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like men at all, but the privilege only of unconscious and impersonal life. To that we can only reply that what we do actually experience, in however imperfect a degree, cannot be impossible to us, and that the creative power of purely disinterested love has no fascination, indeed strictly speaking, no meaning, for us, if we drop the thought of the personal centre from which it flows. "Love" implies the self-surrender of a conscious being to the well-being of others. An unconscious stream of beneficent energy is in no sense "love," and excites none of the moral awe which the display of any divine love excites.

From The Saturday Review. THE ART OF RETICENCE.

AMONG other classifications we may divide the world into those who live by impulse and the undirected flow of circumstance, and those who map out their lives according to art and a definite design. These last, however, are wonderfully rare, few people having capacity enough to construct any persistent plan of life or to carry it through if even they have begun one it being so much easier to follow nature and drift with the stream, than to work by rule and square, and build up even a beaver's dam. Now, in the matter of reticence, In the next place, even the true and un- how few people understand this as an art, deniable effect of death in stimulating en- and how almost entirely it is by the mere ergy, and making men, by suggesting loss, chance of temperament whether a person is conscious of the love which otherwise they confidential or reticent, with his heart on his might hardly know, is more or less condi- sleeve or not to be got at by a pickaxe, tional on death's being believed to be not irritatingly silent or contemptibly loquafinal. A man with death near at hand will cious. Sometimes indeed we do find one seldom undertake any task unconnected who, like Talleyrand, has mastered the art with the life into which he believes himself of an eloquent reticence from alpha to about to plunge, because it seems hardly omega and knows how to conceal everything worth while. Those who lose their belief in without showing that he conceals anything; immortality too often sink under the moral but we find such persons very seldom, and paralysis of a creed which seems to leave so we do not always understand his value when little that it is worth while to attempt. we have him. Any one not a born fool can Especially, we believe, that the loss of faith resolve to keep silence on certain points, in immortality usually saps the deepest and but it takes a master mind to be able to talk tenderest affections of human nature, instead and yet not tell. Silence, indeed, self-eviof giving them, as George Eliot intimates, dent and unmasked, though a safe method, a new tenderness. It is clear that the ap- is but a clumsy one, and to be tolerated prehension of loss cannot create feeling; only in very timid and very young people. it can and does only bring home to the heart" Le silence est le parti plus sur pour celui the depth of feeling already cherished there. qui se défie, de soi-même," says RochefouBut the belief in final death does more than cauld; so is total abstinence for him who this; it undermines our respect for the in- cannot control himself; yet we do not trinsic worth of a nature so ephemeral, and preach total abstinence as the best order of makes it seem more reasonable, perhaps life for a wise and disciplined person, any we should say makes it really more reason- more than we would put strong ancles into able, to contract our love into better leg-irons or forbid a rational man to handle keeping with the short minutes during which a sword. Besides, silence may be as exalone it can be entertained. We are quite pressive, as tell-tale even, as speech, and willing to admit that human aspirations have comparatively little to do with the evidence for immortality, except as evidence, if evidence, as we believe, they be, of the purpose of the Creator. But we utterly deny that to lose that faith could quicken life and love, as this poem seems to teach. We hold that it would paralyze life, and sap the very springs of the deepest love.

MR. BENTLEY announces for early publication, "Travels in the Air," by Mr. Glaisher and others, with numerous full-paged coloured lithographs and woodcuts.

at the best there is no art in shutting one's lips and sitting mute; though indeed too few people have got even so far as this in the art of reticence, but tell everything they know as surely as water flows through a sieve, and are safe just in proportion to their ignorance.

