covered by the yellow and red kufiah, which hung down behind, and was fastened to his head by a wide white muslin turban, over the sides of which the ends of the kufiah were thrown up. His feet were bare; his sandals, like those of a Roman statue, being left at the edge of the carpet. With all this, his manners were so coldly quiet, that the stiffest drawing room in England could have found nothing in them to blame; and I confess that, when he left my room after the first meeting, I was inclined to wish that his highness had sent us some less high-born or less unbending guide.

The Heirs of the Farmstead; or, Life in the Worsted Districts of Yorkshire Twenty Years Ago. A Tale. By the Author of Orphan Upton,' &c. Crown 8vo, 320 pp. London: J. Heaton & Son.

PARSONS FOR THE TIMES.

'Come, come,' Mr Sykes observed, 'let us not be so unwise as to quarrel. I can state in a few words what I meant by my clumsy expression. I look upon it, friends, that employers of labour have great responsibilities. That they owe much to their "hands." Much more than the wages the "hands" earn. They should provide means, if such be not already in existence, for the moral improvement and religious welfare of their work-people. I think this duty presses on us with peculiar weight. We are drawing together a large mass of human beings; some of them, it may be, from neighbourhoods well furnished with those means. And yet there is here but the scantiest provision for their moral and religious improvement. There is not a settled minister in the village. Now, what I meant was, that if we could find a suitable man, and fix him here—a man who would take the care of those matters who would preach and visit from house to house, I should be very much pleased indeed, and should feel that we were not neglecting our duties. What say you?'

There was silence. At length Mr Sparks spoke.

'Do you expect me to give an opinion, Mr Sykes?'

'Of course! Why not?'

'Oh, I didn't know whether I shouldn't be considered as bantering you, and so

be instantly expelled from the house. Well, I've just to say that I decidedly object to the firm, as a firm, attempting anything of the sort. In fact, we couldn't do it, because I'm Church out and out. As to you, in your individual capacities, seeking out a good man to look after the moral and religious welfare of the people, I've nothing to object. Although I would say, if Luther won't knock me down, that you'll have to travel far before you meet with a man who'll be likely to care half so much for the people's morals as the people's money. Such men aren't abroad every day.'

'That's an old song,' Mr Bray remarked, 'which men stupidly persist in singing, notwithstanding that every day falsifies it a hundred times over. The difficulty with me in this matter-for I've thought about it a great deal—is finding, not a true, right-hearted man, but a man suited to the place and the times.'

The question of suitability is something, of course. Well, now, Mr Bray, about this said suitability. If Luther there will withhold his fist, I'll have a word with you about it. It isn't exactly in my line, I'm aware; for I'm not a divine, but an impudent scapegrace, with a burden of sin that wouldn't lie lightly on the shoulders of a Samson. But I've thought about it, I must confess, it being just now a rather common topic in certain quarters. What sort of parson, now, is the man for the times, in your opinion?'

'Why, that's a question that can't be answered in a few sentences. But, as this is an age of books and lectures, of mechanics' institutes and reading societies, depend upon it an illiterate man has no chance. Learning is the thing that's wanted. A preacher must be up in grammar, however he may be as to grace. His manners must be perfect, and his matter original. He must have a good style; and, to please some, a little starch. And then

'That'll do. You've hit off a pretty unique character. Don't spoil it. Now, what say you, Mr Sykes?'

'I think earnestness is the thing that's wanted; and I would just say, that if you know anything of Parsons, of York, you've my ideal of a minister. The great fault of our age is, not feeling our creeds. They are pretty correct in a general way, but they are dead things. Men confess them, but are not moved by 'em. A

That gentleman had just begun to puff out a long stream of smoke, by way of preparing for his turn. He watched it for a second, after it had got clear of his mouth, as if to ascertain in what direction it was about to steer, and then replied

'In my opinion we want men who'll put down all "newfangled notions." I don't know what folks 'll get to. They're discovering planets, and finding, they say, all manner of things in rocks, and beginning to tell some sort of tales about the earth having existed thousands of years before it was made. Now I'd have our preachers to put all this down. I think Abel Morgan will yet see the folly of it. I like learning, but not novelty. If I know anything, true scholarship is learning the old, not the new. Dead languages, and so on; not the foolish fancies of living men. I'd have all new planets put down. Those we have are quite enough. And I wouldn't have men digging in the earth-seeking out things that don't belong to us. Let the age of the earth alone. Who's lived so far back as to send word down that it's so old? It's all '

'Come, Morgan! Are you inclined to give an opinion?'

"The sort of ministers we most want at this day are such as will be friendly with the masses, lecture for them, advocate their just rights, reason with them, answer in a kind way their sceptical objections, and afford proof that they don't seek so much to sectionise society, as to do men good. People don't want cant now. They want sense.'

