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The scheme was ingeniously planned to meet the two main difficulties of the situation-the party hostility of the centralists, and the opposition of the Czechs. But the German party, though incapable of governing themselves, seem determined to allow no one else to govern but themselves. The measure of Count Hohenwart, the Minister-President, which proposed to confer a modified liberty of initiative on the Landtage, has lately been rejected in a full house, and matters rest as they were.

What is the remedy for these things? Government with the present Reichsrath is evidently impossible. To an outside observer, there appears to be but one straightforward policy which would cut the knot. Let the Kaiser pass a decree abolishing the group-method of voting, dissolve the Reichsrath, and trust to the good sense and patriotism of the electors. The result of this would probably be the return to Parliament of an autonomist majority, which would help the Government to carry a number of measures for the conciliation of the Slavish populations. The latter have at present, in addition to their parliamentary grievances, several grounds of discontent. They complain, for instance, that the clause of the first State ground-law, enacting the equality of all nationalities and languages in the eyes of the law, is a mere dead letter. Unlike the remaining clauses of the law, it pronounced nothing but the abstract principle, and has not been followed up by the definite regulations necessary to make it effective. Hence they urge that the Reichsrath was only half-sincere in inserting it. They ask that the State should come forward and encourage the foundation of universities and high-schools, where the Czechish, Slovenian, Polish, Servian, and Rumanian tongues may be scientifically studied. At the same time, they ask that the judges and other State officials should make use in all public transactions of the language spoken by the majority of the population. A nation, says Dr. Fischhof, can only be cultivated and civilized through the medium of its own tongue. If you wish to win over the Slaves to German culture, you will defeat your own ends by forcing on them the use of a foreign idiom. Prepare the soil first in the only way in which it can be rightly prepared, and it will welcome and assimilate for itself the riches of German science and literature. These require no force to recommend them to the world; the employment of force implies a doubt of their intrinsic value.

But the Germans are opposed to these changes, and the Kaiser is naturally unwilling to alienate the sympathies of the race which forms, after all, the backbone of the empire. At the present moment especially, the victories of their Northern

brothers,

The

brothers, and the prestige which has gathered round the German name, makes them less than ever inclined to bend the neck to the whims of their semi-barbarous fellow-subjects. Austrian statesmen see only too plainly that the link which binds the German population to the monarchy is but a slight one, and will not bear any excessive strain. It is worth while to consider what are the chances, and what would be the results, of an annexation of the German provinces by the newly founded empire. At present the relations existing between the two courts are the most amicable, and it seems improbable that Prince Bismarck is meditating any aggressive move. feeling, too, of the German inhabitants of Vienna and the principal towns is on the whole distinctly averse to the transference of allegiance from Kaiser Franz Joseph to Kaiser Wilhelm. They have tasted the sweets of liberty, and feel little attraction to the iron system of Berlin. On the other hand, it is unquestionable that the dominant party in Germany look forward with a sort of hungry impatience to the time when the black, red, and white flag shall be planted on the Hofburg of Vienna. It is the fashion among these politicians to talk of Austria as a hopelessly demoralized country, which nothing less than the rigid rule of Prussia could restore to healthy life. Indeed, Berlin and Vienna are complete contrasts: it is no wonder that they should fail to understand one another. On the one side we see civil absorbed in military life, a feudal aristocracy, an almost Puritanic rigidity of manners; on the other side a sociable bourgeoisie, genial manners, a free and almost licentious press. It may be presumed that the time has not yet come for the incorporation of the old Kaiser-city in the empire of the North. Such an incorporation would be really harmful to the cause of European civilization. The Germans of Bohemia and the two Austrias act as a sort of political rallying-point for the inchoate civilizations which enclose them. It would be a pity if they abandoned this quasi-colonial task imposed on them. Without them the Czechs, Slovenians, Ruthenians, &c., would be incapable of holding together, and would fall a prey sooner or later to the clutches of Russia. But with their help Austria may look forward to a glorious future. The Christian populations lying to the south-east of Hungary are utterly incapable of governing themselves, and the task of their political reconstruction could be entrusted most properly to Austria. But before any such schemes can become possible, she must set her own house in order. To this end a certain amount of self-sacrifice is required on the part of the Germans, and a cheerful co-operation on the part of the remaining nationalities. The main home

difficulties

difficulties which threaten the monarchy have been already described. The dangers which threaten it from without are merely, as it were, the mirror and counterpart of those which threaten it from within. Russia is only so far dangerous, as she can serve as the rallying-point for the discontent of the Austrian Slaves. The aim of the Austrian statesman should be to make the old empire a home where the mixed nationalities of central Europe may enjoy peace, prosperity, and freedom. Such a policy will be the surest safeguard against the intrigues of the Panslavists and Orthodoxists of Moscow. It has been shown that patriotism of the ordinary kind-the patriotism which rests on communities of blood, literature, and national history-cannot be expected in Austria. The time has gone by when patriotism could be based on the pride of a common army, and fomented by continuous acts of successful military aggression. What remaining idea is there that may serve as an element of cohesion to the Austrian peoples? The idea of common rights and a common freedom, and the knowledge that these rights and this freedom can only be secured against the attacks of foreign absolutism by the union which is strength, and the subservience of a multiplicity of wills to a common object, which is unity.

