HAST THOU DEIGNED TO CALL ME BROTHER? "For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren."-HEB. ii. 11. Favoured of this fair creation- Shrink not from the cup of scorn, Even now in mystic story [Favourite R. P. M. Since W. L.'s former appearance in our pages he has made great progress. Although we do not think the topic peculiarly suitable for a young poet, the conception is clear, and the treatment chaste, the diction well chosen, and the rhythm well managed. It is a hopeful and promising sign that he has striven to profit by our former hints-and has profited. We think we may safely say that we have seen nothing better on the subject of late, except some verses of Mrs. Webster, and an idyl of Robert Buchanan's, both of whom are acknowledged occupants of a place among modern poets. We shall be glad to find W. L., by toil of brain and diligence of art, doing better and better still,-for, notwithstanding what we have said, that is possible. WITHOUT. "One more unfortunate, Weary of breath."- "Bridge of Sighs." TO-NIGHT I am alone, and while apart I stand and watch the people pass, I try To still the brain-born thoughts that fill my heart [they Me names, far worse than those wild words which fell From out my lips on him that wrought my fall. [Wrung from Men!-well, forgive me if I call them men, For they are all the sort that cross my path, Though I for vengeance tempt them now and then, And teach them they can fall-it cools my wrath : Yet, for the sake of him who loved my birth, [whom O women! what can I, since I have done My heart with pain so sore, my soul yet lives, Forth in your gloriousness, for ye alone can save; [pure [chasteness [reach [course Ah me! what time is that which floats from far, [tone When life was sweet, without this weary war? [woe's Yea, sounds like those which from yon church floats out, For once 'twas ours, though now 'tis theirs; they sit about, O tears, why will you flow? Why melts my soul? That hastes me far and farther from the day? I yet may be within, and hear that strain, (To be continued.) [chance [breathe balm [stand W. L. ALL legislation implies change, and the instruments of legislation will vary according as the motive power of change resides in one set of persons or in another. The Lords may possibly represent some classes in England, but they do not represent the classes in which the motive power of change resides. They are thus necessarily cut out of the sphere of legislation, and every day their exclusion becomes more complete.-Saturday Review. 66 The Reviewer. Two Addresses-I. Systematic Policy. II. Education. By RICHARD CONGREVE, M.A., &c. London: Trübner and Co. RICHARD CONGREVE is, in many ways, a man of mark, whose utterances on such topics as he here discourses upon ought to receive attention. Born in 1818, and educated at Rugby under the care of Dr. Arnold in his very prime and energy, he entered Wadham College, Oxford, in 1836, and at the Michaelmas term in 1840 graduated B.A.-taking a first-class degree along with Rev. John Hannah, Warden of Glenalmond College, Perth, who recently refused an English deanery; Ralph R. W. Lingen, chief secretary of the Privy Council Committee on Education; and three others, in literis humanioribus;" while Edward Warner, formerly MP. for Norwich, from the same college, took a first-class in mathematics and physics. Richard Congreve graduated M.A. in 1844, and took priest's orders. He was chosen Fellow of his college, and subsequently Tutor and Lecturer in Humanity. In 1855 he had acquired a reputation such as to secure for him a call to lecture before the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh. His lectures, under the title of "The Roman Empire in the West," were almost immediately published, and in the same year his translation of "The Politics of Aristotle" appeared with notes, in which his adhesion to the views of Auguste Comte was abundantly apparent. In 1858 he translated Comte's "Catechism of Positive Religion." He again lectured in the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution in 1862 on "Elizabeth of England; " these two lectures have been published. He has also issued a lecture on Gibraltar; or, the Foreign Policy of England," and pamphlets on "India," land,' Italy and the Western Powers," "The Labour Question," &c., all more or less expository of the political philosophy of positivism. More directly and officially as the High Priest of the British Centre of the Universal Church of believers in the Religion of Humanity, he has laid his views before the public on "The Attitude of the New Religion towards the Old," "The Propagation of the Religion of Humanity," &c. His latest productions in this connection are the two addresses now before us for notice, which were "delivered on the Festival of Humanity in the years 81 and 82 since the opening of the French Revolution,-Jan. 1st, 1869; Jan. 1st, 1870," to the members of the London Organization of Comtists meeting in Bouverie Street. We unhesitatingly commend them to the perusal, not only of those of our readers who have been led to interest themselves in the new phases of faith presented to us in the Religion of Comte by the papers which recently appeared (1868) in this serial on "Positivism and its Founder," but to that of all those who care for vigorous original thought well 66 66 expressed, even though they doubt-as we do-the tenets of the new religion, and feel no sympathy with the cold abstraction which it calls on us to substitute for the living Christ of the creed of Christendom. Without attempting an analysis of these addresses, which might lessen the interest of our readers in their perusal, we may whet their appetites, and illustrate their worth and suggestiveness by the following quotations: "Christianity was the first great conscious innovation on the earlier religious experience of mankind, which had previously moved on without any sense of a break, developing itself spontaneously to meet the wants of man as they made themselves felt, and in each successive stage animated by no hostility to what had gone before." "They who at the opening of a new era, at the beginning of a great change, are not in opposition to it, but, to the best of their ability, promoting it, have usually a more vivid conviction of its necessity and its promise, and have the greater vigour such conviction gives. The contrast of the old and the new, of the remnants of the past with the construction rising from among them, the sense of opposition, and the assurance of triumph, all aid them in presenting more definitely to themselves the object of their efforts." "Great intellects and great characters are a costly production, and the generations are to blame which stand by and see such inestimable value wasted." "Peace on earth, which for centuries was the prayer of Christendom, whilst the constant existence of war was a glaring contradiction to its aspiration, and a testimony to the insufficiency of its doctrines, is still, as ever, the wish of all good men, and, under the action of the purely human movement which we call industry, is on the eve of becoming more and more a reality." "West of us the world is sown with republics. Under such conditions we may be sure that at a period not to be fixed, but certain to come, England will resume her noblest tradition-re-enter the path indicated by Cromwell, by Milton and the younger Sidney, join her co-partners of the Western world, and place herself as a republic, or a union of republics, on a level with and in sympathy with them. Nor will Germany fail to share in the movement." "We accept, in principle, the present division of the industrial class into employer and employed. We accept it not with mere acquiescence, but as a precious acquisition of the race, to be carefully guarded and acted upon. We are opposed to the co-operative system, or the system of collective capitalists, as tending to remove responsibility from the master, and confer no real boon on the workman." "Universities, colleges and schools, endowments and scholarships and prizes, all the whole machinery of corruption which has gradually accumulated, and which is vitiating at its spring the national life, and destroying the first element of all sound social union, the right constitution and legitimate influence of the family, all cease to retain their hold on our reason, and we see them in their true light, as having done a work in the absence of better agencies, but destined to give place, however slowly, to those better agencies when they can be brought to bear upon society." |