culture. If the reader is totally without previous inclination to culture, he will be unmoved by all that Mr. Hamerton says. Accordingly we find the letters almost invariably addressed to persons with whom the writer could feel a sympathy. But having thus recognized the probable limits of the audience, there is a warmth and earnestness about the Intellectual Life that is really captivating. At a glance one might say that it would certainly find some readers that would be not slightly but excessively carried away with it.

Returning again to the quotation from the preface, it is clear that the subject of the work is a dangerous one because it is likely to beget a dull, didactic essay. Nothing could be farther from the author's desire, and he uses many devices to win attention. The work is cast in the form of letters, fictitious, indeed, but yet producing all the effect of reality. Mr. Hamerton says that he made it a rule always to keep some actual person before his mind when writing these letters. To increase the same effect, in the addresses of his letters he always tells of some striking point of individuality in the person addressed. This makes his table of contents very eye-taking, and serves to rouse curiosity. We have, for instance, a letter "To a young man who had firmly resolved never to wear anything but a grey coat," and, for a longer one, a letter "To a young gentleman of intellectual tastes, who, without having as yet any particular lady in view, had expressed in a general way his determination to get married." The letters are made of such a length, and such a strength, to borrow a metaphor from the coffee-cup, that they are well adapted to fill in the spare quarter hours when heavy reading is wearisome but where thoughtfulness is active. As to the style of the work, all who are familiar with the other works of this most companionable author will know what to look for here. If it would not create a misunderstanding, it might be said that Mr. Hamerton never pens a dull sentence. He does not seek to make a pyrotechnic display of wit, nor, on the other hand, does he ever once descend to the wateriness of the Pliny style

of letter. He is a disciple of the French style, where the thought is put forward without attracting any but the smallest attention to the language-medium that conveys it. In the style of the Intellectual Life, there is a combination of chattiness with a measured periodic style, highly disciplined and severely simple. This last feature invites attention almost at once. The short and almost concise nature of each letter, the side-headings of the pages, and the index at the end, all make it resemble a manual of political economy rather than the work it is. The evident motive is to gain force; the earnestness of the writer is nowhere more evident than in this refraining from all mere verbiage. Yet the chattiness, the colloquial spirit, is present in large proportion, and the advantage is plain. Who has not often perceived that, in the careless and confidential way of every-day talk, a writer often touches chords of sympathy in a manner that severely guarded language could never do? It is to this spirit that is due, perhaps, the most charming feature of the book, the succession of striking anecdotes that we find. Anecdotes, perhaps, is a word that does not correctly describe the nature of these numerous references to great men, and quotations from their writings; but, called by any name, they form the seasoning of Mr. Hamerton's pages, and the aptness of their introduction is great. There is no excessive struggle in the Intellectual Life to display a very striking originality of thought, and the author is often content to rely openly for interest and force on these happy selections; so that some of the letters are merely beautiful settings intended to display these gems. They testify to a great extent of reading, and this is more prominent because they are none of them rendered feeble by being hackneyed. Occasionally we meet a more extended anecdote. The story of Mr. Hamerton's French friend, who knew English perfectly as far as one can who has never heard it spoken, comes in so pat to illustrate the argument which he is making, that it is almost suspicious. It is a funny story, and the specimen that he gives of Tennyson's Claribel, mouthed to death by a Gallic

admirer, is rich. In his excellent letters on "Women and Marriage," as might be expected, he throws much of the burden of argument on these anecdotes, and some of the most lengthy make their appearance here. Mr. Hamerton relies on George Sand as an exponent of woman's nature. The letter to the young man who had hard work in accommodating himself to an illiterate but authoritative mother, is as attractive by reason of its pleasant contents as by its singular address.

