nature was the same then as now, he would hardly commence saving money until he had attained the respectable age of four hundred. The insurance tables giving him four hundred more, as his reasonable expectation of life, how interest would accumulate! No wonder that Noah was possessor of the whole earth-he had succeeded to the savings of Methuselah! Now, you two lads go out, and smoke a cigar. If you agree-well: if not, there is no harm done on either side."

Certainly this was a very wise proposal. Attie Faunce and I speedily came to an understanding. I made him aware that I had anything but a wish to bore him, and he undertook to place his stock of miscellaneous knowledge at my disposal.

"It is little I can do," said he, "but I certainly have contrived to pick up some information regarding city matters. Do you know, I think I might have become a brilliant meteor in Lombard Street if I had been regularly bred to the business. I like nothing better than to observe the complicated transactions of this huge commercial Babel, where knaves, dupes, and honest men are alike actively employed. At present, I fear, honesty is somewhat at a discount. The great capitalists, usually so cautious, have been bitten by the mad dog, speculation; and hundreds of them, who would have looked very shy a year ago if asked to discount an ordinary bill, are now raging in the market, buying up every kind of scrip in expectation of a rise. Now, in order to bring that about, they are compelled to puff their projects to the uttermost. More than one clever fellow, with a turn for romance, has made a small fortune merely by drawing prospectuses; and as for the lies that are daily circulated on 'Change, they would exhaust the invention of Munchausen. But what is worst of all, many members of Parliament are deep in the game; and as they possess means, unknown to the rest of the world, of influencing the decisions of committees, they have at least twenty points out of sixty-three in their favour. But you'll know all about that in time-only don't be

astonished if you should find men, who bear the highest character for probity and honour, engaged in tricks and traffickings that savour more of the atmosphere of the Old Bailey than that of the meetinghouse."

Next morning Faunce drove me into town. I began rather to like him; for although it would not be accurate to say that his was a wise head upon young shoulders, still it was a head of no ordinary capacity and cleverness, and the quaint humour of his remarks would have done no discredit to Lucian, immeasurably the most amusing of the satirical writers of antiquity. I chanced to ask him if he knew anything of an individual of the name of Speedwell, and the following was his prompt reply.

"Speedwell? Do you mean a thick-set Jew, with bushy whiskers? I know the man perfectly by sight and reputation. He is as consummate a scoundrel as ever cheated the pillory-one of the very worst of the bill-discounters that infest this precious London of ours. The higher fellows in that line, who deal with the nobility, and assume the airs of men of fashion, are, Heaven knows, hard enough; but they are generous and liberal in comparison with such a dog-fish as this Speedwell. Woe betide the unfortunate sinner who falls into his clutches! He would strip him past the drawers on the frostiest night of January."

66

I conjectured as much," said I. "And has this Mr Speedwell given the benefit of his remarkable talents towards the development of the railway system?"

"You may assume that as a certainty," replied Faunce. "Not one remnant of the whole twelve tribes of Israel but is, at this moment, actively engaged in rigging the market. A speculative craze of this kind is a more important event for them than the return from the Captivity. Spoiling the Egyptians was a mere joke compared with it. I do not believe that there is a single orangeboy, or vendor of sponges, or collector of cast raiment, who has not managed to get an allocation of hundreds of shares in some of the competing lines;

and when that is the case, it is not likely that an acute Sadducee like Speedwell will fail to profit by the occasion. Indeed I have observed him of late in close attendance at Westminster. There is no mistaking him. Curious that so deadly a snake, to whom concealment must often be an object, should be so fond of conspicuous colours!"

"But why should he haunt Westminster?" said I. "Surely it would be easy to procure early intelligence in the city."

"Of a verity," said Faunce, "you have got a great deal to learn. Go to any committee-room where there has been a regular stand-up fight between two competing lines for a fortnight or three weeks; for, when the prey is good, the lawyers have no fancy for abridging proceedings. There have been opening speeches, and evidence, and replies, until the five worthy senators who are to decide which is the better line, and who are usually selected on account of their entire ignorance of the peculiarities of the district, are utterly bewildered, sick of the whole concern, and wellnigh weary of their lives. At last, in desperation, the chairman orders the room to be cleared, that the committee may deliberate which preamble has been proved. In the mean time, mark you, and during the whole discussion, the price of each stock, or I should rather say scrip, has been fluctuating in the market. If Jack's

line is preferred, Jack pockets a cool thousand. If Tom's is thrown out, Tom must descend to the dreary val ley of discount. But they are both confident of success, and to the very last moment the brokers are buying and selling. After an hour or two, the doors are opened. In rush, higgledy-piggledy, the barristers and solicitors, the more wary speculators keep without. The chairman rises, and announces, with a provoking drawl, that the Wessex line has the preference. Then along the lobbies and down the stairs is a frantic race of Jews, jobbers, and publicans, each striving for dear life to be first to get into the city. Some throw themselves into cabs, others rush to the bridges for river-steamers, others trust to sculls.-Neck or nothing!Devil take the hindmost!-Nothing like it on the Derby-day! Nay, I have been credibly informed that carrier-pigeons are sent off to convey the intelligence to Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow, in anticipation of the mail; and it is said that a knowing fellow, who was posted with a gun near the premises of a Birmingham broker, brought down a bird that was worth two thousand pounds to his employer. Such things may seem strange to you, and doubtless will be disbelieved when told hereafter; nevertheless, there they are, facts that will not brook denial. But here we are in Jermyn Street, so for the present I shall bid you good-bye."

