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holds; that Judith, pale with the passion and the me of her cruel night's work - most terrible of heroines, h such exhaustion and excitement in her face as no one Allori, of all her painters, has ventured to put there; at Bella of Titian's painting, who has no name except Beautiful; that pathetic Mary of the Magnificat in tticelli's famous picture, with her pitiful angels; and ny another which we have no space to note. But we abt whether one of all those pictured powers will pluck your memory so effectually as Romola; who dwells in orence, a kind of tutelary patroness and goddess of the ave city. Such power of semi-deity is not in the humer and sweeter soul of the Venetian singer; but when a have come from the Titians, and those acres of splend courtly canvas on which Paolo has proved himself the ost magnificent of all decorators, you will see Consuelo the marble steps as you go back to your gondola — a entle presence as abiding, if not so queenly or so great.

LONDON SOCIETY IN 1874.

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THE pessimist view, whether as to politics or society, is robably in an immense majority of cases the erroneous ew. Englishmen are very fond of it, especially as reards their own affairs, those of France, and those of America, — that is, the affairs of the three countries they know best, or are most keenly interested in, but their ondness is the result rather of a certain sombreness of magination than of intellectual conviction. They enjoy he prospect of public ruin as they enjoy day-dreams about heir individual prosperity. The public ruin does not arrive, any more than the realization of the Alnaschar dream, but the pessimist view nevertheless loses but little of its perennial attraction. It would be possible just now, for instance, to draw a very sad-colored picture of the condition of society in London, of all society, that is, not merely of "Society" technically so called. The latter, always more or less frivolous, had in 1874, as the historian of the future may write, given itself with an almost insane avidity to the pursuit of an unattainable excitement. Not, perhaps, so vicious as the society of the Regency, and certainly not so cynical, it was, nevertheless, much feebler and less sanguine, more impressed with that weariness of time, that indifference to healthy interests, which have always been the curses of safe plutocracies. Enormously expanded in volume, inordinately rich, serrated by deep easte fissures, it had split into coteries, each endeavoring in its own more or less frivolous way to allay in excitement the universal feeling of unrest. Society had no dignity, no calm, and very little content. The better and braver of the jeunesse dorée wearied of country sport, and sought in every part of the globe for fiercer and deeper excitement, which yet was always of the same unintellectual kind. They ranged the world in search of "grand shots," traversed both hemispheres to see if barbarism were attractive, or searched through mankind to discern if where a profitable speculation might be found. One great noble built a palace in an African desert, to enjoy its air and freedom; another sailed through the summer seas, only to tell society how impudent the Sirens of their islands were; while a third gave fortune for formless bits of china an accident might destroy. A new game began to interest the rich more than a new law, and one in particular, imported from the East, and described in "The Arabian Nights," roused as much enthusiasm as if those who pursued it believed, like the doctors of Bagdad, that the mallets with which the game was pursued could have medicated handles. Falconry, the cruellest and most dangerous of sports, regained the favor it held before the idea that an animal could suffer had entered the British mind. The safe slaughter of pigeons became a national sport, and skill in it excited the applause of women. Nothing but the determination of the magistrates prevented a similar revival of cock-fighting. Racing became from an amusement a pursuit, cricket from a healthy game became a

any

profession, the Universities publicly contended with each other for distinction in billiards. Within the houses of the rich extravagance rose to a mania, yet was accompanied by a previously unknown thirst for gain. Every noble became a tradesman. Rents were raised to the highest figure, and their preservation at that figure became such a desire, that the slightest event which menaced them - a strike, for example, among the laborers of a few villages — was treated as a public calamity; and while fortunes were lavished on furniture, the money to rehouse the people whose civilization had outgrown their dwellings was actually asked from the state. All this while, Art scarcely advanced, ennui did not decrease, the multitude of spendthrifts were none the less sad. A strange form of weariness a weariness which was not satiety, yet prompted men, like satiety, to nothing but imbecile repetition of the same hunts for excitement, sometimes assuming almost lunatic forms had taken possession of the prosperous. The millionnaire thought he enjoyed flowers because he filled a ball-room with them at an expense perceptible even to him, and earth was ransacked for new things of beauty, but by traders, not the rich. The latter only indolently bought. Alone among the intellectual faculties curiosity became intensified, and the rich, tired of luxury as of politics, sought in efforts to search beyond the grave, in half-contemptuous examinations of new doctrines, in a gloomily languid study of science, the distraction which daily life could not afford.

