they rise above party considerations, and produce a good Bill. And it is no retort on their part to say, that what we call a good Bill, must in their eyes be not a Conservative, but a Liberal Bill. Unquestionably, it must be a Liberal Bill. There is no blinking the fact. And if they are wise in their generation they will pass it with a good grace. They have always resisted every improvement to the uttermost, doggedly. And then, when it became inevitable, they have turned round and carried it. They resisted the Catholic Emancipation Bill, and carried it. They resisted the abolition of the Corn Laws, and carried it. They resisted the admission of the Jews into Parliament, and admitted them. They have resisted Reform, a Liberal Reform, with equal pertinacity; let them be true to their antecedents, and carry a Liberal Reform Bill. The time seems ripe that they should. It seems absolutely impossible that they can hope any longer in a policy of delay. Is it not then better, we do not say from our point of view, but from theirs, that they should carry a genuinely Liberal Reform Bill, and get all that credit for it, of which at this moment their party stands in so much need in the eyes of the country? Besides, is it not one of their boasts that they, the true Conservatives, are also the true Liberals; that they do not fear the people; that they trust the working classes, and that the working classes trust them? Let them clench their professions by enfranchising the working man, and not at the same time betray their dread of him by giving the landowners additional powers to keep him in order. We know there is a class of men who, without professing the divine right of an aristocracy, or the divine wisdom of landowners, are haunted by the idea of the working man as a unionist, and they dread his admission into Parliament, when, as they say, from land's end to land's end, labour is in open insurrection against capital, and every servant's hand is against his master. Even if this were strictly true, it would be the crying reason above all others, for admitting the working classes to a share, a large share, in the open, public, and recognised debates of the country at large. This is a ground, above all others, which must have weight with the Conservatives. They must, above all other men, desire that questions so vital as those of labour and capital, master and servant, should rather be fought out in Parliament than settled secretly with closed doors in the teeth of Parliament by unrecognised societies. Those who maintain, as Mr. Lowe maintains, that ours is the very best Parliament in the very best country, forget that no Parliament is a good Parliament which leaves half the country unrepresented. And we are not here advocating, we are Contemporary Literature. 233 opposed to manhood suffrage. We only want labour to be represented in the same sense as land is represented, and in that sense it is not represented at all. This is one defect which Mr. Lowe's principles will not cover. Neither will they cover the sins of omission of the present Parliament. England is uneducated, England is the most pauper-ridden, the most crime-ridden country in the civilized world; and these three cardinal curses-we might go into further details, but let this suffice-we lay distinctly and with conviction at the door of a Parliament from which the working classes are excluded. Mr. Lowe has conclusively shown that the admission of the middle. classes to political power has rendered prosperous and happy beyond expectation those strata of society to which Mr. Lowe's vision seems limited. May we not hope that the Reform Bill of 1867 will do for the working classes that which was done for the middle classes by the Reform Bill of 1832-admit them to the franchise without giving them a monopoly of power, and secure their co-operation in all measures affecting themselves without detriment to the interests or independence of any other class of the community? CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS. The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula. By CARL RITTER. Translated and Adapted to the Use of Biblical Students. By WILLIAM L. GAGE. 4 vols. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Ritter's Erdkunde von Asien, as many of our readers know, is a magnificent series of volumes, constituting what Mr. Gage justly calls a Colossal Geography of Asia.' It is a scientific and not a Biblical work; universal in its scope, and by no means limited to the evolution of Judaism and Christianity.' It is, perhaps, the greatest geographical work ever accomplished by one man. The portion of the Erdkunde' which relates to the geography of the Holy Land, i.e., to the Sinaitic Peninsula, Palestine proper, and Syria, would, if translated, fill about fourteen octavo volumes of 450 pages each. Ritter was not a traveller, but a scientific geographer, endowed with a remarkable geographical genius. Had he been enabled personally to visit the localities that he describes, his work would have been to the geography of Palestine what Gibbon's work is to Roman history. His extensive learning, his marvellous power of intuition, his scrupulous fairness, which often betrays him into hesitancy, if not vacillation, and his synthetic and artistic power of presenting his materials, are perhaps unrivalled. His method is to present a complete digest of all that is known concerning the countries he describes, viz., of