Catholic ought for many reasons to be interesting, but one

feels some qualms in accepting the present volume in that character.

It reaches so low a standard of literary workmanship that the fore- most question rather is what sort of people may become professors of history and literature and translators of works of philosophy ?

Mr. Robertson is plainly a literary hodman, and not an artist— tumbling his bricks out promiscuously before hearers and readers,

while much of the rubbish has but little connection with the sub- ject. Thus, because Burke during his career procured the

impeachment of an ex-governor of India, we are treated to an abstract of the dates of Indian history from the earliest times to the period of the English conquest. A picture of India as Burke knew it, with hints as to where and how he was mistaken, and an outline of what India really was and is, ought, no doubt, to be woven into a full account of Burke's career ; but to huddle together a multitude of dry facts from Indian history because at a given stage India is introduced is the sure mark of a man without speculation, or firm notion of what his task is, or sense of fitness and proportion. And this is only a specimen of the composition, the details of Burke's life and " portraits " of his contemporaries

and abridgments of some of Burke's writings being shot into the rubbish heap in the same wooden, awkward way. A most charac- teristic symptom of the author's lumbering execution is the abrupt- ness of his transitions and his curious formulae for bringing forward

a new topic. If thought is really spun out of a man's brain, the thread of connection will be apparent, without perpetual reminders

and marks which may be substituted without convincing us that there is any connection at all. But Mr. Robertson never lets us alone. After a few pages we come on a paragraph like this :-

" And here now, as the illustrious subject of this biography enters on the great arena of public life, is the fitting place to take a glance at the various political parties which than in England contended for power."

A page or two farther on we read :-

"Let me first speak of the party with which ho became connected, and under whose banner he entered Parliament."

.......... . .

"Let us now turn to the public men whose policy Burke was opposed to."

.......... . .

"I will now proceed to vindicate to the best of my ability the political wisdom of Burke from these misrepresentations of party."

"It is now time to assist at his Parliamentary debut."

• Lectures on Use Life, Writings, and Tim. of Edmund Burke. By J. B. Robertson, Esq.. Professor of Modem History and English Literature at the Catholic University of Dublin. London : John Philp.

And so on, throughout the lectures. That it may not be supposed Mr. Robertson shows his woodenness in only one way, let us quote one more passage, which is a fair specimen of his style :—

" Such were the small beginnings of that mighty Indian Empire after- wards ruled by tho merchant princes of London. Here wo see trickling from the rock the little stream that, flowing down the mountain side, descends into the plain, swells by degrees into a mighty river, which sweeps majestically along, growing broader and broader in its bed, and spreading fertility, and sometimes devastation too, in its course. The great man was now born whose genius was to combine and raise our scattered mercantile settlements into an imperial state, destined, in the course of about sixty or seventy pars, to absorb into itself nearly all the vast, populous, and wo.Llthy kingdoms of Hindustan. Truly might a German writer say, 'This empire in its constitution is in tho world's history without a precedent.'

"The great man I allude to was Lord Clive."

Having laid before our readers this exquisite gem of composition, we think we may leave the subject. Possibly some who heard the lectures and some who read them may find novelty in the trickling stream swelling into a river, and no absurdity in particularizing in a rhetorical sentence the exact number of years when a mercantile settlement was to grow into an imperial state, or in prefixing the epithet " truly" to a not very brilliant quotation from a German writer ; but the last touch settles the matter. By showing that this professor of literature " alludes to an individual" we have done quite enough to make all our other statements of his deficiencies credible. We return, then, to the question with which we started—why pro- fessor? The position is a most responsible one, and demands the highest literary qualifications, yet here is a man who thinks and writes lamely, who is barely up to the mark of the veriest pub- lisher's hack, holding that office, and publishing from his pedestal a twaddling lucubration about Edmund Burke ! There is some mystery in the matter—or are we to suppose that the explanation is the religion of the University ; that the Roman Catholic faith in Great Britain can provide none but men of the weakest preten- sions in literature to teach modern history, at least as the bishops would have it taught ; that the bishops, above all things, seek safety, and can get no better thinker than Mr. Robertson, who is safe? This surmise, if well founded, would furnish some new light on the prospects of Catholicism in the nineteenth century ; but, although we do not think it altogether improbable, we should be sorry to accept it without some farther experience. Antiquated and out of harmony with modern thought as the Roman Catholic theory may be, its adherents are surely not so hopelessly behind as to have no better exponent of modern history, as viewed by them, than Mr. Robertson.

