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mour at all, after the first publication in | Pilate, and even of Judas Iscariot. With1823. He never did anything which ap-out going to such lengths as this, it is only proached in merit the contents of that admirable volume during the eleven years

from 1823 to 1834.

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fair to call attention to the very ambiguous and unsatisfactory position of a man whose name really does not seem to deserve to All his periodical writings, all his plays, have become a byword of reproach. It is a and all his poems are necessary, however, to little strange, in this age of civil and relia complete edition of his works; for our gious liberty, that nobody should have a good own part, we should be satisfied with word for Gallio. His hard lot has been to Elia," "Rosamund Grey," "John Wood- be taken as a type of carelessness and of vil," the "Farewell to Tobacco," and the scepticism, and to be thundered at from all "Letters." We must have the last, not as the pulpits of the Christian world. If we Talfourd has given them to us, but as Lamb inquire carefully into what is recorded about wrote them ipsissimis verbis. Talfourd has him, it turns out that he is a strangely unHis whole crime appears to helped us to bits of them-those bits which derrated man. he thought nicest and prettiest; but, if we consist in his having refused to listen to the could have the true text, we should be bet- accusations against the Apostle Paul, and ter pleased on the whole. Upon a moderate having looked on with profound indifference calculation, the collection found by Tal- at a bastinado inflicted upon the chief ruler fourd does not represent a moiety of the of the synagogue. It is possible that a modtotal. Where, let us ask, is the correspond-ern magistrate would have felt it his duty to ence with Hone, with the Holcrofts, with interfere to prevent any and every breach Cottle, with Hunt, with Collier, and with of the peace; but a beating is not a serious Novello? A contemporary of Lamb's was lately, and may be yet, living, who possesses a series of letters, not one of which has seen the light.

From the Saturday Review.
GALLIOS.

--

matter among Oriental communities, and
when inflicted upon a Jew it would be
deemed a bagatelle; and at all events, as
far as the Apostle was concerned, Gallio can
claim the posthumous credit of having re-
leased him from his captors without even
waiting to call on him for his defence. The
sole political principle which we hear of his
enunciating on the occasion was, according
to modern political ideas, a sound one. It
was nothing more or less than the non-inter-
ference of the State in matters of purely
Lib-
religious discipline and controversy
"If it were a mat-
era chiesa in stato libero.
ter of wrong or wicked lewdness," said Gal-
6: reason would
lio to St. Paul's accusers,
that I should bear with you; but if it be a
question of words and names and of your
law, look ye to it, for I will be no judge of
such." And so saying, Gallio drave them
from the judgment seat; or, in other words,
dismissed the prosecution, and ordered the
Court to be cleared. Such being his decis-
ion, it became wholly unnecessary for him
to hear the prisoner at all. We do not even
know that the Apostle wished to be heard,
but in any case Gallio did nothing beyond
what the strictest and most orthodox Bow
Street magistrate of the nineteenth century
would have done. The text usually flung
at the head of the much-abused deputy of
Achaia has no reference at all to his treat-
ment of the religious ideas of Paul The
thing" for which he is said not to have
cared was the beating of Sosthenes. The
Church has not since attached to it much
more importance than Gallio did; and so
long as the whole circumstances of the chas-

A GOOD deal of ingenuity has been spent upon the whitewashing of various historical characters who are thought to have been treated by posterity with unnecessary injustice. Some of them, by means of the pertinacious efforts of their apologists, have almost been set upon their legs again; while others, like Mary Queen of Scots and Henry VIII., still furnish an inexhaustible subject of literary controversy. There is, however, a considerable opening for any diligent theologian who will make it his duty to repair and varnish some of those whom we may perhaps, without irreverence, be permitted to call the black sheep of Scripture. We do not for a moment allude to anybody of whose wickedness we are authoritatively assured by sacred writers. But outside the category of these there are a number of persons on whose moral or religious merits the Bible does not pronounce, but who, from some cause or another, have nevertheless" come to be regarded as good for nothing and sinful creatures. Every educated person is aware of the arguments that have been urged in favour of the sincerity of Pontius

