- and Grey's relations, then " bustling; so she leaned forward, chatter- | our clergyman "Are your people always out? No place seems so still to me as this cottage, and yet you are such a large family." Elsie smiled an amused smile. "It's noisy enough in the mornings and evenings, but now it's harvest-time, and they all come later; that helps to make it seem more quiet just now; but grandfather's home-in the back garden," noticing Dobree's quick look round; "he'll not be coming in till sundown; he says he likes to make the most of these long days; and he does a good bit, too, though he's so old." "Quitt," said the thrush, and Dobree and Elsie looked towards it. They were both silent. "You like your home very much, I suppose?" also for Miss "Ah! yes, I remember Mr. Lillingstone sent away several baskets from here; but," and he turned away from her and looked into the garden again, "he has been a great deal too busy lately to think of those things." "He Something in the tone of his voice suggested a horrible thought to Elsie. was very busy with his books last year, wasn't he?" she said, breathing quickly. A quick light in Dobree's eye showed his scorn. "I believe he was, but he gave up college life after he left Mrs. Gaithorne's last year, and two month's ago he was married; he is now travelling with his wife;" and he pretended to see something new in the elm-trees opposite him. Elsie leaned against the window-frame. She felt her face was white, and that her lips twitched helplessly now and then. This must not be; she must not give way. Yes, there was the garden, cool, rich, and sweet, the smell of the honeysuckle, and her little friend in the cage, and Mr. Dobree, too, looking out of the window quite close to her. Now and then they all swayed up and down. She "Have you thought about what I asked must not give way- she must speak soon you the other evening?" "I like it more and more I love it better than ever." She stopped suddenly, and turned her head away, blushing at the excitement she had shown. They were again silent. "Yes." "You have not changed your mind?" "No thank you for your kindness; and please to thank Miss Grey too, but -I must stay at home." Dobree was half disappointed, although this was what he had expected; he looked past her into the garden for some minutes; then, rousing himself, "Well, I suppose I ought not to try and persuade you against what you think right; but should anything arise to make you change your plans or suppose, for instance, you should not be wanted so much at home as you are now I know I can promise you Miss Grey's help in obtaining a situation out of this place. You need only let Miss Porteous know of your wish." "Thank you," and the least perceptible smile played on Elsie's lips; "but that would be for a long while, as Rettie is still very young," and she looked down at the ferns as if ready to give them to him; but he was not willing to go, though he followed her movement. "Have you had a good sale for them this season?" "For the ferns, sir? No, not so good as last year. I got several for friends of what will he think? she must say something presently. "Quitt, quitt," said the thrush, puzzled at the long silence. Dobree turned his attention to it, speaking low, close to the bars. Elsie fixed her eyes on them both, and they swayed up and down. What should she say if she were any one else? It seemed an age since the stillness had been broken. "Did he take honours, as he expected?" Her voice, though low, was hard, and seemed painfully clear to her. Dobree glanced slightly at her before answering; and he groaned within himself at the misery so wantonly caused the life so early blighted-when "it might have been so different." "No, he disappointed his friends very much by giving up reading altogether some time ago; but I must go now." He took up the basket, and put out his hand. “Goodbye, Elsie, and remember what I have said about Miss Grey; you may trust her. She likes you, and will be a friend if you want one, I am sure; and — but it is no matter, it is of little consequence now-good-bye," and he turned away to avoid seeing the quivering lips that strove so hard to be still. ENIGMAS OF LIFE. She followed him to the door, and nod- | it would, we think, be impossible for any ded a "good-bye," when he shut the gate. candid and open-hearted reader of the Some time after, she felt a warm soft little volume recently published, to a form of pressure on her foot, as the cat passed think of him as a Sceptic. Scepticism is and re-passed, rubbing her back against not a creed but a disposition —a peculiarity of nature—and this the hem of her dress, and purring to gain mind is not the mental character of Mr. Greg. almost in spite of himself her notice, but in vain. He believes From Blackwood's Magazine. Elsie was scarcely conscious of this. She was still looking out, attracted-fas--having no means, he confesses, of cinated, it would seem, by the golden proving the truth of what he believes in, There is something pinnacles of the stacks that rose clear and acknowledging a great many argufrom the vague shadow of the trees, and ments against it. nursed the flattering rays of the daylight amusing even in the humility with which he makes this avowal, or rather, someafter the day had gone. thing that would be amusing but for the perfect and dignified seriousness of the thinker, who, declining to receive Revelation as a possibility, and rejecting Christianity as a great blunder, cannot yet, he allows, divest himself of his faith in God AMONG the many things which change and the Hereafter. We have used a word from one age to another, there is scarcely which we ought not to have used, it