t is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may
be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel
of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend
_Literature and Dogma_ and _God and the Bible_ to a friend; but,
however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now
free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its
price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of
Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken
by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter,
continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys
nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down.
Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one
another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists,
though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of _Lux
Mundi_ does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes
upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of
Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively
individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of
each man to secure his own salvation.

But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a
brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the
biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of
Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have
entered.

DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER

The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular
person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book,
_Disraeli and His Day_, did not succeed in attracting much of the
notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been
made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well
informed.

I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable.
Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist,
humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is
grist for your mill. It feeds the mind.

Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories,
incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect.
To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher
criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing;
it is clever and somewhat cont