tion that in the next world we shall be able | sance in Italy' may be called a chapter in the freely to communicate ourselves-where the philosophy of history. Bound by no formula, 'Babel of words' will not stand between and free to follow wherever his inquiry may soul and soul-can forget it? And where lead, without reference to the requirements of any dogmatic scheme, the author is able to in the range of all Poe's writings can you take a comprehensive view of the causes of find trace of the expression of such a heal- the phenomena under discussion, and the thy human religious faith? Poe seems to consequences to which they may have afterdraw no satisfaction from the thought-if wards led. In addition, Mr. Symonds is he ever entertains it-of the freedom that master of a rich and graceful style, which in shall come to the enfranchised spirit, or certain parts of his inquiry, when the subject from the compensations of Providence and admits of it, blossoms into luxuriance, but is never chargeable with redundancy. The of spiritual relation; he falls back, for fleetchapter on Savonarola, and the final chapter ing satisfaction rather, on his individual on the expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy, dreams, or if he escapes from them at all, it by which the culture and artistic refinement is only to seek a momentary suggestion from of Italy were brought into immediate contact elements of sensuous beauty. Hawthorne, with the European world, are excellent exin a word, had faith-faith in men, faith in amples of what we mean. The author never a future-Poe had not; and the remorse and allows his style to carry him away, but keeps hopelessness of his prose as well as of his it strictly subordinate to his subject. Therefore, while there is much admirable and atpoetry-qualities radical and essential to tractive literary work, there is no fine writing them at once and decidedly differentiate merely for its own sake. his art from that of Hawthorne, in spite of some superficial points of external resemblance.

Another very noticeable point is that, whereas Poe suffered almost chronically from low spirits,blue devils, as his friend Mr. White graphically called them— and was hurried by reaction from joy to sorrow, from despondency to ecstasy, Hawthorne, on his own confession, lived a life of equable content, seldom visited by low spirits. And in spite of the problems with which he occupied himself, this is not so surprising when we reflect how he kept himself en rapport with life, eschewed solitude, and regarded nothing as more healthful for a literary man than to have much to do with those who could not sympathize with his peculiar views and employments.

Mr. Symonds takes a large view of the Renaissance. This term is variously applied by different writers to signify the revival of learning in the fifteenth century, the revival of art, the dawn of political freedom, or the wards to culminate in the reformation of the new movement in thought which was aftersixteenth century, and to humanise with its influence the one-sided tendency of a purely ecclesiastical and religious transformation. To Mr. Symonds the Renaissance' is none of these singly, but it includes them all. He regards it as the growth of the human intellect at the period when, after long previous preparation, it became ready to break the heavy fetters by which it was bound during the Middle Ages and the period of feudalisni. After a slumber of many centuries the thought of humanity awoke from its sleep, and, strong in the dawning consciousness of a new life and fresh energies, spread itself abroad on every side. The causes of such a transformation defy analysis, if we seek for their ultimate explanation in the region of the phenomenal. What analysis is alone able to do is to mark the conditions under which the new life began, and to trace the manifestations of its energies and force. In this view we find that the Renaissance' cannot be isolated either from that which preceded or that which followed it. It is comparatively easy to mark off a period during which the new life of the fifteenth century exhibited its force and freshness, and to call that the 'Renaissance.' But, in truth, the Renaissance' is still with us. The whole complex result called modern civilization is its fruit. The Reformation was a moment' in the great progress it inaugurated; and the French Revolution, which carried the same impulses into the political sphere as had been before manifested in the religious, is another step forward in the same process. The Renaissance,' thus regarded, is the emancipation of the reason for the modern world. Italy took the lead in it because | Italy was already in advance of the other na

