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gious as well as national differences. In fact, the religious difference comes first. If a man changes his religion, he changes his nationality. The Orthodox Church and the Greek nation are very far from being coextensive expressions; but what makes them not co-extensive is that the Orthodox Church contains the Greek nation and several other nations beside it. But if a man of any of those nations forsakes his religion, if he ceases to belong to the Orthodox Church, he is looked on as forsaking his nationality as well. Multitudes of Turks are of Greek or Slavonic origin; Constantinople was stormed, and the Ottoman Empire was administered, by the children of Christian parents. But the proselyte to Islam, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether the mature renegade or the Janissary kidnapped in his childhood, ceased to be Greek, Slave, or whatever he was before; the mere fact of proselytism enrolled him among the ruling caste, and made him, for all practical purposes, a Turk. Even the Oriental Christian who forsakes the national form of Christianity for another greatly weakens, if he does not wholly cast off, the national tie. The United Greek and the United Armenian are Greek and Armenian only in a very secondary sense. So, in the further East, names like Hindoo and Parsee strictly mere names of nations, like English and French-have acquired a secondary religious meaning which has quite displaced the national meaning. If a Hindoo or a Parsee embraces Christianity or Mahometanism, no one any longer speaks of him as a Hindoo or a Parsee. In the East then we may say that nationality and religion are absolutely identical. Given a man's nation - his practical nation, not necessarily his ethnological pedigree and you know his religion. Given his religion, and you very often know his nation; you at least know that he must belong to one out of two or three nations. In the West nationality has had a good deal to do with determining religion, and religion has had something to do with determining nationality. But, in either case, nationality or religion has been simply one element among other elements. The two things have never become identical, as they have in the East.

on its chief as something more than a mere civil ruler, as the temporal chief of Christendom. Except so far as its faith has been displaced by Mahometanism, Christianity still includes all those nations which formed part of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent; all the then heathen nations which in the process of serving, conquering, or dismembering it, came within the range of its influence; all the heathen nations which afterwards came within the range of direct Roman influence, Imperial or Papal. That is to say, it is the religion of Europe, including of course 'European colonies; it is the religion of the small remnant in Roman Asia-in Roman Africa there is hardly so much as a remnant which Mahometan invasions have failed to eat up. Beyond these limits its extent has always been small and its existence precarious. Abyssinia stands alone as an example of an ancient Christian Kingdom surviving in a country which never formed part of the Empire, and which has never been settled by European colonists. We leave divines and philosophers to explain the reasons. We only state the manifest fact. If the Articles would let us, we should say that there was something or other in the national character or circumstances of all these nations which did deserve Christian enlightenment "of congruity."

Looking again within the limits of Christendom itself, it is easy to see four very intelligible divisions. First, let us go back four hundred years or thereabouts. We should then see but three. There was first the Western, the Latin Church, with the Roman Pontiff still its real spiritual chief, with the Roman Cæsar at least its nominal temporal chief. Its pale embraced all those nations which had at any time bowed either to the temporal sway of the Western Cæsar or to the spiritual teaching of the、 Western Pontiff. Secondly, there was the Eastern, the Orthodox, Church, the Church of the hardly defunct Roman Empire of the East, and of those European nations which had submitted either to the temporal dominion or to the spiritual teaching of the New Rome. Thirdly, there were the remnants of the ancient national Churches of the East the heretics, as Roman and ByIf we cast our eye over Christendom and zantine orthodoxy deemed them, of Arits divisions, we shall easily see how exactly menia, Syria, and Eygpt. That is to say, they are marked out by certain great na- they were the Churches of those nations tional and historical landmarks. Christian- which had been politically incorporated ity is the religion of the Roman Empire and within the Empire of the Caesars, but which of those nations which have come, more or had never cheerfully accepted either its less fully, under Roman influences. It was Greek or its Roman influences. Armenia, not without a meaning that the Empire in the oldest Christian Kingdom, Syria and later days took the title of Holy, and looked | Egypt, representatives of a civilization and

if it ever happens, be very different from the Reformation in the West. It will not be a revolt. The utmost in the way of revolt that is likely to happen is for Bulgaria to claim to form an independent national Church as well as Russia and the Greek Kingdom. There is no need to cast off a yoke where no yoke exists. If a reform, doctrinal or other, ever happens in the East, it is as likely to begin at Constantinople as at Athens or at Saint Petersburg. A reform in the West could not begin at Rome, because the leading object of all reform was to cast off the authority of Rome.

