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practically decided the question, whether Christianity or Mahometanism, whether Protestantism or Romanism, should be the religion of France at critical periods in its history. That the bulk of the population of Europe has voted in favour of the truth of Christianity is perfectly true; that their vote has proceeded upon any real knowledge of the subject, that it could not and would not be revoked if an instructed minority voted the other way, appears to us at least entirely false. Is it then the case that the historical truth of the history of Jesus Christ has been so generally affirmed by the instructed minority capable of forming a real judgment upon the subject, that the matter ought to be regarded as res judicata? A person who affirms that it has must either be ignorant or impudent ignorant if he has never even heard of the writings of the many German, French, and English authors who have taken the negative side of the question; impudent if he affirms that their opinion is founded upon corrupt motives, or is professed in bad faith. The ignorance, moreover, must go far beyond want of acquaintance with specific books; it must include ignorance of methods and tendencies as well as of results.

Every one who is in any degree acquainted with the history of speculation ought to know that till physical science had taught people what the accurate and precise investigation of facts really meant, facts, and in particular historical facts, were investigated with extreme looseness and clumsiness. The only case in which even an attempt was made to attain anything like precision was the case of trials in courts of law, where it was always necessary to handle, to some extent, the problem, How can we ascertain whether or not this is true? A good history of the legal

method of investigation and of the rules of evidence which prevailed in different parts of Europe, would form one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the efforts of men to arrive at truth. It would set almost in a pathetic light their conscious inability to deal with the standing difficulties of the subject. Beginning with ordeals, trials by combat, and a superstitious belief (which even now is not quite exploded) in the intrinsic and almost mechanical value, so to speak, of oaths, courts of law have, by slow and intricate paths, arrived at last, at least in this country, at a method of which it may be said, with a good deal of justice, that it is founded on a really scientific conception of the nature of proof, and completed by practical rules of much sagacity for arriving at it, but the path itself has been wonderful. To appreciate our English rules of evidence as they were not very many years ago, it is enough to read Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence-a hideous monument of exploded nonsense. The continental rules in old times, with their silly refinements about plena and semiplena probatio, about adminicula, about the number of witnesses required to prove particular facts, and other matters of the same sort, were not less absurd. The use of torture showed

some common

sense in particular instances, but there is a distinction upon the subject which is often overlooked, though it is well illustrated by the practice of the French, who still employ torture for the extraction of evidence, often with highly satisfactory results, but often also with no result at all, and often with a wrong one. So long as solitary confinement, varied by constant interrogation by a juge d'instruction, is used merely for the purpose of forcing the suspected person to state facts capable of independent verification, it is exceedingly useful;

when it is used merely to drive him into a confession which cannot be verified, it is idle. The question whether its utility is upon the whole counterbalanced by its cruelty is foreign to our present purpose. Be all this how it may, the slow and gradual character of such advances as have been made in the judicial investigation of matters of fact, sufficiently proves how difficult it is to investigate matters of fact, and how many considerations must be taken into account before a just conclusion can be reached respecting them. This is particularly true of matters of history. The more we learn, the more we are able to appreciate the enormous difficulty of correctly inferring what really occurred upon a given occasion from the accounts given in books. When a person goes up a mountain for the first time, he thinks that the highest point he can see must be the top. When he arrives there he finds that it is a mere knob, just high enough to prevent a person immediately under it from seeing any higher, and surmounted in its turn by scores of other horizons. The continual raising and continual disappointment of hopes of this sort is one of the great elements of fatigue in climbing mountains. It is just so in history. In a simple age, the fact that something is stated as true in a standard bookfor instance, in Livy or Thucydides is regarded as conclusive. Yet, as time goes on, as the art of writing books and the importance of obtain

ing first-hand evidence of the transactions related in them come to be better understood, the impossibility of disposing of history in this summary way is continually made plainer and plainer. Our standard as to historical evidence rises not because men are becoming fastidious or impracticable, but because they are learning by degrees to see what very complicated things historical facts and the evidence upon which their credibility depends really are. Our ancestors would have been just as exacting and fastidious if they had been equally well informed. For these reasons we cannot regard the question of the historical truth of the facts stated in the Apostles' Creed as having been decided by the investigations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The real decision must proceed from the full and free application to the subject of the most approved methods of modern historical investigation. To suppose that anything less than this will settle the question finally, or that this will settle it finally if succeeding generations improve their methods of investigation or discover new evidence, is the same absurdity as to suppose that there is no use in looking at the moon or at the planets through Lord Rosse's telescope, because Galileo and Newton looked at them to good purpose through simpler instruments, or that there never will be any use in looking at them hereafter in any better telescope than Lord Rosse's.

