" n of reckless extravagance, they pour forth your own sweet self;" and where ordinary without reserve and upon inadequate occa- mortals would say, "I hope to hear from you sions the most intense feelings and the most soon," she writes, "I shall count the days exaggerated language. And this is very till I see your dear handwriting once more.' often the case with "young things." Five This would be very nice between Angelina minutes is sufficient to cement and to regis- and Edwin, but these gushing sentiments ter an eternal friendship with the "sweetest are addressed exclusively to young lady girl" whose acquaintance has just been friends, and by no means necessarily imply made; another five minutes will give ample a long or a close acquaintance. time for the foundation and declaration of The real error of the gushing system is in a war à l'outrance with some "most detesta- truth an error in economy; it is living very ble creature," who has just given cause of extravagantly upon one's capital, and the offence. The eternal friendship is instantly result in the end must be poverty. The followed by the most unbounded issue of case is clear.. If I throw away all my confidences; and, after the declaration of strong cards at the beginning of the game, war, the offender appears as a blot upon I may make three or four tricks, but before creation, without a redeeming trait or the long I shall expose the nakedness of the possibility of so much as a good motive. hand. If I bring forward all my reserves Also a remarkable symptom is the contrast into the field at once; if I put out my best between the smallness of the occasion and pace in the first half of the course; if I fire the depth of feeling it stirs up. Thus it is the whole of my volley at once upon an adthat the most ricketty babies are often vancing foe, there is not much doubt what noisily pronounced to be beautiful darlings will be the ultimate result of my wastefuland precious pets, and thus it is that the ness. I shall be weighed in the balance "Guard's Waltz' is heavenly, and lemon- and found wanting. So it is with all that is ice divine. And just in the same way as a gushing. There is no reserve fund to fall whole household of measles is worse than an back upon. When the lemon-ice has been isolated case, so is it an aggravated nui- pronounced divine, what epithet remains sance to find oneself in the midst of a gush- for a sunset, or a sonata of Beethoven? A ing family. They are for ever hanging in tasteful sunset with mauve clouds, or a genfestoons about each other's necks; they kiss teel sonata, will be the result, if all the legione another in season and out of season, timate adjectives are used up for little they direct public attention to one another's things. Again, if Angelina heaps such pasexquisite beauty, and perform extravagant sion upon Matilda, what will she have left acts of homage to the family talent. Fe- for Edwin, when she is affianced to him, male members of such families should cautiously be avoided as ball-room partners, for it is depressing to be called off rudely from a partner's tenderest duties by the abrupt appeal, "Oh, Mr. Robinson, did you ever see anything so sweet as my sister Amy with the white camellia in her lovely hair? Don't you admire her immensely?" Unless the wary Robinson can say impressively that he does not feel sure that Amy is the one particular sister whom he conceives to be the model of girlish beauty, there is no further hope for him; he will be dragged from one dismal act of worship to another. Most people, even those who are careless about what they say, are supposed to be shy of committing themselves on paper. Not so the gushing correspondent. Put a pen in her hand and she will outdo herself. Partly by an accumulation of dashes underlining every third word, and partly by a copious use of the fondest terms, she will contrive to gush like any artesian well. For instance, she will not say, "I want to hear something about you," but, "I am dying for news of except" dear sir?" And if she emphasizes nine-tenths of her words by underlining them, what is she 'to do when she really wants to give a particular emphasis? Perhaps her acquaintance with Edwin will do her good, and he may very likely object to underlining when she writes to him. If a good radical cure for this infirmity be really wanted, there can hardly be a better one than to contemplate the same practice assumed and studied by a young lady of that age and of that way of thinking which retains the use of mint sauce long after the days of lambhood. A middle-aged girl who shakes her ringlets and calls herself a giddy thing, and is oh! so in love with that dear Tennyson, is a very humiliating spectacle indeed; but if this warning is insufficient to sober some gushing young things, let them turn back to their "Dombey and Son," and look at the dismal pictures of Mrs. Skewton- —a gushing old lady—and read her outpourings, which are, as she herself would confess, "all soul." That picture ought to act like the celebrated penance of sitting with a skull upon your knee to re The mind you, cheerfully, what you will come to. From The Spectator. TURNER'S RICHMONDSHIRE IN PHOTO- THIS is an admirably executed reproduction by photography, from the best original proof prints, of the engravings of one of Turner's most beautiful series, the twenty pictures of Richmondshire, engraved for Whittaker's history of that lovely little bit of Yorkshire, between 1819 and 1823. The Misses Bertolacci have done their work with great skill, and these photographic copies seem to us to But in spite of all artificial forms there is have all the charm of original engravings. the genuine gusher still among men. One The first of the series, the engravknows the type. He