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community, and inclined to aid its healthy progress. In the view of the writer, the class of a large city most perilous to its prosperity, morals, and political life, are "the ignorant, destitute, untrained, and abandoned youth; the outcast street children grown up to be voters, implements of demagogues, feeders of the criminals, and the sources of domestic outbreaks and violations of law." To do justice to this volume, we ought to compare its facts and scenes with those of our own metropolis, and to consider how far the remedies applied with such zeal and success across the Atlantic suggest improvement or extension of our reformatory efforts. But we cannot do this in detail. We must content ourselves with indicating some of the subjects discussed: "The condition of neglected children before Christianity, and the change wrought by means of the Gospel;" "Dens of crime and fever-nests in New York;" "Prisons and Reformatories;""Orphanages;" Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday. "The weakness of the marriage-tie;" "Overcrowding; "" Intemperance;" "Boys' meetings; 66 Industrial schools; ""Remedies for the social evil;" ""New methods of teaching;" "Emigration;" "Free readingrooms; ""Girls' lodging-houses; "Factory-children;" 66 Alms; Foundlings;" "Criminal chil

have the hope," he says, "that these little stories of the lot of the poor in cities, and the incidents related of their trials and temptations, may bring the two ends of society nearer together in human sympathy." The characteristic dedication must close our notice: "To the many colabourers, men and women, who have not held their comfort or even their lives dear unto themselves, but have striven, through many years, to teach the ignorant, to raise up the depressed, to cheer the despairing, to impart a higher life and a Christian hope to the outcast and neglected youth of this city, and thus save society from their excesses, this simple record of common labours, and this sketch of the terrible evils sought to be cured, is respectfully dedicated."

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dren;
""Secular education rather
than none; and "The true causes
of success in relation to all these."

Most heartily do we commend the book to the attention of those who are working or seeking to inaugurate comprehensive and organized movements of their fellowcitizens. There can be no doubt that the wish so modestly expressed by the author will be realized. “I

Books received:

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The Life and Writings of St. Peter. By the Author of "Essays on the Church." London:

Overland, Inland, and Upland. A Lady's Notes of Personal Observation and Adventure. By A. U. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.

The Story of Daniel. For the
Use of Young People. By the late
Professor Louis Gaussen, Geneva.
Translated, with Additions, by
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, Overend.
Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter,
and Co.

Science and Humanity; or, A
Plea for the Superiority of Spirit
over Matter.
By Noah Porter,
D.D., LL.D., President of Yale
College. London: Hodder and
Stoughton.

75

THE TURN OF THE YEAR: SOME

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Ir is not long since the first of January was regarded by Statesmen with unwonted interest, and often with profound anxiety, throughout Europe. On that day a few oracular sentences, from one of the high places of the political world, were supposed to go far towards settling, or unsettling, international questions of the weightiest order: potentates trimmed the sails of their several ships of the State as mariners do after a fresh observation of their longitude; and merchant-princes and capitalists enlarged or contracted their operations as they augured peace, or discerned complications, misunderstandings, war, from what was then spoken. Till "the Emperor" had opened his lips no one could presume to forecast the next twelve months. It is instructive to look back to those times to see how vain are ninetenths of the speculations of those who are accredited as the most far-seeing of public men, and how wide of the desired mark are the efforts of exalted personages, when nations are the subject of discourse or manipulation.

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the interests of Christianity and civilization at heart, was so closed as to give the promise of a protracted European peace. On the contrary, the embers of the great conflagration are scarcely extinguished before efforts doubled in preparation for its outburst elsewhere, under other conditions which no one appears able clearly to discern. A peace of ten years' duration would be worth, to France, many of the famous "milliards;" to Germany, repose for an equal period would be cheap if procurable by the return of the war-fine many times over,-to give opportunity for the consolidation of an empire such as with doctrinaires has been a dream through many ages, and which the fortune of war at last seems to have made possible. And to the other States, to Italy, in whose coffers gold and silver are so strange that she is scarcely able, in some of her fairest districts, to give security for life or property to her subjects; to Austria, contending with the almost impossible task of inducing her heterogeneous races to blend in a political system under a single suzerainty; to Russia, whose future greatness depends far more on its gradual absorption in the European system of nations than upon the hordes of troops which the Emperor can in time of peace maintain

