lves
exclusively to single branches, which, when mastered,
form but a little section in a cosmic philosophy; and in
life, so slow is progress, it may take a thousand years
to make good a single step. Weary and tedious enough
it seems when we cease to speak in large language, and
remember the numbers of individual souls who have
been at work at it; but who knows whereabouts we
are in the duration of the race? Are we crawling out
of the cradle, or are we tottering into the gave?
In nursery, in schoolroom, or in opening manhood?
Who knows? It is enough for us to be sure of our
steps when we have taken them, and thankfully to
accept what has been done for us. Henceforth it is
impossible for us to give our unmixed admiration to
any character which moral shadows overhang. Henceforth
we require not greatness only, but goodness; and
not that goodness only which begins and ends in conduct
correctly regulated, but that love of goodness, that
keen pure feeling for it, which resides in a conscience
as sensitive and susceptible as woman's modesty.

So much for what seems to us the philosophy of this
matter. If we are right, it is no more than a first
furrow in the crust of a soil, which hitherto the
historians have been contented to leave in its barrenness.
If they are conscientious enough not to trifle
with the facts, as they look back on them from the
easiness of modern Christianity which has ceased to
demand any heavy effort of self-sacrifice, they either
revile the superstition or pity the ignorance which made
such large mistakes on the nature of religion--and, loud
in their denunciations of priestcraft and of lying wonders,
they point their moral with pictures of the ambition of
mediaeval prelacy or the scandals of the annals of the
papacy. For the inner life of all those millions of
immortal souls who were struggling, with such good or
bad success as was given them, to carry Christ's cross
along their journey in this earth of ours, they set it by,
pass it over, dismiss it out of history, with some poor
common-place simper of sorrow or of scorn. It will
not do. Mankind have not been so long on this planet
altogether, that we can allow so large a chasm to be
scooped out of their spiritual existence.

We intended to leave our readers with something
lighter than all this in the shape of literary criticism
and a few specimen extracts; both of which must now,
however, be necessarily brief--we are running out our
space. W