it constrained him to send out his friend; and the calamity he had himself invoked was death to the man that he loved better than his own soul.

'And why did Patroclus die? It was not that Achilles imprudently exposed him to risks beyond his strength. He was abundantly able to encounter Hector. Hector had no care, so long as the battle was by the ships, to encounter this chief. And Achilles had enjoined him to fight by the ships only, lest, if he attempted the city, a deity should take part against him. Patroclus disobeyed, and perished accordingly. As Achilles had refused to follow the laws of wisdom for himself, so when he carefully obeyed them, they were not to avail him for the saving of his friend. Heaven fought against Patroclus; Jupiter, after deliberation, tempted him from the ships, by causing Hector to fly towards the city; and the counsel of Achilles was now baffled as he had baffled the counsels of others; the dart was launched that was to pierce his soul to the quick.

'Thus his proud will was doomed to suffer. The suffering is followed by the reconciliation, and by the climax of his glory and revenge in the death of Hector. How in these books we see him moving in might almost preternatural, with the whole world, as it were, and all its forces, in subjection to his arms! But he has only passed from one excess of feeling into another; from a vindictive excess of feeling against the Greeks, to another vindictive excess of feeling against Hector. The mutilation and dishonour of the body of his slain antagonist now becomes a second idol, stirring the great deep of his passions, and bewildering his mind. Thus, in paying off his old debt to the eternal laws, he has already contracted a new one. Again, then, his proud will must be taught to bow. Hence, as Mr. Penn has well shown, the necessity of the Twenty-fourth Book with its beautiful machinery. Achilles must surrender the darling object of his desire, the wreaking of his vengeance on an inanimate corpse. On this occasion, as before, he is subdued: and both times it is through the medium of his tender affections. But in both cases his evil gratification is cut short, and the authority of the providential order is re-established. The Greeks pursue their righteous war; the respect which nature enjoins is duly paid to the remains of Hector, and the poem closes with the verse which assures us that this obligation was duly and peacefully discharged. 'With these views I find in the plot of the Iliad enough of beauty, order, and structure, not merely to sustain the supposition of its own unity, but to bear an independent testimony, should it be still needed, to the existence of a personal and individual Homer as its author.'Vol. iii, pp. 393-396,

We have attempted to give a general summary of this remarkable work, noteworthy in itself, and yet more so when we consider that it is the production of one of our most active statesmen, of one who does not think himself absolved from the obligation of investigating and forming an opinion upon any single branch of the art and science of politics which may help to make or mar human progress. We have not expressed undoubting faith in the details of the volumes. We do not mean to do so now. Some of the conclusions are not, we think, warranted by the vagueness of the only premises which could be produced in their support; others are arbitrary, and many seem to us the generous exaggerations of an enthusiast, on a subject which excuses or demands enthusiasm. But of what work, in which a topic is treated from a new standing point,

may not the same be said? The absolute merits of the book are many, enough not to make us change our opinion of the quality of the author's genius, but to enable us, as it were, to complete our view of it. It shows great general knowledge of the subject, and patient investigation, raising on the basis of old acquisitions a still more thorough and exact acquaintance with the theme, old and new stores alike being lighted up by a pleasant freshness of ardour in the study. The style is vigorous and animated, rising, on proper occasions, into eloquence, though perhaps, at times, evincing as is natural in the debater, a slight redundancy, or effort at putting the same topic in too many points of view. To eulogise the author's subtlety and general capacity for grasping a question in its integrity, would be out of place here or anywhere. These volumes display those qualities fully. But their prominent feature and main praise is the method, the boldness, thoroughness, and fidelity with which Homer is made to elucidate his own age, and to demonstrate his own rank as a historian by his own single testimony.

We hope Mr. Gladstone's example may produce a revival, in our Universities, of Homeric studies, increased attention to the great poet's manner, and, now at last, a commencement there of curiosity respecting his matter.

It is strange how easily and tranquilly classical students have been in the habit of lulling their judgment into a posture for acquiescing in the pictures of society in the Iliad and Odyssey, as some every-day spectacle, as though there were no practical distinction between the state of things in the nineteenth century and the primeval times of Greece, as represented in those poems, or as though the to us novel scenes in the Camp, Phæacia, and Ithaca, were only Homer's way, and an eccentricity of genius. This capacity for not feeling surprise at contradictions to our own usages and sentiments, does not demonstrate the flexibility of the intellect, and its ability to adapt itself, but an intellectual lethargy. If Homer and the Homeric Age' help to dispel so morbid a serenity, Mr. Gladstone will have attained his object, and received his reward.

368

ART. IV.-1. The Sunday School Teacher. By the Rev. JOHN TODD, of Philadelphia.