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A worse feature yet is noted in this strange period. Wealthy society has always been ennuyéd, and usually feeble in its efforts to get rid of ennui, but the mass of mankind, bound to labor for its bread, has usually, since Rome fell, looked on such efforts with a dislike sometimes, as in France, bitter to slaying; sometimes, as in Italy, tolerantly forgiving; sometimes, as in Germany and England, stolidly apathetic. But in 1874, it seems almost certain that the masses liked and enjoyed the exhibitions of this rage for consuming time. If anything is certain, it is certain that an unpopular ephemeral literature could not circulate, and that a literature devoted in great part to the verbal photographing of frivolities did circulate immensely : that the most popular journals found it pay to record the feats accomplished at polo, at cricket, at billiards, as they recorded events; to devote columns upon columns to the merits of horses; to write elaborate descriptions of artificial skating-grounds and the movements performed upon them; to publish essays raising mere games into occupations; to exclude Parliamentary debates for lists of persons present at garden parties - lists meaning nothing to their readers, not even instruction in social ways, but only conveying to the outside world some faint aroma of the grandiose ceremonial of society. A habit of observing the idle grew even on the workers, who were, for other reasons, as sad as the idle, and who vainly sought, in keen scrutiny of pastimes, the distractions with which those to whom life was pastime were helping themselves to endure the insupportable burden of wealth, leisure, and opportunity. The overladen bees flagged under their load of honey, which they could scarcely taste, yet were compelled, as by a destiny, to accumulate; and the bees not yet laden found a consolation in watching the efforts of the successful to enjoy without the first condition of enjoyment, joyousness.

Another strange symptom marked that period, which in its infinite variety-variety with no connecting link save a universal weariness so baffles analysis, namely, the rise of an intense interest in ecclesiastical contentions. No new faith rose within this period. No new dogma can be said to have been promulgated, influencing Protestant thought to our own time. No mighty divine arose to affect half the population. Under the surface, dimly perceptible to one or two men, who hated it as they watched, might be noticed one or two signs of that vast revival of the religious spirit among the mass which in a few more years produced consequences so permanent; but as yet society, and those who watched society, cared only for ecclesiasticisms, for the external symbols of internal half-beliefs. But they

did care about these. No ceremonial, or absence of ceremonial, was too trumpery to excite fierce contest, no Bill affecting the churches too colorless to rend Ministries, no proposal too cautious to escape instant drowning in vitriolic acid. The literature of Ritual filled shops, the literature of church organization libraries. The periodicals, written mainly by Sadducees, were hot with discussions on phylacteries. The absolute Minister for India declared publicly that he could gain from the heads of society a hearing for his plans for benefiting a fifth of the human race, only by inserting his Bills between other measures for regulating the details in the organization of churches. The House of Commons confessed that it only kept aloof from the subject, lest its discussion should break up the calm of Parliamentary deliberation, or strain the power of Government to enforce its laws. This disposition, at first sight so opposed to frivolity, has from the age of Justinian frequently marked a people given up for the moment to frivolity, and probably proceeds from the same cause, a deep dissatisfaction with life which has not yet been ripened, either by new leaders or new circumstances, into a determination that there shall be a change.

