And

Therefore, no doubt fully twenty million fret and fume their petty hour on the stage of France, fully convinced that they are something, and thanking God, openly or tacitly, that they are not as other men. why not? Let them enjoy their self-importance; let them fancy the cage in which they dwell to be the world, and the some dozen or two who know them by name, and who would eat, and drink, and sleep not the less though they were gone,-let them think these represent its inhabitants: their delusion is as good as any other; far better than any I have to offer in exchange.

66

Knowledge," says Solomon, "is more precious than rubies, and more to be desired than fine gold." But Solomon is not very consistent, and his own authority may often be quoted against him. He has also said that knowledge increaseth sorrow. For my own part, if there were any magazine or warehouse in which good comfortable delusions could be purchased, I would offer in barter all my rubies, which are none, and even a portion of my gold, though altogether it consists only of thirty sovereigns, and a credit for as many at Vienna. Ah, Solomon, if you had not been so completely désillusionné-if you could but have built a few castles in the air, like the temple of Jerusalem-if you could but have imagined a finer and brighter being than any of your six hundred wives and infinite concubines, you would have been a happier man, and not have written that first chapter in Ecclesiastes, nor gone after the gods of the heathen.

But delusions once dissipated are not to be reproduced. We get cold, and difficult to please; the pleasures of imagination are put aside with the toys of our childhood. We clothe ourselves with the homespun of convention and common sense, and buy our pleasures with the current coin of the realm, even though cheated twenty per cent. in the name of agio, as we are in the Crimea.

September 18.

Thanks to my civilian's dress, I am allowed to wander at will over the vast encampment, so that I am in all its localities, and can find my way from one part of the canvas city to another as easily as I do in Gloucester, which contains about half the population.

Shakspeare, with his happy choice of epithets, speaks of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. The pomp needs no unfolding. Every one can imagine flags and trumpets, plumed Highlanders and glittering cavalry. They may see it at Astley's much grander than the reality; (!) but only they who have served a campaign will recognise the aptness of the other epithet, as describing the obtrusiveness and palpability of military importance. The circumstance of rich men and of men of rank, and in general of the whole class of dons, is in part ideal, and requires filling up by the imagination; but the circumstance of a colonel at the head of his regiment is a real fact, while generals and commanders seem to be Fates charged with the destiny of man. Nor is the circumstance, like the pomp, adventitious—a thing which may be dispensed with; it is involved in the very idea of an army, which could not exist without the chasms which military rank interposes between the different grades, making the highest somewhat awful and mysterious to the dazzled eyes of subalterns and soldiers.

But at present the circumstance of glorious war is nearly as highly

;

appreciated by the civilian as by the military man, for the interest attending the present contest is becoming more and more engrossing, and likely to put in the shade all other subjects. Before 1848 it was otherwise war and warriors were at a discount, and literature and science were the channels into which the impulse of the human race was thrown. But the interest directed towards war is the more intense. It is a simple subject on which every one can have some opinion, whereas while literature and science were in the ascendant the topics of interest were infinite in number, and, instead of converging towards one prominent idea, they radiated outwards to the wide circumference of knowledge. Only the philosopher of universal acquirements took any interest in the general progress. Scientific men, although interested in discovery in those sciences which they cultivated, took little account of the advance in other directions while men of ordinary education, and the public in general, never thought of looking at the direction of the current down which they were insensibly floating. Nevertheless, the intellectual movement was worthy of attention and admiration, for never did war nor invasion so completely change the face of the world as did the progress of knowledge during the years intervening between Waterloo and 1848. If we were adequate to the task, we would like to give an analysis of this remarkable period, point out the leading lines of progress, and indicate the more important steps in advance which have been achieved. Not being able to accomplish this task, we make one general remark, namely, that the intellectual progress we have made brings into striking relief the disproportion between the length of human life and the immense apparatus of pursuits, businesses, knowledge, and relations which present themselves to man. The pomp of life is absurdly exaggerated as compared with its circumstance. The musicians are more numerous than the soldiers, and the banners and flags float so thick in the air they nearly hide the army; or, to alter the image, we seem to see the clothes of Micromegas laid out for Tom Thumb, or provisions sufficient for an army stored up for the use of a single soldier.