Sosthenes are not before us, jus- | Christian Church became a State danger. us to impute Gallio's indiffer- As its acknowledged aim was the extirpaous levity. The sole fact which tion of all other creeds, it was not strange us against his character seems to be that it should be thought a standing menace that he does not appear to have been con- to them or to State tranquillity. The tone verted to Christianity before the Apostle adopted towards it by the Emperor Julian opened his mouth to convert him. This, shows what was thought by a rational adherafter all, is not very much; and, at any ent to old systems of belief. As time went rate, it is a fault which he must share in on, a battle à outrance began between the common with others. The opportunities of old and the new. It was war to the knife religious investigation which he enjoyed between them, and, if we are to believe hiswere not extensive; and, provided that he tory, some acute observers had seen this discharged with propriety the only secular from the first. But the distinction drawn duty he was called on to perform, he does by Gallio between matters of opinion and not merit the opprobrium of being a care- matters of State cognizance was not a visless thinker, any more than that of being an ionary one. Such was the view of Rome. unjust judge. The departure from it in the case of Christian persecutions was a matter not of sectarian bitterness so much as of State policy. Indeed Gallio's theory, good or bad in the abstract as it may be, was one which, at that particular moment, the early Christians had every reason to approve. If Gallio had chosen to investigate Paul's orthodoxy, he would have had to investigate it not merely from a Jewish point of view. It would have been his business to examine whether the Apostle's opinions were consistent or inconsistent with allegiance to the Roman Emperor. His abstinence from unnecessary inquisitiveness was therefore rather a politi

was conformable to the maxims of the Empire is evident from the subsequent history of St. Paul. It was the spontaneous appeal of the Apostle to "Cæsar" which led him into captivity at Rome, not any interference by Imperial agents with private liberties and rights. After hearing his exposition of Christian doctrine, Agrippa and Festus agreed between them that "this man might have been set at liberty if he had not ap pealed unto Cæsar."

The charge of indifference to religious truth, so far as Gallio is concerned, must accordingly be considered as not proven. Apart from this, it is a charge which is singularly inconsistent in the mouths of those who prefer it against him. It is illogical in ecclesiastical commentators to upbraid the Executive of the Roman Empire at one time for interfering, and at another for not interfering, in the early controversy between Christianity and its assailants. One of two things is obvious either that the Imperial Government was lax or not lax upon subjects of Pagan orthodoxy; but it is idle to accuse its agents simultaneously of sceptical virtue than a theological vice. That it cism and of tyranny. The truth is that the line drawn by Gallio between what was and what was not a matter for State inquiry was conformable to the principles of Imperial Rome. One of the accidental merits of educated Paganism was that it generally was tolerant, just as Alexander the Great was tolerant, and as all who attempt to establish a world-wide empire must be tolerant. Rome could not afford, with her enormous frontier and her system of outlying provinces, to be anything else. The subsequent persecutions of Jews and Christians were political rather than religious in their inception. Polytheism is usually anything but an exclusive system. The worship of the gods of the hills is not essentially incompatible with a toleration of the worship of the gods of the valleys. But, unfortunately for the lives and liberties of its early followers, Christianity could not co-exist with any other form of religious creed. Neither Jew nor Christian could consent to admit the statue of the Emperor to stand on the altar of the one true God; and both Judaism and Christianity were thus driven into direct conflict with the political requirements of the Roman Empire. Still later on, when it had grown to more substantial proportions, the