What the writer of the future will be obliged to assign as the cause of the change we do not know, though it may possibly be a serious war; but we do know that this picture, though, of course, one-sided to a degree, intentional y one-sided, is true. We do not think it will remain true for any length of time, for the unrest is too conscious, and men who feel it are too ready to renounce frivolity for work, which, wise or unwise, shall at least be real; but it exists now, and we confess we are among those who regard it as a rather contemptible phase in English life. We do not quite go the length of the Bishop of Manchester in some recent denunciations, because, as we think, many of the phenomena he mentions are temporary, and many more which are permanent have been brought by accident into a ridiculous prominence on the surface of the national life; but still we cannot deny that society, and indeed the country, is in rather a contemptible mood. The people seems to feel itself in a sort of theatre, where it has nothing to do but sit and watch with languid amusement the efforts of amateur actors to amuse, not so much their audience as themselves; and is inclined to ask, as Orientals do, why the richer classes do not pay people to go through all that for them. We do not believe the interest in reading about matches and sports and parties and sales of bric-a-brac is genuine, except when connected with betting, and know perfectly well that one breath of cold air will clear off all that tepid and malarious vapor, but still it would be all the better if the breeze would come. Luxury and waste and frivolity may be all unimportant, as the economists say, and certainly their importance may be easily exaggerated, but incessant description of them all, as if they were evidences of civilization, instead of mere efflorescences of wealth in the hands of people with nothing to do, and no idea of doing it in dignified calm, is as tiring to the observer as a constant watching of gold-fish. Those little carp are shiny, too, and move quickly, and keep very carefully within their pretty crystal globes, and are altogether of the gilded kind; but watching them through a wet day is not a beneficial occupation, not half so recuperative as sleep, not one tenth so distracting as work. It is to this, however, that the Metropolis has for this summer given itself up, with a halfamused, half wearied languor, which, in spite of all symptoms, cannot last. The English have many capacities, but lotus-eating for any length of time is beyond them, and whenever they try the occupation, they are sure to awake

morose.

JOHN BUNYAN.1

BY THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted upon a certain place where was a den." These

1 This address was delivered at Bedford on Wednesday, June 10, 1874, on the occasion of unveiling the statue of Bunyan.

words have been translated into hundreds of languages, and hundreds and thousands in all parts of the world and all classes of mankind have asked, "Where was that place, and where was that den?" and the answer has been given the the name of the "place" was Bedford, and that the “den was Bedford jail.2 This it is which has given to the town of Bedford its chief- may I say, without offense, only title to universal and everlasting fame. It is now tw hundred years ago since Bunyan must have resolved on the great venture-so it seemed to him - of publishing the work which has given to Bedford this immortal renown; and Bedford is this day endeavoring to pay back some part of the debt which it owes to him.

It has seemed to me that I should best discharge the trust with which I have been honored and a very high honor I consider it to be by saying a few words, first the local, then on the ecclesiastical and political circun stances, and then on the universal character of your illus trious townsman.

1. I shall not, in speaking of the local claims of Bunyan, surrender without a struggle the share which England at large has in those claims. Something of a national, some thing even of a cosmopolitan color, was given to his career by the wandering gypsy life which drew the tinker with hi humble wares from his brazier's shop, as well as by the more serious circuits which he made as an itinerant pastor on what were regarded as his episcopal visitations. When I leave Bedford this evening in order to go to Leicester, I sha still be on the track of the young soldier, who, whether in the Royal or the Parliamentary army- - for it is still matter of disputeso narrowly escaped the shot which laid his comrade low; and from the siege of its ancient walls gathered the imagery for the " Holy War" and the "Siege of Mansoul." When it was my lot years ago to explore the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury, I was tempted to lend a willing ear to the ingenious officer on the Ordnance Survey, who conjectured that in that devious pathway and on those Surrey downs the Pilgrim of the seventeenth century may have caught the idea of the Hill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains. On the familiar banks of the Kennett at Reading I recognize the scenes to which tradition has assigned his secret visits, disguised in the slouched hat, white smock-frock, and carter's whip of a wagoner, as well as the last charitable enterprise which cost him his life. In the great Babylon of London I find myself in the midst of what must have given him his notion of Vanity Fair; where also, as the Mayor has reminded you, he attracted thousands round his pulpit at Zoar Chapel in Southwark, and where he rests at last in the grave of his host, the grocer Strudwick, in the cemetery of Bunhill Fields.

