PARADOXES.

world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his conception of ultimates!"

There are truths and facts, so strange and absurd, that, state them how you may, they seem paradoxical. Lieutenant Ray gives some very remarkable experiences in the Arctic region. In excavating the frozen earth he found it harder to work than granite. Powder had no effect whatever upon it, and when a blast was inserted it would always "blow out." The drills used were highly tempered, but in a few hours at farthest the tempering was gone. He found that the extreme cold had the same effect on tempered steel as extreme heat. The steel would lose its temper, become Observation softened, and bend easily. De Tocqueville thought it astonishing that the masses should find their position the more intolerable the more it is improved. It has been remarked upon as curious that Guizot, from whose lectures Mazzini said he first learned to love civil and religious liberty, should have "truckled to the base measures of Louis Philippe." Strange that in Arcadia ninety-five per cent. of the inhabit

of De Tocqueville's.

and goitre.

ants should be unable to read and write; that in Venice, a city built upon the water, water to drink should sell for a penny a glass; that the beautiful valleys of Switz- Switzerland erland should be infected with such a disgusting disease as goitre; that in Spain, where all men smoke, and most women, the culture of tobacco should be forbidden by law. It is an historical fact that a fugitive slave was the founder of Virginia. It is believed in England that the famous commodore in the American navy, John Paul Jones, was once horsewhipped by a British officer, -Jones being pronounced a poltroon. In Buckle's note-book is this: "Wrote account of bad emperors favoring Christianity and the good emperors persecuting it." And this: "Began and finished notes of Spain' and 'Inquisition,' to prove that morals have not diminished persecution." The Czar (Alexander II.) who Alexander emancipated the serfs was assassinated Turgenieff. in the name of liberty; and the novelist (Turgenieff) whose humanity was his glory was an exile from his country by the direction of the Emperor (Alexander II.) who admired him and was governed by him in great works, because the liberalism of the author was too much for the

II. and

imperialism of the Russian system. Trelawny wrote of Shelley after seeing him the first time: "I was silent from astonishment; was it possible this mildThe beard-looking, beardless boy could be the veri

less boy a

monster?

tion to sound

table monster at war with all the world? -excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school." Yet

66

we have only to read Shelley's Essays on Christianity," says Symonds, in his biography of the poet, "in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, brief as it is, forms one of the most valuA contribuable extant contributions to a sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed by many who regard themselves as especially qualified to speak on the subject. It is certain that as Christianity passes beyond its mediæval phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more approximate to Shelley's exposition. Here and there only is a vital faith, adapted to the conditions.

theology.

ical claim.

of modern thought, indestructible because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of diverse quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley A paradox of all men a clear insight into the enduring elements of the Christian creed; but it was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to the Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and superstition, which, in his opinion, had retarded the growth of free institutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Cam- Like Cam panella, he distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his blood, and those Christians who would be the first to crucify their Lord if he returned to the earth." Doran, in his Table Traits, attributes to a clergyman the accidental invention of bottled ale. Dean Nowell was out fishing, with a bottle of the

panella.

123459B

bottled ale.

freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when intelligence reached him touching the peril his life was in under Mary, which made him fly, after flinging away his rod and Origin of thrusting his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on being disturbed, drove out the cork like. a pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a fluid, that the dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with the same thenceforward. We have it upon the authority of Morley that one of Burke's chief panegyrists, who calls him one of the greatest of men, and, Bacon alone excepted, the greatest thinker who ever devoted himself to the practice of English politics, oddly enough insists upon it that this great man and great thinker was actually out of his mind when he composed the pieces for which he has been most admired and revered. It is curious that the finest sonnet in the English language, in the judgment of Coleridge and other eminent critics, should have been written by a Spaniard. It has been remarked as not a little singular that the house in Cheyne-row, Chelsea, so long the home of Carlyle, the great de

Sonnet, To
Night.