"chaff" shall alike be gathered into the garner, the "dogs" and the "sorcerers" welcomed within the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem.* In the poem of which we speak, obscure and oracular as are its utterances, this thought is, we think, distinctly heard, and as yet it is the poet's last word to us. We have the old faith represented by the chorus of Levites in the temple, singing as to a Living God who has chosen them as His inheritance : "When the singers lift up their voice, And the trumpets made endeavour, Sounding, 'In God rejoice!' Saying, 'In Him rejoice Whose mercy endureth for ever!'" Then comes the contrast of the modern scientific scepticism which has cast aside this faith, and Rénan is made its representative. It scorns the old and exults over its disappearance: "Gone now! all gone across the dark so far, Then lastly, a spirit speaks. What comes is given as the solution of the problem, the conclusion of the whole matter. The scorn of modern sceptics for the old faith is blind and unreasoning. They too have but glimpses of the truth, and lose one while they grasp at another. The great ocean surges round them, and now this point and now that comes into prominence, and men think that the island-rock which is left bare is the one home of truth, when lo! the waves come and sweep it from view, and the glory and the beauty appear again elsewhere. Nature, in her infinitude, thus dances round each one of us, forms each separate personality, moulding it now after this type, and now after that: "Why, where's the need of temple, when the walls O' the world are that? what use of swells and falls * Mr. Keble's language on this subject is, of course, within the limits of what he held to be the teaching of Scripture and the Church. His sympathy and hope for those who have "fallen asleep in Christ" lead him, however, to what was once recognised as a catholic and pious act: "There are who love upon their knees To linger when their prayers are said, And lengthen out their litanies In duteous care for quick and deal.”—Lyra Innoc., p. v. "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Become my universe, that feels and knows." This is indeed but the condensed expression of the thought which dominates in what is in some respects the most complete and striking of Mr Browning's religious poems-" Christmas Eve, and Easter Day." There the opening scene is a small dissenting chapel on a bleak common, and on a wet and windy night. The congregation are painted, one by one, with all the truth, and all the grotesqueness of which Mr. Browning is so great a master. We have the old woman with her umbrella, the meek apprentice with his hacking cough, the Boanerges in the pulpit. It seems commonplace and mean enough, just what a mere artist, with a sovereign contempt for English middleclass life in general and its religious life in particular, would hold up to scorn; but the observer who speaks to us in the poem goes into the moonlight, and there he has a vision of a Form, dim, shadowy, wonderful, which he recognises as at once Human and Divine, and that Form has been present where the two or three were gathered together, and has not turned away. The scene changes first to St. Peter's, with all its gorgeous worship and its effete symbols, and its superb unrealities, and then to the lecture-room of a German professor, unfolding to his class, with the pallor of death already on his brow, the abysses of the mythical theory of the Gospels, taking from them what has been the faith of their fathers, and offering them a dreary and hopeless substitute. And yet even here, in both these scenes, the presence of the Form is seen, and a glory falls as from the border of its raiment. The worship of Rome is not altogether false. Faith mingles with the denial of the disciple of Strauss. The man who denies a personal immortality dies a martyr to his consuming zeal for truth. Divine Judge pardons and accepts them both. The We have given but the barest outline of the first of these strangely fascinating poems. It will be seen on the one hand that they are inspired with a broad and true catholicity, which can see an element of truth or goodness at the most opposite extremes, and can sympathize with it under whatever disguises and with whatever accompaniments it may be found. On the other, we are compelled to add that they tend to the conclusion that all varieties of the Christian creed are equally true, equally acceptable, and so to a belief which, if it be a faith in a personal God, resembles that of some Eastern mystics who speak of the Divine Mind as delighting in the variety of creeds and worships as a man may delight in the varied colours and odours of a fair garden, and which at last glides into the pantheistic thought of a Divine Work evolving itself through the ages in all forms of human thought and life, not of a Will revealing itself through prophets and apostles, but above all in the Eternal Word. We owe too much to Mr. Browning's spirit-stirring words, and think too highly of his purpose, as well as power, as a poet, to believe that in all that he has said as to the mystery of the manifestation of that Eternal Word in the Divine humanity of Christ, he has been simply dramatic, personating a faith which he no longer holds, or has never held at all. But if we may venture to say one word before we end, not of him only, but to him, it would be to suggest that this intensely dramatic power, while it is a great and wonderful gift, brings with it a subtle and perilous temptation. It leads, as he has himself pointed out in "Sordello," to the suppression of individual, personal life where it might be most powerful : "Sundered in twain, each spectral part at strife But the complete Sordello, Man and Bard, John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land, A bitter-sweetling of a book—was gone." The artist paints a thousand portraits, but we long to see himself. We could almost pay the price of