ART. IV. The whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., Lord Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore: with a Life of the Author, and a critical examination of his Writings. By the Right Rev. Reginald Heber, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Calcutta. Revised and corrected by the Rev. Charles Page Eden, M.A., and the Rev. Alexander Taylor, M.A. In 10 volumes. London, 1856.

2. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, his Predecessors, Contemporaries, and Successors. A Biography. By the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, Incumbent of Bear Wood, Berks. Second Edition. London, 1848.

HE great glory of the English pulpit is, by common consent, Jeremy Taylor; and he has, we think, fairly earned his supremacy. He is much the most distinguished of those who, in the early part of the seventeenth century, turned in their sermons from the discussion of abstract points of theology to the earnest recommendation of those points of Christian life and character which are known and loved of all men; no one of his time joined in an equal degree the graver studies of morality and theology with an eager love of polite letters, not only in Vol. 131.-No. 261.

I

classic

classic form, but in the then comparatively new literatures of Italy and France; the fluent sweetness of his style is, in its way, unsurpassed, and this honied eloquence does but reflect the gentleness of a temper which passed unsoured, if not unruffled, through the terrible strife of the Civil War and the harshness of Puritan rule.

Jeremy Taylor was born at Cambridge, and baptized in Trinity Church in that town on the 15th of August, 1613. Of the date of his birth there is no certain evidence. It has generally been assumed that he was baptized in infancy, but if we suppose that he was two years old at the time of his baptism we obtain a date which harmonises better with the indications afforded by his later life; for when he was entered at Caius College in August, 1626, he was described as having completed his fifteenth year; and further, if we suppose him to have been born in 1611, he would be nearly of the canonical age at the date when he is said to have been ordained, instead of being under twenty, an age at which holy orders have very rarely been conferred. He was the son of a barber in the town, probably a respectable tradesman, as we find him churchwarden of his parish in 1621; and there is no difficulty in supposing that, in those days of love-locks and daintily trimmed beards, one of that occupation would occupy as high a position among the other tradesmen of the town as his successors do now. He is said to have been descended from the famous Dr. Rowland Taylor, who left his blood' at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, for the defence of the Protestant faith. The young Jeremy was one of the earliest alumni of the Perse Grammar School in Cambridge, which was founded in 1615, and he became a sizar at Caius College in 1626. John Milton had taken up his abode in Christ's College only one year before. The two poets-for we must not refuse to Taylor the name of poet-were, no doubt, to use Milton's vigorous expression, deluded with ragged notions and brabblements, and dragged to an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles; that is, they had to pass through the tedious forms of scholastic logic which were still in vogue in the schools; but we may well believe that the pliant intellect of Taylor submitted to this training with far greater ease and readiness than Milton's fiery self-will; in fact, his works show that his mind had great affinity with such intellects as Aquinas and Scotus, though he also traversed fields foreign to them. 'Wranglers' and 'senior optimes' as yet were not, and we have no record of the student's success in the schools, but it is hardly doubtful that a mind so fertile in arguments and objections would be a most formidable adversary in the wit-combats

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of those days. He took his bachelor's degree in 1630, and, as his friend Rust tells us, as soon as he was graduate he was chosen fellow.' His fellowship was probably on the Perse foundation, and of small value. Soon after taking his M.A. degree, which he did in the usual course in 1634,* he was ordained, being then, if he was born in 1611, twenty-three years of age. From the time of his ordination his life was one of frequent change and no little trouble. The patronage of Archbishop Laud procured him a fellowship at All Souls', which he enjoyed but a couple of years; then we find him for a few years Vicar of Uppingham, then ejected, and following the royal army; and at last, about 1644, settled in a Welsh village on the banks of the Towy, in Carmarthenshire, where he supported himself by keeping a school. In these years he had been himself taken prisoner; sickness and death had been busy in his family; he had lost his wife and a son, and was married again to Joanna Bridges, said to have been a natural daughter of Charles I. For some years he led a life of poverty and seclusion; yet, if he was poor and in trouble, he was not friendless: he was constantly befriended by Lord Carbery and his family, whose beautiful seat, Golden Grove, was hard by the village where he dwelt. And he dwelt there, we believe, contentedly: if he had fallen into the hands of 'publicans and sequestrators,' he had still a loving wife and many friends to pity him, and some to relieve him; he had still his merry countenance, his cheerful spirit, and his good conscience; he could walk in his neighbour's pleasant fields and see the variety of natural beauties; and if, with all this, he chose to sit down upon his handful of thorns,' he was fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppaa's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow.' In truth, his situation contrasted favourably with that of many of the royalists who were driven from house and home, and he repeatedly expresses his gratitude to Lord Carbery and his amiable wife for their patronage and protection.

It was in his Welsh retreat that the genius of Taylor was matured: there he wrote the 'Liberty of Prophesying,' the 'Holy Living' and 'Holy Dying,' the 'Great Exemplar,' or Life of Christ, and many of those great sermons with which his name is always associated. If these latter were de

'Holy Dying,' ch. iii. sec. 4.

On the single authority of the MS. of Mr. Jones, a descendant of Taylor's whose papers were used by Heber; see 'Life,' p. xxxv. f.

'Holy Living,' ch. ii. sec. 6.

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