But none of these places can compete for closeness of association with his birthplace at Elstow. The cottage, or what might have been the cottage of his early home-the venerable church where first he joined in the prayers of our public worship- the antique pew where he sat the massive tower whose bells he so lustily rang till struck by the pangs of a morbid conscience - the village green where he played his rustic games and was haunted by his terrific visions the puddles in the road, on which he thought to try his first miracles - all these are still with us. And even Elstow can hardly rival the den, - whether the legendary prison on the bridge or the historical prison not far from where his monument stands, for which the whole world inquiringly turns to Bedford. Most fitting, therefore, has it been that the first statue erected to the memory of the most illustrious citizen of Bedford should have been the offering of the noble head of the illustrious house to which Bedford has given its chief title. Most fitting it is that St. Peter's Green at Bedford should in this way-if I may use an expression I have myself elsewhere employed 2 "As it has been questioned whether the 'den,' at the beginning of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' means the jail at Bedford, the following note may not be without interest: The second edition, London, 1678, has no marginal note on the passage. The third edition, London, 1679, has as a note the jail. This was published in Bunyan's life-time, and is, therefore, an an thority. In the same edition there is a portrait in which Bunyan is repre sented as reclining and asleep over a den, in which there is a lion, with a portcullis." Notes and Queries, June 20, 1874.

have been annexed to the Poet's Corner of Westminster bbey, and should contain the one effigy which England sssesses of the first of human allegorists. Claim him, citiins of Bedford and inhabitants of Bedfordshire; claim him your own. It is the strength of a county and of a town bave its famous men held in everlasting remembrance. hey are the links by which you are bound to the history your country, and by which the whole consciousness of great nation is bound together. In your Bedfordshire nes he doubtless found the original of his "Slough of Despond." In the halls and gardens of Wrest, of Haynes, nd Woburn, he may have snatched the first glimpses of is "House Beautiful." In the turbid waters of your Ouse t flood time he saw the likeness of the "river very deep," which had to be crossed before reaching the Celestial City. You have become immortal through him; see that his glory ever fades away amongst you.

2. And here this local connection passes into an ecclesiistical association on which I would dwell for a few moBents. If Elstow was the natural birthplace of Bunyan, he himself would certainly have named as his spiritual irthplace the meeting-house at Bedford and the stream of the Ouse, near the corner of Duck Mill Lane, where he was in middle life re-baptized. There, and in those dells of Wainwood and Samsell, where in the hard times he secretly ministered to his scattered flock, he became the most famous preacher of the religious communion which claims him as its own. The Baptist or Anabaptist Church, which once struck terror by its very name throughout the states of Europe, now, and even in Bunyan's time, subsiding into a quiet, loyal, peaceful community, has numbered on its roll many illustrious names-a Havelock amongst its soldiers, a Carey and a Marshman among its mission. aries, a Robert Hall among its preachers, and I speak now only of the dead. But neither amongst the dead nor the living who have adorned the Baptist name is there any before whom other churches bow their heads so reverently as he who in this place derived his chief spiritual inspirations from them; and amongst their titles to a high place in English Christendom, the conversion of John Bunyan is their chief and sufficient guarantee. We ministers and members of the National Church have much whereof to glory. We boast, and we justly boast, that one of our claims on the grateful affection of our country is that our institutions, our learning, our liturgy, our version of the Bible, have sustained and enlarged the general culture even of those who dissent from much that we teach and from much that we hold dear. But we know that even this boast is not ours exclusively. You remember Lord Macaulay's saying that the seventeenth century produced in England two men only of original genius. These were both Nonconformists one was John Milton, and the other was John Bunyan. I will venture to add this yet further remark, that the whole of English literature has produced only two prose works of universal popularity, and both of these also were by Nonconformists one is the work of a Presbyterian journalist, and it is called "Robinson Crusoe;" and the other is the work of a Baptist preacher, and its name is the "Pilgrim's Progress." Every time that we open those well-known pages, or look at that memorable face they remind us Churchmen that Nonconformists have their own splendid literature; they remind you Nonconformists that literature and culture are channels of grace no less spiritual than sacraments or doctrines, than preaching or revivals. There were many Bishops eminent for their piety and learning in the seventeenth century; but few were more deserving of the name than he who by the popular voice of Bedfordshire was called Bishop Bunyan. 3. And now, having rendered honor to whom honor is due,-honor to the town of Bedford, and honor to my Nonconformist brethren, let me take that somewhat wider survey to which, as I have said, this occasion invites me; only let me, before entering on that survey, touch for an instant on the contrast which is presented by the recollections of which we have just been speaking, and the occasion which brings us here together. There are certain places which we pass by in the valley of life, like to that