rushes up in the ing of Richmond itself. is almost equal street, and, although we saw him only yes- in beauty to the engraving of one of Turnterday, yet he shakes our hand as if he had er's finest pictures, "Heidelberg Castle," just come back after a perilous voyage from to which in character and treatment it New Zealand. Breathlessly he tells us bears no slight resemblance. There is everything about himself; and the smallest no bridge, indeed, over the river, and detail is invested with the very highest im- no rainbow arch in the sky, and less alportance. He slaps his friends on the back, causing the most exquisite pain; he pokess them in their ribs, redoubling their anguish; he laughs irrepressibly at the faintest joke that arises, and, in short, a little of him goes a very long way. And he labours under a still further disadvantage. If for an hour he is quiet or silent he is immediately thought to be out of temper, or at any rate to have something the matter with himSo that the mere physical exhaustion which must sometimes attend upon gushing, will most likely be interpreted as a fit of the sulks. Compare with this unkindly estimate by which he is tried the blessings which hover round the reserved and selfcontained man. His wishes are tacitly consulted for fear he should make himself disagreeable, which he can do very satisfactorily in his quiet way. And supposing on any occasion that he thaws for a while and behaves like an ordinary mortal, there is quite a buzz of excitement, about, and one whispers to another the joyful news, "How Wonderfully agreeable Diogenes was tonight; I saw him talking to Jones for nearly half an hour." Think of the honour which this unworthy member of society receives in contrast to the contemptuous treatment to which the gushing man is condemned, however good and virtuous he may be. And if there is any truth in the pictures which have been drawn, they ought to convey most broadly that celebrated "Advice to those about to be gushing ". don't. together of the romantic and imaginative character which so well suits the grand historic traditions of the Heidelberg ruin. But there is an unseen summer-evening sun catching the crest of the hill on which Richmond stands, so that its church and castle towers, and even the houses themselves, are steeped in a white light that seems to rob them of half their solidity, while the trees and sloping banks of the Swale are all in shadow, and the whitish stream itself, reflecting the light sky above it, glasses the deeply shadowed bank in a pale soft mirror. In the distance is a landscape flooded with soft evening light, and in the foreground a little girl, kneeling beside her little terrier, touching her dog with one hand and plucking flowers with the other, on the edge of the high bank above the stream. In the half-distance, at a bend in the Swale, is the weir, white against the shadowed banks, and on the opposite bank of the river winds away a tiny footpath, along which a figure with a market basket is walking home from Richmond. It is just one of those scenes in which the light and shade seem to conspire to make nature appear more real than human habitations. The pale river reflect Richmondshire. By J. M. W. Turner, R. A. The twenty subjects photographically reproduced by with a concise historical preface. London: Pub C. C. and M. E. Bertolacci, in one complete volume, lished for C. C. and M. E. Bertolacci, by Messrs. Willis and Sotheran, 136 Strand; and also for them by Messrs. Colnaghi, Pall Mall East, and Messrs. A. Marion, Son, and Co., Soho Square. al The Sabbath silence of the hills; The silver river winds between hills covered "Beneath the clear blue sky, he saw ing back the sky, and the pale town in the evening sun, seem equally unsubstantial beside the steep heavy-shadowed banks of the swale and the dark foliage upon them. Still more beautiful is the photographed engraving of the fall of the Tees called High Force. Round a great round crag, most like the face of one of the Nuremberg round towers, the Tees sweeps down in two waterfalls, one on each side; one of them, after springing forward from the rock just far enough to catch a gleam of light, falls almost perpendicularly in the shadow; the other shelves down in a mist of dazzling sunlight, and only reaches the shadow near its base. On the landward side of both falls stand, half facing each other, two great cliffs, the opposite extremities of the wall of rock through which the Tees bursts, neither of them caught by the sunlight and one densely black in its own shade; but the head of the round crag which divides the falls, and which is isolated by them, is lighted up by the sun, and its lower slope is so thrown forward as just to catch the light It would be easy to go on dilating on the again in a sweeping curve that bridges the exceeding beauty of almost all of these fine separating rock, and unites the sunlit with reproductions of some of Turner's best the shadowed waterfall. The effect of works. What a picture is that of "Harthese three sweeps of wave, of water draw Falls," the solid wall of bare rock without sun, of sun without water, and of fringed with wood on either side, over both sun and water together, is inex- which the thin stream of the swift river pressibly grand; they form an incomplete leaps in silver spray, cooling the summer triangle, of which the uniting arc of sun- air for those happy cattle that are gently light is the slanting base. By the deep grazing on the sunny slope in the foreground. black pool beneath, where the two cataracts But it is idle describing in words what the join, fishermen are standing with rod and eye can take in at a glance; and we have net, and with just a glimpse of the brilliant only attempted it thus far to persuade