supernatural, the spiritual element in life row. The condition of feeling which this will evaporate also, that we shall have to passion, taken alone and without faith, accept a life with narrow horizons, without would really justify, is the last in the world disinterestedness, harshly cut off from the which, if we understand him rightly, the springs of life in the past. But what is reviewer seriously wishes to encourage. this spiritual element? It is the passion He admires and envies "the engaging for inward perfection, with its sorrows, its naturalness, simple, chastened, debonair aspirations, its joy. These mental states of the Greek spirit. Now aspiration in its are the delicacies of the higher morality of most ardent form, "the passion of perfecthe few, of Augustine, of the author of the tion," without trust in the love of God and Imitation, of Francis de Sales; in their Christ, is a passion of pain. The homo essence they are only the permanent char- desideriorum whom it tends to make is as acteristics of the higher life. .. The far as possible from "the Greek spirit, with life of those who are capable of a passion its engaging naturalness, simple, chastened of perfection still produces the same men- debonair." A debonair "passion of perfectal states; but that religious expression of tion" is almost a contradiction in terms. them is no longer congruous with the cul- Indeed, however the Westminster critic may ture of the age. Still all inward life works talk of the religious graces reappearing in itself out in a few simple forms, and culture a "subtilized intellectual shape," it is percannot go very far before the religious fectly clear that the joy of perfect trust, graces reappear in a subtilized intellectual the profound self-abasement of conscious shape." This is nobler and doubtless more alienation from God, are just as little capatenable than the other theory, for though, ble of "reappearing in a subtilized intelwith instinctive exclusiveness of feeling lectual shape," if there be no personal obrather odd in a Westminster reviewer, the ject for such feelings, as is the warmth critic still limits the "passion of perfection" derived from a real sun, of "reappearing to a few, by making it a desire for a higher in a subtilized intellectual shape " when the life, and not for mere distinguishing rarities sun is extinguished and shines no more. of feeling, he opens it to the many. And We do not deny we should be the last to try and convince those who are unhappy enough to be blind to God, that therefore they ought to indulge no "passion of perfection" if they feel it stir within them. Even the Comtist who thinks he sees a law of historic development in human nature towards something nobler, and feels, he knows not why, the ardour of desire towards that nobler future, will not be challenged by any true Christian for believing so much, only be cause he does not believe more. If he really feels "the passion of perfection," the desire to reach a higher step in inward feeling himself, and to contribute his mite to the attainment of a yet higher level by those who succeed him after he has ceased to exist for ever, then we say that whether the Comtian philosophy explaine those states of feeling truly or not, he is at least justified by the positivist theory in assuming these emotions as facts marking out the true direction of the historic law, and in fostering them also, if that seems to him the best kind of conformity to the historic law. Only we entirely deny the reviewer's position that this "passion of perfection" is itself the "spiritual element" of all true faith. The "passion of perfection" in its present form is mere aspiration, and no source of joy, though a rich source of sor we earnestly maintain - that men who by no fault of their own have lost sight of God, still draw from Him the life and love which they may, if they choose, ascribe to the "subtilized intellectual" movements of their own intellects. So a blind man may rejoice in the sunlight, and yet maintain that because he is blind the sun does not exist, and that what he feels is the "subtilized intellectual" heat which other and coarser minds falsely attribute to an external object. But those who know that God besets them behind and before, and lays His hand upon them, though they may admit that what he gives to others "in a subtilized intellectual shape" is as much proof of His love as what He gives more openly, and without veiling Himself behind the complexities of a fine organization, will feel great compensation in the revealed personality which bestows the simpler gifts, for the delicacy and subtlety of those which are filtered through a network of refined labyrinthine perceptions that conceals the giver. There seems to us something more natural in turning away from spiritual subjects altogether, when once the natural focus of such subjects, God, disappears from the unhappy thinker's view, than in trying to warm himself still with the heat of feelings