beauty, and even of producing it, and renewing its endless development; and that that something is best described as a Spirit, even the living God.

On this matter there are three works, two very short, and one rather long, which the reader had better read with all his might. The two first are not in very easy language, but are easily and clearly intelligible; the last is the best and most brilliant English of our time. Any counter hypothesis may be started against them; but these writings state and illustrate ours, in accurate and vivid expression. The first is the late Canon Mozley's Sermon on Nature (25 widely printed pages Svo.); the second, Sir Edmund Beckett's pithy Lectures on the Origin of the Laws of Nature; the third is the fourth volume (in particular, and not excluding the rest), of Ruskin's Modern Painters. All of them, the former in particular, the mind of the reader will accept or fight against, according as he believes anything or nothing. But they enable believers to set their own battle in array, to know what the attack is like; to understand its force, the strength of their own side, and the totally irreconcilable separation, in every thought worth thinking, which must exist and widen between the two sides.

Modern Painters is by far the earliest of these three works, and it is possible that the Sermon might not have been written without it. At all events, it will be seen, as we pursue our comparison and collation of their argument, how powerfully, how variously, with what manysided iteration and illustration, Professor Ruskin has set before his reader the contemplative faculty of man, and its object; the mental habit of those who, as matter of fact, do rejoice in God's works-who are really made glad by the operations of His hand. Let us attempt a summary, to begin with, of the united argument before us. If it be allowed any importance at all, then the analysis of beauty, with the production of things beautiful, becomes not only a harmless employment of time, but a duty of some gravity.

Dr. Mozley says, virtually: When he who is against us in this matter has done all he can to explain away the believer's argument from design or utility, he finds himself confronted by this extra effect of beauty, which is evidently a result from design in some cases, and probably in all, and of which no materialist scheme gives, or can give, any account whatever. The belief in a Living God appealing by reason to the reason He has put in man, does account for it; the believer has a hypothesis which will carry the facts, and there is no other.

Sir Edmund Beckett argues as follows:-Neither science, religion, nor anything else can do more, in the present state of human knowledge and of the human mind, than offer man a hypothesis of creation and of himself. Only two such hypotheses can ultimately exist: that of an Infinite Will and Purpose ruling all things; and that of

all things self-acting, or ruling themselves from all eternity. This science has ascertained, and it is agreed that they do, in the ultimate form of atoms, or of molecules, which are aggregates of atoms. Now if the atoms regularly and constantly arrange themselves so as with certainty to produce results, they obey laws and work out purposes. A contriver, lawgiver, or master of purposes must exist, to make the atoms behave themselves as they always do, in a purpose-like manner. He exists then in the atoms, or out of them. Our hypothesis is that He exists out of them, and that He by His Spirit impressed on them the laws which produced the universe; that the atoms, by His guidance, produced Athens, and Mount Pentelicus, and Pheidias; the Lagunes, Venice and her history, Tintoret, and the Paradise of the Doge's Palace. The other hypothesis is that the atoms did all this by themselves-by concert of their own, nobody knows how or why which is not a hypothesis at all, only a denial that any such thing can exist.

Now, Professor Ruskin began to say about forty years ago, and continues to say:-I am convinced, and can convince you, of these things, inter alia plurima :

That there is a beauty of natural phenomena.

That there is a purpose in natural phenomena.

That this beauty and this purpose are mutually related, one resulting from the other in many wonderful ways.

That this purpose is the physical welfare of the body of man, and the contemplative edification of his mind.

That the same means which work out man's welfare produce beauty for his contemplation. Further,

That man is so made as to contemplate beauty to his own good, and also, and accordingly, to reflect and reproduce it to the farther glory of its Creator.

That such reproduction, or representation, and record of beauty is the chief object of art, primarily and particularly of what we call naturalist art.

Record and reproduction are mostly done by pictures, and the easier surface forms of natural beauty are generally called picturesque. We all understand that sublimity or pure beauty are above it in degree; but the picturesque, till of late, has clung very closely to human life in its outer shows and ways; and in its higher form of association it appeals with an indefinite amount of power to the human spirit. There is a sadly perceptible diminution now in the number of old and beautiful things and places which made this appeal to the outgoing generation; and we are right in saying how delightful they were. But it will not do to despond because our children cannot see what we saw, or give way to despair, though the parting Genius be with sighing sent' from the banks of the Rhine into the side valleys or farther, The same lines of 'through' travel which expel him, enable us to follow

him into more recondite shades, and mountain recesses farther away withdrawn. And there is still a picturesque at home, and a beauty that dwells in the eye of the gazer. Perhaps the chief use of great sights in occasional travel is that they call you so authoritatively to the study of beauty as to make you look for it when you get home. The first sight of some great earthly beauty is a great event in life to any one who has latent in him the sixth sense of the painter, a poet, or observer. Switzerland or Scotland ought to awaken the capacity for full enjoyment of Yorkshire or Devon, or, if that be all, of the midlands and any place where men lead sweet country life in peace; not but that there is a picturesque of contrast and grandeur, a landscape of great cities, on which we shall have something to say, and which some of Mr. Walter Severn's works best illustrate. As there is a sublime picturesque of wild landscape and stern incident, so there is a domestic picturesque of quieter and more passivelyenduring things; and that again divides itself into out-door and in-door; into beauties of familiar fields, and well-known wood and river, and the decorative or associative charm of home-furniture, dress, and other habits. The familiar love of these things is motive enough for any picture, but it must be painted by men who know them well.

