It would be wearisome to multiply examples. Nature universally, history universally, the experience, the observation of every individual are resolutely, are unanimously hostile to the theory of compensation, such as Azaïs pleads for. The more sublimely nature maintains physical order, the less she seems to care for moral equilibrium, and moral equivalents. There may be an ethical order corresponding to the physical order, and this we are not prepared to dispute. But if it exists, it is hidden from human eyes and the theory of compensation, ingenious though it be, does not more clearly reveal it unto us.

Feeble and futile as a theodicæa, the theory of compensation is pitiably helpless as a code of morals, as a teacher of duty. It is as morbid as it is mischievous. Morality demands two things chiefly: a lofty ideal and a rich and vigorous impulse. Virtue, as its very name indicates, is manliness; in its most godlike aspects, it is ideal ised manliness. But what to this apocalypse, this apotheosis of individuality, must the theory of compensation be? An incomprehensibility, an impertinence, or an insipidity. What a meagre life must that be which, seesawing incessantly itself, beholds in the world nothing except seesaw! Passivity, and passivity in its most paralytic shapes, the theory of compensation inculcates, whereas virtue is positive, outgoing, aggressive, adventurous. Good, virtue would incarnate and diffuse; evil, it would conquer; its own sufferings it would forget in the attempt to relieve the sufferings of others; and its keenest joy is self-immolation for mankind. Now, compared to this heroic valour, this angelic pity, this beautiful self-abnegation, how puny the scheme of Azaïs for regugulating our feelings, our principles, and our actions by apothecaries' weight. A little dose here is to

counteract a little dose there; we are to consider the advantages of being single, and the advantages of being married; the advantages of having children and the advantages of having none; the advantages of having two stout honest legs, or of having two cork legs, or of having no legs at all; the advan tages of being blind or deaf and the advantages of being neither, and so on. Now it is with twaddle of this kind that Azaïs entertains us. How can I do anything, when I am kept busy swallowing the tiny ethical globules which Azaïs the homoeopathist gives me? At the most, Azaïs would make contentment the excellence of excellences. But contentment by itself is not an excellence, it is generally a defect, it is sometimes a vice, differing little from the most lethargic cowardice; it is discontented, not contented people that are earth's reformers and benefactors. Why do we strive after higher and higher perfection for ourselves and for the human race?

Is it not from dissatisfaction with ourselves and the community? A self-satisfied man is a fool, and a self-satisfied community is one too gross and debased to have hunger for aught but the bread which perisheth.

The nobleness of a thing is the measure of its restlessness, and if the restlessness should glow and rush into feverish impetuosity, better this than that stupid and stagnant self-compla cency which, under the name of contentment, common-place moralists and common-place preachers are so fond of celebrating. We can accomplish little till we get into a state of furious discontentment, and render our discontentment con. tagious.

St. Paul and all the really great moral and religious teachers have evermore laboured at the outset to infect the soul with a species of malaise, that through that malaise the yearning for the divine life

might be kindled. That cheerfulness should accompany courage needs not be shown. Unless we are cheerful and hopeful, we cannot be truly brave. But a valiant cheerfulness and an apathetic content ment are as remote as possible from each other. Besides, granting that we aim at no exalted objects, it is preposterous to speak of being contented with the position which Providence has allotted us, as if by that contentment or pretended contentment we were fulfilling a religious duty. Providence allots us no position, except that which we gain by our own efforts, by our strenuous self-reliance. If we fail by our laziness or incapacity, it is convenient to put the blame on Providence, under the guise of affecting to be contented and resigned. We may fail assuredly from other causes. Men the most gifted, the most generous, men the most strong, resolute, and untiring, often fall into a labyrinth of complications and fatalities from which neither their skill nor their bravery can deliver them. If we can embolden them to hope on, to struggle on, or if we can tear them from their entanglements, we do well; but contented they cannot be, and contented they ought not to be, and we can only madden them by glib discourses about contentment and compensation, for they know that even if they could realise all their aspirations, the conquest arrives too late to delight. There is a lassitude which in energetic, imaginative men is a usual result of hope long deferred; a deadening of the elasticity that to such men is the power and the joy of toil and of combat. Thenceforth they can bear existence, merely bear it; but it has lost its interest for them. A Latin poet first, Dante afterwards, and finally our poet Campbell said, that all fortune can be conquered by enduring it. True, nobly true; yet, whatever the truth, it is lost sight of by Azaïs and his disciples. The

