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victory which secured the emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indies. But that victory, honorable as it was to the unflinching perseverance and the exalted faith of those who won it, was not, in any sense, a victory won by the general sentiment of the people of England. Here was one of those unflinching bodies with "one idea." They were not a majority, they were only a small minority of the people of England. But they had wealth enough, principle enough, and determination enough to command a certain number of seats in Parliament. Those who represented them there were men of conscience, integrity, and resolution, perfectly indifferent to defeat, because they were entirely resolved on ultimate victory. One need only read the debates on the slavery questions from the beginning, more than half a century, be it remembered, to see that the gradual conversion of the public men who successively lent themselves or gave themselves to the cause of emancipation was not simply a tribute to the arguments of the anti-slavery hierarchs, but to their power. Here was this knot of voters commanding this considerable Parliamentary influence. Here was a cause absolutely right in principle, which could not be gainsaid, on which this knot of men insisted as the sine qua non in legislation. "There will never be a session of Parliament," it is evident the Liberal leaders said, "till this is got out of the way. Let us adopt their measure for ours, win their grati tude forever, do what is right, and strengthen our majority at the same time." We have no desire to undervalue the moral forces which won this great victory. But they were certainly moral forces which worked through all the various agencies of finite human ambitions. They won their victory and freed England, at the expense of posterity, of the responsi bility for slavery. But with that victory the anti-slavery principle and power of England of necessity culminated. From that moment it began to decline.

First, because it had nothing at home to act upon, it declined. Englishmen, of all people, dislike dealing with matters which are not exactly their own concern. The very policy of non-intervention, or no policy, came in, to work the decline of a sentiment which could only work henceforth in interfer

ence with the affairs of others. Again, the loss of a well-knit nucleus of Parliamentary leaders was a severe loss for it. It was impossible that the sentiment should have any longer any efficient organized action. We must add, that the pecuniary failure of the experiment of emancipation had its effect. Too much had been claimed, when it was urged that free labor would produce as much sugar as forced labor. And the whole interest of West India proprietors, whether they had lost their fortunes by their own fault or not, was a positive unit in presenting constantly the picture of this partial failure, which, in fact, to a nation under Adam Smith's tutelage, ought to excite no regret at all. To sum up all these causes, England, with regard to anti-slavery, has been for twenty years in the condition of a large capitalist, who gave twenty years ago a very handsome endowment to a great philanthropic enterprise, but who is not well pleased when the begging" proctors" or "agents" of that enterprise return to him every year, with some tale of new necessities, and ask him, because he has done so much before, if he will not now do a little more. We do not always find that such solicitations are well received. Certainly they are not in this case. The anti-slavery sentiment of England has steadily declined. It is now left to the guardianship of a few of its older friends, who are thoroughly committed to maintain it, but who have themselves but a vague understanding of the way in which, and of the reasons why, they should seek for its revival. The Southern assailants of England, who try to show her inconsistency in maintaining the systems of service in the East Indies, while she loosens those in the West, waste their ammunition. The Northern dreamers, if there were such, who fancied that any very eager anti-slavery enthusiasm would be called forth in England by the great crisis on which hangs the fate of slavery in America, dreamed of a brilliant handful of "good men," whose day went by twenty years ago.

Such is a rapid review of the sentiment entertained towards America in England by her hereditary and mercantile aristocracies, her acting government and her real government, and the influences which are brought to bear upon them. Aside from these temporary and material interests, there is no

doubt, of course, that the real wish of the people of England is for the triumph of law and liberty. The people of England are a Christian people, holding very stanchly to the firm anchorages of Christian morals, and not easily seduced by fanciful speculations which would make the right appear wrong. They are a loyal people, who sympathize with loyalty wherever it shows itself. With them and the men of their race constitutional government had its birth, and they and their race are the only people in the world in whose hands it has thus far succeeded. They will not look carelessly, therefore, on the great question of to-day, "Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?" It is true that in ordinary times the great body of them know, care, and think as little of America or American politics as we do of Australia or of Brazil. They are also a slow people, a very slow people. They have no fondness for ideas as ideas. The same bluntness which deprives them of the conception of wit, therefore, takes away their interest in any speculative argument, But when ideas clothe themselves in the concrete, the English are sure in the end to be true. They can distinguish between a true man and a liar; between him who keeps an oath and him who breaks it; between a loyal citizen and a traitor; between the maintenance of law and its overthrow; between the liberty of a race and its oppression. There is no fear, therefore, but in the end the people of England will understand aright and express themselves aright regarding the issues of this great rebellion.

