the upland towns were less exposed to the guns of English and French men-of-war than those upon the coast, and the authorized burglary at the house of the British Minister was almost balanced in enormity by the stoppage of the Laguna Seca Conducta. So soon, indeed, as the Liberal party found themselves in safety at the capital they became as indifferent to assassinations, and as palpably dishonest in money matters as their predecessors had been before. No doubt this state of matters was very unpleasant. England has heavy claims against Mexico, which a respectable people would satisfy at once; but the Mexicans are not respectable, and there was no hope that any motive short of a very urgent fear would induce them to pay the arrears of interest on the loans, to restore the money stolen from the Minister's house, and from the Conducta, and to "compensate" the families of Englishmen who had been killed. The temptation to intervene was very strong, and the clamour from the residents very loud; but before yielding to either temptation or clamour, it was the duty of the Government to consider whether it could intervene effectually, and, if so, whether an intervention would put England into a better or worse position on the

whole.

doubt that France is the one which holds out the more solid guarantees to the world and to the country itself. The interest of the United States is to encourage the exspoliation of the provinces which it is part of the liberal programme to effect to a certain extent. The policy of France is to support the Church, and, in compassing its own ends, it strengthens a faction which happens to be identified with the principle of centralisation. Federal and Centralist would in truth be better names than Liberal and Reactionist for the parties which are at present represented to the eyes of Europe by Juarez and Almonte; and if these names were given to them there would be more chance that Mexican politics would be seen to possess definite colour, and our own interests would be better understood than is at present the case. With the exception that the Liberals confiscate the property of the Church, and that the Reactionists ignore the confiscation, there is little other difference of aim between the two parties than that the former maintain and would enlarge the rights of the several provinces, while the latter would gather all authority into the hands of the Government at Mexico. Obviously everything which adds to the importance of the provincial Governors works to the detriment of the central power and to the disintegration of the State; the Northern Americans have, therefore, persistently upheld the Liberal party. Their only object is to prepare the country for absorption; and whether they intrigue to substitute one government for another, or whether they offer, in an embarrassed state of their own finances, to assume a further liability to assist the Mexicans, they act directly towards this end. Whatever, therefore, might be the ultimate beneficial effect of American interference in Mexico, however noble and however refined might be the civilization which would be in time imposed upon the degenerate inhabitants, the immediate results can only be greater confusion and more thorough retrogression. may be said that a French conquest also implies confusion and retrogression; but it does not imply them to the same degree. The commencement of American conquest must be postponed, that of French invasion is present: and there is so much greater affinity between the French and the Mexicans than between the latter and the Yankees, or even the Southerners, that the crisis would be shorter and less violent. The inability of the Anglo-Saxons to assimilate other races does not seem to be diminished by the change which their nature has undergone in America, as is witnessed by the existence side by side with them there of the French and Irish and German populations: a conquest, therefore, of Mexico from the North would probably mean displacement of the Indian and Spanish elements. The French, on the contrary, have no intention of holding the country permanently, and, even if circumstances compelled them to do so, could mix easily with a cognate race, which is already prepared for their reception by the knowledge which it possesses of their civilization. Although the commerce of Mexico is chiefly with England, it is the language of France which is studied, it is French literature which is read, and through a French medium are received whatever ideas respecting Europe have

Apparently they had come to a negative conclusion, for insults and injuries enough to justify a dozen interventions were patiently submitted to; and apparently it has recurred to this belief, since it has grasped with ill-concealed joy the excuse for withdrawal which was presented by the development of the intentions of the French; but it was carried away by passion or gained over by blandishment for a long enough time to make this country appear very ridiculous, and to put it into a very false position. It was not consistent with our dignity to contribute so small a portion of the forces to be employed that we should have been eclipsed by a second-rate power, had the joint expedition been continued; and as the objects which we proposed to attain did not justify the despatch of an army, we ought simply to have refrained altogether from moving. We should have been positively humiliated if a march into the interior had been found necessary to secure the legitimate ends for which the treaty was concluded between England and France and Spain. The nation, however, is so glad to have escaped from the possible consequences of the ministerial blunder that it is only too ready to condone the errors which have been committed; and it must in frankness be allowed that Lord Russell has behaved with considerable tact from the moment that he began to retrace his steps. It is now better worth while to consider what will be the effects of the unsupported and uncontrolled intervention of France. If Mexico is to be regenerated at all it is impossible to deny that French assistance is the means which offers the best hope of success. It is idle to expect that either of the two parties which have so long contended for power in that country will be able to keep so permanent a mastery over the other, as to attract the wealthy and respectable classes to its support by establishing an abiding régime of order and lawfulness. On the other hand, of the two nations, the interference of which would be the least resented, there can be no

tics, it has been truly said, transformed simple believers into doctors. Persecutions by heathens and Arians brought out the powers of government possessed by great rulers of the Church; insomuch that even Gibbon remarks of S. Athanasius, that he "displayed a superiority of character and abilities, which would have qualified him, far better than the degenerate sons of Constantine, for the government of a great monarchy." The qualities displayed by the Primate of Egypt were again and again manifested, on a less extensive scale, by bishops in Germany and in France during the Middle Ages: and happily the time has now gone by in which it was necessary to plead for these statesmen-bishops against the charges of ambition or undue intermeddling with concerns that did not belong to them. Readers of the works of M. Guizot or Sir Francis Palgrave and other like-minded historians must be well aware that secular offices of trust were in those ages imposed upon ecclesiastics, simply because there was no one else fit to undertake them. For a defence of the position of the medieval Clergy, in brief space, we would refer the reader to an article on Michelet's History of France in the Edinburgh Review (we think it was the number for January, 1845), or to its reprint in the collected essays of its author Mr. John Stuart Mill. Possibly the case on behalf of the Church, as contrasted with the State, may be overstated in that article; yet, strange as it is to look for enlightenment in such a quarter, we must avow that Mr. Mill's view of the medieval Church seems to us more fair, more philosophic and profound, than that of the Dean of Chichester, which has not long since been so ably criticised in the columns of the Guardian. In those ages the meaning of the terms beau-clerc, clerkly skill, legit ut clericus, indicate a great deal. They show where learning resided, and, as a consequence, authority and influence.

But prosperity may be too great. In many countries the Church became more rich and powerful than was at all conducive to its best and highest welfare. Take Scotland, for example, where at least one-third (some say one-half) of the land had become the property of the Church. There is indeed no nobler specimen of the statesman-ecclesiastic than that of Archbishop Kennedy of St. Andrews, in the first half of the fifteenth century, under James III. But in the far different character of Cardinal Beaton, we recognize the dangerous declension to which such positions render the ecclesiastical profession

but too liable.

Then came the tremendous, the deeply-needed, shock of the Reformation. What is the language of the latest work that discusses this topic from a Roman Catholic point of view? "In the beginning of the sixteenth century," writes Dr. Döllinger, there was spread far and wide in Germany a strong repugnance against the Popedom as it was then; and no unrightful indignation with reference to abuses in the Church, and the moral depravity of a much too numerous and far too wealthy clergy."*

The immense benefit which accrued to the Roman clergy, the improvement of their character resulting from the Reformation, has been alluded to by even Presbyterian historians like Dr. Robertson. And unquestionably the struggle won to the study of theology on both sides some of the most commanding intellects of the day. What was the stature of such a man as Loyola may be partly gathered from the writings even of Sir James Stephen and of the Nonconformist Mr. Isaac Taylor. What the powers of Martin Luther, may be imagined from the description of the Roman Catholic theologian just cited. Dr. Döllinger terms Luther "the mightest democrat and most popular character that Germany has ever possessed-the greatest of his age-the centre of a new circle of ideas, the most condensed expression of that religious and ethical mode of thought peculiar to the German mind, and from whose mighty influence even those who resisted it could not wholly withdraw themselves." +

We pass per saltum to the latter half of the eighteenth century. On both sides, in continental Europe, zeal has

* The Church and the Churches, (Eng. Trans.) p. 26.
↑ Ibid, pp. 26 and 267.

waxed fainter. Lutherans and Calvinists have lost their first warmth. The Roman Catholic prince-bishops of the empire are fast sinking again into mere secular lords. The different branches of the house of Bourbon have entered into a family compact to crush the Jesuits, in a manner that calls forth the sternest reprobation from the pen of the Ultra-Protestant historian Sismondi. In England such minds as those of Hooker, Andrewes, Pearson, intellectually among the first of their time, have almost ceased to be found among the clergy. The numbers of the priesthood are not enlarged to keep pace with the increase of the population there is no sufficient sub-division of parishes; the social status of the Clergy is in some parts of the country much too low, and is, perhaps, tending downwards everywhere.

Another mighty shock is impending. It is not unfrequently asserted that the French clergy must have been sunk in sloth and depravity before the outburst of the great Revolution of 1789. Such is probably the impression which would be left by the work of Mr. Carlyle; and his somewhat servile follower, Mr. Dickens, likewise intimates it in his powerful Tale of Two Cities. But such a view will not, we believe, bear the slightest examination. Mr. Carlyle, in his French Revolution, deliberately omits all notice of the terrible massacre at the Carmes. The tale of the heroism there displayed might interfere with the lessons which it is his desire to inculcate. Doubtless there were among the higher clergy some execrably bad specimens of their order, such as the Cardinal de Rohan of diamond-necklace celebrity; nor is it probable that the average of the curés was what it had been even in the earlier part of the century. The fairest view of the French clergy before the overthrow of the Gallican Establishment is probably that given by Count Louis de Carné in his Etudes sur le Gouvernement Représentatif en France. Without thinking badly of their personal character, M. de Carné (though an earnest Roman Catholic) condemns with just severity their applause of Louis XIV. in his persecutions of the Huguenots; their endurance without a murmur of the consecration of the infamous Dubois as successor to Fenelon; their silence during the wickednesses of the reign of Louis XV; their lack of charity and wisdom, and above all, their allowing the sacred lamp of knowledge-one of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit-to pass into the hands of their enemies.

But our business is with ourselves. We have dwelt thus long upon the faults of others, partly by way of warning, partly by way of encouragement. Noble as was the manner in which Bishop Horsley, and even the Baptist Robert Hall, spoke and acted with reference to the suffering French clergy, it is highly probable that the spectacle of such an overthrow was calculated to do good to our own Clergy. The war, which increased the value of land, seems to have raised the social position of rural pastors in England, and the Evangelical movement, though deficient in anything like scientific theology, did great things in respect of earnestness and devotion to the proper work of the Clergy. Then arose a spirit of profounder thought and deeper study, and in nothing was the so-called Tractarian movement more successful than in the manner in which it persuaded men of the most varied gifts and temperaments to give up the secular professions they were about to enter, and take upon them the service of Christ's ministry. Here was a young aspirant for the bar, whose ingenuity and eloquence might have achieved much forensic success; there an Anglo-Indian with his lucrative appointments; and in another place one whose fortune and position seemed to mark him out for a county-member. All alike were resigning their worldly prospects and seeking the cure of souls. The years between 1830 and 1845 mark a brilliant period of Anglican Ordinations.

But there went away from us-let us frankly look it in the face-some of the most powerful among those who had led, or shared, in this wonderful uprising. Those whose yearning for abstract authority was more ardent than their love for primitive antiquity departed from the Church of England; distrust followed, fainter hopes, less ardent zeal.

The Broad-church movement has not supplied the voidwe find it hard to believe that it can have won us recruits for the priesthood either many in number or great in value. Let us briefly consider what we have at present to deplore; its causes and its possible remedies.

Firstly, then, we are wanting in numbers. Of course, as we have seen, it is possible for a clergy to be too numerous. This is not in all countries a mere danger of the past. Dr. Döllinger's work, from which we have already borrowed some remarks, might almost be called the "Black Book of the Churches;" so ruthless and (we must add) so one-sided, in some cases, is its treatment of the de facto condition of almost every Christian community. He complains that in the Papal States "an immense multitude of idle ecclesiastics were to be seen wasting their days in coffee-houses, and loitering in the street, passing their time in an unpriestly manner, so that a reverence for the entire order had very much diminished among the population.' But we in England have no such danger. The open competition now instituted for appointments in India, in the army, and in the civil service, are a great attraction to parents. The fresh sources of distrust awakened by the publication of Essays and Reviews also tend to keep back some who might have proved to be valuable labourers. Nor is it quantity alone that is lacking; the social and intellectual standard is likewise being lowered. The wretchedly poor endowments of the new districts, so justly called "starvings" instead of "livings," have greatly diminished the average number of incumbencies. At this moment the average stipend of each English incumbent (even counting in the bishops and archbishops) is very decidedly below that enjoyed by each of the incumbents in the Presbyterian Establishment in Scotland. Such facts tend to change the class from which the staple of the ministry is drawn. As human nature goes, low reward will, as a rule, have this effect. We have no right to expect that England should herein manifest any striking discrepancy from the results which have followed from the poverty of stipends in Roman Catholic France and in Calvinistic Scotland. There will now be a larger infusion of humbly-born and less highly-educated Clergy.

This last circumstance is not in itself an evil to be compared with lack of numbers. It may be that we have had too much leaning to the gentleman heresy, too much tendency to hold that a priest must be "a gentleman born," which Sir E. B. Lytton stigmatizes as "both an upstart and an insular opinion." And though the desire for intellect in the service of the ministry is more pardonable, yet even here there may lurk danger of unconsciously trusting to the arm of flesh. The two greatest geniuses of the Ante-Nicene Church, Origen and Tertullian, are the two whose aberrations have deprived their names of the honoured prefix of "saint." The powerful and versatile intellect of Abelard had far better have remained among the laity. How easily this list might be extended may be seen, alas! by a momentary glance at the pages of any Church history. It is far more serious to hear the complaint that our newly-ordained clergy dislike curacies where there are frequent services and celebrations of Holy Communion.

Modern Warfare.

ERY few years ago it was the common belief that war on a large scale had become improbable, and before long would become, under the altered state of society, impossible. The school of modern materialists, in deference to their own abstract theories, and in defiance of the conditions of humanity, went so far as to declare that the love itself of war was on the decline. The capitalist and the manufacturer predicted an universal free trade, and a large part of England, deceived if not enervated by their "forty years of rest," worshipped in the creation of the first crystal palace the symbol of a worldwide peace.

The deadly struggle in the Crimea was the first interruption to these dreams; but before the last echoes of that crash of their hopes and fancies had died away, the sounds. of war were taken up on the plains of Lombardy, and the ancient conflict of the Latin and Teuton races was illustrated by battalions as powerful, and battle-scenes as bloody, as some of those which had inaugurated the first French Empire. But it did not end here; for, as though the spirit of carnage had been unchained, the war, which was barely suppressed amongst ourselves, abandoning its old haunts, has stalked forth, in more grim and colossal proportions, into a new land, which by some was fondly imagined to be the home of industry and peace, and where neither army nor navy, nor even the elements of modern war, were supposed to exist. Past military transactions seem dwarfed by the numbers of the combatants and the vastness of the empire for which they contend. Yet perhaps it may be questioned whether there is actually as great a difference either in the scale or in the conduct between the present and past wars as many are inclined to think. The vivid contrast in the United States now and formerly, in their present agonies of dismemberment and their former insolence of power, the unnatural character of the contest, the passions which it kindles, and the picturesque accounts of its incidents that we receive, awaken an interest which possibly leads us to overrate its magnitude. But vast as are the numbers which the spirit of democratic ambition has evoked for the forcible maintenance of the "Union," they fall far short of the 1,200,000 men whom the first Napoleon had under arms in the seventh year of an European contest; large as has been the issue of inconvertible paper for military purposes, it is not as yet equal to the prodigious flood of "assignats" on which for two or three years, instead of a few months as in America, the half-starved and half-clothed armies of France were led abroad to an almost universal conquest; large as may have been the loss of life in some recent engagements in America, or as it undoubtedly was at Solferino and Magenta, the numbers pale before those ot the Revolutionary war. At Aspern, after two days' conflict, from 20,000 to 30,000, at Wagram 25,000, at the Borodino 50,000, at Leipsic, after three days' struggle, from 60,000 to 40,000 men fell fighting on either side.

Nor need the comparison end here. It might be pursued further, and to a singular conclusion. For first, the very circumstances which, it was predicted, would render future wars impossible have in reality tended to facilitate their operations; and secondly, by some strange fatality in the ever-turning wheel of human knowledge, there would seem to be a recurrence in the art of war to the earlier, perhaps the earliest, principles on which it was conducted. In the earthworks of Sebastopol, and the earthen fortifications recommended by Mr. Fergusson for the defence of Portsmouth, military science seems to run back the course of centuries, whilst in the huge cannon-balls, the heavy charges of powder, and Sir W. Armstrong's 300-pounders, we almost seem to revert to the marble-shot at the Dardanelles, which nearly sunk Sir J. Duckworth in the Britannia in 1812, or the huge ordnance of the 15th century, which the curious antiquarianism of our day has preserved.

In the very position which a fortress ought to occupy the modern has succumbed to the earlier theory. It was supposed that under the influence of improved gunnery the low and level range of a sea battery, à fleur d'eau, had superseded the forts which, like Dover Castle, or the picturesque strongholds of the Rhine, used to crown every rocky and inaccessible eminence; but the recent engagement near Richmond has once again vindicated the deadly superiority of a vertical fire. Even the proposed forts at Portsmouth have been recommended on this- and it must be added almost exclusively on this-ground. But by sea the analogy is yet closer. The screw and the paddle have made the modern war-steamer as independent of wind and tide as was the ancient trireme, and the manœuvres of a Thucydidean sea-fight, where ship wheeled around ship in order to find out a vulnerable point of attack, were some weeks since repeated on the waters of the Mississippi. By a not less curious coincidence the minie rifle, whilst it reproduced an accuracy of aim which had become unknown since the days of archery, was universally believed to have destroyed the use of armour, already rendered obsolete by the previous advances in the art of war. Yet within the last twelve months the protection of armour, though transferred from the individual to the thing, has been revived to an extent of which we never dreamed. More than this, an armour-plated penthouse was lately reported to exist in the Federal camp, which, resembling the testudo of classical times, or the moveable towers which Josephus has made familiar to us in the siege of Jerusalem, can be driven up to the very walls of a beleaguered fortress; whilst by sea, rams and iron-beaks and massive combinations of wood and metal, the very type of Rome's naval architecture in her struggle with Carthage, and the cause of her successes-once more form the prominent feature of maritime warfare. Even the Greek fire of the Lower Empire, and the subtle powers of mediæval science, seem to revive in the boulets asphyxiants, the liquid gases, and the chemical combinations which the destructive ingenuity of man is continually bringing to light. It is worth noting how every branch of study is ransacked, every elemental force, from the electric fluid which explodes the torpedo, to the balloon which makes a reconnaissance in mid-air, is pressed into the service of military science; but the secrets of nature are not yet explored, and it may well be that we are touching upon an issue, at once horrible and ludicrous, where a few cubic inches of gas may submerge a fleet or annihilate an army.

How far, indeed, the analogy of modern and earlier warfare can be traced in the spirit which now governs the belligerent parties in North America, is a painful but not an irrelevant question. The brutality of a General Butler, or the deadly hatred which proposes to confiscate property or to kindle a servile war, which destroys an unoffending commerce, and brings "a silent blight" upon the cities of the South, rises to a height of deliberate ferocity which is worthy of the worst pages of Roman history. Fortunately, however, for the dignity and the interests of humanity, it is not unfair to believe that the American character is too far distorted from our own to hold up to us, in these things at least, a faithful mirror of our imperfections.

Mr. Buckle, whose early death is announced even whilst we write, and whom we may lament as an opponent whose antagonism in every field of thought, if it was irreconcilable, was open and undissembled, whilst labouring to prove a decrease in war and in the love of war, enumerates as the three moving causes in that direction, the discovery of gunpowder, steam communication, and a more extended acquaintance with the principles of political economy. But to those who have no preconceived theory to establish it will probably appear, on a calm review of existing facts, that whilst the last of these three influences is wholly powerless to restrain the violence of men, the two former have tended to increase rather than to diminish the facilities, and consequently the destructive powers, of war. The impartial reasonings of self-interest and the un

questioned doctrines of political economy have melted like a snow-wreath under the hot passions which the lust of empire and the love of independence have kindled in America, whilst the transport of troops and the operations of a vast campaign have absolutely depended upon the efficiency of steam communication by sea and land. Nor need the battles of modern Europe shrink from a comparison of their blood-stained honours with the conflicts of earlier times when gunpowder was unknown or unused. Here and there a battle of Chalons or of Tours may stand pre-eminent in carnage, but we can recall within the last 500 years few campaigns so bloody as that of Russia in 1812, which sacrificed 550,000 of the invaders, and no war so costly to human life as that of the Revolution, which decimated the population of France, and left its physical mark upon the existing generation by an actual diminution in the standard of height. Were it indeed desirable to pursue this argument, it should be borne in mind that those who fall in battle are but a fraction of the total number of victims that war in present or in past times has claimed.

It is not then without deep anxiety for the future destinies of this country that we see the conditions of war changing on every side of us, and the laws of attack and defence become wholly indefinite. We are too deeply interested in all that contributes to maintain or impair the defensibility of our insular position to be indifferent to so vital a question. It is, however, some consolation to Englishmen to observe that to whatever extent, and with whatever important results, mechanical agencies are applied to the art of modern war, the issue must still mainly be decided by the individual men engaged. As yet no royal road to military success has been discovered, and no science or mechanical invention are a substitute for courage, strength, and moral vigour. In the Italian campaign of Solferino and Magenta the "arms of precision," and the fear of being picked off at a distance, drove both parties to close with each other, and to decide the day by bayonetthrust and by a hand-to-hand struggle as fierce and unscientific as any in the days of "brown Bess;" whilst in America it is clear, even through the cloud of Northern exaggeration and bombast, that the ill-armed levies of the South have gained or disputed each victory by the desperate courage and personal gallantry of their men. It is true that we are passing through a revolution of opinion as regards the practice and art of war, and that time alone can solve many questions in which is involved the security of the Empire. How far, indeed, the means of attack and defence may predominate the one over the other, how far the gigantic expense of modern armaments can be reconciled with the solvency of the nations concerned, or will tend to absorb war itself, these and such-like are questions which we dare not answer, when we have seen within the last few months the public mind vibrate between the extremities of contradictory opinions at each fresh touch of American intelligence from the theatre of war. But so long as Englishmen retain the physical and moral organization of their forefathers, and are true to the traditions of their race and history, they have a buckler which is proof against every mechanical or scientific device. For Science owes its being to Man, and not Man to Science, and therefore Man will still be the lord of his own creation.

The Way of Unity.

T is clear that there has arisen of late years in many quarters, and in many sections of the Church, a longing after the restoration of Unity. Several of the plans proposed for this object are not such as can lead to its accomplishment. And yet their existence testifies to the fact, and proves the extent of this desire. Nor is this all: we know by experience that it is according to the analogy of God's dealings with mankind, that when the time approaches for any great step