Nationality and religion then are in some parts of the world identical; in other parts, though not identical, they greatly influence one another. The ritual, the discipline even the dogmas, which suit one nation do not suit another. Such is plainly the fact, but beyond the statement of the fact we do not presume to go.

From The Saturday Review, 24 Oct.
FRANCE.

a literature older than that of Greece and Italy, had never become pupils of their masters. While the rest of the Empire, save here and there a wild mountain tribe, adopted either the Greek or the Latin language, they clave to their own ancient tongues, they moulded Christianity into forms of their own, and they offered no hearty resistance to the Saracen invader. Abyssinia, the spiritual colony of Egypt, the one Christian State wholly beyond the limits of the Empire, of course takes its place along with those nations which never willingly belonged to it. All these three divisions still remain, and, within the range of the last two, nationality and religion are still as identical as ever. But the events of the last three centuries and a half have added a fourth division. That is to say, the Teutonic nations have risen against the spiritual domination of the elder Rome. A curious question now arises. We see that Roman, Byzantine, Oriental, and Teutonic Christianity all exist. Will there ever be such a thing as Slavonic Christianity? The great mass of the Slavonic nations, all at least of the Eastern branch of the race, have stood for ages towards the Eastern Church and Empire in nearly the same THE Spanish Revolution has perhaps relation in which the Teutons have stood done something for the general peace of to the Western Church and Empire. They Europe during the next few months. What have been half conquerors, half disciples. plans, if any, the Emperor Napoleon had Will they ever revolt against the New formed, only those in his confidence can Rome as we have done against the Old? tell. The settled discontent with which the If they ever do, it must be a revolt of a Tuileries regards the state of Germany had different kind. It must be a purely dog- perhaps found vent this last summer in the matic revolt. It is only accidentally that concoction of more than one scheme or the Byzantine Church has anywhere estab- conspiracy against the quiet of the Conti lished a dominion against which national nent. Various ideal repartitions of Europe feeling is tempted to kick, as national feel- have been designed in the Imperial Cabinet ing is tempted to kick against the dominion in the course of sixteen years of political of the Roman Church. Some of the na- dreaming, and 1868 has had, like the rest, tions belonging to the Orthodox Church its map, its programme, and possibly its have had, and still have, grievances to plan of a campaign. Great enterprises complain of at the hands of the Byzantine might have been undertaken again in the Patriarchate. But they are simply local and coming winter if it had not been for the temporary grievances, such grievances as irony of Fortune, which so constantly inthe appointment of Greek Bishops to Bul- terferes with the execution of the vagu garian sees and the like. The Eastern purposes of irresolute men. Prussia, at Church never attempted to establish the any rate, is thought to be safe till next year, same sort of universal dominion as the when, unless anything else happens, the Western. The national Churches within French Emperor will again be hard at work its communion have always enjoyed a na- conquering General Moltke upon paper. tional hierarchy and the use of the national All that can be hoped is that someting language in divine service. At this mo- may happen again next year, and, as the ment the national Churches of Greece and world is full of surprises, perhaps someRussia are in full spiritual communion with thing will. The Pope may be ill, or M. the mother Church of Constantinople, while Rochefort may be dead, or there will be a they are as independent of her in their in- Great Exhibition somewhere, or a new gen ternal constitution as the Church of Eng-eral election to the Corps Législatif, or the land is independent of Rome. There may Jesuits may have got into trouble by bay be a Reformation in the East, but it must, ing up all the land in Belgium, or M. Our

vier have acquired the happiest influence and the Austrian Provinces would be disat home over the mind of the French Em-tracted, if not persuaded, by the spectacle peror. Everything will once more neces- of a crusade for the cause of nationalities. sarily blow over, and the French nation be Even Garibaldi would feel a little uncertain consoled with the promise for the twentieth as to the path of duty, as he could not head time that the Edifice is now at last about at one and the same moment a guerilla war to be crowned, and a new law introduced in Poland and in Italy. To head such a about the public press. It is singular that Catholic league as this would be the Ema politician of the Emperor's grasp of mind peror's delight that is to say, if it did not should be incessantly exhausting his own cost too many lives, and if he could calcutreasury and the patience of Europe by late with absolute certainty on its success. these indefinite prolongations and postpone- To have the Pope and the French Empress ments. War, it would seem, never is, but crying with joy at the news of alternate always is to be. The explanation is that Te Deums at Warsaw and Baden-Baden, to the Emperor cannot but perceive that the see French Marshals proudly prancing about war programme on which he is constantly at the head of military contingents from forcing himself to ponder is unsuited to the Catholic Spain and even Catholic Belgium, real wants of his age and country. He is and to be able to hope that the excitement by no means inaccessible to ideas of right about Poland might make the Roman quesand wrong, and a grain of conscience easily tion easier of solution, in which case Italian makes him sour. Those who are best ac- legions might yet be fighting with enthusiquainted with his habits and disposition ap-asm in the Polish forests side by side with pear agreed in thinking that he has no nat- the French Zouaves-all this is a sort of ural turn or inclination for engaging in a political picture which the Emperor of great and hazardous campaign. Handling the powder-barrel, and calculating the effects of its explosion, is an occupation for which he has even a predilection, but firing it would be an act of fury from which his better nature, at well as his ordinary instincts, both equally recoil. Napoleon III., like Hamlet, might continue through whole years to brood over an enterprise which he could not bring himself to execute, if it were not for the natural tendency of political clouds to precipitate themselves in wet weather. Englishmen know by experience the meaning of "drifting into war," and the danger is lest the situation which the Emperor has partly created should in its turn produce the catastrophe from which he

shrinks.

course has often drawn at times in his romantic soul. The reconciliation of the Papacy and of democracy would seem thus to be complete; and France would get the Rhine, with the approval both of the patriots and the priests of Southern Europe. This dreamy, misty, Napoleonic fancy has been ruined, as it was sure in the ordinary course of things to be, by a very commonplace event. The Queen of Spain, who was to have played the glorified part of at once lending men to France and contributing an air of sanctity to the undertaking, has suddenly been deposed by her subjects, who could not abide an intolerable mixture of piety, misgovernment, and feminine depravity. The loss of an army on the eve of a desperate campaign is a serious affair, The general impression that a movement especially when the army is one on whose upon the Rhine was meant to coincide (in co-operation at the nick of time depends case of Russian intervention) with a revival the whole success of the arrangement. of Polish agitation and a Franco-Austrian Anxious as the Spanish Revolution may be expedition in favour of Catholic Poland, is to appease or propitiate the French Empire, doubtless founded upon a modicum of fact. liberated Spain is scarcely likely to embark Such a combination was probably one on in a speculative filibustering adventure, which the Imperial fancy has rested in its which at most could only end in the aggranpassage from one phase to another, and for disement of an already powerful neighbour. the present, like Beau Brummel's mangled And indeed, supposing that no such ingencravat's, must be considered to be one more ious scheme was seriously entertained at of the Emperor's failures. The advantage the Tuileries as a Franco-Catholic alliance, of the design, if it was ever really matured, still the explosion of a successful rebellion was doubtless that France might thus ex- in Spain has not been without its uses. peet to engage on her side a certain amount The dreams of an undecided person are of pious and a certain amount of revolutionary fervour. The Pope might bless the banners whose mission was to avenge the Catholic Bishops of Poland; while the scattered spirits of sedition in France, Italy,

easily disturbed. A rat behind the tapestry at the last might have kept Hamlet from avenging his father's ghost. No one can feel sure what the French Emperor might or might not have attempted this winter, if

at the critical moment his resolution had not been shaken by hearing a noise upon his frontier.

one who heard Mr. Reverdy Johnson, and every one who has read what he said, must have felt a conviction that the representative of the United States was not speaking mere smooth things to please for a moment, but was uttering the genuine sentiments of his own mind and of the minds of a vast number of his countrymen. They wish, as we wish, to forget the past, and to go on better and more kindly for the future; and in nothing was Mr. Johnson's speech more commendable, nothing showed the wisdom and generosity of a statesman more, than the manner in which he dealt with the objection that there were some present who ought not to have been there, and who while the civil war was going on, had sympathized, and even perhaps cooperated with the South. The partisans of the North in this country are even more American than the Americans themselves, and were in a state of great fury and agitation because Mr. Laird and other Copperheads had been asked to be present. They expected that Mr. Johnson would feel the same horror at sitting down to eat with such persons as an American Republican feels at sitting down to eat with a negro. But Mr. Johnson was much wiser than his friends, and not only did not allow the presence of Mr. Laird to spoil his dinner, but went out of his way to express his satisfaction that the representative of the United States was treated as if the civil war was now past and forgotten, and was welcomed simply as the guest of English merchants and statesmen. How are outstanding difficulties ever to be surmounted, how are Americans ever to get over the soreness which they felt while the war was going on, if the member for Birkenhead is not to be asked to a Liverpool dinner because the English friends of the North have a too vivid remembrance of his misdoings? If Mr. Johnson had shown himself petty enough to resent that the rep resentative of one-half of the port of Liverpool should have been asked to meet him, he would not have been the man to establish the friendship of the two nations on a firm basis. It must have been gratifying to THE Liverpool banquet to Mr. Reverdy all the sensible portion of his audience to Johnson has been a complete success. find that he frankly dealt with the matter in Coming at exactly the right moment, when a graceful and generous manner. Perhaps, the minds of men on both sides of the At- however, his audience was even more gratlantic were prepared and anxious for some ified by the declaration which he took upon sign of reciprocal good-feeling and assured himself to make with regard to the public amity between the two nations, it has risen debt of the United States. It seems to into an event of real political importance, have been an afterthought, for it was only by affording a means of placing on record at the close of the entertainment that he the good relations now existing between touched on this point. Probably some of England and the United States. Every his Liverpool friends thought that, as he

It is not pleasant to think that the peace of Europe is at the mercy of any single man; but no condition is without its consoling side, and it is some comfort to feel that the French Emperor has his nerves. Les nerfs, said the philosopher, voilà l'homme. Napoleon III. might have been a bold desperado, with the spirit and determination of a burglar. As it is, he is a sovereign who is reluctant to shed blood, who knows what military glory means to the poor and industrious, and who in his heart, perhaps, is not sorry when something occurs to render it easy for him to put off his great conquests till another day. He would doubtless rejoice, for the sake of humanity, if Prussia at the last moment would give him a small, even the smallest piece of tribute money. What the representative of French vanity requires is indeed rather consideration and deference than concession; and Napoleon III. often perhaps sighs (in the interests of humanity) to think what a happy family the Continent would be if France might enjoy even the faintest shadow of hegemony. His policy, alternately bold and tanid, humitarian and reactionary, conclusively shows that despotic power cannot safely be entrusted even to philosophers who have what is called the popular fibre. The Empire is not peace. It has not justified the first blast of trumpets with which its chief entered the political arena. Neither, on the other hand, is the Empire war. The Empire, to Europe, means suspense. How long Prussia will consent to have the sword of Damocles hang over her head has yet to be seen; but if she does not mind it, and if 1868 is to close quietly in spite of all the rumours of the autumn, one cannot but allow that suspense is not so bad but that certainty might be worse.

From The Saturday Review, 24 Oct. MR. REVERDY JOHNSON AT LIVERPOOL.

had said so much that was true, and had done so much to tranquillize the feelings of different kinds of people, it was a pity the bondholders should not come in for a share of the good things going, and that a word should not be spoken to keep up the price of Five-Twenties. Whether Mr. Johnson was right in committing himself and the nation he represents so decidedly on a point which is still kept open in the battlefield of American polities, he alone can decide. We in England cannot criticize his conduct in any way on this head. We can only accept his declaration with the sincerest pleasure, and rejoice to find so leading an American statesman, placed in so responsible a position, declare that even if the point in dispute is one that can be fairly raised between the debtor and the creditor, prudence and honesty alike concur in determining that it shall be ruled in favour of those who have lent their money.

Lord Stanley was there to meet Mr. Johnson, and joined in giving the welcome assurance that all was going on as well as possible between himself and their guest, and that all the questions at issue between ourselves and the Americans were in a fair way to be settled very shortly, and on terms highly satisfactory to both parties. On two points-the possession of the island of San Juan and the naturalization of aliens an understanding seems already to have been arrived at. It ought not to be difficult to deal with such a subject as the island of San Juan. Very few Englishmen have ever heard of the island, and our only feeling as to it must be that we do not wish to be bullied out of it, or out of anything else; but that really we have so many possessions we know nothing about, and do not know what to do with, that we should be rather glad than otherwise to find our title bad to some of them. As to naturalization, it never was an international difficulty at all. A few violent Americans tried to make capital out of it, and to use it as a means of hurting the feelings of Britishers; but we in England never saw it in that light at all. The difficulties that surround the subject are difficulties, not of national feeling or custom, but simply of law. It so happens that, in this as in many other cases, the rule which we are willing to accept is simple enough, but the application of it is by no means easy. Let us suppose that we and the Americans and every other civilized nation are willing to adopt the principle that every male of full age may at his pleasure, and by going through certain forms, change his nationality. This sounds

simple enough, and Englishmen are quite as ready to accept it as Americans can be. But the consequence of the rule in the sphere of criminal law, in the sphere of family life and of inheritance, are not easy to foresee and to determine properly; and it is quite as much to the interests of Americans that they should be properly determined as it can be to that of Englishmen. The discussion of the claims on both sides arising out of the war is not yet ended, but both Lord Stanley and Mr. Johnson seem to think an agreement as equitable as possible under the circumstances will very soon be come to; and it is evident that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Seward will be glad the matter should be settled before the new President forms his Cabinet, and that Lord Stanley would like to have the credit of going out of office with the credit of leaving so good piece of finished work behind him. Both sides, we suppose, will agree to admit to some extent the claims of the other, and therefore both sides will have something to pay. The balance may possibly be against England. We may have to pay the money, but then we shall have one great source of satisfaction to comfort us. The Americans will be only settling those ordinary claims for reparation which arise so easily and naturally out of every war where the interests and commerce of a neutral are largely mixed up with those of a belligerent. But we shall be establishing a principle at once new and greatly to our advantage. We shall be binding over all neutrals not to inflict on us the injury to which a great maritime Power is most exposed in time of war. We shall be insuring ourselves against depredations on our mercantile marine at the hands of neutrals or by their connivance; and this is a source of security and advantage to us which we shall be sure to be purchasing very cheaply, whatever may be the exact amount of pecuniary satisfaction to the Americans which Lord Stanley may undertake we shall render.

The good feeling prevailing between the United States and England seemed so clearly established, the banquet went off so well, and it seemed such an excellent thing to have secured peace between the two nations on such pleasant terms, that Lord Stanley and Mr. Gladstone were both led to speculate on the possibility of the example being followed elsewhere, and of Europe being tranquillized in the same manner. Lord Stanley allowed it to be understood that, in his opinion, the danger of war between France and Prussia had been exaggerated, and it was principally because persons had chosen to think war inevitable

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