The same inconsistency which is observable in the reproaches freely poured upon Gallio is also to be seen in the censures lav ished on those in our day who are supposed to be like him, and who are usually dubbed by his name. In the proper sense of the appellation, a modern Gallio is, as we have said, a gentleman who disbelieves in a State Inquisition. If so, most people are Gallios. No section of the Church at the present day is anxious to have matters of theology subjected unnecessarily to the careful cogni zance of State authority – least of all those sections of the Church which might be expected to inveigh most earnestly against Gallios. Again. if it be suggested that Gallio was indifferent to the welfare of his soul, there is not the vestige of proof that he

was anything of the kind. We come, lastly, on the whole to abstain from controversial to the real derivative sense attached by pul- discussion. Their answer to such abuse is a pit orators to the term. Gallio is put for- simple and a conclusive one. They do not ward as the type of people who, on the whole, profess to deal with those topics any more are sceptical about the advantage of enter than Gallio the Roman lawyer did. They ing upon the discussion of religious contro- are secular, not religious, critics, just as he versy. It is somewhat significant that this was a secular, and not a religious, judge. should form part of the burden of the indict- The line they draw is precisely his line. ment against Pilate, who is thought to have When it comes to be a matter of wrong or displayed an improper incredulity as to the of wicked lewdness they interfere, but not possibility of arriving at abstract "truth." till then. It is their duty in the interest of Gallio and Pilate, as far as one can judge, the public to expose ignorance, charlatanwere both of them sceptics in the metaphysi- ism, or immorality, but from subjects of thecal sense of the word, though the former ology pure and simple they keep aloof. seems to have been exempt from the crimi- Nobody in his senses can maintain that such nal weakness which has rendered the latter a view is wicked. It is simply common an object of infamy to all time. Before con- sense. And Gallio-haters may perhaps feel demning, in Gallio's person at all events, the the cogency of the argument when they spirit of philosophical scepticism, preachers reflect on the nature of the other alternawill do well to consider what philosophical tive that must be accepted if abstention scepticism is, and how far it interferes with from theological controversy is to be conor seems contrary to the principles of orthodox religion.

demned. The alternative is that every newspaper in England shall be a religious partisan, free to adopt its own theories about religion, and to enter on a religious propaganda for the sake of persuading the public of their truth. Probably a régime of literary Gallios would be far more acceptable, even to theologians.

It is worth remarking that the one nation in Europe which is most conservative in matters of theology is the most sceptical about metaphysics. The nation in question is ourselves. Nor is this a pure coincidence. The two things stand to each other very much in the relation of cause and effect. The position of Gallios in private life is The reason that Englishmen believe in re- not a bit less tenable than that of Gallios in ligious truth so firmly is that they do not journalism. It is not a crime, as some peobelieve in the attainment of philosophical ple think, to feel no interest in theological truth at all. The ordinary theologian of the controversy. There is a point, indeed, at day makes metaphysical uncertainty, or the which such controversy usually becomes inimpossibility of discovering truth by think- teresting. If problems are mooted affecting ing about it, the basis of his system. It is the future destinies of the Church, and the true that the edifice is not a logical result of character of the future religious teaching of the foundation on which it is built, and that the country, people seldom fail to form a a man may doubt everything besides reli- view of their own about them. In this region without ceasing to doubt about reli- spect few of us are Gallios, and least of all gion itself. But practically, and among a those who are oftenest suspected of the large mass of English men and women, dis- crime. But apart from such cases a Gallio belief in the powers of the human mind, and point of view is not only very natural, but belief in the doctrines taught to them, do go certainly by no means the reverse of praisetogether. There are, however, more ration-worthy. What would become of the world al methods of reconciling Gallios and religion than this. And, in the first place, it is clear that, in declining to discuss theology, Gallios have the sanct.on of a large number of authorities of the Christian Church. Every modern Gallio has a right to say that theology is not his vocation. There are those whose business it is to study it and to investigate its subtleties; but a layman is no more bound to be a theologian, unless he likes, than he is bound to be acquainted with the mysteries of contingent remainders. Newspapers, for example, are continually set down as Gallios, or Sadducees, or both, simply because they feel it best up