We had intended to follow out this comparison into much fuller instance and detail. Space forbids; but it is easy to verify the suggestion here given, which we trust many of our readers may be tempted to do for themselves at the same time gaining more intimate acquaintance with the style and thought of two of the greatest masters of the English language in recent times.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.
The Renaissance in Italy-the Age of the
Despots. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS,
Author of An Introduction to the Study
of Dante,' &c. Smith, Elder, and Co.
IN a certain wide sense of the term Mr.
Symonds' attractive work on The Renais-

tions of Europe in possessing the conditions | there is a mighty force mysteriously guided necessary to the free development of thought. and governed and led on through an immense Before the other countries that have since evolution to ever higher results. There is played their parts in the drama of modern thus an universal soul of progress,' of which history, Italy possessed a language; she man is the instrument and not the element, had a favourable climate, political freedom, and civilization the result. Having develand commercial prosperity;' and she became oped this general theory, and admitted that the means of bridging the gulf between the the problem of the causes of human progress Middle Ages and modern civilization. Mr is, as to its origin and issues, insoluble, Mr. Symonds, in dealing with the Renaissance Bancroft proceeds with what is the proper in Italy,' sketches the history of that country task of his work-to pass in review, namely, during the Age of the Despots,' and the the Civilized Nations of the Western half of period of the Republics, in order to exhibit | North America, or the Pacific States. Here, to us the features of Italian civilization. as in the first volume, the author almost overAmid the literary influences that were pro-whelms us with the amount and complexity minent are the Florentine Historians and of his material. He has gathered together an enormous mass of facts and descriptions, which are often of very profound interest and significance. The fact that the ground over which he takes us is, if not virgin soil, yet ground which has been comparatively little trodden of late, ought to render the work attractive to the reader in search of what is new and curious. The very names of the peoples with whom he deals are almost forgotten. The Aztecs are, indeed, not unknown to fame; but who now remembers the Nahua civilization of which they were the representatives, and to whom does the Chichimec Era' or the Toltec Era' carry definite ideas? Nevertheless the government of the Nahua nations was a complex system, developed by a semicivilized people, whose social, political, and economical customs and institutions were not perhaps far behind in civilization those of the contemporary nations of Europe. Another great family of peoples were the Maya nations, whose manners in peace and in war, their feasts and amusements, their laws and religion, their dress and food, and modes of warfare, with their arts, implements, and hieroglyphics, are narrated with ample detail in the volume before us. Mr. Bancroft has undertaken a gigantic task; and at a time when interest has almost died away in peoples and phases of civilization that were once more generally familiar, his work ought to prove as instructive as, from the charm of novelty which it bears, it will be entertaining.

Machiavelli's political theories. The con-
sideration of the influence of the Popes of
the period leads to a review of the relations
of morality and the Church, into which a new
element was infused by Savonarola. The
Florentine Reformer is a prominent character
in the volume, and the chapter on him is one
of the most eloquent of the work. The vol-
ume closes with a sketch of the Invasion of
Italy by Charles VIII., and an exhibition of
the effects which that event produced in con-
nection with the progress of the Renaissance.'
In subsequent volumes we are promised a his-
tory of the Fine Arts and the Revival of
Learning, and of Italian Literature. The
volume before us, though complete by itself,
is therefore also a part of a larger whole.
The ground requiring to be gone over is ex-
tensive, and the objects of interest are very
numerous. In tracing the origin of the Italian
'Renaissance,' for example, it is requisite to
consider the political conditions of Italy in
the fourteenth century; and strict chronolo-
gical consistency sometimes requires to be
sacrificed in order to exhibit a general view
of the nature and issues so far of the entire
movement. Of course, the author goes over
ground, much of which has been trodden be-
fore; but he brings a new spirit of inquiry to
the old task, and the result is a work of a
truly fascinating description, which throws
light on some of the most important move-
ments of human thought at a period which
was the birth-time of a new age.