But there is art, the most consummate act, in appearing absolutely frank, yet never telling anything which it is not wished should be known, in being pleasantly chatty and conversational, yet never committing oneself to a statement or an opinion which might be used against one afterwards - ars celare artem in keeping one's own counsel as well as in other things. It is only after along acquaintance with this kind of person

that you find out he has been substantially have let them behind the scenes, and told reticent throughout, though apparently so them more than they knew before. If only frank. Caught by his easy manner, his they had spoken, your elation would not genial talk, his ready sympathy, you have have been very long-lived. Of all personal confided to him not only all you have of qualities this art of reticence is the most your own, but all you have of other peo- important and valuable for a professional ple's; and it is only long after, when you man to possess. Lawyer or physician, he reflect quietly undisturbed by the magnetism must be able to hold all and hear all with of his presence, that you come to the out betraying by word or look, by injudiknowledge of how reticent he has been in cious defence any more than by overt the midst of this seeming frankness, and treachery, by anger at a malicious accusahow little reciprocity there has been in your tion any more than by a smile at an egreconfidence together. You know such peo-gious mistake; his business is to be reticent, ple for years, and you never know really not exculpatory, to maintain silence, not more of them at the end than you did in set up a defence nor yet proclaim the truth. the beginning. You cannot lay your finger To do this well requires a rare combination on a fact that would in any way place them of good qualities, among which are tact and in your power; and though you did not self-respect in about equal amount, selfnotice it at the time, and don't know how it command and the power of hitting that fine has been done now, you feel that they have line which marks off reticence from decepnever trusted you, and have all along care- tion. No man was ever thoroughly suefully avoided anything like confidence. cessful as either a lawyer or a physician But you are at their mercy by your own who did not possess this combination; and rashness, and if they do not destroy you it with it even a modest amount of technical is because they are reticent for you as well skill can be made to go a long way. as towards you; perhaps because they are good-natured, perhaps because they despise you for your very frankness too much to hurt you; but above all things not because they are unable. How you hate them when you think of the skill with which they took all that was offered to them, yet never let you see they gave back nothing for their own part-rather by the jugglery of manner made you believe that they were giving back as much as they were receiving! Perhaps it was a little ungenerous; but they had the right to argue that if you could not keep your own counsel you would not be likely to keep theirs, and it was only kind at the time to let you hoodwink yourself so that you might not be offended. In manner genial, frank, conversational, sympathetic in substance absolutely secret, cautious, never taken off their guard, never seduced into dangerous confidences, as careful for their friends as they are for themselves, and careful even for strangers unknown to them these people are the salvation as they are the charm of society; never making mischief, and by their habitual reticence, raising up barriers at which gossip halts and rumour dies. No slander is ever traced to them, and what they know is as though it were not. Yet they do not make the clumsy mistake of letting you see that they are better informed than yourself on certain subjects, and know more about the current scandals of the day than they choose to reveal; on the contrary, they listen to your crude mistakes with a highly edified air, and leave you elated with the idea that you

Valuable in society, at home the reticent are so many forms of living death. Eyes have they and see not, ears and hear not, and the faculty of speech seems to have been given them in vain. They go out and they come home, and they tell you nothing of all they have seen. They have heard all sorts of news and seen no end of pleasant things, but they come down to breakfast the next morning as mute as fishes, and if you want it you must dig out your own informa tion bit by bit by sequential, categorical questioning. Not that they are surly or ill-natured; they are only reticent. They are disastrous enough to those who are associated with them, and make the worst partners in the world in business or marriage; for you never know what is going on, or where you are, and you must be content to walk blindfold if you walk with them. They tell you nothing beyond what they are obliged, take you into no confidence, never consult you, never arrest their own action for your concurrence; and the consequence is that you live with them in the dark, if you are timid, for ever afraid of looming catastrophes, and more like a captive bound to the car of their fortunes than like the coadjutor with a voice in the manner of the driving and the right to assist in the direction of the journey. This is the reticence of temperament, and we see it in children from quite an early age- those children who are trusted by the servants, and are their favourites in consequence, because they tell no tales; but it is a disposi tion that may become dangerous unless