of which the intellectual justification has disappeared. A may be into the highest phenomena of his spirit, does not exist for the purely "relative spirit," simply because it does not believe that they are the highest phenomena of his spirit, or indeed characteristic phenomena at all. The purely relative spirit which disbelieves in absolute righteousness disbelieves also in the special sacredness of duty, the special evil of sin. And while our critic's criticism fails on this side in showing that the "relative spirit" does issue in a "delicate and tender justness," it fails still more conspicuously in showing that faith in an absolute righteousness hardens and petrifies the moral judgment, rendering it inflexible and "brutal" in its classifications. Was it our Lord, living in Him, as no human being before or since could possibly have realized it, and who in criticizing the moral evil in others 66 - the woman taken in adultery for instance, or the woman who was a sinner-acted on His own precept, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," - was it He who failed in a delicate and tender justness" in the criticism of human life, or rather the "relative spirit" of that day, the Sadduceeism which would have stoned Paul for believing in the resurrection? No doubt belief in a dead dogma may become the cruelest Pharisaism. But faith in a living Lord of absolute righteousness is probably the most softening, the most purifying, and ethereally delicate of the human influences which affect our judgment of others. Even M. Renan, The reviewer has an odd impression that all belief in an absolutely Righteous, an infinitely Holy God, destroys the delicacy of human insight, the finely graduated judg--who realized the absolute righteousness ment for human moralities. "The relative spirit," he says, "by dwelling constantly on the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, breaking through a thousand rough and brutal classifications, and giving elasticity to inflexible principles, begets an intellectual finesse of which the ethical result is a delicate and tender justness in the criticism of human life." On the other hand, belief in the absolute has a tendency to petrify moral judgments into abstract principles which will not fit individual cases, and into harmony with which therefore individual cases are artificially clipped or bent, to the great injury of true justice; and he illustrates by the deplorable figure which Coleridge's life, judged by abstract morality, itself presents. We admit that what the critic calls the "relative spirit," that is, the spirit which believes in no absolute righteousness, is often lax, but we should certainly not have thought it "elastic." On moral subjects it is loose-fitting enough, but has not belief enough of any sort to care to adapt itself closely to the moral condition of individual natures. Mr. 'Lewes's life of Goethe may be fairly taken as a very good example of what the critic means by the purely relative spirit" in its adaptation to the higher criticism. The result is not a "delicate and tender justness in the criticism of human life," but a lax absolution of that great man from almost all his sins, even those sins which " a tender and delicate justness" would be compelled to admit. The truth is that the purely "relative spirit" has no belief in either the free power of man to choose the higher part, or in a higher inspiration than its own to show it the higher part to choose. The spiritual elasticity which is concerned to adapt itself closely to the moral conflicts of man's life, in order to enter as fully as the great apostle of the "relative spirit," has attributed this delicacy of moral appreciation in the highest measure to our Lord, and has remarked that his feeling for moral nuances was something quite new to the Oriental genius. And whence did this arise, if not in that infinite love for the Absolute righteousness and beauty which opened His eyes to the most delicate shades of loveliness, whether in the lily of the field or in the heart of man? From the Spectator. HAREM LIFE IN EGYPT.* THERE is no problem in literature so difficult as to write on delicate things delicately, and Mrs. Emmeline Lott - if there be such *Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. By Emmeline Lott. In 2 vols, London: Richard Bentley. 