The Armenian Question. By an Eastern Statesman. Professor Max Müller and Mr. Mili on Liberty. By James T. Mackenzie The Genealogies between Adam and the Deluge. A Biblical Story. By François Personal Property, Debt, and Interest. By Francis W. Newman PAGE 533 548 565 590 The Relations of Living Beings to One Another. By Professor St. George Mivart. 606 626 The Gospel of Evolution. By Dr. Elam. International Novelists and Mr. Howells. By Mrs. Sutherland Orr Dr. Littledale's "Plain Reasons against Joining the Church of Rome." By Thomas 741 766 The Eleusinian Mysteries. A Study of Religious History. Ey François Lenormant 847 872 What can a Liberal Government do for Turkey? By an Eastern Statesman 893 905 924 941 "THE ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. A History of England in the Eighteenth Century. By The English Church in the Eighteenth Century. By English Men of Letters. Edited by JOHN MORLEY. 1. Daniel Defoe. By W. MINTO. 2. Samuel Johnson. By L. STEPHEN. 3. Hume. By Prof. HUXLEY. 4. Goldsmith. By W. BLACK. 5. Gibbon. By J. C. MORISON. 6. Burke. By J. MORLEY. 7. Robert Burns. By Principal SHAIEP. "HERE is no one, probably, now living who does not congratulate himself that his lot was not cast in the Eighteenth Century. It has become, by general consent, an object for ridicule and sarcasm. Its very dress and airs had something about them which irresistibly moves a smile. Its literature-with some noble exceptions-stands neglected upon our shelves. Its poetry has lost all power to enkindle us. Its science is exploded; its taste condemned; its ecclesiastical arrangements flung to the winds; its religious ideas outgrown, and in rapid process of a complete and, perhaps, hardly-deserved extinction."* Nothing but that consciousness of superiority which the clerical garb is wont to lend to its wearers could have made it possible for words like these to be spoken before the representatives of English learning, and in the Alma Mater of English culture, in reference to the most truly human and fruitful of all the ages. Strange to say, however, these words represent, with only a certain amount of priestly exaggeration, the prevailing feeling in the England of to-day. I am not aware whether Mr. Curteis, who was still a young man, and had just arrived at Old Catholicism, when he uttered these bold words (in 1871), has since then made any considerable advances towards Rome, nor are we concerned here about such personal matters. A judgment upon the Eighteenth Century, pronounced in such a place, and before such an audience, claims our attention only as bringing into prominence one G. H. Curteis: "Dissent in its Relation to the Church of England." Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford, 1871, p. 289. VOL. XXXVII. B aspect of the reaction against that century, which must at once strike the attentive observer as characteristic of the whole tendency of thought in England for the last thirty or forty years. In addition to the contempt which Radicals of the school of Mill manifest for a time when England still groaned under the fetters of the aristocracy, was reckless enough to maintain a European policy, and still dabbled in philosophy, there has arisen also a revulsion of the romantic school against "the long reign of prose," as people who are more inclined to discern poetry beneath a surplice dare to call the age of Fielding and Goldsmith. There is, indeed, a remarkable resemblance between the singular movement of mind in some English circles, since about 1840, and the German romantic school of 1800. There is the same tendency, the same want of directness, the same affectation of so-called poetical forms of expression, and, with a less thorough appreciation of the historic past, the same quite unhistorical endeavour to force back the present; all this, of course, modified by English decorum and self-restraint. The very conditions of a state of society long established and bristling with conventionalities made it impossible for the English romantic school to venture on such liberties with morality as were taken by their forerunners in Germany. A national State and a national Church place a firm check on that toying with questions of State and of religion, in which the apostles of a new Christianity and a new Germany delighted. The sickly sentimentalism, born of emasculated thought, so common in the German pedantic school, has no chance of developing itself in the bracing atmosphere of English education and English public life. On the other hand, the English romanticists Jack the remarkable mental suppleness and flexibility of the kindred school in Germany, their thorough philosophic culture, and that subtle irony which Frederick Schlegel used to regard as of the very essence of the new teaching. The Englishman is too homogeneous, too thoroughly conscientious, too inflexibly dignified, and far too realistic ever to reach the same height of sentimental or philosophical abstraction, or ever to be carried away by a visionary fanaticism which might imperil the whole social edifice. Fanaticism there is, of course, in England, as in every other nation; but it is always of a religious order, and is confined almost exclusively to circles not reached by the higher culture. But the fashionable romantic school are the very élite of the cultured class. The whole movement emanated from Oxford, and it finds the readiest response in the highest spheres. It began in the Church under the name of Tractarianism, which afterwards took the form of Puseyism, and ultimately developed itself in the Ritualistic school into a more distinctly Catholic reaction. It is equally opposed to the Moravian enthusiasm and to the frigid indifference of the English Church of the Eighteenth Century. lt seeks satisfaction for the æsthetic instinct, and seeks it in that which is purely external-priestly vestments, candles, choral services, &c. The few with whom it goes deeper than this take the same step as Schiller's Mortimer; they throw themselves, like Dr. Newman, into