when, having grown familiar with first principles and feeling quite at ease with them, leading minds, secure of their own steadfastness, begin to venture to apply them in detail to schemes and methods of comprehension. It is an anxious period, though at the same time hopeful. We have watched with the greatest interest an evidently growing tendency in this direction among earnest Churchmen; namely, to relax what is deemed by them an overstrict ecclesiasticism with the hope of gaining religious-minded Nonconformists. It is quite possible to do so, of course, without in any degree abjuring the principles or disparaging the past efforts of the movement. The movement began rightly by a stern advocacy and assertion of Church principles, and by firmly establishing the things which remained, but were in imminent danger of being lost and abandoned. We cannot be too thankful for the seeming bigotry of the early leaders of the movement; we would add, for the mistakes of their many zealous but half-instructed followers, who groped and struggled and stumbled into right and truth. They were scarcely mistakes, indeed, when they were made, for they led to a more clear definition and proof of essential principles. But what was not bigotry at an earlier period of a movement may possibly become so at a later. The circumstances of the case alter, and the same principles may be modified to meet the altered circumstances and clearer light. We were a good deal struck by certain discussions which took place, in the course of last winter, at the offices of the Additional Curates Society in London; where clergymen meet periodically and detail their experiences, and various plans of dealing for the nonce with several classes alienated from the Church, with hereditary dissenters, open infidels, and the ungodly. One speaker in particular, who has gained a special reputation for enthusiasm and active zeal in parochial work, read a paper on his mode of treating dissenters and secularists, so called, in a district of a large manufacturing town, where he holds a pastoral cure. His aim is to break down intervening barriers, to disembody the spirit from existing formularies, and assuming an universal religious sympathy in human nature, to draw it out into spontaneous developments, with the hope, we presume, of reaching at a more advanced stage of spiritual attainment, a more uniform walk by the same rule and mind. Such a method can be carried out safely, and with a prospect of success, only, if its execution be conducted with that instinctive discretion which familiarity with and a due appreciation of first principles ensure, but which is far above the average. The person alone who feels sure of his position acts freely and as if above suspicion. It is in itself a sign of largeness of mind and nobleness of character to be independent of mere appearances and opinion. A notoriously rich man may dress and otherwise live plainly without prejudice to his respectability. A man skilful with his pencil or musical instrument will make many a bold stroke with advantage contrary to written rule; while the novice, who distrusts himself and does not feel at ease, will wisely keep to the strict letter of his instructions, carefully eschew grace-notes, and earn a freedom of hand by the drudgery of accurate drawing in outline. Pretty much the same principle holds good in pastoral theology and parochial work. The rock bigotry is a far less danger in the path of the Church's ship than the whirlpool of a pseudo-catholicity and broad-church eclecticism. We are not without suspicion and anxiety, therefore, as to the present crisis of the movement, lest what is the privileged manner of genius and a masterhand should be taken up as a fashion of the day by the mere copyist and tyro. Bigotry may be an exaggeration or imitation of religious zeal; the essence of latitudinarianism is the abnegation of religious truth. Perhaps the best safeguard against error in this direction is to secure, in the first instance, the establishment of the Church's system, and then, not to lower or relax that system for purposes of comprehension, but to add on to it, as something extra and exceptional, whatever less perfect methods may be the best possible for any whom it does not reach. This we conceive to be the true intention ofthe practical minded and experienced parish clergy to whom we have alluded; and so interpreted, we cannot but allow and commend generally the wisdom of their scheme. Convocation in Ireland. N 1833 a petition was presented to the House of Lords, by the present Archbishop of Dublin, from two hundred of the clergy of the Diocese of Kildare, praying for a restoration of the Synodical powers of the Church. Similar petitions numerously signed were presented by the same archbishop in 1843 and 1844. These petitions, which were all of a similar character, prayed that the United Church of England and Ireland "might enjoy the privileges permitted to other churches and religious bodies, of possessing within herself such a power of regulation in her spiritual affairs as may best promote the due discharge of the