DR HANNA has here given us one of those useful unpretending volumes which, without professing to add to our stock of historical knowledge by original research, presents to the public, in a brief space, the result of an extensive reading. The first and larger portion of it is devoted to the life and opinions of Wycliffe, and a spirited portrait is drawn of our early Reformer, or great precursor of the Reformation; and the selection of facts is so judicious that we are carried rapidly, and without any sense of confusion, over a wide arena of history. The second part is devoted to the Huguenots, or the Reformation in France; and here, it must be confessed that the too narrow space for the so extensive subject becomes painfully evident; and although there is doubtless the same judicious selection of facts and of points of view, the result is not so satisfactory. There are limits to the compressibility even of historical matter. Nevertheless, as the history of the Reformation in France is less familiar than that of the Reformation in Germany or in England, this latter portion of the book may have more interest and novelty to many of its readers.

The Reformation is, indeed, an endless subject of interest, and this not only because in countries of the reformed faith this great event is looked upon as the starting-point of a new era of mental cultivation and of national existence, but because, together with the new, we are constantly employed in regarding the older form of Christianity, and that so-called Catholic Church from which we have separated. In some revolutions, the new government, or the new order of things which has been established, is the only subject we care very much to contemplate; but in this great spiritual revolution we are as much interested in examining the ancient tyranny against which

we rebelled, as the new government under which we are living; and we will venture to say that it is the Protestant, who has the intellectual excitement of the contrast which is brought constantly before him of the two régimes, who is most likely to feel the deep speculative interest attached to the history of the Catholic Church. He proclaims, indeed, that the theory of that great Church was altogether impracticable- was, in fact, a quite erroneous theory; but he is not the less occupied, on this account, with its examination, for it is a theory which would inevitably offer itself to the human mind, and one which he has both to explain, to admire, and to repudiate.

Grant that any set of men have a right to assume that they are in possession of all religious truth, and of truth unmixed with error, and that the will of Heaven as to the future existence of the human soul, and the terms of its eternal happiness and misery, has been finally and fully revealed to them-grant this, and the theory of the Catholic Church is grand and sublime, and altogether impregnable as a logical position. Here is a Church in possession of this truth-Heaven has spoken-all is known that can be known, and there is no room for cavil or denial;-truth cannot be taught without teachers, nor religious precepts enforced without living preceptors; Church, then, stands forth upon the face of the earth as the representative of religious truth, the indispensable preceptor-one and universal, because there is but one truth, and under it all mankind are but one family. Men of ardent temperament or lofty aspirations have always felt the charm of this theory. And evermore as the Church extends and magnifies her claims, does the logic by which those claims are supported grow more complete and invincible. If logic would but suffice!--if facts

this

might be disregarded!-if the first admission, the first premiss, could never be revoked or re-examined! But men, when disappointed in the results of a spiritual government, will pry into its credentials. Otherwise, what more certain than that Christianity should rule over Christendom -rule in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs-rule in courts of justice and in courts of emperors, as well as in courts ecclesiastical? Or what more palpable than that this cannot be effected unless Christianity has its representative and its instrument in a great hierarchy of unquestioned supremacy, and itself of indissoluble unity? Distinction between spiritual and temporal! Limitation of the power of this hierarchy, and of its great head and chief to matters of doctrine or of religious discipline! Miserable fallacy! Does not à Protestant Arnold, does not every earnest and zealous Christian, loudly assert that truth has come in vain unto the world unless it is allowed to govern all the affairs of human life, unless it moulds the jurisprudence, determines the policy, wields the administration of the state? Of what use to decide upon doctrine, if the Christian doctrine is not to lead to the Christian life? And who but a sceptic at heart would ever think of leaving both the Christian doctrine and the Christian life to take their chance unaided amidst the thousand modes of thinking and acting that perplex and mislead the multitude-to be merely one of the many influences that are moulding the great whole of human society?

The theory is perfect. Who would dare or wish to set a limit to the authority of the representative of Truth, and the Vicar of Christ? That authority should be coextensive with the Christian life, and in Christendom all human life should be Christian. Alas that this representative of Truth should palpably have fallen into error! Alas that the Vicar of Christ should not have realised for us this grand conception! Such an ideal must captivate the reason, must secure the affections of all good men; but if the reality does not accord with it, what are we to do? Whether there is such a Vicar of Christ upon

the earth must, after all, be tested by fact, by experience. A Vicar of Christ against whom we have here in England to pass a statute "of Provisers" is a very questionable personage. If human error and human vice have palpably crept into this great vicariate, what becomes of our theory? It is a dream, a wish, a regret, or it becomes an instrument of cupidity and ambition.