forfeiting Hamlet or Iago if so we could have had the whole mind of Shakspere. It is open, we believe, to Mr. Browning to attain a yet higher pinnacle of greatness, to exercise a wider and nobler influence on men of strong will and robust intellect, than he has yet done. As a "fashioner," to return to his own language, he has attained an excellence which no other living poet equals. Will he not realize the promise of his own words and appear, if years are given and the old strength remains, as a "seer," telling us with clearer and stronger voice what he has indeed seen, leading us not downwards to a fiery whirl of passions, or a chaos of grotesque horrors, or plunging the scalpel into the soul's ulcerous scabs, but upward as to the majesty of the Throne, purifying our hearts and attuning them to adoration? Asking himself what he himself believes, and uttering the answer which we hope he is prepared to give, in no faltering voice, he may come to be the greatest Christian poet that England has yet seen in this century or in all the past, and leave a name to live with those of Dante and of Milton. NOTE. I have learnt, since the publication of Part I., that two of Mr. Browning's dramas, besides "Strafford," have been brought upon the stage; "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" at Drury Lane in 1842 or 1843, and "Colombe's Birthday" at the Haymarket more recently. PUBLIC SCHOOLS. A Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the The Public Schools Calendar. 1866. FEW months ago an eminent divine, writing to a brother clergyman, said, "The deterioration of the culture of the 'rising generation' is among the puzzles of our day." We believe that these words represent very fairly the feeling prevalent among the more thoughtful sort of fathers, who, having boys to send to school, do not, as a matter of course, send them to the place where they were themselves brought up, but turn their minds to the question what it will be best to do for their sons' welfare. There is a strong impression abroad that the young men of the present day are intellectually inferior to their fathers, and that this is very much due to the short--comings of schools. While we admit that we believe the formerpart of this proposition to be true, we do not presume to offer any decisive judgment on the matter. But considering the great interest of the subject, we think that there can be no impropriety in raising the question, and stating the reasons for the opinion we entertain, more especially since it will afford an opportunity of drawing attention to some useful sources of information. It is not very easy, or rather has not been until lately very easy, to get at trustworthy means of information about schools. The theories of scientific men about education do not much help a man to answer the question, "Where shall I send my son?" He can readily learn, if he has any acquaintances at either University, what schools happen to send up the best scholars at the time; but that is far from all he requires to know. The "Report," however, which stands at the head of this paper furnishes a vast body of statistics and replies to all sorts of questions on almost every point that can arise in connexion. with a school. The nine schools the Commissioners visited may be taken to represent, with tolerable fairness, both the advantages and deficiencies of English public school education as at present conducted. A man who has made himself acquainted with what they have to offer will know pretty well what he may expect at any public school. The "Report" itself is well worth reading. It occupies one volume out of the four issued by the Commissioners. It is divided into two parts-one containing a masterly review of the general results of the inquiry, and the general recommendations of the Commissioners ;* the other, a particular account of the origin, endowments, government, and present state of each of the schools to which they were sent, with summaries of their recommendations respectively. If we may take any exception to it, it is that Rugby is rather too much held up as a model. Thus the good Harry Sandford, at Rugby, rests" on Sunday from all serious intellectual exertion till the evening, and passes the day in hearing a lecture, attending church" (at which exercises, we fear, the reporter thinks he does not use his intellects), “walking in the country, and strolling about the school close;" while naughty Tommy Merton, at Eton, requires a "tap," knows the road to "the Christopher," and even finds his way there now and then "on a Sunday after four." More than this, Tommy shirks his master, votes reading unfashionable, though he condescends "not to think the worse of another boy for reading;" so the misguided youth can do anything else if he can row, for example, play cricket, or any other athletic game, and finds the charms of idleness very numerous and very seductive at Eton. But this is a small blemish, and confined to a very small part of one chapter. On the whole, the "Report" is eminently complete and impartial; and if its style, as a literary work, be at all a fair specimen of blue-books in general, they must be much better reading than is usually thought. It is so long (consisting, with the appendices, of four folio volumes, containing near two thousand pages, of which more than three-fourths are printed in small type and double columns) that we cannot attempt to give an abstract of it, but we shall frequently refer to it in the following paper. We have also found the "Public Schools Calendar" of service. But we take the freedom of recommending the "Graduate of the University of Oxford," by whom it is edited, to acknowledge explicitly his obligations to the "Report of the Commissioners," or else to put expressions which he adopts from it, and which are probably better than such as would We venture to suggest that this portion of the Report might, with advantage to the public, be printed and published in a separate form. |