consist in taking neither side, but in tak-tainly not necessarily unequal to one ing both, and then carefully comparing the another. Equality and inequality had no relative weight attaching to each. meaning. You simply had nothing to say about relative magnitude at all, and were at a final standstill. So Mr. W. G. Ward, too, used to insist that if men did not trust their own memories when their memories made absolute affirmation that (suppose) they had been cold or warm the instant before, they certainly could not talk of learning by experience, since experience depends absolutely on trustworthy mem ory, and cannot be stored without it. No enterprise can be more hopeless than to clear the mind of all prepossessions. It really means clearing the mind of itself. A strong mind is, in fact, a bundle of most effectual and useful and necessary prepos. sessions, and unless you are prepared to use the most dominant and persistent of these, and use them vigorously, you cannot, properly speaking, have a mind, much less a vigorous mind, at all. All science is built up on the right prepossessions, and aims at the acquisition of the right prepossessions by vigorously using and trusting those with which we were originally furnished, for the purpose of clearing away those which we have allowed to grow up in us without their being either of the essence of our faculties, or properly acquired by the legitimate use of those faculties. Impartiality cannot exist without trusting implicitly to all the fundamental prepossessions with which the mind is furnished, and then using freely and experimentally the various prepos sessions which experience suggests to us,

Or take, as another illustration of what impartiality should and should not mean, the statement which Mr. Wilfrid Ward makes in the very interesting final chapter which he has more or less gravely modified in the second edition of the life of his father, William George Ward, on the theological upshot of the Anglican movement. Theory, says Mr. Wilfrid Ward, led Newman and Ward up to this point, "that a certain moral disposition was needed to receive in their fullness and to appreciate justly the tokens of supernatural truth which God has allowed to mankind. Every one appreciates such tokens in one moral disposition or another. The charge of prejudice can be brought primâ facie just as much against the secular spirit as against the religious; while closer consideration shows that the crucial testimonies which religion appeals to, cannot even be apprehended without a temper of mind which is in harmony with them." Is this not equivalent to saying that it is quite possible for a man to treat the difficulties of the sceptic impartially who has nevertheless prejudged the question whether those difficulties are insuperable, and has made up his mind that they are not? Surely it is. As well might you say that no man can treat the difficulties of a mathematical problem impartially who knows that the problem has actually been solved, as that it is impossible for one who is not a sceptic, but a believer, to do full justice to the sceptic's attitude? Impartiality no more means clearing your mind of all prepossessions against a particular conclusion than it means clearing your mind of all memories which tend to shake that conclusion, many of which, indeed, as William George Ward used to press upon his sceptical friends, involve prepossessions of the most serious kind. The present writer once knew a lad who had the notion that he ought to treat Euclid's axioms impartially, and he would profess to regard it as a highly disputable point whether things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. But the only result was, of course, that so far as he acted on his own theory, he was quite as incompetent to be a reasonable sceptic of geometrical doctrine as to be a reasonable believer in it. He had no more reason to dispute than he had to accept any doctrine, for he had no premiss at all on which to take his stand. If things which were equal to the same thing were not necessarily equal to one another, they were cer

though without relying on the latter till we have carefully satisfied ourselves that they really fit the facts, and that none others which we were able to construct would equally well fit the facts. The true distinction between prepossessions and prejudices seems to be that prejudices are prepossessions which are too confidently held before they have been thoroughly tested and found indispensable, — in other words, one-sided views which, however useful as provisional explanations of facts, have not been shown to constitute a sound and adequate explanation of them, and which should not therefore be treated as we are all of us too ready to treat them, as if they were sound and adequate, though they may turn out to be either radically unsound, or, though sound up to a certain point, perfectly inadequate beyond that point. Religion is just one of those subjects into which you cannot even inquire without forming a distinct judgment as to what, if any, are the assumptions ingrained in the very constitution of the human con

poetry, whether we consider its quantity or its quality, will contrast favorably with the poetry of any living men, except the first half-dozen. As with the poetesses already mentioned, her Muse was frequently inspired by sympathy for the sufferings of her sisters. But she is prob ably best known as a sonneteer. For this artificial form of verse-of which the present generation has had a surfeit - she possessed the qualifications of a refined imagination and considerable metrical faculty. Her sensitive and cultured mind was also open to receive the impulses of thought and feeling which are most char

science. If you try to ignore the fact that there are such assumptions ingrained in the conscience, you will constantly trip yourself up, and find yourself out in selfcontradictions, or slipping in unconsciously in one sentence what you have refused to admit in another. But if you recognize frankly what those religious assumptions are, and act upon them just as you do on the assumptions which the mind is compelled to make with respect to number and magnitude, then you find yourself provided with the foundation at least of a genuine religion in which there is no more, and perhaps even less, danger of being self-deceived, than there is of being self-acteristic of our self-conscious age. Above deceived in building up the structure of science on assumptions probably even less certain. Impartiality, far from being the attitude of mind in which you ignore all prepossessions, is the attitude of mind in which you sift all your prepossessions strictly by comparing them with the appropriate facts, and dismiss only those which you find inconsistent with these facts.

From The Academy.
EMILY PFEIFFER.

NOT only a wide circle of friends, but all careful readers of contemporary literature, will have felt a pang of sorrow at hearing of the death of Mrs. Pfeiffer. She and her husband were bound together by no common tie. He died in January of last year; and now she has followed him to the grave within a twelvemonth, and the once cheerful house on the slopes of Putney Hill is left desolate.

all, the modern conception of nature, not as a kind nurse but as a relentless taskmaster, influenced her somewhat in the same manner that it influenced George Eliot. It was this aspect of her poetry that specially attracted the admiration of such a keen critic as the late rector of Lincoln.

