to us by men who have made them a subject of special study. All that goes beyond this is their business, and if we ever wish, or it is requisite for us to follow it out, we can do so better and more quickly in later life than at school.

The superficial study of the natural sciences has, however, another disadvantage, which ought not to be under-estimated. It tends to spread a coarse and shallow conception of life, for which only the palpable exists, and which therefore excludes a respect for and a comprehension of what men in earlier ages believed, as well as the sense of the inadequacy of our powers. It therefore destroys all intellectual modesty. Now, if even in naturalists of real distinction, who stand on the height of the scientific attainment of our day, this conception of life is apt to degenerate into materialism and a mechanical atomism, together with an intolerable intellectual arrogance whose pretensions are based on knowledge alone, how much more is this the case with those who have only looked at natural science and its results from the outside-nay, from a distance. One has only to compare the youth of to-day, whose minds and characters have been formed under these influences, with those who grew to manhood under the rule of Hegel, or the German literature of 1830-40 with that of 1870-80, to form a clear idea of what we have lost. And we have lost it, because a half-knowledge about the natural sciences has spread an opinion that the whole riddle of life has been solved, since in our days the naturalists have succeeded in tracing a hundred or two more of the many millions of threads of which the great world-texture is woven.

By thus limiting the school-course time would be gained for a thorough study of mathematics, the ancient languages, and their leading authors, without over-exerting the mind of the scholar or depriving him of time for the play, exercise, and private reading which are so necessary for his health and recreation, nay, even for his education. Each boy should be obliged fully to satisfy his teachers as to his competency before he is permitted to pass into a higher class, but particularly at the end of each of the great sections-i.e., after the preparatory instruction, and after the purely grammatical course, in order that the idle and ungifted may remain in the lower classes, or be compelled to choose another path of life. One might almost say the more thus left behind the better. The higher classes would by this means be rendered smaller, and consequently the instruction more effective. Those of slender means, whose parents had deceived themselves as to their abilities, would not persevere, but return, before it was too late, to their proper sphere; and the wealthy would be obliged to exert themselves in order to assert their position in the world; they would, at worst, enter life at a later, and consequently at a more mature age.

That such a limitation and deepening of the mental discipline of the young would counteract the shallow and tawdry half-knowledge about innumerable subjects which enervates the mind cannot be a matter of

doubt either to the writer of this article or the readers whom he especially addresses, for he has advanced nothing new, he has only followed out to their consequences the truths that for them are old. We are all convinced that by this means not only would a stop be put to the Jack-a-lantern vagaries of taste which characterize our time, but also that the minds of our youth would receive a more ideal impulse from it.

It

Humane studies seldom fail to lead to that deep and broad conception of life which looks with comparative contempt on what is only profitable, and rises, above the narrow confines of a selfish patriotism, to a desire to know things instead of words, which are but their symbols-to a sympathy with all man's higher interests, as well as to that many-sided but harmonious development of the intellect which is their infallible result.. Now, the aim of education is this: to make a man all that his natural gifts, the accident of his birth, and the claims of his future profession will allow him to become. "In this sense," we can say with Lagarde, "education is a continual increase of the intellectual wealth of a nation. is the birthright of every citizen. A People, in the true sense of the word, can only be conceived of as a society of men so educated that each is contented with his position, because his life is so ordered as to fill it, and because he therefore loves it. . . . . There is no chance of these views being generally adopted. But nations do not consist of millions; they consist of the individuals who are conscious of the task of a nation, and therefore capable of stepping before the noughts, and changing them into effective numbers. For this reason it will suffice if the best of the German people hold the convictions with respect to culture which have been explained, and if the State, which ought only to be in the hands of the best, adopts them as the criterion of its institutions."

But why should not we endeavour to establish a grammar school to our minds? There is no want of excellent teachers in Germany, and school fees are not the item of expenditure about which German parents are accustomed to be niggardly. From the State we need ask nothing but toleration, and from the parents nothing but patience; for, true to our whole conception of life, we must not attempt to plant full grown trees in the national park of the future. In nine or ten years we should see whether the youths whom we had educated did not surpass all their equals in years in the counting-house as well as in the examination hall, in official life as well as in the free professions, on the parade ground as well as on their landed estates. And if we were to succeed would not others follow our example? Would not the weaker sex, the most influential propagators of true culture as of true religion, when they have once accepted it-would not they, too, tread in our steps? Would not a prospect thus be opened of doing away with the deepest