The Native Races of the Pacific States of
North America. By ROBERT HOWE BAN-
CROFT. Vol. II. 'Civilized Nations.'
Longmans and Co.

|

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Macready's Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters. Edited by Sir FREDERICK POLLOCK, Bart., one of his Executors. Two Vols. Macmillan and Co. If we found reason to complain of the first The stage is a perilous form of professional volume of this extensive work, that its vast activity, and the theatre is a hazardous mode accumulation of facts and phenomena was of personal effort. On almost no subject is a not reduced to any form or order under com- greater mistake made than in regard to the prehensive theories, the converse is the case conditions of fitness for being on the stage. with the second volume. In an introductory A person of active passionate nature, or at the chapter on 'Savageism and Civilization,' occu- period of life in which the aimless stir of pying eighty pages, we have theories in suffi- passion is strongest, becomes stage-struck,' cient abundance to constitute a philosophy of and fancies that the vigorous play of the civilization. The author seeks to run back pulses of passion promises to him or her sucphenomena to their ultimate elements; but cess, position, and fame as an actor. Over he cannot be said to have achieved a great such aspirants the passions exert mastery; the measure of success. As in the physical world great impersonator must hold all the manimatter and force perform certain functions festations of passion under his control. Judgunder fixed laws, so in the intellectual worldment must outweigh and overcome, the hey

Feeble tra

day in the blood, and cultured art bear rule which the next wave obliterates. The more in the penetralia mentis. The ecstasy and enduring arts leave in their works the chamthrill of the spectator require to be secured pions of their fame to live and delight and by the predetermined force of the actor's instruct, when the cavils against them are artistic adaptation of expression to passion. | heard no more. The player's triumph is moPersonation is educated simulation, a regu-mentary, passing as the rapturous applause lated and refined reproduction of emotive that attests its merit dies away. fervour in others by the exhibition of trained dition is his memory's guard.' manifestations of the outward signs of the inward movements of the mind. They are not, therefore, those whose personal passions are over-active who should choose the stage as a profession, but those whose intellect can be so kindled with emotive sympathy as to add the grace of personation to the poet's conceptions. Good acting is not the result of an afflatus of passionate fervour, but of a reasoned reproduction of the appearances of the temper-changing passions excited by each separate play's plot. Acting demands high emotive capacity, great intellectual enthusiasm, easily stirred sympathy, clear conceptions of character, and observant imitativeness of manner. Besides all these it requires a statuesque frame, pliant physiognomy, versatility of utterance, variety of action, rapidity and retentiveness of memory, and a keen sense of the picturesque. Though the stage is so onerous in its requirements, too often it is made,' as Mr. Macready complains, for the idle and ignorant a refuge from the duties of painstaking industry,' under the idea that the pressing excitement of necessity may raise the spirit to the requisite height of reproductive emotion. This is a great error, which leads to much misunderstanding off the stage' in an undervaluing of the art which combines in one sculpture, painting, oratory, plot-interest, and poetry; and on the stage in a depreciation of the study due to the proper rendering of the characters cast in a play as a living tout ensemble. Macready's Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters' is of great interest, not only as affording the elements of a memoir of one of the most scholarly, cultured, moral, and industri-school-lad at Rugby, the cares of theatrical ous of the gentlemen players' of this century; but as giving us glimpses of theatrical life in many phases, and as exciting an interest in the trials and troubles of that

Or, as Macready himself pathetically and forcibly says of the actor: He leaves no trace of his life's work. The poet, as his imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, turns them to shape, which remain a lasting monument of his genius; the painter, upon the wall or canvas, fixes imperishably the dreams of his fancy; the sculptor, in the various attitudes of his lifelike image, conveys to future times the thought and feeling that had burned within him; the player, with conceptions as glowing, heightening the poet's thought and realizing his visions of glory, imprints his graceful and picturesque illustrations, his touching studies of the human heart, upon the light sands of time,

