the first edition of this work, when it appeared, some three years ago.* The present is a "popular edition," with several new chapters, and the statistics of convents in the United Kingdom brought down to the present day. The spirit in which Mr. Murphy writes is highly commendable, while his object is laudable. Great ignorance and prejudice, he affirms, prevail in Protestant minds on the subject of conventual institutions, and he is anxious "to dissipate the mists and darkness that envelope the truth." No doubt the great body of Mr. Murphy's statistical information may be taken as perfectly reliable, but the contents of his volume do not realize the idea conveyed by its title. The terra incognita is not revealed to us. We are not led through the unknown land, and permitted to explore its mysteries.

We are supplied, in the first instance, with very partial and imperfect sketches of the origin of monks and nuns; of early British and Irish Monachism, and of ancient religious orders; a list of convents is given, with their characteristics, rules, and constitutions; but, as regards the inner life, the terra incognita of such institutions as are not devoted to the active charities of life, we have absolutely no information whatever. We have, it is true, Mr. Murphy's general assertion that there is no unhappiness in conventual life—that "there is no life happier than that of a nun;" but it is impossible to credit this, and consider such establishments so entirely free from abuses as he would represent them, unless we utterly discredit and repudiate a vast body of Roman Catholic testimony respecting the operation of monastic and conventual institutions in Roman Catholic countries. One great fact stands before us—

that there is not a single Roman Catholic country in the whole world which has not been compelled to exercise some sort of supervising authority over such institutions. The conclusion to which this fact inevitably leads is irresistible-that had not serious abuses existed no such authority would ever have been exercised.

There is a very wide distinction to be drawn between monastic and conventual institutions whose inmates, engaged in the active charities of life, enjoy a comparative freedom as regards vows and action, and those established the inmates of which take vows for life, and are practically dead to the world. In his chapter on "Objections to Convents," Mr. Murphy has failed even to notice those which have been urged, not against such as are charitable or educational institutions, but against such as bind their inmates by perpetual vows, immure them in what may be hopeless confinement, and maintain, respecting their internal discipline and government, an impenetrable mystery.

Mr. Murphy has failed to see, or at least to notice, that public policy is involved that the State has duties to perform to its subjects -that rights are relative. In return for allegiance the State is bound to maintain personal rights inviolate, and the simple question is, how can the proper performance of such unavoidable duty be reconciled with the State permitting institutions to exist wherein its subjects may possibly be immured against their will. No one can rationally hold that such confinement is impossible-is it not, therefore, the imperative duty of the State to inspect, and, if necessary, to protect?

Rightly considered, the matter of

No. DXXIV.]

Not

THE state of life and the progress of politics in the far Orient have, at all times indeed, a very especial claim on our attention. merely on the universal-brotherhood principle of philosophers, which, as far as the East is from the West, would unite all men on the common ground of humanity, but as drawn still closer to our Asiatic fellows within the magic ring of one imperial crown. Now, too, the feverish progress of events in Turkey-the one, so to speak, oriental kingdom in Europe-invests all the circumstances of their law, politics, and religion with a deeper interest. We have a nearer kindred, a greater similarity, with all the other European nations, Russia, perhaps, excepted. We can, as the tide of history rolls on, argue from them to ourselves and vice versa, and guess at the hidden springs of action and character.

But, to theorize with any degree of probability on Mohammedan forms of government, to under

best foundation for successful policy."

"Their common faith in the Koran and its precepts as of Divine authority, is stronger even than race affinities, and makes common cause against all giaours and infidels."

Thus the Koran is one of the sources where we are to seek for some of these ruling "leading ideas." One of these, perhaps the very chiefest, is the idea, the ineffaceable impression, left on every chapter of the Korān, of its author, Mohammed. Louis XIV. used to say "L'état c'est moi"-Mohammed, with far greater truth, might have said "The Koran is myself." To quote from Dean Stanley's "Eastern Church," "it is to the Mussulman, in one sense, far more than the Bible is to the Christian. It is his code of laws, his creed, and, to a great extent, his liturgy." Thus in the Koran we find at once the mainspring and the complex machinery which it sets in motion.

"If," observes Mr. Bosworth Smith, "our Scriptures are they which testify of Christ,' here (in the Koran), if anywhere, we have a mirror of one of the Master-spirits of the world, often inartistic, incoherent, self-contradictory, dull, but impregnated with a few grand ideas which stand out from the whole, a mind seething with the inspiration pent within it, 'intoxicated with God,' but full of human weaknesses from which he never pretended, and it is his lasting glory that he never pretended, to be free."*

The Arabs had a proverb that "Mohammed's character is the Koran," He himself used to call it his one "standing miracle," and

used to appeal to it as the proof of his mission. There may be dif ferences of opinion as to its style. The Prophet himself said (Koran, Sura XVII.), "If men and genii were assembled together that they might produce a book like the Koran, they must fail." The Moslem world fully endorses this judgment. They challenge the world to rival this book, this "Reading," "Thing to be read," as its name implies. They think it impious to translate it. "We hear of Mahometan doctors that had read it seventy thousand times." t

By Europeans of the Aryan race, the book is generally regarded as almost unreadable. Mr. Bosworth Smith tells us that Bunsen, Sprenger, and Renan found the task of reading it through all but impossible, and for himself, after reading it through repeatedly, he pronounces that " dulness is, to a European who is ignorant of Arabic, the prevailing characteristic of the book, until he begins to make a minute study of it." Mr. Carlyle's verdict is, "I must say it is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook.

.. Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran." Such is this strange book to Mohammedans, and such to Christians. Most probably no degree of insight would awaken us to the enthusiasm of the Moslem for his book, but is there an "open Sesame" which would admit us t a better vantage-point of study?

It seems to us that sympathy i the clue, as we said before; and this we find an apt illustration i Mr. Carlyle himself. To him, aft all, it is not unintelligible ho the Arabs could so love it. Behi "the confused coil" he begins