tion of Louis Seize and his Consort. Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope" was published a year after the battle of the Nile; the first of Scott's great poems was issued about the time of the battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson; Southey's "Curse of Kehama" was published synchronously with Wellington's entering on the lines of Torres Vedras ; the first cantos of "Childe Harold" appeared in the year that the battle of Salamanca was fought, while "Christabel," "Lalla Rookh" and "Endymion" were all given to the world before the reverberations of the thunders in the conflict at Waterloo, that brought Europe peace, had utterly died away. Whatever we may say about civilisation I do not think we should be justified in claiming this as a specially heroic age in the ordinary sense of the word. Wars we have had in the last quarter of a century it is true, but they bear no comparison whatever to the gigantic life-and-death struggle ushered in during the last decade of the eighteenth, and continued without break for fifteen years of the nineteenth, century. In our day, and I say it in no spirit of condemnation, far from it, we have seen what promised to become a fierce, a fratricidal, and a bloody war averted in the most unheroic and businesslike manner by a reference to arbitration, and a payment of damages and costs; while our very brand-new "Rule Britannia," born in troublous and exciting times, and, if not the production of the national muse, accepted very warmly by a large section of the people, actually begins with the most unheroic declaration that "We don't want to fight." The finest touch of heroics that I can call to mind in these latter days was not a national one at all, but a provincial, and, I am proud to say, a local one. It was when the devastating flames had ruthlessly consumed the glorious collection of poetry and prose of all ages that men had, by a self-inflicted tax, here gathered together, and before the flames were scarcely subdued, our citizens rallied and determined that the elements themselves should not prevail against them. I am sorry to add that the occasion gave birth to a villainously large quantity of very vile verse, as well as to a very small half-pennyworth of genuine good poetry.

I hope I shall not be misunderstood if I aver that the bagman has had a very considerable share in quenching the heroic, and in indirectly and directly too, aiding in extinguishing the taste and relish for poetry. The spirit of business is very omnipotent in this nineteenth century, and the enormous impetus that the trade of the country has received during the past half century, affecting as it has the lives of the great bulk of the population, has had a wonderful effect upon our literature. Its influence indeed is not confined to our literature alone. What are known as business-like habits and qualities were always, no doubt, extremely useful to members of any British Government, but many of our greatest statesmen were anything but efficient heads of departments, and it is only in these latter years that good business abilities have been held to be so very desirable in members of the Cabinet. As for oratory, in the sense in which our fathers and grandfathers understood the term, it has wellnigh altogether vanished. In Parliament, the great arena where formerly

the eloquence of the age found its voice, oratory is very rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The few really eloquent speakers remaining are certainly attentively listened to, and the announcement that either Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, or Mr. Bright contemplates making a special speech will fill the House, Lords or Commons as the case may be, and its galleries too; but these occasions are beginning to be regarded as special exhibitions of a nearly extinct and not in present circumstances altogether desirable gift. Avery few years ago when one of the Irish members, Professor Smyth, electrified the House by a grand speech, the eloquence of which recalled, according to the best authorities, the days of Burke and of Grattan, the orator was looked upon as a sort of survival from a remote past. The Quarter Sessions style is the style par excellence of the modern British House of Commons. The speech must be brief, business-like, to the point, a dash of epigram will give it the only flavour now appreciatedthe flavour of smartness. Fancy Pitt, or Fox, or Burke being smart! I do not say that the business of the country suffers from the change, but I do maintain that the literature of the country, which has been sensibly enriched by Parliamentary orations, is decidedly the worse for it. We have become very, very practical. A good many things besides the enormous development of our trade have tended to this. The rise of the railway system, and the immense increase in facilities of all kinds for travelling, have tended, to use the slang term of the day, to discount everything and almost everybody. Familiarity proverbially breeds contempt, and there is a great deal of both in the world nowadays. The enormous growth and development of the press has tended somewhat in the same direction. We know day by day what is going on all the world over, and are tempted to accept the most marvellous events with a coolness and sang froid that would very considerably astound our forefathers. Our sensibility has been warred up on by the rapid strides we have made in civilisation, and oratory and poetry have alike suffered thereby. Romance is becoming a tradition. Why, if there is one thing more than another that I should have judged would have continued to endure uninjured, unscathed, nay untouched, even in these days of change, it is the office of high sheriff in our counties. It is an office that dates back from the Anglo-Saxon times, when the scir-gerefa, or shire reeve had very important duties to attend to, and it is a post that has always been held to be one of great dignity, if not of great utility. But I read in the papers recently some very earnest protests from county gentlemen, condemning the office as useless, and asking for its immediate abolition. The office is designated a "monstrous tax on poor gentlemen," and one gentleman, presumably a poor one, who it seems is threatened with the office next year, complains that in these hard times his income barely suffices for his ordinary wants, and he will have to borrow the £500 or £600 which the office will cost him. Beyond this he will have to give up absolutely all magisterial work, which for many years past has occupied a large portion of his life. "If," he goes on to say, "I were called upon to make these two heavy sacrifices of money and occupation in order

