moral and religious needs of men, considers how this theory meets those needs. It does not profess to find any such immediate, authoritative disclosure of a moral governor as does the intuitive theory, a profession which avails nothing if the theory is overthrown by facts. But his view recognizes a vast, orderly, progressive scheme of things, suggestive at least of a moral order underlying the universe. Clear and satisfactory provision for worship he does not yet find. But we have a provision, holds our essayist, a provision firm and powerful, for the conduct of man among his fellows. For the enlightened mind, this is the obvious elementary principle: "That the happiness of all be protected and cultivated;" and "the knowledge of what is best must bind a rational being.” As an external force, we have the tremendous engine of public sentiment :

The influence of society a weak, insufficient foundation for the moral sentiment! I entreat those who make the objection to consider what and how great a thing to man is the good opinion of his fellow-man. It visits him in every relation of humanity, from parents, from children, from neighbours, from citizens; it is equally present in life public and domestic; it mingles with almost every enjoyment; it is blended, either as object or as means, with every hope and every project of his existence. .. Man lives, for pleasure or for pain, in deed or in thought, in constant collision with his fellow-men; they are beings without whom he can do nothing, yet as they are beings of the same passions with himself they have conflicting claims; he must yield, he must compromise, must secure their friendship, must avert their emnity. A new want arises, perpetual, and that can never be shaken off a want the summary of a thousand wants the want of the good opinion of these fellowmen. Is this a motive, a part of our mental constitution, likely to fail us, to grow weak and languid as society advances, and becomes, as it must become, more and more complicated? Is it likely to decay as the interests of life become more keen, widespreading, and interwoven? God has set men to be rulers over

men

all over each; that is his moral government, which He has, in the first instance, established upon the earth, a government which must continue and improve with every improvement made in the means and knowledge of happiness, a government which in its plan, and progress, and by its connection and harmony with other parts of the system of nature, claims to have sprung from the Author of creation.

And now that he has spoken his deepest, most serious word, he returns to quiet work, upon book reviews and sketches and one or two dramas, and it is almost twenty years before he again in the world's hearing recurs to the direct discussion of the greatest themes of all, whose fascination for him has never intermitted.

CHAPTER X.

THE REVIEWER.

IN the connection with "Blackwood's Magazine," which began in 1839, William Smith found what proved to be the chief external business of his life. For a few years longer there continued some formal allegiance to the law, but writing for the magazine, principally in the form of literary reviews, soon became his main occupation. It was a work and a place which admirably suited him. His contributions brought a modest income, which came ere long to be his main dependence. For such a man literature in any shape could never be a lucrative profession, and it was much to find in it a resource sufficient for bread-winning and for independence. The work was in the direct line of his tastes and powers, it dealt with congenial and beloved themes, yet it lay apart from those fundamental problems of thought whose fascination had so strong an element of disquiet. There would seem at first an incompatibility between a speculator so daring and heterodox, and the organ of staunch conservatism; all the more, since the articles in "Blackwood" were unsigned, and stood in the name of the editorial "we." But William Smith's articles dealt neither with current politics nor with theology, and in the fields of general literature, poetry, history, and metaphysics, as well as romance and travel, the magazine gave all the scope he required.

The obituary notice of him in "Blackwood" (October, 1872) shows in what high estimation he was held by its conductors, who, it is equally plain, were at a wide remove from that attitude in religion and philosophy which

characterizes "Thorndale" and "Gravenhurst."

The

more noticeable therefore is the recognition of his personal traits.

In his youth, the circle of young men who surrounded him expected for him the highest fame; he was to be their leader, the foremost in all intellectual progress, always the superior, in those visions of the future which are often so widely apart from reality. But if others passed him in the race, pressed on higher, and won more dazzling prizes, it was because the finer qualities of his mind outweighed the coarser, and fastidious taste and a retiring disposition withdrew him from the common arena, where, amid shouts and cheers and commonplace din, the ordinary competitors for fame take their places, disregarding all its vulgar circumstances. He could not disregard them. His nature was so constituted that he shrank from the noises, whether applausive or otherwise.

No better type could be found of the true man of letters, the student, scholar, and critic of our days, who is already beginning to yield to a hastier and more shallow class of modern commentators. He was not of those who dash off a breathless criticism on the spur of the moment, or arrogantly pretend to judge of subjects upon which they have the merest smattering of knowledge. He belonged to the older fashion of man, who had the habit of mastering a subject before speaking of it, and of bringing a richly cultivated understanding, a mind and memory full of all that is excellent in the past, to the consideration of the affairs and productions of the present. That charm of culture which, next to genius, is almost the most delightful of mental conditions, was his in an eminent degree.

In finding at last a vocation so well fitted to his inclination and his powers, he had gained one of the prime conditions of happiness and content. If we have been right in discerning in "Wild Oats" the traces of a self-mastery and recall from undisciplined brooding and idleness, we may find one of the evidences of a more concentrated and purposeful life, as well as a great aid to it, in this entry upon periodical literature as a profession. Fame there

was none from anonymous contributions, but there was outlet for the eager faculties, there was that consciousness of a worthy and an attentive audience which is the best spur to a true author; and that absorption of the writer's personality by the magazine which deprived him of personal credit weighted his words to the world's ear with the sanction of a great authority.

He was inherently a judge and not an advocate, and the wool-sack to which he was predestined was in the courts not of law but of literature. The most striking feature of his reviews is the quality of even-handed justice. He makes it his business to give a frank and discriminating award upon each book's merits and faults; to instance to the reader its quality by free quotation, a matter in which he is far more generous than is now the usual practice of reviewers; and, also, to discuss somewhat from his own standpoint the ground which the book traverses. The easy and lucid style seldom rises into brilliance; there is a generous but tempered ardor; the constant purpose to be just does not often allow the sparkle of epigram; but now and then there occurs a passage of delicate and melodious grace. The contributions of the earlier years are diversified by brief tales and romances, sometimes with an underlying moral, sometimes of pure amusement, showing the mind unbent and the fancy in free play.

From this broad and tempting field we can gather here only the merest handful, so choosing as to illustrate how some phases of life were received and interpreted by this observer. Let us take first a scene ("Mildred," December, 1846) from a region where as yet we have had no glimpse of him, in a ball-room.

Found where it is, it is certainly a remarkable phenomenon, this waltz. Look now at that young lady—how cold, formal, stately! how she has been trained to act the little queen amongst her admirers and flatterers! See what a reticence in