who could wear them. Is there any chance | Americans.
of such a change in Western civilization as
would enable men again to bedizen them-
selves in gorgeous array? The taste for it
is certainly not extinct, and probably never
will be. Men are just as vain as woman,
and just as fond of splendour, and there are
hundreds of men in London at this minute
who if they could wear pearl-bespattered
jackets without ridicule, would wear them,
and rejoice in their liberty. Murat was of
our time, and there are hundreds of Murats.
The taste for plain dress is artificial, a re-
sult of culture and special circumstances; it
is the taste for finery which is natural, else
why do savages wear feathers, and why are
the Guards fretting because somebody at
the Horse Guards wants to make their uni-
form more economical? The love of person-
al splendour is a permanent instinct, and so
is the desire for ostentation, and nothing
gratifies both so completely and so immedi-
ately as dress of excessive brilliancy and
costliness. At present display of this kind
is voted vulgar by the men of the West, for
two reasons. An aristocracy still leads so-
ciety, and an aristocracy knows by instinct
that it must rely on incommunicable quali-
ties like birth and, to some extent, manner,
and not on a display in which it runs the
risk of being defeated by every upstart who
accumulates cash. Moreover, the very
wealthy feel by a sort of instinct that per-
sonal display offends the masses who cannot
indulge in it, and the masses have grown
strong. But neither of these causes may
operate for ever. Already in two wealthy
countries an aristocracy has ceased to lead,
and we perceive a tendency both in France
and America to a revival of personal mag-
nificence. There is the spirit of an older
world in a good many of the acts recorded
of Mr. Jerome, of New York, and several of
the French millionaires. No man dresses
himself in bank notes yet, but many men
dress their wives. "Anybody," said a mil-
lionaire's wife the other day, can have
splendid dresses, but only we can have dia-
monds like these!" An instinct of humani-
ty forbids men from being annoyed with fe-
male magnificence, and the annoyance of
poorer women does not count in polities, is
only perhaps just a very little titillating.
The spirit which makes a French "share-
jobber" exult in seeing his wife with a
stomacher costing 50,000l. may yet, if the
pressure of opinion relaxes, spread to men,
particularly to men who feel that they can
do the theatrical safely-that is, all French-
men, most Italians, all Magyars, many
Russians, and a very great number of

66

Englishmen know they can

not, and a secret consciousness of the fact is one great buttress of the existing uniformity. If, as is quite possible, the rich have soon to stand aside from the battle of life, and renounce politics, there will be a great desire to avenge themselves on the world by proving a superiority of some kind. In the abler sort the feeling will display itself in over-refinement of culture and fastidiousness, in the sort of Medicean life, half artistic, half intellectual, both halves just tinged with a graceful or ungraceful voluptuousness. Lives of that sort are led now by men to whom earth has nothing to offer except the chance of governing it, which they have renounced or been deprived of. Beckford led it at Cimbra and dreamed it in Vathek. The feebler sort are just as likely to go in for personal splendour as for anything else, and, indeed, do it now, though opinion compels them not to make lavishness too visible. It may be that Sybaritism will remain simple on this single point, luxury having usually an instinct of seclusion but the direct pressure from below removed, we do not see why it should. At this moment a millionaire cannot in Paris walk the Boulevards in a jewelled collar, but he can attend a masked ball at the Tuileries in one, and he does whenever he gets a chance. Suppose, what is quite likely, that in the stage of semi-culture on which the masses of Western men are just entering there should be a phase of admiration for mere splendour, a liking for a man because he is splendidly dressed, instead of a disliking. The Irish have it now, and so have all Asiatics. It is quite conceivable that such a feeling might flower out, as its kindred feeling, the enjoyment of pageantry, has often done; and if it does, we shall see millionaires dressing like Oriental Princes, and the Esterhazy jacket considered a poor affair. Somebody may produce a white velvet jacket spattered with flowers, leaves of emerald, roses of ruby, and crocuses of topaz- who knows? It is not likely, but it is possible. Or suppose the spirit of individualism to win the game, and everybody to be honestly allowed to do as he likes, subject to the laws. A genuine respect for idiosyncrasies, such as we have always thought Greeks must have felt, is by no means an improbable development among mankind, particularly in America, where upon certain points it exists now. Suppose one's dress as free as one's faith, and that the only remark likely to be made upon Smith walking about in a diamond cap was, "What a fancy Smith has got for diamonds!" should we not see

Think not the eternal Good

Is measured by Man's rood, thoughts scanned, as the stars are, one by

many Smiths diamonded? If everybody
were permitted to live his own life frankly,
instead of living somebody else's, as we
most of us do, a certain number would His
dress magnificently; and permission to live
one's own life may, after a century or two
of progress, be accorded. It is not, indeed
very likely. We agree with Mr. Mill that God's
the tendency is the other way, towards the
stereotyping of life, and suspect that our
children will be very much in the position
of men living in houses like glass prisms,

one

No prophet, saint, or sage

Shall sum up Truth, or gauge purpose ripening as the ages run.

5.

In crocus and in rose,

Though the same sunshine glows,

with a pair of eyes staring down through One flower waves crimson, and one trembles

every facet. But that cannot last, and in the recoil we should not wonder if the love of personal display, which is just as instinc

gold

Dost thou alone claim sight?
Is love less free than light,

tive in man as in the peacock who hides Love's rays in human hearts less manifold? himself when his tail is moulting, or the bull who dies of vexation because a ribbon is taken off his neck, should once more burst forth. Wise men might regret, but why are the wise to dictate to the fools in raiment, any more than in beliefs?

6.

Nay, yet, thro' scorn and hate,
We hail but one thing great,

One power the universal heart approves.
With Love's free sandals shod,
Man's feet may find out God,
Far from the world's great ways and echoing
grooves.