sacred duties required of her ministers, and provide for the religious discipline of her own members . . . and that neither to revive Convocation or to make any provisions for supplying its place were clearly at variance with the design of our reformers." The petition then stated the unfitness of Parliament for being the sole "legislative authority for the Church in spiritual matters," and prayed that steps might be taken for remedying these evils, and securing the efficiency of the Church. The able Charge of the Archbishop of Dublin for 1844 was directed to this subject. After referring to the presentation of the above-mentioned petition, in the debate which followed, his Grace clearly described the many evils arising from the then existing state of things, and declared that the longer self-government is denied the Church, the greater and more aggravated will be the evils by which she is beset. Nor does the archbishop hesitate to say "that a large proportion of those who are now irrecoverably alienated from the Church might at this moment have been sound members of it had timely steps been taken" to restore to the Church those powers of self-government which our reformers undoubtedly intended her to possess. Previous, however, to this, at the time of the Union in 1800, an attempt was made by the Irish Parliament to unite the Convocations as well as the Parliaments of the two kingdoms. The 18th article of the Act of Union, as proposed by them, provided that "the archbishops, bishops, deans and clergy of the Churches of England and Ireland shall from time to time be summoned to, and entitled to sit in, Convocation of the United Church, in like manner and subject to the same regulations as are at present by law established with respect to the like orders of the Church in England." England." And this clause was introduced into the English House of Commons. When this article came to be considered, Mr. Pitt noticed the clause introduced by the Irish Parliament for "providing for the presence of the clergy of that country in Convocations which might be holden in this island," and pronounced it to be a reasonable addition; but on further discussion it was deemed advisable to omit the clause respecting Convocations, on the ground that his Majesty had the power of calling such a Convocation whenever he pleased, and it does not appear that the Irish bishops and clergy of the day took any further notice of the matter. This Union of the Establishments, in 1800, is too generally looked upon as the Union of the Churches of England and Ireland, whereas a perfect union in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, has existed between them for centuries before, the Synod of Cashel, in 1172, having enjoined "that all divine matters shall for the future, in all parts of Ireland, be regulated after the model of Holy Church, according to the observance of the Anglican Church." Moreover, the first canon of 1634 accepts the English Articles of 1652 in their entirety, and declares the agreement "of the Church of England and Ireland in the Confession of the same Christian faith and the doctrines of the sacraments." So that for six hundred years previous to the Act of Union there had been a complete spiritual and ecclesiastical agreement between the Church in England and the Church in Ireland, and that statute only made matter of statute law the union which had existed for many centuries before. Although from the earliest periods of Irish Church History, down to the time of the Reformation, Synods of bishops and clergy were constantly held to regulate the regulate the internal affairs of the Church, yet it was not till 1615 that the Irish Provincial Synods assumed the form of our English Convocations. In that year James I, summoned a Convocation to sit in Dublin, and that Convocation. consisted of an Upper and Lower House, as in England. From that time till 1711 (with the exception of the two Parliaments of William III.) Convocation sat with each Parliament, from which period down to the present day it has not been permitted to exercise either its deliberative or legislative functions. When the Church Temporalities Act (3 & 4 William IV, cap. 37) was passed, the Convocation of the Church in Ireland being dormant, a protest was formally made against the suppression of two of her Sees, and the reduction of two of her archbishoprics to the rank of bishoprics. By the 46th clause of that act the archiepiscopal jurisdiction of the Archbishops of Tuam and Cashel was transferred to the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin respectively, and thus, as far as an act of Parliament can effect it, the four provinces of the Church in Ireland were reduced to two without even the opinion of her bishops and clergy being asked in the matter. But although their active functions are suspended, the provincial Synods still exist; and it requires but the writ of the Crown to assemble them as a Convocation. The Provincial Synod of Dublin still meets in the year of the archbishop's triennial visitation of the province; and it is not many years since the Archbishop of Armagh