the volume, it will probably be thought that Mr. Courthope has judged wisely in not reprinting the Latin of Horace's Satires. On the other hand, both the scholar and the poetical student know how much of the beauty and power of Pope's Imitations is lost if we do not follow his adaptation of modern images and contemporary allusions to the Horatian original. There are also reasons which it is hard to reject why the imitation of the Second Satire of the First Book should be omitted, while at the same time no edition of Pope's works can claim to be complete without it.

If we could have wished a style more pithy and pregnant in the annotations, Mr. Courthope's Introductions to the several

pieces leave nothing to be desired. He comes to each point of the Pope case neither as advocate nor as prosecutor, but in a thoroughly judicial spirit. Often as the quarrel between Pope and Lady M. W. Montague has been discussed, no fuller and fairer statement of the case has probably ever been made than that now given in Mr. Courthope's Introduction to Satire I. The remarks in the General Introduction on the style of Pope cannot fail to command attention on a subject which is well-nigh worn threadbare. If Mr. Courthope inherits from his predecessor, Mr. Elwin, some want of sympathy with the moral and religious tone of the age of Deism, it cannot be said that he is deficient in a sense of its poetical excellence. Of the Prologue to the Satires-Pope's masterpiece, as it appears to me-Mr. Courthope writes:

"The quality of the whole epistle is of extraordinary excellence. Johnson is probably right in tracing the idea to Boileau's address A son Esprit; but, admirable as that satire is, we have only to compare it with Pope's to see how far the latter excels his French predecessor in all poetical gifts and graces. The sustained dramatic power, the variety of the detail, the richness of the imagery, the elevation of the sentiment, the force of the invective, contrasting so exquisitely with the pathetic repose of the conclusion, all combine to place the epistle beyond the reach of rivalry in this kind of writing."

Mr. Courthope probably suffers, like myself, from inability to correct his own proof sheets. Some small oversights arising from such a cause have met my eye; I note them here for the benefit of the second edition. P. 242, note, "Johnson says;" I think this story was first put in print in Ayre's "Life." P. 263, for "Non a d'autres," read "Non, à d'autres." P. 271, for" heir of Lindsay," read " Earl of Lindsey." P. 269, for "man's the same," read "shame." P. 295, for "Hawkin," read "Hawkins." P. 313, for "thoughts and prose," read "thoughts in verse and prose." P. 321, for "said to be by Cibber," read " by Hawkins Browne in his parody of Cibber." P. 326, for "The cordial," read cordial." P. 377, insert "dabit " after P. 354, for 66 speciem." "Warburton." P. 371, for "Warton," read "Warburton." P. 307: no such bird as the "beccafico is known to ornithology; "beccafico" is a poulterers' term under which several species of the genus Sylvia are brought to market in the South of Europe. P. 371, for "faut de rois," read "tant de rois;" for "craionnat" read "caionnât," and insert

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"Boileau, Ep. 10, 107." In p. 308, the note seems to rest on some misunderstanding; what Pope says is that Avidien and his wife sell the game which has been presented to them, not that they charge their friends for game they send as presents. MARK PATTISON.

The Great French Revolution, 1785-1793; Narrated in the Letters of Mdme. Jof the Jacobin party. Edited by her Grandson, M. Edouard Lockroy. From the French, by Miss Martin and an American Collaborator. (Sampson Low.) M. LOCKROY is amply justified in the pub

lication of these letters of Mdme. Jollien, of La Drôme, whose husband was a Jacobin member of the Convention. He is right in thinking that they will enable us to judge more truly of the opinions and habits of mind of a group of men whose influence was for a time supreme in France; but we are not sure that the truer judgment which is consequently rendered possible will lead to the justification of a party which he says has been "systematically calumniated." History has to consider only the large results of actions; and its verdict is only slightly affected by the extenuating plea of good intentions." We cannot admit that the Jacobins acted wisely or rightly because they meant well; and the interest of this volume of letters lies in the means that it affords us of discovering how good intentions, when narrowed by fanaticism, lead to political crimes.

a

The book is admirably adapted to provide the materials of an interesting psychological study. It begins with a few letters written in the retirement of country life in 1785, which show us woman of powerful intelligence and simple character, devoted to her husband and her family, of high moral principles, with a religion that was founded upon her own moral nature, and was the expression rather than the regulator of her feelings. In 1790 this woman goes to Paris: and in the middle of 1791 she is an anxious and excited spectator of affairs, and writes her impressions freely to her husband and her son. The first thing that strikes us is the supreme confidence of Mdme. J in her own virtue and in her own wisdom. She writes :

"I have principles which are all the firmer because they are founded on the purest virtue. .. I defy your philosophy to place me in the wrong, and the tenderest friendship, as well as the most exacting love, to find aught in my heart to reprove."