But if the return of a particular day in the year is no longer feared, it can scarcely be said that the uncertainty and confusion that gathered about it do not still on a war-footing; to each of these, exist. No oracle speaks at some favoured shrine, it is true, but there seem everywhere around us mysterious voices, ominous whis. perings, which keep the nations in an incessant state of unrest. It

and to the minor States, whose

does not yet appear that the late war, so afflictive to all who have

movements as satellites must be governed by those of the great planets, a guarantee against an outbreak of hostilities for a single decade of years would be a boon beyond calculation. In this all are agreed, but none will abate a regi

ment of soldiers, or dismantle a fortress, in pledge of agreement; the consequence being those warlike precautions, universally taken, which are hardly less disastrous, being continued year by year, than war itself, were it to make the half of Europe a scene of its desolations. This forms the constant background to every picture which the imagination draws of the proximate condition of modern Europe. It shapes the policy of Governments, is the inevitable factor of transactions on the exchanges, and determines the course, at least, in which religious and philanthropic enterprises shall develop themselves.

Nothing has of late taken place in neighbouring States of more importance than the change in the attitude of Prince Bismarck towards his late political associates, and towards the Papacy. As to the former, the explanation is easy. We have of late, moreover, so often seen the same thing done,-the sudden embracing of principles that a lifetime has been spent in resisting, or vice versa,-that we seem scarcely to wonder at it. In recent times (we do not speak as political partisans) a Sir Robert Peel, in the matter of the cornlaws; Austrian Metternichs in giving and revoking a reformed constitution wrung from the Emperor by the troubles of 1848; a Disraeli, in the "Conservative surrender," have shown us afresh that, no matter what the antecedent professions of great Statesmen, Horace Walpole's sneer, "Every man has his price," contains more truth than is pleasant to dwell upon. So swiftly have the opinions of his former opponents made way since the German Chancellor's famous “ supercilious

speech" in the Prussian Chambers in 1866, that to change his front is the pledge which he has to give for the maintenance of his position at the head of the Prussian or German Government. The result will be, as the "Counties' Bill" just carried by packing the Herrnhaus shows, the abolition of the feudal system which has hitherto had its stronghold in Prussia, and to which the Prussian monarchy as a military power has owed so much in former times. Three difficult problems are, in fact, clearly before this prosperous strategist; the amalgamation of Eastern and Western Prussia in a system equally clear of aristocratic feudalism, and of the democracy of Prussia's near neighbour and hereditary foe; the preservation, by the unification, of the empire recently created; and the Prussianization of Germany, as opposed to that Germanization of Prussia which the mere preponderance of numbers, if we distinguish between Prussians and Germans, would seem to threaten. Every step in the peaceful solution of these important questions, fraught with the destinies of Central Europe, will be watched with the deepest interest.

Nor is it as to political affairs only that all eyes are fixed for the time upon Bismarck. His dealings with the Ultramontanes must in the nature of things put the top-stone on his state-craft, or entirely subvert it. There can be no medium. The gauntlet is thrown down by the sudden expulsion of the Jesuits. The success of the policy, whether greater or less, in every country of Europe in bygone times, is not the question; it has been deemed the best step to take as a preliminary blow at the power which interferes with the civil obedience due to the

imperial crown from so many millions of its Roman Catholic subjects. The long truce, in other words, between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism is broken; and if this divergency should soon become a quarrel on religious no less than on political grounds, no one, in these days of speedy developments, will be greatly surprised. The danger here is lest the instinct of selfdefence in the rulers of the new empire should degenerate into something allied to persecution on account of religion, and so the risk be incurred of defeating their own just aspirations. A struggle at all events is begun in which, to judge from the current of modern history, an abasement of no common kind is probably in store for the Papacy.. "France is my difficulty" one can imagine some governor-general of Europe exclaiming, were such an unhappy functionary to spring into being. Rest here, would be rest everywhere. Whether a more generous treatment from conquerors holding the Divine right of Kings would not have been a virtue sure to bring its own reward, we will not now venture to inquire. The design of the treatment which was witnessed, deliberately carried into effect notwithstanding remonstrances as strong as friends, remaining friends, could make, has so far conspicuously failed. Threefifths of the huge war-indemnity are discharged, another fifth is ready to be handed over, and the last fifth will be readily paid, should the present regime continue for another year or two, at its appointed time. Contrary, however, to what was looked for, and by some even desired, France is neither crushed nor discouraged, nor indeed permanently crippled in her monetary resources. At peace among them

