revolutionary state of society would be that in which all the members were men of combative ambition and fidgety genius; all haranguing, fighting, scribbling; all striving, each against the other! We sober fellows are the ballast in the state vessel without us, it would upset in the first squall! We have our uses, my friend, little as you seem disposed to own it."

My dear Tracey, the question is not whether a ship should carry ballast, but whether you are of the proper material for ballast. And when I wonder why a man of great intellect and knowledge should not make his intellect and knowledge more largely useful, it is a poor answer to tell me that he is as useful as-a bag of stones."

"A motive power is as necessary to impel a man, whatever his intellect or knowledge, towards ambitious action, as it is to lift a stone from the hold of a vessel into the arch of a palace. No motive power from without urges me into action, and the property inherent in me is to keep still."

"Well, it is true, yours is so exceptional a lot that it affords no ground for practical speculation on human life. Take a patrician of £60,000 a-year, who only spends £6000 give him tastes so cultivated that he has in himself all resources; diet him on philosophy till he says, with the Greek sage, 'Man is made to contemplate, and to gaze on the stars,' and it seems an infantine credulity to expect that this elegant Looker-on will condescend to take part with the actors on the world's stage. Yet without the actors, the world would be only a drop-scene for the Lookers-on. Yours, I repeat, is an exceptional case. And those who admire your mind, must regret that it has been robbed of fame by your fortune.”

"Flatterer," said Tracey, with his imperturbable good-temper, "I am ashamed of myself to know that you have not hit on the truth. If I had been born to £200 a-year, and single as I am now-that is, free to

VOL. XCII-NO. DLXVIII.

choose my own mode of life—I should have been, I was about to say as idle as I am, but idle is not the word; I should have been as busy in completing my own mind, and as reluctant to force that mind into the squabbles of that mob which you call the world: in fact, I am but a type-somewhat exaggerated by accidental circumstances, which make me more prominent than others to your friendly if critical eye-of a very common and a very numerous class in a civilisation so cultivated as that of our age. Wherever you look, you will find men whom the world has never heard of, yet who in intellect or knowledge could match themselves againt those whose names are in all the newspapers. Allow me to ask, Do you not know, in the House of Commons, men who never open their lips, but for whose mere intellect, in judgment, penetration, genuine statesmanship, you have more respect than you have for that of the leading orators? Allow me to ask again, Should you say the profoundest minds and the most comprehensive scholars are to be found among the most popular authors of your time; or among men who have never published a line, and never will? Answer me frankly."

"I will answer you frankly. I should say that, in political judgment and knowledge, there are many men in the back benches of Parliament, who are the most admirable critics of the leading statesmen. I should say that, in many educated, fastidious gentlemen, there are men who, in exquisite taste and extensive knowledge, are the most admirable critics of the popular authors. But still there is an immense difference in human value between even a first-rate critic who does not publish his criticisms, and even a second or third-rate statesman or author who does contribute his quota of thought to the intellectual riches of the world."

"Granted; but the distinction between man and man, in relation to the public, is not mere intellect,

M

nor mere knowledge; it is in something else. What is it?"

"Dr Arnold, the schoolmaster, said, that as between boy and boy the distinction was energy, perhaps it is so with men."

"Energy! yes: but what puts the energy into movement? what makes one man dash into fame by a harumscarum book full of blunders and blemishes, or a random fiery speech, of which any sound thinker would be heartily ashamed; and what keeps back the man who could write a much better book and make a much better speech?"

"Perhaps," said I, ironically, "that extreme of elegant vanity, an over-fastidious taste; perhaps that extreme of philosophical donothingness, which always contemplates and never acts."

"Possibly you are right," answered Tracey, shaming my irony by his urbane candour. "But why has the man this extreme of elegant vanity or philosophical do-nothingness? Is it not, perhaps, after all, a physical defect? the lymphatic temperament instead of the nervousbilious?"

cracy, as long as the State to which they belong is free, will never fail of mental vigour-of ambition for reputation and honours achieved in the public service. It was so with the senators of Rome as long as the Roman Republic lasted; it will be so with the members of the House of Lords as long as the English Constitution exists. And in such an order of men there will always be a degree of motive power sufficiently counteracting the indolence and epicurism which great wealth in itself engenders, to place a very large numerical proportion of the body among the most active and aspiring spirits of the time. But your misfortune, my dear Tracey, has been this (and hence I call your case exceptional)—that, immeasurably above the average of our peers, both in illustration of descent and in territorial possessions, still you have had none of the duties, none of the motive power, which actuate hereditary legislators. You have had their wealth-you have had their temptations to idleness; you have not had their responsible duties -you have not had their motives for energy and toil. That is why I call your case exceptional."