the arms of the Roman Church. Side by side with this movement within the Church, there is also a pagan movement going on, which is equally directed against the spirit of the Eighteenth Century, and which, although apparently opposed to the religious reaction, or at least indifferent to it, arises really out of the same craving for a fuller sensuous life, and similarly seeks its satisfaction in that which is merely external. Its ideal is the Italian Renaissance, with its seeming indifference to substance and reality, and its revelry in forms and colours. Out of this have arisen schools of painting and of poetry, æsthetic theories and modes of writing history, which are as hollow and superficial as is the Church movement, and yet, in the country of almighty Fashion, these have become as widely dominant as Ritualism. It would be very unjust, however, to imply for a moment that the historical culture and mental activity of the England of to-day are to be sought in this æsthetic school. The elements of true progress will be found pre-eminently in the Darwinian school, the doctrines of which are being more firmly established, more fully developed and widely applied by such distinguished men as Huxley, W. Bagehot, and (although he himself may be hardly conscious of it) Leslie Stephen. These are the men who have made their distinct mark upon European thought, as, in former times, did Bacon and Newton, Voltaire and Rousseau, Herder and Kant. The great surplice question has but a local and ephemeral significance; the positivism which for a while prevailed is already almost driven from the field. Both will leave behind only indirect traces of their existence. We observe, however, the following curious phenomenon which was produced in Germany also, under the influence of the romantic school. Even men of clear head, belonging both by education and inclination to the rationalistic school, cannot wholly escape the influence we have been describing. They accept, however, only that which it contains of truth, and give it a deeper and clearer application. In this way there springs up a historical literature-historical in the widest sense of the word-which bears much resemblance to the historical school of Germany of the first half of this century, and which promises to be equally rich in results. a The positivism in which, to a large extent, the present generation of middle-aged Englishmen were nurtured, recognised only the actual facts of history, but wished these to be scientifically treated, that is, reduced under fixed laws, while it repudiated the philosophy of history as branch of metaphysics. For a time this theory held sway, and Buckle's book seemed designed to become the model for all historical writing. Before long, however, men began to feel that such a mode of treating history gave, if possible, even paler and more bodiless abstractions than the à priori constructions of the so-called philosophy of history; and they turned to seek the link between history as a science and history as life, where alone it is possible to find it-in the study of individual characters. The craving expressed in the modern romantic school for a fuller exercise of the imagination coincided with this new phase of historical study; and to this endeavour, by a scientific investigation of facts, to bring before us in a concrete form the life-work and influence of the great personages of history, we are indebted for a series of works equally remarkable from a historical and a literary point of view. Some of these take as their subject the much-decried Eighteenth Century. Following such excellent leaders, though often differing from their conclusions, I shall attempt, in the following pages, to show that the political, religious, and literary development of England, was never in a more active, and consequently never in a more fruitful condition than during that age of supposed torpor; and especially that the political, poetical, and ecclesiastical products of the years 1780-90 were incomparably richer and more original than the attempted Renaissance which, in more recent times, professes to have renovated the State by an "imperial" policy, the Church by a pompous ritual, and poetry and art by an afflatus of sensuousness. I. Any one who attempts to follow in detail the constitutional history of England from 1688 to 1786, may perhaps be tempted to turn away from it in impatience, if not in disgust. Shameless intrigues of unscrupulous aristocrats; a hateful struggle for power and pay; a laxity of principle which allowed statesmen to change their colours without hesitation, whenever their interest required it; bribery everywhere, and the grossest self-seeking among the governing classes, combined with seeming lethargy among the governed: such is the spectacle that presents itself to the student of this period of history, nor does the microscope through which he looks at it need to be a very powerful one. Even the heroes of this drama seem to have more of human infirmity than those of any other time or nation. William III. may have been a great politician, but when we approach him as a man, we cannot avoid a slight shiver; the manner in which he took possession of the throne, and the way in which he treated Ireland, overpass even the widest bounds of political morality. His successor was a weak person, and like all such, self-willed, petulant, and narrow-the true daughter of her father. None of the three Georges inspires us with any interest. or regard for his personal character. The one individual of the whole family who appeals to our human sympathies, is Queen Caroline; and, she died early. Godolphin, Marlborough, Bolingbroke, Robert Walpole, are characters to command but slight esteem, and, with the exception of the latter, were very indifferent statesmen, in spite of all their other gifts. The elder Pitt and Burke introduced a higher tone and greater moral seriousness into the conduct of the State, but this was accompanied by an amount of staginess very un-English, and from which their |