After what we have said, it will of course be seen that it is out of the question to look in these lectures for any vivid portraiture of their subject. The execution of a good portrait from the stand- point of Ultramontanism would have been difficult even for the highest genius ; hardly any feat of moral legerdemain could lift the bound adherent of a narrow philosophy and a narrower theology into the region of sympathy with a political and versatile mind, troubled and baffled by problems and circumstances which hardly ever get hold of Ultramontane thinking. While failing in the highest flights, however, such a writer might well have caught a spark of enthusiasm for the moral qualities of Burke and for his rich mental endowments ; but even here Mr. Robertson grasps every point in so feeble a way as to be barely readable. In a certain sense, nevertheless, the lectures are more serviceable than if they had been the work of an abler man. They show the common opinion of a school whose opinions are not familiar to Englishmen as to the historical position of Burke ; and it is almost an advantage to have the opinion blurted out with unconscious innocence, instead of skilfully argued and wrapped up in ingeni- ous sophistry. By this school, Burke is viewed as a great champion of the old social order, as a man whose sympathies and tastes were in reality Roman Catholic, as one who has uttered the last word in political and social philosophy, and to whose positions it is the world's only hope to return. That the world will so return, at least very soon, the writer—and, we assume, the class whom he represents,—do not appear to be very sanguine ; but they are sure that in any other case it will be very bad for the world. The strain of the book is all the same way. The old order, even as it existed just before tli.! French Revolution, was not so bad as it was called. Louis XVI. was a good sovereign, and Marie Antoinette a beautiful and excellent lady, and the nobles only partially vicious, and the clergy in the main all that a clergy should be ; and the horrible misgovernment which made the people wretched and debased, and provoked the subsequent explosion, is mildly phrased about as pro- ducing some " hardships and exactions," and a " deterioration of the well-being" of the peasants. It was a case for reform, and not for revolution ; and but for the infidels and literati the former, i and not the latter, with all its excesses, would have happened. At this hour Catholics are the real conservatives according to Burke's prineiples, and still have for their ideal a constitutional monarchy,—the king, nobles, and clergy with real power, and the people an estate of the realm with only a share of power, bound in the main to due subordination and respect to their superiors.

It is hardly necessary to inquire how this theory is set out and fortified. There are two fatal objections to which it is obnoxious. The first is, that Burke was by no means so uncompromis- ing a champion of the old order as he is represeuted. Cer- tainly he did not appreciate the tremendous new-birth of which the upheaval in France was but a sign. He did not see that societies of men were struggling towards the establishment of an instructed democracy, in which there would remain no orders but those of service, in which careers would be open to all, and no class or individual privilege would stand against the general welfare, claiming rank or precedence for its holder as of divine right. Still, Burke's defence of the old order was strictly based on what he thought expedient and useful, and he had no idea of government except for the general welfare. According to his view of political experience a gradation of classes and authority was expedient in a State, while certain religious opinions were part of the common law and sense of civilized countries, and could not be uprooted without endangering everything. But that was all. He would have been the last man to unite with Ultramontanes in saying that " those institutions and fundamental laws which he defended on the ground of utility and expedience" were "absolutely necessary," and " founded in the very constitution of human society." Even had he done so incidentally, it would yet have been true that his mind was mainly occupied with the exigencies, and circumstances, and opinions of the time. And this brings us to our second objection. To agree with Burke now is plainly a different thing from agreeing with him three-quarters of a century ago. The genius of Burke was of too high a cast to let us suppose that were he living now all the criticism, and investigation, and philosophy, and new experience which have been acquired since he lived would have made no impression. No one could have understood better than he the difference between the superficial and real working of the various democratic types of government which we see aroand us. It is impossible to fancy him crying over spilt milk—dreaming of an ideal of government with a hierarchy of estates and the lodg- ment of power in a class whose functions had been submerged by a tide of new influences, and that, too, in a community which did not want his ideal. A statesman who realized so constantly the necessity of appreciating the wishes of the community to be governed, and who was always practical, would have devised some other plan. It is the surest condemnation, therefore, of Ultra- montanists that they accept, or profess to accept, the exposition of Burke so long after his death, when the world has perhaps changed more in the interval than it has done in any similar period. Just because Burke was practical, his insight into the position and cir- cumstances of England and Europe in the nineties of last century, is largely irrelevant in the closing decades of our own.

The melancholy and hopeless tone of the lectures—and still more so of the preface—is very observable. England and Europe are in a lamentable plight ; society is disturbed ; religion set at naught ; governments undutiful ; all things are decaying or decayed. Such language in itself appears to us a proof of sterility of thought and feeling. To speak of the condition of things in the world of to-day as lamentable compared with former times, is not permissible to men of sense and observation. They can have no sympathy with humanity in the mass who treat so lightly the amelioration of all the conditions of existence—the new possibilities, and actually improved opportunities, of cul- ture and enjoyment of life which are opened to millions of men whose ancestors knew them not at all. The sectary who thinks, or thinks that he thinks, all men are going to hell who hold not by his small creed, is perhaps entitled logically to a different view ; but he only introduces into the question a strange and incalculable element out of relation to the facts themselves upon which the comparison must be based, and an element which every one but himself disregards. We shall be referred, doubt- less, to the religious anarchy and confusion of the age ; but what- ever may be said, the age is not irreligious. Nothing can be more striking than the strength of the Christian sentiment amid all creeds and professions, among the few as among the many, in the sceptic as well as the believer ; and what is this but a proof that things are not what they seem—that the constitution of the race Is stronger than it was, and can stand anarchy and scepticism which would in another age have been fatal, quietly appropriating meanwhile the new knowledge of facts and of the laws of life and nature which is brought by that scientific spirit of which scepticism is the transient accompaniment ? People who have faith and some sympathy with what is good in the new develop- ments, have indeed little cause to despair at the aspect of the world.