While thus convinced of her own purity and of her own intuitive perception into the principles which ought to regulate the govern

ment of France, she is equally convinced of the absence of any such qualities from the King and his advisers. She is ready to say hard things against them, but regards it almost as sacrilege that they should retaliate. "The ferocity of tigers is the humanity of Courts." Nay, popular violence directed against the aristocrats is a direct interposi tion of Providence. Mdme. J writes in April 1792:

"The danger we have been in, the insolence of the aristocrats, who proclaim counter-revolution and a rain of blood, as one would foretell a salutary storm of rain-all this must have angered the Supreme Being, and I look upon all that has just happened as so many miracles of

His power and goodness towards the people." As things advance, we find a growing belief in the "imposing majority of the right-minded and single-hearted, who judge men and even kings, who consult history, and examine the past as a guide for the future." But this high-minded majority is constantly hemmed in by a tyrannous execu tive. The National Assembly is too weak, Lafayette is a traitor, while orators in rags are haranguing in the streets with all the eloquence of Cicero. The future of France is secure; but there are obstacles to be removed, and Providence does not move fast enough. In August 1792 Mdme. J-prophe sies: "The patriotic party will prevail, but it is unfortunately impossible that its laurels should long remain unstained with blood." This tender-hearted woman is so filled with fanaticism that she can look forward with as necessary calmness to "a rain of blood" to secure the supremacy of the party of the upright.

After this Mdme. J —'s progress is rapid. The sack of the Tuileries was due, according to her, to the abominable treachery of the Swiss Guards.

"There were some popular executions, which proved that the lion is roused. I cast a ve over those horrors, which my too sensi ive Yet reason heart cannot bear to dwell on. has lost fewer men by the gross barbarity makes me feel very strongly that humanity the people than by the civilised rascality of Kings and their Ministers."

It only takes ten days after this to complete Mdme. J's education. Her heart has ceased to be too sensitive, and she has learned the moral and political maxims of those whose perversion of right first kindled in her the enthusiastic hatred of oppression and the fanatical love of liberty for all men which she found was only to be gained by violence. She writes, on August 22, 1792:

truly great and humine, we feel that it is some"You and I, dear husband, whose souls are motives. These poor, petty creatures who can times necessary to be barbarous from virtuous only understand partial justice are revolted at the horror of a head on a pike; the sight chills their hearts, and they cannot see that such a crime-perhaps a necessary one-spares the shedding of torrents of blood."

We have traced the development of political fanaticism in the writer's words, which tell their own story. Mdme. J had not learned the lesson which Cromwell tried to impress on the Scottish Parliament, "to think it possible that they might be mistaken." Starting from a consciousness of

In the sentence he has cut in half I said we had also seen chamois, bouquetin, and beartracks. Six lines farther on I recommended the aurochs to adventurous sportsmen. On the same page I added that we found good evidence that "bears abound," "chamois and bouquetin are sufficiently numerous," and that wolves, jackals, wild boars, pheasants, and ptarmigan are to be found by those who go in search of them. Further, to distinguish between the tribes is one of the first duties of a Caucasian traveller, and it was not "in a Tscherkess," but in a Suanetian village that we saw our tame bears.

Mr. Phillips-Wolley, however, is a better observer than reader; and if his interests are as yet narrow, and his book singularly disappointing as a book of travel, it has a sufficient raison d'être. It is the first book on Caucasia written for sportsmen by a sportsman. The neighbourhoods of Kertch and Ekaterinodar, and the western portion of the Black Sea coast, were the scenes of the author's early exploits. Here he met with hares weighing thirteen pounds, bustards, swarms of wild fowl, pheasants, foxes, wolves, red deer, boars, panthers, otters. "All the game found in the Caucasus," he thinks, "is the same as, or very nearly allied to, species found throughout the mountains of India." Mr.