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which the Pilgrim saw, in which two giants dwelt of old time, "who," he says, were either dead many a day, or else, by reason of age, have grown so crazy and stiff in their joints that they now do little more than sit at their cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by." It is at such a cave's mouth that we are to-day. We see, at the long distance of two hundred years, a giant, who, in Bunyan's time, was very stout and hearty. What shall we call him? His name was Old Intolerance, that giant who first, under the Commonwealth, in the shape of the Presbyterian clergy, could not bear with "the preaching of an illiterate tinker and an unordained minister," and then, in the shape of the Episcopal clergy, shut him up for twelve years in Bedford jail. All this is gone forever. But let us not rejoice prematurely the old giant is still alive. He may be seen in many shapes, on all sides, and with many voices. "The spirit of burning and the spirit of judgment" have not, as some lament, altogether departed either from Churchmen or from Nonconformists. But his joints are very stiff and crazy; and when on this day the clergy and the magistrates of Bedford are seen rejoicing in common with their Dissenting brethren, at the inauguration of a memorial of him who once uffered at the hands of all their spiritual forefathers, it is a proof that the world has at least, in this respect, become a little more Christian, because a little more charitable and a little more enlightened a little more capable of seeing the inward good behind outward differences.

An excellent and laborious Nonconformist, who devoted his life to the elucidation of the times and works of Bunyan, describes, with just indignation, the persecuting law of Charles II., under which John Bunyan was imprisoned, and he then adds, "This is now the law of the land we live in." No, my good Nonconformist brother, no, thank God! it is not now, nor has for many a long year, been in force amongst us. In the very year in which John Bunyan died, that revolution took place to which, when compared with all the numerous revolutions which have since swept over other countries, may be well accorded the good old name "glorious," and of which one of the most glorious fruits was the Toleration Act, by which such cruelties and follies as the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts became thenceforth and forever impossible. That Act was, no doubt, only the first imperfect beginning; we have still, even now, all of us much to learn in this respect. But we have gained something; and this day is another pledge of the victory of the Christian faith, another nail knocked into the coffin of our ancient enemy. It required a union of many forces to effect the change. If it was Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, that befriended John Bunyan in prison, it was Whitehead, the Quaker, whom, in his earlier days, Bunyan regarded as a heathen and an outcast, that opened for him the doors of Bedford jail; and those doors were kept open by the wise King William III., by the Whig statesmen and Whig prelates of the day, and not least, by the great house of Russell, who, having protected the oppressed Nonconformists in the days of their trial, have in each succeeding generation opened the gates of the prisonhouse of prejudice and intolerance wider and wider still. Let it be our endeavor to see that they are not closed again either in Bedford or anywhere else.

4. Thus much I have felt constrained to say by the circumstances, local, ecclesiastical, and political, of this celebration. But I now enter on those points for which chiefly, no doubt, I have been asked to address you, and from which alone this monument has acquired its national importance. The hero of Elstow was great, the preacher in the Baptist meeting-house of Bedford was greater, but, beyond all comparison, greater was the dear teacher of the childhood of each of us, the creator of those characters whose names and faces are familiar to the whole world, the author of the " Pilgrim's Progress." And when I speak to you of Bunyan in this his world-wide aspect, I speak to you no longer as a stranger to the men of Bedford, but as an Englishman to Englishmen; no longer as a Churchman to Dissenters, but as a Christian to Christians, and as a man to men throughout the world. In the "Pilgrim's

Progress" we have his best self- as superior to his own inferior self as to his contemporaries. It is one of the peculiar delights of that charming volume that when we open it all questions of Conformity or Nonconformity, of Baptists or Pædobaptists, even of Catholic and Protestant, are left far behind. It is one of the few books which acts as a religious bond to the whole of English Christendom. It is, perhaps, with six others, and equally with any of those six, the book which, after the English Bible, has contributed to the common religious culture of the AngloSaxon race. It is one of the few books, perhaps almost the only English book, which has succeeded in identifying religious instruction with entertainment and amusement both of old and young. It is one of the few books which has struck a chord which vibrates alike amongst the humblest peasants and amongst the most fastidious critics.

