of pieces of occasion on the war, and their singular confusion of facts, would defy classification. The minstrels usually descend into the theological drift at the close of their performances.

"If other Powers don't give them aid,
I'm sure the French are not afraid;
We wish them well-may they succeed,
For they believe the Roman Creed!
And now to end my warlike theme,
The French and Irish are the same;
And for their welfare now we hope,
Because they love the present Pope!"

Prize-fighting has never flourished in Ireland. An Irishman is never mercenary where hard hitting is concerned, and the system and organization of the Ring is virtually unknown in the island. The transplanted Irishman, however, occasionally distinguishes himself in the profession of slogging, and his foreign reputation is at once seized upon in his native country as a fact to be proud of from a national and patriotic rather than from a P.R. aspect. Tradition and ballads inform us of a tremendous set-to on the Curragh of Kildare, between Cooper of England and Donnelly of Ireland, when Donnelly won the victory and the heart of a countess who saw him fight. The giant Baldwin, or O'Baldwin, who two years ago was, from stress of police and the unaccommodating disposition of railway directors, unable to bring off his tussle for the belt in London, paid a visit to Ireland, where he met with a warm reception from the peasantry of his natal parish, and a local poet laid the following tribute of rhymes at his feet:

"You lovers all of manly art and self-defence, attend

The praises of a hero brave that lately I have penned.

His name is Edward Baldwin, from the town of sweet Lismore;

He now has challenged England for 1,0007. and more.

Now, to conclude and finish, and end my

fighting song,

Let us drink unto brave Baldwin and Dan

Donnelly that's gone;

For so true and brave two Irishmen ne'er fought on British shore,

Not forgetting brave John Morrissey, a native of Templemore.".

The dog-tax has inspired a bard to protest against it in the following fashion:

"You dog-fanciers of Ireland of every degree, sir,

I hope you'll pay attention and listen unto me, sir,

It's about the dogs I'm going to sing,-don't think that I am larking,

You must all pay two-and-sixpence if you keep a dog for barking.

With your bow-wow-wow."

During the siege of Paris, the street minstrels continued to prophesy victory for the French, and defeat to the Prussians constantly.

"They think to conquer Paris, but its walls are very strong.

Brave Trochu and his army will die there to

a man;

He's sworn that the Crown Prince and his army he will defeat,

And what won't die outside the walls will fall in the retreat."

"A new Song on the Recapture of Orleans by the French," by John O'Callaghan, had a great run of popularity last year. The chorus, "Fagimind suir mar a Ta shea," is not easily translatable; it signifies literally "leave things as they are," but it has an aside meaning implying a threat and punishment.

"War to the knife now in France is the cry;
Onward to glory, to conquer, or die.
The Prussians and Germans in turn do fly,
I'm told they are falling in swarms;

I think they had better get ready in time,
And make no delay, but run back to the
Rhine,

For as shure as the sun in the heavens do shine,

They'll get Fagimind suir mar a Ta shea.

Here's a health to the French, who were

tracts in the foregoing pages are strictly taken from the common street ballads. They may serve to give the English reader a novel insight into certain obscure phases of Irish humour and sentiment. The airs to which the verses are sung are almost invariably in minor keys, and are often, I suspect, the inspirations of a moment, especially when the ballad is bran-new and unattached by tradition to a popular melody. The singer walks slowly along while performing the ditty, and offers copies for sale without interrupting his chant. A

crowd strolls after him, and for one who comes to buy, twenty stay to listen. You might safely purchase the entire contents of the minstrel's portfolio or

wallet without finding a single verse of a coarse description. The good time for the bard is the season of the contested election. He is then regularly retained, and has his selected opponent, with whom he may probably attempt conclusions in the style of the pipers in the "Fair Maid of Perth." These election lyrics are ferocious and eloquent in denunciation, to a degree that often verges on what might be termed the poetry of unlimited abuse; but the street minstrel is decidedly most amusing when he treats of sporting, religion, war, love, and politics, in the original fashion which the reader has just had an opportunity of inspecting.

