towards this goal; it is the aim of all, even of him who lays violent hands upon himself. Yet through the ages, no one, except through religion, has attained that end which is the desire of the whole race. The Christian's God is not simply the author of geometrical truths and elementary order, such was the deity of the heathen and the Epicureans. Nor is he merely a God who watches providentially over the lives and fortunes of men, giving happiness and length of years to those who worship him, such was the deity of the Jews. But the God of Abraham and Jacob, the God of the Christians, is a God of love and consolation, who fills the hearts and souls of those whom he possesses; who makes them feel deeply their own misery and his infinite compassion; who enters into their inmost spirit, filling them with joy and humility, confidence and love, and making them incapable of resting in any other end than himself. Christ is the end of all and the centre to which everything tends. To know him is to know the cause of all things. Those who go astray do so because they see not one of these two things: we may know God without knowing our misery; we may know our misery without knowing God. But we cannot know Christ without knowing both God and our misery. Some of the grandest of his sayings are those in which he dwells upon the greatness of man as a thinking being, which to him is the only greatness. He has many things that remind us of the saying of Immanuel Kant: "Two things fill my soul with awe, the firmament with its stars, and the sense of duty in man." When I reflect [says Pascal] upon the brief duration of my life, absorbed in an eternity before and behind, "passing away as the remembrance of a guest who tarrieth but a day; "the little space I fill or behold, lost in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing, and which know nothing of me; when I reflect thus, I am filled with terror, and wonder that I am here and not there, for there was no reason why it should be the one rather than the other, why now rather than then. Who set me here? By whose command and rule were this time and place appointed me? How many kingdoms know nothing of us! The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me! Not from space must I seek my greatness, but from the ruling of my thought. More than this I could not have, though I possessed worlds. By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up as an atom; by thought I encompass the universe. It Man is but a reed, the feeblest of created things, but a reed that thinks. needs not that the universe should rise to crush him; a breath, a drop of water, is sufficient. But were the whole universe to arm itself in order to destroy him, man is greater than that which crushes him, for man knows that he dies; and the universe, though it thus prevails against him, has no sense of its power. All our greatness therefore is in thought; it is by this we must raise ourselves, not by time or space which we cannot fill. Let it then be our aim to think well, for here is the startingpoint of morals. We find in such passages as these the accent of a man who is at once poet, moralist, and seer. His utterances on religion have the authority that we recognize in the saints and the prophets. An acute observer remarked to us recently that Pascal was not a man with a special calling for religion, but that he took it up with the same ardor which he showed in his study of mathematics, or in his controversy with the Jesuits. Something of this sort is perhaps true of Matthew Arnold, but it certainly is not true of Pascal, whose religious genius was greater even than Bossuet's. The authority of his utterances spiritual things is proof enough of his fitness to speak on these subjects; purely intellectual writers on religion like Mr. Arnold have not this unmis takable accent. on Pascal, indeed, was qualified to speak for the human spirit on many sides, for he was one of the most perfect of modern minds. No other man since Plato, except three or four of the great poets, has had such keenness of intellect combined with such depth of emotion and niceness of perception. His mind was Greek in its natural sense of fitness and proportion, while his literary sense was as fine as Voltaire's. Where could we find a truer sense of measure than in the following? combined extreme valor with extreme be- the spaces between them. I do not admire the excess of a virtue, as | interesting a book as "Loss and Gain." for instance valor, unless at the same time Pascal, even when writing of every-day it is balanced by the excess of an opposite matters, has such a rare distinction of virtue, as in the case of Epaminondas, who phrase, and an accent of individuality so strong and winning, that you feel no one else could have written in just the same way. Yet the thing is said simply, and in such a manner as to satisfy alike the grammarian, the literary artist, and the man of good sense. Pascal is There is in Pascal nothing of the also the more original mind; and