our upper day from which the river is rushing readers of the excellence of these photodown into their twilight. A more poetical graphic echoes of the original engravings. picture it is not easy to imagine. The waterfall in shadow (though just touched with light at the top) is almost solemn, and looks like the flowing dress of some gigantic figure turning away from the darkness of the glen towards the sunlight; the other is a sparkling shower of light feeding the gloom; while the belt of fainter sunlight which slants up from one to the other seems to soften the contrast, and shade off the one into the other. The engraving "Brignall Church" is one of the softest and most delicious of these landscapes. The little church itself lies in one of those sequestered glens which recalls what has been said of Vala Crucis: From The Spectator. BUDDHISM*. MR HARDY would have done better to write a book Buddhism specially upon adapted for English readers. He has a deep practical knowledge of the creed as obeyed in Ceylon, from reading its books and controversy with its priests, and has collected information which in another form would be of the highest interest to Europe. Nothing is more wanted than an account of Buddhism as it appears to an intelligent English theologian if an Arminian, so *Legends and Theories of the Buddhists. By the Rev. R. S. Hardy. London: Williams and Nor gate. the human race. India fell back from it, or rather superadded to it a system of another kind, at once nobler and more earthly, but in Siam, China, Cochin China, and Ceylon the people, so far as they recognize any system of religious philosophy, recognize this, the most original of all which the sons of men have devised. much the better-who has really fought it | human race, and thence spread till it subout with the yellow-robed priests in their jugated India, China, and the countries own tongue, has understood not only what between, and Ceylon-say a clear half of their sacred books say, which is one thing, but what the expositors think they say, which is quite another. Instead of such a work, Mr. Hardy, either out of laziness or humility we will assume the second, for the man is evidently both good and temperatehas republished a controversial work intended to fortify the Singhalese Christians among whom he laboured, mingled with explanations intended for a more Western latitude. The result is a jumble of knowledge which, as far as the writer, who can follow most of the quotations, can judge, is very accurate; of reflections which, if not always deep, are usually to the point; of legends which would be most interesting, but for the higgledy-piggledy in which they are presented, and of deductions which are sometimes of necessity imperfect. For instance, Mr. Hardy wants evidently to point out the actual working of the Buddhist sexual law, apparently so very pure a system. That is a practical point of high interest to the speculative Europeans who alone will read his book, but he stops short, and will not even quote the Buddhist Scripture, lest a certain laxity in its doctrine should injure his converts' minds. Nevertheless, in spite of its form, his little book is one for which we are indebted, and we will try to condense from it an account of Buddhism, the least known and in some ways the most interesting of creeds, as it appears to a man who has studied the Buddhist books with the aid of Singhalese, i. e., as we understand it, of "Catholic" Buddhists, theologians. We take it- but we give the opinion as the result of much reading, and not, except as to the Indian Buddhists, of knowledge like Mr. Hardy's that the Indian Buddhist of the higher class is the Neologian, the Burmese the Orthodox Protestant, the Singhalese the High Church, and the Siamese and Chinese the Secularist of the Buddhist system. We may pass over disquisitions as to Gautama or Gotama. Whether Sakya Muni ever existed, whether he was a Prince, whether he ran away from his wife to hide himself in the jungle, whether he turned the world topsy-turvy, or whether he underWent St. Anthony's temptations in an intensified form, does not matter much. What is certain is, that about 580 B. C., say a century after Lycurgus, a system of thought, probably originating with an individual, did arise on the Indian frontier of Nepal, or did get there from the old cradle of the Its originality consists in this, that while Buddhism is a religion, i. e., a system of thought having reference to things not material, inculcating self-restraints and moral obligations, it denies the useful basis of all religions. In India, and indeed most places, it is so mixed with Brahminism that it is hard to discern the truth, but wherever it is pure it recognizes no God, no Supreme Intelligence, the primary idea of Gautama being that to predicate any Self, any Ego, is an absurdity, no soul, no future life, except as one among a myriad stages of terminable existence. It is not revealed, but discovered by man, any human being who can so far conquer his natural self, his affections, desires, fears, and wants, as to attain to perfect calm, being capable of "intuitions" which are absolute truth; wherefore Gautama, though he argued against other creeds, never proved his own by argument, simply asserting "I know." Its sole motors are upadan, the attachment to sensuous objects," as Mr. Hardy calls it, or as we should describe it, nature, and karmma, literally, work, the aggregate action which everything in existence must by virtue of its existence produce, and which ex rerum naturâ cannot die. For example, fruit comes because there is a tree, not because the tree wills it, but because its karmma, its inherent aggregate of qualities, necessitates fruit, and its fruit another tree in infinite continuity. There