if every professional man and every educated layman were to strip for the controversial arena, and to desend into the pit in the costume of a theological gladiator, armed with net and dagger for the fray? Such a state of things would be the death of most easy-going country parsons. There was a Turkish Pasha in the Crimean war who expired out of sheer dismay at the fuss made at Balaclava by the Consuls of the Western Powers. A like melancholy end would befall a good many English clergymen if all the laymen in the parish insisted on sifting and controverting all the doctrines laid down, or taken for granted, in the Sun

of road through the plains, a Polygonum (avicu-
lare), called 'cow-grass,' grows most luxuriantly,
the roots sometimes two feet in depth, and the
plants spreading over an area from four to five
feet in diameter. The dock (Rumex obtusifolius
or R. crispus) is to be found in every river-bed,
extending into the valleys of the mountain riv-
ers, until these become mere torrents.
sow thistle is spread all over the country, grow-
ing luxuriantly nearly up to 6,000 feet. The

The

day sermon. Does the parson who preaches | country. All along the sides of the main lines against Gallios wish for a congregation of Gallios or not? If he does, he is a very rash man. He desires to pass from a calm atmosphere of quiet into a troubled atmosphere of thesis and antithesis, of disputation, mutiny, and rebellion. If he appreciates the utility of Gallios in particular, he ought not in common fairness to preach against Gallios in general. This is especially true in times like the present, when religious ten-watercress increases in our still rivers to such ets are held by most educated people rather as a matter of moral conviction and practical use than of mathematical certainty. If Gallios are to be put down, their place will be filled by far more inconvenient and uncomfortable disputants. Theologians ought to be satisfied with the latitude conceded to the theologians of Corinth. They have full liberty to inflict any spiritual penalties they like on a rival Sosthenes, but it is a fatal mistake on their part to object to the orthodox neutrality of Gallio.

From the Spectator.

MR. DARWIN AT THE ANTIPODES.

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"THE native [Maori] saying is, As the white man's rat has driven away the native rat, as the European fly drives away our own, as the clover kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man himself." Thus quotes Dr. Hooker, the eminent naturalist of our Kew Gardens, in a remarkable article in the new number of the Popular Science Review on "The Struggle for Existence amongst Plants." "The European house-fly," says Dr. Hooker, "seems to drive out before it the native blue-bottle of New Zealand, so that settlers, knowing its value, carry it in boxes and bottles to their inland stations." So, too, in the vegetable world the vegetable emigration from Europe seems to drive before it the native products of the New Zealand soil. "The noisy train of English migration is not more surely doing its work than the stealthy tide of English weeds, which are creeping over the waste, cultivated, and virgin soil, in annually increasing numbers of genera, species, and individuals." Dr. Hooker quotes a New Zealand correspondent to the same effect: :

"You would be surprised at the rapid spread of European and other foreign plants in this

an extent as to threaten to choke them altogether; in fact, in the Avon, a still deep stream, running through Christ Church, the annual cost of keeping the river free for boat navigaI have measured stems twelve feet long and tion and for purposes of drainage exceeds 300l. three quarters of an inch in diameter. In some of the mountain districts, where the soil is loose, the white clover is completely displacing the native grasses, forming a close sward."

- and later in his article he tells us the most remarkable fact of all, that,

"The little white clover, and other herbs, are actually strangling and killing outright the New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax), a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description, that forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of sword-like leaves, six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture and fibre. I know of no English plant to which the New Zealand flax can be likened, so as to give any idea of its robust constitution and habit, to those who do not know it; in some respects the great matted difficult enough to imagine the possibility of tussocks of Carex paniculata approach it. It is white clover invading our bogs, and smothering the tussocks of this Carex, but this would be child's play in comparison with the resistance the Phormium would seem to offer."