M.

A THIRD IRISH TOURIST.

DE MONTALEMBERT, in his account of a debate on India in the British Parliament,' said he was in the habit of coming over to England, every now and then, to take a bain de vie, to give a fillip to his mind by plunging into the freer medium which he found on our side of the Channel. I, in like manner (to compare a small man with a great one), go to Ireland, as often as I can, to get a bain de foi, to freshen up my belief in those characteristics wherein man differs from ant, bee, and beaver, and other very intelligent but not very lovable creatures. An instance will show what I mean: this summer I was in the south-west of Donegal, waiting for remittances;' the hotel was an excellent one, but I was seized with a passion for economy, so, quartering my two boys on a friend-made in the rapid way in which one makes friends in hospitable Donegal-I took my knapsack, and went up the country. After three days' 'footing it' through heather, and bog, and mountain roads, I thought I had earned a right to a post-car. So at Pettigoe I wish I could tell you the real word of which this is clearly a corruption, as Killygordon is of Cailhe gurthain, the hill of the parsnips,' ---I hired one to Lahy, on the road to Donegal town. My driver was a grim old fellow, out of whom every word had to be pumped. He had seen that all the good I did Flood's Hotel, in the way of consuming victual, was to empty a bottle of porter; he had heard me beat down Mrs. Flood about the price of the car; besides, it was a driving rain, and the jibbing horse evidently thought he had done his day's work before starting with me. However, we got on well enough. Behind us there were beautiful peeps of Lough Erne, on whose islands the sun was

shining; and the rain around us suited the dreary country in front. We talked about Belleek potteries, which everybody says pay well, though I was grieved to find at Killybegs a Padstow brig which had just discharged at Belleek a cargo of Devonshire clay-has not the kaolin been found in Wicklow? We talked about the Lough Erne steamer, which does not pay (said my driver) 'since they've had the railroad, which 'll take the people now without the fear that they'll be drownded.' We talked about farming-most of the farms hereabouts are large, proportioned to the size of the vast Leslie property. 'How did you fare in the famine time?' Oh, they were all strong farmers about here, and didn't feel it as they did in some places. It was easy to get the meal up, too, from Ballyshannon.' And you, yourself?' 'I was well enough off in those days.' I could not ask him what had made the change: the subject was evidently a sore one. Of course I shared with him what little whiskey

and water-was in my flask: it would have done Father Mathew's heart good to see how sparingly he took just a drain against this coarse weather.' And then, hoping I'd not feel it unpleasant if he smoked, he lit his pipe. I think I said something about keeping him company if I'd not left mine behind me: so, after a while, he took the pipe from his lips, wiped it on his cuff, polished it on his sleeve, and shyly asked, May be, if I might make so bold, you'd not object to a smoke out of this, sir? I thanked him, and began puffing away at the strongest stuff it has ever been my lot to taste. At last we got to Lahy, whence I was to walk into Donegal; so giving my friend half a glass '--he would not

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when it is used merely to drive him into a confession which cannot be verified, it is idle. The question whether its utility is upon the whole counterbalanced by its cruelty is foreign to our present purpose. Be all this how it may, the slow and gradual character of such advances as have been made in the judicial investigation of matters of fact, sufficiently proves how difficult it is to investigate matters of fact, and how many considerations must be taken into account before a just conclusion can be reached respecting them. This is particularly true of matters of history. The more we learn, the more we are able to appreciate the enormous difficulty of correctly inferring what really occurred upon a given occasion from the accounts given in books. When a person goes up a mountain for the first time, he thinks that the highest point he can see must be the top. When he arrives there he finds that it is a mere knob, just high enough to prevent a person immediately under it from seeing any higher, and surmounted in its turn by scores of other horizons. The continual raising and continual disappointment of hopes of this sort is one of the great clements of fatigue in climbing mountains. It is just so in history. In a simple age, the fact that something is stated as true in a standard bookfor instance, in Livy or Thucydides --is regarded as conclusive. Yet, as time goes on, as the art of writing books and the importance of obtain