he is hair-splitter; not the most pretentious the greater reasoner, in spite of all that of the realists has so keen a sense of has been said of late concerning Newreality as this mystic and mathema- man's logical power. Both are men of tician. Naturally he is one of the profound religious feeling, and of great healthiest of thinkers; and he exem- religious genius; and each has eviplifies for us admirably the truth of that dently sounded depths of scepticism saying of Landor's, "The intellectual which few unbelievers have reached. world, like the physical, is inapplicable | And both are among the "glories of to profit and incapable of cultivation a the human race.” little way below the surface." If we would see Pascal at his highWe find, too, in Pascal a vigor, and a est, we should try to picture him during manliness of tone, which are wanting the four last years of his life. His in the distinguished writers of French weakness and suffering make it imposprose who followed him. Fénelon and sible for him to meditate long upon Massillon are altogether gracious and a subject; he can only write down winning spirits, but in them the femi-in haste the thought of the moment, nine side of our nature is too strong to nor can he afterwards connect these permit them to produce that invigor- thoughts, and make of them a coherent ating literature which is at once noble, classical, and masculine. There is in Pascal's writing as genuine a ring of manliness as in the writings of the greatest of the Elizabethans. But it is of an Englishman of our own time that we think as in many ways the analogue of Pascal. John Henry Newman and Blaise Pascal were both great writers on religion in whom the human sentiment was never killed by ecclesiasticism; they wrote as men who lived closely in touch with the world. Both are greater than their writings, each has the same lofty selfrespect and aloofness, which are no doubt a kind of pride, but a pride found only in great spirits and consistent with entire simplicity of character. Pascal's literary style is the more perfect, though Newman has isolated passages worthy of comparison with the best things of Pascal but Newman is always uncertain, and often commonplace, which Pascal never is. It is inconceivable that the latter could have written so un whole. It is the last development of the illness of his youth; an illness peculiar to natures with nerves too highly strung, brought on at first in Pascal's case by excessive study, and since complicated in many ways. This break-up of the physical frame has left its mark upon the whole man; yet his mental power has not failed him; to the end his intellect has all its keenness, notwithstanding that morbid element which the body has imparted to the soul. Fancy gives him the long, narrow face of the ascetic, with the mark of spiritual exaltation, and the lines that tell of deep penance and anxious self-questionings - at once austerc, humble, yet invincibly proud. How dif ferent from this was the Pascal who looked upon men two hundred and thirty years ago! In these last years, when the hand of death is upon him, he has still the full face, the handsome features, and the large, quiet, dreamy eyes of his youth; grave, indeed, he looks, but on that fine face there is no sign of pain. He is a singular, complex, most | Francis Xavier that will stand as the attractive personality. A great and type. Strenuous, vigilant, eager to original thinker upon the subject of bring the whole world into the fold of religion, he is not an ecclesiastic; by no Rome, intolerant, and a little supermeans learned in theology (as the ficial, Xavier, with his feverish desire schoolmen understand it), his writings for unity and his impatience of indion religion have given him a place viduality, is an embodiment of the sentiabove many of the great theologians; ment of Rome. Pascal is the spiritual he is distinguished among mathema- brother, not of St. Francis Xavier, but ticians, but keeps his science rigidly of that greatly loved if unknown man within its proper limits; the master of who wrote the "Imitation of Christ." a consummate literary art, he disdains all the tricks of the rhetorician; ardent, and deeply in earnest, he does not forget his breeding, but is at all times a gentleman. This world-weary ascetic, struggling to kill within him that spirit of Hellenism which loves art and science, poesy and all things fair; this lofty thinker, unceasingly narrowing his conNo principles of historical criticism ception of piety, is yet far above the can fully explain him. You can in a mere ascetic or sacerdotalist, and is way build up Bossuet from the known after all too great for us to see him working influences of the epoch; he is fully. The extreme ecclesiastic, like in truth, as most great men are, the Bossuet, is always overmuch of a forproduct of the time-spirit. Much of malist; and when you have once Pascal, too, belonged to the time, for clearly defined his limitations, you no man can make an atmosphere or a know him