consequences. He will run to seed before his summer-time has fairly begun; and the gardener who is looking out for flowers will number his productions among worthless weeds.

"George Eliot" is understood to be a nom de guerre. Who the writer is, we do not happen to know. What he is, in position and opinion, is clear enough. He is unmistakably an Anglican clergyman of the broad-church school in theology, with a slightly high-church colouring to his views, drawn from practical and æsthetical sources, and most laudably free from bigotry of any kind whatsoever. But whatever he is, he is certainly a gentleman with no little fun about him, added to a strong dash of sentiment (generally pretty healthy), and a keen eye for the poetry of the visible world. The Scenes from Clerical Life, reprinted from "Black wood," are three in number; not always put together very skilfully, and unfortunately a little tending to "dragging" at the end. Moreover, in the story of "Janet's Repentance" there is a little too much of the sentimental and theological towards the termination; while to call Mr. Tryan, the hero of the story, an Evangelical" is about as correct as it would be to call him a Papist. It is difficult to give any exact idea of "George Eliot's" style, which is on the whole new, without extracts, which our space does not allow; though we might select not a few, from brief sentences like that in which we see the Rev. Amos Barton in his bed, "snoring the snore of the just," to the exposition of Mrs. Jorome's reasons for acquiescing in her dissenting husband's chapelgoing, notwithstanding her own bringing-up as a church woman. Our only advice to the author is, that when he writes again,-which we hope will be the case, he will not expend all his gaiety on the first half of his stories, and give us nothing but gravity during the remainder.

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A Month in Yorkshire. By Walter White. (London, Chapman and Hall.) Walter White, whose acquaintance we first made in "A Walk to the Land's End," is not a brilliant but an observant writer, of good principles, and free from bigotry. We will cull at hazard a few of his reports. "In Staffordshire, within twenty miles of Birmingham, there are districts where baptism, marriage, and other moral and religious observances, considered as essentials of Christianity, are as completely disregarded as among the heathen. In some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire similar characteristics prevail." But Mr. White thinks that morality is no worse in those parts, though manners are coarser.

At Bridlington he dines with a party whose unanimous opinion it was that he had sinned much in walking all Sunday morning. It was wrong in itself, besides "setting such a bad example." They would not hear reason; the fourth commandment settled the matter. Then they began urging him to stay over Monday; to take a boat-trip to Flamborough Head, and shoot at the sea-fowl: "The possibilities of weather, the merits of cold pies, sandwiches, and lively bottled drinks, were talked about in a way that led me to infer that there was nothing at all wrong in consuming the holy day in anticipations of pleasure to come in the days reckoned unholy." The party walked part of the way with him to Flamborough; there is nothing wrong, it appears, in short walks on a Sunday.

We have several reports of conversations with Yorkshire rustics. They are all well-to-do. They eat mutton and beef most days. They don't want to emigrate; Yorkshire is good enough for them. "While talking to them, and listening to their conversation among themselves, my old conviction strengthened, that the rural folk are not the fools they are commonly taken to be. Choose such words as they are familiar with,—

such as John Bunyan uses, and you can make them understand any ordinary subject, and take pleasure in it."

These wandering human-naturalists have at least one fault, they treat man and beast alike; they go about spying into corners, seeing what the horses, snails, limpets, fishermen, dogs, farmers, magpies, rooks, lawyers, and humble-bees are doing or saying. An observation is the end of their existence. They make it, and note it, and publish it, and forthwith set themselves up as instructors of the human race. They write readable books, despite their lack of method or art; but they must not think themselves at all superior beings to the human subjects whom they observe, manipulate, and report upon.

History of the Life of Arthur Duke of Wellington, from the French of M. Brialmont, Captain on the staff of the Belgian army. With emendations and additions by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A. 3 vols. (Longmans.) A foreigner has written by far the best life of our illustrious captain, most critical, most rational, and on the whole most favourable, because it is written without special bias, so that the praise is the result of judgment, not of prejudice. The style is good, and the Belgian officer shows himself a better critic of Wellington's plans than Wellington himself. At least such is our impression after reading a lengthy defence of certain dispositions of his own by the Duke, inserted by the editor in the second volume. Mr. Gleig's additions are something like greenbaize patches on broadcloth.

Cosmos: Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. By A. von Humboldt. Vol. IV. Part I. Translated under the superintendence of General Sabine. (London, Longmans.) The hoary naturalist cannot tear himself away from this pet child of his old age; he cannot prevail on himself to close his labours. When part ii. of vol. iv.-the concluding volume-comes out, we shall doubtless be told it is to be followed by part iii. vol. iv.; so that the last volume will keep spreading itself out across our shelves till the fingers of its writer fail in death. Cosmos was virtually finished in the two first volumes; they contained the "sketch;" all the rest are but notes, additions, corrections, commentaries; indeed, in the present large volume the different sections are headed, "Extension of the picture of nature' in Kosmos, b. i. §§ 171-178, &c. ;" and they "extend" the picture not only into chemical disquisitions on the composition of its colours, but into recondite accounts of the formation of the paint-brushes, with biographical sketches of the tradesman at whose shop they were bought, of the workmen who made them, and of the camel that furnished the hair. We bought his picture, and the artist is not content without our buying all his plant to boot; we must not only admire his building, we must also swallow his scaffolding;-in a word, this old gentleman is getting troublesome and prolix. His work at first appealed to every well-educated and intelligent now it appeals only to the most narrow circle of specially scientific men. He is like Pascal's doctor, who, after saying all he had to say, went on talking another quarter of an hour from the mere love of speaking.

man

London Robson, Levey, and Franklyn, Great New Street and Fetter Lane, E.C.

