man's hand is against his brother, and only the necessity of defence hinders the desire of attack. All nations are on the watch, and order is maintained because everybody is afraid of his neighbour. The Continental press shows us one half of Europe in array against the other. The whole of Europe is arming. France does not disarm, but, on the contrary, increases its armies; Russia is raising three hundred thousand recruits; Prussia is reorganising four new army corps; Austria is remodelling and reforming its army; everywhere the armaments are in training, and new systems of warfare are being elaborated. The art of slaying threatens to become the sole industry of Europe.5

It is, therefore, no wonder that Pius the Ninth and his counsellors hesitated to fix the day for the opening of the Council. The Pope had at one time thought of fixing the 29th of June in 1867, on which the eighteenth centenary of St. Peter's martyrdom would fall; but the aspect of Europe and the clouds which were visibly rolling towards the walls of Rome caused him to pause. Therefore, on the 8th of December, 1866, a circular letter was written to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, inviting them to Rome in the following year for the solemnities of the centenary alone, the importance of which no one at that time foresaw. But this must be narrated hereafter.

HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Archbishop.

5 Times, Nov. 12, 1866.

FALKLAND.

"THE English are just, but not amiable.' A well-bred Frenchman, who has recently travelled in India, and who has published in the Revue des deux Mondes an interesting account of what he saw and heard there, ends with this criticism. It conveys, he says, as to the English and their rule, the real mind of the best informed and most intelligent of the natives of India with whom he conversed. They admitted the great superiority of the English rule in India to every other which had preceded it. They admitted the good intentions of the English rule-they admitted its activity, energy, incorruptibility, justice. Still, the final impression was this: something wanting in the English, something which they were not. Les Anglais sont justes, mais pas bons. The English are just, but not kind and good.'

It is proposed to raise, on the field of Newbury, a monument to a famous Englishman who was amiable. A meeting has been held at Newbury to launch the project, and Lord Carnarvon made there an excellent speech. I believe the subscription to the monument does not grow very rapidly. The unamiable ones amongst us, the vast majority, naturally perhaps keep their hands in their pockets. But let us take the opportunity, as others, too, have taken it, for at least recalling Falkland to our memory. Let us give our attention for a moment to this phenomenon of an amiable Englishman.

At the battle of Newbury (says Clarendon) was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so glowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed Civil War than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity. Turpe mori, post te, solo non posse dolore.

Clarendon's style is here a little Asiatic. And perhaps a something Asiatic is not wholly absent, either, from that famous passage the best known, probably, in all the History of the Rebellion that famous passage which describes Lord Falkland's longing for peace:

Sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he would with a shrill and sad accent ingeminate the word Peace, Peace; and would passionately profess, that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart.

Clarendon's touch in the Life is simpler than in the History. But we will not carp at this great writer and faithful friend. Falkland's life was an uneventful one, and but a few points in it are known to us. To Clarendon he owes it that each of those points is a picture.

In his speech at Newbury Lord Carnarvon said: When we look back to the history of the Civil War, I can think of no character that stands out in higher, purer relief, than Falkland.' 'Of all the names,' said Lord Carnarvon again, which have come down to us from the Great Rebellion, none have come invested with higher respect and greater honour than the name of Lord Falkland.' One asks oneself how this comes to be so. Falkland wrote both in verse and in prose. Both his verse and his prose have their interest, yet as a writer he hardly counts. He was a gallant soldier, but gallant soldiers were in his day not uncommon. He was an unsuccessful politician, and was reproached with deserting his party. He was Secretary of State for but two years, and in that office he accomplished, and could then accomplish, nothing remarkable. He was killed in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age. Horace Walpole pronounces him a much overrated man. But let us go through the scanty records of his life a little more deliberately.

6

Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, was born in 1610. His father, Sir Henry Cary, the first Lord Falkland, went to Ireland as Lord Deputy in 1622, and remained there until 1629. The son was bred,' says Clarendon, in the court and in the university, but under the care, vigilance, and direction of such governors and tutors, that he learned all his exercises and languages better than most men do in more celebrated places.' In 1629 the father, who appears to have been an able man, but violent and unfortunate, returned with broken fortunes to England. Shortly afterwards the son inherited from his maternal grandfather, the Lord Chief Baron Tanfield, who passed over his daughter and her husband the ex-Lord Deputy, a good estate at Burford and Great Tew, in Oxfordshire. At nineteen, then, the young Lucius Cary came into possession of all his grandfather's land, with two very good houses very well furnished (worth about 2,000l. per annum), in a most pleasant country, and the two most pleasant places in that country, with a very plentiful personal estate.' But, adds Clarendon