It is an illustration of the same process that the European horse so increases in South America as to gain rapidly upon the native animals of these plains, and that in New Zealand the English pig runs wild and multiplies at a rate which is a serious danger to the sheep farmers, whose flocks of lambs the wild hog decimates. That a little and apparently feeble plant like clover should be able to win a complete victory over the formidable sworded flax of New Zealand, and that the English fly should drive out the blue-bottle which is such a nuisance to the settlers, are striking illustrations of the apparent power which human civilization seems to lend to even the animals and plants that have thoroughly adapted themselves to its conditions, illustrations which inevitably suggest the superstitious view of the subject conveyed

in the Maori presage with which we commenced this article. It seems as if the mere local connection with civilized beings which is implied in buzzing in civilized windows and growing on ploughed fields, were a physical tonic to the constitution of animals and plants which enables them, when put in competition with the native insects, animals, or plants of barbarous countries, to win as easy a victory as civilization wins over barbarism. Does not the English fly contract a cunning from its residence in English larders, which makes it more than the match of the big Maori bluebottle? Have not the clover and watercress imbibed, by the process of selection, structural habits of economizing the juices of the comparatively poor English soil, which gives them an advantage over the plants that have grown up for ages in a soil to rich to need any such provisions for assimilating all the most nutritious elements of growth? It is quite conceivable that in an old and much tilled country only the more hardy species, those which have the most powerful attraction for the juices in the soil on which they live, will succeed in yielding good crops, while in a very rich country, especially when combined with a milder climate, this process of contest between the more and less vigorous species will go on much more tranquilly and slowly, so that the race between one plant and another for nutrition may not have elaborated anything like such special powers of competition for sap. Dr. Hooker tells us that seedlings of the cedar and the maple come up even with us in the early spring by thousands in the grass-ground where they are planted, but then, as soon as the grass begins to grow again, the grass draws away all their supplies of nourishment, and they die away. This seems to show that perennial grasses have a much stronger relative attraction for the nutritious elements of the earth than seedling trees; but in New Zealand it would seem, from Dr. Hooker's account that even annuals from Europe often beat New Zealand perennials in the race. That is, it may be, the seeds of the European plants obtain in a few months as strong a hold of the ground as the native perennials have gained in many years, and then by virtue of their "naturally selected' species, assimilate with more rapidity and effect than their perennial neighbours the juices of the soil, and so starve the plants in their vicinity. The vegetable which in England has gone through centuries of competition for existence with other vegetables, has lost by the death of the

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weaker plants all the more languid and feeble elements of its physiology, while the New Zealand perennial, living undisturbed in a milder climate and much richer soil, has been left comparatively without any process of competitive selection, till, like the luxurious man who has had all his comforts and necessaries at his elbow, when competing for existence against the trained hunter who has lived by his knife and gun, it is worsted at every turn by the hardier rival. It would be easy, of course, to suggest a similar account of the success of the European fly and European rat in competing against the native blue-bottle and the native rat. In neither case, probably, is it due to greater strength or ferocity, greater aptitude for war, but to instincts trained through successive generations under more difficult circumstances. Those European flies and rats which have not been able to adapt themselves to their condition in a country where the most nourishing food is usually jealously guarded, and where all wild animals have less and less chance every year, have died out, and only those remained which by hardier constitution, greater caution, less offensive habits, and more subtle instincts, have been able, while supporting themselves, sufficiently to avoid the enmity of man to prevent any war of extermination being waged against them. And these trained instincts of course tell greatly in their favour when they come to be pitted against races which have not hitherto needed them for their protection. Such is the apparently most natural inference from Dr. Hooker's strange array of facts to prove that while the plants and animals of the antipodes show no increased fertility when transplanted to Europe, no tendency to run our native plants hard in the struggle for existence, our plants and animals show as much colonizing capacity as man himself when they emigrate with him to New Zealand. We take the case of New Zealand rather than that of any other virgin soil, like South America, because though many of the same phenomena are true of South America also, the conditions of climate are there generally so different that the experiment is disturbed by many other considerations. In New Zealand, on the contrary, though the climate is rather milder, owing to the greater extent of sea, the climatic conditions are exceedingly like those of England.

We have striven purposely to suggest an interpretation of these very curious and as yet unexplained facts which is entirely in the spirit of Mr. Darwin's great work,

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