These two volumes seem, on perusal, to be singularly frank, unaffected, and honest. They are not a good specimen of bookmaking, and may, perhaps, be all the better for that; though they suggest that the undigested mass of the Diaries and Letters might very easily have been thrown into the narrative form, and so made more readable and not less racy or enjoyable. Of volume one, the first 327 pages are occupied by the Reminiscences, commenced by W. C. Macready in 1855; and these carry us on from the great actor's birth, in Mary street, Tottenham Court Road, London, 3rd March, 1793, till his marriage, 24th June, 1824; his Drury Lane season, 1825-26; and his American engagements in 1826. The remainder of this volume (pp. 327-476) contains selections from Macready's own contemporary records of his daily life' in his Diaries till the end of 1835. In the second volume these Selections from Diaries' are continued from 1836 till his farewell to the stage in 1851. A brief, interesting account of Macready in Retirement includes further selections from his note-books, copies of some excellently composed letters to the editor, Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., and his wife, and gives a very brief notice of the last scene of all in life's eventful history,' which occurred at Weston-super-Mare, 27th April; and of his funeral at Kensal Green, 4th May, 1873, according to the minute instructions Macready had left in writing to regulate the proceedings. The life included in these eighty years began in self-sacrifice and ended in success. Macready was intended for the bar; but, by his father's failure while he was a

management were thrust upon him, and reluctant though he was to see his dreams of bar and bench dissipate into thin air, he felt himself necessitated to study for the stage, on which he made his first appearance as Romeo, at Birmingham, 7th June, 1810, in his eighteenth year. During the forty-one years he remained upon the stage his life is a record of severe self-criticism and arduous study. The patient toil he underwent was terrible, and the persistent assiduity he devoted to fulfil his ambition to reach the top of his profession was continued long in the face of misfortune, difficulty, disease, and of the keen rivalry of competitors on the stage, as well as of the eager criticism of those who often tinged their articles with partisanship. And yet he hated no jot of heart or hope, but held right onward,' till his aspirations were realized and he was acknowledged to be an earnest and adequate expositor of Shakespeare and the higher drama. There are confessions of petulance, selfishness, jealousy, envy, and chagrin; there are marks of arro

thinking that they have erred by the insertion of so many frivolous letters, even although in most cases they are from persons of some note, have done well to let their lament

story. In spite of the egotistic Note, the Autobiography is deeply interesting—more interesting in some ways than it would have been had that not been present; and the same thing holds true of the letters and extracts from diaries, &c., which we have in this volume; although we are more than ever impressed with the fact that Dr. Guthrie, in spite of his healthy sympathy and breadth in many ways, was so void of what, for lack of a better term, we may name the delicacy that comes of intellectual distinction, and the charm alone derivable from it, that we are sometimes inclined to wonder at the pre-eminent position that he gained with his contemporaries. But that impression is only momentary. We turn the page, and find some fresh and striking proof of his energy, his philanthropy, his tact, his determination, his indomitable bravery. He was, in the strict sense, no student, but a man of action, with an imperious necessity that he should have some great object before him, and he was always straitened till it should be accomplished. His sons have not followed the chronological order, which is, after all, the most natural; but, taking up the idea which we have just expressed, have found headings for their chapters in the various works in which he was engaged-the Disruption, Manse-Fund tours, Ragged-School movement, Temperance movement, and so on. The association of true humour, pawky common sense, and a tender pathos that gained rather than lost by its egotistic basis, made a great platform orator of Dr. Guthrie; his skill in wordpainting, his conscientious labour in preparation, his power of, so to say, realising his audience both in the closet and in the pulpit made him a great preacher. He was quite right when he said, after the, Disruption, when some one was about to raise money by publishing sermons, that he would publish stories. His forte lay there-picture and anecdote were the two strings of his bow, and from one or other the arrow went straight. And, notwithstanding what we have said, it has to be confessed frankly that Dr. Guthrie maintained almost as great an influence over the cultured as over the ignorant-a fact which, in any