watched, and that is always liable to degen- | for all that, next to truth, on which society erate into falsehood. For reticence is just rests, mutual knowledge is the best workon the boundary of deception, and it needs ing virtue, and a state of reticent distrust but a very little step to take one over the is more prudent than noble. Many people border. Still nothing can be more foolish think it a fine thing to live with their most or more suicidal, to say nothing of its sin, intimate friends as if they would one day than lying. No man's memory is so good become their enemies, and never let even as to enable him to lie with constant im- their deepest affections strike root so far punity. Some day there must come the down as confidence. They re-arrange La inevitable slip, and one such slip of memory Bruyère's famous maxim, "L'on peut avoir and consequent discovery will undo the la confiance de quelqu'un sans en avoir le careful labour of a life, and reduce the cœur," and take it quite the contrary way; whole fabric to a heap of unsightly ruins. but perhaps the heart which gives itself, divorced from confidence, is not worth accepting, and reticence where there is love sounds almost a contradiction in terms. Indeed, the certainty of unlimited confidences where there is love is one of the strongest of all the arguments in favour of general reticence. For in nine cases out of ten you tell your secrets and open your heart, not only to your friend, but to your friend's wife, or husband, or lover; and secondhand confidence is rarely held sacred if it can be betrayed with impunity.

That obtrusive kind of reticence which parades itself, which makes mysteries and lets you see there are mysteries, which keeps silence and flaunts it in your face as an intentional silence, brooding over things you are not worthy to know that silence which is as loud as words is one of the most irritating things in the world, and can be made one of the most insulting. If words are sharp arrows, this kind of dumbness is even sharper and all the worse because it puts it out of your power to complain. You cannot bring into court a list of looks, By an apparent contradiction, reticent and shrugs, or make it a grievance that a people who tell nothing are often the most man held his tongue while you raved, and charming letter-writers. Full of chit-chat, to all appearance kept his temper when you of descriptions dashed off with a warm and lost yours. Yet all of us who have had flowing pen, giving all the latest news any experience that way know that his hold-well authenticated and not scandalous, and ing his tongue was the very reason why you raved, and that if he had spoken for his own share the worst of the tempest would have been allayed. This is a common manner of tormenting, however, with reticent people who have a moral twist; and to fling stones at you from behind the shield of silence by which they have sheltered themselves is a pastime that hurts only one of the combatants. Reticence, though at times one of the greatest social virtues we possess, is also at times one of the most disastrous personal conditions. Half our modern novels turn on the misery brought about by mistaken reticence; and though novelists generally exaggerate the circumstances they deal with, they are not wrong in their facts. If the waters of strife have been let loose because of many words, there have been broken hearts before now because of none, or not sufficient. Old proverbs, to be sure, inculcate the value of reticence, and the wisdom of keeping one's own counsel. If speech is silvern, silence is golden, in popular philosophy; and the youth is ever enjoined to be like the wise man, and keep himself free from the peril of words. Yet

breathing just the right amount of affec-
tion according to the circumstances of the
correspondents - a naturally eloquent per-
son who has cultivated the art of reticence
writes letters unequalled for charm of
manner. The first impression of them is
superb, enchanting, enthralling, like the
bouquet of old wine; but, on reconsidera
tion, what have they said? Absolutely
nothing. This charming letter, apparently
so full of matter, is an answer to a great,
good, bonest outpour wherein you laid bare
that foolish heart of yours, and delivered
up your soul for anatomical examination;
and you looked for a reply based on the
same lines. At first delighted, you are
soon chilled and depressed by such a
turn, and you feel that you have made a
fool of yourself, and that your correspond-
ent is laughing in his sleeve at your insane
propensity to "gush." So must it be till
that good time comes when man shall have
no need to defend himself against his fel
lows, when confidence shall not bring sor-
row nor trust betrayal, and when the art of
reticence shall be as obsolete as the art of
fence, or the Socratic method.

re

From The Spectator.

