CHAPTER V.

The Voice of the Church, and the Woices of the World.

"The LORD is KING, be the people never so impatient: HE sitteth between the cherubims, be the earth never so unquiet.” "The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly: but yet the LORD, WHO dwelleth on high, is mightier."

"WHO stilleth the raging of the sea: and the noise of His waves, and the madness of the people."

"I thought to understand this: but it was too hard for me, until I went into the sanctuary of GoD: then understood I the end of these men: namely, how THOU dost set them in slippery places: and castest them down and destroyest them. Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh: so shalt THOU make their image to vanish out of the city."

"But PEACE shall be upon Israel.”

"THOU shalt hide them privily by THINE own presence from the provoking of all men: THOU shalt keep them secretly in THY tabernacle from the strife of tongues."

"The LORD sitteth above the water-flood: and the LORD remaineth a KING for ever.".

"The LORD thy GOD, O Sion, shall be KING for evermore: and throughout all generations."

ONE may not say he has seen France, when he

has not seen Paris! nor America, and not Niagara! neither England, and not a Contested Election! It is an eminently national spectacle, and an improving study, as well as an exciting time. The honesty and the ardour, the honour and the heart, of the primitive British character,

show out in bold relief beside the mere brute zeal and fretting chagrin of less pure and genuine elements. It is fine to see the man of mere means standing, for the first time in his life conscious that he is poor, before an unpurchasable constituency; and fine to see one, opulent of popularity, rallying enthusiastic thousands as with a magician's wand; and finer yet, many times, to see the real great man, stern, bold, and uncompromising, appealing to the secret sense of a rough, but appreciative, people. And the lower, though not less effective, accompaniments of the act-the colours and the band-music, and the crowd; processions, and banners, and the presence of the privileged and titled class, one for the time with the masses of "the "million -all are the inseparable characteristics of that unique saturnalia which should at least have been witnessed once by every student of English men and manners.

Perhaps to the simply reflective mind, it is a sight at first awaking more surprise than any other feeling, and that in a greater degree than any other common fact. For it is the instinct of reflection to fall back upon motives, and the motives here appear marvellously insufficient. The eagerness of the soldier we comprehend, the ambition of the scholar we laud, even pure vanity may find apologists for its votaries—but that a man should quit his castle and his park, his elegancies and civilizations, and wear out his body, and become a defaulter to his estate, and place himself in collision with people and circumstances which gall and buffet him,--not for heroism, neither for the famousness of ages-not for charity, not for some high prophetic reason, not in the name of GODbut for the honour of a Seat in Parliament '-it

is a thing we cannot understand; the love of legislation in such a one must be strong. Yet once, possibly, we might have understood it, when the world seemed more, and things unworldly less, to us. We can travel back over the pathway of the rapid past, and remember how, when we were very young, these things warmed and roused us; how we joined in making our nursery ring with rehearsals of the coming contest, how we extolled the candidate whose 'side' we chose, with all the laudatory words of our growing vocabulary, and assumed his whiteand-crimson favour with as much enthusiasm as if our small partizanship were the very cynosure of his success-how melancholy a hallucination we thought it when men, though, we remember, vainly as blindly, followed their unwise and visionary purpose to oppose the advent to power of those whom we considered true and honourable-hearted senators. Now, we may be changed, but the world goes on the same. While we write, in the last week of July, 1847, the elective franchise of the empire is again exercising its responsibilities; and to-day, again, we wear the white-and-crimson favour -for old custom's sake perhaps-perhaps because the struggle of to-day is of the 'nouvel millionaire' against the born gentleman, possessing more titledeeds than ducats, and more hearts among the peasantry than votes of the electors; and we still care to find ourselves swelling with our unit the proud minority (an inevitable minority in the mass, however here and there personal popularity, or the sense of public services rendered, may balance the local scale) lifting up last witnesses against the fatal ascendancy of mammon in this devoted land. The vivas of a multitude are ringing at the present moment in our ears, the final panic of close-coming

defeat has seized upon the losing cause, the clamour and the agitation rises higher, and they fear, and curse, and hate, and the clock strikes four! and all is over-the die is cast-and again the never-conquered-yet returns to the place that has known him almost from the day he put off his college tunic, to represent the borough which claims the honour of his birth. Here, if anywhere, in things of the sort one might say, satisfaction should exist. Yet if we read that lofty and most triumphant eye aright, we recur to the feeling of simple surprise that so much labour and heart has been given for so little reality. We retreat within, and the calm of the soul returns while it silently recals to itself the memorial of Ignatius Loyola, on the Feast of the Annunciation morning, hanging up his sword before the altar at Montserrat, and going forth a mendicant!-and the touching emblem whereby the tale of the Royal Stuarts is told—a broken diadem at the foot of the cross!-and many a martyr's, many a missionary's, story, and fame and fortune ten thousand times resigned for the cloister and the tonsure-in all these things we feel that a sufficient motive and an abundant recompense have authorised each boundless sacrifice, and the more we may have been at any time by temperament or circumstances able to comprehend and fraternise with all this show, the more vividly do we now perceive the infinite greatness of the least thing in the Kingdom of Heaven above it all. Faded boughs hang round the handsome carriage which this morning, when the boughs were fresh, bore a young and eager-hearted candidate through the thronged and noisy streets, and now bears him away from the scene of disappointment; bright flowers, bound by many fair devoted hands, deck

the chair of the Honourable Member-from each and both we recur again impatiently to the inward Ideal, of which we can exult and say

"Pines may tower and laurels flourish,

Deathless green is only THINE."

Yes, in such, as in every day of excitement and commotion, the mind of the child of the Church finds its stability in Her steadfastness-its peace in Her undisturbed protection. The billows of the stormiest sea beat upon the bosom of that Great Rock, and It bides them all, rooted in Its deep primeval centre:-the waves may dash about Its fortifications, but Its fabric they cannot damage:in every time of worldly tumult, as in every hour of private woe, or of strife in the secret soul, here is unchangingness to fly to, and comfort wherewith to be consoled.

It were but a truism to say how daily experience teaches, sometimes with keen instruction, the frailty of the tenure by which every simply earthly holding is secured to its possessor, and how the voices of history come low and sad across the great waters of time, bearing the same tale of all of whom they are cognizant. Property, friends, and pleasant circumstances-to-day they are a man's own, and to-morrow have left to him not a vestige-a mere privation-an earthquake-chasm. In the midst of the sunshine of success, the thunderstorm lowers at mid-day; the seed is cast into the earth, and the corn is ripe, and the husbandman looks for the harvest, and in its stead comes a tempest or a mildew. One begins to rejoice himself in his felicitous fortune, and suddenly the rooftree is blasted, and he lonely stands upon his hearth, amidst the shattered relics of his household