also summoned the Synod of his province. We find from the Down and Connor and Dromore Diocesan Calendar, for 1862, that the Lower House of the Provincial Synod of Armagh consists of twenty-eight dignitaries, eleven proctors from the chapters, and twentyeight from the clergy of the several dioceses, making sixty-seven in all, whilst the Lower House of the Provincial Synod of Dublin consists of thirty-eight dignitaries, nineteen proctors of chapters, and thirty-eight proctors of dioceses, in all ninety-five. The Upper House in each case consisting of the six bishops of the province. Although the archbishop of each province has the power to summon his Provincial Synod whenever and wherever he pleases, without any writ or licence from the Crown, yet, to form a Convocation having legislative power, the members of these Provincial Synods must meet as one body, under a president appointed by the Crown. The Upper House of such a Convocation would consist of twelve members, the Lower, of one hundred and sixtytwo, and this is the existing constitution of the Convocation of the Church in Ireland. Such a Convocation could at once be assembled on a writ being issued by the Crown to the archbishops, directing them to summon their suffragans, and they in turn convening their clergy for the election of proctors for the several dioceses. But at present the Irish bishops, as a body, seem to prefer the assembling of a National Synod to that of their own Convocation. Last July they unanimously presented an address to her Majesty, praying "that the advice, not of one or two Provincial Synods only, but of a General Synod of the United Church of England and Ireland might be obtained, before any change is made in the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the Church." To this address no reply beyond the formal announcement of its receipt by the Home Secretary has been given, or, if given, has not been permitted to transpire. But it will not fail to be observed that the Irish prelates have judiciously abstained from making any recommendation as to the constitution of the future Synod, or as to the means by which its assembling may be brought about. But it would seem that this unanimous wish of the Irish bishops for a National Synod is not so fully shared in by their clergy. At a Conference of the Clergy of the United Diocese of Down and Connor and Dromore, held in Belfast in October, 1861, under the presidency of the bishop, one of the four sessions was occupied in considering the subject of Synodical action. A paper on Convocation having been read by the Rev. Alfred T. Lee, the Hon. Sec. to the Conference, and the matter fully discussed, it was resolved unanimously : 1. "That it is the opinion of this Conference that the interests of the Irish Branch of the United Church imperatively require the immediate resuscitation of its Synodical powers. 2. "That the Archbishops and Bishops of the Irish provinces having lately memorialized Her Majesty to summon a General Synod of the United Church, this Conference is of opinion, that, even should the prayer of that memorial be granted, it will still be necessary that the Irish Convocation should, from time to time, assemble to consider affairs peculiar to our own Branch of the United Church. 3. "That this expression of our opinion be conveyed, through the Lord Bishop of the Diocese, to His Grace the Lord Primate, with a respectful request that His Grace will take the necessary steps to obtain the permission of the Crown for the assembling of Irish Convocation at the commencement of the next session of the Imperial Parliament.” The reply of the Primate to this resolution was to the effect that having, in conjunction with his brother prelates, requested the Queen to assemble a National Synod, he could not, until her Majesty's reply was received, take any further action in the matter. At Such is the present position of Synodical matters in Ireland. Although her Majesty's reply has not yet been given, or at least not made public, it requires but little foresight to see that this request of the Irish prelates will be respectfully refused. A National Synod could not be assembled, with any prospect of united action, until the Convocations of Canterbury and York, as well as that of the Church in Ireland, have been consulted as to its constitution and the rules which shall guide its future deliberations; and the first step towards the assembling of such a Synod must therefore be the revival of Irish Convocation. The present time is most favourable for such a step, the session of the Convocation of Canterbury held in February last, a resolution was proposed and carried, on the motion of the Bishop of Oxford, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury was requested to confer with the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, and request them "to take such steps as to them may seem expedient to obtain the advice and concurrence of their branch of the United Church," to the authorization of a special form of thanksgiving for harvest. The Convocation of Canterbury has thus formally requested the co-operation