thought at first that a man of low attainments would do; but he reviewed his opinion, and said he must have a learned man to teach a simple subject well. You may detect a scholar even when he is teaching a simple subject simply, just as a mere note is often sufficient to show much of a man's tone and character. We can testify, both of Mr. de Levante and of Mr. Hood, that they are capable of much more than such books as these. The books may be confidently recommended as of great utility. Mr. de Levante complains, with great reason, that young people are not sound in orthography and that foreigners fail in orthoepy,* that is, cannot make the English pronunciation. To all such his book will lend effectually guidance. He often reminds us of William Cobbett, who delighted to find false grammar in king's speeches or the speeches of bishops and statesmen. But bad grammar is sporadic. Cob

*Ortheepy and Orthography of the English Language.' By Rev. E. R. De Levante. Longmans.

The Rules of Rhymes: a Guide to English Versification. With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes.' By Tom Hood. James Hogg and Son, York Street.

bett delighted to dwell on the errors of Lindley Murray, and we may at least smile at the affected purisin of Cobbett, who certainly could not understand idioms. We have looked with much pleasure through Mr. de Levante's book, and consider it a real addition to educational literature.

Mr. Tom Hood is so accomplished a master of the art of rhyme that we necessarily listen with respect to his explication of the mechanism of his art. Scattered through his book are some gems of pure criticism, as in his remarks on that rare and difficult art of song-writing, and his true notion that Moore owed much of his success this way to his musical knowledge. His work will go far to arrest what he calls the Americanising of our language. Mr. Hood is careful to explain that he is only dealing with the form of poetry, and that verse is but its A B C. But all literary excellence must be based upon that A B C.

But, as we said just now, books are multiplying very fast on us. We shall later attempt to classify them, with notices of some selected specimens.

WILLIAM SAWYER.

era of his own history in which Memory more than Hope governs the horizon of human life-who analyses the motives and muses on the events of his own life-story, and who learns to watch with intense human interest that drama of life which day by day is unfolding in all the relationships that surround him, will, I think, understand the phrase which I have set at the head of this paper, and the line of thought indicated by the phrase. But a man must have some self-knowledge, some self-insight, before he can dispassionately review his own history. A man cannot seo his blunders while he is playing his game; but when the game is very nearly over he can see little else except his blunders. And yet he may have played a very fair game after all. And it is a truth in military science that no battle is fought without blunders, and the goodness of generalship practically consists in the

It is very touching to see such renowned statesmen as Earl Russell and the late Sir James Graham-men who zealously contended during their political career for the absolute indefeasibility of their conduct— as the shadows darken, confess candidly the number and greatness of their blunders. And if calm, meditative introspection is rare, it is something still more difficult to understand others, to do justice to them, to put yourself in his place,' to forget rivalries and feuds in sympathy and appreciation. Really to do so is a mixed moral and intellectual achievement of a somewhat high order. First of all, man has the sense of novelty, the desire, ever unsatisfied, to see, or hear, or do something fresh. Then intelligent admiration succeeds the mere sense of wonder. Men desire to have a knowledge of the laws that pervade the world of matter and the world of mind around them. Then comes,

higher still, I think, in the scale, the faculty that interests man in the human interests that surround him. On the intellectual side this faculty cnables him to grasp by mental acts the shifting panorama of his tory and the poetry and passion of life, and on the moral side it gives him sympathy and gumption, and the desire to act justly, charitably, and purely-to do all the good he can in all the ways he can to all the people he can.

Besides this conscious feeling of having blundered, and the wholesome humility such a feeling should inspire, there will ensue on any such retrospect the feeling that there have been great 'turning-points in life.' Some of these blanders will certainly be connected with some of these turning-points, and some of these turning-points will connect themselves with the very reverse of blunders, that is, with what has been best and worthiest in our imperfect lives. But many of them will be odd, strange, inexplicable. After eliminating all that can be explained as the legitimate results of certain practical lines of conduct, it is still remarkable how large a realm in human life is occupied by what is simply and absolutely fortuitous. And this presence of chance cannot really be a matter of chance. So far from that, it is, I believe, part of the constitution of things under which we live. Just as we live in an order of nature, where the seasons succeed each other, not in mere arithmetical order, but in all sweet variety, so events do not succeed each other according to a clearly-defined system of causation, but with a liability to the constant recurrence of what is accidental and fortuitous. Probably all the phenomena of human life, as of nature, are referable to law; but still it would be wearisome work to us, constituted as we are, to watch all the unvaried sequences of order. Instead of that we only vaguely see the vague skirts, the vast shadowy forms of such laws, and most things below the skies remain as uncertain, uncertified, transitory as the skies themselves. And this weird, fortuitous

realm is doubtless ordered for the best, and is no mystery to the great Lawgiver, although His laws are inexplicable to us, and are to us as confused as the rush and roar of complicated machinery when first from the sweet south we enter the grim establishments of those masterful northern manufacturers.

