ception of the services rendered by the Roman Catholic Church to society during the middle ages, will occur better in a subsequent place, and in the mean time I proceed to add a word or two upon the theory of Hegel.

Theory of Hegel.

The theory of Hegel is only known to me through the account given of it by Archdeacon Hare1, but his capacity and fidelity as an interpreter, philosophical as well as linguistic, are such as greatly diminish my regret at my ignorance of the original. It is, in effect, that the various powers in human nature suggest a certain harmonious development and subordination, in which perfection would consist; that this perfection has not been and is not attained by the individual, but that it must be conceived of as being in a course of progressive attainment by the whole human race. Every faculty will at some time or other have its full development, and the collective mass of mankind continually, but indefinitely, approximates to the state in which the moral faculties will be supreme. This theory may fairly vie with M. Comte's in the majestic sweep which it makes over the phenomena of human life. But it is not more free from error. Archdeacon Hare signalizes the fact that the theory does not take account of the one effective instrument of moral elevation, namely, Christianity. Indeed, the German admirers of Hegel would probably not think it a slanderous misrepresentation of his idea to embody it thus. It is God gradually coming into life in the universal consciousness of the human race.

This theory, like M. Comte's, discloses its weakness when brought into comparison with facts exhibiting the moral condition of races and nations. It would be hard to trace the working of Hegel's principle during two or three thousand

"Guesses at Truth," Second Series.

years of stationary life in China and India, or in the nomadic tribes whom Mr. Layard and Mr. Walpole picture to-day as their ancestors existed in the days of Abraham.

The result of this survey is, that, apart from Christianity, no scientific ground has yet been established for a belief in the moral progressiveness of the human race.

CHAPTER II.

NATIONAL DECAY.

"A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land

Look'd to the winged lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles !

"She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,

Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was ;-her daughters had their dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased.

"In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,

And silent rows the songless gondolier;

Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,

And music meets not always now the ear."-BYRON.

Moral Progress and Decay in Individuals.

If the belief that the human race is moving onwards in a state of uniform moral progression, be in any degree difficult to reconcile with the facts of history, the same thing cannot be said of the belief that particular nations run through successive stages somewhat like those which we mark in the individual as youth, maturity, and decay. This latter opinion was expressed by Bacon in these pregnant words. "In the youth of a State arms do flourish :-in the middle age of a State

learning, and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a State, mechanical arts and merchandize."

Looking to the changes which take place in individual character, it is to be feared that moral decay is more common than moral improvement. The courageous truth, the overflowing affection, the prompt self-sacrifice which so often make youth beautiful, are not so apt to be manifested in advanced years. On the contrary, the glorious promise of the dawn is often overcast before the sun is yet midway in its course. The warm impulse gives way to the cold calculation, and the heart, which at the outset of life was a fountain of noble feeling, becomes closed and withered up, and dry as summer dust," before it returns to the source from which it came. One of the aspects of this truth appears in the well-known lines of Wordsworth :

66

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy;

Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows:
He sees it in his joy.

The Youth who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day."

This gradual loss of the heavenly light does not indicate moral progress. But if particular men may become hard and selfish, and sink into every kind of moral degradation as they advance in life, such a thing cannot be impossible for societies of men, that is to say, for nations. Accordingly this fact of national decay is not only possible, but one of the most familiar to be met with in history.

Greece and Rome.

The career and fate of Greece are known to every reader. The unrivalled intellectual power and deep sensibility to

beauty of the contemporaries of Pericles, did not save others who belonged to the same stock, and who still remained pre-eminent for mental accomplishments, from that moral decay which rendered them the scorn of the Romans. The adroit Greek adventurer, who could assume every shape for money, was in the times of the Empire the ideal of all that was mean and contemptible. Neither did the coarser but more vigorous fibre of the Roman national character hold out against corrupting influences. The descendants of the Scipios cared more for their fish-ponds than for their liberties in the time of Cæsar, and the depravity and worthlessness of the same aristocracy in the time of Tacitus was something which the modern imagination finds it difficult to conceive. The intensity of the evil is only fully brought out where the light of Christianity is thrown upon it, as is done in the epistles of St. Paul.

Italian Republics.

The advance guard of modern European civilization consisted of the people of Northern Italy. The virgin soil of the fresh Lombard race was the first to receive the seeds of the Greek and Roman culture, immeasurably enriched as they were by combination with Christianity, and it soon sent up a noble growth of organized valour, policy, literature, and commerce. But the early ripeness of the Italian republics was followed by early decay. The men of iron became men of silk, and the sword grew too heavy for their enervated hands; yet wealth continued to advance, and the commercial prosperity of Italy was at its height, when companies of "Free Lances," like that of the English Hawkwood, kept the degraded inhabitants of the towns in continual terror. Whatever hopes may be entertained of the regeneration of the Italian people at the present day, the fact of their having fallen from a lofty height of moral and national power is too palpable to be denied.