BOOKS.

PATRIOTIC PROSE"

MAwr compilers of anthologies start with an attractive plan, but fail in its execution. Mr. Frederick Page in the little volume before us is to be congratulated on both idea and execution. Incidentally he furnishes an excellent answer to the contention of a writer in the Times that war does not inspire good literature, not merely by the quality of the passages quoted, but in the declaration of Ruskin that the arts "never reached any vital strength or honour but . . is the service either of great and just religion, or of some un- selfish patriotism, and law of such national life as must be the foundation of religion." But, apart from this, the war in which we are now engaged has shown again and again in letters from the trenches, in each sayings as that of the late Mr. W. G. C. Gladstone, and in the testimonies of leading neutrals the abiding truth of Lucretius's lines

in dahlia hominem specters perialie Convenit, adversisque in rebus noscere qui sit Nam verse Tacos turn demum pectore ab imo

Eiciuntur et eripitur persona, manet res."

Mr. Page divides his anthology into sections, the first and last of which treat of war as the expression of patriotism. One cannot but be impressed by the appositeness of many of the comments in these pages to the present juncture. What could be better, for example, with certain reserves, than Coleridge's words written in 1809 P-

" Often have I reflected with awe on the greet and dispropor- tionate power, which en individual of no extraordinary talents or attainments may exert, by merely throwing off all restraint of conscience. What then must not be the power, where en individual, of consummate wickedness, can organize into the unity and rapidity of an individual will, all the natural and artificial forces of a populous and wicked nation?"

Or where can we find a more wholesome warning as to the perils that beset us than in Sydney Smith's sermon, " On Invasion," delivered in 18047- " Be not deceived, there is no wall of adamant, no triple flaming sword, to drive off those lawless assassins that have murdered and pillaged in every other land; Heaven has made with us no covenant, that there should be joy, and peace here, and wailing, and lamenta- tion in the world besides: I would counsel you to put on a mind of patient suffering, and noble acting ; whatever energies there are in the human mind, you will want them all ; every man will be tried to the very springs of his heart, and those times are at hand which will show na all as we really are, with the genuine stamp, and vales, he it much, or be it little, which nature has impressed upon each living soul."

Mr. Page draws on Wordsworth's tract on The Convention of Cintra to illustrate the limitations of passive courage, the dangers of a policy which only aims at safety, and of an " ill-judging tenderness" which would sacrifice the nation's honour; while the need of sustained effort is overwhelmingly enforced in a superb passage from Thirke's Letters on a Regicide Peace "I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard, in conversation, the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest, • that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and if it did not succeed, then to vote for peach As if war was a matter of experiment! Am if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation ; not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judge- ment. When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without reason es valid, as fully, and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear ; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst • An Anthology of Patriotio Prose. Filected by Frederick Page. London : Humphrey Miliora. lzs. net.) they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly."

The same extract also contains a noble rebuke to those who sea in the war only a means of commercial aggrandisement. "Never can a vehement and sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation. . . The calcula- tion of profit in all such ware is false. On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime." Ruskin 'e argument, written at the time of the Crimean War, that "war is at present productive of good more than of evil" is remarkable for its appeal to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the dearest, in preference to that of prudent economists or careless pleasure. seekers who have suffered nothing, and yet ingeminate peace :— " Ask their witness, and see if they will not reply that it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no other- wise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the cross an the breastplate of England. Ask them and though they should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry—' Set on.'" The section headed "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" opens with the wonderful chapter in Ecelesiasticus, and con- tains De Quincey's homage to Joan of Are, in which he com- pares her fate with that of David, Dean Church's estimate of Wolsey, Ralegh'a account of the surrender of the 'Revenge,' Southey's description of the national mourning for Nelson, and Napier's eulogy of Sir John Moore. Thence we pass to "English National Pride," in which our reliance on natural bulwarks, so eloquently set forth in Camden's praise of the "Lady of the Sea" and Lucy Hutchinson's description of Britain as a "garden enclosed," is duly discounted by a passage from Mr. Bellew, in which he insists on the accident which has given to the lovers of England no long pageantry of battle. Here, too, we find Swinburne's praise of Shake- speare's Englishmen ; Milton's prayer for the deliverance of England from intestine sedition, from his tract on Church discipline, and his description of England in Areopagitica as "a city of refuge and mansion house of liberty "; and inter sties Sydney Smith's fine Assize Sermon, preached in 1824, in which he says:-

• '

Nations fall where judges are unjust, because there is nothing which the multitude think worth defending ; but nations do not fall which are treated as we are treated, but they rise as we have risen, and they shine as we have ehone, and die ae we have died, too much used to justice, and too much used to freedom, to owe for that life which is not just and free."

