than deny their invisible King, or pour out a libation in honour of the emperor, . . . displaying amidst tortures too horrible to recount a nobler courage than ever shone upon a battlefield. . . . Armies of solitaries fled from the world to live dead to the world, training themselves in lonely retirement to conquer temptation.'

Yet in none of these has been heard the voice of self-satisfaction or vainglorious boasting. A deep sense of personal unworthiness prompted in them a wonderful humility, and constituted it a distinctive mark of the Christian character.

'Yet no man in his hour of deepest despondency has ever thought of having recourse to the ancient sacrificial ritual of expiation, consecrated though it had been by the associations of ages and the habits of successive generations.'

But we must refer our readers to the lectures themselves for a more complete acquaintance with their argument. It is not necessary for us to add that Dr. Maclear writes as a scholar and a divine, and enriches his pages with ample illustrations from the stores of classical as well as of theological learning. As was said above, he travels by a somewhat different route from that which we ourselves pursued in the earlier portion of this article, but he arrives at the same conclusion namely, that the Holy Eucharist-with which alone his prescribed subject led him to deal—but we would add Holy Baptism as well, bears testimony distinct and convincing at once to the historical facts and the leading doctrines of revelation: to facts which, indeed, are supernatural, and to doctrines which involve transcendent mysteries, but to facts which for that very reason are qualified to become the foundation of religious faith in that they are supernatural, and to doctrines which if they be mysterious are so because they are divine.

ART. VII.-EDWARD HENRY PALMER.

1. The Life and Achievements of Edward Henry Palmer, late Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of S. John's College. By WALTER BESANT, M.A. (London, 1883.)

2. Correspondence respecting the Murder of Professor E. H. Palmer, Captain William Gill, R.E., and Lieutenant Harold Charrington, R.N. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of HER MAJESTY. (London, 1883.)

A DRAMATIST who undertakes to write a play which is to be almost devoid of incident, and to depend for interest on the development of an eccentric character, with only a single strong situation, even though that situation be one of surpassing power, is considered by those learned in such matters to be almost courting failure. Such a work is therefore rarely attempted, and is still more rarely successful. Yet this is what Mr. Besant has had to do in writing the Life of Edward Henry Palmer; and we are glad to be able to say at once that he has discharged a delicate and difficult task in a most admirable fashion. For in truth he had a very unpromising subject to deal with. It is always difficult to interest the general public in the sayings and doings of a man of letters, even when he has occupied a prominent position, and thrown himself with ardour into some burning question of the day, political or social, of which, though it may be almost forgotten when his biography appears, the world likes to be reminded. Palmer, however, was not such a man at all. He did 'break his birth's invidious bar,' but alas! it was never given to him, until the end was close at hand, 'to grasp the skirts of happy chance,' or to rise into a position where he could be seen by the world. It is melancholy now to speculate on what might have been had he returned in safety from the perilous enterprise in which he met his death, for it is hardly likely that the Government would have failed to secure, by some permanent appointment, the services of a man who had proved, in so signal a manner, his capacity for dealing with Orientals. As it was, however, with the exception of the journeys to the Sinaitic Peninsula. and the Holy Land, he lived a quiet student-life; not wholly retired, for he was no book-worm, and enjoyed, after a peculiar

fashion of his own, the society of his fellow-men; but still a life which did not really bring him beyond the narrow circle of the few intimate friends who knew him thoroughly, and were proportionately devoted to him. He took no part in any movement; he was not 'earnest' or 'intense.' He did not read new books, or any of the thoughtful' magazines; nor had he any particular desire to alter the framework of society. The world was a good world so far as he was concerned; and men were strange and interesting creatures whom it was a pleasure to study, as a naturalist studies a new species; why alter it or them? The interest which attaches to such a life depends wholly on the way in which the central character is presented to the public. That Mr. Besant should have succeeeded where others would have failed need not surprise us. The same qualities which have made him a delightful novelist are brought to bear upon this prose In Memoriam, with the additional incentives of warm friendship and passionate regret. It is clear that he realized all the difficulties of his task from the outset; and he has treated his materials accordingly, leading the reader forward with consummate art, chapter by chapter, as the spectator is led through successive acts by a skilful dramatist, to the catastrophe at the end, which is described with the picturesqueness of a romance, and the solemn earnestness of a tragedy. Such a book is almost above criticism. A mourner by an open grave, pronouncing the funeral oration of his murdered friend, has a prescriptive right to apportion praise and blame in what measure he thinks fit; and we should be the last to intrude upon his sacred sorrow with harsh and inconsiderate criticism. But we should be failing in our duty if we did not draw attention to one point. It has been Mr. Besant's object to show the difficulties of all kinds against which his hero had to contend-ill-health, heavy sorrows, debt-and how he came triumphant through them all, thanks to his indomitable pluck and energy; and further, as though no element of interest should be wanting, he has represented him as smarting under a sense of unmerited wrong done to him by his University, which went out of the way to insult and neglect him. This is no mere fancy of Mr. Besant's; we know from other sources that Palmer himself thought he had not been treated at Cambridge as he ought to have been, and that he was glad to get away from it. We shall do our best to show that this was a misconception on his part, and we regret that his biographer should have given such prominence to it. But, though Mr. Besant may have been zealous