of their Irish brethren, and the Convocation of York in its last session has shown the same friendly spirit. Let then the Irish bishops and clergy forthwith request her Majesty to permit their Convocation to assemble and consider this and other important matters affecting the interests and welfare of the Church. This request, in common justice, cannot be denied. If the Convocations of Canterbury and York are permitted to assemble and deliberate each session of Parliament, and even to enact a new canon under royal licence, what pretence can there be for withholding the same privilege from the Irish provinces of the United Church When by the revival of Irish Convocation the action of the Provincial Synods of the Church shall thus be completed, it will then be time enough to consider further the question of a National Synod. REVIEW S. Lord Stanhope's Life of William Pitt.* T is hardly to be supposed that Lord Stanhope's excellent sense permits him to fret after a reputation which it has long been impossible for him to achieve. Indeed, any hankering to be called a fine writer would be more than usually unreasonable in a historian whose works might not inaptly be cited as an implied protest against the necessity of setting off true facts and honest convictions with the unadorned decency and order of common grammar itself. The commendation, which is his right, is of another and a better order than even the higher genius of his correlative Lord Macaulay will eventually command. A homely reliable narrative, historical or biographical, though it be somewhat uncouthly put together, is far more worth having than the most brilliant idealization of a man or an epoch, in which the fictitious incidents are falsehoods, and the illusions culpable and perilous deceits. Lord Stanhope is as rarely to be admired as Lord Macaulay is to be constantly mistrusted; but the genius of the one is outweighed by the integrity of the other. If morality be always an overmatch for intellect in a competition for true fame, Lord Macaulay must take rank farther below the dignity of a first-rate historian for a lack of truth than Lord Stanhope needs to do for a faulty style. After establishing, therefore, or conceding, or taking for granted, the fact that this Biography of Pitt is as reliable as it is abundant, the first thing to be done is to withdraw, as utterly useless, all attempts to criticise it as a literary composition. His generation has so long agreed to accept Lord Stanhope among its writers, that it must be content henceforth to submit in silent patience to imperfections that will never be amended now. Let us strive to forget that he is clumsy, that his literary garb rusticius defluit, and let us continually remind ourselves how burly and honest is the truthfulness which the rags and tags of his untidy paragraphs overspread. He has given us a full, and not unpicturesque Life of our great modern Minister, and one which, in spite of its drawback of style, will probably be final. What has been told might perhaps have been better told, but there is plainly nothing more to tell. One very praiseworthy quality of the book is the carefulness with which the secondary characters have been elaborated. It is too much the habit of biographers to take for granted that their readers know all about the men and women among whom their subject lived and acted, and the affairs in which he interfered. They consequently surround their hero with nothing more life-like or picturesque than the names of his contemporaries and allusions to historical events; Lord Stanhope, on the contrary, has carefully sketched the characters of Dundas, Wilberforce, Canning, and the rest of the younger or second-rate men who grouped themselves around Mr. Pitt; and, without thrusting them unduly into that central prominence which the subject of his Biography could alone occupy with propriety in the general picture, he has given great dramatic vivacity to the figures of Mr. Fox and his disciples. Nor has he been less lavish in supplying an entourage of events. The third and fourth volumes, without for one moment trenching upon the domain of History, are beyond measure rich in public incident. The story of the Mutiny of the Fleets at Portsmouth and Sheerness is particularly well introduced; and the episode of General Humbert's landing at Killala, as are all the other glimpses of the Irish Rebellion, is given in a manner unhappily only too rare with the writer. These last two * The Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, by Earl Stanhope. 