And, on the other hand, if Governments, we repeat, take up the work of arbitration in such cases,-Governments such as those of Russia, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, France, Sardinia, Naples, Spain, and Portugal,-and such are the existing elements for an Arbitration Court,-it is easy to divine how the peace of the world would be preserved: it would be preserved by the putting down of what would be termed rebellion in Hungary, and revolution in Rome.

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pure,

Often did Chalmers quote the emphatic word, "first then peaceable." And very emphatic words they are, and singularly pregnant with meaning. They reveal why it is that Peace Societies, in the present state of the world, can produce no direct results. The nations and the Governments must realize the purity ere they can rationally expect the peace. Peace under certain limitations is no doubt a duty. "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you," says the Apostle, "live peaceably with all men." But the qualifications of the text are very important ones,-" if it be possible," and as much as lieth in you,”—so important, that they make a state of peace to be not so much a duty to be accomplished as a gift to be received. "When a man's ways please the Lord," said the wise king, "He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." Nor can Peace Associations alter this state of matters. They cannot by any scheme of arbitration convert the gift simply into a duty, seeing that if they take the existing Governments as the elements of their Arbitration Courts, their plan involves of necessity merely the creation of a new Holy Alliance; and if, on the contrary, they propose first remodelling and reforming the nations, so as to qualify their Governments for arbitrating justly, they change their nature, and become Revolution Societies,-of course, another name for war societies. But, though we can thus promise ourselves no direct results from the Peace Societies of the times, their indirect results may be very im

T

portant. That dislike of war which good men have entertained
in all ages is, we are happy to believe, a fast-spreading dislike.
It was formerly entertained by units and tens; it is now che-
rished by thousands and tens of thousands. And, of course,
the more the feeling grows in any country which, like France,
Britain, and America, possesses a representative Government,
the less chance will there be of these nations entering rashly
into war.
France and the United States have always had
their senseless war parties. It is of importance, therefore,
that they should possess also their balancing peace parties,
even should these be well-nigh as senseless as the others.
Again, in our own country, war is always the interest of a
class largely represented in both Houses of Parliament. It
is of great importance that they also should be kept in check,
and their influence neutralized, by a party as hostile to war
on principle as they are favourable to it from interest.
We
repose very considerable confidence in the common sense of
the British people, and so have no fear that an irrational
peace party should so increase in the country as to put in
peril the national independence; and, not fearing this, we
must hail as good and advantageous any revolution in that
opinion in which all power is founded, which bids fair to
render more rare than formerly those profitless exhibitions
of national warfare which the poet of the "Seasons" so gra-
phically describes :-

"What most showed the vanity of life
Was to behold the nations all on fire,
In cruel broils engaged and deadly strife:
Most Christian kings, inflamed by black desire,
With honourable ruffians in their hire,
Cause war to wage, and blood around to pour.

Of this sad work when each begins to tire,

They sit them down just where they were before,

Till for new scenes of woe, peace shall their force restore."

-November 10, 1849.

LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE.

"THE Crock of Gold," "Toil and Trial," and a "" Story of the West End," are all little works which have been sent us for review during the last few months. The "Crock of Gold" is a story about a poor English labourer, who lived in a damp, unwholesome, exceedingly picturesque hovel, on eight shillings per week; “Toil and Trial" is a story about a poor shopman and his wife, who had to toil together in much unhappiness on the long-hour, late-shutting-up system; and a "Story of the West End" is a story about two poor needlegirls, of whom one sank into the grave under her protracted labour, and the other narrowly escaped degradation and ruin. They are all interesting, well-written little works; but what we would at present remark in incidental connection with them is that very decided change of direction which our higher literature has taken during the last twenty years, and more especially during the last ten. The great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers of the present reading public could sympathize in the joys and sorrows of only kings and queens; and the critics of the day gave reasons why it should be so. Humble life was introduced upon the stage, or into works of fiction, only to be laughed at; or so bedizzened with the unnatural frippery of Pastoral, that the picture represented, not the realities of actual life, but merely one of the idlest conventualities of literature. But we have lived to see a great revolution in these matters reach almost its culminating point. It is kings and queens, albeit subjected to greater and more sudden revolutions than at any former period of the world's history, that have now no place in the literature of fiction. We have our humbler people exhibited instead; and the reading public are invited to sympathize in the sorrows and

trials of aged labourers of an independent spirit, settling down, not without many an unavailing struggle, into dreaded pauperism; overwrought artizans avenging their sufferings upon their wealthy masters; and poor friendless needle-women bearing long up against the evils of incessant toil and extreme privation, but at length sinking into degradation or the grave. We are made acquainted in tales and novels with the machinery and principles of strike-associations and trades' unions; and introduced to the fire-sides of carriers, publicans, and porters.

There is a fashion in all such matters, that lasts but for a time; and what we chiefly fear is, that the present disposition on the part of the reading public to look more closely than formerly into the state of the labouring classes, and to take an interest in their humble stories, may be suffered to pass away unimproved. Wherever there exists a large demand for any species of manufacture, spurious imitations are sure to abound; and when the supply becomes at once greatly deteriorated and greatly too ample, there commences a period of re-action and depression. An overcharged satiety takes the place of the previously existing interest. It is of importance, therefore, for there are already many spurious articles in the field,—that the still unblunted appetite should be ministered to, not by the spurious, but by the real, and that only the true condition and character of those classes which must always comprise the great bulk of mankind should be exhibited to the classes on a higher level than themselves, on whose exertions in their behalf so very much must depend. Nor would the advantage be all on one side: both the high and the low would be greatly the better for knowing each other. It would tend to contract and narrow the perilous gulf which yawns, in this and in all the other countries of Europe, between the poor and the wealthy, were it mutually felt, not merely coldly acknowledged, that God has

made them of one blood, and given to them the same sympathies and faculties, and that the things in which they differ are mere superficial circumstances,-the effect of accident of position. "I have long had a notion," said the late William Thom, the Inverury poet, "that many of the heartburnings that run through the SOCIAL WHOLE spring not so much from the distinctiveness of classes, as from their mutual ignorance of each other. The miserably rich look on the miserably poor with distrust and dread, scarcely giving them credit for sensibility sufficient to feel their own sorrow. That is ignorance with its gilded side. The poor, in turn, foster a hatred of the wealthy as a sole inheritance, look on grandeur as their natural enemy, and bend to the rich man's rule in gall and bleeding scorn. Puppies on the one side and demagogues on the other are the portions that come oftenest in contact. These are the luckless things that skirt the great divisions, exchanging all that is offensive therein. 'Man, know thyself,' should be written on the right hand; on the left, 'Men, know each other."" These are quaintly expressed sentences, but they are pregnant with meaning.

It is no uninteresting matter to trace, in the various styles of English literature, the part assigned to the people. They cut but a poor figure in Shakspeare. The wonderful woolcomber of Stratford-on-Avon rose from among them; but it would scarce have served the interests of the Globe Theatre in those days to have ennobled, by any of the higher qualities of head or heart, the humble peers and associates of wool-combers; and so, wherever the people, as such, are introduced in his dramas, whether they be citizens of Rome, as in "Coriolanus," or English country folk, as in "Henry VI.," we find them represented as fickle, unthinking, and ludicrously absurd. In the works of his contemporary Spencer we do not find the people at all; but discover, instead, what for nearly two hundred years after his time occupied their