is any so subject to variation, strangely pathetic rather than amusing. Mr. Greg enough, as those opinions on religious puts himself voluntarily at the bar, and subjects which are the most important our gives for his defence the humanest, the minds are capable of forming. Though most unassailable, of all pleas. It is not the hottest controversies in the Church at any bar of ours that he makes his deare generally raised for the rigid conser- fence. We are ready to give him full and vation of old forms and old conceptions of frank absolution for believing in God bereligious truth, it is nevertheless true that cause he cannot help it, because it is plus every century, and often every generation, forte que lui: but there is something inhas its own characteristic way of setting finitely curious in the spectacle of this forth these truths; and that, not to go man standing humbly uncovered before back too far nor to venture upon any dis- his peers, excusing himself for his faith. cussion such as that which has risen We can easily conceive that a great effort round the Athanasian Creed, a pious and was necessary to enable him to confront even highly orthodox Christian of the such a tribunal with such a confession. present day would hesitate at least, and The great leading principle of all the possibly shudder, were he called upon to philosophical researches of our day, both utter assertions or explanations which dis- physical and mental, is that faith is the The very state of mind which tilled like dew from the lips of his proto-one unallowable sentiment - the accursed type in 1773, only a hundred years ago. And scepticism, or philosophy, or counter- makes such a feeling possible, fills scitheology, whatever name may be the best ence with disgust and opposition; yet to use, changes with equal variety and here is a distinguished philosopher compersistency. From Voltaire to Mr. W. ing forward to confess to it, with a sense R. Greg, what a difference! We do not of his own weakness, yet with an absoknow by what name to distinguish the lute incapacity to separate himself from What he avows is pure later author. He disbelieves the greater it, which is at once strange and whimsical that and pathetic. part of-we may almost say all on the faith of the highest and most visionary Christians believe. He seems whole to be of opinion to us a new and kind, faith in things unprovable, without that Christianity has rather tangible foundation, without authoritystrange oneretarded than helped forward the reign of yet in its naked force prevailing over all purity and truth on the earth. He is the methods and habits of doubt, and all cruelly and unjustly, and sometimes we the prejudices of the intellect. The folthink ignorantly, contemptuous of all re-lowing is Mr. Greg's own explanation or bar of philosophical ligious teachers of every class, creed, and excuse- the plea with which he presents country. He is not without that intoler- himself at the ance and dogmatism which are so curi- thought: ously characteristic of the philosophic antagonists of spiritual oppression; but thing. *Enigmas of Life: by W. R. Greg. Trubner & Co. 1872. London: The religious views in which we have been | once when he was young he believed. In brought up, inevitably colour to the last our short, he does what the weakest of us do, tone of thought on all cognate matters, and what the most illogical do: he believes largely affect the manner and direction of our because he believes. Honour to the philapproach to them, even where every dogma of our early creed has been, if not abandoned, yet scoff at him who will, he shall have no osopher who dares to say so! Let those deprived of its dogmatic form, as well as of its original logical or authoritative basis. Not only scorn from us. We may grieve that he are doctrines often persistently retained, though can proceed no further- that he cannot the old foundations of them have been under- go in at the doors open to us, or see what mined or surrendered-but beliefs that have it hath not entered into the heart of man dwelt long in the mind leave indelible traces to conceive; but for this vindication, even of their residence years after they have been though uttered somewhat against his will, discarded and dislodged. It would be more of pure Faith without foundation or reacorrect to say that they linger with a sort of loving obstinacy in their old abode, long after son, he is to be thanked, almost more they have received formal notice to quit. Their deeply than is another man who feels himchamber is never to the end of time quite self able to speak with fuller certainty and swept and garnished. The mind is never alto- a more definite hope. This confession is gether as if they had not been there. When a a triumph of that something above nature, "yes" or "no" answer is demanded to a prop- above reason, above all that can be taught osition, for and against which argument and or learned: that something ineffable, inevidence seem equally balanced, the decision is comprehensible in us, which makes us sure to be different in minds, one of which what we are-which cannot be altogether comes new to the question, while the other has destroyed by brutality, nor altogether held a preconceived opinion, even though on eliminated by intellect; and which makes grounds which he now recognizes as erroneous or insufficient. It was my lot to inherit from us, on the whole, very indifferent to Mr. Puritan forefathers the strongest impressions Darwin's monkeys, even could we see as to the great doctrines of religion, at a time them in actual process of development. when the mind is most plastic and most tena- Tails are one thing-but souls