This disproportion was not so striking before Waterloo. Threescore years and ten seemed then a period of life well proportioned to the state of knowledge and variety of interests then in the world. And if we go still further back in history, the relation becomes inverted, and twenty years seem enough to exhaust the limited varieties of experience. Let us get still nearer the origin of man, when life becomes most simple, dwindling down to a pastoral or hunting state, and we see the duration of existence immeasurably extended, and the antediluvians, who transmitted through Noah neither sciences nor arts, enjoying an average period of life of five hundred years.

POSSIBILITIES.

BEYOND VISION.-III.

BY EDWARD P. ROWSELL.

WE wish we had the means of carrying out the following curious design. From the vilest haunt in London we should like to rescue the most degraded and depraved girl of about thirteen years of age whom we might be able to find. This miserable creature we should like to raise by slow degrees to the highest point of refinement. Tardily but completely we should remove from her every sign of her former condition, until at length we might introduce her to the world as an elegant, graceful, and accomplished young lady. It would be so strange to watch the progress of improvement. The exterior losing day by day its coarseness, the mind expanding, the heart softening, the crushed and deadened spirit rising and smiling in the new and heavenly light. How it would make us glow with pure pleasure to observe this battle between good and evil, between beauty and deformity, and watch the gradual incoming of happiness and peace where before wretchedness and vice had reigned supreme.

Now it might have been that we had had the power of gratifying this strange fancy. If we had, what a vast alteration would have occurred in the fate of some Susan Smith or Betsy Brown, revelling now in a polluted region of this great city. We will say that, roaming abroad one night, we had made a capture of Susan Smith in one of the hideous nooks about Southwark. We had found her as deplorable a specimen of misery and vice as could have been selected. And we had put her under the treatment we have sketched; and the results had been those we have imagined. Well, what then? Why, it would appear that Susan Smith might now be a virtuous, engaging, well-educated young woman. Yes, instead of what? Instead of being a blot upon the land and a curse-instead of lying at this moment, a despairing reprobate, on an hospital bed, to be quickly exchanged for a pauper's grave.

And you

Reader, you must have heard plenty of charity sermons. must have remarked in sermons for penitentiaries, schools, and such institutions, the preacher has always laid immense stress upon the moral responsibility resting upon the good and the wealthy to reform and to teach the wicked and the ignorant among the poor. The pious advocate has almost gone the length of saying, that with you it will lie whether or no certain souls shall be saved. If you give so much money to a particular reformatory, a number of cases which cannot now be admitted will be instantly received, a great mercy now unavoidably withheld will be delightedly supplied, a vast blessing now of necessity kept back will be proffered with gladness, and will, most assuredly, be grasped with joy. And there is nothing extravagant in this. Doubtless it would seem that evil might be nearly uprooted from the land if the help extended to our backsliding or needy fellow-creatures were commensurate with their requirements. Vice would shrink and cower amazingly if virtue were fairly to buckle on her armour, and, girding herself with all the weapons with

which her holy character supplies her, were to refuse to know slumber until her mortal foe should lie prostrate in the dust.

But we know well that good has never assumed this determined aspect, or played this vigorous part. Thousands of wretched creatures who apparently might have been wrenched from evil have lived and perished in it, and every day destruction embraces many a weak and laden heart, simply, it might seem, because no kind and influential friend has stood forth in the service of truth to startle with the cry "Forbear!" and to soften with the whisper, "Come!"

Now, if many a man at this moment high uprearing his head in conscious honesty would have been, but for certain favourable circumstances which moulded his character and marked his course, an atrocious villain, and if many a fallen creature whose bones moulder in a dishonoured grave would have been, but for certain unfavourable circumstances which beset his path, dodged his steps, worked upon his weaknesses, and poisoned his soul, a true and faithful worker, a curious inquiry must, of necessity, present itself, how far "circumstances" affect the moral responsibility of every living being.