uncon

It is now nearly thirty years ago that Mr. Helps's name began to be revered by many young men and women, who were struggling to arrive at some just notion of the human beings around them, and of the important, and often frightful problems of the time. They admired him as a poet, and as an historian; but they valued him most as a critic, not of art or of literature, but of men and the ways and needs of men. Dissatisfied with the narrow religious theory then fashionable in London pulpits, which knew no distinctions of the human race save that between the " verted" many and the "converted" few, they seemed to themselves to find in his essays views wider, juster, more humane, more in accord with the actual facts which they found in themselves and in the people round them, and more likely, too, to result in practical benefit to the suffering and the degraded. And well it was for them that they did so. Some of them were tempted to rush from one religious extreme into another, which offered them just then not only the charms of novelty, but those of genius, of culture, of manly and devoted. earnestness. Others were tempted in a very different direction. They were ready to escape from a narrow and intolerant fanaticism into that equally narrow and intolerant revolutionist infidelity which has for the last eighty years usurped the sacred name of Liberty.

There were those among both parties who received at once from Mr. Helps's book an influence none the less powerful because it calmed and subdued. It was new and wholesome for many, then in hot and hasty youth, to find the social problems which were so important to them equally important to a man of a training utterly different from theirs,

and approached by him in a proportionally different temper. They were inclined at first to accuse that temper of dilettantism. It had no tincture of Cambyses' vein, none even of Shelley's. It threatened not thrones, principalities, nor powers. It promised not to build up an elysium on their ruins. The sneer of lukewarmness rose to many men's lips; and the playful interludes which were interspersed throughout the volumes seemed to justify their suspicions. Were not these mere fiddlings while Rome was burning? impertinent interruptions to the one great work of setting the world to rights out of hand?

But, as they read on, they found themselves compelled to respect the writer's temper more and more, even though it seemed to lack fiercer and bolder qualities which they valued (and rightly) in some of their own friends. They were forced to confess at the outset that Mr. Helps did not approach social problems in that spirit of selfish sentimentalism which regards the poor and the awful as divinely ordained means by which the rich and the superstitious may climb to heaven. Neither did he approach them in the spirit (if the word spirit can be used of aught so spiritless) of that "philosophie du néant," the old laissez-faire political economy which taught men, and taught little else, that it is good for mankind that the many should be degraded in order that the few may be rich. They saw that Mr. Helps had, like Mr. John Stuart Mill, righteous and chivalrous instincts, which forbade them both to accept the reasonableness of any reasoning which proved that. They saw, too, that both possessed elements of strength which they themselves lacked, namely, calm and culture; a calm and a culture

which did not interfere with a deep tenderness for the sorrows and follies of mankind, and with a deep indignation now and then at their wrongs; but which tamed them and trained them to use, converting them, to quote from memory an old simile of Mr. Carlyle's, "from wild smoke and blaze into genial inward heat."

I do not wish to push further the likeness between two remarkable men. But I am certain that many who owe much to them both, will feel that the influence of both has been in some respects identical, and that they have learnt from both a valuable lesson on the importance, whether to the thinker or to the actor, of culture and calm.

It has been good then-to confine myself to Mr. Helps's books-for many young men and women to be taught that it is possible to discuss, fairly and fully, questions all-important, many exquisitely painful, some seemingly wellnigh hopeless, without fury, even without flurry; that such a composure is a sign, not of carelessness, but of faith in the strength of right, and hope in its final triumph; that, as the old seer says, "he that believeth will not make haste," and that it is wise "not to fret thyself, lest thou be moved to do evil;" that all passion, even all emotion, however useful they may be in the very heat of battle, must be resolutely sent below, and clapt under hatches, if we intend to ascertain our own ship's position, or to reconnoitre the strength of our enemies; that only by a just patience in preparation, can we save from disaster an equally just fierceness in execution; that without σωφροσύνη, even Oupos, "the root of all the virtues,' is of no avail: because without it we shall not have truly seen the object on which the Oupos is to work; shall not have looked at it on all its sides, or taken measure of its true proportions. Good it was for them, too, to find, as they read on through Mr. Helps's books, that those sides, those proportions could only be ascertained by much culture, much reading, observation, reflection, concerning many men and many matters; that the scholar and the man