Considering that Mrs. Pfeiffer never enjoyed good health, and also that she took an active part in all movements for the social and economical regeneration of her sex, the total amount of her published work is remarkable. Her earliest book, we believe, was "Kahmera: a Midsummer Night's Dream," published nearly thirty years ago; but this we have not seen. Her first volume of poems took its name from "Gerard's Monument" (1873). This was followed by another, called simply "Poems" (1876), which included several sonnets. Then came "GlanAlarch " (1877); "Quarterman's Grace" (1879); "Under the Aspens " (1882); and "The Rhyme of the Lady of the Rock" Prominent attention has recently been (1884). Most of these passed through drawn to the fact that, among the poets of more than one edition, though they were the Victorian era, women hold a conspic- never issued in a uniform series, such as uous place. Foremost of all, of course, she and her husband had contemplated. stands Mrs. Barrett Browning; and the The sonnets alone were collected into a popular suffrage, in America as well as in pretty volume bearing that title (1887), England, has put Miss Christina Rossetti which comprises most of her work that and Miss Jean Ingelow in a second class will live. Only last year, after her husby themselves. All three of these are em- band's death, she published another volphatically feminine poets, who attained ume of verse, "Flowers of the Night," their highest inspiration when writing as which hardly maintained her reputation; women and about women. To compare and at the very last she was actively entheir work with that of men otherwise gaged in preparing a drama for stage reptheir equals would be absurd. But when resentation. To complete this record of we pass to the next class of those who are her books, it should be mentioned that ungraciously styled "minor poets" it is she wrote a pleasant account of her jourimpossible not to be struck by the reflec-neys in Greece and North America, under tion that the women hold their own-and more than their own against the men. This is not the place to mention other names, which will readily occur to the mind. Suffice it to say that Mrs. Pfeiffer's

the title of "Flying Leaves from East and West" (1885); and also an essay on a subject that was very dear to her-"Woman and Work" (1888).

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From The London Quarterly Review.
PRINCE ADAM CZARTORYSKI.*

Poland split up into factions, divided by fierce political differences, and trammelled THE memoirs of Prince Adam Czarto- by obsolete customs, but the elective naryski, so ably edited by Mr. Gielgud, place ture of her monarchy opened a way to not only a historic figure before us, but foreign intrigues in behalf of one or anwhat may also be called a great represen- other favorite candidate, and courted for. tative name. The Czartoryskis are iden- eign interference. Moreover, another and tified with the supreme efforts made by more fatal bar to the success of any patriPoland to reform her constitution; they otic schemes lay in the unscrupulous are associated with those last struggles ambition of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, for national life and independence that who coveted certain portions of Polish convulsed her while she was writhing un- territory, and left no stone unturned to der the heel of the spoiler and oppressor. secure their own ends. It would take too And though some may question whether long to explain here the apprehension with Poland could ever have settled her own which these allied powers saw "the rich internal difficulties, even had fair play dawn of an ampler day" in the neighborbeen allowed her, still her undoubted ing State, in whose very disorder and conwrongs and sufferings, her superhuman stitutional weakness they hoped to find and oft-renewed resistance, the heroic their opportunity. They took cunning figures of Kosciuszko, Sobieski, Poniatowski, and last, but not least, of the Czartoryskis, have invested this page of European history with keen interest, and have colored it with the hues of poetry and romance.

advantage of every abuse; they imposed arbitrary checks on every reform calcu lated to make her stronger; they fostered her dissensions; and, if ever one or other found it expedient from time to time to play the part of Poland's friend, it was only to lead her more certainly to her own destruction.

It is towards the middle of the eighteenth century that the Czartoryskis, in the persons of two brothers, Michael and Augus- Unfortunately, the very reforms advotus, begin to play a prominent part in the cated by the Czartoryskis were not carried history of Poland. These distinguished out without rousing active opposition on statesmen were animated by the purest the part of some of the great nobles, and zeal and most fervid desire to serve their even awakening a feeling of anxiety in the country, and save it, as it were, almost in heart of the king. The state of anarchy its own despite. They would have con- into which the country had fallen was strained it to follow in the general wake such that no statesman could act with of Western progress and development; authority and practical effect without the they were eager to carry out the necessary support of some foreign government. reforms, and to establish those principles The Czartoryskis, deprecating a civil war, of constitutional liberty which, through all and with their country's vital interests at its errors and subsequent throes, Poland stake, sought the armed intervention of held sacred—and which, so far as they Russia. Circumstances possibly left them reached, were a natural growth in that no other alternative, but time has proved country as in England and Hungary. As this invitation of foreign interference to Mr. Gielgud says, in his lucid and inter- have been a fatal mistake. The eagle esting preface, these eminent statesmen was only too ready to fasten on its prey. used all the forces at their command - The evil day was put off a short space by prestige, wealth, social relations to carry reason of the mutual jealousies of the out their high political aims. None the spoilers, but the doom of Poland was less true or devoted was their patriotism, practically sealed. In 1772 Catherine of although time has shown them to have led Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, and a forlorn hope. Not only, indeed, was Frederick the Great of Prussia, signed a • Memoirs of Prince Czartoryski and his Corre-treaty, in the name of the Holy Trinity,

spondence with Alexander I. Two vols.

Adam Gielgud. Remington & Co.

Edited by

followed by the first partition of Poland. What remained of the kingdom was formed