almost as the instrument is world for himself; yet there is a great known to the musician. Still more so part of him of which his age gives no with the ordinary ascetic; when you promise, and offers no explanation. In know his temperament and his fixed these last years, incurably ill, and able ideas, you can tell everything of which only to think fitfully upon a subject, he he is capable. But Pascal eludes you yet sounds the human heart and con- at every turn. He is an ascetic, and science so deeply that he puts himself even goes so far as to wear a girdle in a class apart from the other Christian fitted with spikes, which he does not apologists of his century. Make what hesitate to use when he feels that deductions you will for his occasional temptation is near. He has other exmonastic falseness of tone, you still travagances of thought and action, feel that he desires the truth so such as we usually conceive to be ardently, and struggles so terribly to peculiar to the worst type of religious gain it, that he leaves behind him alto- fanatic, with a small brain, a gloomy gether the scholasticism of the age; nature, and great poverty of blood. It and while in spirit he lives with the is not without pain that we can force early Christians, he obtains a foretaste ourselves to dwell upon this side of of the religious doubts and difficulties Pascal, for it is strained and unhealthy. of the future. A loyal son of Rome, to But it is not the whole man ; it is whom Luther and Calvin are objects of far from that. scorn, he has none of the Roman sentiment for unity, but more than the Lutheran feeling for individuality. The communion of the soul with God, and the joy of the spiritual life; man's sense of responsibility, and the awful mysteries of pain, sin, and death these are the things that occupy Pascal. If we seek among the illustrious sons of the Church of Rome a representative of her spirit, it is not Pascal but St. very Not even St. Martin of Tours had more pity for the poor and suffering than Pascal; he lived as one of them, and gave them not only half, but nearly all that he had. Charity, that supernatural, that divine virtue, filled him through and through. "All bodies together," he says, "and all minds together, and all their productions, are not worth the least movement of charity; that is of an order infinitely higher." Nor was this mere theory | Copt, Turk, Jew, Nubian, Syrian, with him; he shaped his conduct by it. Negro, Soudanese, Berber, Albanian, His life in these years is inexpressibly Armenian, Indian, you can see them pathetic. Surely no man in mortal all commingled in this ever-varying sickness ever thought more nobly. crowd, with eyes centred upon the For be it remembered that he was ship. Well might it be said in classic above all things a thinker and not a lore that Proteus had his home at this man of action, but one of those think-place, for Protean indeed are the diverers whose words are acts. To be near sities of costume and type which we unto death for years while you are can see around us. It is just the same young, and to know that health will as when Dion the golden-mouthed oranever again be yours, yet to face your tor was here eighteen hundred years lot with unflinching courage, while in ago, and when the same sight saluted soul you remain pure, human, and of and astonished him (Orat. xxxii. : undimmed faith; not to murmur at "Halians, Syrians, Libyans, Cilicians, your destiny, or ask with the faint-Ethiopians, Arabians, Bactrians, Perhearted ones whether it is good to live, sians, Scythians, and Indians "he menbut to be brave, humble, and in charity with all men, while you continue to "seek the truth with groans," until death completes his hold upon your frail body - this is to live worthily, as a hero and saint should live. And thus lived Pascal. From The Nineteenth Century. A WALK IN ALEXANDRIA. tions). You feel for some days that you never shall be weary of simply watching these lithe, spare, and graceful men, and that you never shall be able to distinguish between them, or feel at ease with dark faces everywhere about you. It is not, however, the present that we need regard now. It is in the days of its Grecian glory that we like to think of it. Happy Return-and the two most ancient civilizations we know of, Egypt and its pupil Greece, seem to join here in greeting us. The whole tale of how the city architect, Dinocrates, came to know his great employer, and the city's founder, is far more worth thinking about as you drive or walk through the modern town than anything you will see there, so let me tell it. Dinocrates was a Macedonian, the Lesseps of his time, a It is ancient classic Greece which WHAT a wonderful scene is that pre- comes out to welcome one in this beausented to our view as we draw up along-tiful harbor of Eunostos-the Port of side the quay at Alexandria! The fine broad wharves, built by Englishmen, and identical with those of their own sea-girt land, are crowded with a mass of humanity differing in face and