bear witness on their return. And then the czar is something more than patriarch or sovereign, he is also Cæsar, the "elect" and representative of all who obey him. The origin of the dynasty was elective, and the Romanoffs, hated by the aristocratic chiefs, and without a citizen class to support them, have always made it their policy to proclaim themselves representatives of the dim, common populations. They have probably felt that position also. All kings feel it more or less; and to the czar of Russia, so far removed above his subjects, the "mass" must always seem the most interesting as well as the most formidable object within his dominions. The second main end of the coronation is to impress them, and in the effort to reach the true people, to become visible across two continents and to a hundred millions, a ceremony naturally becomes It is a people which is to set of spectators, a people

cut out, without risk of diminishing the impact to be made on the popular imagination. That is, we suppose, true; and for ourselves, we can imagine for a Russian czar no coronation more impressive than the ancient Tartar one, the raising of the sovereign on a shield in the sight of the whole nation, assembled on some vast plain, each morsel of the shield being borne up by the representative of a tribe. Tchengis was enthroned so, and the tradition of the scene has lingered for centuries in men's minds. But ceremonials usually grow of themselves, and it is not difficult to detect the causes which have made this one so separately grandiose. The first idea has been to make it religious, to show the czar to the people of his faith as the consecrated ruler delegated by the Almighty and by the Orthodox Church to govern them. In nations which do not reject symbolism, great religious functions are always slowly performed, grandiose. and always tend to accrete to themselves see, not a a more and more elaborate magnificence. which is to be fed, a people which is to No precedent must be departed from, and recognize that something has occurred precedents accumulate like paraphernalia, so great that each one even of them like bishops' robes, for example, or the bears in it some part. When the tenRussian regalia, which were forwarded to antry count thousands, the kitchen must Moscow in a special train. A pope who be big, the roast oxen many, and the was elected in a moment would hardly beer-vats deep; and the czar only inseem a pope, and the very notion of hurry creases adequately the preparations of is inconsistent with the movements of a the squire. Add to all the forms necesChurch. The czar is patriarch, as well as sary to the recognition of a patriarch, and sovereign; and in his consecration a reli- all the forms essential in the election of gious function is performed which, in a Cæsar, all the forms usual in the crownthe eyes of the Russian people, is first ing of a European monarch, who this of all, and must, as other ceremonials time is anxious to outdo precedent rather are slow, and costly, and magnificent, be than depart from it, and we have the slowest, costliest, most magnificent of materials for a ceremonial which would any. Otherwise, czar and Church would be magnificent anywhere, and which, in alike lack the sense of the becoming. Moscow, the capital of northern Asia, as This is indeed the ultima ratio of the well as of northern Europe, the city coronation, without which Alexander III. where East and West have embraced would hardly have encountered its special each other, becomes a stupendous func dangers or sanctioned its enormous ex- tion, such as could not elsewhere be perpense. Till he is crowned he is not sa- formed. In no other city could a corocred, and as his sacredness is the source nation be a festa at once religious and of his prerogative, the crowning must be democratic, Asiatic and European, modso done as to be past all question, must elled upon most ancient precedents, and be known by direct evidence to every decorated by all the aid of modern inven. person in the empire. Coronations were tiveness and knowledge. Only there could arranged before newspapers began, and Europeans gaze astonished at a building much of the immoderateness of the cere at once fortress, palace, and basilicamonial arises simply from the multitude the largest of fortresses, the hugest of of witnesses from all the nations beneath palaces, the most stupendous of basili the czar's sceptre whom it was necessary cas and watch Tartar princes gazing to summon, that on their return they up thunderstruck under the electric light. might testify that all had been regularly And only there, we hope, could the man and solemnly performed. The kings of who is the centre of all be in more imthe desert do not come to Moscow to minent risk of a violent death than a please themselves, but because they are criminal tried, convicted, and expecting summoned to see, and do homage, and sentence.

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From The London Quarterly Review.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL.*

if thoughtful men decline to give that deference to their opinions which they freely accord to others, who, like Clerk Maxwell, have attained to high rank among scholars and discoverers, and who have not shrunk from bringing their extraordinary powers of mind to bear upon the great subjects involved in the beliefs and doctrines of Christianity.

It is almost taken for granted in some quarters that there is a necessary and irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. The bolder spirits amongst

