequality. For, if Lord Derby would think of it, he is himself at Knowsley quite as tremendous a personage, over against St. Helens, as the emperors and grand dukes and archdukes who fill him with horror. And though he himself may be one of the humane few who emerge in all classes, and may have escaped being materialised, yet still, owing to his tremendousness, the middle class of St. Helens is thrown in upon itself, and not civilised; and the lower class, again, is thrown in upon itself, and not civilised. And some who fill the place which he now fills are certain to be, some of them, materialised : like his great-grandfather, whose cock-fights, as it is said, are still remembered with gratitude and love by old men in Preston. he himself, being so able and acute as he is, would never, if he were not in a false position and compelled by it to use unreal language, he would never talk so much to his hearers in the towns of the north about their being an intelligent, keen-witted, critical, and well-todo population,' but he would reproach them, though kindly and mildly, for having made St. Helens and places like it, and he would exhort them to civilise themselves.

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But of inequality, as a defeat to the instinct in the community for expansion, and as a sure cause of trouble, Liberal statesmen are very shy to speak. And in Ireland, where inequality and the system of great estates produces, owing to differences of religion, and to VOL. VIII.-No. 41.

C

absenteeism, and to the ways of personages such as the late Lord Leitrim, even more tremendous, perhaps, than an emperor or an archduke, and to the whole history of the country and character of the people in Ireland, I say, where inequality produces, owing to all these, more pressing and evident troubles than in England, and is the second cause of our difficulties with the Irish, as the habit of governing them in deference to British middle-class prejudices is the first in Ireland Liberal statesmen never look the thing fairly in the face, or apply a real remedy like the reform of the law of bequest, but invent palliatives like the Irish Land Act, which do not go to the root of the evil, but which unsettle men's notions as to the constitutive characters of property, making these characters something quite different in one place from what they are in another. And in England, where inequality and the system of great estates produces trouble too, though not so glaringly as in Ireland, in England Liberal statesmen shrink even more from looking the thing in the face, and apply little palliatives; and even for these little palliatives they allege reasons which are extremely questionable, such as that each child has a natural right to his equal share of his father's property, or that land in the hands of many owners will certainly produce more than in the hands of few. And the true and simple reason against inequality they shut their eyes to, as if it were a Medusa; the reason, namely, that inequality, in a society like ours, inevitably materialises the upper class, vulgarises the middle class, brutalises the lower class.

Not until the need in man for expansion is better understood by Liberal statesmen -that it includes equality as well as political liberty and free trade and is cared for by them, but cared for not singly and exorbitantly, but in union and proportion with the progress of man in conduct, and his growth in intellect and knowledge, and his nearer approach to beauty and manners, will Liberal governments be secure. But when Liberal statesmen have learned to care for all these together, and to go on unto civilisation, then at last they will be professing and practising the true and noble science of politics, and the true and noble science of economics, instead of, as now, semblances only of these sciences, or at best fragments of them. And then will come at last the extinction or the conversion of the Tories, the restitution of all things, the reign of the Liberal saints. But meanwhile, so long as the Liberals do only as they have done hitherto, they will not satisfy the community; but the Tories will from time to time be tried -tried and found wanting. And we, who study to be quiet, and to keep our temper and our tongue under control, shall continue to speak of the principles of our two great political parties much as we do now; while clear-headed, but rough, impatient, and angry men, like Cobbett, will call them the principles of Pratt, the principles of Yorke.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE.

A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY.

"I THINK,' said Mrs. Norham to her husband, as she bit meditatively the nail of her forefinger, 'I think I am right in the important step I have taken. I wrote yesterday evening, and made my decision final.'

Mr. Norham closed a Latin lexicon, and looked up from his writing-desk. What decision, my dear?'

'My decision to resign the sub-editorship of The Agnostic Moralist. I am of course aware that it was myself who made the journal, and that it will inevitably suffer by my withdrawing my support from it. But for many reasons I think this the right course to pursue. The editor, Dr. Pearson, was getting anxious to have the chief management a most incapable man, for ever preferring his own opinion to mine; and I really found at last that there was no working with him. However, I was resolved that the rupture between us should have no bitterness, so I have done my best to make the next number a helpful one, and have insisted on contributing nearly the whole matter myself. There will appear in it, my dear, inter alia, those two new papers of mine on "Functional Amusement," and "The Cellular Character of the Individual." But besides my editorial difficulties, I should at any rate for the next few months have had little time for editing. This new pupil of yours-if pupil is the right name for him—will be, to a great extent, on my hands. It is moral influence he is in want of, more than intellectual, you tell me; and when a young man has arrived at two-and-twenty the complete readjustment of his character may be hard work even for me.'

'Well,' said Mr. Norham, 'the young scapegrace comes this evening. I wonder very much what we shall be able to make of him.'

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'That,' said Mrs. Norham with decision, depends of course on what we find him to be at present. We must study the scope of his possible activities before we can judge in what way they should be motived. Now, what sort of man is the boy's father? You said that you used to know him formerly. And what sort of social life has the boy led? I mean, my dear, to put the matter more simply, to what sort of environment has the young organism had to adapt itself?'