1868. a person certainly has not solved it. She has tried very hard, with apparently most upright intentions, and she has failed, either because she has allowed some littérateur to write out her own experience in his language, or because she has simply mistaken the easiest mode of conveying the impression she nevertheless desires to convey. It is quite advisable, it is even at this moment necessary, that the inside of the harem life of Mohammedan Asia, the home life of a fourth of mankind, should be faithfully and honestly described, as faithfully and honestly as the interior life of Europe has been by a thousand pens. The world is less fixed in its belief in the superiority of monogamy than it should be, and can derive only benefit from a plain statement of the results of the rival system. A clear and distinct account of the social meaning, the true drift and working, of the Asiatic system, would be a distinct gain not only to ethics, but to the permanent convictions of civilization. It would settle, for instance, one way or the other, the latent doubt of the highest European caste whether monogamy is not an idea, an acceptable idea no doubt, or even an essential idea where pedigree is important, but still an idea, and not a principle, liable to be overridden for the sake of convenience, or even of enjoymemt. Unfortunately, for English readers at all events, to describe harem life, i. e. polygamy in its ultimate and indeed necessary form, it is necessary to state certain facts which it is very hard to state in any form which is not, to English ideas, slightly or gravely, according to an infinitely varying opinion, mischievous. The only mode of accomplishing the feat is to be very plain and very simple, making the facts as clear as possible, and also as little suggestive. Lady Duff Gordon has in her letters from Egypt succeeded in doing this, succeeded, that is, in giving the truth of a civilization whose laws upon all sexual subjects differ from our own. though they are laws, without writing an objectionable book. Mrs. Lott we assume from internal evidence that the "English governess" is married - has not so completely succeeded. Her book is thoroughly honest and upright. There is not in it a sentence which is not of itself well-principled, or is calculated to harm any human being not brought up in the belief that ignorance is innocence. It would strike a French woman, or still more an Italian woman, of the better class, as a slightly realistic but absolutely unobjectionable record of a very unusual and therefore very valuable experience. It is a coarse book nevertheless, one well worth the reading of educated men, but one which we should by no means recommend for households indiscriminately. The authoress, as we have said, is clearly honest, and desirous only to state facts, and has a wish not only to make those facts enticing, but to make them as unsavoury as she well can, but she does not know precisely how to do it. Instead of being very direct and very simple, she is very plain and not very simple, but addicted to shrouding statements quite needful to her objects in language which arouses the very sense of annoyance she wishes to avoid. We wish we could give the best and easiest proof of her mismanagement in this respect, but perhaps a still better proof is that we hesitate. Writing for educated men, and not for girls, we cannot accuse ourselves of over prudery, and with adequate reason to assign would set the conventional laws very distinctly at defiance. And nevertheless, the fact that upon one of the simplest points of manners and hygiene Oriental civilization differs absolutely from Western civilization, is in this book so clumsily stated that we decline to quote the statement as it stands. Upon another question our refusal is more absolute. The whole of the allusions to the "guardians of the harem" have obviously and certainly been written by a man, and are in the very worst possible taste, in one or two passages almost disgusting. The fact of the employment of these men is really important, as displaying the grand secret of Oriental life, that the restrictions upon women do not arise in the faintest degree from the sentiment which in the West is called modesty, but the fact is sufficient without the, to say the least, annoying repetition in this book. Two or three paragraphs besides have a sort of nursery plainness, quite harmless but not usual in English, and on the whole, while availing ourselves of the author's experience, we recommend her book only to those careful to know the bad side of Oriental polygamy. Of the good side she says nothing and saw nothing, nor are we acquainted with any book which really describes it, except perhaps The Camp, the Mission, and the Zenana, and the accomplished authoress of those much abused volumes errs as much upon the side of reticence. Mrs. Lott was employed for some months by Ismael Pacha as governess to his son, or rather as English teacher, and in that capacity accompanied his household on a visit to Constantinople. Of course she saw the interior of harem life, and her impression of it is what the impression of a nurse ry governess slightly above the average which matched the hangings of each apartwas sure to be, that it was very magnifi- ment." cent, very uncivilized, a little disgusting, and unbearably uncomfortable. There There are twenty or thirty descriptions were jewels without end and without end like this alternated with others of filthy jealousies, glorious halls and squalid bed-rooms, bad food, and that kind of squalor rooms, infinite wealth and nothing fit to eat, which seems peculiar to Asiatics, the