of the world were probably as necessary now to the safe direction of human affairs, as they ever have been; that the weakness of the average ideologue lay in this not that he had too many ideas, but too few; that the danger now, as always, lay not in "latitudinarianism" (whatever that may mean), but in bigotry; not in breadth, but in narrowness; and that "Cave hominem unius Scientiæ," like "Cave hominem unius Libri," though undoubtedly true, was capable of an interpretation by no means complimentary to the man of one science. Good also for them was it, to learn on the testimony of a witness whom they could not well impeach, that those who had then, and have still, the direction of public affairs were not altogether the knaves and fools, the robbers and tyrants, which they were said to be by the then Press of Holywell Street, and even sometimes in the heat of the Debating Society, by their own young kinsmen; that they were men of like passions, and of like virtues, with those who were so ready to take their places, to do all that they had left undone; that they were but too fully aware of difficulties in any course of action, of which the outside aspirant knew nothing, and which he would be, therefore, still more unable to face; that though the slothful man is too apt to say "there is a lion in the path," the fool is also too apt to say that there is none; and that though anything like reverence for one's elders has been voted out of court for at least a generation, yet a little humility as to our own value, a little charity towards those who are trying to get the work done with such tools as the British nation allows them, might conduce to a better understanding between private men, and a better understanding of public men, of all parties and opinions.

No two men have done more, I believe, to save this generation from two or even three extremes of fanaticism, than Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Helps; and that because they have been just to all that was vital and sound in the Middle Ages, just to all that was vital and sound in the French Revolution; and, be it

remembered, to all that was vital and sound in the young Puritan time of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus they have carned the right to be heard, and they have on the whole been heard, when they have preached, not indeed content with the established order of things, but at least patience, charity, and caution in reforming it. The extraordinary sale of the cheap edition of Mr. Carlyle's works, principally, I am told, among the hard-working classes, is a hopeful omen that the "public," in spite of all its sillinesses, is after all, though very slowly, amenable to reason; and the day may come when a cheap edition of Mr. Helps's essays-at least a selection from themmay find favour with those who are to be (so we are told) henceforth the chief power in the British Empire; and who therefore need to know what the British Empire is like, and how it can, and cannot, be governed. "Essays in the Intervals of Business," "The Claims of Labour," "Friends in Council," "Companions of my Solitude," and last, but not least, the recent "Brevia" and "Thoughts on War and Culture "-all these would furnish to the poorest, as well as to the richest, many a weighty, and I believe many a welcome lesson, concerning himself, his family, his countrymen, his country, and his duty to them all. If it be objected that these essays are only adapted to cultivated men and women, and deal only with an artificial stately society, I should demur. Mr. Helps seems to me to ground his sayings, whenever he can, on truths which are equally intelligible to, because equally true for, all men. His aphorisms, even on Government, would stand good just as much for the grocer and his shopboy as for the statesman and his subordinate, and would "touch the witness". -as Friends say-of the one neither less nor more than that of the other; while for manner, as well as for matter, many a page of Mr. Helps's might be profitably intercalated into an average sermon, were it not that the "purpureus pannus" might not enhance the homespun, and much less the shoddy, of the rest of the discourse.

I believe that many ministers of religion, of all parties and denominations, would agree with what I have said. We parsons owe Mr. Helps much more than he knows, or than, perhaps, it is good for him to know. His influence though often of course indirect and unconscious-has been very potent for some years past among the most rational and hearty of those who have had to teach, to manage, or to succour their fellow-creatures; and it is most desirable just now that that influence should increase, and lay hold of the young men who are growing up. It is more than probable that the laity will, ere long, have a far larger share than hitherto, in the internal management of Church affairs; and to do that work well the religious layman will require more than piety, more than orthodoxy, indispensable as those will be.

He will require a great deal of that practical humanity, and a great deal of that common sense, of which Mr. Helps's books are full; for without them, and as much of them as can be obtained, both from laymen and clerks, the Church of England will be in danger of being torn to pieces by small minorities of factious bigots, who do not see that she was meant to be, and can only exist by being, a Church of compromise and tolerance; that is, a Church of practical humanity, and practical common sense.

Tolerance-which after all is, as Mr. Helps says, only another name for that Divine property which St. Paul calls charity, that is what we all need to make the world go right. If anyone wishes to know Mr. Helps's theological opinions concerning it, let him study the last few noble pages of the second series of "Friends in Council." And if he wishes to know Mr. Helps's moral opinions concerning it, whether or not he considers it synonymous with licence, with indulgence either to our own misdeeds or to those of others, let him read whatever Mr. Helps has written on the point on which all men in all ages have been most "tolerant "-when their own wives or daughters were not in question; the point on which this generation is