gance, egotism, and a constantly active pride sometimes degenerating into vanity; there are self-accusings of want of temper and of considerateness for others in the Diaries laid open to our perusal here, but these should noted father, as far as was possible, tell his own be read too one-sidedly against the recorder. It was one of the evil results of his early and unwilling need to go upon the stage that de- | veloped in Macready a morbidly sensitive selfcriticism, which frequently interfered with his own happiness and the happiness of others, and often greatly injured his professional success by destroying spontaneity of characterization and imparting a greater appearance of artificiality to his acting than it would otherwise have had. Self-criticism during the time of action destroys energy and mars the free operation of the spirit. This uneasy desire to excite and keep up a duplex action in his consciousness-this attempt to make his reflective faculties overpeer his representative ones Macready carried to excess. Indeed, this dubiety of self became one of his besetting weaknesses. It made him jealous, ready to take offence, and quick to suspect slight or affront. He wished to be a gentleman, and he especially desired to be a faithful disciple of the first true gentleman that ever breathed,' but this early-learned and stronglyactive self-watchfulness greatly hindered the ease, grace, suavity, and politeness of the first actor of his day, although he possessed scholarship, genius, high moral aims, and great professional and social influence. The idea of the legal vagabondage of all his tribe held his soul constantly in bondage. He writhed under it, and tortured himself with the notion of being received into society only on sufferance. In this he was unwise; but yet this opinion caused him to strain endeavour, if not to win, yet to be worthy of the station to which he aspired. And he succeeded not only in acquiring the leading place in his art, a high position in the social scale, but also, after his retirement from the stage, 26th Feb. ruary, 1851, he devoted himself most zealously and self-sacrificingly to all the duties of a gentleman in his various relations during his residence at Sherbourne House. We must notice the unaffected, quiet, and unostentatious piety shown in his life, especially after the severe illness which brought him, in 1825, to a serious consideration of life, death, futurity, duty, and God. The record of his own religious feelings, the care exerted over his children to keep them under Christian influ-exhaustive estimate of him, would need to be ences, and the constancy of his adherence to family worship, is very pleasing, and he died fearing God. This book is a round unvarnished tale of a good man's life, who, in difficult circumstances and amid sore temptations, 'strove to do the duty that lay nearest to his hand manfully, and, despite a few errors, succeeded in his aim.

recognised and accounted for. His style is, however, too much marked by the necessity that was primarily laid upon him, to gain a high place for him as a writer, and the success of his books was perhaps so far adventitious. Future critics may even wonder at the high position which he secured as a preacher. Much was due to his personal presence-the varying expression of the mobile features, the impressive action, the tone of voice, the freedom and complete self-command combined with that absorption in his theme, which made one-half disbelieve in his Dr. Guthrie's sons, though we cannot help careful and complete preparation for the

Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie, D.D., and
Memoir. By his Sons, the Rev. D. K.
GUTHRIE and CHARLES J. GUTHRIE., M.A.
Vol. II. Daldy, Isbister, and Co.

and brought timely aid. To the demand of the priests that the religious education of Roman Catholics be left to them, he replied, I have two answers to this demand: My first is, I saved the boy, and the hand that plucked him from the wreck is the hand which shall lead him on the way to heaven. My second is to point him to the wreck and roaring sea, and bid him strip and plunge like me and save those that still perish there.' Then come admirable sketches of his quiet congregational work, and his appearances on platforms in connection with the temperance cause and the matter of innocent amusements for the people-an object he had deeply at heart and earnestly contested for. His health began to give way, but it seemed as though he found only more causes in which to be interested, and was active for the Union movement; whilst he found an outlet for his thoughts in the Sunday Magazine,' which he edited. Speaking of the proposed union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches on one occasion, he said- Some men are like hedgehogs, you cannot touch them but they expose their bristles immediately, although I believe that if hedgehogs would only love each other they could lie closely enough together.' There is a graphic and striking account of his presentation to the Queen on the occasion of the marriage of the Princess Louise.