overmuch on this particular point, his book is none the less fascinating, and it will live, we venture to predict, as a permanent record of a very remarkable man. We are sensible that much of its charm will disappear in the short sketch which we have room to give, but if our remarks have the effect of sending our readers to the original, we shall not have written in vain.

Edward Henry Palmer was born in Green Street, Cambridge, August 7, 1840. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother did not long survive her husband. Her place was supplied to some extent by an aunt, then unmarried, who took the orphan child to her own home and educated him. She was evidently a person who combined great kindness with great good sense. Palmer, we read, 'owed everything to her,' and never spoke of her in after years without the greatest tenderness and emotion.' Of his real mother we do not find any record; but the father, who kept a small private school, was 'a man of considerable acquirements, with a strong taste for art.' We do not know whether any of Palmer's peculiar talents had ever been observed in the father, or whether he can be said to have inherited anything from his family except a tendency to asthma and bronchial disease. From this, of which the father died before he was thirty, the son suffered all his life. He grew out of it to a certain extent, but it was always there, a watchful enemy, ready to start forth and fasten upon its victim.

The beginning of Palmer's education was of the most ordinary description, and little need be said about it. He was sent in the first instance to a private school, and afterwards to the Perse Grammar School. There he made rapid progress, arriving at the sixth form before he was fifteen; but all we hear about his studies is that he distinguished himself in Greek and Latin, and disliked mathematics. By the time he was sixteen he had learnt all that he was likely to learn at school, and was sent to London to earn his living. It never seems to have struck anybody that he was a genius, nor, indeed, had he ever given anybody reason to suppose that he possessed more than good average abilities. In London he became a junior clerk in a house of business in Eastcheap, where he remained for three years, and might have remained for the term of his natural life, had he not been obliged to resign his situation on account of ill-health. Symptoms of pulmonary disease manifested themselves, and he got so rapidly worse that he was told that he had little hope of recovery. He returned to Cambridge, under the belief that he had but a few weeks to live, and that

he might as well die comfortably among his relations, as miserably in London among strangers. But after a few weeks of severe illness he recovered, suddenly and strangely. Mr. Besant tells a curious story, which Palmer is reported to have believed, about the cure having been effected by a dose of lobelia, administered by a herbalist. That Palmer swallowed the drug of which, by the way, he nearly died-is certain, and that he recovered is equally certain; but that the dose and the recovery can be correlated as cause and effect is more than we are prepared to admit. We are rather disposed to accept the view which has been communicated to us by a gentleman who at that period was one of his intimate friends:

'Careful watchfulness on the part of his aunt, open air, exercise, and freedom from restraint, were the principal means of patching him up. He had frequent attacks of blood-spitting afterwards, and was altogether one of those wonderful creatures that defy doctors and quacks alike, and won't die of the disease which is theirs by inheritance. How little any of us thought that he would die a hero!'

Palmer's peculiar gift of acquiring languages had manifested itself even before he went to London. Throughout his whole career his strength as a linguist lay in his extraordinary aptitude for learning a spoken language. The literature came afterwards. We are not aware that he was ever what is called a good scholar in Latin or in Greek, simply for the reason, according to our view, that those languages are no longer spoken anywhere. He did not repudiate the literature of a language; far from it. Probably few Orientalists have known the literatures of Arabia and Persia better than he knew them; but he learnt to speak Arabic and Persian before he learnt to read them. In this he resembled Cardinal Mezzofanti, who had the same power of picking up a language for speaking purposes from a few conversations-learning some words, and constructing for himself first a vocabulary and then a grammár. When Palmer was still a boy at school he learnt Romany. He learnt it, says Mr. Besant, by paying travelling tinkers sixpence for a lesson, by haunting the tents, talking to the men, and crossing the women's palms with his pocket-money in exchange for a few more words to add to his vocabulary. In this way he gradually made for himself a Gipsy dictionary.' In time he became a proficient in Gipsy lore, and Mr. Besant tells several curious stories about his adventures with that remarkable people. We will quote the narrative supplied to him by Mr. Charles Leland-better known as Hans Breitmann-Palmer's intimate friend and brother in Romany lore.