are quite cious of such impressionsanother thing. The appendage might be got rid of; but the other is not to be got rid of nor accounted for. And here it stands, clear-shining, ineffable, poising on angels' wings over the big brain of this thinker, as over the smallest brain of any one of us. We trust and hope that there is a great deal more of this kind of faith present in the world at this doubting and doubtful period, than the Christian critics of the time have any idea of. It is a Faith which has little to say for itself, which sometimes may be somewhat ashamed of itself; but its very shame and its avowed want of absolute foundation are its most valuable qualities. It is like the testimony of an unwilling witness, of whom honour and truth demand that he should tell something which goes against the cause he favours. "Wax to receive and marble to retain." And though I recognize, as fully as any man of science, the hollowness of most of the foundations on which those impressions were based, and the entire invalidity of the tenure on which I then held them, yet I by no means feel compelled to throw up the possession merely Decause the old title-deeds were full of flaws. The existence of a wise and beneficent Creator, and of a renewed life hereafter, are still to me beliefs-especially the first- very nearly reaching the solidity of absolute convictions. The one is almost a Certainty, the other a solemn Hope. And it does not seem to me unphilosophic to allow my contemplation of life, or my speculations on the problems it presents, to run in the grooves worn in the mind by its antecedent history, so long as no dogmatism is allowed, and no disprovable datum is suffered for a moment to intrude. The feeling which dictates this plea is as little sceptical as that which makes the firmest believer cling to his creed - nay, it is almost, if we may be permitted to say so, a more pure and unmixed Faith than are those beliefs which are founded upon authority, either human or divine on Revelation itself, the great final authority in which Christians trust. Mr. Greg rejects the idea of Revelation as a folly; he smiles at authority in matters of the mind. He believes - because, as we have said, he cannot help it; because he had Puritan forefathers because Another curious peculiarity of the philosophy of our day is the modesty with which it avows its absolute inability to answer any of the questions it raises. The very name of Mr. Greg's volume shows his full acquiescence in this sentiment. To the deeper Enigmas of Life which he here proposes he offers no answer; he holds out no hope to us that any answer can ever be found by intellect or thought. It is true that to the less lofty to those which concern the physical wellbeing and progress of man-he believes in the possibility of a limited and ENIGMAS OF LIFE. conditional answer, but that only by the | ago raised themselves "to the highest interposition of a philosophical millenni- summit which any nation has yet reached - the culminating point of human intelliuma time when all men will do justly and love mercy, when sanitary science gence." To be able to think is surely a shall vanquish disease, when Peace shall greater gift, after all that can be said, have a universal reign, when men shall than to be able to flash a possibly foolish learn in all things how much better and message from one end of the world to the more comfortable it is for themselves to other in twelve minutes. Almost the do well than to do ill, and vice and dys- only way in which we can consider this pepsia shall alike vanish from the face of latter privilege as an unmingled boon, is the earth. We have no disposition to as- either when it works in the service of the sail with harsh criticism this foolishness affections and relieves the anxious, or of wisdom. We remember that another when it is used in the royal work of govphilosopher, more celebrated still than ernment, facilitating the action of a cenMr. Greg, once proposed the same sum-tral authority or summoning aid to a demary and delightful remedy for the woes, pendency in peril ;-yet we all know that not of the world, but of that small part in both these cases the telegraph has of it called Ireland: Let every man but probably done as much harm as good, do his duty; let all be good, sober, virtu- torturing the absent who cannot be of ous, honest, and peaceable, as it was right any service to a sufferer with all the flucto be, and lo, at once, without beating tuations of his malady, and confusing and about the bush, or search after elaborate stultifying the unhappy State subordinpolitical panaceas, the remedy was found! ate, who is now never out of reach of an So said Bishop Berkeley a hundred years ignorant chief, nor allowed to act as his this merely external ago. An older philosopher still-Fran- superior local knowledge sees fit. We cis, of the town of Assisi, in Umbria held similar yet still wider views. His agency, great as it is, could, even if it had no défauts de ses qualités, be either an cure for Turk and Infidel was, not to cruAnd certainly sade against them with armies and chiv- intellectual or moral influence affecting alry, but the simplest thing, which any the minds or wills of men. to convert its existence is no balance whatever to non-existence of any poor monk was good forthem! In such company Mr. Greg need the confessed Yet, notwithstanding not be ashamed to stand; and if he, too, marked and general elevation of intellect dreams of a time when the lion shall lie or wisdom in man. down with the lamb, and the sucking child all this, Mr. Greg still holds his ideal as lay its hand on the cockatrice' den, we realizable. Everything