and most lasting cause of our discontent? and would not the other evils under which we labour, whether necessary or accidental, then appear less intolerable? Might we not hope that the whole nation would then once more return to the right way? Would that the apostles of true culture might make many converts; for by these alone can the spiritual new birth, for which Germany longs so earnestly, be accomplished. The first effort in the right direction must be to root out the intellectual weeds which stifle the budding life of the nation-to put an end to the false and flimsy education which leads to a knowledge about things instead of to an acquaintance with them-to the supremacy of words instead of that of thought and feeling-to the habit, as Lagarde says, of playing with counters instead of trading with sterling coin. And this can be done by the higher, the cultured class, a large number of whom see the evil clearly enough; if, instead of wasting their time in fruitless lamentations, they publicly unite in a holy League, create a common organ, and establish schools in which none of these intellectual weeds are tolerated. Years must pass, perseverance will be needed, sacrifices will be required, for this as for every other great cause; but victory is sure; as sure as that truth outlasts falsehood, and reality appearance as sure as it is that the world always, in the end, accepts what is genuine, and rejects what is counterfeit.

KARI HILLEBRAND.

INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIANITY.

THE

HE idea of a Christian nation, not merely composed of an aggregate of Christian citizens, but having in its corporate character a sort of Christian personality, is not unfamiliar to us. The admission of Jews into the legislature was strongly opposed, on the ground that this act would violate the Christian profession of the nation. When we are contending for the maintenance of the Established Church, we are accustomed to defend this institution as demanded by, or at least as naturally and fitly representing, the public Christianity. England, we say, declares itself to be a Christian nation by having a State Church for Christian worship and for the diffusion of the Christian faith. My purpose in this paper is to appeal chiefly to those who still cling to this view of our country, and delight to think of it as having a Christian calling and profession. If there are any Christians amongst my readers who believe that the changes of the last half-century have rendered the old theory of an ideally Christian nation untenable amongst us, they will admit that, in virtue of its old traditions and of the religion of the immense majority of its people, England continues to take rank in the world as a professedly Christian country. I may claim the sympathy of all whose morality is substantially that of the Christian Church, on whatever grounds they may hold it;. but it is only to Christians that one can appeal, as I desire to do, in the name of all that to them is most sacred.

I do not understand how it can be that, amongst those who profess to be governed by the law of Christ, there is so little care about the character of our country's public dealings with other nations. We know how much thought there is about the Christian behaviour of individuals towards other men; we know what efforts are made to uphold a high standard of private morality and to urge and stimulate

men by their Christian profession and their sense of duty to aim at conforming themselves to it. It cannot be said that English Christians or churchmen are similarly anxious that our country, in those extremely important relations which connect it with other countries, should manifest the properly Christian dispositions. What, it may be asked, has the Church of England done towards this end? What sensitiveness has been shown by its hierarchy, by the accepted exponents of its theology, by the masses of its members, on the subject of international morality? There is a general silence, an apparent indifference, on the part of those who should speak in behalf of the national conscience, about the fulfilment of our Christian duty towards other countries. And, unhappily, we cannot say that this reticence, this indifference, is to be explained by the absence of anything that might excite misgivings as to the manner in which that duty is actually discharged.

Our dealings with other nations are controlled in a very important degree by what is called international law. This law forms a large and difficult subject, on which only those who have devoted much time to the study of it are competent to speak with authority. But the general nature of it may be easily understood. It is a law without a legislature, without courts of its own, without the sanction of assigned penalties. It has grown out of the necessary intercourse of the different sections of civilized mankind. It consists of rules, partly incorporated in the statutes of particular nations, and therefore sharing in the authority and sanctions of national law, partly recognized in formal agreements between nations, partly laid down by the great expositors, Grotius, Puffendorff, and their successors, and supported by traditional observance. These rules or conventions are of immense value, and their value tends to increase continually. Take, for example, those that relate to war. International law has many prescriptions as to the methods in which war is to be commenced and carried on. Every such rule tends, by the nature of the case, to mitigate the horrors of war. Property is not to be destroyed without the most express military reasons, the civil population is not to be slaughtered, even by reckless bombardment of fortified places; by these and the like prohibitions war is made much less atrocious than merely natural war would be. The force that constrains nations to observe these rules is the fear of what would happen to them if they were put out of the civilized pale. No European power would dare to yield to the temptation of securing an advantage by a glaring violation of the laws of war. The way in which the conventions, formal and informal, of international law tend to become continually more useful is by prescribing new rights or restrictions in the interest of humanity. This is, upon the whole, their progressive effect; though occasionally it may happen for a time that a rule delays by its authority a progress demanded by the common advantage or by improved feeling. The extension and increased complexity of intercourse are in favour of the more humane rules. The leading authors,