2. The Sunday School. By LOUISA DAVIDS. London: Printed for the Sunday School Union.

3. The Sunday School Teacher's Hand-book. Ward: Paternoster Row.

4. The Sabbath School and Bible Teaching. By JAMES INGLIS. Edinburgh: Gall and Inglis.

5. The Teacher's Companion. By R. N. COLLINS. Houlston and Wright.

London:

6. The Church of England Sunday School Quarterly Magazine. Church of England Sunday School Institute, 41, Ludgate Hill.

WHILE the press teems with the theory and practice of national education; while learned men descant and dispute on the one in substantial volumes, and school inspectors unfold the other in works equally large and heavy; while the school books and lesson books of different societies leave no detail unexplained, setting each rival system in exact distinctness before us, one great institution, the only education of universal application within reach of the poorest, would seem to the casual observer,—the chance inquirer, to be without a literature. Which of our readers, desirous to know something of the working of Sunday Schools beyond his own parish or town, would know where to look for information? whom to apply to? how to get at any trustworthy facts? At first it seems as if there were no books, no exposition of a system to be met with. In his own experience he sees no community of practice; one school is no guide for another; nobody can tell him anything beyond his sphere of immediate observation, which, perhaps, differs so completely from his own, as to induce a doubt of his informant's discernment, till a third witness has a totally different history to disclose, and has arrived at quite contrary opinions from both. He concludes, then, that it is a system without organization beyond the simplest one of teachers and learners; each school a close borough, a distinct society jealously watchful of its independence, and resenting all alien inspection. Strangers may enter our National and British Schools, nay, are invited to witness examinations on stated days. The timid mistress and pupil teachers are liable any moment to be called

upon to exercise their craft before a chance curious visitor; but who ventures into the Sunday School to stand behind the chair of the Sunday School teacher? Each teacher's system and doctrines may, if he chooses, be a secret between himself and his scholars. We doubt-for here we speak without sufficient general information to be confident-if_the_boldest pastor ever ventures on a tour of inspection round his Sunday School room, listening to the course of instruction as it is carried on in his absence.

For want, then, of positive data, our inquirer's discoveries in this department only teach him that the institution has chameleon-like qualities, and varies in its aspect with every fresh locality, and even in every school-room. And so it does, but not quite for want of a literature and a system,—at least we, who are fresh from the perusal of the works at the head of our article, would feel it impossible to ignore efforts, views, and plans, set forth with such confidence of tone and in such lofty flights of language. A system has been set forth with force and precision enough, and with sufficiency of detail. Nor has it wanted readers and disciples; but the fault seems to be, that all that is said authoritatively flies over the heads of those who are expected to carry it out, and thus, we must suppose, fails in affording practical direction or guidance, and leaves the teacher virtually to his own discretion, such as it is. Not that we wish to raise alarms on this score; though it is curious to note the liberty, nay licence, that may exist, unsuspected, side by side with the most inquisitorial investigation, and in the very same field; to contrast the trained, catechised, sanctioned teacher of the week-day scholar, the creature of system, whose mind has been in the hands of an active, watchful superintendence for years, over whose opinions bishops and committees have presided and perhaps sat in judgment; with the substitute Sunday supplies to the same learner; with the Sunday School teacher whose qualifications have probably never been tested by the simplest examination beyond perhaps that for confirmation, who has gone through no ordeal whatever, who has been accepted solely on his application for the office, accepted and generally welcomed eagerly, his disinterested good-will being taken as guarantee for all those other requisites, which, probably, can never be investigated. This voluntary offer of service, and ready, unconditional acceptance, is, we believe, the ordinary mode of a Sunday School teacher's election in our Church; we suspect it to be the same with Dissenters, from certain casual admissions in their books; indeed, our own small experience points to an absolute indifference to qualifications or fitness, which, we trust, is never paralleled in our own communion. It is to a body thus

constituted that the works before us, Church or sectarian, are addressed, and the task imposed on them, whether by man or woman, Englishman, Scotchman, or American, is one and the same, and expressed uniformly in the same formula,—the conversion of their scholars. Neither sex nor age mitigates the burden of the commission, or clothes it in less awful, overwhelming language. A girl of fifteen, who wishes to help little children to learn to be good, has her task put before her in no lighter colours. Then and there she must convert those infants, and 'save their souls.' Any humbler aim, any notion of doing good short of this supreme result, is denounced as unfitting her for the work. And, moreover, she is taught to consider the task an easy one.

Now, of course, there is a point of view-abstracting ourselves from time and looking only at the ultimate end of all our labour-in which it may be said that there is no good done, and no happiness worth a thought, separate from the accomplished fact of salvation. But we, who cannot read the heart, must work step by step, and rejoice in small hourly conquests over evil, and aim at certain immediate effects, and labour to instil a true faith, and right principles, and good habits, without presuming to anticipate the end, nor to grudge our labour in improving the present hour, leaving results to a higher disposal. At first the more ambitious tone of these books seemed to us assumed as a stimulus to exertion, as though boys and girls would be excited to greater efforts by being put on this elevation, and set impossible tasks, and taught to think their small service one with the preacher's and missionary's work, in call, in authority, in responsibility, in magnitude of result; and we felt how sad it was that every impulse given to youthful devotion should be a stab at Christian lowliness and humility; but we are inclined, on further thought, to attribute this line of argument to a different and sincerer cause. The recognised authority in this branch of study is the Reverend John Todd, Pastor of the First Congregational Church, Philadelphia: to him all our writers defer, and quote especially from him on this subject of conversion. Our readers might, perhaps, wonder how his dictum came to have such weight, so that thoughtful practical men slip into his words when they approach this topic; but, probably, the very weaknesses of his style have won him a standing amongst the class to whom he especially addresses himself, for young readers of circumscribed education and ambitious aims are likely to be at once taken with high-sounding language, and attracted by what their elders would pronounce puerilities; and he has, moreover, the advantage of having formed a distinct idea on the subject, which he develops with considerable ingenuity and consistency.