"Still," answered Tracey, "I say that I am but a very commonplace type of educated men who belong neither to the House of Lords nor the House of Commons, and who, in this country, despise ambition, yet in some mysterious latent way serve to influence opinion. Motive power-motive power! how is it formed? why is it so capricious? why sometimes strongest in the rich and weakest in the poor? why does knowledge sometimes impart, and sometimes destroy it? On these questions I do not think that your reasonings will satisfy me. I am sure that mine would not satisfy you. Let us call in a third party and hear what he has to say on the matter. Ride with me to-morrow to the house of a gifted friend of mine, who was all for public life once, and is all for private life now. I will tell you who and what he is.

In early life my friend carried off the most envied honours of a university. Almost immediately on taking his degree, he obtained his fellowship. Thus he became an independent man. The career most suited to his prospects was that of the Church. To this he had a conscientious objection; not that he objected to the doctrines of our Church, nor that he felt in himself any consciousness of sinful propensities at variance with the profession; but simply because he did not feel that strong impulse towards the holiest of earthly vocations, without which a very clever man may be a very indifferent parson and his ambition led him towards political distinction. His reputation for talents, and for talents adapted to public life, was so high, that he received an offer to be brought into Parliament at the first general election, from a man of great station, with whose son he had been intimate at college, and who possessed a predominant influence in a certain borough. The offer was accepted. But before it could be carried out, a critical change occurred in my friend's life and in his temper of mind.

A distant

relation, whom he had never even seen, died, and left him a small estate in this county: on taking possession of the property, he naturally made acquaintance with the rector of the parish, and formed a sudden and passionate attachment for one of the rector's daughters, resigned the fellowship he no longer needed, married the young lady, and found himself so happy with his young partner and in his new home, that before the general election took place, the idea of the parliamentary life, which he had before coveted, became intolerable to him. He excused himself to the borough and its patron, and has ever since lived as quietly in his rural village, as if he had never known the joys of academical triumph, nor nursed the hope of political renown. Let us then go and see him to-morrow (it is a very

pretty ride across the country), and you will be compelled to acknowledge that his £600 or £700 a-year of wood and sheepwalk, with peace and love at his fireside, have sufficed to stifle ambition in one whose youth had been intensely ambitious. So you see it does not need £60,000 a-year to make a man cling to private life, and shrink from all that, in shackling him with the fetters and agitating him with the passion of public life, would lessen his personal feeedom and mar his intellectual serenity."

"I shall be glad to see your friend. What is his name?" "Hastings Gray."

"What! the Hastings Gray who, seventeen or eighteen years ago, made so remarkable a speech at some public meeting (I own I forget where it was), and wrote the political pamphlet which caused so great a sensation! "

"The same man."

"I remember that he was said to have distinguished himself highly at the university, and that he was much talked of in London, for a few weeks, as a man likely to come into Parliament, and even to make a figure in it. Since then, never having heard more of him, I supposed he was dead. I am glad to learn that he only sleepeth."

Here we heard behind us the muffled fall of hoofs on the sward; our party was in movement homeward, Lady Gertrude leading the van in her pony chaise. I had to retake my place by her side; Clara and the Librarian followed in a similar vehicle, driven by Henry Thornhill, who had caught none of the great perches; I suspect he had not tried for them. Percival and the Painter rode. The twilight deepened, and soon melted into a starry night, as we went through the shadowy forest-land.

Lady Gertrude talked incessantly and agreeably, but I was a very dull companion, and, being in a musing humour, would much rather have been alone. At length we saw the moon shining on the white

walls of the villa. "I fear we have tired you with our childish party of pleasure," said Lady Gertrude, with a malicious fling at my silence. "Perhaps I am tired," I replied, ingenuously. "Pleasures are fatiguing, especially when one is not accustomed to them."

"Satirist!" said Lady Gertrude. "You come from the brilliant excitement of London, and what may be pleasure to us must be ennui to you."