With these advantages he had one great disadvantage (which in the first entrance into the world is attended with too much prejudice) in his person and

presence, which was in no degree attractive or promising. His stature was low, and smaller than most men; his motion not graceful, and his aspect so far from inviting, that it had somewhat in it of simplicity; and his voice the worst of the three, and so untuned that instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody would have expected music from that tongue; and sure no man was ever less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world. But then no man sooner or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice. That little person and small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, a courage so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no composition of the strongest limbs and most harmonious and proportioned presence and strength ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise; it being his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adventures. And that untuned tongue and voice easily discovered itself to be supplied and governed by a mind and understanding so excellent, that the wit and weight of all he said carried another kind of admiration in it, and even another kind of acceptation from the persons present, than any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itself, or is usually attended with. And his disposition and nature was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and love him.

For a year or two he mixed in the gay life of London, rich, accomplished, popular, with a passion for soldiering, with a passion for letters. He was of Ben Jonson's society at the 'Apollo'; he mixed with Suckling, Carew, Davenant, Waller, Sandys, Sir Kenelm Digby; with Selden and Hobbes; with Hales of Eton and Chillingworth great spirits in little bodies, these two last, like Falkland himself. He contracted a passionate friendship with a young man as promising and as universally beloved as himself, Sir Henry Morison. Ben Jonson has celebrated it; and it was on Morison's early death that Jonson wrote the beautiful lines which every one knows, beginning

It is not growing like a tree,

In bulk, doth make men better be.

Falkland married, before he was of age, Morison's sister. The marriage gave mcrtal offence to his father. His father had projected for the young Lucius, says Clarendon, a marriage which might mend his own broken fortunes and ruined credit at court. The son behaved admirably. He offered to resign his whole estate to his father, and to rely wholly upon his father's pleasure for his own maintenance. He had deeds of conveyance prepared to that effect, and brought them to his father for signature :—

But his father's passion and indignation so far transported him (though he was a gentleman of excellent parts), that he refused any reconciliation and rejected all the offers that were made him of the estate, so that his son remained still in the possession of his estate against his will, for which he found great reason afterwards to rejoice. But he was for the present so much afflicted with his father's displeasure that he transported himself and his wife into Holland, resolving to buy some military command, and to spend the remainder of his life in that profession. But being disappointed in the treaty he expected, and finding no opportunity to accommodate himself with such a command, he returned again into England; resolving to retire

to a country life and to his books, that since he was not like to improve himself in arms he might advance in letters.

So began the convivium philosophicum, or convivium theologicum, of his life at Great Tew. With a great thoroughness of nature, with the high resolve to make up his mind about the matters of most vital concernment to man, and to make it up on good grounds, he plunged into study. The controversy with Rome was then keen. Agents of conversion to the Romish Church, corner-creepers as they were called, penetrated everywhere. Two young brothers of Falkland himself were won over by them. More and more, therefore, his thoughts and his studies took a theological turn. On his first retirement to the country he had declared, says Clarendon, that 'he would not see London in many years, which was the place he loved of all the world.' But his father's death soon after, from an accident, forced him back for a time to London. Then, on his return to Oxfordshire he surrounded himself with friends from the university, who led with him the life which Clarendon's description has made memorable :

His house where he usually resided (Tew or Burford, in Oxfordshire), being within ten or twelve miles of the university, looked like the university itself by the company that was always found there. There were Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Morley, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Earles, Mr. Chillingworth, and indeed all men of eminent parts and faculties in Oxford, besides those who resorted thither from London; who all found their lodgings there as ready as in the colleges; nor did the lord of the house know of their coming or going, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner or supper where all still met. Otherwise there was no troublesome ceremony or constraint, to forbid men to come to the house or to make them weary of staying there. So that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the books they could desire in his library, and all the persons together whose company they could wish, and not find in any other society. Here Mr. Chillingworth wrote and formed and modelled his excellent book against the learned Jesuit Mr. Nott (The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation), after frequent debates upon the most important particulars; in many of which he suffered himself to be overruled by the judgment of his friends, though in others he still adhered to his own fancy, which was sceptical enough even in the highest points.

From this happy and delightful conversation and restraint' Falkland was in 1639 called away by the first alarum from the north," Charles the First's expedition to suppress the disturbances in Scotland. After the return of that expedition Falkland sate in the short Parliament of 1640, which preceded the Long Parliament. The 'Short Parliament' sate but a few weeks. Falkland was born a constitutionalist, a hater of all that was violent and arbitrary. What he saw in the Short Parliament' made a favourable and deep impression upon him. From the debates which were there managed with all imaginable gravity and solemnity, he contracted (says Clarendon) such a reverence to Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom,