this convenient word will, and express by it some simple and peculiar psychical quality. It was framed to express a union of soul and body-the passion-contracted arm-but the psychical part of the business usurps the name to itself.

This it does very conspicuously when the movement, or series of movements that we perform, is not the main object of our contemplation, or when the action, whatever it may be, is still at a distance. Here popular language applies the term will to the resolution itself. And here it is evident that we can have nothing before us but the elements of thought and passion. Such terms as resolution and determination obtain a peculiar significance from the persistence of the thought and passion, and also from a feeling of opposition to whatever would resist or change it.

A contemplated action can be nothing but a thought. Often the action, so far as bodily movement is concerned, is of a very trivial character. It may be the utterance of a few words, a yes or a no. The resolution of the Christian martyr was to abstain from saying "I recant," or from throwing a few grains of incense before the statue of an emperor. But such abstinence was followed by death. And friends and enemies implored and threatened in order to shake his resolution. But in vain. The martyr had one persistent purposeto be faithful to his God. In the alternative placed before him he chose death.

What grand things have been said by poets and orators of this unshaken resolve! The man you cannot terrify, or flatter, or persuade, if he really have a great purpose, and power to accomplish it, is indeed one of the sublimest objects we can contemplate. The author of that noble poem, the "Spanish Gipsy," makes one of her characters say

"You may divide the universe with God,

Keeping your will intact, and hold a world
Where He is not supreme."

The stoic bent on doing what is good and right in defiance of the multitude, in defiance of his own self-regarding passions, attains, it is generally believed, the culminating point of human greatness. The greatness lies plainly in the purpose, the thought and passion of the man.

It is worth a remark that we sometimes expect that the resolution or choice of a virtuous man should be sudden, instantaneous, without a moment's hesitation. On other occasions we demand deliberation, and only approve the choice that follows on deliberation. If a man of honour is asked to tell a falsehood we should be disappointed if he did not at once reject the proposal; we expect that from the settled habit of his mind he will dismiss it at once, not without some feeling

of scorn or anger that it should have been made. But if some arduous and difficult enterprise is proposed to him we expect that he should deliberate before he returns an answer, because a wise man would carefully abstain from committing himself to what might be beyond his power to accomplish, because only light and featherbrained men would rush heedlessly on a difficult enterprise, because the resolution that is expected from him is one that must embrace all the probable dangers ahead. Time for reflection and deliberation No fitting resolution could else be

there must be in such a case. formed.

But the choice that follows deliberation, and the choice that is sudden as lightning, are ultimately resolvable into the same elements of judgment and feeling, or, as we popularly express them, of reason and passion.

Do you wish to believe that this ever-varying and progressive movement of thought and feeling wells forth arbitrarily from your own mind? Are you reluctant to be the creature, ambitious to be creator? Do you wish to make these fine lines just quotedbeautiful as poetry-literally true, and have a universe of your

own

"A world

Where He is not supreme?"

It seems that all our lines of thought bring us from the natural to the supernatural, bring us to that Absolute Being and Power on which all nature rests. We move and live and have our being in God. We exist as part of His universe. This is what I presume is meant when we say that "in Him we live and move and have our being."

VOL. XV.

G G

WILLIAM SMITH.

[THE conversations which I am about to report, took place soon

after the early victories of the Germans over the French. I suppose it would have been better if these conversations had been confined to one subject-as, doubtless, Mr. Milverton had originally intended that they should be. But conversation is a thing that no one of the interlocutors can rule; and it will proceed in its own sinuous and eccentric way. The intense interest which every one in England feels in this war makes it almost impossible for any conversation to go on without interruptions arising from a reference to the awful scenes which are taking place in a neighbouring country.

As for me, I am but a mere reporter, and cannot, of course, direct or restrain the conversation to any particular topic. I dare say that my short-hand brethren, the reporters in the House of Commons, would also sometimes like to be able to guide and restrain the debate; but in this respect they are powerless in their sphere, as I in mine. I think, moreover, that it may interest many of my readers to see how questions relating to war were interwoven in these conversations with questions relating to general culture.

It was at a country-house, and during the recess, that those

persons, who have been called "Friends in Council," met, and thus conversed :-]

Milverton. I have a subject in hand which I have long wished to discuss with you. It has reference to general culture, and especially to the deficiency of information which prevails among those whom we call the best informed classes.

Ellesmere. Is there any burridge in the garden, Sandy?

Milverton. Now, that shows the want of information in certain persons. It is not burridge, but borage, derived from the Latin 'borago."

66

Ellesmere. Never mind the spelling. Let this wretched pedant have his way; but do you, Sandy, go and get the borage, and insist upon a large bowl of claret-cup being made, otherwise I, for one, will not assist at any lecture upon culture, and will be content with the paucity of information which I possess.

I thank my stars that I am a humble personage.

Cranmer. Your stars, Ellesmere, must be stars of a very moderate capacity, and very ready to be thanked, if they sanction this appeal to them respecting your humility.

Milverton. Mine is a very ungrateful task. I want to show you all, how very ill-educated we are; and how very few of us can presume to call ourselves men of culture in any liberal sense of the word.

Ellesmere. Now he is going to oppress us with his vast powers of memory. He will make out that everybody is a savage, and only fit to be a cannibal, who does not know fifteen languages, and five and twenty separate branches of science.

This is the kind of thing which Milverton's prodigious memory enables him to say to you: "It was seven years ago, when we were at the end of that gravel walk, and were just going into the greenhouse, that you mentioned to me that I must be an idiot if I believed that, in our time, we should ever have household suffrage. It was on a Tuesday, if you recollect, and you were going up to town early on Wednesday morning." I do not like living with fellows that have such a memory. The pleasant people to live with are those that forget soon. What a memory women have for injuries!

Cranmer. I don't wonder, Ellesmere, you wish to live with people of short memories. Never mind: I forget nine-tenths of the outrageous things you have ever said against me.

Ellesmere. Thank you, Cranmer. I can assure you I very soon forget your piercing sarcasms. I say with Cæsar, let me have men about me who are fat, and can forget things. The British public is a charming public to deal with. Why? Because it is fat, and can

forget things. Otherwise it would fare ill with certain politicians whom I could name, and who always rely upon the splendid forgetfulness of that excellent public. I hate your lean, rememberative people.

By the way, I do not find that Milverton is so prone to recollect those remarks I made to him seven years ago, which have turned out to be quite right.

Milverton. I suppose you will now allow me to commence the consideration of the subject which I wish so much to bring before you. It would, perhaps, be advisable for me, in the first instance, to arrange the subject of culture under the following

Ellesmere. I do think, Milverton, you are the oddest man in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. At this moment we are all of us thinking, day and night (at least all of us except you), about this dreadful war; but your stoical or epicurean mind suddenly betakes itself to the serene contemplation of culture. I believe you do it for the sake of paradox.

Milverton. What should you say, then, if I were to tell you that the general subject of culture has been revived in my mind by the consideration of this war?

What is the real cause of the late defeats of the French? "Ignorance, my dear madam," as Dr. Johnson once said, "simple ignorance,"―ignorance of topography; ignorance of language; ignorance of what was going on in other nations; ignorance of their

own resources.

I do not wonder that Charles V., as a statesman and a soldier, thought so highly of a knowledge of languages, when he said, The man who knows two languages is twice a man. A sort of sublime conceit seems to overcome the French in their study of foreign languages, when they do study them. They can't spell a foreign name rightly; they can't make a quotation accurately. I took up yesterday a work of one of their greatest scholars. He must needs quote Shakspeare after this fashion: "To be, or no to be"; and as for proper names, the only two names that I have observed them always to spell accurately, are "London" and "Palmerston." How true that copy-book sentence is, that "Conceit is the mother of Ignorance." There is nothing so dangerous as your supposing you know a thing, when you do not know it. This kind of conceit has been the ruin of theologians, metaphysicians, geographers

Ellesmere. Historians

Milverton.—and statesmen. In this particular case I should rather like to turn the word culture into that of information. It is the want of information,-proceeding, however, very largely from a want of culture, which is the ruin of states.