THE RAMBLER.

VOL. X. New Series. SEPTEMBER 1858.

PART LVII.

THE POPE AND THE PATRIARCHS.

THE proofs of the Catholic doctrine, and of each article that goes to make up the whole creed, are of astonishing variety. Some of these proofs appeal to some classes of thinkers, others to others. But there is one proof which overshadows all others, and forms the ground of certainty with respect to all, at those moments when the mind loses her hold of what she before saw clearly, and when she is disposed to admit the first insidious approaches of doubt. The proof that we speak of is in itself a doctrine; but it is a doctrine which is quite independent of the others: all the others might supposably be left, though this were taken away; this one might, on another hypothesis, remain, and all the rest be changed. The other doctrines of the faith are intimately bound together in essential material and form; the doctrine of the authority of the Church stands apart from the rest, unconnected with them in nature,—their witness, not their maker. Mgr. Gerbet has called the doctrine of the Eucharist le dogme générateur. Theologians have developed the few simple phrases in which the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were revealed into whole systems of theology. All these doctrines might be true, might even be certified to men, by other means than the Church. On the other hand, we cannot call the Church a dogme générateur. Given only the proposition of the authority of the Church, and no one could deduce from this what was the precise message she had to deliver. Yet without the Church, the creed would be but a philosophy, without any demonstrative evidence of its reality. Without the creed, the Church would be a laborious legislator, an elaborate educational establishment, with nothing to teach or to legislate about.

It cannot be denied that the Catholic dogma, apart from

VOL. X.-NEW SERIES.

M

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the testimony of the Church, contains many elements which recommend it to belief, especially to philosophical minds. Its unity, its marvellous consistency, its disorganisation under the manipulations of the would-be improver, prove it not to be the mere production of human thought. "What thought can think, another thought can mend," says one of our old martyrs. But this proof is too subtle for the ordinary intelligence, and too evanescent even for the most extraordinary. Beauty, perfection, and completeness may be characters of a mere subjective thought; they cannot form any safe criterion of the external and objective reality of the thing. Hence, however a man's mind has been drawn to the Church,-whether by the philosophy of her dogma, the beauty of her morals, or the dignity and poetry of her ritual,-some time or other he is sure to want a more technical, objective, legal proof; his philosophy or his poetry will be a staff that bends in his hands; he will require a stronger, a more common-sense, a rougher witness than his own thoughts and feelings.

The tribunal of the Church is just this witness. Her establishment by Christ, and the authority she claims, are matters of dogma; like all other dogmas, they are founded on various proof; but they do not prove themselves. They prove other dogmas: once believe the Church, and you must believe what she teaches. But we cannot be told to believe the Church solely because the Church tells us to believe her. Her existence must be always matter of appeal to the private judgment and common sense of men, just as the existence of any other fact is. We must prove it, and discuss it with the same freedom as a Protestant uses with regard to doctrines which we have no right to treat in this way, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. The Church cannot say less of herself than our Lord said of Himself: "If I (alone) bear witness to myself, my witness is nothing."

Hence the doctrine of the Church is one which should be carefully studied by every person likely to have to do with controversy. And in a Protestant land who is not each moment liable to be called on for some such act of charity? It may not be the first doctrine which engages the attention of converts, neither need it be the most attractive in drawing them; but sooner or later all will have to retire into this stronghold. There will be moments when all other grounds are felt to be deficient in certainty; and if the authority of the Church is not well worked into our minds, no one can tell what mischief may be the result.

And in proportion to the immense importance of this

Father Southwell.

doctrine, are the proofs that have been collected around it. Together they form a rope, each strand of which is strong enough to hang our faith to. Take the à-priori probability, that if there is a revelation, there will be some provision that the revelation should be kept from dying out; the argument from analogy, that all pretended revelations were attempted to be preserved by hierarchies somewhat similar to that of the Church; the fact that, admitting the Jewish writers to have written what they did at the time supposed (a mere historical question), the Christian Church is clearly predicted. Admitting the New Testament to be a true record of the words and deeds of our Lord, the Church was clearly founded by Him; admitting the authenticity of the Apostolic writings, some such institution is clearly mentioned and confirmed. It appears in history; in historical records we may trace the history of its action, the history of opinion concerning it, and the histories of its sufferings and conflicts with other religions. Each of these lines, and many others beside, would furnish matter for an argument, in itself convincing, for the authority of the Church. No doctrine has such a concurrent weight of testimony; for no conclusion could we construct such various arguments, all taking independent lines, yet all converging to the same point. Most of these arguments, from the nature of the case, must be historical. Thus, for instance, one argument might be drawn exclusively from the representations which heathen authors give of the Christian hierarchy. Another might be drawn from the institutions which the different heresies attacked. A third from the history of the Christian patriarchates. This last line of argument is so fruitful, and at the same time so capable of being briefly set forth, that we are tempted to lay it before our readers.

If Christianity is any thing objective at all; if it is any thing apart from the mere opinions of individuals; if there is any external organisation, any institution of priests or preachers, to continue it; if our Lord did not intend simply to abolish all order, all religious society, all the hierarchical spirit that had been so carefully cultivated in Judaism, and to sow in its place a mere impalpable opinion in the earth, depending not on social teaching, but on independent individual dreaming, then we must surely look for the organisation which He intended to establish in that which, in fact, we find established in the first glimmerings of ecclesiastical history. And what does this first glimmering light reveal to us? We find the Church teaching the same doctrine throughout the world, governed in each city by a Bishop; the Bishops we find acknowledging a hierarchical gradation among themselves,