1300K.S.

TEE NATIONAL BEMIEW..

TEE title of this new quarterly—" The National "—sufficiently indicates the object and character of the work. It will not be the organ of any one political party, but will criticize all parties in their turn. It will be found in direct opposition to the cants and persecuting spirit of all existing religious sects; while it claims to represent a national or indigenous Christianity," (that has yet to grow,) and to " interpret the deliberate faith of most cul- tivated laymen however now scattered among different churches"; a Christianity which does not yet appear to have its formularies, but whose spirit, if we read rightly, is to be sought for in Arnold and his followers Maurice and Kingsley. The criticisms in the review will not be based on formal canons, but attempt to seize the spirit and life which lurk under all writings of earnest purpose and spontaneous growth. In fact, the National Review would seem to aim at representing that class of independ- ent thinkers who have thrown off a superstitious devotion to the mere names of party, the sapless dogmas of Church religion, or the bigotry of practical science. This class is not of yesterday. It is nearly twenty years sines Bohn Stuart Mill and others refused to swear by every formula of the Radicals, and opposed certain re- ceived axioms of economical science, claiming in either ease a right to judge for themselves according to their own reason. It is about as long since the Tories were disturbed by the fancies of Young Eng- land,—a less robust race and morounder "the dominion of dreams," but whose mere existence argued some weariness with established shibboleths as well as some independence of thinking. The agita- tions in the religious world have been louder, but as doctrines and articles of belief have greater authority in sacred than even in lay questions, the religious disputes have mostly turned upon formulas, rather than emancipation from formulas. -Arnold and.his two followers already named are the beat-known excep- tions, though ,others exist.

Men of this independent oast of mind, with a love above all

things for reasonable truth, may be numerous, but as yet they are rather a class than a party. Indeed, even class should be used-as an intellectual rather than a social distinction ; for though they may all agree in differing from the party with whom they were first enrolled, they equally differ with one another. They maypropose to themselves-some common ends—the advancement or progress-of mankind, for example ; but they have no common means. Ilenoe they cannot furnish that reliable support which a professed party of the oldlichool can and did furnish ; nor, have they in fact the same stimulus. "-Reason the card, but passion is the gale." The ad- vocacy and exposition of truth, however ably it may be done, cannot have the same interest for the mass of people as the echoing their preconceptions and 'stimulating their, prejudices. The quali- ties desired in a popular Member of Parliament as Tainted in the first article of this review, apply equally well to the popular pe- riodical writer.

" The qualities which catch the fancy and jump with the taste of a popu- lar constituency will rarely be those best suited for administrative states- manship. Brilliant parts, a ready tongue, that clear, strong, unhesitating conviction which is secured by seeing only one side of a question, which

troubled by no misgivings, and will listen to no modifications,—these are the qualifications which make the successful candidate in a great city. Sobriety, caution, a disposition to listen rather than to speak, a temper ever ready to weigh all sides of a subject, a conviction that there must be something of strength and truth in opinions held tenaciously by able and conscientious opponents, a firm will to run counter when necessary to popular impressions and desires, and a power to look to future and secondary and permanent ratherthan to immediate and transitory consequences,—these are the gifts which mark out the safe and upright ruler of a great empire. How, then, shall popular election ever give us wise statesmen ? Is it not probable that -we shall have to look for •these either out of the pale of the House of Com- mons altogether, or among those Members of it who are least under the con- trol of large and democratic constituencies? "

Whether that growing, but as yet, we think, fermenting class, which may really become a national party, is numerous enough or willink enough to support a quarterly review, is matter of trial. The National Review deserves support as an able work, catholic

