into The Japanese directing classes are | any change in the educating system which not foreigners, or in any way out of touch has produced them. No State nominally with the masses of their people. If, then, Christian can be quite as bad, we think, the people are ready to acquiesce in the as a State nominally pagan. Even Abys proclamation of Christianity as an educat- sinia is a little in advance of any purely ing measure, like a proclamation in favor pagan country, or at least of any country of Western culture, much of the objection at once pagan and African, -a reservato it disappears - we should say all of it, tion forced upon us by some doubt as to but for a doubt to be mentioned below the realities of the ancient civilization of and the good to be obtained is obvious Peru. and large. In the first place, all teachers On the whole, we should think the open of Christianity, native and foreign, are set profession of Christianity by a pagan free. It is simply impossible to punish State an advance towards the light, but instruction which the State itself by law for one inner dread. May not a people declares to be not only beneficial, but to like the Japanese, accepting Christianity be superior to any attainable in any other in profession, but retaining not only pagan direction; and to suppose that free in hearts but pagan minds, injure Christianstruction in the Christian creed will have ity itself, develop it in some form so palpano good result is to doubt beyond reason bly bad as to hinder its diffusion throughthe converting energy of the faith. In out Asia? We admit that the evidence the second place, inquiry is provoked by no means justifies any intensity in that among masses of men, and although the fear. It was not realized among the tribes Japanese are singularly indisposed to re- whom Charlemagne baptized by force; ligious thought, being, as regards the and if it is objected that they were white, masses, quietly indifferent, and as regards there is testimony both as to black and the educated, preoccupied with ideas of brown peoples. Three peoples have been material progress, still there must be in modern times Christianized by what we among them, as among every other peo- may call direct force, applied in the case ple, some potentiality of religious emotion, of two of them with unrelenting and hidesome dread of the unknown, some curios- ous cruelty, and while the lowest, the black ity as to the whence and whither, which population of the Southern States of the will in time develop great native teachers Union, has been raised out of savagery, of the truth. And in the third place, the the Mexican Indians have abandoned official acceptance of Christianity makes their bloodthirsty worship-probably the Christianity the basis of legislation to a worst, certainly the most cruel, of all padegree which Europeans, from their very gan cults and the Peruvian Indians are habitude, have half forgotten. The fun- certainly no worse than they were before damental laws, the edicts of governors, the Spaniards landed. None of the three the administrative ways of rulers must, have shown any disposition to develop and almost invariably do, conform to the monstrous forms of Christianity, and in officially confessed creed. Christian gov-none has the ideal of the faith been visiernments may and do allow many things utterly un-Christian; but it is impossible for a Christian State to sanction acts admittedly at variance with its creed, to order a massacre, to legalize polygamy, or to set up an arena for gladiatorial shows. The laws must conform, in theory at all events, to the State religion; and when that religion is Christianity, the laws must gradually become humane. We cannot see, we confess, why the Japanese hope should be fulfilled, and their civilization become stronger for an acceptance of Christianity which, at first at all events, must be perfunctory. the civilization of Rome, for example, did not develop after Constantine but we can see why it must become a little more humane, a little more just, a little less openly impure; and those advances are real advances, creditable to

bly degraded; while in all, individuals who have reached a high level of personal sanctity, have been regarded by their less spiritual fellow-men at least as ideals, counsels of perfection in the flesh. Nevertheless, while admitting the force of the evidence, we confess to a doubt whether a people like the Japanese, who are a gentler and weaker kind of Parisians, eager for knowledge, variable in mood, detached from all beliefs moral as well as religious, callous if not cruel, and exceptionally salacious, may not so discredit Christianity when they have nominally adopted it as to become a distinct minus quantity in the spiritual forces of Asia, where hitherto this antiseptic thought has always reigned, that whatever the ultimate truth, religion is and must be the highest preoccupation of man.

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From The Nineteenth Century. ARCHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS.

ARCHBISHOP TRENCH, not long before his lamented death, published in two volumes a new edition of his poetical works* a welcome gift to many who had read in their youth, alike with delight and profit, the poems written by him in his youth, and a bequest which will be valued most by those who are attracted by the spiritual element in poetry when it is in no degree divorced from human sympathies. His religious poetry is of an order special to himself, and among contemporary " Anglican" poets he will probably be one day regarded by many as the best. Certainly there was no other that combined with a devout spirit so much not generally included in the term religious poetry; none who penetrated into so sound a vein of philosophical thought, or who derived his themes from such varied sources. To the minor, but not unimportant graces of poetry, such as metrical perfection, the labors of an ecclesiastical career probably allowed him to pay less attention than he would otherwise have bestowed on them, though they did not prevent him from continuing to write poetry in his maturer years, and write not less ably than in earlier days. His literary career began when the age occupied itself in an unusual degree with religion; and it was its first fruits that his poetic mind dedicated to spiritual themes. In his first volume, "The Story of Justin Martyr," the poems specially Christian are not only the more numerous, but are obviously those most entirely spontaneous. They are expressions of emotions as much as of thoughts — emotions that mated themselves with whatever met his eye as he moved through the classic lands illustrated in that vol

