No

Prelector of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, expose and refute the mingled atheism and pantheism which arise from Kant misunderstood; or expatiate on his favourite theme, the philosophy of the conditioned as the handmaid and auxiliary of Christian truth. Then we should have been happy to accompany Mr. Emerson over Folly Bridge, over the line of railway to Abingdon, past that quaint old church, up the fields sweeter with bean-flowers than a green-house with seringas and orangeblossoms, to the park where the mansion of the Bowyers of Radleys rises proudly among its ancient trees, commanding a prospect over the lowlands of Oxfordshire. How is this? carriages sweep up the avenue; no ladies gallop over the turf, or shoot at targets; no hunters paw at the portal; no hounds give tongue in the kennel; no sportsman beats the preserves; yet the place is not silent. Has some gallant gentleman of the good old stock more children than Priam? Not so; these are Mr. Sewell's school-boys, who drive the cricket-ball over the sun-burnt sward. Get out of the way, Mr. Emerson, for Smith, the best bat in the school, is "swiping" ferociously" to the leg." Or look at that other group, who are turning their glowing faces to the city of spires, and domes, and ringing bells. It is sunset; and the lights are falling chequered through the leafy oaks, and they touch those young faces with their golden fingers, like the hope that plays about their hearts, and then die away, as those hopes will surely fade in the dusk of manhood. And then we should like to have taken him into the presence of that Platonic dreamer who presides so splendidly over the establishment-whose ushers are all "Fellows," and who manages school-boys by refusing their proffered flowers-a man whose speculative views many may dislke and disown, but whose earnest and self-denying spirit all must admire.

And now, as a conclusion to this part of our animadversion upon Mr. Emerson, we must say that he does not understand the kind of men who are formed by the English Universities. Oxford is by no means Greek factory." Mr. Emerson says justly of Oxford, "The knowledge pretended to be conveyed is con

а

veyed." But, after all, there is about Oxford a spirit far beyond any amount of cram-work, and which cannot be guaged by examination papers. You can weigh roses, but you cannot weigh their scent, which is yet the most precious thing belonging to them. We may call it the spirit of elegance the μovoh as distinguished from the γυμναστική of Dublin and Cambridge. Let us be permitted to cite as an illustration the present occupant of a post, which we devoutly hope may soon be abolished. We mean Lord Carlisle, far too accomplished a man to be the Sancho Panza, the governor of an island, and to be lectured by any knight over the water, as to the garb and neatness of person indispensable in his new dignity, and that he should be sparing of his words, and careful not to intermix proverbs with his discourses." In the Michaelmas Term of 1822, the name of the Hon. G. W. F. Howard stands in the first class in Lit. Hum. (We may remark, en passant, to settle a dispute which was vehemently carried on some years ago in the papers, that at the same examination Viscount Oxmantown, Magdalene, afterwards Lord Rosse, appears in the first class in Disciplinis Mat.) Mr. Howard's first-class stands for hard work. But remark that the youth's progress in elegant literature has been commensurate with his advancement in exact scholarship. His knowledge, like a peach, has turned its sunny side to poetry. Let us picture to ourselves the Sheldonian Theatre at the close of the summer term, some time in June, 1821. The painted roof-with its deep blue sky, and angels with floating drapery, blowing long trumpets-covers a vast assemblage. The doctors, with their scarlet robes, are grouped in a majestic circle round the vice-chancellor. Possibly the chair of state is filled by the splendid presence of William Wyndham Grenville, Lord Grenville, then Chancellor of the University. The ladies occupy the first tier, with the under-graduates ranged overhead, and the masters of arts in the pit beneath. Their bonnets are moving to and fro, and their robes rustling, with the roar of voices above, and the quick excited murmur beneath, and the black folds of gownsmen roundlike a parterre of flowers in the centre

of a forest, when the dark plumes of the trees swing madly in the wind, and the storm shouts through the branches. The orations and the essays (the English by Mr., afterwards Sir Daniel, Sandford) are listened to with waggish impudence, or respectful impatience. At last comes the Latin poem, Eliseus. The unusual-the all but solitary appearance of "a tuft" in the rostrumproduces a sensation; and the wellrounded hexameters draw down an occasional approval from the critics in the gallery. But when the same well-known figure passed over from the Latin side, and took his place in the English rostrum-yet fresh with the glories of Heber, Wilson, and Milman-when those elegant heroics on Pæstum :

Where the light soil bore plants of every hue, And twice each year her storied roses blew.

were recited with manly emphasis; there rang out cheer after cheer, until the denizens of Broad-street were astonished, and the dust began to fly about the old schools. And in successive years the training of Oxford hung, a sort of graceful, impalpable influence, about the statesman and man of business. It was in the Viceroy of Ireland's touching speech at the inauguration of the statue of Lord Belfast; it was in the oration at Limerick, wise as it was beautiul, rich in philanthropic statesmanship and historical analogies.*

But while we think Mr. Emerson deficient in his appreciation of the English Universities, we hold him to be something worse-flippant, vulgar, and profane-in his estimation of English religion. But we pause. So grave a topic will require a graver tone and another article.