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Let us pause for an instant to reflect how great a boon is conferred upon a nation by one such uniting element. How deeply extended is the power of sympathy, and the force of argument, when the preacher or the teacher knows that he can enforce his appeal by a name which, like that of an apostle or evangelist, comes home as with canonical weight to every one who hears him; by figures of speech which need only to be touched in order to elicit an electric spark of understanding and satisfaction. And when we ask wherein this power consists, let me name three points. First, it is because the "Pilgrim's Progress," as I have already indicated, is entirely catholic- that is, universal in its expressions and its thoughts. I do not mean to say it would be an exaggeration that it contains no sentiments distasteful to this or that section of Christians, that it has not a certain tinge of the Calvinist or the Puritan. But what is remarkable is that this peculiar color is so very slight. We know what was Bunyan's own passionate desire on this point. "I would be," he says, "as I hope I am, a Christian,' but as for those factious titles of Anabaptists, Independent, Presbyterian, or the like, I conclude that they come neither from Jerusalem nor Antioch, but from hell or Babylon." It was this universal charity that he expressed in his last sermon, "Dost thou see a soul that has the image of God in him? Love him, love him. This man and I must go to heaven one day. Love one another and do good for one another." It was this discriminating forbearance that he expressed in his account of the Interpreter's Garden. "Behold," he says, "the flowers are diverse in stature, in quality, in color, in smell, and in virtue; and some are better than some; also where the gardener has set them there they stand and quarrel not with one another." There is no compromise in his words, there is no faltering in his convictions; but his love and admiration are reserved on the whole for that which all good men love, and his detestation on the whole is reserved for that which all good men detest. And if I may for a moment enter into detail, even in the very forms of his narrative, we find something as universal as his doctrine. Protestant, Puritan, Calvinist as he was, yet he did not fear to take the framework of his story and the figures of his drama, from the old mediæval church, and the illustrations in which the modern editions of his book abound give us the pilgrim with his pilgrim's hat, the wayside cross, the crusading knight with his red-cross shield, the winged angels at the Celestial Gate, as naturally and as gracefully as though it had been a story from the "Golden Legend," or from the favorite romance of his early boyhood, "Sir Bevis of Southampton." Such a combination of Protestant ideas with Catholic forms had never been seen before, perhaps never since; it is in itself a union of Christendom in the best sense, to which neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither Churchman nor Nonconformist can possibly demur. The form, the substance, the tendency of the "Pilgrim's Progress "in these respects may be called latitudinarian; but it is a latitudinarianism which was an indispensable condition for its influence throughout the world. By it, as has been well said by an admirable living authority 1 learned in all the learning of the Nonconformists, John Bunyan

1

1 Church of the Revolution, by the Rev. Dr. Stoughton, p 175.

became the teacher, not of any particular sect, but of the universal Church.

Secondly, this wonderful book, with all its freedom, never profane; with all its devotion, is rarely fanatical with all its homeliness, is never vulgar. In other words, is a work of pure art and true genius, and wherever the are we mount at once into a freer and loftier air. Banya was in this sense the Burns of England. On the tinker Bedfordshire, as on the ploughman of Ayrshire, the hear enly fire had been breathed which transformed the com mon clay, and made him a poet, a philosopher — may not say a gentleman and a nobleman in spite of himself "If you were to polish the style," says Coleridge, "yo would destroy the reality of the vision.” He dared (and it was, for one of his straitened school and scanty culture an act of immense daring) to communicate his religious teaching in the form of fiction, dream, poetry. It is one of the most striking proofs of the superiority of literature over polemics, of poetry over prose, as a messenger of heavenly truth. "I have been better entertained and more informed," says Dean Swift, "by a few pages of the Pil grim's Progress,' than by a long discourse on the will and the intellect." "I have," says Arnold, "always been struck by its piety. I am now equally struck, and even more, by its profound wisdom." It might, perhaps, have been thought that Bunyan, with his rough and imperfect education, must have erred- as it may be he has some times erred in .defective appreciation of virtues and weaknesses not his own; but one prevailing characteristic of his work is the breadth and depth of his intellectual insight. For the sincere tremors of poor Mrs. Muchafraid he has as good a word of consolation as he has for the ardent aspirations of Faithful and Hopeful. For the dog-i matic nonsense of Talkative he has a word of rebuke as 1 strong as he has for the gloomy dungeons of Doubting Castle; and for the treasures of the past he has a feeling as tender and as pervasive as if he had been brought up in the cloisters of Oxford or Westminster Abbey.