Under the heading of " Imaginative Patriotism" we are given Ruskin's excellent advice to those about to go abroad, con- firmed by Dr. Martineau's condemnation of the patriot who "becomes the egotist, as soon as he shuts his heart against the genius of other lands, and establishes a propagandism for the peculiarities of his own." In this section is also appro- priately included Chatham's famous declaration, in his speech on the employment of Indian troops in the American War in 1777; "If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never I " Thirty pages are devoted to the illustration of various types of national patriotism—Scots, Irish, Colonial, American, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish. Lockhart and Carlyle are cited in evidence of the influence of Burns; Thomas Davis speaks for Ireland ; Matthew Arnold justifies Italy in claiming an inheritance in Roman antiquity ; Mazzini finds the secret of Italy's national aim in the immense popu- larity of Dante; and the testimony of Cardinal Mercier is invoked in defence of the view that "patriotism is a sacred thing, and that a violation of national dignity is in a manner a profanation and a sacrilege." Bat two utterances stand out above all others in this section: Lincoln's immortal Dedicatory Address at Gettysburg and Burke's magnificent statement of the principles of true Imperialism. The former has been recently quoted in our columns. From the latter we may extract one passage:— " As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple con- secrated to our common faith, wherever the choeen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which. you have the monopoly. This is the true net of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to yon the wealth of the world. Deny them this participa- tion of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination, as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferanees, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigoratee, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member."

Under the head of " Christianity and Patriotism" we may note Dr. Martineau's acute explanation of the efficacy of Old Testament teaching in every crisis of public strife, in virtue of its intense nationality, and, in regard to the New Testament, the peculiar influence exerted by the historical theatre on which Christianity appeared and spread. The Roman Empire was a grand field for the diffusion of Christian truth. But its world-wide expansion, wiping out independent life over a vast area, and its genius for organization "enabled it to hold what it acquired, and purchase content by material order and military fear." One thinks of Matthew Arnold's line: "But ah 1 its heart, its heart was stone, And so it could not thrive." Dr. Martineau continues A religion sent forth over such a world can say nothing of the commonwealth; on the side of the political virtues it mast present a blank ; and so terrible did the omission eeem to the Christian teachers, so mutilated did human nature look under this incapa- city, that it was evidence to them against the longer existence of the disjointed world that entailed it; and the allegiance and self- =orifice that were not wanted here they transferred to the invisible realm, and bespoke for ' a better country, even a heavenly: What would have been patriotism under better terres- trial conditions became joyous, affectionate, devoted 'fellow- citizenship with the Saints '; what would have been loyalty took the upward and ideal direction, and became a simple willingness to spend and be spent in the service of the' King of Sainte.' And these were real and living affections, bursting with pure fire into the vacant spaces of the human soul, and kindling it all with a fresh enthusiasm."

F. D. Maurice'• sermon on the death of the Duke of Wellington is remarkable for the clear declaration that if ever our countrymen are called upon to defend their hearths and homes, it will be a duty which it is a sin against God to neglect: "not self-preservation but self-sacrifice is their work and privilege." By a happy juxtaposition, the editor follows this passage with another extract from Cardinal Mercier's pastoral letter on the absolution of a faithful fight

•• 'Greater love than this no man hetb,' said Our Saviour, •that a man lay down his life for his friends.' And the soldier who die. to save his brothers, and to defend the hearths and altars of his country, reaches this highest of all degrees of charity."

Of the remaining sections, with which we must perforce deal in cursory fashion, we may specially single out those on "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism," with Coleridge's denuncia- tion of the "traders in philanthropy "; on "Patriotism a Passion," with Halifax's wonderful passage on the Trimmer's one idolatry—his worship of the earth of England; on "Patriotism and Politics," liberally illustrated from Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents; on " Warning Voices," which deals with the defects, prejudices, and perversions of patriotism; and, lastly, on " Patriotism and the Soldier," with its memorable citations from Gordon's Khartoum journal, Ruskin's "Address to Young Soldiers," and Wordsworth's letter to Captain Paeley opening with the momentous warning: " Woe be to that country whose military power is irresistible!"