T. IRWIN.

On the 23rd of June, 1757, our empire in India was founded on the battlefield of Plassy. The centenary of this great event, which deserves a place among the decisive battles of the world, slipped by in England with little or no comment from the press. Even a grammar-school has now-adays a centenary commemoration; a century of Wesleyan Methodism is celebrated by centenary chapels and other solemnities; the missionary societies have their jubilees; but a century of empire in India has rolled away, and in the year 1857 we had almost forgotten that the year 1757 was an annus mirabilis in the annals of England. But the last mail from India has quite aroused us from this forgetfulness. We are forced to commemorate this centenary, but not with peaceful processions, with statues uncovered and banquets to governors and generals, and (if we may suggest such a thing) a new cross of honour for India, such as the Elephant and Castle, with the motto, "Trans Garamantas et Indos." The centenary is kept instead, with

mounting in hot haste, the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering

car;

The electric telegraph is hurrying regiments on service for India to the nearest port. Huge steamers are out to sea in a few hours, with a thousand strong on board, and in a few days an army has been embarked by the long sea, to reinforce our army in India.

The events which have caused this sudden embarkation of troops are too well known to need any detail. (6 Art

thou a stranger in England, and knowest not these things?" How, as quiet country-people were going to church on Sunday the 28th of June, they heard that news had come in by telegraph that a mutiny had broken out in North India with a massacre of the Europeans; that Delhi was in the hands of the mutineers, and that they had proclaimed the descendant of the Great Mogul, king. Then there was a hasty running over of names in one's head. One neighbour was thankful that his boy had just landed, another that the Madras army were not in for it. The parson thought sadly during service of two missionaries in Delhi, his old college friends, and had he been a man of a ready tongue might have improved the occasion by an impromptu sermon. As it was, he felt his people's interest was not with him, and so cut short his sermon, and went home to write one for next Sunday, more "to the times."

Monday came, and with it further particulars. It is useless to conceal that our feelings were worked up to the fullest pitch. Men always fancy the worst, and with Indian disasters the worst is soon realized. Most of us have nursed the fear that some day or other a general rising might occur in India, and a massacre like the Sicilian Vespers spread over the length and breadth of the land. In proportion to our ignorance of the East did such a disaster appear probable, and the strong remark of no less a man than Lord Metcalfe, who said he never went to bed without expecting to awake and hear that we had lost India, went far to confirm these presumptions. The news of the mutiny at Delhi fell therefore like a spark on

a train of forebodings that had been laid at the door of every English heart, and no wonder if the whole magazine of our fears went off at a touch of the telegraph wires.

Happily the first news was the worst, and every shred of intelligence that has reached us since has been of a reassuring kind. If there has been treachery where we least reckoned upon it, there has been fidelity quite as unexpected. The native princes, so far from joining the mutineers, have even marched their troops to our assistance. The great mass of the people have kept aloof from the mutineers, and in some cases turned out against them, and even cut them to pieces, as in the Punjab. We have ascertained by this time the extent of the disaster-what it is and what it is not. Like a fire which has been so far got under that it cannot spread further and lay the town in ashes; so this mutiny, if not yet quenched, will not, at least, spread into a general rising of the whole populationits devastations can reach no further than they have done. It is a military, not a popular emeute. proof of the state of our army, it is the most alarming event that has happened this century in India; as a proof of the immobility of the unarmed population, it is the most reassuring that has happened during the same period. From Barrackpore to Lahore, through fifteen hundred miles of cantonments, a mutinous spirit has spread, and yet throughout the whole of that wide extent of country the people have held aloof from it.

As a

What are we to gather from thisthat our civil administration of India

is as sound as our military is faulty? Not quite. This construction is too flattering to our civil and unfair to our military service. But we may at least infer this much, that there is no real danger of a revolution in India. If we pay an army to keep down the people, who is to keep down the army? The army revolts, and the people do not rise in rebellion. What are we to conclude but this-first, that the people do not need to be kept down; and next, that the soldiers are not to be trusted who keep them down? For two reasons our army system in India is faulty, and the one confirms the other.

The administration of the army is

admitted, at last by authority, to be our weak point in the government of India. Lest we should appear to pass a presumptuous judgment, we screen ourselves behind the authority of the chairman of the Board of Directors. Before the battering-ram was brought to bear on the walls of a town, the Roman soldiers made a tortoise back to cover it. Mr. Mangle's speech at Addiscombe is the tortoise, under cover of which the press can bring its battering-ram to bear on the army system in India. The faults of the service in India are an exaggeration of those of the service at home. Sergeant-major M'Arthur of the Guards is a little "jaloused" when Frederick Lord Scoutbush, captain and colonel, becomes a model officer, reads of nothing but sieges and stockades, and drills his men as if qualifying for the adjutant's post. Now such as the Guards are in England are the native regiments in India. Every cadet who joins is a little Lord Scoutbush, and the Soubahdar officer is to a native regiment what a Sergeant-major is to the Guards. He eats with his men, he drills with them, and prays with them; and as man has been defined in three ways, as a cooking animal, a praying animal, and a two-legged animal without feathers, in these three respects the Soubahdar is one with his men, and the European officer is not.

Several causes have been at work to produce this separation between the native army and its European officers. Fifty years ago it was the fashion for Europeans to Hinduise, for it was never thought that Hindus would Europeanise. We attended their heathen festivals, and even made offerings at the shrines of their gods. Colonel Stewart went even so far as to bring back with him his idols to Europe, for the purpose of continuing his worship at home.

Fifty years ago there was no European society to draw the officer away from his camp duties. In 1810 there were only two hundred and fifty European ladies in India, though, fourteen years before, Tennant tells us the marriage market was overstocked, and numbers of disconsolate adventuresses were compelled to return home alone. A market where the demand was even scantier than the supply must have been forestalled with ar