When (if I may for a moment speak of myself) in early youth I lighted on the passage where the Pilgrim is taken to the House Beautiful to see "the pedigree of the Ancient of Days, and the rarities and histories of that place, both ancient and modern," I determined that if ever the time should arrive when I should become a professor of ecclesiastical history, these should be the opening words in which I would describe the treasures of that magnificent storehouse. Accordingly when, many years after, it so fell out, I could find no better mode of beginning my course at Oxford than by redeeming that early pledge; and when the course came to an end, and I wished to draw a picture of the prospects yet reserved for the future of Christendom, I found again that the best words I could supply were those in which, on leaving the Beautiful House, Christian was shown in the distance the view of the Delectable Mountains, "which, they said, would add to his comfort because they were nearer to the desired haven." What was my own experience in one special branch of knowledge may also be the experience of many others. And for the nation at large, all who appreciate the difficult necessity of refining the atmosphere and cultivating the taste of the uneducated and the half-educated, may be thankful that in this instance there is a well of English language and of Christian thought, pure and undefiled, at which the least instructed and the best instructed may alike come to quench their mental thirst, and to refresh their intellectual labors. On no other occasion could such a rustic assemblage have been seen taking part in the glorification of a literary work as we have witnessed this day in Bedford. That is a true education of the people an education which we know not perhaps whether to call denominational, or undenominational but which is truly national, truly Christian, truly divine.

Lastly, there is the practical, homely, energetic insight into the heart of man, and the spiritual needs of human nature, which make his picture of the Pilgrim's heavenward road a living drama, not a dead disquisition, a thing to be imitated, not merely to be read. Look at John Bun

an himself as he stands before you, whether in the decription of his own contemporaries or in the image now skilfully carved amongst you by the hand of the sculpor. As surely as he walked your streets with his lofty, talwart form,“ tall of stature, strong boned, with sparking eyes, wearing his hair on his upper lip after the old British fashion, his hair reddish, but in his latter days prinkled with gray, his nose well cut, his mouth moderate rge, his forehead something high, and his habit always lain and modest;" as surely also as he was known mongst his neighbors as "in countenance of a stern and ough temper, but in his conversation mild and affable, not given to loquacity unless occasion required it, observing ever to boast of himself, but rather seeming low in his own eyes, and submitting himself to the judgment of others; abhorring lying and swearing, being just in all that ay in his power to his word, not seeming to revenge injuries, but loving to reconcile differences, and make friendship with all, with a sharp, quick eye, accomplished with an excellent discerning of person, being of good judgment and quick wit;" as surely as he so seemed when he was alive, as surely as he was one of yourselves, a "man of the people," as you heard at St. Peter's Green this morning, a man of the people of England and the people of Bedford-so surely is the pilgrimage which he described the pilgrimage of every one amongst us, so surely are the combinations of the neighbors, the friends, the enemies whom he saw in his dream the same as we see in our actual lives. You and I, as well as he, have met with Mr. By-ends, and Mr. Facing-both-ways, and Mr. Talkative. Some of us perhaps, may have seen Mr. Nogood and Mr. Liveloose, Mr. Hatelight and Mr. Implacable. All of us have at times been like Mr. Ready-to-halt, Mr. Feeblemind, and Faintheart and Noheart, and Slowpace, and Shortwind, and Sleepyhead, and "the young woman whose name was Dall." All of us need to be cheered by the help of Greatbeart, and Standfast, and Valiant for the Truth, and good old Honest. Some of us have been in Doubting Castle, some in the Slough of Despond; some have experienced the temptations of Vanity Fair; all of us have to climb the Hill Difficulty; all of us need to be instructed by the Interpreter in the House Beautiful; all of us bear the same burden; all of us need the same armor in our fight with Apollyon; all of us have to pass through the wicket gate; all of us have to pass through the dark river; and for all of us (if God so will) there wait the Shining Ones at the gates of the Celestial City, "which, when we see, we wish ourselves amongst them."

FOREIGN NOTES.

MR. WILLIAM BLACK's new story for the Cornhill will be called "Three Feathers." The title is derived from the scene, which is laid in North Cornwall.