passive virtues are the offspring of the active virtues, and are not virtues unless they have this noble parentage. A man cannot have passive virtues alone. In order to possess the passive virtues he must discipline himself stalwartly in the active virtues. Martyrdom is but a form of heroism. We commiserate Poland as a victim, we honour it as a martyr, because Poland has been the most heroic of lands. The creed, however, of Azaïs seems to be that the passive virtues are the only virtues, and that they can grow of themselves, without any active element; a deplorable delusion. In declining years we require a large array of passive virtues, but we can manifest them only to the extent that we have exhibited the active virtues at a former period. virtue, though many vices, can be acquired in solitude and inaction: yet the notion of Azaïs plainly was that in solitude and inaction all virtues have birth and growth, and that, in cloister or closet, we have merely to dream of a virtue to be armed therewith. Pardonable error of a man who was always somewhat of a monk!

No

On the value of the theory of compensation as a philosophy of consolation, opinions must vary according to the estimate formed of the theory as a whole. It is mainly, however, as a philosophy of consolation that the theory interests and impresses us. There are shrinking, sensitive persons who are unfit for the battle, and who, if thrust into the battle, are sure to be defeated. They love retirement, and they may almost be said to love the luxury of grief. Nothing would disappoint them so much as not to encounter disappointments. Now, these weak but worthy mortals like to regard their privations as a privilege, and Azaïs has invented an evangel expressly for their benefit. The banquet does not tempt them; they are quite satisfied with the crumbs

they gather, and they are sincere in professing not to care for the banquet. At the same time, they are not unwilling to be considered rather ill-used; and they murmur in their feeble fashion pretty sentimentalisms about their woes and wrongs. To souls of this stamp, mediævalism offered monastic retreats, and in these they were supremely happy. Azaïs, in his theory of compensation, shows to sick souls how they can create monastic retreats for themselves, and how they can be supremely happy there. If the doctrine does not give what, perhaps, nothing can give, strength to debility, it soothes it. There are three classes of men-the positively strong, the fitfully strong, and the positively weak. In no circumstances do men of the first class require consolation, for in no circumstances can they be profoundly wretched. Men of the second class are, from the very constitution of their nature, always unhappy, even if no adverse fortune assail them; but, though exactly the class most needing consolation, they are exactly the class likewise that cannot be consoled, for they are consumed by the fever of their own emotions, visions, wild insatiable aspirations. What could have consoled Dante, Tasso, Rousseau, Byron ?

To this gifted, illustrious, tortured, and self-torturing brotherhood, whose piercing cry, century after century, outvoices the wail of suffering nations; to this brotherhood, so beautiful, so accursed, there can be no boon from pitying Heaven but an early death. Dante, dying at fifty-six; Tasso, at fiftyone; Rousseau, at sixty-six ;-all lived too long. Dying at thirty-six, Byron had a more merciful doom. The positively strong have the dower of muscular pith-of muscular enjoyment; manhood, therefore, is their true and peculiar season. On the fitfully strong is bestowed a plenitude of animal

Their true

spirits and of daring dreams; but swiftly the animal spirits and the daring dreams vanish, though fa culty may continue to grow. The fitfully strong have, consequently, as their true and peculiar season, ardent and abounding youth. Submission, at first calm, ultimately cheerful, is the utmost the posi tively weak can reach. and peculiar season must therefore be old age. For three score and ten years they have been learning resignation, and at last they are perfect therein. There is no reason why this class of men should not have their prophet; and they can have no better or wiser prophet than Azaïs. To their resignation they can join contemplation, and the fruits of their contemplation may be very precious to the world and to themselves. It were not well if all poets were like Wordsworth. But Wordsworth meets the longings and requirements of numerous individuals, and responds to certain moods of every individual. If many members of the community prefer flowers, and trees, and brooks, and rills, and hills, to human beings, the community is braced and purified thereby. And if we all occasionally forget man in our rapturous commune with nature, we, and man too, experience afterward the benefit of the forgetfulness. We return to our duty with a keener relish, and man is dearer to us than before. Azaïs is a prose Wordsworth, yet with sundry essential differences. He tried, though in a clumsy, roundabout way, to lead his countrymen back to nature. What he deemed a doctrine of universal application has only a very limited application. But in the midst of revolutionary commotion, it taught peace, and, in the face of social corruption it taught holiness; and, after the long reign of mate rialism, it proclaimed the dawn of spiritualism. As the utterance of a philosophy, it is entitled to the