Spurgeon's great work on the Psalms. It deserves to be so called. It is generally known that Mr. Spurgeon's expositions of Scripture in the pulpit are as striking in their way as his sermons, and these written expositions are fully worthy of his reputation. He possesses quite sufficient scholarship for practical purposes, a strong, racy, human common sense, and a marvellous grasp of spiritual truth in almost every key. We could select passages whose shrewd thought and quaint expression recall the liveliest of Puritan preachers, and others of sustained and lofty eloquence worthy of any pulpit of any age. But beyond doubt Mr. Spurgeon's great power is the spiritual power, which is a preacher's greatest glory. The illustrative extracts are well selected from a very wide range of authors, and by themselves would form an interesting Commentary. For general readers, reading for purposes of devotion and religious instruction, we know of no work on the Psalms to be compared with this, and we sincerely trust the author's life may be spared to finish his laborious and very useful undertaking. The following extract, taken almost at random, will perhaps illustrate the writer's plain and vigorous style:"Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray. Often but none too often. Seasons of great need call for frequent seasons of devotion. The three periods chosen are most fitting; to begin, continue, and end the day with God is supreme wisdom. Where time has naturally set up a boundary, there let us set up an altar-stone. The Psalmist means that he will always pray; he will run a line of prayer right along the day, and track the sun with his petitions. Day and night he saw his enemies busy, and therefore he would meet their activity by continuous prayer. And cry aloud. He would give a tongue to his complaint; he would be very earnest in his pleas with heaven. Some cry aloud who never say a word. It is the bell of the heart that rings loudest in heaven. Some read it, 'I will muse and murmur;' deep heart thoughts should be attended with inarticulate but vehement utterances of grief. Blessed be God, moaning is translatable in heaven. A father's heart reads a child's heart. And He shall hear my voice.' He is confident that he will prevail; he speaks as if already he were answered. When our window is opened towards heaven, the windows of heaven are open Have but a pleading heart and God will have a plenteous

to us. hand."

II. MISCELLANEOUS.

NASSAU SENIOR AND ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859. Edited by M. C. M. Simpson. Two Vols. London: Henry S. King and Co. 1872.

THE Journals kept in France and Italy, by Nassau William Senior, published a few months ago, are now followed by two interesting volumes of his Correspondence and Conversations with Alexis de Tocqueville. The friendship of which they are the memorial began singularly enough. One day, in the year 1833, while Mr. Senior was sitting at work in his chambers, a knock was heard at the door, and a young man entered, who announced himself in these words: Je suis Alexis de Tocqueville, et je viens faire votre connaissance. At that time Senior was the better known man of the two; for the work on America, which at once gave De Tocqueville reputation, had not yet appeared. But De Tocqueville's instinct in seeking Mr. Senior's acquaintance was a true one. They became firm friends, frequently visited each other, shared their intellectual pursuits, and together watched with keen intelligent interest the course of events from 1848, the annus mirabilis of modern Europe, to 1859, the year of De Tocqueville's premature death. It is sufficient that M. de Tocqueville's reputation should rest on his principal work, De la Démocratie en Amérique; but the volumes before us give no unworthy proof of his learning, eloquence, insight, and general capacity for the investigation of social and political questions. He was one of a class of Frenchmen to whom France, during the last thirty years at least, could not be a kindly mother. Belonging both by birth and by sentiment to the ancien régime, yet singularly free from a narrow spirit of class; a monarchist by the tradition of his family, and by personal conviction; a friend of order, yet full of contempt for the bourgeois theory that makes commercial prosperity the one measure of a nation's greatness; admiring the capacity of the lower orders, though deploring their ignorance, and the prevalence among them of false ideas; loving his country with chivalrous devotion, and ashamed of her moral and political bondage; how could he be otherwise than restless and unhappy in the France of Louis Philippe and Napoleon the Third? There are times of national misfortune in which the spirits of the best men are strung to the highest pitch for effort or for suffering, and these are by no means the worst periods of a nation's history; but when the sting of humiliation is added, when events are only tragic in their consequences, and run continually into burlesque in the character and conduct of the actors, then honourable VOL. XXXIX. NO. LXXVII.

Q

and sensitive men have a bitter time of it, and it may be, through sheer despondency, do less for their country than they might. De Tocqueville writes thus of the downfall of Louis Philippe :

"The great and real cause of the Revolution was the detestable spirit which animated the Government during this long reign; a spirit of trickery, of baseness, and of bribery, which has enervated and degraded the middle classes, destroyed their public spirit, and filled them with a selfishness so blind as to induce them to separate their interests entirely from those of the lower classes whence they sprang, which, consequently, have been abandoned to the counsels of men who, under pretence of serving the lower orders, have filled their heads with false ideas. This is the root of the matter, all the rest were accidents, strange and violent in themselves, I confess, but still insufficient to produce alone such an effect. Consider, on the one hand, the causes which I have pointed out, and, on the other, our system of centralisation, which makes the fate of France depend on a single blow struck in Paris, and you will have the explanation of the Revolution of 1848." Later on, he said in conversation with Mr. Senior: "Louis Philippe had so thoroughly corrupted the Chamber, that he had no parliamentary opposition to fear. He had so thoroughly corrupted the 200,000 electors, that he had nothing to fear from an electoral opposition. With his 200,000, or rather 400,000 places, all the middle classes, on whom his Government rested, were his tools. But, by abusing for these purposes the gigantic means conferred by our system of centralisation, he had rendered those middle classes, on whom his throne was built, unfit to sustain its weight. His monarchy was constructed with great skill and solidity, but its foundation was a quicksand. He made the middle classes objects of hatred and contempt, and the people trampled them and him under foot."