JULES JANIN wrote an extraordinary hand. The characters were formed with some care, but bad not their like in any known alphabet. There were only two compositors on the Journal des Débats who could decipher them. When he contributed to other papers he dictated to his wife.

AMONG Some books and MSS. shortly to be sold in London is a Rolled Manuscript of the Hebrew Pentateuch, acquired a few years ago from a synagogue in Palestine. This manuscript was written in the twelfth century on sixty skins of leather, and measures 120 feet in length by

2 feet 2 inches in breadth.

THE exclusiveness of the Athenæum Club, which has hitherto refused to admit a Dissenting minister as a member, has been broken through by the election of the Rev. Dr. Stoughton, one of the leading London Congregationalists. Dean Stanley is credited with being the prime mover in opening the doors of the Athenæum to the reverend gentleman.

A NEW method of casting statues in bronze is reported as having been discovered by a Venetian founder, named

Giordani. The advantage of the method consists in the cast being effected in a single operation, no matter how large the model, or how complicated in its forms. A Leda cast by this process is now being exhibited in Venice.

AN interesting Return to an Order of the House of Commons has been published, giving "the aggregate Cost to the Nation of the South Kensington Museum, including bition in London, and Loan Collections for Country CirAdministration, Buildings, Maintenance, Objects for Exhiculation, from the commencement of the Museum to the end of the Financial Year, 1873-74," and of "the Cost of cluding as above, has been, according to this Return, in all Purchases," etc. The total cost of the Museum, inpounds, 1,191,709.

M. EHRART, a pupil of M. Reber (the composer and musical critic of the Journal des Débats), has gained the Prix de Rome for musical composition at the competition at the Conservatoire and the Institut. The decision of the jury at the former was confirmed by the members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The professors on the jury were MM. Ambroise Thomas, Reber, Bazin, Victor Massé, Félicien David, Massenet, and Vaucorbeil. M. Véronge de la Nux, pupil of M. Bazin, got the second prize, and another pupil of this composer, M. Wormser, obtained honorable mention.

THE Paris correspondent of The Academy, speaking of Jules Janin, says:

Jules Janin leaves behind him abundant evidences of his industry, and versatility. Few of his works, save "L'Ane Mort," "Barnave," "La Confession," and "Gaiessentially a feuilletoniste; he could connect nothing, fill no etés Champêtres," have become at all popular. Janin was

broader frame than those few columns of the Débats. After the works above named, the best known among the fiftyeight volumes signed by him are, "Un Coeur pour Deux Amours, "Le Prince Royal,' 99.66 Un Hiver à Paris," "L'Été à Paris," "Clarisse Harlowe," "La Religieuse de Toulouse," and a translation of Horace, which was his labor of love. More than a year ago the intellect that found rest in it was to all intents and purposes extinct. A monstrous obesity, against which Janin had been battling for the last fifteen last published work is “ years, appears to have stifled his faculties one by one. His Paris et Versailles il y a Cent sketches of the provinces after the war. Ans," which followed at a year's interval some uninteresting I believe that a considerable portion of the memoir on which the critic was engaged had been saved from the auto da fẽ he made of all his manuscripts some eight months ago. A collection of his chief dramatic criticisms has been published recently under the title "Histoire de la Littérature Dramatique.' In addition to these works, Janin is said to have written more than a hundred notices and prefaces, and to have been an active contributor to fourteen periodical publica

tions.

THE Pall Mall Gazette says: "It will be gratifying to that insignificant class, the consumers of food, to learn from the report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the operation of the Adulteration of Food Act, 1872, that robbery rather than murder is the prevailing vice of the retail tradesman. It will,' says the report, 'afford some consolation to the public to know that in the matter of adulteration they are cheated rather than poisoned. Witnesses of the highest standing concur in stating that, in the numerous articles of food and drink which they have analyzed, they have found scarcely anything absolutely injurious to health, and that if deleterious substances are occasionally employed for the purposes of adulcomparatively harmless.' Consumers ought to be comforted teration, they are used in such minute quantities as to be at these cheering words, unless, indeed, they read the evidence given by Professor Redwood in a case which came before the magistrates at Kensington, a few days ago, when a grocer was summoned for selling a canister of preserved green peas adulterated with copperas. These peas, he said, were manufactured in France for English consumption, as

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