4 vols. Murray. volumes are indeed far better than the two first; and the interval between Mr. Pitt's resignation and his final assumption of office, which promised naturally to be the barest portion of the book, is, by sheer skill, made almost the most interesting. Upon Pitt's conduct during that difficult period too much praise can hardly be bestowed. He would seem almost to have acted with deliberate intent to show that it was possible for a politician out of office to behave like a high-minded and generous gentleman to his opponents and successors. The days of Mr. Addington's administration were unfortunate and brief; but, such as they were, they endured only through his rival's nobleness and forbearance; and whatever alleviation there was of their vexation and difficulty was owing to that rival's co-operation and support. It has too often been the custom to decry the first Lord Sidmouth. His administration was certainly feeble, but he was not. He was a man of more than ordinary capacity, and in less urgent times would have ably filled the post of which his occupation in the days of the French Revolution was a misfortune no less to himself than to his country. Nor had he any great talent at his disposal for the formation of a strong cabinet, Mr. Fox, the Grenvilles, and Sheridan, with all the legitimate opponents of Pitt, who should have been in any ministry that took the place of his, stood aloof from the ranks of his successor. Under the administration of the former they were no less excluded from office than they had been under that of the latter; and, notwithstanding the pleasure with which they welcomed the downfall of Pitt, it may be doubted whether there was as much heart in the support which decency demanded from them to the man whom they had helped to elevate, as there was in the self-forgetful counsels and adhesion of his generous rival and superior. But it is not alone in his treatment of Mr. Addington that Lord Stanhope has been careful to keep in prominence the rectitude and the moral ascendancy of Mr. Pitt. To the last day of his public life he made good the noble declaration with which he may be said almost to have commenced it. Within a year of his introduction to Parliament he had been accused by Lord North's supporters he was himself then in the ranks of the opposition-of attacking the conduct of the Admiralty Board, from feelings of enmity to the Earl of Sandwich. "I support the motion," cried Pitt, in his reply, " from motives of a public nature, and from those motives only. I am too young to be supposed capable of entertaining any personal enmity against the Earl of Sandwich; and I trust that when I shall be less young, it will appear that I have early determined, in the most solemn manner, never to allow any private and personal consideration whatever to influence my public conduct at any one period of my life." The offer, made to him by Lord Rockingham, of the ViceTreasurership of Ireland, with nothing to do for a salary of 5,000l. a-year, was a trifling test of the sincerity and strength of the boy's declaration, compared to that which he underwent before he was a year older or stronger. Before the close of 1783 the Marquis of Rockingham had died, and his successor the Earl of Shelbourne had resigned. George the Third, whose two chief antipathies in domestic politics, one of them wise, the other foolish, were Catholic Emancipation and the domination of the great Whig families, was beside himself in the search for a Premier. Lord North and Mr. Fox had juft then concluded, in their coalition, a sanction for much that is mean and evil-hearted in the struggle for office; but though branded with the dislike of the king, and the disgust of the wisest and best among their own followers, their union seemed to challenge alike both the monarch and the country to frame a cabinet without one or both of them. In this emergency, and as a last hope of emancipation from so disgraceful a cabal, George the Third, with the sanction, if not at the suggestion, of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, offered the Headship of the Treasury to Mr. Pitt. The offer was accompanied with full authority to choose every one of his colleagues. Few young orators of four-andtwenty summers, and two or three successful sessions in the House of Commons, would, under such circumstances, have retained self-possession enough to think of holding back for the one day which Mr. Pitt asked for consultation and decision. Still fewer would, after a week of anxious deliberation, have sent any such reply as the following was, to the king who sought to honour them. "Mr. Pitt received, this morning, the honour of your Majesty's gracious commands. With infinite pain he feels himself under the necessity of humbly expressing to your Majesty, that, with every sentiment of dutiful attachment to your Majesty, and zealous desire to contribute to the public service, it is utterly impossible for him, after the fullest consideration of the situation in which things stand, and of what passed yesterday in the House of Commons, to think of undertaking, under such circumstances, the situation which your Majesty has had the condescension and goodness to propose to him. "As what he now presumes to write is the final result of his best reflection, he would think himself criminal, if, by delaying till to-morrow humbly to lay it before your Majesty, he should be the cause of your Majesty's not immediately turning your royal mind to such a plan of arrangement as the exigency of the prefent circumstances may, in your Majesty's wisdom, seem to require." "Mr. Pitt, I am much hurt to find that you are determined to decline," wrote George the