'Well now, look here, gentlemen! What a diversity of opinions? By asking you to express your views, I've shown you, I trust, the impracticability of what our friend Sykes suggested. You are by no means agreed amongst yourselves as to the sort of parson best adapted to the times. How then is it likely that you'll be able to act in concert! Each of you, like many others, assumes that the man whom he likes best, with whose modes of thought, expression, ways, he has most sympathy, is the man for the age. Our friend Bray, possessing a smattering of

learning, must needs have an educated ministry. More colleges and professors, rounded periods and flashing figures, is his cry. Then you, Mr Sykes, want earnestness. Fire, and passion, and damnation! Something to keep a fellow alive in the pew! You would have the brimstone bag thrown at him, and a touch of the choke-damp of the pit dashed into his nostrils! That's what you would be at evidently. Then Bower there would have a class of preachers who'd be sure and put down every new thing. Powerlooms, to wit, Bower. Who'd be sure and smash those parts of the solar system with which we don't happen to be acquainted, lest by revolving into view they should give rise to the cry of something new. Who'd be sure, in short, and put their foot on truth. An order of men, by the by, which the world in past ages has by no means lacked, and hardly lacks at this day. Morgan would have a ministry for the masses. All who don't happen to belong to the swinish multitude he would leave to perish. A just doom, doubtless. He would have the ministry seek on the platform what they're not allowed to command in the pulpit-namely, applause. He would have them lecture on profitless topics, and spend their time in trying to answer vain questions, and all in order to get men to tolerate them, when they should venerate them; to pay attention to their message, when it ought to command it.

Studies on Secret Records, Personal and Historic. With other Papers. By Thomas De Quincey. Crown 8vo, 334 pp. Edinburgh: James Hogg & Sons.

THE GREAT MODERN HOAX.

Has the modern world no hoax of its own, answering to the Eleusinian mysteries of Grecian days? Oh yes, it has. I have a very bad opinion of the ancient world; and it would grieve me if such a world could be shown to have beaten us even in the quality of our hoaxes. I have also a very bad opinion of the modern world. But I daresay that in fifty thousand years it will be considerably improved; and, in the meantime, if we are not quite so good or so clever as we ought to be, yet still we are a trifle better than our ancestors; and I hope we are up to a hoax any day. A man must be a poor

was anything but wicked, being pedantic, crazy, and fantastical in virtue after a fashion of his own, that must have been sincere, as it neither brought nor promised anything but ruin. He ruined his wife and family, he ruined himself and all that trusted in him, by crotchets that he never could explain to any rational man; and by one thing that he never explained to himself, which a hundred years after I explained very clearly-namely, that all his heresies in religion, all his crazes in ecclesiastical antiquities, in casuistical morals, and even as to the discovery of the longitude, had their rise, not (as his friends thought) in too much conscientiousness and too much learning, but in too little rhubarb and magnesia. In his Autobiography he has described his own craziness of stomach in a way to move the gravest reader's laughter, and the sternest reader's pity. Everybody, in fact, that knew his case and history, stared at him, derided him, pitied him, and in some degree respected him. For he was a man of eternal self-sacrifice, and that is always venerable; he was a man of primitive unworldly sincerity, and that is always lovely: yet both the one and the other were associated with so many oddities and absurdities, as compelled the most equitable judge at times to join in the general laughter. He and Humphrey Ditton, who both held official stations as mathematicians, and were both honoured with the acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton, had both been candidates for the parliamentary prize as discoverers of the longitude, and, naturally, both were found wrong, which furnishes the immediate theme for Swift's savage ridicule:

'The longitude mist on

By wicked Will Whiston;
And not better hit on
By good Master Ditton;
Sing Whiston, sing Ditton.'

After which Swift grows toc atrociously
Swiftian for quotation.

WHO AND WHAT IS MILTON ? Before we notice these two cases of Milton, first of all let us ask-Who and what is Milton? Dr Johnson was furiously incensed with a certain man, by trade an author and manufacturer of books, wholesale and retail, for introducing Milton's name into a certain index, under the letter M, thus-' Milton, Mr John.' That Mister, undoubtedly, was hard to digest. Yet very often it hap

VOL. XXVI.

pens to the best of us-to men who are far enough from 'thinking small beer of themselves'-that about ten o'clock A.M., an official big-wig, sitting at Bow Street, calls upon the man to account for his sprees of the last night, for his feats in knocking down lamp-posts, and extinguishing watchmen, by this ugly demand of-'Who and what are you, sir?' And perhaps the poor man, sick and penitential for want of soda-water, really finds a considerable difficulty in replying satisfactorily to the worthy beek's apostrophe. Although, at five o'clock in the evening, should the culprit be returning into the country in the same coach as his awful interrogator, he might be very apt to look fierce, and retort this amiable inquiry, and with equal thirst for knowledge to demand, 'Now, sir, if you come to that, who and what are you?' And the beek in his turn, though so apt to indulge his own curiosity at the expense of the public, might find it very difficult to satisfy that of others.

The same thing happens to authors; and to great authors beyond all others. So accustomed are we to survey a great man through the cloud of years that has gathered round him-so impossible is it to detach him from the pomp and equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him, echoed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quarrelled about him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the Scythian coming amongst us-any savage, that is to say, uninstructed in our literature, but speaking our language, and feeling an intelligent interest in our great men-a man could hardly believe at first how perplexed he would feelhow utterly at a loss for any adequate answer to this question, suddenly proposed- Who and what was Milton?' That is to say, what is the place which he fills in his own vernacular literature? what station does he hold in universal literature?

I, if abruptly called upon in that summary fashion to convey a commensurate idea of Milton, one which might at once correspond to his pretensions, and yet be readily intelligible to the savage, should answer perhaps thus:-Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a poet amongst poets, but a power amongst powers; and the 'Paradise Lost' is not a book amongst books, not a poem amongst poems, but a central force amongst forces.