squalluxury of a kind beyond measure and no or, namely, which is indulged in as a relief civilization. This, for instance, is a de- from oppressive splendour. The ladies of scription of one chamber, or rather apparte- the harem, for example, never received ment curious that English has no equiva- their lord except in the richest attire, but lent for that word-in one of the many they lived by themselves dressed in a medViceregal palaces in Egypt. ley of morning wrappers and diamonds, and their chief, the first wife, whose rule was absolute, superintended her laundresses, "shoeless, stockingless, with her hair hanging loosely about, and the sleeves of her shoulders and there tied." dirty cotton wrapper tucked up to the cents. "As soon as I had joined the little Prince, who waited patiently while I explored the chamber, we opened a door on the right hand, passed through a small marble paved hall in which stood four life-size statues, each holding gilt lamps in their hands, which led us into the Viceregal Bedchamber. It was a noblelooking room, covered with a handsome Brussels carpet, with black ground and thickly studded with bouquets of variegated flowers of almost every hue. The whole was scrupulously clean. The gilt-iron bedstead was surmounted with gilded knobs, as also the foot and head plates. The mosquito curtains were of fine crimson silk gauze bespangled with gold crescents. The washhand-stand was of pure white marble, with ewer, basin, and the other usual append ages, of beautifully painted Sèvres china, the bouquets on which were artistically executed, and matched the carpet admirably. A large pier-glass hung down from the ceiling. The divan (which was rather diminutive in comparison to those generally placed in the apartments of Turkish dwellings) and chairs were covered with crimson silk bespangled with gold cresThe toilet table, on which were placed His Highness's toilet requisites, all of solid gold, inlaid with most valuable precious stones, was covered with a similar cloth. The ebony cabinet was inlaid with gold, and costly jewels, on each side of which stood two silver branch candelabras holding a dozen transparent coloured wax candles; and in the centre was placed His Highness's jewel casket, a perfect gem of the same material, richly inlaid. The walls were covered with crimson paper, embossed with gold crescents. The ceiling was beautifully painted with Turkish and Egyptian landscapes. The chimney piece was of white marble, and the handsome, elegant bronze stove on the spotless white marble hearth was constructed in the form of a kiosk. Then we proceeded through a door that was left wide open into another chamber similarly fitted up, except that the furniture was of yellow satin bespangled with silver crescents, which was invariably occupied by that Ikbal,favourite,' whom the Viceroy from time to time delighted to honour. This was the guests' chamber, and the history of its Occupants would form a singular addition to the annals of Egyptian history. The beds in both these roons were encased in richly figured satin, "One morning, when I returned from the gardens into which I had been strolling for a short time, I entered the Grand Pacha's reception room, and there I beheld one of the most extraordinary scenes imaginable. It was one of those nondescript tableaux to which only a Hogarth could have done justice. My feeble pen-drawing must necessarily fall very short of the original; for there were their Highnesses the Princesses, squatted on the carpet amidst a whole pile of trunks, most of which were much deeper than carriage imperials - a host of portmanteaus and carpet bags of small and large dimensions-jewel cases and immense red leather sacks capable of holding from six to eight mattresses. They were all attired in filthily dirty crumpled muslins, shoeless and stockingless, their trousers were tucked up above their knees, the sleeves of their paletots pinned up above their elbows, their hair hanging loosely about their shoulders, as rough as a badger's back, totally unencumbered with nets or handkerchiefs, but, pardon me, literally swarming with vermin! no Russian peasants could possibly have been more infested with live animals. In short, their tout ensemble was even more untidy than that of hardworking washerwomen at the tubs; nay, almost akin to Billingsgate fishwomen at home, for their conversation in their own vernacular was equally as low. They all swore in Arabic at the slaves most lustily, banged them about right and left with any missile, whether light or heavy, which came within their reach." The same lady, however, revelled on State occasions in rings with diamonds in them almost as large as the Koh-i-noor since it has been cut," and our fairer readers will thank us for this minute description of the State dress worn by the second wife on her visit fo the Sultan's harem: "Her Highness the Princess Epouse wore a and commode, and her impressions before and after her frank reception among the