BOOKS.

THE NEW Ll7CIAN.* Tins is a book of very unequal merit in its different sections, though the reason of that inequality may perhaps be that Mr. Train has aimed at different standards in different dialogues, sometimes apparently ignoring all desire to be dramatic, and using the conversation (as in the case of Edmund Burke and Mr. Horsman) only as a means of conveying an opinion of his own ; while at other times he has studied his characters carefully, and reached a very high point of dramatic force. Perhaps the most interesting thing in the book is the prefixed dedication, "To E. T." :—

" Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He bath given thee under the sun all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might ; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest."— &el. ix., 9, 10.

• " What matter though such things have never been, Nor shall be ? the Ecclesiast bath said.

Though but in mockery the Samosatene Imagined his confabulating dead ?

What matter though nor knowledge nor device, Nor work nor wisdom in the grave there be 1'- - Does not the Preacher bid us once and twice Live out in joy love's life of vanity ?

So live we, then ! nor heed what whisper tells That closest union heaviest reckoning pays

In shock of loss and anguish of farewells At that eternal parting of the ways."

This, of course, means that the author regards the hypothesis that those who have passed through death can meet and com- municate again, as a fanciful one, not to be accepted as possible, but holds that we may none the less wisely soften the bitterness of a world of vanity by ignoring the terrible significance of death, and imagining for ourselves a life beyond it in which it is impos- sible seriously to believe. And that gives us the cue to the tone of the book. It is a book that plays with the great subjects of life, sometimes with more and sometimes with leas of earnestness, sometimes with none at all, using a tone of levity. Of course, the form of imaginary dialogues lends itself to this change from superficiality to seriousness. Mr. Trail has only to introduce such a figure as Lord Westbury, or the late Lord Beaconsfield, or Lucian himself, to enable him with perfect appropriateness to make the dialogue as light and caustic as be will,—and he himself is capable of great things in that direction. Here, for instance, in

* The Nese Lueieo bane a Series of Dialoptes of the Dead. By li. D. Tema. London: Chapman and HAIL Het

the dialogue between Sir Robert Peel and Lord Beaconsfield, he is at his highest point of skill while treating Lord Beaconsfield. Sir Robert is a tougher morsel, and we do not think that Mr. Traill manages to give his somewhat ostentatious frigidity and middle-class pride with anything like equal effect.

"PEEL. Ay, but there are political sins—if there are not political services—which merit an eternity of remembrance.

"LORD B. No doubt : but they don't get it. Practically, there is but one inexpiable sin in politics, and but one way of atoning for the expiable. You blundered, Sir Robert—excuse my freedom—you blun- dered more than once in your policy ; but the stumble most fatal to your posthumous reputation WBB that of your horse on Constitution Hill. I, on the other hand, had I committed far more errors than you did; should have atoned for them all by that one consummate stroke of statesmanship—the completion of my seventy-fifth year. Nothing, depend upon it, is more politic than longevity. Its effects may not be so startling and brilliant as are produced by the early death of promise ;' but they are infinitely more assured and lasting. After all, it sooner or later occurs to people that the young Marceline might have turned out a failure. But if one is not to die in the first blush of political youth, it is essential to last well into the seventies. Once the attractions of adolescence have been lost, one is bound to live until the dignity of old age has been won. The hurried departure of a sexagenarian, in the full freshness, perhaps, of some political reverse, has a touch of the ludicrous about it, like the premature farewell of a middle-aged prima donna under the discouragement of a bronchial attack. It is wanting alike in discretion and in romance. "PEEL. If statesmanship is to be tested by tenacity of life, you have left a greater statesman behind you.

"Loan B. I admit it with regret. Be has at present surpassed my political achievements by two years—for the difference in our ages is too slight to matter. But our cases are exceptional. Our antagonism took so dramatic a form at last, that our reputations react upon and support each other, and the memory of the dead statesman is in a certain stare perpetuated by every characteristic act of his survivor. My own humble merit is to have lived long enough to fix that idea of dramatic antaganisni in the public mind—to have esta- blished myself as the typical opponent of that form of Radicalism with which Mr. Gladstone's name is associated."

