in some curious knowledge, some vivid pictures characteristic: of the time; but it, nevertheless, induces us to feel the weakness, rather than the strength, both of John Inglesant and also of Platonic tendencies. We are kept uncomfortably aware that 'man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.' The 'fallings from us, the vanishings, the blank misgivings,' do not seem to leave on us the impression of spiritual mastery; they do not uphold or cherish; rather, they perplex and afflict; we seem, in them, to be touched with sickness, with masterless confusion between fact and fiction, between waking and dreaming.

We cannot but think that the power of the Christian Revelation, as contrasted with this, lies in its steady grip on solid fact, in its broad open-hearted recognition of matter, in its attachment to historical realities, in its physical fulness, in its ready welcome to the value of body. The Word took flesh.' There is the sacred phrase, in which we victoriously surpass the insecurities of the Platonic position. The earth wins to itself the needful subsistence; the flesh is no longer a dark puzzle; matter no longer falls away from us into hollow emptiness; life steadies itself into a sacramental reality, which evidences and strengthens, instead of disguising and diminishing, the penetrative energies of the Spirit that possesses it. This is what lifts us out of the shadowy reverie of strange and bewildering symbolism into the sturdy recognition of the spiritual actuality of natural facts. How shall we put the difference? Perhaps, most concretely in this: that the instinct of the reverie is to seek to snatch a revelation out of the least known incidents, out of the effects that belong to the edge of human experience, out of those abnormal and unusual effects that hover between the subjective and objective worlds; it haunts the supernaturalistic circles of Alchemy, of Visions, of Astrology, of Spiritualism. The instinct of the truer mysticism, as we would venture to call it, feels no need to fly from the common and the normal. It is these that Spirit creates and uses; in the normal fact, then, will be detected the normal action of Spirit. So believing, it clings to the sound and solid central mass of human experiences, seeking its manifestation and its realization in this core of accepted fact: it can endure to let the edges and the fringes of life shade off into doubtful obscurity, unanxious and unassertive, where certainty fails it. Perhaps Mr. Shorthouse will forgive us if we say that his beautiful book leaves us with an impression rather of the first than of the second temper; and will pardon us again if we are wrong in

suggesting that to this same temper may belong the unfortunate expression of 'Christian Myth' in the preface to the second edition. Materialism, in our day, has a valid lesson to teach us: the worth and significance of fact; and it will bear down, with overwhelming impetus, upon anything that claims no more for itself than a 'mythical,' or emotional, or imaginative standing. So much for the philosophy.

The religious bearings of the book are of permanent and positive value, for they raise the spiritual question into a form at once decisive and vital. This form is the Sacramental. No other aspect of the religious problem seems to present itself to the author as within the region of practical consideration. It is almost amusing to note the entire absence, from the dramatic scene of discussion, of all those theological controversies over which Protestantism would wage its battle with Rome. They do not appear for examination. At the utmost, they present a curious specimen or two of personal character, more or less monstrous in type, which the author uses for a moment and drops, poor Mr. Thorne, e.g., and the fanatic at the Court of the Duke of Umbria, who offers a momentary contrast of great brilliancy and skill to the tolerant humanity of the magnificent Italian Renaissance. But that is all. Theological controversies all resolve themselves into the one absorbing question-'How, and where, without loss to my individual freedom of nature, can I secure Sacramental Grace?' The Christian life is a life in Christ; and a life in Christ is a life fed, here and now, by the flesh and the blood of a living and present Christ. Christianity, then, is a sacrament; and its realization is the Eucharist, brought nigh by the ordained means of approach, the priesthood of Christ's Church. To be in true and sure contact with this inflowing grace, so made nigh: this is the one religious necessity, a necessity, not so much for definition and discussion, as of obvious practical certainty. One anxiety alone remains how to secure the large and varied intricacy of personal life uncurtailed and unmenaced in the face of this necessary sacerdotalism? How large, how varied, the massive sum of intricate personal experiences is, the author expresses in his portrayal of the broad tolerance, the kindly universality of interest, the welcome to all living things, that constitute the secret and the fascination of the Classical Revivalism. This fascination, it is true, while it dominates Inglesant, paralyses his religious intensity, and weakens his moral fibre; he is on lower levels of life while under its spell; the star of Lauretta rides higher, for the time, than the star