MR. ARNOLD ON ST. PAUL.*

IT is not easy to express strongly enough either the depth of our agreement with, or the depth of our dissent from, the doctrine of these remarkable essays. On the one side, they teach what we have always held as of the very essence of St. Paul's theology, that instead of expounding the forensic system which might almost be described, in the old legal terminology, as Christ "suffering a fine and recovery" in order to free mankind from the lien laid by the law upon the human conscience, St. Paul's whole effort is to show how the inner spirit of man may become truly righteous and holy, and to describe with the utmost fulness what the true signs of that righteousness and holiness are, that nobody may mistake the nature of the end in view. On the other hand, the distinction between that in St. Paul's teaching which Mr. Arnold says that "science" acknowledges as founded on genuine facts of human nature, and that in it which he intimates that it does not acknowledge, and cannot be expected to acknowledge, and of which, therefore, he does his best to attenuate the emphasis and importance in St. Paul's letters, seems to us to strike at the very root of that teaching, and to reduce it back again from a fountain of inexhaustible freshness to a mere dried-up spring in the desert.

clearly understand the situation with which the Legislature has to deal. It may be true, we think, that Mr. Winterbotham admitted the feeling of watchful jealousy with too little of regret, though it was with regret, and as an excusable, not as an intrinsically worthy attitude of mind, that he spoke of it. But of this we are quite sure, that Mr. Arnold is utterly blind to the unworthy spirit in the Church of England which has fomented this unworthy feeling among Dissenters, and we cannot but think that he as a Churchman would be better employed in trying to enforce upon us Churchmen the spirit of Christ's teaching, "How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull the mote out of thine eye, and behold a beam is in thine own eye," than in lecturing the Dissenters thus:

·

"And now let us turn to Mr. Winterbotham and the Protestant Dissenters. He interprets their very inner mind, he says; that which he declares in their name, they are all feeling, and would declare for themselves if they could. the part of the Dissenters, which made them There was a spirit of watchful jealousy on not introduce the Established Church into all the prone to take offence; therefore statesmen should institutions of the country.' That is positively the whole speech! Strife, jealousy, wrath, contentions, backbitings,' - we know the catalogue. And the Dissenters are, by their own confession, so full of these, and the very existence of an orBut first let us say a word on Mr. Ar-ganization of Dissent so makes them a necessity, nold's very thoughtful and instructive but that the State is required to frame its legislation patronizing preface on the attitude of the in consideration of them! Was there ever such Dissenters towards the Church of England. a confession made? Here are people existing for He makes, we think, a somewhat unfair use the sake of a religion of which the essence is of Mr. Winterbotham's confession in Par-mildness and sweet reasonableness, and the forliament as to the spirit of "watchful jeal- clare themselves so full of the very temper and bearing to assert our ordinary self; and they deousy "which had grown up among Dissent- habits at which that religion is specially levelled, ers towards the Church of England, calling that they require to have even the occasion of it a "hideous confession," and putting to forbearing to assert their ordinary self removed those who feel it St. Paul's question, out of their way, because they are quite sure "When there is jealousy and strife among they will never comply with it! Never was you, are ye not carnal?" The present there a more instructive comment on the blesswriter had the advantage of hearing that ings of separation, which we are so often invited speech as well as Mr. Arnold, and he assur- by separatists to admire. Why does not Dissent edly did not interpret it as a boast made by forbear to assert its ordinary self, and help to Mr. Winterbotham in the name of the Dis- win the world to the mildness and sweet reasonsenters, but as an admission made with re-ableness of Christ, without this vain contest gret, but which he thought it wiser for all parties to be candidly made, in order that we Churchmen who, through carnality of another kind, are (as Mr. Winterbotham holds, and as, we confess, we too hold), in some considerable measure the cause of that carnal feeling among Dissenters, might

St. Paul and Protestantism, with an Introduction on Puritanism and the Church of England. By Matthew Arnold, M.A., LL.D. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1870.