dress from anything experienced before in European travel; the eyes wander over the great congregation of men no white faces seem present, or else they are lost in the multitude of those of Asia and Africa. What a mixture of races and appearances, as well as of characters, meet you upon this Alex-genius of daring design, and it is to be andrian quay ! To those who have never been out of Europe before, it is a sight never to be forgotten; you there meet for the first time that grave, impassive face of the Eastern, bearing himself erect and nobly, with his graceful fall of robe and ample turban; their bright black eyes seem full of calm intelligence and repose, but you feel yourself unable to read them as you can those of your own race. Arab and hoped quite out of accord with the popular feeling of his day in his craving for self-advertisement. He had perhaps contracted the corrupt practice from Herostratus (or Eratostratus), the scoundrel who had destroyed the Temple of Diana at Ephesus upon the first birthday of Alexander, in order, as he himself confessed, that future ages might not be ignorant of his name, such being his passionate lust for noto4272. riety that he cared not whether his "I am Dinocrates, the Macedonian fame were good or evil. Dinocrates architect, and bring to your Majesty had been called upon to restore this thoughts and designs worthy of your temple, which, in order that the earth- greatness." When Alexander heard quakes might not ruin, had been that it was he who had restored the placed in a marsh upon foundations of Temple of Diana of the Ephesians, he charcoal and goat-skins! It was in asked him what next he proposed to this restored building that St. Paul do. "I have laid out Mount Athos," preached, and where that apostle must responded he, "to be sculptured as have seen the great picture of Alexan- one block, and to be hewn into the der painted by Apelles, upon its walls, fashion of the limbs and features of and from which arose the saying that your Majesty. In your left hand I there were two Alexanders the Great, have designed a city of ten thousand one the invincible, the son of Philip, inhabitants, and into your right I have and the other the inimitable, the work conducted all the rivers of the mount, of Apelles (Plut). We have in our and formed them into a sea, from national Museum about sixty tons of whence they flow to the ocean. Thus, Dinocrates' stones. sire, shall a memorial be left worthy Our architect, after completing his of your greatness." Alexander was work at Ephesus, and moved by the amused at the audacity of the man, and vivid art of the portrait-painter, deter-dismissed him; nevertheless he rememmined to personally interview the great bered him when he wanted to build monarch, and therefore, setting out for Alexandria, and the tradition of its his camp as he returned from his East-planning is quite in keeping with the ern triumphs, he cast about for a theatrical character of the clever fellow. device by which he could gain his audience and likewise flatter his sovereign. Now there was one weakness, or it may have been a noble yearning, in the great conqueror's heart, that, just as his own reputed father had claimed the God-like hero Hercules as sire, so Alex-promontories the jewelled clasp. ander desired it might be proved that relic of the tradition may perchance be no earthly parent had begotten him seen in the name Pharos, which means (Alexander). Some men did, indeed, a loose cloak or mantle, as possibly a say that he was not Philip's son, but of recollection of his work at Ephesus in Nectanebo, an Egyptian mage and the point Lochias, a title of Diana. lover of Olympias, and perhaps it was Another tradition connected with the to solve all doubt that Alexander city's origin is that Alexander marked thought he would remove his parent- its circuit himself, dropping a white age beyond human reasoning. How-powder to indicate its limits; but, this ever, he had not as yet finally fixed failing, he took the sacks of flour or upon Jupiter Ammon, and the crafty sycophant Dinocrates deemed that he would best flatter the great king by a reference to the grandfather. Anointing, therefore, his body with oil, and wreathing his temples with Herculean poplar, with the skin of a Nemean lion crows with their robes of powdered over his shoulder, and flourishing a satin-and ate up all his plan; but club, he approached the court of the those priests of the fowls of the airking, and stood prominently forth in the augurs with their ever-pleasant his singular garb. "Who are you?" lore, reassured him that it was a most must have said his Majesty, to which favorable sign, and that it foretold, the unabashed self-advertiser replied, what came so true, that nations should He cast his Macedonian cloak down as the design, giving it "a circular border full of plaits, and projecting into corners on right and left," as Pliny says, and made the new port the sweep of the neck and the Pharos and Lochias A grain heaped up to feed the workmen, |