Phillips-Wolley was not fortunate enough to meet with the aurochs, which is still found, though rarely, in these fastnesses. His next field was among the mountains of Daghestan, where he passed a few days in midwinter in unsuccessful pursuit of chamois and ibex. Hence he travelled on, finding post-roads grow worse and worse, till he reached the extremity of the Caucasian provinces, where they include, in the district of Lenkoran, a portion of the low lying, forest-clad lands which fringe the southern Caspian. It is not, perhaps, the writer's fault if his descriptions are here disappointing for those who are not satisfied with wild-fowl shooting; or if he did not meet with a specimen of the tigers which represent this district in Herr Radde's Museum at Tiflis. He then returned to Poti and the Black Sea coast, where he fell into the grip of the fever which haunts its shores and valleys, and is, at least in summer, "not only a possible but an absolutely certain consequence of the enjoyment of its wonderful beauty." If the worst happens, however, the traveller may find consolation in the prospect

of his tomb.

"On the edge of the cliffs we came to the fairest site for a sportsman's grave that the mind of man could conceive. Here, on the very summit of a gracefully rounded hill-top, was some three acres of greensward almost as fine and even as an English lawn. Up to its very edge rose the dense forest trees, through and over the tops of which came glimpses of the opalescent sea far down beneath. Here in the morning the soft sea-breezes shook music out of the rustling leaves, and in the evening the lengthening shadows wove strange traceries on the grass. Here the wild cherry blossoms whitened the sward in the springtime, and in autumn the drooping vines hung heavy clusters over the dead chief's tomb in recognition of the tender care his ancestors had bestowed on the parent vine in days gone by."

Persons in the frame of mind of Mr. Tennyson's suicide might find a visit to such

a coast both a surer and a pleasanter exit from life than a plunge into a shallow Northern sea. But our author's vitality was happily too vigorous to yield to the influences of Circassia, and forced him, not without regret, to return to "the narrow life in town" with such consolations as can be afforded by a few days' chamois-stalking in the chain of Mont Blanc. Fellow-sportsmen will no doubt follow closely the details of each of Mr. Wolley's shooting parties and shots. Other readers may find themselves led on by the youthful freshness and vigour of his narrative, and the keen enjoyment of nature as well as sport shown in his descriptions. Here is a night

Scene:

"The stillness was so great as to be oppressive, and the occasional sounds of an owl's weird hoot, the howl of a wolf, or the stealthy spring of an old gray hare only heightened the effect by contrast. On every side I could look down long vistas of frozen hazels, with tall oaks rising limbs the intense metallic light of the winter above them, through whose quaintly twisting moon gleamed down on the sparkling snow, or, catching the icicles that hung in huge clusters from them, drew from them all manner of pale prismatic colours. Every now and again a dark shadow glided over the snow, and a sound like a devil's low, chuckling laugh told one that the substance of that shadow was the

great eagle owl, whose strong, silent pennons were creeping, a very shadow of death, over some doomed hare. At one time a company of wolves seemed to have gathered round, for as soon as a long, vibrating howl had moaned itself into silence on one side another took up the strain and thrilled the forest on the other. All round us this music was kept up, but not a single wolf showed himself either to my companions or myself. Suddenly there was a loud report as if an enormous piece of artillery had been fired, and as the echoes thundered through the forest the whole seemed to wake at once to a fiendish riot of strange sound. Every prowling beast and weird night bird screamed in concert, and then all was silence again. This was caused by the cracking of the ice on the Kuban, some miles off."

and lively-if by no means new-description of Tiflis and its bazaars, and a number of observations generally confirming those of previous travellers. Mr. Phillips-Wolley holds that the central Government means well; that the official classes, from policemen upwards, are hopelessly corrupt; that the Russian is hospitable to strangers; that the postmaster is a surly knave; the Cossack, as a rule, a good fellow. He tells, however, stories of the evil-doings of some Cossacks near Soukhoum Kaleh. Possibly these were part of the force made up of the nobles and their followers from Imeritia and the Gouriel of whom Capt. Telfer has also spoken unfavourably. Mr. Phillips-Wolley's heart, however, is in the hunting-field; and it is this part of his book, rather than his somewhat hasty remarks and reflections on other topics, which will detain his readers.

DOUGLAS W. FRESHFIELD.