"Nay, Lady Gertrude, let me tell you what a very clever and learned man, a Minister of State, said the other day at one of those great public ceremonial receptions which are the customary holidays of a Minister of State. 'Life,' said he, pensively, would be tolerably agreeable if it were not for its amusements.' He spoke of those 'brilliant excitements,' as you call them, which form the amusements of capitals. He would not have spoken so of the delight which Man can extract from a holiday with Nature. But tell me, you who have played so considerable a part in the world of fashion, do you prefer the drawing-rooms of London to the log-house by the lake?"

stopped at the porch, I descended to offer my arm to the amiable charioteer.

Nothing worth recording took place the rest of the evening. Henry and the Painter played at billiards, Lady Gertrude and the Librarian at backgammon. Clara went into the billiard-room, seating herself there with her work: by some fond instinct of her loving nature she felt as if she ought not to waste the minutes yet vouchsafed to her-she was still with him who was all in all to her!

I took down The Faithful Shepherdess,' wishing to refresh my memory of passages which the scenes we had visited that day vaguely recalled to my mind. Looking over my shoulder, Percival guided me to the lines I was hunting after. This led to comparisons between 'The Faithful Shepherdess' and the 'Comus,' and thence to that startling contrast in the way of viewing, and in the mode of describing, rural nature, between the earlier English poets and those whom Dryden formed upon Gallic models, and so on into the pleasant clueless labyrinth of metaphysical criticism on the art of poetic genius. When we had parted for the night, and I regained my own room, I opened my window and looked forth on the moonlit gardens. A few minutes later, a shadow, moving slow, passed over the silvered ground, and, descending the terrace stairs, vanished among the breathless shrubs and slumbering flowers. I recognised the man who loved to make night his companion.

(To be continued.)

THERE are few of the leaders or servants of the public who interest the general mind so profoundly as the great preachers, whose fame reaches the humblest as well as the most exalted, and within the reach of whose influence, more or less, an entire generation passes. Not to reckon the secondary class of preachers, whose biography is as inevitable as their decease, and whose lives are studied as a matter of religious duty by vast sections of the population who lie in a kind of underground out of the reach of ordinary literature, it is enough to instance such a life as that of Chalmers, to prove how wide a hold upon the public interest is taken by a man with whom, for once in their lives, most people of his generation have come in momentary contact in the slight but often momentous relation of hearers to a speaker. Only a very limited number can or do hear a great speaker in any other kind, compared with those who think it indispensable to hear the notable preacher of their day; and multitudes who have the most visionary conception of their rulers and statesmen, and all other public notabilities, have a certain personal knowledge of the orator whose sphere is the pulpit, which makes them as eager to hear his life as if their own history were somehow involved in it. The life which we have now to unfold to our readers is, however, one with which in this country we are unfamiliar. It is a religious existence of a fashion unknown to us. A strange atmosphere breathes out of its acts and sentiments; its strength and its feebleness are alike novel to our experience; but under all these puzzling distinctions, the life itself is very remarkable-interwoven with the entire history of its country and period-and opens to us so strange yet so instruc

tive a glimpse of a Christianity not less fervent, pure, and true, than anything in our Protestant records, but couched in terms so different from ours, and wearing an aspect so unlike, that the mingled resemblance and dissimilarity add a charm to its own merits. The life of Henri Lacordaire, priest, preacher, and monk, told by his eloquent countryman and loving friend, M. de Montalembert, is for us not only a religious biography, but a novel study of character and life. The picture is fascinating but strange. Stranger than the eremites in the ancient wilderness, or those early followers of Benedict and Francis, with whom the same hand has lately made us familiar, is the apparition of the monk of the nineteenth century as he appears in these pages. For it is no picturesque lay figure which rises in the white Dominican tunic before our unaccustomed eyes, but a modern Frenchman, acute, brilliant, unimpassioned-full of sound sense and inexorable logica politician, a liberal, a man of his day, no less than a great preacher and a pious Catholic. The story of his life is without private events, for he was a priest, and debarred from any private life save that which makes a passion of friendship and finds an outlet there; but his career is that of a man strong in personal identity, who acts and thinks for himself, and throws his entire being into his occupation, whatever that may be. M. de Montalembert, always eloquent, is perhaps too rhetorical and declamatory for biography, at least in narrating a life which to a great extent he shared, and the vicissitudes of which, as he records them, naturally rouse his enthusiasm, his indignation, and grief, and tempt him into many digressions. The volume which he has dedicated to the memory of his friend is more