all the accounts of previous travellers, which he compares, arranges, and presents with an accuracy and order that make his work as interesting as it is instructive. To have translated the whole of the geography of the Biblical lands would have been an undertaking too vast, and yet there are few Biblical students who would not be glad to possess it. Mr. Gage, however, has done a safer, and therefore wiser thing. He has condensed the fourteen volumes into four, and he has done this with admirable skill and great success. I was led,' he says, 'to believe that the most feasible method of condensing, was to retain almost or quite intact whatever illustrates 'the Bible, and just so much of what remained as would keep the outlines of the subject unbroken, and allow the reader to see the masterly 'method of the original work.' The literature of the Holy Land is immense. Scores of books have been written about Palestine since Ritter closed his labours; some of them of great scientific value; Stanley, Porter, Wilson, and Tristram are well known to English readers; Mr. Grove has contributed to Smith's Dictionary, and Mr. Porter to that of Dr. Alexander, geogra phical articles of a very high order; Captain Wilson and his exploring party have made some interesting discoveries, and will probably re-create the scientific topography of Palestine. But however Ritter may be supplemented, he cannot be superseded; his great work is the summary of all that had been done before it; it must be the starting point of whatever is done after it. Indeed, those who have since contributed the most to the geography of the Holy Land delight to call him master. His work is and must be an imperishable treasure of matters, the most interesting to students of the Bible. It is of course impossible, within the limits of a notice like this, to enter into any of the details of so multifarious a work: even to give a synopsis of its contents, would be to fill three or four pages with mere index matter. We will, therefore, only say generally, that the first volume is occupied by the Peninsula of Sinai; a historical introduction brings together the knowledge contributed by travellers down to Burckhardt. The different parts and routes of the Peninsula are then described; the two great groups of Serbal and Sinai especially, and their conflicting claims to be the mountain of the lawgiving, are weighed. Ritter gives the weight of his great authority in favour of Sinai, a conclusion to which personal observation had brought us. There is no possible spot near enough to Serbal for the purposes of the narrative where a multitude of people could encamp. Ritter inclines to the opinion that the encampment at Sinai was on the plain of Sebâyeh, at the southern end of the mass of Sinai, in view of Jebel Mousa. For many reasons, the fact that Jebel Mousa can be seen from every part of it being one, we are strongly convinced that it was on the plain Er Rahah, at the northern end, under the peaks of Sufsâfeh, and in the broad opening of the Wady el Sheikh. To this conclusion, the editor remarks, the explorations of Stanley and more recent travellers have tended. Very great geographical interest attaches to the unique basin or fissure of the Dead Sea, and Mr. Grove has translated for this work M. Lartet's elaborate essay on its formation, also M.Terreil's essay on the composition of its water. The work also contains summaries of all that, up to its publication, was known about the tombs of the Patriarchs at Hebron. More, however, has been added to our knowledge by the visits of the Contemporary Literature. 235 Prince of Wales and Mr. Fergusson than was possessed before. It is a singular illustration of the tenacity of Mussulman exclusiveness, that all our affirmations concerning the visit of the latter were met at Hebron by an utter and abrupt denial. Ritter enters fully into the entangled question concerning the origin of the Mosque of Omar, the site of the Temple, the Walls of Jerusalem, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He affirms, on the authority of Arabian historians, that the House of the Rock was erected by the Caliph Abd-al-Melek in the year 686. He ridicules Mr. Fergusson's whimsical hypothesis,' that the Mosque of Omar is identical with the ancient Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A singular blunder of either the author or the translator represents the cave under the Kubbet es Sukhrah-the summit of Moriah,as 600 feet in length; the entire platform, in the centre of which the Mosque of Omar stands, is only 550 feet long. The Mosque of Omar itself is an octagon, each side of which measures only 67 feet, and the cave of the rock occupies but a small portion of its area. Speaking simply from the impression made by it, we should say that it is not more than 30 feet in diameter. Large additions again have been made to the literature of the Haram since Ritter wrote. The editor has_appended notes to indicate the principal conclusions thus reached. It is superfluous to commend a work of so peerless a character as this. By publishing it at a price so reasonable, Messrs. Clark have placed it within the reach of almost every Biblical student, and few, we apprehend, will be without it. The Life of David Roberts, R.A. Compiled from his Journals and other sources. By JAMES BALLANTINE. With Etchings and Facsimiles of Pen-and-ink Sketches by the Artist. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black. We are getting rich in biographies of British painters. We have great painters enough, and biographical materials enough for a Vasari of our own, whenever he shall appear; not to speak of past generations, although the memoirs of many of them are being produced in this, we have Haydon, Leslie, Uwins, Turner, Blake, David Scott, Wilkie, and many others; to which the interesting biography of Roberts must now be added. It is remarkable, too, how many of them are Scotchmen; and men who have fought their way upward from a very low social level, by dint of genius and determination. Perhaps no population so small, not excepting old Greece itself, has furnished so large a proportion of men eminent in almost every department of literature and art. It might not be difficult to select reasons for this, but so it is. David Roberts was a Scotchman, the son of a working shoemaker in Stockbridge, near Edinburgh, whose highest ambition it was to see him a worthy devotee of St. Crispin-able to make and mend shoon.' His parents were industrious, moral, and affectionate; they did their best by their son, and he repaid their love by his grateful care. They were 'very poor,' and could not, therefore, give him much education. His artistic genius found its first rude, but unmistakeable expression, in attempts to represent to his mother what he had seen on the Mound, in panoramas and wild beast shows, by scratches on the whitewashed kitchen wall, with the end of a burnt stick and a bit of keel.' He copied such pictures and engravings as he could procure, and was especially elated when a lady gave him drawings to copy. He showed his productions to Grahame, then master of the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, with a view to his becoming an artist-pupil there. Grahame, however, gave what Roberts thinks the most judicious advice-that he should be apprenticed to a house-painter, which would enable him still to practise drawing, while he learnt an art by which he could at any rate earn his living. Accordingly he was apprenticed for seven years to Mr. Gavin Bengo, an ornamental house-painter, who appears to have been a capricious and tyrannical master. His long winter evenings were industriously spent in drawing, the light of the lamp by which his father was mending shoes being laid under contribution. This was very characteristic. Through life his dogged perseverance, and amazing power of work, fulfilled in him Carlyle's conception of the chief part of genius. At the close of his apprenticeship he became scenic artist to a travelling circus, occasionally taking his part on the stage, and availing himself of the opportunities which it afforded of copying bits of cathedrals and of public buildings wherever he went. Then he was engaged as scene painter in an Edinburgh theatre; and gradually won for himself a reputation sufficient to secure for him an engagement at Drury Lane, where he was associated with Clarkson Stanfield, his great rival in artistic fame, but his life-long friend. His first oil painting was sent to the Edinburgh Exhibition of 1821, and was rejected; but this only stimulated him to fresh efforts, and the following year he sent three pictures, of which, to his great surprise and delight, two were not only hung, but sold at 50s. each. The amount of work which he sometimes did as a scene painter was almost incredible, and yet every year he exhibited pictures; until his work rapidly brought him both fame and fortune. The chief interest of his life centres in these early struggles. There is but little to note concerning his long subsequent career as an artist. It is a continuous triumphal procession-unbroken by vicissitude, unshadowed by care. He journeyed to Spain, and filled his portfolio with two or three hundred subjects for pictures. He then went to the East, and in Upper Egypt, Sinai, Palestine, and Syria made the sketches for his magnificent and successful work on 'Egypt, Nubia, and the Holy Land.' His journals during these journeys are somewhat commonplace; they are, indeed, little more than an artist's log. Roberts possessed none of the literary power which, apart from their professional art, distinguished some of his brethren - Haydon, David Scott, William Blake, and Leslie, for instance. His letters are full of good sense, and of a homely kindliness of heart, which give a very favourable impression of the man. His eye is that of an artist, in form and colour; not that of poetic imagination, or of an artist in words. Happy in his family, happy in his friends, honouring and supporting his aged parents, and honoured and loved by them-the glory of his countrymen, and at the pinnacle of artistic fame--he had nothing to desire. He died in 1864, at the age of sixty-eight, the greatest architectural painter that Britain has produced. Mr. Ballantine, who edits his autobiography, was his colour boy in the Edinburgh Theatre, and his life-long friend. He has himself achieved fame, in both glass-staining and literature. We could, however, have wished for a better book than this is. The feeling which has left Roberts almost entirely to tell the story of his own life is very praiseworthy; but much of mere diary detail might advantageously have been omitted from his journals, and much might have been added by Mr. Ballantine himself that would have given a richer setting to the letters and more vivid colours to the portrait. Roberts was the centre of a |