The Beginnings of the Christian Church:
Lectures delivered in the Chapter-room of
Winchester Cathedral.
By the Rev.
William Henry Simcox. (Rivingtons.)
MR. SIMCOX is correct in assuming that an
English book covering the ground which he
proposes to cover is much needed; but we

cannot consider that he has been altogether successful in supplying the want, because of the inadequate conception which he seems to have formed of the amount of labour necessary for the purpose. He does not, indeed, "pretend to any originality of research, or use of any but the most familiar authorities; "but he urges that, "in the period treated of, unlike most others, the most familiar authorities are, happily, to a great extent first-hand ones (Preface, p. vi.). It may be urged, on the other hand, that the fact of first-hand authorities being easily accessible does not always justify a writer in dealing with them by the light of nature, aided by an acquaintance with the language The result of Mr. Phillips-Wolley's experi- in which they were written. The Saxon ence seems to be that there is plenty of sport Chronicle, for example, is a first-hand and to be had in the Caucasus, but at considerable easily accessible authority for an important risk, the best sporting-grounds being also part of the history of our own country; but the least healthy parts of the country. In a writer who, without pretending to originthis sportsmen are at a disadvantage com- ality of research, based upon it a new pared to mountaineers, who have little to account of the centuries preceding the Confear in the immediate vicinity of the highest quest, in which Kemble and Lappenberg, portions of the snowy chain. In Daghestan, Stubbs and Freeman, were all equally igwhere the climate is better, there appears to nored, would expose himself to adverse criti But this is what Mr. Simcox has done be now some danger from the tribes. Lawless- cism. ness seems to be on the increase. Travel, through the greater part of his work. We which before the late war was fairly safe will take only some prominent instances. except in the most remote mountain fast- In the harmonising of the Acts of nesses, is said now to be very much the the Apostles with the Epistle to the reverse. Yet martial law, formerly confined to the mountain districts, has according to Mr. Phillips-Wolley-been put in force at Tiflis itself. In that city British travellers and merchants have now the advantage of being able to appeal to a consul of their own-a privilege too long denied them. Mr. Phillips-Wolley does not seem, however, to have been favoured with the valuable boons formerly accorded to Englishmen-a" crownpodorojno" and the use of the "five-verst" ordnance map of the country-and he consequently suffered severely in post-travelling.

Outside sport, the reader will find a true

Galatians, pp. 74 et seqq., there is no apparent reference to the discussion which, since Schwegler began it in 1842, has been going on almost without interruption, and in which almost every theologian of distinction has taken part. In his account of the Neronian persecution, pp. 132 et seqq., he ignores the interesting and important question, which has recently been discussed afresh, whether the persecution was directed against the Christians as Christians or as Jews (see, e.g., Schiller, "Ein Problem der Tacituserklärung" in the Commentationes philologae in honorem Th. Mommseni, pp. 41 et seqq.;

and

Keim, "Das neronische Verbrechen u. der Christennamen" in Aus dem Urchristenthum, pp. 171 et seqq.). He quotes without question, p. 283, the letter of Hadrian to Fundanus, the authenticity of which has been vigorously, and many persons think successfully, attacked by Keim and Overbeck, and which is given up even by Aubé. He is inclined to consider the Epistle to Diognetus as the earliest of the Apologie, p. 287; whereas the modern point of controversy respecting it is not whether it was written before Justin Martyr, but how long after: He simply dismisses as "a ridiculous saying," p. 384, the remarkable description which Papias appears to attribute to our Lord about the physical effects of the second advent, in apparent unconsciousness that that saying is an important link of connexion between Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (compare with it,e g., Book of Enoch, 10, 19; Apocalypse of Baruch, c. 29; Talmud Bab., Schabb, 30b, mentioned in Harnack, Patres Apostol., fasc. i. 2. p. 88). He holds that "no reasonable Christian can doubt" that St. Peter died at Rome (p. 140), whereas the most that can be said is that the question is still sub judice, and that" reasonable Christians" like Lipsius, Holzmann, and Hausrath, on purely historical grounds, maintain the negative. He ventures the rash assertion that the Martyrium S. Polycarpi is of "absolutely unquestioned the question of interpolations and additions,

EDWIN HATCH.