is possible. It is will not attempt to smile down his hope true he grants that we may still go on as as a devout imagination, as, we fear, did we have done for past centuries; that we venture to breathe a word of the mil-"passion may still be in the ascendant, "It may be so," he says, lennium of the Apocalypse, he would do speaking in a louder tone than either into us. No; that obstinate hope in human terest or duty." nature, which is one of the highest symp- and thus proceeds to explain what hope toms of the possibilities in us, is not one is in him of better things: which we can cast any scorn at; but the philosopher's faith in it is yet another proof of the endless potency of that principle which he despises scientifically, but which in the blessed inconsistency of human nature hangs by him still. In the paper called "Realizable Ideals," no cannot see how But there are three sets of considerations which point to a more hopeful issue: the inevitably vast change which cannot fail to ensue hitherto been working perversely in a wrong when all the countless influences which have direction shall turn their combined forces the other way; the reciprocally reacting and cumulative operation of each step in the right course; and the illimitable generations and ages which yet lie before humanity ere the goal be reached. Our present condition, no doubt, is discouraging enough; we have been sailing for centuthough only just beginning, to put about the ries on a wrong tack, but we are beginning, helm. What may we not rationally hope for, when the condition of the masses shall receive that concentrated and urgent attention which has hitherto been directed permanently, if not exclusively, to furthering the interests of more favoured ranks? What, when charity, which for centuries has been doing mischief, shall | It may sound romantic, at the end of a decade begin to do good? What, when the countless which has witnessed, perhaps, the two most pulpits that, so far back as history can reach, fierce and sanguinary wars in the world's hishave been preaching Catholicism, Anglican- tory, to hope that this wretched and clumsy ism, Presbyterianism, Calvinism, Wesleyanism, mode of settling national quarrels will ere long shall set to work to preach Christianity at last? be obsolete; but no one can doubt that the Do we ever even approach to a due estimate commencement of higher estimates of national of the degree in which every stronghold of interests and needs, the growing devastation vice or folly overthrown exposes, weakens, and and slaughter of modern wars, the increased undermines every other; of the extent to range and power of implements of destruction, which every improvement, social, moral, or which, as they are employable by all combatmaterial, makes every other easier; of the ants, will grow too tremendous to be employed by countless ways in which physical reforms react any, and the increasing horror with which a on intellectual and ethical progress? cultivated age cannot avoid regarding such What a gradual transformation-transform-scenes, are all clear, if feeble and inchoate, ination almost reaching to transfiguration - will dications of a tendency towards this blessed not steal over the aspect of civilized communi- consummation. ties, when, by a few generations during which Hygienic science and sense shall have been in the ascendant, the restored health of mankind shall have corrected the morbid exaggeration of our appetites; when the more questionable instincts and passions, less and less exercised and stimulated for centuries, shall have faded into comparative quiescence; when the disor- ation. If our working men were as hardy, enduring, and ambitious as the better specimens of the Scotch peasantry, and valued instruction as much, and if they were as frugal, managing, and saving as the French peasantry, the work would be very near completion. Heaven forbid that we should sneer at any man for holding so hopeful a view. Yet of all unlikely things this philosophical Utopia seems to us the most unlikely a thing absolutely without warrant from experience, and little justified, so far as we can see, by the only agencies which are avowedly at command-agencies wholly material, affecting our comfort, but neither touching our minds nor our hearts. We have not time to do more than indicate Mr. Greg's curiously fine and searching argument on the question of --a question so often and so disprayer; agreeably discussed of late days, with what seems to us equal ignorance and bad taste on the sceptical side of the question, and much feebleness on the Christian. Here once again the fine spiritual sense (if we may use such an expression) of which Mr. Greg is incapable of divesting himself, comes in, lifting the argument out of the vulgar circle in which it has been bandied about from one hand. to another, into a clearer and serener air. Mr. Greg's eyes are too keen and too candid not to see that in this case, as in so many others, it is a mere question with all thinkers which set of difficulties they will choose to protect and patronize,those which set forth the impossibility of disturbing the order of nature by the interposition of such an agent as prayeror those which regard the still deeper impossibility of believing in a God and not appealing to Him. Mr. Greg considers both sides of the question carefully. He declares prayer to be "an inevitable consequence and correlative of belief in God," an "original and nearly irresistible instinct." "We cannot picture to ourselves," he says, with a force of expression which might well be consolatory to timid believers, "what our nature would be without it." He considers both sides |