We do not need to inform the reader, that conventual establishments
are not now so thin-sown in England as they were a few years ago, or
that they occasionally draw into their circle individuals who started
in life with very different prospects before them. The whole subject
is one worthy of some inquiry, as a feature of our social state, by no
means devoid of political importance; and it is for this very reason
that we draw attention to the subject. Instead of contemptuously
ignoring such things, let them, we say, be made known and investigated
in a calm and philosophical spirit. It is for want of a steady
comprehension of facts of the kind here adverted to, that an illusion
is kept up respecting our existing social condition. It is heedlessly
said, and every one repeats the error, that the age is a hard,
mechanical one, which shines only in splendid materialities; but is it
compatible with this notion, that there is ten times more earnest
religious feeling of one kind and another than there was thirty years
ago; that antiquities, mediaeval literature and architecture, are
studied with a zeal hitherto unknown; and that such mystical writers
as Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning, carry off the palm from all the
calm-blooded old-school men of letters? We rather think it is the most
romantic, supra-material age that has yet been seen. The resurrection
of conventual life, in some instances Catholic, in others Protestant,
appears to us as one of the facts of this unexpected reaction, which
doubtless will run its course, and then give place to something else,
though not, we trust, till out of its commixture of good and evil some
novelty hopeful for humanity has sprung.

THE LATE EMPEROR OF CHINA.

The announcement of a work by the late Dr Gutzlaff, entitled the _Life
of Taou-Kwang, late Emperor of China, with Memoirs of the Court of
Peking_,[1] excited a good deal of expectation; but for our own part,
now that the book is published, we must confess our disappointment on
finding it not a well-constructed memoir, but a volume bearing the
appearance of a collection of materials put together just as they came
to hand, with a view to re-arrangement. Declining health probably
prevented the author from perfecting his plan, and hurried his pages
to the press; death has now removed him from his labours. But a
collection of authentic historic facts is valuable, however loosely
embodied; and few writers have enjoyed such favourab