names

a

draw down the blinds, and refuse to look out continues to be altogether unknown to the upon the questions which are being discussed law, nor has its existence ever been recognised as to the early ages of Christianity. There by an Act of Parliament." The Privy is, moreover, the less reason to do so because Council remains nominally the advisers the tendency of the best modern researches of the Sovereign, but it has long ceased into the history of those ages is conservative to be of any value except as applying rather than destructive. to the of leading statesmen distinctive label and as furnishing a highsounding title for an administrative department, or as, by means of two or three ment of the day, supplying responsible witmembers always connected with the Govern must be performed "in council." nesses for those acts of the prerogative which Scarcely

"English Citizen" Series.

and

Central Government. By H. D. Traill. (Macmillan) THIS is an age of handbooks and manuals. To the ancient maxim that a great book is a great evil, the publishers have added the words, " and a heavy pecuniary loss;" they are one and all engaged in supplying the well-written booklets on subjects previously British public with elegantly printed and discussed in heavy folios or numerous octavos One bookseller issues a series of Lives of literary men; another takes to himself the world of art; and a third endeavours to bring home to the minds of men the dangers of life, and the means by which they can be warded off. The volumes of the present series, upon the rights and duties of the citizen, will furnish the public with information about the conditions of the government to which they are subjected, and about the meanings of those phrases in political life which may be heard every night in the House of Commons, or read every morning in the daily papers. In

a day passes without our speaking of the "Prime Minister;" but no such official is All the lords of the Treasury are equal in recognised by the Constitution of the country. first lord is the most important member, and the eye of the law, although in practice the the others the least influential, of the whole Government are still the official titles of Ministry. Boards of Trade and of Local those offices; but the functions of both are administered by a single chief just as much as the Foreign or the Home Office. The into a recognised, although an illegal, existmanner in which these anomalies have come ence may be read in the pages of Mr. Traill's little treatise; they furnish a striking English government, whatever its proof of the oft-repeated assertion that other

of the series are discharging a duty which has never been performed before. There is no

a handbook of 160 pages it would not be

tions with which the various Government of Mr. Traill's treatise, the offices are entrusted, and the processes through which they have in the course of centuries assumed the shape by which they are now known. There is no handy volume which describes the successive changes by which the electoral roll of the kingdom has risen from units to thousands, and the manner in which the extension of the franchise acts upon the deliberations of the Legislature and the opinions of public men. Such are the aims of the work just issued and of its immediate successor. Those which are to come after will deal with the growth of the National Debt, the sources from which the income of the country is derived, and the channels through which it is applied; with the machinery of local government in counties and municipal boroughs, and the duties imposed upon these provincial administrators; with the relations of the State to trade or labour, and to those fruitful sources of antagonistic opinion, the land and the Church. These be selected as the chief subjects of domestic politics which will be discussed in the series; but to them there will be added a description of India and of the colonies and dependencies which have been peopled from, and are still bound in union with, the English nation.

may

A condensed history of the whole executive subject of Mr. Traill's volume-impresses government of England-and this is the vividly on the mind the inconsistencies which, in the course of years, have grown up in political life. The word Cabinet-council has been used both in poetry and in prose for at least two centuries, and for most of that period such a deliberative body in some form or other has been in existence. Yet it still

66

the principal sources of executive authority administration; but all are sufficiently, if succinctly, described in its chapters. Mr. Trail has to explain the process by which the moneys requisite for nation and for maintaining the efficiency of discharging the obligations of the English the services, both civil and military, are voted in Parliament. He has to put before his readers the frequent alterations in the number and the numerous changes in the When he comes to the description of the duties of the principal Secretaries of State. work of the Foreign Office he finds it necessary to trace how the conduct of the foreign Sovereign into those of the Ministry of the policy of England passed from the hands of the Colonial Office demands his entering into day. The chapter on the duties of the the details of the intricate relations between its duties and those imposed upon the War Office. The history of the India Office leads him to chronicle how in the last century one Ministry perished in the task of and how in this century an abortive Bill for constructing a mode of government for India, the remodelling of its antiquated system sapped the foundation of another Cabinet. To trace the varied forms of rule in England needs an extensive experience of public affairs, and for

one office at least Mr. Traill has obtained the

assistance of the experts within its walls.

In a work of this character there must be the statement that the President of the Local a few minor faults. The most important is Government Board "has hitherto represented it without the assistance of any secretary; and this will show that the other errors are of but slight moment. W. P. COURTNEY,