Naturally, we do not like Mr. Traill so well, though he may, perhaps, show even greater ability, when he attempts to contrast the spirit of Christian theology with that of Pagan light- heartedness, as he does in the dialogue between Pascal and Lucian. That dialogue strikes us as aiming higher and show- ing a more finished literary ability than any of the others ; but if it aims higher, it does not aim high enough. Mr. Traill falls into irreverence in his desire to show the almost irrational char- acter of Pascal's conception of grace, and yet he does not exhibit it, we think, as Pascal himself would have exhibited it, though he is quite equal to painting the bewilderment and levity of Lucian :—

" PAS. But how if human nature itself is a shameful thing ?

"Luc. Your question, if I may dare to say so, appears to be a jugglery with words. There can be no such feeling as shame for anything which all men possess in common : it is born of the sense of inferiority, and where equality is, it cannot exist. Even thieves are not ashamed of their calling among themselves, but only by com- parison with the honest. How, then, can man's nature seem to him shameful, when there is no superior nature to which he can com- pare it ?

" PAS. There, however, is the very point. He can, he must, com- pare it with a higher, a Divine nature ; though to ycu, indeed, I may not say, 'with the nature of the gods.'

"Luc. No, indeed, you may not. I have always avoided compar- ing myself with the gods lest I should grow too proud of my virtue. Zeus the adulterer, and Hermes the pilferer, and Dionysus the tippler might keep the most profligate of mortals in countenance.

" PAS. 1 know ; and I speak not of the Divine nature as the bar- barous and unclean legends of your religion represented it. But could you form no conception of Deity as something unspeakably higher, purer, holier than the nature of man ? Could you not imagine it, let me ask you, by idealising human virtues ? Call to mind for a moment the most blameless man whom you have ever known ; and then imagine a being—name him god or man, I care not which—who should as far surpass your friend in excellence as he himself surpassed the vilest of his race.

"Luc. I have obeyed you. Your monster of innocence is in my mind.

"PAS. Then now bethink yourself that even as be is, whom you are imagining, so might all men be : as noble as the worst of them are base, as perfect as the best of them are imperfect. And do you not feel, then, as if the burden of this reflection must abase you to the dust ?

"Luc. No, by the Dog, not I. I should see no reason to blush for my inches before a live man of six cubits in stature; and you would have me cast dust on my head because I have merely dreamt of a giant. Why should we banker after the unattainable in anything, whether it be length of leg or altitude of virtue But you look sad. Have I said anything to grieve you ?

" PAS. You have, my friend, but unwittingly. I cannot but feel sad at perceiving how helpless is the condition of humanity un- illumined by the Divine Word In thy counsels, 0 Lord, in Thy counsels was it ordained, that through the perfections of Thy Son -alone should the eyes of man be opened to the depravity of his nature, and the misery of his estate. Give me grace, 0 infinite in wisdom, to subdue my- " Luc. I shrink from interrupting your meditations, 0 most devout one ; but you seem to be bringing a new term into the discussion. What is this 'misery of man's estate ?' Do you mean only that un- easiness of conscience of which we have been speaking ? If so, of. course I, who know not the uneasiness, can have no share in the misery. But I imagine you to be thinking of something other than that.

"Pea. And you are right. I had but a feeble hope of finding in you a comprehension of the Christian sense of sin : but I had thought that perhaps I might lead you to it by a pagan route. Though yes might not feel man's sinfulness, you could not but feel his unhappi- ness, and it appeared to me to be possible that a mind as enlightened as yours might be already half prepared to associate the two. But T foresee that the expectation would be disappointed. Christianity alone has revealed to man that sin and suffering are but two aspects- of the same thing, the obverse and the reverse of the coin of life."