If I had found and taken charge of Susan Smith, and almost forced her into virtue by my unremitting care of her, how far could she be considered meritorious over Betsy Brown, who remained a miserable profligate simply because no hand drew her from her degradation, and held her in the right path? My choice might have lighted upon Betsy Brown, and then she might have been raised to respectability, leaving Susan Smith to live and die among the hopelessly depraved. Look around. As I journey along the streets, I behold a being so fearfully disfigured, such a frightful spectacle, that I turn away sick and horrified. I see a man dragged between two policemen, followed by the lowest rabble. I hear that this wretched creature has just murdered his wife in a fit of fury occasioned by intoxication. He has been seized, he has resisted, he has been beaten with staves until his features have become almost undistinguishable, he is covered from top to toe with blood and dust, his head lies on his shoulder, he is almost insensible, he will quickly be before a magistrate, he will be committed for trial, he will be triedwill be convicted-will be hung until he is dead-will be- -What then? Who shall answer? Who shall dare to say, that, this awful misery ended, worse torment shall begin? Reader, I tell you solemnly, that while, without being a pharisee, I hold myself as free from tendency to dark guilt as most men-while, not as a mere farce and form, but truly and sincerely, I thank God that I am not as this murderer-yet I have no assurance but that I might have been the same, and done the same, had his circumstances been mine. And I have no conviction that because he is what he is and I am what I am, therefore I dare reckon that I am his superior save in the sight of surface-judging men. The truth-the truth is hidden now. Who shall abide the withdrawal of the cloud which screens it? This appalling outcast might, with my opportunities, have been far better than I am, and I, under his temptations, been far worse than he. Who shall talk of merit, and who shall look down upon his neighbour? The best amongst us will be the lowliest; the highest saint will be the most merciful judge.

And now it is unquestionably a great mystery is this seeming truth,

that we are rather what we are made by circumstances than what we become through listening to or rejecting any counsel within ourselves. Because, inasmuch as there is no such thing as chance, as every event, both great and small, owes its occurrence to some operation of the Master Will which rules all, both above and below, therefore it would appear that, if not actually compelled to the words we say and the actions we perform, we nevertheless are either so led or so driven to the utterance of the former and the committal of the latter, that, to judge us in respect of them, to punish us for the bad and reward us for the good, would appear inconsistent with Supreme Justice and unerring Truth. Survey this murderer. Almost every circumstance from his youth up seemed to tend darkly to the terrible consummation. The offspring of vice, in vice he was nurtured, and vice he was trained to love. Taught no means of obtaining a livelihood save dishonest means, dishonest means he adopted rather than starve. Beaten and bruised when weak as a child, he seemed but to follow out his teaching when, with man's strength, he oppressed and ill-treated such as he could master. Led to drink by misery, incited to quarrel by fever, hurled to murder by madness, cast down groaning and despairing by remorse, goaded to frenzy by fear, and, at the last, dying sullen and unrepentant through the previous death in him of all sensibility, of all power of thought and understanding, are we not in a difficulty when we note how completely some evil influence seems to have clutched and guided this man's fate from the time when light first shone upon him as an infant at the breast to the moment when the executioner's task was done? Mark yonder saint upon his knees. His is no feigned devotion. His whole life has been true and holy, and his death will be blessed. Yet undoubtedly there is an inclination to surmise, that if in infancy the babes had been exchanged, and he who is now a saint had been given over to the sinners, and he who is a murderer had been handed to the saints, their respective courses would have been correspondingly changed, the gallows-tree would have exhibited the body of him who will now fall asleep under angel guardianship, and he would have gone hence, with holy calm, who will now be wrenched away from earth in agony and shame.'

There is another point of mystery deserving of notice. It is embraced in the greater marvel of the compatibility of universal providence with final judgment; but it would have existence independently of that wonder, and would remain if the loftier difficulty were done away. We allude to the effect of intercession or prayer. There are many texts in Scripture pointing to the efficacy of intercession, and to intercession for others. It would seem as though there might at this moment be a great blessing hovering over, or withheld from me, according as prayer in my behalf may be uttered or restrained by some pious well-wisher. Consider how much the happiness of others enters into both public and private prayer. We pray for the Queen, for all in authority, for bishops and priests. We pray for other nations, for Jews, Turks, and infidels. pray for the fallen and degraded; the outcast has our prayer, the worst criminal, the most degraded sinner. A man might be contemplating the committal, this very night, of some terrible deed of blood. As far as any irresolution within himself was concerned, it might have absolutely disappeared. A fierce desire, an irrepressible longing, might

We