There, that will do! I have been as didactic and speculative as I durst, or, indeed, as I can be on these problems, which are almost as baffling to the mind as the notions of space and infinity. But as I have been speaking of the fortuitous, let us mark off clearly a set of cases peculiarly likely to be confounded with it. A man finds a watch upon the ground. This was Paley's famous illustration, which has a regular pedigree in the history of literature. You remember the story of the absurd Cambridge undergraduate who mixed up Paley's Argument of Design with the Evidences of Christianity, and commenced his examination paper with the queer hypothesis, 'If twelve men find a watch.' But, to employ this used-up teleological watch once more, it is by no means a fortuitous event, whether the man seeks to restore the watch to its owner or forthwith appropriates the same. To one man the watch will be an overmastering temptation, and he will pocket it; to another the watch will be destitute of the least power of exciting temptation, and he would immediately deposit it with the town crier. The result, in either case, is simply the result of a man's disposition, character, and antecedent history. The same sort of thing happens under much more difficult and complicated circumstances. A man makes a certain decision, and in after-life he is spoken of as having made such a very wise or unwise decision; or it is said that in a certain emergency he acted with such vigour, or promptness, or justness, or the reverse. Now what I wish to deny altogether is the apparently fortuitous character of such transactions. The whole previous life, so to speak, had been a preparation for that particular minute of momentous action. It was a sum, duly

cast up, giving the result in particular figures. The practical force of these considerations is evident. A man is dismissed his ship for drunkenness. It seems a sharp penalty. Yes, but the intoxication was not a fortuitous event. There must have been a crescendo series of ungentlemanly acts culminating in this punishable misdemeanour. A woman runs away with her groom; but what a progressive debasement of heart and mind there must have been before all culture and gentle associations are forgotten! A man is convicted of a criminal offence at the bar of some tribunal. There are a crowd of witnesses to character. He has not a witness who would have thought him capable of such an act. Yet his mind had been familiarised with such acts, and probably his practice with acts only just evading the character of transgression against positive law. It often happens, also, that extenuating circumstances are, in truth, aggravating circumstances. And this may suggest a consideration on the character of scruples. Bishop Temple has a sermon on the subject, and when I read it--and also when I heard it preached by one of his admirers as his own-I thought the treatment very unsatisfactory. Scruples are often tedious, tiresome things, mere matters of anise and cummin. And yet, though their absolute importance may be little, to some minds their relative importance is very great. Scruples are often the advanced outposts of conscience. Sometimes they are outposts which command the citadel. When the outposts fall, one by one, there is often no use at all in defending the city. The lines are drawn round it and it must fall. Which things are an allegory. As consequents have their antecedents, so apparently fortuitous acts have their anterior order.

When, therefore, I speak of turning-points in life I mean, first, those events which undoubtedly have a fortuitous character, though this is perhaps more apparent than real; and Lext, those events which, though they may seem fortuitous, are distinctly nothing of the sort; and

thirdly, those stages and crises in individual history when a man, nolens volens, is obliged to take his line, and when not to take a line is the most distinct line of all, i. e., whether a man will get married, or take to a profession, or practically decides that he will not marry and will not take to a profession. In human history, from time to time, these turning-points emerge. Men tell us so, and we see it. We all know how Shakespeare says that there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. That turning of the tide is frequently dramatic or even tragic enough. So we have heard of persons cut off by the tide and left stranded on some rock out at sea. The hungry, crawling foam reaches the feet, the knees, the loins, the breast, the lips. There is the deathagony of apprehension. Then suddenly the water recedes. It is the turn of the tide. The romance is told of such unlooked-for safety, but those erect no tablets who perish. We sometimes see something analogous to this in life. Once nothing succeeded, but now everything turns to gold. Once they drew all blanks, now the prizes are all before them. As the Yankee parson said, 'So mote it be.'

Sometimes circumstances purely fortuitous have coloured and influenced a whole lifetime. I have met with two instances of this in my reading within the last week or two. The other day I was within a magnificent library-a library that belonged to one of the greatest scholars that England has ever known. It has grown with choice accretions since it came into its present owner's hands. I took down a tall thick folio, bound in vellum - such books with such coverings its owner loved-and opened the volume of Justin Martyr, which contained the dialogue with Trypho. I read that remarkable passage in which Justin recounts to his chance companions the truest and strangest of all passages of his history. One day he had been musing on the seashore when he was accosted by an aged and benevolent stranger, who ven