Third, in answer to this magnanimous rejection of the highest office; and if the young statesman were then suffering at all from the internal soreness of suppressed vanity, in this one expression of his sovereign he might have found a salve. But Pitt felt the exigencies of the Crown at that moment far too keenly to recognize with pleasure in them any marks of his own importance. Such as he was when he resigned the seals to Lord Sidmouth, he was when he left the cabinet doors open to Lord North and Mr. Fox, and the associates of their unmanly coalition. Nor was his moderation left long unrewarded. A few months were sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility of the new administration. How long it might have held together but for the magnificent whiggery of Mr. Fox's famous India Bill is hardly a matter of speculation. The passion of "the Revolution families" for turning the government of the country into a private oligarchy of their own would probably have broken out sooner or later in some form equally incompatible with the tolerance of the Court or the nation at large. The dismissal of Lord North and Mr. Fox brought to Mr. Pitt his compulsory reward. He was now the only He was now the only possible prime-minister, and he entered the treasury to the joy of his master, and with the concurrence of the people. The consciousness that his former rejection of office was generally known enabled him to avail himself of the king's pertinacity, and through a succession of vexatious defeats to work his way to a majority in a hostile House of Commons. From the year 1783 he may be said to have retained office till his death. The intercalation of Lord Sidmouth's Cabinet only relieved him of such labours of routine as make the weariness of an actual minister. Until his nominal return to power, he was still the archdirector of the councils of England, the oracle to which its weaker leaders recurred for sanction and guidance. The steadiness of his career is as wonderful as its abrupt commencement. He was evidently constructed for it; born to it. He seemed to take the premiership at the outset of his life as his destiny, and to be confirmed in it by the instinct of his countrymen. No modern minister, in England or elsewhere, has ever had so firm a hold of power as was his; and, with temptations to impurity and ambition that have seldom been transcended since the days of Elizabeth, few have ever lived and died as pure and as modest as he. Biblical Psychology.* F all the various objects towards which man's thoughts and interests are directed, there is nothing which can be so interesting to him as himself. "The proper study of mankind is man," *Olshausen: Opuscula, Art. 6.-Delitzsch's Biblische Psychologie. Second Edition, 1861. is a saying which can never become stale, any more than it can cease to be true. Nor can it be said that the study of our common human nature has ever been entirely neglected even in this country, in which we are supposed to have little taste for metaphysics or psychology. Although the progress towards decision in psychological theories seems but slow, although idealist and sensationalist remain in their old rigid antagonism, and the disciple of the " common sense" school or the eclectic still holds aloof from both, and strives to find a solid footing on ground equally removed from the cloud-land of the one and the materialism of the other, still the inquiry is happily not abandoned; and if the general theories remain substantially the same, there is something contributed, in the course of the struggle, towards clearing the ground and making the positions of the adverse party mutually intelligible. There is, however, one branch of this great question which has been almost entirely neglected by the whole Christian Church in modern times, the psychology of the sacred Scriptures. It might seem the most natural thing possible, for one who wished to investigate the nature of man in a Christian spirit, to ask whether any light was thrown upon the question by the Word of God, and if so, what amount of guidance might be derived from its intimations. The words of Tertullian are most appropriately prefixed to a section of his work by Delitzsch: "Learn of God what you have from God; or if not from Him, then from no one." We are far from thinking the time wasted which has been bestowed upon the philosophy of consciousness; but we are bound to believe that the most subtle investigator of mental phenomena would derive help from that which is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The importance of a careful study of the Biblical account of man's nature will be overlooked by no thoughtful student of the Scriptures. To say nothing of the additional clearness of conception, and hence of expression, which would thereby be imparted to the Christian teacher, every one who has studied the inspired writings with the reverence which they deserve and demand, who has made an effort, not simply to catch the general meaning of any particular passage, but to understand every word of that awful volume of which no "jot or tittle" shall ever