gregation." And the congregation, being detained only till the Archbishop departed as he had come, was dismissed, partly amused, partly offended, with the whole proceeding.

As long as Archbishop Murray lived, Whately's influence in the Commission of National Education was, or seemed to be, supreme. He named those books which were to be used as class-books, and wrote several of them. He gave a tone to the regulations upon which the system was to be worked. His leaning, if he had any, was in favour of the prejudices of the Roman Catholics, which he guarded against attack down to the minutest point. The consequence was that, of open opposition, the weightiest amount came for a while from the Protestant clergy. Had they but thrown themselves heart and soul into the movement, they might have guided its course to this day. They not only held aloof, however, but openly denounced the whole scheme as deliberately intended for the overthrow of Protestantism and the establishment of Popery in Ireland. On the other hand, the acquiescence of the great body of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics was, as the result has shown, hollow throughout. Partly out of deference to the wishes of Archbishop Murray, partly with the deeper design of making themselves masters of the situation, they accepted for twenty years the boon which the Government gave them, subject to an occasional growl of remonstance from Archbishop Cullen. At last Dr Murray died, and Dr Cullen becoming Romish Archbishop in his room, matters underwent a change. First a book of sacred poetry, which Whately had arranged, and in part compiled, was objected to. With miraculous unanimity, all the Roman Catholic children in all the schools of Ireland suddenly discovered that its teaching impugned the faith. Next it was found out, that to place a volume of evidences of the truth of Christianity in the

hands of young people, was to suggest doubts which otherwise might never have occurred to them. And, finally, the Board determined on disusing for the future Whately's favourite treatise, his Lessons from the Bible. The Archbishop's indignation knew no bounds. He remonstrated and protested in every quarter where the faintest hope of being attended to presented itself; and at last, finding his efforts vain, withdrew from the Board. No heavier blow ever fell upon an enthusiast in the cause of good. The object for which he had laboured during all the years of his Primacy was defeated; and Whately became, as enthusiasts are apt to do when their favourite schemes go wrong, soured and despondent.

His abandonment of the Board, and the openness with which he denounced its proceedings, effected a sort of reconciliation between him and his clergy. And the setting up by some members of his family of a sort of orphanage, in which the children of Roman Catholics were received, and trained to become Protestants, led some of the more zealous of the body to speak of him as a converted man. It was a great mistake. Whately continued to the last what he had been since his arrival in Dublin-an honest believer in the impolicy, not to say the iniquity, of interfering with the religious convictions of any class of Christians. And his objection to the Board, and to the system of education which it promoted, lay entirely in this, that both had departed from the principle on which they were originally established. It may be, it probably is, true enough that wounded self-conceit gave pungency to this objection. Whately loved his own works, because they were portions of himself, and the rejection of any of them from the list of recognised text-books was an outrage which he could not bear patiently. But he was too keen-sighted not to see that his books were thrown aside, because whatever religious

instruction they conveyed was not Romish instruction; and that the next demand of the body which had achieved this preliminary triumph, would be, either that to the priests exclusively the religious instruction of the children attending the national schools should be committed, or else that the system in Ireland should be assimilated to that in England, and separate grants of public money made to each of the great religious bodies into which the population of Ireland is divided.

The last years of Whately's life were a good deal overcast by the mortification incident to the breakdown of his favourite schemes, and by failing health. He began likewise to feel more acutely than he once did the attacks which his enemies made upon him. During the prevalence of the cholera he had delivered a charge to his clergy, which went farther than to defend them from the charge brought against them by the Romanists of neglecting their sick parishioners through fear of infection. Dr Whately, neither assenting to the statement nor denying it, laboured to prove that all comparisons between the responsibilities of Protestant clergymen and Romish priests in such a case must fail. The Roman Catholic layman is taught to believe that, however sinful his life may have been, the reception of the last sacraments of the Church, in the hour of death, will pass his soul into paradise. The Protestant is taught, whether he believe it or not, that there is no virtue in any sacrament to cleanse the guilty soul which is passing, unrepentant, into the presence of its Maker. What, therefore, is a stern duty for the priest, is not a duty for the clergyman—at the risk of catching the disease himself, and, it may be, conveying it to his wife and children. Whately was right in logic, but wrong in morals; nor did we ever hear that his charge had any effect in keeping the more earnest of the clergy away from visit

ing and offering such consolation as they could to the dying members of their flocks. But Dr Doyle and Dr Cullen did not fail to make the most of the Archbishop's indiscretion; and now that he was separated from them in the great work of educating the people, they took every opportunity of throwing it in his teeth.