is a final cause, but it is not sentient ::-" All existences are the result of some cause, but in no instance is this formative cause the working of a power inherent in any being that can be exercised at will. All beings are produced from the upadána, attachment to existence, of some previous being; the manner of its exercise, the character of its consequences, being controlled, directed, or apportioned by karmma; and all sentient existences are produced from the same causes, or from some cause dependent on the results of these causes; so that upádána and karmma, mediately or immediately, are the cause of all causes, and the source whence all beings have originated in their present form." It will be readily perceived Gautama we have no concern. Suffice it to that this theory, expressed by Buddha in say that his theory of what we call revelathis form because he wanted to use illustration is that the intuition of a man who has tions from the germination and self-repro- conquered upádána is absolutely true, and duction of trees and fruit, is really nothing that this idea applied to physics by a totally but the old argument of necessity, the ignorant person produces an explanation of "must be" of the universe; but he drew from it a strange deduction. Instead of arguing, as English secularists and many Hindoos do, that as there is obviously a law which is unalterable, and of which we can know nothing, and which therefore we should ignore, and try to be happy as intelligent animals, Gautama set himself to kill the law. Penetrated with the idea that existence, though a natural consequence of a natural law, is mere misery that the natural man is wretched as well as evil, he declared that if a man, by subduing all the natural affections, could, as it were, break the chain, kill the upádána, or attachment to sensuous things, he would as a reward pass out of existence, would either cease to be, or for this is doubtful- cease to be conscious of being. The popular notion that nirwan is absorption, is incorrect, for there is nothing to be absorbed into, no supreme spirit, no supreme universe, nothing, and into this nothing the man who has attained nirwan necessarily passes. To attain it he may have to pass through a myriad states or forms, each less attached to sense than the last, hence transmigration; but when it is reached the perfect result is simply annihilation, or rather the loss of being, for the components of being, if we understand Buddha, could not die. A drearier system of thought was never devised, and we can account for its rapid spread only by assuming what we believe to be the fact, that the Asiatic who was below philosophy understood by nirwan not annihilation in our sense, but that state of suspended being in which one exists, but neither hopes, fears, thinks, nor feels, in which he delights, and which we despair of making comprehensible to the Northern mind. Our only chance is to recall to our readers' recollection a fact they may have recognized, but which, if they can sympathize with the Spectator, they have probably never realized to themselves, namely, the intense delight some men feel in sleep, not as a relief from fatigue, not as a renovator, but as a condition. Sleep is temporary death, - non-existence and if they can realize the delight in that temporary death, they may understand why, amid a people with whom it is universal, the doctrine of nirwan found favour. With the cosmical system of Buddha or the phenomena of the world which is simply extravagant nonsense, dreamy stuff about central rocks, and the swallowing up of the sun by a demon. We pass on to the ethical system of Buddhism. Strictly speaking, the creed, by reducing everything to the natural law of cause and effect, should kill morals, but it does not. "Of sin, in the sense in which the Scriptures speak of it, he knows nothing. There is no authoritative lawgiver, according to the Dharmma, nor can there possibly be one; so that the transgression of the precepts is not an iniquity, and brings no guilt. It is right that we should try to get free from its consequences, in the same way in which it is right for us to appease hunger or overcome disease; but no repentance is required; and if we are taught the necessity of being tranquil, subdued, and humble, it is that our minds may go out with the less eagerness after those things that unsettle their tranquillity. If we injure no one by our acts, no wrong has been done; and if they are an inconvenience to ourselves only, no one else has any right to regard us as transgressors. The Dharmma has some resemblance to the modern utilitarianism; it is not, however, the production of the greatest possible happiness at which it aims, but the removal of all possible evil and inconvenience - from ourselves. Nevertheless selfdenial is the sum of practical ethics, and Gautama having set up the killing of attachment to sense as the object, and selfdenial as the means, has produced a very noble theoretic system of ethics. True, the ultimate reward is only annihilation, but there are intermediate stages, and so powerful is the crave of man to be higher than he is, so terrible his fear of being lower, that even for this he will, theoretically at least, surrender much. No act is in the Buddhist system sin, the very idea is unknown but then a bad act produces a bad consequence, just as a rotten substance will produce stench, and bad acts are therefore to be avoided. As to what is good everything is good, because in se everything is indifferent, but nevertheless that is bad relatively to its consequence which produces injury to another. If it produces injury to oneself no matter, because each existence is its own irresponsible lord, but if to another then nirwan is by that injurious |