in sentiment, independent in view ; often. original, always pene- trating in thought ; vigorous' spirited, and striking in style ; with pungent salt enough to give flavour without bitterness. The first article, on " Administrative Reform," considers what "is just and unjust in the recent popular discontent"; and in so doing it is likely to raise opposition rather than conciliate support, except in the case of those who are seeking for truth or prefer it to their own preconceptions. It is in the main favourable to administra- tive reform ; brit as it dties not indorse the statements of the As- sociation's orators, whetter Platform or Parliamentary—as it scouts the notion of corrupt or unjust appointments obtaining as a rule—as it points out the difficulties arising from our habits, and what are called constitutional ideas, as well as the inherent diffi- culties of the subject—and more than all, as the writer is not penetrated with an out-and-out respect for the middle dawns, the paper will scarcely be popular with the Administrative Be- formers. At the same time, as there is no scriiple in boldly ;Joint- ing out the errors of Ministers and the faults of the system, it will -not be admired by officials. The paper, however, is well worth reading, for its searching logic, its sensible conclusions, and its striking pictures and remarks. We have just seen depicted-the qualities that take with the large constituencies. There are like- Wise several pictures of the middle classes and of the working of * The National Ravisw. No. I. duly 1655. -Published by Theobald.

the Reform Bill. Here is kpassage that deals with a great evil, and has a passing interest from its allusion to Lord Raglan, written while he was yet living—indeed, without any thought of his death.

" There is another point, however, in respect of which Ministers of every party are much to blame—viz: in @heir insurmountable reluctance to cancel a bad appointment when once its injudiciousness has been made manifest. But even here candour compels us to admit that much may be pleaded in arrest of judgment, or at least in mitigation of the sentence. In the first place, the reluctance is national rather than ministerial. It is felt by every one, and it pervades every department. We never supersede our clergymen for incapacity, rarely our physician or our lawyer, not readily even our servant or our tradesman. Even merchants shrink from dismissing a slow or stupid clerk unless he be guilty of some actual delinquency. Public posts, once bestowed, are understood to be held for life; and whenever dismissal for in- capacity does take place, the sufferer is invariably represented as a martyr or victim, and the courageous Minister as ajobber or a tyrant. In the second place, especially in high office, it is not always easy to know whether or not a man has failed, and deserves to be superseded. The public judgment is always hasty and often erroneous; generally founded on imperfect information, and not seldom the mere echo of some newspaper denunciation. Those most!con- cerned and beet qualified to judge perhaps bold an opinion diametrically op- posite to that of the country. The oountry itself frequently changes its opin- ion when knowledge has increased and passion has subsided. We have a case in point before us now. Two or three months ago the clamour was uni- versal for the recall of Lord Raglan. Every epithet of vituperation was heaped upon his head. His incapacity' was held to be patent and noto- rious, and the obstinate and wilful guilt of Ministers in retaining him to be undeniable and heinous. The strong testimony borne to his merits by the -generals serving under him was little known or little heeded ; and the pe- culiar difficulties in his path were as imperfectly comprehended as his singu- lar tact and patience in surmounting them, or steering through them. Something of all this is beginning to be seen or ..gueesed even by the public, and far more is, and has long been, in the cognizance of those whom sound policy forbids to speak out; and the country is gradually modifying and re- scinding its first hasty decision. Now, how wrong it would have been had Ministers allowed themselves in such a case to be influenced by popular cla- mour, or made themselves, by an inconsiderate or premature decision, the instruments of national injustice! In the third place, in impirtant posts, such as governors of colonies or generals of armies, the facility of finding a suitable successor must enter largely into the question as to the recall of the actual holder of the office."

- There is a good article on the present state of religion or re- ligious parties, in which the writer looks below the mere externals of services and doctrines, to the national or natural qualities that characterize Protestants and Catholics ; and to a great extent determine the modes of their religion, if not the religion itself. When the author enters upon what we suppose may be termed his own religion, he is not so successful, from the want of some -positive" creed or doctrines, without which we suspect no church can advance much beyond "natural religion" or a philosophical sect. That "the kingdom of God" is every- where about us, is a fine idea ; it may lead to a lofty mqrality and worthy actions ;. but it will not constitute a visible church. The -war is not handled as a' military question, either critically or as a narrative : an article' entitled " International Ditties and the Pre- 'sant Crisis" examines the policy of the war, and pronounces strongly in favour of it. Mingled with this immediate argument are -new and remarkable opinions on international law, and the rights and the personality of peoples. There are some striking observations on what constitutes nationality and national life • but -we take a quotation on a more practical topic—the propriety of resisting Russia now, and the consequences if that resistance had not been made, or should fail of success.