At last the strength of his naturally strong constitution began to fail. For thirty years he had abjured the use of medicine, and when gangrene of the leg showed itself, he refused to call in the assistance of the Faculty. His remedy for every incipient illness had been abstinence and exercise; and so long as the frame retained its vigour, these served his purpose. But the old man could not throw off his coat as the young man used to do, and cleave or saw wood till he got into a violent perspiration. Even abstinence failed to be effective; and partial paralysis came on. Not even paralysis, however, could damp the Archbishop's energies. The mind was as vigorous as ever; and he compelled the feeble body to do the mind's bidding still. He went about confirming and delivering addresses to his clergy and his people, after sheer debility constrained him over and over again to sit down and rest more than once during the progress of what he was about. But not even his strong will could hold at bay the enemy which was advancing on him. In March 1863 his leg grew alarmingly worse. He refused to be treated for it, or even to give it rest. The disease gained ground, as might be expected, and he became unable to quit his bed. His bodily sufferings were very great, yet he never uttered a complaint. On the 14th of September, when his dissolution was momentarily expected, he received the sacrament of the Lord's supper, surrounded by his family; and he continued to live, with his mental faculties perfect, up to Monday the 7th of October. One of his last speeches might alone suffice to vin

dicate his memory from the silly charges which were, by the Evangelical clergy, brought against him in the vigour of his days. "It is a great mercy," said the Rev. T. Nelgan, who sat beside him-"it is a great mercy, my lord, that though your body be weak your intellect is vigorous still." "Don't talk to me any more," was the reply, "about intellect; there is nothing now for me except Christ."

The readers of this article can scarcely desire that we should carry it beyond the point at which we have now arrived, by presenting them with a detailed analysis of the character, moral and intellectual, of the remarkable man whose career we have been following. Enough has been stated to show that Whately was no common man. His intellect was large, his understanding untiring, his prejudices strong, his inconsistencies very striking. Never stooping to flatter others, he dearly loved flattery himself, which could scarcely be offered to him too broadly or too lavishly. A keen political economist, he was yet generous to those who stood in need. Often saying rude and harsh things, his heart was as kind as that of a woman. The greatest joker and punster of his day next to Sydney Smith, his natural disposition was tinged with melancholy. He relished the society of clever women, yet professed to hold women's judgments cheap. "They never reason," he used to say, or if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always

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poke the fire from the top." Of his literary labours it may suffice. to say that they were as extensive as they were varied. Essays on all subjects-in religion, from The Kingdom of Christ' to 'The Origin of the Pagan Superstitions,'sermons, lectures, charges, schoolbooks, tales, dramas, imaginary voyages, followed one another in rapid succession. The 'Elements of Logic and of Rhetoric' went through many editions. His 'Introductory Lectures on Political Economy' were four times printed. He edited Bacon's 'Essays,' Paley's 'Moral Philosophy,' Paley's Evidences,' annotating each. No subject, in fact, appeared above, none beneath, his attention. He prepared the lines which head the copy-books generally used in the Irish schools. His book of English synonyms is still extensively read; his 'Thoughts on the Sabbath' still afford ground for discussion and disputation. But more remains to be said. He never wrote a line which, though many might differ from its teaching, any one could with justice say that it was either childish or unreasonable. If Whately may not be classed among the profoundest thinkers of his day, it is past dispute that his mind never lay fallow. He was always busy, and never, in his efforts, aimed at ends which were mean or selfish. He was religious without affectation, honest and sincere, a philosopher and a buffoon, a Christian moralist and a merryAndrew. Peace to his ashes! He deserved a better biographer than William John Fitzpatrick, J.P.

OUR

WHEN Croesus made a display of all his treasures and good fortune to Solon, the Athenian sage is said to have hastened his departure from the Lydian Court, feeling assured that such great and uninterrupted prosperity would ere long be overtaken by disaster. If Solon, or some other ancient Greek, were amongst us at present, he would probably experience a similar foreboding. The gods, in old times, were thought to be jealous of the unbroken prosperity of mortals; and it was regarded as a tempting of the gods when men thus happily circumstanced openly boasted of their good fortune. England is not only remarkably prosperous, but we all boast loudly of our prosperity. The Ministers of the Crown lead the jubilant chorus of self-congratulation. Doubtless they are desirous to make us forget the political humiliation to which England has been subjected under their rule, by extolling in an unusual manner our material prosperity. But the jubilant spirit has become infectious; and amid the lull of politics, and the stillness of the Parliamentary recess, the only voices which catch the ear are those which are uplifted in praise and admiration of the wonderful increase of our trade and commerce. As we listen, in our study, to this apotheosis of Trade, our tight little island seems to rise into the shape and proportions of a magnificent temple, thronged with busy crowds swarming out and in,-making ample use of the sanctuary, but seldom even touching their hats as they pass to the golden statue of the goddess Fortuna, which stands in the midst. There they are ceaselessly storing up the wealth that flows to them from the rest of the world. Men in strange climes, and in strange dresses, and speak