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ART. III.-MYSTICS AND THEIR CREED.

Hours with the Mystics. By ROBERT ALFRED VAUGHAN, B. A. Second Edition. London. 1860. 2 vols.

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MR. KINGSLEY, reviewing in Fraser's Magazine the first edition of this pleasant book, speaks of the author as a young man, and predicts for him a useful and brilliant career. less we have misunderstood a few words in the Preface to the second edition, which lies on our table, this prediction has been disappointed by an early death. The Preface alluded to is from the pen of Robert Vaughan, the father, perhaps, of the author, and it speaks of one "who now finds the solace of her loneliness in treasuring up the products of his mind, and in cherishing the dear ones he has left to her wise love and oversight," sad intimation that a laboring, learned, and liberal scholar has closed his books.

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This little work was first published in 1856, and in four years had been "some time out of print," the welcome of the English public agreeably disappointing, we may hope, the young author's mistrusting fears, and soon taking up his small venture. Mr. Vaughan clearly expected no very cordial reception for a book about mystics. He thought the theme an uncongenial one both to the age and to the people. In fact, he betrays, by some unequivocal signs, a want of personal confidence in the subject he has undertaken to treat, which would go a little way towards producing the very indifference he deprecates or dreads. Not only in his Preface does he offer some words of explanation, if not of apology," speaking of mysticism as "an error, associated, for the most part, with a measure of truth so considerable that its good has greatly outweighed its evil"; but on almost every page of his volumes he writes like a half-hearted man, who has no profound sympathy with the modes of thought he describes, no decisive judgment respecting their worth, and no earnest desire either to repel them or to advance them. Of the mystics he hardly knows what he ought to think; of mysticism he certainly is doubtful how much he ought to believe. Of course his chap

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ters are lacking in that warm glow of enthusiasm which would have commended to a larger and a better public a book far inferior as an intellectual production to his own. The very form in which the author has chosen to cast his materials is a timid confession of distrust in their power to win regard. No deeply convinced and earnest man, treating a subject like mysticism, would have availed himself, we think, of the well-used and well-worn device of parlor essays and conversations thereon; a device requiring the utmost skill for its successful management, and even then demanding more variety of theme and discussion than is afforded here. The gentlemen and ladies to whom Mr. Vaughan introduces his readers are extremely well-bred, intelligent, and refined. They are rich, comfortable, eupeptic. They meet in an elegant library, with warm curtains and bright coal-fires, in winter; in the summer, their less frequent sessions are held at a most delightful and luxurious retreat in the country, where music and flowers, hunting, fishing, and sketching, divide the hours with Master Eckart and John Tauler. A likely set of people to do justice to the terribly earnest "Friends of God"!people whose opinions on such mortals as St. Theresa and John of the Cross one would be very careful not to ask, knowing that they could have none but the most dapper and conventional opinion to give, and that they would be very glad when this was given briefly as possible, and they could go to supper. The talk of these felicitous people, who by the way are not people, but only labels on the various opinions which the readings of the intellectual Mr. Atherton call forth, is of the superficial and dilettante kind. We should greatly prefer listening to the words of the grand old mystics themselves, though the Champagne was not. The comment is largely and tiresomely out of proportion to the text, filling up the pages with irrelevant matter, which the author vainly hopes may be entertaining to the light-minded. We would not have Mr. Vaughan's book shorter by a single paragraph than it is; but we would have somewhat less of Mr. Gower, who spreads the sheeny vans of the imagination, and of Mr. Willoughby, who furnishes the philosophical criticism, and of Mr. Lowestoffe, who puts in the common sense, and somewhat more of Ber

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