" Whether prevention had become impossible or hot, events will show better than discussion. But this at least was clear, that it was possible now or never; that whatever difficulties beset the enterprise of repulse, tenfold discouragement would attend an enterprise of rescue ; and that to wait till the fleet of Sebastopol was at the Golden Horn, beneath the eyes of the Rus- sian army on the Southern slopes of the Balkan, would be to let the future of Europe go by default. For who can fail to see that the issue is of this magnitude, and that Russia, mistress of the Hellespont, sweeps at once with her influence, and ultimately with her dominion, the whole Old World from Japan to the Atlantic ? The sequence of events, terminating-in this issue, or in its moral equivalent, appears to us so simple and necessary as to re- move the usual precariousness of political vaticination. An empire, won in Greek interests and by pretensions to a pontifical rule over Eastern Christen- dom, would first give- Otho his passports back to Bavaria ; and would meet its pilgrims at the Holy Places by way of the Archipelago and the Levant. The first moment of Pansclavonic triumph hands over to the conqueror the Dalmatian coast and the Selavic populations of Austria. The empire of Vienna thus disintegrated, losing its most reliable military material, and being totally destitute of any moral cohesion, falls-in piecemeal, and the more surely because scarcely one of its races would have reason to regret the change. The feeble kingdom of Naples would be glad of an irresistible patron ; nor is Western Catholicism anywhere, in Spain, in Tuscany, in Bavaria,—in condition to present a front of political resistance to the in- verted crusade advancing from the East. There are malcontents enough in Italy, and conflicting passions of Democrats and priests, to keep the ele- ments fermenting till the effervescence leaves them fiat and dead. But Ger- many,—Mr. Cobden's 'educated' nation,—is there no barrier there? Alas! we believe and hope everything good of Germany except political union and power. Her courts are already wholly and her people half corrupted by Russian alliances and admirations: poised in vigilance between Paris and St. Petersburg, she considers her nationality still pledged to look suspiciously at, the West, and bound by good fellowship to accept the compliments of the East. A direct invasion, indeed, would at once rouse and unite her people, and repeat the patriotic sacrifices of the war of liberation. But this is not the method of the Czars. The schemes of Napoleon L were personal, and could not wait; a lifetime was the limit of their chance; the policy of Rus- sia is traditional and slow, advancing not like passion, but like destiny ; pressing, like a circumambient atmosphere, into every open opportunity, and oozing into every leaky will. Against so insinuating a power there are not, we fear, in Germany, the requisite elements of resistance —mutual trust, definite aims, and moral solidity. A huge Macedonian autocracy, disposing of the resources of an empire, deals to immense advantage with a group of small or secondary states, jealous of each other, and peopled by a race of susceptible sentiment and rich culture, but sunk, for want of a common faith and a common experience, into intellectual distraction and practical feebleness. Nothing, therefore, beyond an occasion for patience and cir- cumspection is opposed by central Europe to the Muscovite advance, and

France and England present the first formidable and positive barrier. Who

can say that, offered then, it is not offered too late Nor, meanwhile, is it supposable that these countries could remain to that hour what they are now. There are plenty of combustible elements in France, whose outbursts might call in the great Russian fire-engine to quench it with conservative floods. And as for England, two inevitable changes would have altered her whole relation to the world. With the fall of Turkey, Persia, already trembling between Russian pensions and patriotic shame, wholly disappears ; and India, penetrated by the intrigues, and bordered by the reputed omni- potence of Russia, would need no invasion to become untenable, but with the sudden sweep of Oriental revolution, would go over to the strongest. And in the presence of a power uniting with its fleets the Mediterranean and the Baltic, with freedom to retreat into the Euxine or scour the Atlantic with the rocks of the /Egean turned into Cronstadts, and the harbours of , Asia Minor into Portamouthe; the naval supremacy of England, and there- fore the security of her commerce, the protection of her dependencies, the spread of her colonization, would be hopelessly. compromised. Thus to sur- render her proper life, and let the national genius intrusted to her perish by her apathy, what else would it be than historical suicide ?"

