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as it did, by its old theory, the duties of Christian and citizen, is a strange legacy for a statesman to have bequeathed to us. The English king, blinded by his moral ahhorrence of sin, laid down resolutely the first principles of religion by the side of the secular and inconsistent laws of his people. He had given them the ideal of life. Let them work it out as they could. A thousand years of clashing jurisdiction, civil law contending with criminal, divine theories of kingship contending with people's charters, laws of marriage as a sacrament with laws of marriage as a contract, attest how that unextinguished torch has been handed down through successive generations. Yet, with all its inconsistencies, that Saxon and medieval theory of a people framing their life in accordance with God's law, and regarding external truth, not cheap government or success, as the final cause of their existence, is among the grandest conceptions of history. It is Plato's republic, administered, not by philosophers, but by the vulgar: failing not from inherent baseness, but because its ideal was higher than men could bear.

CHARLES PEARSON.

ENGLAND'S TREATMENT OF IRELAND.

WHAT is the case of Ireland at this moment? Have the gentlemen considered that they are coming into contact with a nation? This, if I understand it, is one of the golden moments of our history, one of those opportunities which may come, may go, but which rarely return, or, if they return, return at long intervals, and under circumstances which no man can forecast. There have been such golden moments even in the tragic history of Ireland. There was such a golden moment, in 1795, during the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam, and at that moment it is historically clear that the Parliament of Grattan was on the point of solving the Irish problem. The two great knots of that problem were,

Catholic emancipation, and reform of Parliament. The cup was at her lips and she was ready to drink it, when the hand of England rudely and ruthlessly dashed it to the ground in obedience to the wild and dangerous intimation of an Irish faction.

There has been no great day of hope for Ireland, no day when you might hope completely and definitely to end the controversy, till now, after more than ninety years. The. long periodic time has at last run out, and the star has again mounted up into the heavens. What Ireland was doing for herself in 1798, we at length have done. The Roman Catholics have been emancipated-emancipated after a woful disregard of solemn promises through twenty-nine years, emancipated slowly, sullenly, not from good-will, but from abject terror, with all the fruits and consequences that will follow that method of legislation. The second problem has been also solved: the representation of Ireland reformed the franchise given to her with the readjustment with a free and open hand. That gift of franchise was the last act required to make the success of Ireland in her final effort absolutely sure. We have given Ireland a voice and we must listen to what she says. We must all listen, both sides, both parties. Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is a deeper interest than hers. Go into the length and breadth of the world, search the literature of all countries, and find if you can a single voice, a single book in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation.

Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No! They are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They are more than a black blot upon the pages of its history. And what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland. So we treat our traditions; so we hail the

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demand of Ireland for a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future, and that will be a boon to us in respect to honor no less than to her in respect to happiness, prosperity, and peace.

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.

Note 117.

THE POETRY OF WAR.

THERE is an element of poetry in us all. Whatever wakes intense sensibilities, puts one for a moment into a poetic state: if not the creative state in which he can make poetry, at least the receptive state in which he can feel poetry. Therefore let no man think that, because he cannot appreciate the verse of Milton or Wordsworth, there is no poetry in his soul; let him be assured that there is something within him, which may any day awake, break through the crust of his selfishness, and redeem him from a low, mercenary, or sensual existence.

Why is it that on the battle-field there is ever one spot, where the sabres glitter faster, and the pistol's flash is more frequent, and men and officers crowd together in denser masses? They are struggling for a flag, an eagle, or a standard. Strip it of its symbolism, take from it the meaning with which imagination has invested it, and it is nothing but a bit of silk rag, torn with shot and blackened with powder. Now go, with your common-sense, and tell the soldier he is madly striving about a bit of rag. See if your common-sense is as true to him as his poetry, or able to quench it for a moment. Take a case: Among the exploits of marvellous and almost legendary valor, performed by that great English chieftain-who has been laid aside uncoroneted, and almost unhonored, because he would promote and distinguish the men of work in preference to the men of idleness, -- among his achievements not the least wondrous was the subjugation of the robber tribes of the

Cutchee Hills in the north of Scinde. Those warriors had been unsubdued for six hundred years. They dwelt in a crater-like valley, surrounded by mountains, through which there were but two or three narrow entrances, and up which there was no access but by goat-paths so precipitous that brave men grew dizzy, and could not proceed. So rude and wild was the fastness of Trukkee that the entrances themselves could scarcely be discovered amidst the labyrinth-like confusion of rocks and mountains. It was part of the masterly plan by which Sir Charles Napier had resolved to storm the stronghold of the robbers, to cause a detachment of his army to scale the mountain-side. A service so perilous could scarcely be commanded. Volunteers were called for.

There was a regiment, the Sixty-fourth Bengal Infantry, which had been recently disgraced in consequence of mutiny at Shikarpoor, their colonel cashiered, and their colors taken from them. A hundred of these men volunteered. The commander, who knew the way to the soldier's heart, said: "Soldiers from the Sixty-fourth, your colors are on the top of yonder hill!" I should like to have seen the precipice that would have deterred the Sixty-fourth regiment after words like those from the conqueror of Scinde ! And now, suppose that you had gone, with your commonsense and economic science, and proved to them that the colors they were risking their lives to win back were worth but so many shillings, tell me, which would the stern workers of the Sixty-fourth regiment have found it easiest to understand, common-sense or poetry? Which would they have believed, Science, which said, "It is manufactured silk," or Imagination, whose kingly voice has made it, "colors"? It is in this sense that the poet has been called, as the name imports-creator, namer, maker. He stamps his own feelings on a form or symbol, names it, and makes it what it was not before. Before, it was silk, so many square feet. Now, it is a thing for which men will die. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON.

THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 275

THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION.

FROM all over the land, by thousands and hundreds of thousands, the young recruits are marching to these working camps-the cities. The father says "good-bye, my boy, be a man," the mother gives him all she has to bestow, her prayers and her tears; the last sight which fills his eyes and lingers forever in his memory, as the turn in the road hides the old house, is her waving farewell, and he never knows again what home is, until he has created one for himself.

We are a home-loving people and all our virtues are fostered by the fireside. As the recognition of the political equality of the individual is the basis of our liberty, and the township is at the foundation of our government, so the home nurtures and protects the character, which saves the community from ruin and from rot. No man who has never tried it, or come in intimate contact with those who have, can know the perils begot of loneliness which surround the young stranger in the metropolis. The whirl and rush of the great city sweeps past him, and takes no note of his existence. Man is a social animal and the creature of his associations. It is a rare organization which can resist or rise above them. The young stranger knew everybody in the country; here, nobody. After the office, counting-room, or workshop is closed, what then? He cannot stay in his room. Full of life and human sympathy, beasts of prey, in alluring form, lie in wait for him at every street corner. Does he strive for clean manliness? They taunt him with assertions hardest for a sensitive boy to bear, that hay-seeds and clover-blossoms still adorn his coat and mark his rusticity. Does he say, "I am a Christian"? They sneer at his superstition, and invite him to that broader freedom which breaks loose from servile creeds into the largest liberty of thought and action. He learns, often too late, that liberty with his friends means only license, and indulgence ruin, that his boasted freedom is only to burst the restraints