up

about machinery? Why does not the Church? is the Dissenter's answer. What an answer for a Christian! We are to defer giving up our ordinary self until our neighbour shall have given all. But I will answer the question on more his: that is, we are never to give it up at mundane grounds. Why are we to be more blamed than the Church for the strife arising out of our rival existences? asks the Dissenter. Because the Church cannot help existing and you can! Therefore, contra ecclesiam nemo pacificus, as Baxter himself said in his better

moments. Because the Church is there; be- which has in these latter days prolonged cause strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are sure Dissent, the spirit of bland superiority, to come with breaking off from her; and because the calm attitude of a higher caste, the lofstrife, jealousy, and self-assertion are the very tiness of mind which deems the Dissenter miseries against which Christianity is firstly indefinitely, though perhaps involuntarily, levelled; - therefore we say that a Christian is lower than ourselves, in the whole tone of inexcusable in breaking with the Church, ex- Mr. Arnold's disputation. At the root of cept for a departure from the primal ground of his false conception of the Dissenters and her foundation: Let every one that nameth the their position, we take to be Mr. Arnold's name of Christ depart from iniquity.” assumption that separation from the Church That is more or less true, we think. The on points of dogma is wrong, because neiDissenters, had it been written by a Dis- ther the Church nor those who separate from senter, might have learned much by it. it, have "the means of determining such Those of them who have magnanimity points adequately." Even if Mr. Arnold enough to learn from one who sedulously were right in this assumption, his use of it refuses even to hear of the beam in his own in relation to periods when any Churchman eye, how to pluck the mote out of their who had held with him would probably have eyes, may learn by it. But we confess that been a worthless indifferentist, immeasurwe think the mildness and sweet reason- ably inferior to the Dissenter who held that ableness of Christ would better be illus- there was the means of obtaining absolute trated in a Churchman by self-examination truth on matters of dogma, and that the of his own sins and those of his commun- Church had neglected that means, is surely ion, than by a forcible exposition to Dis- the grossest of moral anachronisms! Alsenters of the impossibility of their being in together, while we heartily hold with Mr. the right, and the necessarily unassailable Arnold as to the vital error of the Calvinposition of the Church. Mr. Arnold has ists, and the superior sobriety and wisdom no hating power in him, but we cannot help of the Church in refusing to crystallize the suggesting that the lists of Christian gifts Calvinistic view into Church symbols, we on which St. Paul lays so much stress, and utterly differ with him in supposing that the on which Mr. Arnold, following accurately men who did take the Calvinistic view could in his wake, wisely and eloquently insiste with honesty have remained in the Church. so much, contain some which cordemn us A man who believes, like Mr. Arnold, that and the pervading spirit of our Church, at all theological dogma is premature, has least as severely as those he quotes con- hardly the right to arbitrate on differences demn the "watchful jealousy" of the Dis- between men the noblest of whom cling with senters. Take this, for example, "I, their whole hearts to the belief that dogtherefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech matic truth on theological subjects is not you that ye walk worthy of the voca- only attainable by all men, but that inabil tion wherewith ye are called, with all lowli-ity to attain it has been due to some deep ness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another." Now, can any honest man describe the attitude of the national Church towards Dissent in these terms? Can Mr. Arnold's own book, so far as it touches the Dissenters, be described in these terms? Is it not much nearer to a book written in all exaltation and patronage, with impatience upbraiding the Dissenter and his scruples? A more one-sided lecture we never perused than this able preface. Let nothing be done," says St. Paul in another epistle, "through strife and vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." Can a precept of the great apostle's be more "St. Paul's piercing practical religious sense, neatly and expressly contradicted in spirit him to discern and follow the range of the comjoined to his strong intellectual power, enabled than it is in the preface and some parts of mandment, both as to man's actions and as to the first essay of this book? As for strife, his heart and thoughts, with extraordinary force Mr. Arnold no doubt hopes to remove it and closeness. His religion had, as we shall by showing his antagonists how completely see, a preponderantly mystic side, and nothing they are in the wrong, and he in the right; is so natural to the mystic as in rich sinbut for the rest, there is the very spirit gle words, such as faith, light, love, to sum

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moral delinquency in the spirits of those who have confessed it.

But to come back to what is immeasura bly the best part of this book, the two essays on St. Paul. We have said that we concur entirely with the thesis that St. Paul, so far from being in spirit Antinomian or verging in that direction, writes with one sole object in view, the object of bringing righteousness home to the heart of man with a power that will make it no longer a yoke, a law to be obeyed, but an inspiration and a joy. Nothing can be finer and truer than this: