And the end thereof shall be with a flood; and to the end of the war desolations are determined.'

It is as impossible as it would be unwise, to conceal from ourselves the fact, that all the Continental nations look upon our present peace as but transitory, momentary; and on the Crimean war as but the prologue to a fearful drama-all the more fearful because none knows its purpose, its plot, which character will be assumed by any given actor, and, least of all, the dénouement of the whole. All that they feel and know is, that everything which has happened since 1848 has exasperated, not calmed, the electric tension of the European atmosphere; that a rottenness, rapidly growing intolerable alike to God and the enemies of God,' has eaten into the vitals of Continental life; that their rulers know neither where they are, nor whither they are going, and only pray that things may last out their time: all notes which one would interpret as proving the Continent to be already ripe for subjection to some one devouring race of conquerors, were there not a ray of hope in an expectation, even more painful to our human pity, which is held by some of the wisest among the Germans; namely, that the coming war will fast resolve into no struggle between bankrupt monarchs and their respective armies, but a war between nations themselves, an internecine war of opinions and of creeds. There are wise Germans now who prophesy, with sacred tears, a second 'thirty years' war' with all its frantic horrors, for their hapless country, which has found two centuries too short a time wherein to recover from the exhaustion of that first fearful scourge. Let us trust if that war shall beget its new Tillys and Wallensteins, it shall also beget its new Gustavus Adolphus, and many another child of Light: but let us not hope that we can stand by, in idle comfort, and that when

the overflowing scourge passes by, it shall not reach to us. Shame to us, were that our destiny. Shame to us, were we to refuse our share in the struggles of the human race, and to stand by in idle comfort, while the Lord's battles are being fought. Honour to us, if in that day, we have chosen for our leaders, as our forefathers of the sixteenth century did, men who see the work which God would have them do, and have hearts and heads to do it. Honour to us, if we spend this transient lull, as our forefathers of the sixteenth century did, in setting our house in order, in redressing every grievance, reforming every abuse, knitting the hearts of the British nation together by practical care and help between class and class, man and man, governor and governed, that we may bequeath to our children, as Henry the Eighth's men did to theirs, a British national life, so united and whole-hearted, so clear in purpose, and sturdy in execution, so trained to know the right side at the first glance, and take it, that they shall look back with love and honour upon us, their fathers, determined to carry out, even to the death, the method which we have bequeathed to them. Then,

if God will that the powers of evil, physical and spiritual, should combine against this land, as they did in the days of good Queen Bess, we shall not have lived in vain; for those who, as in Queen Bess's days, thought to yoke for their own use a labouring ox, will find, as then, that they have roused a lion from his den.

PLAYS AND PURITANS.*

THE

HE British isles have been ringing, for the last few years, with the word 'Art,' in its German sense, with High Art,' 'Symbolic Art,'' Ecclesiastical Art,' 'Dramatic Art,' 'Tragic Art,' and so forth; and every well-educated person is expected, now-a-days, to know something about Art. Meanwhile, in spite of all translations of German Esthetic' treatises, and 'Kunstnovellen,' the mass of the British people cares very little about the matter, and sits contented under the imputation of bad taste.' Our stage, long since dead, does not revive; our poetry is dying; our music, like our architecture, only reproduces the past; our painting is only good when it handles landscapes and animals, and seems likely so to remain : but, meanwhile, nobody cares.

* THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, No. XLIX.-1. 'Works of Beaumont and Fletcher.' London, 1679.-2. 'Works of Ben Jonson.' London, 1692.-3. 'Massinger's Plays.' Edited by William Gifford, Esq. London, 1813.-4. 'Works of John Webster.' Edited, &c., by Rev. Alexander Dyce. Pickering, London, 1830.5. Works of James Shirley. Edited by Rev. A. Dyce. Murray, 1833.-6. Works of T. Middleton.' Edited by the Rev. A. Dyce. Lumley, 1840.-7. 'Comedies,' &c. By Mr. William Cartwright. London, 1651.-8. 'Specimens of English Dramatic Poets.' By Charles Lamb. Longmans & Co., 1808.—9. 'Histriomastix.' By W. Prynne, Utter-Barrister of Lincoln's Inn. London, 1633.-10. 'Northbrooke's Treatise against Plays,' &c. (Shakspeare Soc.) 1843. -II. 'The Works of Bishop Hall.' Oxford, 1839.-12. Marston's Satires.' London, 1600.-13. 'Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Profaneness, &c., of the English Stage.' London, 1730.-14. 'Langbaine's English Dramatists.' Oxford, 1691.-15. Companion to the Playhouse.' London, 1764.-16. 'Riccoboni's Account of the Theatres in Europe.' 1741.

Some of the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question, in general, a ' sham and a snare,' and whisper to each other confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a 'bore,' and that Sir Christopher Wren was a very good fellow after all; while the middle classes look on the Art movement half amused, as with a pretty toy, half sulkily suspicious of Popery and Paganism; and think, apparently, that Art is very well when it means nothing, and is merely used to beautify drawing-rooms and shawl patterns; not to mention that, if there were no painters, Mr. Smith could not hand down to posterity likenesses of himself, Mrs. Smith, and family. But when 'Art' dares to be in earnest, and to mean something, much more to connect itself with religion, Smith's tone alters. He will teach Art' to keep in what he considers its place, and if it refuses, take the law of it, and put it into the Ecclesiastical Court. So he says, and what is more, he means what he says; and as all the world, from Hindostan to Canada, knows by most practical proof, what he means, he sooner or later does, perhaps not always in the wisest way, but still he does it.

Thus, in fact, the temper of the British nation toward Art,' is simply that of the old Puritans, softened, no doubt, and widened; but only enough so as to permit Art, not to encourage it.

Some men's thoughts on this curious fact would probably take the form of some æsthetic à priori disquisition, beginning with 'the tendency of the infinite to reveal itself in the finite,' and ending-who can tell where? But as we cannot honestly arrogate to ourselves any skill in the scientia scientiarum, or say, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before his works of old. When He prepared the

Heavens, I was there, when he set a compass upon the face of the deep; we shall leave æsthetic science to those who think that they comprehend it; we will, as simple disciples of Bacon, deal with facts and with history as the will of God revealed in facts.' We will leave those who choose to settle what ought to be, and ourselves look patiently at that which actually was once, and which may be again; that so out of the conduct of our old Puritan forefathers (right or wrong), and their long war against Art,' we may learn a wholesome lesson; as we doubtless shall, if we will believe firmly that our history is neither more nor less than what the old Hebrew prophets called God's gracious dealings with His people,' and not say in our hearts, like some sentimental girl who sings Jacobite ballads (written forty years ago by men who cared no more for the Stuarts than for the Ptolemies, and were ready to kiss the dust off George the Fourth's feet at his visit to Edinburgh)-Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa puellis.'

The historian of a time of change has always a difficult and invidious task. For Revolutions, in the great majority of cases, arise not merely from the crimes of a few great men, but from a general viciousness and decay of the whole, or the majority of the nation; and that viciousness is certain to be made up, in great part, of a loosening of domestic ties, of breaches of the Seventh Commandment, and of sins connected with them, which a writer is now hardly permitted to mention. An 'evil and adulterous generation' has been in all ages and countries the one marked out for intestine and internecine strife. That description is always applicable to a revolutionary generation, whether or not it also comes under the class of a superstitious one,