ing all manner of tongues, are seen preparing produce and luxuries of all kinds for the Temple, which flow thither in long streams across both land and sea. And still the work of storing goes on: gold, silver, and all precious things, the delights of life, the cream of the earth's good things, accumulate higher and higher in the chambers of the temple. And ever and anon, as the recorders announce the increasing tale, there rises a great shout from the busy throng, which sounds in our ears like that which St Paul heard of old when the people cried out with one voice,

Great is Diana of the Ephesians, whom the world worshippeth!"

It is a remarkable position which England occupies in the world. A little spot amidst the northern seas, almost invisible to the schoolboy as he seeks for it on his globe, and which inadvertently he may hide with his finger-point as he turns round the coloured sphere, the British Isles are nevertheless the heart of the world, the centre to which the thoughts and acts of men most generally tend, and to and from which the streams of material life are ever flowing. If we draw on a map the great lines of commerce, we will see what a large proportion of them converge to our shores. It was once a proverb that "all roads lead to Rome;" and England, commercially, now holds in the world at large the same predominant position which the Eternal City held in the restricted area of the Roman empire. Our country is the chief goal of the highways of commerce. Caravans, with their long strings of laden camels and horses, are ceaselessly crossing the plains and deserts of Asia,-railway-trains, drawn by the rapid fire-car, rush across Europe and America with their freight of goods, and ships in thousands

bring to us from all parts of the world the staple supplies of our food and industry. The sun never sets on the dominions of England: in one part or other of the globe his rays still shine on the red-cross banner of St George. But is not England herself a sun- -diffusing civilisation, while adding to the material comforts of mankind? She furnishes employment to tens of millions of people in the uttermost parts of the earth. The Chinaman in his tea-plantations and mulberrygardens the Hindoo in his rice and cotton fields-the poor Indian miner on the Andes-the Gaucho as he follows his herds on the Pampas, -even the Negro of Africa, and the native of the far and fair islands of the Pacific-are stirred to industry and kept in comfort by the employment which we in our little island give to them. If-as has been in the æons of the Past-the British Isles were to sink slowly beneath the surrounding seas, their disappearance would be like the setting of a sun, and the world of commerce would suffer an eclipse. Why, then, should we not boast of our Trade, seeing that it not only increases our wealth, but confers benefits on mankind at large?

True, commerce does not always appear as a benefactor. With equal indifference we send forth the clothing which preserves, and the arms which destroy, life. We not only give employment, but occasion and facilitate wars. Our skill is as conspicuous in the manufacture of the enginery of war as in the fabrics and machinery of peace. True, also, we fight for markets. If a people will not accept the blessings of trade, we force them upon them at the point of the bayonet, or at the mouth of the cannon. This is indefensible-it is a reproach to civilisation-but it is natural. There is no unmixed good-but evil itself is made to develop good. The action of self-interest has been made by Providence the regulating force of human progress; and self-interest

low motive as it may seem to those who fancy they could have made the world better than its Maker has done - when rightly understood, through experience of life, ever propels us in the end towards the good. The first result of the contact of civilisation and barbarism is uniformly war. Yet slowly and surely peace is winning her triumphs. Broader and broader expands the area of commerce-wider and wider extends civilisation, and more and more prevail the doctrines of peace and the principle of international brotherhood. The Elysian time, the golden age of the world, when there shall be universal peace, is too far off to be discernible at the present day. Wars probably will never cease out of the earth. Like the poor, they will be always with us. Nevertheless they will grow fewer and milder. The heart of the world will rest at peace, and wars will only fringe its borders-in the outlying countries not yet brought within the pale. And in effecting this happy change, the influence of commerce the operations of self-interest-will accomplish more than all the moralising of sages or the preachings of philanthropy. Have we not felt, during this present year, how firmly the golden meshes of trade have wound themselves round the heart of the nation? Unfelt, unnoticed, in ordinary times, it is only when we raise our right arm in anger to strike that we become sensible of the golden meshes that have slowly encircled us. We are bound over to peace by chains which are not unpleasant to us. This, too, may have its bad side, but that is a question beyond our subject. Let it suffice that other nations also, our neighbours and rivals, are gradually coming into the same golden bondage, and that the more potent that bondage becomes, the less need will there be for "a policeman" in Europe.

We send forth the material com