THE life of James Clerk Maxwell, who, as his biographers state, "has enriched the inheritance left by Newton, consolidated the work of Faraday, and impelled the mind of Cambridge to a fresh course of real investigation;" and who, amid all the subtlety of speculation, the profundity of research, and the brilliance of discov ery for which his career is so distinguished, retained the simplicity and fervor of the Christian faith, well deserves to be chronicled, and to hold a permanent the devotees of science, and the more place in human memory. Professors timid of the adherents to Christianity, to Campbell and Garnett have performed whom perhaps science is almost a sealed their task with great ability and fairness, book, have come to regard one another and have conferred an invaluable boon with feelings approaching to implacable upon what is after all the major portion hostility, as if the one class tended to the of scientific students, those who are ob- license of atheism, and the other dreaded servers rather than theorizers, and who anything like freedom of thought. These, do not desire to drift away from the old however, are the extreme sections of the moorings of religious conviction and sen- two encampments between which there is timent. We have here presented to us a vast phalanx of sober and devout men the history of a man of eminent natural who love both science and religion, and endowments, of keen penetration fitting see much in each to help the other. Scihim for the closest scrutiny, of calm, clear entific methods of the pursuit of truth judgment without which genius is but a give precision and accuracy to the visions Phaeton holding the reins of the sun, who of faith, while a wider sweep and loftier attained to scholarship in classics and range are imparted to the inquiries of the English literature, who shone in mathe- mind by the aspirations of faith. Science matics and astronomy, and who spoke might have grown ridiculous because of with unsurpassed authority in every brilliant but false theories and unwarrantbranch of physical science. Such a man able generalizations had it not been for cannot be regarded as narrow and fossil- the moderating influence of Christian ized in his ideas when he ventures to tell thought, and theology owes some of the out the deeper feelings of his mind, awak- most effective demonstrations of her reaened by a contemplation of the soul's sonableness and truth to the principles relationship to God. Those who have and researches of scientific men. Earwon celebrity by the brilliance of their nest and painstaking study of the laws theories, or the novelty of their specula- and phenomena of nature have not only tions in one or two departments of sci- a practical influence upon the material ence, but who with an almost scornful and social welfare of humanity, amelioratcynicism have turned aside from those ing sanitary conditions by the light of realms of thought and study which bor- physiological researches, improving mander upon religion, or which are of a dis-ufacturing industry by a better undertinctly theological character, while they have not refrained from pronouncing dog matically upon the vast problems concerned therein, ought not to be astonished

standing of physical laws, or making agriculture more productive as the result of the chemist's skill and the observations of the botanist; but it also cultivates a true metaphysic by the discovery of cause and effect, and fosters those intellectual qualifications which are as indispensable to correct religious as to scientific thought.

And there ought to be no concern as to of age. During this period the kindly the fate of Christianity in consequence of and ingenious father exercised a deep and the study of nature, when we call to mind lasting influence on the susceptible nature that the most distinguished philosophers of his son. Mr. Maxwell planned all the and scientists of every age have clung to buildings and improvements on his estate, it with fervent tenacity, and have attrib- and superintended all domestic matters, uted to its inspirations the noblest im- even to the cutting of the last for his own pulses of their minds. Copernicus, Tycho square-toed shoes. And as James was Brahé, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Des- his one companion and care, it is not an cartes, all accepted a divine revelation. exaggeration to say that those mechanical Pascal defended the faith, and Kant bent and mathematical proclivities which he all his energies against sceptical modes of manifested at a quite juvenile age, and thought. Hamilton, Hugh Miller, Owen, which found their consummation in the Faraday, Agassiz, and Clerk Maxwell, planning of the Cavendish Laboratory princes among men, found a place in their during his Cambridge professorship, were beliefs for a direct communication of the the direct products of his father's example Creator's will to mankind, and Francis and training. As his biographers say, Bacon, whom students of nature rev-"The Galloway boy was in many ways erence as the high priest of their order, the father of the Cambridge man; and has said, "Slight tastes of philosophy even the 'ploys' of his childhood conmay perchance move to atheism, but fuller tained the germ of his life work ” (p. 429). draughts lead back to religion."

We shall have to refer again to what we regard as the most charming characteristic of this lamented man, too soon stricken down by death, the trustfulness and fervor with which he clung to the faith in which he had been nurtured; but we must now endeavor to outline the development of his mind, and sketch the growth of those intellectual tastes which led on to the splendid attainments of after years, and the permanent contributions to science which he has made.

The necessities of education led to James being sent to Edinburgh Academy at the age of ten, his father taking up his abode again at Edinburgh, except during the summer season, when he repaired to Glenlair. He was thus enabled to take the oversight of his son's studies, and also, which was more important, of his recreation. Some slight oddities in dress and manners did not tend to make the boy's introduction to school-life smooth and agreeable. Tunics of hodden gray tweed, and shoes clasped and fashioned after the somewhat bucolic ideas of his father, were not likely to escape the keen observation of frolicsome schoolboys, to whom round jackets and shoestrings were de rigueur. But his fine natural gift of irony, combined with his geniality of disposition, saved him on many an occasion from provoking merriment, and estab lished him eventually as a general favorite. The very first time he was questioned as to the maker of his shoes, he replied

James Clerk Maxwell was born at Edinburgh, in 1831. Being an only child, with the exception of a daughter who died in infancy, he was the object of great solicitude, and as his mother died when he was but nine years old, it was fortunate that his father was eminently qualified for the training of a young mind, and the moulding of a moral character. This important and congenial task he performed with the "judiciosity," to borrow a word from his Bradwardinean vocabulary, which in broad Scotch patois :· characterized all he did. As a younger son he had received a portion of the old Middlebie estate, which by the conditions of entail could not go with the Penicuick estate of the Clerks, and to this he added by purchase the Glenlair farm. It was to Glenlair that he retired after his marriage, and here James lived till he was ten years

Din ye ken, 'twas a man,
And he lived in a house
In whilk was a mouse.

At school, though at first he seems to have found more pleasure in watching "humble bees" than in the monotony of Latin grammar, yet he soon applied him