to do some good, I might at any rate console myself; but what is the fact? As high sheriff I shall not be of the slightest good to any human being. I shall twice, or, possibly (worse luck!), four times, exhibit myself in an absurd dress to the loafers of my county town. I shall convey the judges 200 or 300 yards from the railway station to their lodgings, in a gorgeous equipage provided by a jobber in London, I, who in my ordinary life have to content myself with one old screw and a small pony. In a word, for twelve mortal months I shall be a sort of glorified beadle-a sham."

Now who can expect poetry to flourish in an age when the office of high sheriff is in imminent danger, and poverty-stricken squires object to hold it by reason of the attendant expense?

I might, had time permitted, have endeavoured to show the influence which the astounding development of novel writing and novel reading has most certainly had upon poetical literature. I think it would be found that the strain of modern life in all, or nearly all sections of society; the much higher pressure at which we live as compared with previous generations, has made the novel very powerful, both as a literary sedative and a literary stimulant. With the great demand for works of fiction we have been treated to a very abundant supply, with the quality of a great deal of which there is not much fault to be found; while some of it will, I believe, be placed by posterity in a higher position than any preceding literature of the same class. It has happened in more than one instance that poet and novelist have been combined, but I will venture to say that for one reader of "The Spanish Gypsy," noble poem as it is, there have been a thousand readers of "Adam Bede;" and this being so, it is not very wonderful that the muse has been sacrificed and the story-teller has triumphed.

MARCH.

YE little birds that chant your love so loud,
Your careless hearts are not so glad as mine;
For he who sings because the sun doth shine
Is robbed of joy by every murky cloud;
And ye, sweet heralds of the summer crowd
Of unremembered flowers, whose tints combine
To light the meadows-ye grow pale and pine
When by cold winds your radiant heads are bowed.
From you, from all fair creatures of the earth,
I do but gain the beauty that I give ;
Your form, your music, in my soul have birth,
And in my very life your colours live;
And when the sunlight fades, and ye depart,
I hold your joy within my secret heart.

C. C. W. N.

SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION.

ALTHOUGH it cannot be affirmed that the theory of Physical Evolution has yet taken its place amongst those indisputable scientific truths which can no longer be called in question; it has, nevertheless, made most extraordinary progress during the past decade. Moreover, it is now being used as a working theory by so large a number of hard-working enquirers, who in a thousand ways are putting it to the test, with the result hitherto of confirming generally its main proposition, that it may not be thought mere eccentricity if I propound some thoughts having regard to the probable applicability of this law to the higher nature of man. I do not propose to go into the subject with anything like fulness, the most I can here do is to record a few reflections, or, if the reader prefers to call them so, "speculations" which seem to me to open up a line of enquiry of great interest.

There are three possible theories of the relationship which the Spiritual part of man bears to his Physical nature; and here, as throughout this paper, I shall use the word "spiritual" as including the whole intellectual and moral side of our being. First: that which we call the Spiritual nature may be supposed to be simply a phenomenon of his physical nature, inexplicable indeed, but still so bound up with the animal organism as to originate with the life of the body, and to become extinct when that life ceases. This is the theory towards which the scientific mind at present seems to gravitate. On this hypothesis it would obviously be unnecessary to discuss Spiritual as distinct from Physical evolution.

Secondly it may be that the Spiritual life commences contemporaneously with the bodily life, but that it continues an independent existence after that body has returned to its original elements.

This is the generally received opinion of Christendom to-day, but, like many popular opinions which have come down to us ready-made, it greatly needs to be submitted to the crucible of scientific thought before we are justified in adopting it as our own. I may say, however, that to hold different views on this point has not been considered at all inconsistent with a general adherence to orthodox Christianity. The Cambridge Platonists, and notably Henry More, warmly sustained the theory I shall next propound. On the assumption of the truth of this