There are two notices of English modern literary subjects- Cowper's life and writings, and Kingsley's Poems and Novels. Cowper is an old subject enough ; but freshness and interest are given to the article not only by the life and vigour of the writing, but by its hearty views on the best training to make boys men, its quiet sarcasm on the extreme religions notions of Cowper's spiritual advisers, its thorough and kindly appreciation of the gentle-minded poet, and many shrewd remarks of a worldly nature scattered through the essay. In like manner, the writings of Kingsley are not new as subjects, except his last novel "West- ward Ho !" but again interest and freshness are given by the idea that pervades the notice and the ramifications that extend from it. This " idea " is, that man in society is the proper subject of the novelist : and that•whether designedly or indirectly, whether distinctly or crudely, the novelist should in his pictures of life point some lesson of life—he should teach as well as amuse. In the writer's opinion, De Foe was the first British writer of fiction who exhibited " individual character and broad pictures of social life " : which he seems to think, when done truly, will impress some lesson upon the mind even if no moral is obviously aimed at. In the last century, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and Goldsmith, " worked from the life, with the object of correcting evils and abuses, as well as of interesting and amusing their readers." " In the hands of Scott the novel assumed a new character, but lost ranch of its ethical and reformatory aim. " Himself deeply imbued with the picturesqueness of the past, sympa- thizing in its healthy. animalism,' enjoying its sports and pageants and costume, almost losing, in his relial; for feudalism, his sense of its systematic cruelties and injustice, Scott carried all England with him from the contem-, plation of the present revel in a brilliant but unreal world, from which no lesson was to be derived but that of a kindly and genial sympathy with man and nature. He worked with no higher purpose than to amuse, and he succeeded to admiration. As the nature of the man was healthy, manly, and truthful, the amusement he afforded was in the main wholesome, and 'the world owes him a debt of gratitude. But the world will not long rest satisfied with amusement. No school of writing can be permanent unless it have an aim beyond amusing. The school that has not such an aim will never attract to its ranks the nobleSt rising minds. This has been shown in the history of that branch of novel-writing which had its root in Scott. It can boast of no really great name but his. It is already effete ; and the writer who sets himself to paint the past now, if he wish to attract any attention beyond the poor circle of subscribers to the circulating library, or the hun- gry members of the country book-club, must read the lesson of his period while he paints its manners."

After touching upon the characteristics of Thackeray and Dickens as both working "with a grave and earnest purpose," the writer proceeds to exhibit the social, moral, and religious objects which employ Mr. Kingsley's pen in poetry and fiction. The morals of " Elizabeth of Hungary " are obvious enough; so are those works which introduce the younger men of the upper middle classes. In the description of the mental movement among the working classes, Mr. Kingsley is equally successful, but not in the conclusions to which it all tends. In a certain sense, how- ever, this can scarcely be otherwise ; because the social fermenta- tion—the struggle after something different from and better than old and effete maxims of conduct—have not yet terminated, and in- deed, as they say of bodily humours, have "not come to a head." When Mr. Kingsley kills off his modern persons, or sends them on a moral or religious crusade, the imperfect ends may argue that he does not himself perfectly comprehend the results of the reform which he is striving for. A mode of life not yet existent cannot, however, be described. The extracts in the notice will of course be familiar to the readers of Kingsley : the review is worth perusal for the particular criticism, though the pervading idea is the lead- ing characteristic.

In addition to these articles, which have reference to passing events, or present life and opinions, there are three of a more ab- stract kind. One of these is a paper on the Planets, which inti- mates the writer's leaning to a belief in their habitability under the form of arguments against Dr. Whewell's book ; another is a free but reverent notice of Ewald's "Life of Christ'; a third is a pleasant and readable article on the circumstances in Goethe's life which led to the composition of " The Sorrows of Werter."

There are likwise two papers called " Summaries "-' one on "Theology and Mental Philosophy," another on " Political Philo- sophy and Economy." Their object is to present a summary of the books of that nature which may have appeared during the quarter. The utility of this plan must depend upon the execution'; but publications on economy and politics are not so much neglected by daily and weekly publications as the prospectus of the National Review seems to suppose; • and to double up the books of a quarter in a short article is likely to involve a brevity inconsistent with the elaboration of a quarterly publication.