selves, the French might even now claim a place in European councils not unworthy of her former prestige; and a very few years would see her healed of every trace of the calamities through which she has lately gone, except that ineffaceable scar of wounded honour. She has the advantage of that national unity, the unity of manners and customs, literature, government, laws, and religion, which the recently-created empire of many States has yet to acquire. She has, too, an inexhaustible source of wealth in her favoured soil, a population buoyant by constitution, and geographical advantages which put profitable commerce, in addition to her industries and manufactures, within her easy reach. Yet what do we witness? A prevailing insouciance, amounting to recklessness, with regard to the national future; a fresh scope given to the play of party-spirit; the Reformed or Protestant Church split into two irreconcilable camps; all possibility of constitutional government threatened by disputes that would seem to leave for the country no choice but that between communism and the intervention, by some happy chance, of another despotism; the conscription more strictly enforced than ever; and a vast army that is not a servant of the State, but is one of the parties, if not factions, in it. The horoscope is not good, truly, either for distracted France herself or for the Governments that surround her.

Turning our attention homewards for a moment, it is pleasant to observe that the New Year finds Great Britain and her Dependencies at peace all over the world, and that the prospect also is one of peace and material prosperity,-of that indefinable thing

which, for want of a better word, is curtly called "progress." But to pleasant calculations of this kind there are some obvious drawbacks, which cannot fail to occasion uneasiness, not to use a stronger term, in many minds. Ever and anon the stealthy advance of Ultramontanism and its allied brood of errors and observances attracts notice; but neither public opinion nor (we had almost said, of course) the Legislature so speaks or acts as to arrest it. It is not the violence or craft of the attack that constitutes our danger from this quarter, but an unaccountable neglect of the means of self-defence. It seems to be assumed that, the temporal power of the Pope having been in these last times broken before our very eyes, and so signally, we are safe from the inroads of the system which "Rome embodies. The same "science" which rejects revelation, tosses its head in scorn at the idea that "free thought" will ever again be fettered by superstition; " and there are multitudes of religious people who appear to regard it as indicating a want of faith in God to hold the possibility of the "man of sin," if the Pope be he, ever again becoming a power in "our Protestant land." But a 66 spirit of slumber" has heretofore fallen upon a people, and under similar conditions, we need to remind ourselves, the like may occur once more. How far such conditions obtain among us, every one who "naturally cares" for the maintenance of evangelical religion, must candidly judge for himself; that they have no existence whatever, will only be maintained by such as are either indifferent to the movements of society, or incapable of estimating their significance. It is not an occasional philippic from the

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pulpit, or the solitary efforts of here and there a Society devoted to the purpose, or now and then a burst of indignation in the columns of a newspaper, that will counteract the assimilative force of the subtile Romanism in our midst. There is but one remedy-we need not describe it-and failing that one, there can be little uncertainty as to what the future of our national life, on its religious side, is ere long to be-Popery or infidelity, or both in unholy alliance, with religious freedom struggling for a precarious existence.

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If we omit comment on the grave fact that English governments, whether Conservative or 'Liberal," have in turn for many years past yielded to Popish encroachments; and if we forbear to dwell on such things as the growth of a luxury which occasions a regret on finding in history no instance of the efficacy of sumptuary laws, the widening distance between the working-man and his employer, the moral desolation wrought by the novelist, with many other evils, each in itself requiring a disquisition to unfold its true import; it is for the purpose of devoting a sentence or two to a feature of our social life which some would not hesitate to say is more ominous, in regard to the national well-being, than all the rest put together. We allude to an evil which has been for some time suspected, but whose existence is now put beyond doubt by the statistics of the Revenue Office just published by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The National Revenue it appears is at present buoyant, a large increase having been realized over the figures of last year, which were themselves an advance upon the returns of some previous years. But at what price? One is filled

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