pulpit; an excellent description of which is began the ragged-school movement there. given in this volume. His Plea' created such an outburst of symAfter all, it was as a practical social influ-pathy as could hardly have been looked for, ence mainly that Dr. Guthrie made his fame, and it is in that character chiefly that he will live. The part he played in the great Disruption strife is historical. He was no leader in church-courts, no apt hand at dealing at legal subtleties; but he laid firm hold of the fact that freedom-even political freedomand national self-respect were bound up in the claims urged by the Evangelical party in the Church, and he fought as being filled with this conviction. Very characteristic is his description of his visit to Strathbogie as one of the delegates from the General Assembly to preach in place of the suspended ministers, who had bowed to the Court of Session in accepting for ordination an unacceptable presentee in the face of the Veto Act. These ministers went to the Court of Session, and got an extended interdict to prohibit the delegates from preaching in their parishes. After saying that, as the churches, the schools, the very dust of the dead in the churchyards, belonged to the State, he would not intrude there, he goes on to add: 'But when these Lords of Session forbade me to preach my Master's blessed Gospel, and offer salvation to sinners, anywhere in the district under the wide arch of heaven, I put the Interdict under my foot, and I preached the Gospel.' It is this common-sense way in which Dr. Guthrie protected himself from anything that could be called wild or extreme, either in expression or in conduct, that gave him his abiding He combined high impulse with a kind of influence; and we see it fully here. As he shrewd discreetness-the 'canny Scot' alhad not intruded into church, school, or even ways showing through his passionate earnestchurchyard, the fulfilment of the terms of ness and determining his choice of means and the interdict-lodgment in the Calton Gaol-instruments. Dr. Ker, in his suggestive refor ' 'open-air' preaching would have set Scotland in a blaze, and the Lords of Session knew it. When afterwards he was prohibited from preaching by the doctors, he was wont to remark, jocularly, in putting aside requests to preach, I feel the medical interdict rests on as good grounds as the legal one did on bad.' The gathering stir of affairs as the Disruption approached is presented powerfully, and some humour is shown in his description of his tour with Dr. Elder to arouse the country. 'I oftener found myself at the guns than at the wheel then,' he says. His visit to Ireland, too, gives opportunity for some humour. 'If I had not the brogue, I might have the blarney for the boys,' is his own version of the chief reason why he was chosen to go there, and he amply justified the choice. In June 1843, too, he was one of those who visited the chief towns of England to enlighten public opinion on the Free Church movement. Then came the agitation for the Manse Fund, and his ceaseless efforts for that object, £116,370 having been subscribed. 'I have now,' he writes, only one request to make of the Church, and that is that they would let me alone.' But no! If the Church did the world would not; and walking about now as Dr. Guthrie did in Edinburgh, he was moved by the sights of misery he saw, and

miniscences,--which we cannot but regard as the gem of the volume,-very delicately notes this characteristic. Perhaps this had something to do with the manner in which to the end he clung to the Establishment idea, as so many Scotchmen have done: it is something that his ideas underwent such modifica · tion as to make him wish to be able to declare himself an out-and-out voluntary to see how the Church would deal with him! As an evidence of the pathetic humour that was wont to flit round his most serious utterances as he began to feel the disease gaining upon him-of which we have many instances in the last chapter-this anecdote may be given:

A friend, who had not seen him for some time, meeting him one day in the street, remarked how robust he looked. Ah, my good sir,' replied Guthrie, 'I may say of myself what James Hamilton of London once said of a certain person. I should tell you I' had said to Dr. Hamilton, "What can be the secret of -'s reputation-it has lasted now

66

a number of years? Surely there must be
something great about the man after all."
'Well," replied Hamilton in his quaint way,
"no doubt he is a great imposition." Now,
my friend, I am just like that.
So far as my
looks go, I am a great imposition.'