But let us observe, in the first place, that this theory of a universal church did not precede the constitution of the Papal government, but grew up to maturity as that government itself grew up to its full power and dimensions. The Papal Church, like all the great institutions of society, arose gradually, shaping itself according to the wants and emergencies of the time. When it had assumed grand proportions, there came the grand theory which corresponded to them, and which helped still further to complete and aggrandise the institution. And in the second place, it is well to remember that this was the theory of churchmen, and very rarely received by civilians; it was not often the theory of laymen, of jurists, of monarchs or their barons. Side by side with the Christian Church was a feudalism built up on a quite different class of ideas and interests. That all the affairs of this world should be governed by the law of Christ, and that the Church was the expounder of that law, were propositions which would doubtless have been acquiesced in so long as they remained mere logical propositions; but the monarch or the baron never thought of surrendering his own rights, or of living otherwise than after his own code of honour or of fealty. He levied war and administered justice quite independently of the Church, or of that law of which the Church was the guardian. Protestant writers, looking back to centuries which preceded the Reformation, sometimes express surprise at what appears to them bold and liberal opinions from feudal monarchs and barons; as if men of this stamp had been, by a process of reasoning, emancipating themselves from a spiritual thraldom. Such men had never felt their conscience encumbered by any

ecclesiastical dogmas. Dr Hanna, in the work before us, after citing Wycliffe's report of certain speeches of our barons in the reign of Edward III., makes the following comment: "These speeches, when we think of the period when they were uttered, are remarkable for the bold, broad, patriotic sentiments which they expressed." The sentiments they expressed were the natural and independent sentiments of such men at this, and at still earlier periods. They had never indoctrinated themselves in "high-church principles." Our Protestant controversies lead us here to practise a slight deception upon ourselves. Learned ecclesiastics at the time of the Reformation had to limit and define for themselves the

power of the Church, breaking loose from certain dogmas then taught at the seats of learning. But such dogmas had never, at any time, been established in the head or the wills of feudal barons, feudal monarchs, or powerful municipalities.

In these days, when the temporal power of the Pope (though in a very different phase of it) has been made the subject of renewed discussion, it may be amusing, if nothing else, to refer to this debate in our House of Lords, of which Wycliffe is the reporter :

"In 1365, thirty-three years after the last payment of this tribute (the tribute extorted from King John) had been made, Edward III. received an unexpected communication from Rome. Pope Urban V. not only demanded that the payment should be immediately renewed,

but that the accumulated arrears should be instantly discharged; and to let the King of England know how resolute he was that this should be done, Edward

was still further informed that, in default of compliance, he would be summoned to appear and answer to his liege lord the Pope for his neglect. The King laid the Pope's letter before a meeting of his Parliament, and submitted to it the question as to what answer should be given. At this important meeting Wycliffe was present, and has reported to us the speeches of some of the great barons on the occasion.

but force would give him no perpetual right to it. Let the Pope, then, gird on his sword, and come and try to exact this tribute by force, and I for one am ready to resist him.'

rational) begins his speech by laying it "The second lord (somewhat more down as a first principle that tribute such as that now claimed could be paid only to those capable of civil and secular rule. The Pope had no such qualification; his duty was to follow Christ, who refused all secular dominion. hold him, then, firmly,' said the speaker, to his own proper spiritual duties, and oppose him when he claims civil power.'

'Let us

"It seems to me,' said the third speaker, that we can retort the Pope's own reasoning upon himself. He calls himself the servant of the servants of God. He can claim, then, such tribute as this only upon the ground of some good service rendered to this land; but as, in my judgment, he renders no such service, either spiritually or temporally, but only drains our treasure to help our enemies, the tribute, I say, should be denied." (P. 16.)

Of Wycliffe himself, the reporter of this animated debate, from which we have extracted but a small portion, Dr Hanna, in common with his other biographers, is well justified in speaking as of a man singularly in advance of his age. A more thorough acquaintance with that age would probably diminish the wonder we feel at his complete anticipation of the reformers of the sixteenth century. But his intellectual superiority was not so remarkable as his great boldness and self-reliance. It is his moral courage that strikes us with admiration. Think of the audacity of the man who could stand forth apparently alone, and challenge the whole University of Oxford to defend their

favourite doctrine of transubstantiation. He signs a paper with twelve conclusions against this doctrine, and challenges all comers to contradict them. Twelve doctors and regents of the university assembled at the summons of the chancellor, but not to discuss such a flagrant heresy ; they simply passed sentence of suspension, imprisonment, excommunication against every offender who should teach such heresy, or even listen to any teaching that impugns the faith in transubstantiation.

Wycliffe's opinions upon the subject

R