pass away, must have been met by the difficulty of assigning a distinct meaning to various words which sometimes seem to be interchangeable, sometimes separate and distinct, in their significations. Such words as spirit, soul, understanding, mind, heart, occur to us at once. Are these words employed in a loose, popular sense, or in a strict invariable sense; or are they sometimes used popularly, sometimes with the intention of marking certain distinctions in our inner man? However these questions may be answered, it is desirable that we should know what is the answer. If they have no distinct and special meaning save that which is determined by the context, it is well that such a conclusion should be made good by a careful induction of the particular passages in which they occur. If the reverse be the case, if each word has a distinct meaning of its own, sometimes it may be more generic, sometimes more specific, which seems à priori the reasonable as well as the reverent way of viewing the subject, then it is desirable that those meanings should be ascertained. Let us take a single illustration of the importance of such definitions. of such definitions. "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also." (1 Cor. xiv. 15.) What can this mean? Does not the understanding belong to the spirit? In the wider sense of the word spirit, unquestionably it does. Then the word must have a more limited meaning? It is only by investigations which belong to Biblical psychology that difficulties such as these can be solved. We can refer to the subject in this place only in general terms. Happily the means of becoming better acquainted with it are increasing among ourselves. Attention has been directed to it by Dean Alford and Dean Ellicott, in their Commentaries, and by the latter in his sermons on the Destiny of the Creature, in which, as he would himself be the first to admit, he has been under considerable obligation to the work of Delitzsch which we have named. Whether a complete system of Biblical psychology be a possibility or not we do not pretend to say. It must be tried before it can be pronounced to be impossible. The materials for it are far more abundant than a mere reader of the English version of the Bible would suppose. The basis of the whole inquiry lies, of course, in the distinction. of body, soul, and spirit. In our common language we use the words soul and spirit interchangeably. It may be asserted that this is never the case in the Scriptures. By this we do not mean that the one word could never be substituted for the other, so as to make a meaning which was true and substantially the same, but that the words are never used to mean exactly the same thing. Let it be remembered that, in the words of Delitzsch, "Biblical psychology is no science of yesterday." A subject which occupied the mind and the pen of Tertullian may well be thought worthy of being carefully studied in our own days. When S. Paul speaks of "body, soul, and spirit," it is hardly a reverent estimate of one who spake as he was "moved by the Holy Ghost," to say that the expression was tautological. But it is not merely in such expressions as these that the distinction of soul and spirit is pointed out. Let readers of the Greek Testament mark the words of the same Apostle, in 1 Cor. xv. 44, "It is sown a natural (a soulish) body, it is raised a spiritual body;" and in the same Epistle (ii. 14), "The natural (soulish) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. . . . they are spiritually discerned ;" and it will be perceived that there is not merely a distinction, but a contrast indicated between the soul and the spirit. To those who may wish for a brief examination of this particular point, we may recommend the perusal of the short article in Olshausen's Opuscula. For a more complete investigation of the subject we know of no work to be compared with Delitzsch's Biblical Psychology. We may not accept all his conclusions; but we may at least promise those who enter upon the study of his work that they will find in him a favourable contrast to too many of his countrymen, in the possession of a calm, reverent, and devout tone of mind, and that they will meet with little or nothing at variance with "those things which are most surely believed among us." Mendelssohn's Letters.* HAT shall be said for Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the genius, poet, and musician, who perished in the noontide of his glory, snatched away in the very fulness of his power, just as the world began to admire and to love him? Fortunately, his genius as a musician has given him a name high up among the immortals, and if anything were now needed to render it more illustrious and more charming, this volume of Letters would afford all that could be wished for. Here we have him as he really was in life, bright, ardent, and affectionate, in the spring and flush of his youthful enthusiasm; full of eloquence, good sense, and feeling; whether talking of the common incidents of his journey, the pictures of Venice, the music at Rome, the beggars at Naples, or the snowy ravines of