I have thought of casting these papers into the form of conversations, because that enables one to talk all round the subject, and put in objections, qualifications, &c., more vividly and comfortably. And it saves the continued egotism of speaking in the first person, or its alternatives-the philosophic 'it seems,' and the official 'it is considered.' Much, in fact, is to be taught and learned by conversation on these subjects, when people can endure it; which many cannot. We not only find out what we all think, but take unconscious or inoffensive measure of our own and others' right to think. Art is the only subject in England, except religion, on which it is thought legitimate to express strong opinions founded on no knowledge whatever; and to endeavour openly to put down and oppress knowledge.

One of the several reasons why it is so difficult to keep the subjects of art and religion long apart is, that both exercise the most powerful attraction or repulsion on the human mind; so that it will always be employed, either in eager assimilation of, or determined resistance to, one or both. Both in some great measure seek they know not what. The light that never was on sea or land' is an expression very similar indeed to 'Eye hath not seen nor ear heard.' Both represent two of the noblest unquietnesses of the soul, donec requiescat in Domino. R. ST. JOHN TYRWHITT.

* With some water-colours of a few years back, by Mr. Boyce.

CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

CAMEO CLXXII.

GREAT SAILORS.

1571-1581.

THE true greatness of a reign probably depends on the sovereign's power of feeling and leading popular impulses, and one of the great aids to Elizabeth's prosperity was the interest she took in the spirit of naval enterprise which had set in before her time.

Thomas, the head of the great merchant family of Gresham, was in great favour with the Queen, and did her invaluable service, both by negotiating loans, advising her in matters of finance, and in a manner anticipating the office of President of the Board of Trade. He was at the same time a banker and wholesale dealer on his own account, and he was moreover entrusted with the strange charge of poor little Lady Mary Grey, the youngest sister of Lady Jane. She was the smallest woman in the whole Court, and the Elizabethan world knew not whether to be shocked or diverted when, in 1565, it was discovered that she was secretly married to the serjeant porter, Martin Keyes, the biggest gentleman in Court. The pair were both kept in close imprisonment, Martin in the Fleet, Lady Mary in the keeping, first of the Duchess of Suffolk, Charles Brandon's second wife, then of a Mr. Hawtrey of Checkers, near Aylesbury, and lastly of Sir Thomas Gresham, who took her about with his family. His wife, a greedy, miserly woman, much disliked the charge, and it led to many quarrels, until, on Martin's death, the poor little lady was released, in 1572, and spent the last six years of her life at large, but in much poverty.

Gresham had lost his only son, and he employed his great wealth on the work so closely connected with his name, the Royal Exchange. Before his time the many merchants who met in London had no covered place for transacting business. They met in an open space near Grace Church, and when it rained too much for their endurance transacted their affairs in 'Paul's Walk,' namely, the nave of S. Paul's Cathedral. Gresham resolved to put an end to this state of things, and raised subscriptions to the amount of 4,000l. among his brother merchants for the purchase of the ground. The building was at his own cost, the wood and stone furnished from his own estates, the glass, slates, ironwork, and wainscoting coming from Antwerp. The plan was a great square court surrounded by a cloister, with rooms behind it to serve as offices, and above two tiers of closed galleries. High above towered on a column a huge grasshopper, the Gresham crest. The legend was that the first of the family had been a foundling picked up under a hedge, and that notice had been attracted to him by the grasshoppers chirping round him. The walks and rooms laid out

on the basement were for the merchants, and shops were above for retail dealers. These were offered for the first year rent free by Sir Thomas to such persons as would furnish them with wares and illuminate them with wax lights when the Queen came to open the building on the 23rd of January, 1571, and named it the Royal Exchange, proclaiming the same with the sound of trumpet.

Gresham was no explorer himself, but he gave large aid in money to the schemes of more adventurous men than himself. And these schemes were many, all turning on the discovery of the north-west passage that was to lead to the wealth of Cathay. The good Devonshire knight, Sir Humfrey Gilbert, was studying the subject scientifically, and Martin Frobisher, the Yorkshire mariner, was earnestly set on making the voyage of discovery.

Lord Leicester, his brother Warwick, and his nephew Philip Sidney, became interested in the plan, and in 1575 two ships, the Gabriel and the Michael, the one under twenty tons, the other under twenty-five, were fitted out to make the attempt, with thirty-five men and boys, under the command of Martin Frobisher as Admiral. Queen Elizabeth came to Greenwich and looked from the window when the brave little crafts fired a salute as they sailed past on the 7th of June, and the Queen afterwards sent for Frobisher to take leave of him before setting out on his fearful expedition.

In September the Michael came back again, her captain, Owen Gryffyn, declaring that in a terrible storm they had, seen the Gabriel 'go down!'

However, four months later the Gabriel confounded these cowards and their falsehood by appearing at Harwich. She had lived through the storm, though with the loss of a mast, and crept along the coast of Greenland, past Cape Farewell, then in ten days had sighted the coast of Labrador. They were much beset with ice, but they landed, took possession of the country in the name of the Queen, picked up some stones, and had some communication with the Esquimaux. Frobisher was exceedingly cautious in dealing with these men, but he could not force his crew to be equally so; and five men who had gone, contrary to order, to exchange trifles and beads for seal-skins, were captured with their only boat. Frobisher, by his personal strength, seized a native, whom he hoped to exchange for his men, but the poor creature bit out his own tongue in his rage at finding himself a prisoner, and lay moping and pining. His kindred kept out of sight, and, crippled as Frobisher was by the loss of his boat, he was forced to return home.

He was received with great enthusiasm, and crowds thronged to look at the unfortunate captive, who was by this time in a dying state, and only lived a few days. A black stone found in the hold was more interesting. A gentlewoman, having thrown it into the fire and then quenched it in vinegar, saw sparkles of gold in it. Bits of it were