of holy Mary Collet. But yet, subordinate though it be, there are elements in that wide world of culture which the religious instinct may govern, indeed, but also must include and allow for, and without which it would be stinted and narrow, and, in some degree, ineffectual. Inglesant would have lost something if he had followed the call of the Paris Benedictine, even though he would have avoided the taint of the Italian corruption. He would have been saved much, but he would have missed something. Molinos seems to hold out to him the larger hope of embracing his secular experiences within the possibilities of sacramental grace; and when the Jesuits, with their clever instinct of threatened authority, resolve on shattering the Molinist dream, Rome has made herself impracticable to Inglesant. If she would have given him fair room for the development of that human nature, which it is our sacred task to sustain and tend, he would have gladly made himself hers. But the Jesuit deliberately wrecks all chance of this; with a malicious and provoking cleverness he smilingly demolishes the only spiritual home which was possible to Inglesant within the lines of Rome; and, from that moment, he is Anglican out and out. We earnestly wish that the author had not apparently tired of his work after he has once passed the crisis. As it is, we are suddenly dropped to the level of a third party's report for the final scene; the nature of Inglesant's conviction is expressed in a speech of great force and condensed interest, but the transition to it from the last scene of farewell to the Jesuits is left far too abrupt and unexplained; the matter and the passion of the speech suggest too much to be crowded into a couple of pages; the conclusion has the air of being reached at a rush, leaving a touch of surprise at much that needs unravelling. So much is said in these last two pages which leaves us darkly questioning what the author intends to say. Once more we feel the infection of the Platonic mood upon the story: the scene shakes, even as the woodland reels in autumn 'athwart the smoke of burning weeds.' The fine sweet melancholy of the sunset is Platonic; it lacks the glow and steady patient hopefulness of the slow advancing Christian dawn. Is there, we are inclined to ask, not another answer to the 'Papist's argument' than that suggested by the author's phrase? There is, indeed, 'no absolute exponent' to be found of an absolute revelation:' facts are too strong to admit of this easy solution. But are we, therefore, cut off from an absolute revelation? May it not be mediated through a relative,

partial, incomplete material? Can the Word not make itself known through the Flesh as the very Word that was in the beginning with the Father? Can the absolute truth not make itself felt through the stress and pressure of conflicting hesitations? Is God Himself not known in Nature (e.g.) even though it be through no exponent specialized and logical, but through the things that are seen, confused and confusing as they seem? Is there no voice to be heard alive among the stars of heaven because they have no loud speech or fixed language ?

These questions rush forward to mix with the last utterances of John Inglesant; and yet we would not be taken to mean that we do not welcome, with grateful enthusiasm, the main effort of the book to point the spiritual dilemma in its most vital form. He has seized the position. It does, indeed, seem most possible to us, amid all the sickening disturbance and fear that now afflict us, that the heart of peace may yet be disclosed to us in the Holy Supper; that there, in the Eucharist, lies the hope of an Eirenicon. Worship is more central, even, than the Creed itself; it holds within itself the key of the Creed; it is in the action of worship we are all made one. That all should come to recognize the one Food by which all are fed; that every possible freedom in all secular directions should be perfectly compatible with entire union in that act of spiritual contact with the Divine Power by which and in which all things are done is this so utterly impossible to conceive? At least, John Inglesant has furthered some such suggestive issue of our blind struggling; the book feels for a solution, in which a wide free range of human and secular life should circle round a sacramental centre of spiritual sustenance; for some such fulfilment it has helped us to pray, and by striking this note it has taught us, once again, how high and stirring is the task to which our Church in England has set its hand. Our troubles, our pangs, our confusions, marshal themselves into rank and order once again, as we sweep them into the scope and purpose of this great achievement. We see them in

their place; they are all part of the vast and intricate process by which the leaven laboriously and painfully works its way amid the gross lump, which it claims and yet but slowly penetrates. Better to wait in patience until the dead mass stirs at last than to hasten the process by cutting down and diminishing the lump. Some such thoughts as these Mr. Shorthouse prompts and encourages; and we would fervently beg all those to read his beautiful book who desire to foster

in themselves a strong and deep passion of spiritual devotion, and yet are conscious of a precious and holy heritage of human hopes and human impulses to which they dare not play false, which they cannot ignore, to which they owe reverence, and to redeem which to Christ they would gladly work and struggle with slow and unflagging patience, even though it involve long waiting and much anxiety, and some perplexity, and no little ridicule.

Perhaps it may be said that the book is overweighted by the perplexities that these last words of ours have attempted to justify. It is, indeed, true that there is a certain sense of brooding oppression about the book; it is sad in tone; and there is a strain of anxiety, of mysterious doomful issues, that hangs heavily about its pages; dark forces in the background press and push Inglesant along; circumstance and authority are, both of them, unduly imperious and compelling, sometimes with a purposelessness that seems blind and depressing. Life appears anxious and perplexing; there is but little freshness, but little play of joyous spontaneity.

But we must not appear to depreciate that which has been to us such a delightful and exciting surprise; the book has taken the world by storm, and we warmly join the chorus of admiration. Yet the author has touched such deep chords that it seemed impossible to speak of his book without an earnest attempt to express where in it we found help and where we seemed to miss it. The novels are rare indeed towards which we find ourselves taking such anxious pains to express our grateful thanks.

ART. VIII.-HALF A CENTURY OF CAMBRIDGE LIFE.

I. William Whewell, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. An Account of his Writings, with Selections from his Literary and Scientific Correspondence. By I. TODHUNTER, M.A., F.R.S., Honorary Fellow of S. John's College. 2 vols., 8vo. (London, 1876.)

2. The Life and Selections from the Correspondence of William Whewell, D.D., late Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. By Mrs. STAIR DOUGLAS. 8vo. (London, 1881.)