The evils of centralisation are often referred to by De Tocqueville, and the illustrations afforded by the history of the last few years will readily occur to the reader. It has not merely prevented the growth of an intelligent public opinion in the provinces-a thing which most French Governments have expressly desired-but, by withholding the means of practical training in municipal and national politics, has led to this result, that among the most quick-witted people in Europe there is, perhaps, a smaller proportion of men capable of taking part in the transaction of public affairs than in any other civilised country. The French love of organisation, and the curious aptitude for discipline, which is as indisputable as some opposite qualities more generally ascribed to them, form very hopeful elements of national character; but Government after Government has discouraged the true political education of the people, and so, to her own grievous loss, France has been denied the benefit of the national genius when it was needed in the highest department of national affairs. It is quite compatible with this state of things that offices under the Government are very much more numerous in

France than, for instance, in England. The excessive multiplication of public functionaries generally marks an undeveloped or abridged measure of public liberty. A trifling post under Government, or the prospect of getting one, goes a long way towards reconciling a man to the very scanty political rights which a paternal Government allows, and the free distribution of such offices has been found wonderfully effective in appeasing the public appetite for reforms, and converting previously independent members of the community into officials.

One important difference between French society and English is noticed:"We talked of the careers open in France to a gentleman. From many of those which naturally suggest themselves to us, he is almost excluded by the low estimation in which they are held. Such are the Church, the Bar, and Medicine. Unless under peculiar circumstances, a gentleman would not select one of these professions for his son. France has not the Indian and Colonial Empire, in which the cadets of the English aristocracy find place. None but the sons of men engaged in banking, trade, or manufactures follow these pursuits. The great outlet is public employment, military or civil." Concerning the French clergy generally De Tocqueville's testimony is favourable. "In general the priest is the son of a rich peasant; he is not a polished man, but has manners that do not offend, and considerable information. His worst fault is pride. His morals are always pure. A dissolute priest would be hunted out of the country; but whatever his personality, his profession entitles him to be treated as an equal. When you come to Tocqueville," he added, " you I will find the curé dining frequently with me, and once a year Madame de Tocqueville and I dine with him. The brother of the predecessor of the present curé was my servant; the curé has dined with me whilst his brother waited, and neither of them perceived in this the least inconvenance.” De Tocqueville's friend, M. Anisson, was less favourable in his estimate of the clergy. "He thinks very ill of their information, and not well, at least not universally well, of their morals. There are none whom he could invite to his house. He agrees with De Tocqueville as to the great increase of religious feeling since the revolution of 1789, and his experience is long." Leaving on one side the religious aspect of the question, Mr. Senior points out, in rather a striking manner, one of the evils resulting to a nation from having a celibate clergy. "Have you ever," I said, "considered the loss which the world would have sustained if the Protestant clergy were unmarried? A third, perhaps a half, of our most distinguished men in England and Scotland have been the sons of clergymen. A clergyman has almost always a family; he always gives them a liberal education; he has generally something beyond his life income, but not enough for his sons to live on. They uniformly refuse to be tradesmen, and are therefore forced into literature and the professions, and succeed in them better than any other class."

Nothing in these volumes is more interesting than De Tocqueville's

criticism of Napoleon the Third. The analysis of his character seems to us, on the whole, wonderfully accurate, and while he did not prophesy, many of his hypotheses respecting the future, now that we read them in the light of accomplished events, show him to have had real insight into the condition of France, and the nature of her chief public men. The following sentence was written at the very beginning of the Empire :-" What I fear is, that when this man feels the ground crumbling under him, he will try the resource of war. It will be a most dangerous experiment. Defeat, or even the alternation of success or failure, which is the ordinary course of war, would be fatal to him; but brilliant success might, as I have said before, establish him. It would be playing double or quits. He is by nature a gambler. His self-confidence, his reliance, not only on himself, but on his fortune, exceeds even that of his uncle. He believes himself to have a great military genius. He certainly planned war a year ago. I do not believe that he has abandoned it now, though the general feeling of the country forces him to suspend it. That feeling, however, he might overcome; he might so contrive as to appear to be forced into hostilities; and such is the intoxicating effect of military glory, that the government which would give us that would be pardoned, whatever were its defects or its crimes." We believe this estimate to have been very fully confirmed. The Crimean War and the Italian War were successful, and gave strength to his throne. The attempt in Mexico was a failure, and, though the extent of the failure was carefully concealed, the spell of success was broken, and the Emperor's prestige suffered accordingly. Then came the last great venture, when he played "double or quits," and the end of the Empire. It is not very pleasant for an English reader, though we think it may not be unwholesome for him, to know what was thought in France of the eager cordiality with which we accepted the Second Empire, and rushed into the arms of our new ally. The friends of political liberty in France could not understand the way in which the English people, so tenacious of their own liberty, could make a friend of one who suppressed the liberty of a neighbouring people. We think that the moral feeling of this country showed itself very lax with regard to the coup d'état. It succeeded, and the successful man promised fair to be a very useful kind of neighbour, and, the fact is, we shirked the question of right and wrong in a way not particularly creditable to a nation with a high standard of political virtue. "While he was useful to you," said De Tocqueville, "you steadily refused to admit that he was a tyrant, or even an usurper. You chose to disbelieve in the 3,000 men, women, and children massacred on the Boulevards of Paris; in the 20,000 poisoned by jungle fever in Cayenne; in the 25,000 who have died of malaria, exposure, and bad food, working in gangs on the roads and in the marshes of the Metidja and Lambressa." To this Mr. Senior replied that the English people were ignorant. "I knew all these facts, because I walked along the Boulevards on the 20th of December, 1851, and saw the