ladies of the harem were as unfavourable as those recorded in this extract: "There I was, totally unacquainted with either the Turkish or Arabic tongues; unaccustomed to the filthy manners, barbarous customs, and disgusting habits of all around me; deprived of every comfort by which I had always been surrounded; shut out from all rational society; hurried here and there, in the heat of a scorching African sun, at a moment's notice; absolutely living upon nothing else but dry bread and a little pigeon or mutton, barely pelled to take all my meals but my scanty breakfast (a dry roll and cup of coffee) in the society of two clownish, disgusting, German peasant servants; lacking the stimulants so essentially necessary for the preservation of health in such a hot climate; stung almost to death with mosquitoes, tormented with flies, and surrounded with beings who were breeders of vermin; a daily witness of manners the most repugnant, nay, revolting, to the delicacy of a European female-for often have I seen, in the presence of my little Prince, most superb thick white moiré-antique silk robe, with a long train, trimmed with handsome point Alençon lace, having rich ruches of tulle and pink' artificial daisies all around it. The body and sleeves were also trimmed with silver ribbon and daisies. The bertha was composed of rich lace, ribbons, and daisies. Her slender waist was encircled with a ceinture composed of sapphires and diamonds. On her arm she wore diamond bracelets. Around her neck was clasped a superb diamond necklace. Her head was adorned with a tiara of diamonds, arranged in the shape of Indian wheat, the weight of which was very great. An immense branch, forming a geranium flower in full blossom, composed of opals, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, amethysts, formed the stom-sufficient to keep body and soul together. Comacher of her dress. A pink satin Turkish cloak, with sleeves and cape, was placed on her shoulders. Her face was covered with a rich Brussels lace veil, one end of which was placed over the head, and the other end crossed over the mouth and nose, passed round the back of the neck, and tucked down behind the cloak. Her feet were encased in white silk stockings, white satin shoes, richly embroidered with coloured silks, pearls, and gold and silver thread, with high gold heels, over which she wore a pair of yellow morocco papooshes, 'slippers. In her hand she held a rich pink silk parasol, lined with white satin, trimmed with a deep silver fringe, with a gold handle, inlaid with a great variety of precious stones. On her fingers were a large yellow diamond and a beautiful sapphire ring. Her Grand Eunuch held over her head a handsome large pink silk umbrella." The odalisques are seldom educated, are in an English woman's opinion fearfully indelicate, though some of this must be set down to the cardinal rule of Oriental speech-Nothing natural can be indelicate," are incessantly intriguing against each other and the wives, and are, strange to say, hungry for money, of which some of them possess large sums. They were kind enough to the English governess when they understood her, and made her a sort of universal referee upon Frankish customs, and of course the lower women followed their example. Indeed, though Mrs. Lott complains repeatedly of her treatment, she records frankly a little incident which to any one acquainted with the East speaks volumes as to her position. The Heir Apparent's head nurse never took a backshish without compelling her to accept threefourths, without assigning her, that is, the rank a gouvernante would hold in a European royal family. Her orders seem latterly never to have been disobeyed, yet she was compelled, as she repeatedly complains, to fight for a European chair, bedstead, "A lady of the Harem, not more forward than all the rest, Well versed in Syren's arts, it must be confessed, Shuffle off her garments, and let her figure stand revealed Like that of Venus, who no charms concealed!' Surrounded by intriguing Arab nurses, who not only despised me because I was a Howadji, but hated me in their hearts because, as a European lady, I insisted upon receiving, and most assuredly I did receive, so far as H.H. the Viceroy and their H.H. the Princesses, the three wives, were concerned, proper respect. The bare fact of my being allowed to take preceIkbals, favourites,' galled them to the quick; dence of the inmates of the Harem, even of the and there is no doubt but they were at that time inwardly resolved to do their utmost to render my position as painful as possible, nay, even untenable. Then my only companions were the ladies of the Harem, whose appearance I have already described as being totally at variance with that glowing myth-like picture that Tom Moore gives of retired beauty, so erroneously supposed to be caged within the precincts of the Abodes of Bliss, in his exquisite poem of Lalla Rookh; for therein I failed to find "Oh, what a pure and sacred thing |