resolves itself into order and harmony. Surely there is a place in the Spiritual Universe near the throne of God, whence we shall see the confusions of earth resolved into beauty and joy.

We have seen the barriers of time broken down, and an eternal purpose working through the ages; and we feel we can trust Him who is strong and patient, to whom a thousand years are as one day.

We have in still later times become conscious of an all-pervading energy filling the Universe, felt by the living and the dead, indestructible as the atoms of which science tells us; and unless we deify matter, teaching a "fetish doctrine," or destroy the unity which science tends ever more to establish, we must believe in one almighty power working through the visible. Surely we have been Manichees in spirit; we have not felt, as we ought, that the Kosmos is a Word of God, and so it has not been to us, as it might be, as it was to the deep thinkers of old, to Prophets and Apostles, and to the greatest poets of our century—a sacrament of the invisible.

"The arras folds that variegate

The earth, God's ante-chamber."

This consciousness breathes through all the poetry of Wordsworth :—

"And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things".

1 Prof. Newman.

It was felt, though less intimately, by Coleridge :

"Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?-
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,

And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"

Although one cannot say such a thought is the life of Tennyson's poetry, as it is of Wordsworth's, one meets here and there the very strongest utterances of this Christian doctrine.

"Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meetCloser is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. " Thus we find in the scientific teaching of our own days much to lift us to higher moral and spiritual conceptions to make us in a real sense catholics, through the sense of a Divine presence, which makes all things one-to teach us that isolation is death.

As the heavens have opened and shown us the Infinite, as in the great Rock-book we have read of the Eternal, so in the energies immanent in Matter, which control and guide the worlds, and rule the motions of the invisible atoms, we see shadowed forth the Living, the Omnipresent God.

The Connection of Literature with history.

THE Connection of literature with history, of thought uttered with thought acted, the power of events to mould the character, is a subject of unfailing interest in biography, and is perhaps even more so in the biography of nations. Of them, as of individuals, it is true that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and, in the writings which have been preserved, more perhaps than in the study of the mere acts of men, do we learn that through work and sorrow and material prosperity each nation has wrought out its own salvation, or that of others. We shall find throughout many analogies between individual and national history, and yet there are differences in the work assigned to each; as Dante has pointed out in "De Monarchia," the functions of the individual, the city, the state must be distinct.

Still, we may perhaps treat many of the causes of excellence as common, premising however, that too great importance should not be attached to external causes, when they are brought to bear upon a man already educated, a nation already civilised; a fever may stunt the growth of a child, which would be powerless to affect the frame of a grown man. Thus savage races melt away before the advance of civilisation, for the weaker the will, the individuality, the more is man the prey of circumstances.

First I would inquire what are the causes which tend to produce not merely individual excellence in literature, but those bright periods of which we read

from time to time in the world's history; and seek out what are the causes which, on the contrary, tend to produce decay. Possibly we may find our inquiries not merely what Bacon would have called light-bringing, but also fruit-bearing.

Before proceeding further it may be well to define not only what is meant by literature generally, but specially what is meant by the literature of an age. This may be defined as the deliberate expression in written words of the thoughts of that age, thought crystallised into permanent form by written words. It is only one of many modes of utterance. In the physical world, for instance, force applied in various ways may cause a fluid to be agitated by waves, or boil with heat, or slowly and noiselessly build up crystalline forms of beauty and symmetry. So there seems to be in the world of thought a conservation of energy, a correlation of forces. Energy may be transformed into action, and then the great men are found amongst the fighters rather than the orators. It may be transformed into passion, and find its expression in the words and works of revolutionary periods, in rhapsody, in music.

We have next to consider, a priori, what causes tend to produce energy, and further, to direct that energy into literary channels. Let us then inquire what tends to bring out strength and earnestness in individuals, to lead them to use to the utmost, and to develop to high perfection, the ability that is in them. It is clear that no one produces great works without some powerful stimulus, it may be of a higher or of a lower kind. Thus, with some it is the necessity of earning money, with others it is ambition, and with others enthusiasm in a noble cause, patriotism, religious zeal, admiration of the noble things done by those who

have gone before, and that excellent emulation which cares nothing to be best, but much to be good. Still there must not be stimulus alone, for then the energy will rather tend to express itself in action: there must be leisure to reflect, to shape a monument worthy to take its place among the abiding works of the world, and such works cannot be produced by one spasmodic effort. The sculptor, the musician, the artist, must gather and garner thought; then indeed, in the moment of enthusiasm the eager mind may shape the living form, and with the energy of genius, by a few rapid acts produce the outline of a great work. But it is, we venture to think, rarely, that even the greatest masters have left any very rapid work to perpetuate their fame. Euripides wrote ten iambics at a sitting, and Virgil five hexameters a day, and we read of Leonardo da Vinci spending three years on one portrait. Dante was not a rapid writer. Chaucer says—

"There is no workeman

That can bothe worken well and hastilie,
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie".

Shakespeare seems to have produced successive editions of his plays; Milton brooded for half a life-time over his mighty theme, and in our own day we have records of the prolonged labours of a Tennyson and a Macaulay.

So there seems, too, a brooding period for nations. If we look into the most brilliant periods, we shall generally find them not contemporaneous with, but rather succeeding, a time when men's spirits were stirred by some great motive power. The high tide follows the moon, the wave must have time to gather strength ere it can rise: so there must be first, time for the thought to rouse feeling; there must be leisure to give to the feeling expression. Times of literary barren