ing first-hand evidence of the transactions related in them come to be better understood, the impossibility of disposing of history in this summary way is continually made plainer and plainer. Our standard as to historical evidence rises not because men are becoming fastidious or impracticable, but because they are learning by degrees to see what very complicated things historical facts and the evidence upon which their credibility depends really are. Our ancestors would have been just as exacting and fastidious if they had been equally well informed. For these reasons we cannot regard the question of the historical truth of the facts stated in the Apostles' Creed as having been decided by the investigations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The real decision must proceed from the full and free application to the subject of the most approved methods of modern historical investigation. To suppose that anything less than this will settle the question finally, or that this will settle it finally if succeeding generations improve their methods of investigation or discover new evidence, is the same absurdity as to suppose that there is no use in looking at the moon or at the planets through Lord Rosse's telescope, because Galileo and Newton looked at them to good purpose through simpler instruments, or that there never will be any use in looking at them hereafter in any better telescope than Lord Rosse's.

A THIRD IRISH TOURIST.

M. his account of a debate on suited the dreary country in front.

DE MONTALEMBERT, in shining; and the rain around us

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India in the British Parliament,' said he was in the habit of coming over to England, every now and then, to take a bain de vie, to give a fillip to his mind by plunging into the freer medium which he found on our side of the Channel. I, in like manner (to compare a small man with a great one), go to Ireland, as often as I can, to get a bain de foi, to freshen up my belief in those characteristics wherein man differs from ant, bee, and beaver, and other very intelligent but not very lovable creatures. An instance will show what I mean: this summer I was in the south-west of Donegal, waiting for remittances;' the hotel was an excellent one, but I was seized with a passion for economy, so, quartering my two boys on a friend-made in the rapid way in which one makes friends in hospitable Donegal-I took my knapsack, and went up the country. After three days' 'footing it' through heather, and bog, and mountain roads, I thought I had earned a right to a post-car. So at Pettigoe I wish I could tell you the real word of which this is clearly a corruption, as Killygordon is of Cailhe gurthain, the hill of the parsnips,' ---I hired one to Lahy, on the road to Donegal town. My driver was a grim old fellow, out of whom every word had to be pumped. He had seen that all the good I did Flood's Hotel, in the way of consuming victual, was to empty a bottle of porter; he had heard me beat down Mrs. Flood about the price of the car; besides, it was a driving rain, and the jibbing horse evidently thought he had done his day's work before starting with me. However, we got on well enough. Behind us there were beautiful peeps of Lough Erne, on whose islands the sun was

We talked about Belleek potteries, which everybody says pay well, though I was grieved to find at Killybegs a Padstow brig which had just discharged at Belleek a cargo of Devonshire clay-has not the kaolin been found in Wicklow? We talked about the Lough Erne steamer, which does not pay (said my driver) 'since they've had the railroad, which 'll take the people now without the fear that they'll be drownded.' We talked about farming-most of the farms hereabouts are large, proportioned to the size of the vast Leslie property. 'How did you fare in the famine time?' Oh, they were all strong farmers about here, and didn't feel it as they did in some places. It was easy to get the meal up, too, from Ballyshannon.' And you, yourself?' 'I was well enough off in those days.' I could not ask him what had made the change: the subject was evidently a sore one. Of course I shared with him what little whiskey

and water-was in my flask: it would have done Father Mathew's heart good to see how sparingly he took just a drain against this coarse weather.' And then, hoping I'd not feel it unpleasant if he smoked, he lit his pipe. I think I said something about keeping him company if I'd not left mine behind me: so, after a while, he took the pipe from his lips, wiped it on his cuff, polished it on his sleeve, and shyly asked, May be, if I might make so bold, you'd not object to a smoke out of this, sir?" I thanked him, and began puffing away at the strongest stuff it has ever been my lot to taste. At last we got to Lahy, whence I was to walk into Donegal; so giving my friend half a glass '-he would not

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