Those that take up this work with some knowledge of Mr. Hamerton's history, may look to find traces of the painter in it, and doubtless would be ready to recognize an indication in the frontispiece etching of Leonardo Da Vinci, and in the enthusiastic notice of him in one of the letters on "Education." Mr. Hamerton, as it is known, began as a painter, but it has been remarked of him that he seems to have been drawn from his art by his love of reading, and his desire for more general culture. One is tempted to believe that the passage on painting as an occupation, in the first letter in "Trades and Professions," is derived from personal experience, only that in his case the intellectual tastes outran the power to remain contented with his art. In this work, the traces of the painter are not at all plain. Yet his tastes do not embrace that other kind of study wherein the reading of the ancient classics forms so prominent a feature. Whether it arises from his want of university education or not, he certainly regards the study of Latin and Greek as of little value. His letters on "Education" abound in remarks on the impossibility of attaining, in the dead languages, any scholarship that can be satisfactory to an earnest man. The degree of scholarship that may be attained in modern languages is so very high compared to what is attainable in Latin or Greek, that all comparison fails. He quotes approvingly a remark from Sydney Smith that there is a mistake in the current term "ancients:" it is not they who are older and wiser than we; they were the clever children, "and we only are the white-bearded, silverheaded ancients, who have treasured up, and are prepared

to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply." Mr. Hamerton's ideas on the study of languages are certainly exalted. Even in the case of modern languages, where he often alludes to the reward that falls to honest toil, he carefully states, in loud-speaking italic paragraphs, that a foreign language can never be perfectly acquired unless there be peculiar family conditions that facilitate acquirement; and, even then, some loss in the mother-tongue almost always follows.

In conclusion, let it be noticed that the Intellectual Life has a special interest for young men. To them these letters are in great part addressed, and the style is adapted to have its most powerful effect among them. The book will undoubtedly have great influence with all those who have accorded it a fair examination.

A

THE PRESENT ASPECTS OF ATHEISM.

GREAT revolution of thought seems now, as before the Reformation, to be gradually gathering strength for one final struggle. To many this struggle seems imminent. Some look forward to it with a feeling of relief, thinking that it may put an end to those intellectual combats which, however satisfactory to the participants, are the cause of hopeless confusion to less philosophic minds and of terrible suspense to less independent hearts. Others dread the result, fearing that it may establish truths adverse to their own theories. These persons are the true opponents of science. They do not dare to tolerate such truths as science may sometimes teach, because they fear the consequences would be disastrous. In arguing, to make their own side stronger, they abuse their opponents and misrepresent their beliefs. They, very commonly, denounce all scientific thought as atheism and draw a vivid picture of what its social effects

would be, contrasting the desolation, which is pictured, with the present state of society which is due to divine. direction.

Atheism is a belief which is but very little accepted at the present day even among the most radical thinkers. It fails to satisfy the craving of every man's nature for the existence of a being superior to himself, to control and guide him; and there is little possibility that a belief, so repugnant to man's nature, could ever be established. Yet almost all scientific men are accused of atheism, and their discoveries are combatted on the ground that they are atheistic and would therefore overthrow our civilization. Passing over the unfairness manifested in such a course, let us accept the issue on which they strive to establish their conclusions and in a spirit of reverence and fairness try to discover if their deductions and assumptions are not false or at least much exaggerated. The final conclusion which is drawn is that if atheism prevailed as an universal belief, man would soon revert to a state of barbarism. This conclusion is based upon the assumption that the controlling influence in the life of civilized man is a belief in God; and this belief is effective by promoting two feelings,-love of God and fear of God. Both these feelings would be trampled out by a complete triumph of atheism; man would become the creature of his own unbridled passions and, as a necessary consequence of this, would follow, the overthrow of civilization. As an instance of the effects of atheism, the Commune, which held control of Paris at the close of the Franco-Prussian war, is very often mentioned; but a little consideration of the state of Parisian society before the war, will show both communism and atheism to have been its inevitable results.

The oppression of the lower classes by the Imperial government; the demoralization consequent upon the continual presence of a large army; the almost traitorous action of the government at Sedan; and above all, the efforts of a large number of renegade Poles, Russians, Italians and Germans to incite the populace to deeds of