Switzerland. Taken merely as letters, these may for beauty of style rank among the very highest; their natural grace, vivacity, and truth, being preserved by the skill of the translator, even in their English dress. They read, in fact, like English letters; though not one Englishman in a million could present us with so charming a mixture of wisdom, wit, and graceful imagination. All this is the more remarkable when we remember that they were written when Mendelssohn was but twenty-one years of age;-extending over the two years, 1830-1832, that were spent in Italy and SwitLetters from Italy and Switzerland, by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Translated from the German by Lady Wallace. Long1861. mans. zerland. The few extracts our space admits of will give but a faint idea of their full beauty. His whole life seemed one unbroken "Song without words;" at home or abroad, at work or idling away the sunny mornings at Rome, or in the green valley of Interlachen and in this respect we know of no musician of ancient or modern times with whom we may compare him. To the devout piety of Handel he added the tenderness of a loving heart, and the sprightliness of Mozart. If he talks of pictures, we imagine that he was born a painter; if of sculpture, that he must himself have handled the chisel of Thorwaldsen, as well as charmed him on the piano; or if of poetry, that he was born a poet. But when he touches on music, then we feel and know at once that this is his master-passion that moulds and sways his whole being. The very pulses of his heart beat afresh, with new life, at its sound. He thinks music, talks music—what wonder that he sings and plays as if his life depended on it. Of such a book no fair notion can be formed by mere extract. Only the whole volume suffices; a difficulty not to be surmounted even by the most ardent critic. Most of his letters are to his sister Fanny, and from these our extracts are chiefly culled. We will first hear him talk of pictures ;-of The Entombment, by Titian, he says: "Here is the conclusion of a great tragedy; so still, so grand, so acutely painful; Magdalene supporting Mary, fearing that she will die of anguish, she endeavours to lead her away, but once more looks round herself, evidently wishing to imprint this spectacle indelibly on her heart, thinking it is for the last time;-and then the sorrowing John, who sympathizes and suffers with Mary; and Joseph, who absorbed in his piety, and occupied with the tomb, directs and conducts the whole; and Christ Himself lying there so tranquil, having ensky! It all speaks to the heart and fills me with enthusiasm, and will dured to the end: then the blaze of brilliant colour and the gloomy never leave my memory." When artists talk learnedly of Guido's Aurora, he calls it the very type of haste and impetus; for surely no man ever imagined such hurry and tumult, such sounding and clashing, while of the modern painters at Rome he draws a most amusing picture : "The Café Greco, where they congregate, is a small dark room, about eight feet square, where on one side you may smoke, but not on the other; so they sit round on benches, with their broad-leaved hats on their heads, and their huge mastiffs beside them; their cheeks and throats and the whole of their faces covered with hair, puffing forth clouds of smoke (only on one side of the room), and saying rude things to each other while the mastiffs swarm with vermin. They drink coffee, and talk of Titian and Pordenone, just as if they were sitting beside them with beards and wide-awakes!" In this and a hundred other such passages we find traces of his bright and genial good sense, and everywhere tokens of his taste and naïveté. The first time he orders his supper in Italian, he says :— "My tongue skated away as if on slippery ice, first gliding into English, and then stumbling afresh. I was famously cheated the next morning, but I did not in the least care, and so on we went." Nothing upsets his good-humour; nothing annoys him. The landlord takes hold of the sack-cloth sheets, and says: 66 6 Very fine linen;' but I," says Mendelssohn, "slept as sound as a bear, and, before falling asleep I said to myself, Now you are in the Apennines. When would-be musicians asked him what he thought of Mozart and all his sins, he replied :— "As far as I am concerned, I should feel only too happy to renounce all my virtues in exchange for Mozart's sins." With a noble and generous appreciation of excellence in others, he ever spoke and wrote of himself with the modesty which marks true genius : "I can form," he says to his sister, "no judgment of my new compositions; I cannot tell whether they are good or bad; and this arises from the circumstance that all the people to whom I have played anything for the last twelve months forthwith glibly declared it to be wonderfully beautiful; and that will never do. I wish some one would let me have a little rational blame once more, &c. &c." But the happiest passages are little touches of quiet humour, as in a letter to his father, where he describes the exceeding slowness of a slow coachman : |