- Spectator.

J. R.

THE Pall Mall Gazette says: "Our readers will be rather startled to learn that a new edition of Winkelmann's " Allegory of Art, which was published in 1766, is about to appear, prepared by the author himself. The fact is that his own large paper copy, covered with a vast number of corrections, additions, &c., on almost every page, was discovered some time ago in the Albany Library, of which he was keeper. He was, as will be remembered, murdered at Trieste, on his way back to Germany, far the sake of some antique gold coins he happened to have with him. His death prevented his carrying this carefully prepared new edition through the press, and its very existence was unknown. The new editor, Dr. Cressel, of Leipsic, intends to add several hitherto unprinted and partly unknown letters by the great archæologist, and an Italian one to Mengs, in Madrid, including several particulars (wanting in Rosetti) regarding his last moments, which were obtained from an eyewitness, and were lately found among the papers of the Avvocato

'Tis bitter thus to part;
But Falsehood to the heart
Shoots bitterer arrows barbed with self-disdain;
The beaten ways are sweet,
Worn with a thousand feet -
Not with old foot-prints must my path be plain. Carlo Fea."

No. 1191. Fourth Series, No. 52. 30 March, 1867.

JOURNAL OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES, 1865. Together with the Constitution and a Digest of the Canons of the Church.

THE INITIALS; a Love Story of Modern Life. By the Baroness Tautphoeus, Author of Quits,' ," "At Odds," " Cyrilla," &c. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

66

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LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

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PENANCE AND ABSOLUTION.

From Fraser's Magazine.
PENANCE AND ABSOLUTION.

Or all the doctrines upheld by the Church
of Rome there is not one which exercises so
great a demand on faith for its reception,
and which is, at the same time, so severely
and engrossingly practical in its application,
as that of the sacrament of penance, com-
pleted by priestly absolution. That a fellow-
man, by virtue of the authority vested in
him at his ordination, should have the power
to place me in a different relation to God,
as my Judge, from that in which I should
have been without his ministration and
absolution either means this, or it means
nothing is a proposition tremendous in
itself, and it is also one which calls, on the
part of him who receives it, for immediate
submission in deed, and not in heart only.
The Roman Catholic receives it in humility,
or with enthusiasm, as the case may be,
and, if a religious man, acts upon it. The
English Protestant rejects it altogether as a
superstition, and holds that the occasional
references to it in the liturgy of the Church
of England are mere casual remains of an-
tiquity, left in the process of reconstruction
from causes easy to explain, although quite
unconformable with the rest of the edifice.
But to the High Churchman the subject is
- fuller, perhaps, than
full of perplexity.
any other. He cannot but recognize the
power of the keys' as an essential part of
his system. Yet he cannot but see this:
that, if true, it calls on every branch of the
Church Catholic to assert it in the strongest
words; that the Church of Rome does so
assert it; that the Church of England no-
where asserts it in her articles of belief at
all, and that it is only here and there alluded
to, as if by stealth and fearfully, by the
authors of her formularies. If he turn for
explanation to her writers, he is still more
bewildered. He finds, indeed, a few casual
expressions dropped even by our earliest
Protestant confessors and martyrs, still only
half emancipated from the chain which they
were breaking, more or less favourable to
the doctrine of absolution: and he makes
the most of them. But he sees that advanc-
ing Protestantism soon gets rid of it alto-
gether. The great master of plausibilities,
Hooker, devotes several most elaborate
chapters to the ambiguous task of proving
that absolution is something, yet nothing
all powerful,
declaratory, yet operative -
yet unnecessary. The result of all this be-
wilderment is much assertion, little or no
belief. There is no doctrine more habitu-

1

ally preached, not so much in the pulpit,
perhaps, as in private exhortation: none
more placidly received, less believed, and
Newspaper controversy
less relied on.
assures us that the practice exists; other-
of full age, and in health
wise we should hardly know the fact. But
how many men
does the great High Church Bishop X.,
or the greater Anglican Director Y., absolve
in a year? or, which is still more pertinent
to the purpose, how often are they absolved
themselves? Now, on the answer to these
questions depends the conclusion, whether
the doctrine of absolution is really a sub-
sisting and vital one in any portion of the
Church of England, or not. For though a
really sincere man may powerfully believe
in God's wrath against sin, and yet sin on
from weakness under temptation: it is im-
possible that he can really believe a priest
has the power to absolve him, and not seek
absolution.

Both the theory of absolution, therefore,
and the practices which follow on it, are
out of date in this country: nor likely ever
really to revive, though they may be much
talked about, and great profession made of
their efficacy and importance. And yet,
probably, few of us are so hardened by mere
opposition to Romish usages as not to have
felt pained, now and then, at the thought,
how closely good and evil, use and abuse,
are knit together, and how much of real
possibly of the means of
spiritual comfort
grace itself-we are forced to reject, be-
cause of the inevitable and inveterate false-
hood connected with them. How many a
Protestant, viewing the confessionals of a
Romish Church, may have said to himself,

Absolution is a dream: the priest in the sacerdotal sense is an idol, and I may not be a partaker in idolatry: but oh that the idol could step down from his pedestal, and be, not the imaginary intermediate between me and God, but my guide, friend, director, and comforter, called thereto by his holy office, accustomed to deal with doubt, and sorrow and shame like mine! Heart-weary with the burden of common sinfulness; or full, almost to bursting, with the consciousness of some heavy guilt; or troubled and perplexed about minor feelings only, but such as effectually interfere with my peace with God; could I but lay them all, all unreservedly before my human adviser, and hear what he counsels me, and do what he enjoins me, even as these pious believers now before me who attach to his person a magic virtue!'

Of course, the answer to such a complaint as this might be: 'You may make