often given in their original bareness, without being materially unfolded, or pointing the way towards further truth. Mr. Carlyle's forms of expression and of sentence are continually recurring, while we are forced to own the absence of that original and piercing observation, and that occasional rhythmic cadence, which redeem their singularity in his works.

But Mr. Kingsley is a minister of the Church of England, a believer in Christianity. This is the second explicative fact in determining his mental constitution and analyzing his works. Christianity must be true; but Mr. Carlyle cannot speak falsely: a union must be devised between the two. And so Mr. Kingsley becomes one great representative of the influence of Mr. Carlyle upon believers in Christianity in the nineteenth century. We speak not in any tone of censure. It is, indeed, much the reverse. We firmly believe that such men as Mr. Carlyle are not sent into our world for nothing-that they may speak truth which it is the duty of Christians to hear, expose errors or delinquencies which it is the duty of Christians to amend. We thank Mr. Kingsley for reminding us of an important truth, when he tells us, "That God's grace, like his love, is free, and that His Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and vindicates its own free-will against our narrow systems, by revealing at times, even to nominal heretics and infidels, truths which the Catholic Church must humbly receive as the message of Him who is wider, deeper, more tolerant, than even she can be." Surely it is not well with a Christian church, when those who refuse the Christian name exclaim, that they have applied to her the test appointed by her Master, that they have looked round upon her works, and have gained such a knowledge of her by so doing, that they must assail her. We cannot, indeed, on any hypoth

esis defend those who confound Christianity with hierarchy, in their attacks on the church. When they have exhausted Christian morality, when they have raised the standard of holiness and of love higher than "Christ and his disciples" raised it, then they may speak against the Gospel of Jesus but the church must look warily and ponder well, when infidels assert that their standard is higher than hers, that the ancient, all-conquering banner is draggled in the mire. Mr. Kingsley is right in accepting Mr. Carlyle's writings as a stern and momentous warning to Christian churches to awake and bestir themselves.

From the influence of Mr. Carlyle, and all that he represents of modern doubt, modern inquiry, modern philosophy, come those two applications of Christianity to distinct phenomena of our time, which Mr. Kingsley has embodied in Alton Locke and Hypatia. In the former, he endeavors to apply Christianity to the arrangements of our social system; in the latter, his chief effort is to show that Christianity alone allays and satisfies the cravings of the earnest philosophic skeptic. It is unnecessary to dwell upon Yeast, since it is an exhibition rather than a removal of difficulties, a 'problem' without its solution. We doubt not Mr. Kingsley would permit us to say, that the answers to the questions proposed in Yeast are to be found in the two works we have just referred to; not, perhaps, the complete and final answers, but, at least, the general outline of those methods by which national and individual health, moral, social, intellectual, are to be attained. To these two works, then, we propose first to direct our attention, after quoting two short passages from Yeast, the first declarative of Mr. Kingsley's faith in the final victory of Christianity, the second very appropriately and cheeringly conclusive on the point that, however dark may be the revelations of

Alton Locke, we have reason even in our century, to thank God and take courage.

"I believe that the ancient creed, the eternal gospel, will stand, and conquer, and prove its might in this age, as it has in every other for eighteen hundred years, by claiming, subduing, and organizing those young anarchic forces, which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel against Him to whom they owe their being."

This is a good hope, and the man may act courageously in whose bosom it dwells. Yet we must remark, that such general declarations, except when based on a very wide and accurate induction, are of little value. If the period at which Christianity is to triumph is at an indefinite distance, the announcement is little better than a truism; a noble, a glorious truism, indeed; but of application to all times as well as the present. If Mr. Kingsley intends to declare that Christianity has hitherto prevailed over every form of infidelity, in such a manner and within such a time as to dispel all fear for its victory over skepticism in our century, we must demur to his correctness. It is as stern a duty to compute the force and to weigh the triumphs of the adversary, as it is to bare the sword, and march into the conflict. Whatever the shame and agony with which we accompany the concession, we must grant that the doctrines of Voltaire have been extensively victorious on the Continent. The fact is one of unspeakable sadness; but, like every fact honestly accepted and interpreted, it reads us important lessons. It points us to the Continent, where thrones totter, where armies march, where, for sixty years, human blood has been flowing in torrents from battle-plain and barricade; in these fearful characters it holds up to us the truth, that religion is the sheet-anchor of national stability, that the nations which know not God

must perish. It tells us also that it is a dangerous thing to dally with error, to lay the beautifully-tinted, slumbering snake in the bosom. How little did many a philosophic abbè dream whither all that encyclopædism was leading! The ultimate tendency of principles is hard to define. Men may plant gardens on the sides of a volcano, and rejoice as the heat beneath insensibly increases, warming the roots of their flowers, and causing them to put forth fresh buds; until suddenly all are flung into the air. The doctrines of Carlyle and Emerson may lend a fresh vigor to Christianity; but let them who use them for that purpose, at the least, beware.

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Now for our second preliminary extract: "How dare you, young man, despair of your own nation, while its nobles can produce a Carlyle, an Ellesmere, an Ashley, a Robert Grosvenor; while its middle classes can beget a Faraday, a Stevenson, a Brooke, an Elizabeth Fry? See, I say, what a chaos of noble materials is here. confused, it is true-polarized, jarring, and chaotic-here bigotry, there self-will, superstition, sheer atheism often, but only waiting for the one inspiring Spirit, to organize, and unite, and consecrate this chaos into the noblest polity the world ever saw realized!"

A deliberate consideration of the great and hopeful fact expressed in this passage, the fact that, at this moment, in this island, there are, perhaps, as many noble intellects at work, and as many noble hearts beating, as were ever collected in the same space since the world began, might, we think, have spread a general air of moderation, and forbearance, and deference, over Mr. Kingsley's works, for which we look in vain.

Such occasional passages as the above do little more than excite our astonishment at the dogmatism of Mr. Kings

ley's general opinions, and the asperity of his general appeals. "It might seem incredible," said the cool and large-minded Mackintosh, "if it were not established by the experience of all ages, that those who differ most from the opinions of their fellow-men are most confident of the truth of their own." It is a kindred observation, and equally true, that those whose opinions are hastily adopted, those who refuse the long drudgery of thought, and think with the heart rather than the head, are ever the most fiercely dogmatic in their tone. Mr. Kingsley deals round his blows at political economists, at evangelical clergymen, at Calvinists, and others, with such fierce decision, that we might reasonably expect to find him prepared with some all-healing scheme, before which every other philanthropic or political device would hide its diminished head, or, at least, with some carefully-thought refutation of opposing theories. But, instead of this, we find the remedy he proposes to apply to our social ills to be one concerning which the most ardent friend of the people may entertain serious doubts; the answer he affords to our philosophic questionings, however true, to be neither very novel, very precise, nor very profound; and his refutation of opposing theories to be little else than strong appeals to our feelings, with certain disputable axioms from Mr. Carlyle. We are happy, however, to be able to state, that Mr. Kingsley's ablest work, Hypatia, is marked by a great improvement in this respect. If a certain patronizing, pitying, condescending tone towards an old rheumatic church, and a slow, un-ideal generation, still lingers on the page, we gladly admit that it is nowise so conspicuous as elsewhere, and that the dogmatism has as good as disappeared.

Alton Locke is a didactic novel, suggested by the sorrows of the tailors and needlewomen of the metropolis.