ently have worn for the poet a perpetual
shadow-not one cast on them by the
pessimism connected with the cynical
spirit, but with sensibilities too keen for a
| world of chance and of change. Except
when the sensibilities possess an elastic-
ity equal to their intensity, the humanities
take not only a sober but a sombre color-
ing. The shadow of the tomb rests on
them, and the air around them is filled
with warning voices. Poetry has its tem-
perament as well as its spirit. The tem
perament of his poetry is melancholy and
saturnine; its spirit, on the other hand, is
buoyant. The result of this union is that
the cheerfulness which belongs to his most
characteristic poems is predominantly that
of consolation. It is often, indeed, the
sunbeam of the churchyard, and the bird-
song echoed from the ruin. His poetry
is essentially that of reality, and reality
has its sad side. Byron, the gloomiest of
modern poets, despite his bursts of wild
mirth, calls Crabbe, though nature's
darkest painter, "yet her best." Arch-
bishop Trench's picture of life might have
worn a graver sadness if his spiritual be-
lief had not been as bright as Cowper's
Calvinistic creed was depressing. The
duty of poetry to be an inspirer of hope
is insisted on in the "prefatory lines
prefixed to his earliest volume. It is
hers, he asserts, to speak

Of light from darkness, good from evil brought
If we will not refuse the good they bring,
By an almighty power, and how all things,
Are messages of an almighty love,
And full of blessings. Oh! be sure of this-
All things are mercies while we count them

and affirm the kinship of poetry and faith. They address the former:

In my life's youth, while yet the deeper
needs

Of the inmost spirit unawakened were,
Thou couldst recount of high heroic deeds,
Couldst add a glory unto earth and air,
A crowning glory, making fair more fair :
So that my soul was pleased and satisfied,
Which had as yet no higher, deeper care,
And said that thou shouldst evermore abide
With me, and make my bliss, and be my
spirit's bride.

But

If in this quest, O power of sacred song, Thou canst assist-oh, never take thy flight!

If thou canst make us gladder or more
strong,

If thou canst fling glimpses of glorious light
Upon life deepest depth and highest height,
Or pour upon its low and level plain

A gleam of mellower gladness, if this might
Thou hast (and it is thine), then not in vain
Are we henceforth prepared to follow in the
train.

Not long after the publication of his first volume the poet learned that it had

went on, and thoughts which slept imparted serious aid to several persons

years
before,

who, when appalled by the "Sphinx's
enigmas,” had not taken refuge in an igno-

O'er the horizon of my soul arose -
Thoughts which perplexed me ever more ble indifference. Among them was one

and more;

As though a sphinx should meet one, and
propose

Enigmas hard, and which whoso not knows
To interpret, must her prey and victim be;,
And I, round whom thick darkness seemed
to close,

Knew only this one thing, that misery
Remained, if none could solve this riddle

unto me.

But when no longer without hope I mourned,
When peace and joy revived in me anew,
Even from that moment my old love re-
turned,

My former love, yet wiser and more true,
As seeing what for us thy power can do,
And what thy skill can make us understand
And know-and where that skill attained

of his college friends, the author of "The
Lawyer,"
," who to the end continued faith-
ful both to his Christian convictions, and
sustained in that book and vindicated by
to the principles as regards legal practice
Lord Macaulay against Lord Brougham.

So far as Archbishop Trench's poetry is to be placed in the class of religious verse though it was by no means confined to that category —it is curious to observe how different it is in character from that of the Oxford poets, Keble and Williams the former of whom helped so much to the creation of the High Church school, while the poetical works of the latter, and especially his "Baptistery," possessed also high poetic merit, and exercised a kindred influence. Dean Milman belonged also to the University of Oxford; but his poetry represented an earlier time, and related less to religious themes. Archbishop Trench belonged to Cambridge, not Oxford. In those days, more than half a century gone by, the marvellously ecclesiastical aspect presented by Oxford was but a type of the spirit that pervaded that "ancient and venerable university," and had received an addiTo make men feel the presence by his skill tional stimulus from the excitement occaOf an eternal loveliness, until

not to;

How far thou canst sustain us by thy hand, And what things shall in us a holier care de

mand.

Though now there seems one only worthy

aim

For Poet-that my strength were as my

will!

And which renounce he cannot without blame

sioned by Catholic emancipation. The All souls are faint with longing for their spirit of Cambridge was a different spirit;