Pascal would, we think, have taken up Lucian's remark that it is not reasonable to cast dust on one's head because one has dreamt of a giant and compared his stature unfavourably with one's own, by remarking, what Mr. Traill makes Pascal fail to remark, that there is in every man a knowledge that he is intended to feel, and potentially capable of feeling, very differently, and much more purely and simply and sincerely than he does feel ; while there is in him no knowledge that. he can grow to the height of six cubits by taking thought about his stature. He might have quoted even heathen philo- sophers to show how deeply engrafted in us is this concep- tion that we are born for a higher life than we lead. Pascal's rhapsodical burst into prayer seems to us an irreverent mode- of suggesting that the Christian thinker was vanquished, and had no resource but to betake himself to devout and penitential reverie. It may be true, as Pascal would certainly have maintained,. that with the Christian revelation came a great stimulus to this inward conviction that a holiness at present unattainable to us ought to be the object of passionate effort, but Pascal. would certainly not have despaired of showing from heathen.

literature itself that there was an inexplicably far-reaching range in the moral aspirations of man, even under the various systems of Pagan thought. However, the dialogue- between Pascal and Lucian marks, we think, the highest point of literary ability achieved in this volume. And the dialogue- between Lucretius, Paley, and Darwin marks the lowest point..

There is hardly any attempt in it at dramatic force, and the- subject discussed is not even well discussed, or with Mr. Trailrs- usual keenness and mastery. The dialogue which seems to us- to show the greatest ability after that between Pascal and Lucian is the one between Daniel O'Connell and Mr. Isaac Butt, though. it gives a view of O'Connell's character which we think unjust to him, and makes a mere walking gentleman of Isaac Butt. We.

do not for a moment believe that O'Connell would have been

so indifferent to the gross outrages inflicted on innocent Irish peasants, and Irish farmers, and Irish cattle, during the regime- of the Land League, as this dialogue represents him. Doubt- less, he was not a scrupulous man, and would not seriously have deprecated the use of a good deal of terrorism for a political victory that should have made his Celtic blood bound in his- veins. But he did care for his countrymen, and he would have

raised his voice in genuine horror against the cruelty and blood- shed which Mr. Parnell at most coldly deprecated, and of which • he never once expressed either loathing or even moral condemna- tion. Still, there is great force and great skill in this expression of O'Connell's passionate wish for a triumph over England :--

" O'C. The English people are wearied to death already by the importunities of Ireland ; and it now only needs that some states- man in whom they believe should offer them relief from their incubus upon the faith of his solemn guarantee that the scheme of Federal- ism which they do not understand is different from, and will never lead to, that repeal of the Union which they instinctively fear.

" B. But that statesman ?

" O'C. Will appear, Isaac, when the time is ripe. Never fear, meta Let the Irish Nationalists but once become the arbiters of the fate of the two English parties, and one or other of these political hucksters, whose system of party government is so fast settling down upon the lees of its demoralisation, will sell the unity of their empire to defeat their rivals. Ireland, you need not doubt, will in a very few years. become mistress of her destinies.

"B. And then ?

" O'C. And then ? Why, what do you mean, Butt?

"B. Ah ! Mr. O'Connell, remember what you said a while ago about the happiness of peoples. Will success—success by such means and under such leaders—secure our country's happiness ; or do you sometimes fear, as I do, that Ireland, in seeking a fallen national life, may be losing all that makes it worth possessing ?

"O'C. Why, what the-

" B. Nay, sir, let me finish. You, like me, are a religious man, and in all things spiritual a loyal son of our Holy Church. Like me, you respected and upheld the great institutions of human society. History records the indignant rebuke which you levelled at Arthur O'Connotja.

project for the partition of Irish land. And can you without mis- giving commit our country to the charge of men who have drunk so deeply of the teachings of Communism, and who, if outwardly reli- giotts.themselves, are the willing allies and even the fast friends of those reckless and creedless desperadoes whom Irish America has flung broadcast upon the world ? Are you prepared, sir-

" O'C. Be silent, you croaking raven ! Could any man escape such feelings, who daring the pauses in her interminable struggle looks forth upon Ireland from the world of Shades ? I know them as well as you do, and except in the excitement of the conflict, I am as much at their mercy as you are. But as soon as the armies close again—as soon as I see my countrymen once more at hand-grip with England, and with the spoils for which I vainly struggled almost within their grasp—why then, Isaac, I fling my misgivings to the winds, and whether the victory of the Nationalists be destined to prove a blessing to Ireland or a curse, I wish them victory with all my heart and soul !"

The book Will not take its place by Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations, for it is not sufficiently equal in its different parts. But there are dialogues in it which equal some of the best of Walter. Savage Landor's in ability, though the dramatic spirit is not embodied sufficiently in all of them, some of the interlocutors being made mere vehicles for eliciting the views of the others.