dying woman 66 over hell" till, one by one, Any awe that shows itself in appropriate she dropped the money-bags from beneath look and action is gloom, sourness, and her pillow on to the floor. And horrible" ungainly stiffness," and the Puritan elestories are told of threats and denunciations ment of Protestantism. following upon warnings contemned; to which, as the biographer puts it, "the Almighty Arbiter set His seal." In so far as there is any truth in these stories, we take them as an illustration of a marked difference between the educated and uneducated

nerves.

in the influence of vague alarms upon the Women who, in the practical work of life, are far bolder and more self-reliant than their high-born sisters, have far less power of standing against mysterious terrors. A violent woman, met on her own ground, her curses answered by a bold threat assuming the tone of prophecy, is not at all an unlikely victim. Awful words, disregarded at the moment, tell when the reaction comes, and the prophecy works its own fulfilment.

Whatever we may think of these specimens of popular devotion, it is very clear that they have awakened sympathy in unexpected quarters. Two books of Catholic hymns, by the late Father Faber, which bear the token of favour and success that numbers give on their title-pages, seem to us evidently composed on these models. The Father talks, indeed, in his preface, of the Olney Hymns having been once dear to him, but one detects a more modern, and we will say less scrupulous, source of inspiration. He evidently is attracted by the tone which we have called irreverent, and imitates it deliberately; both as most removed from the tone of the Church he had abandoned, and as a sort of thing that tells with the vulgar. Taking up this view, he thus reasons himself into irreverence, arguing that real reverence always assumes the disguise of its opposite:

"The awe that lies too deep for words, Too deep for solemn looks

It finds no way into the face,

No spoken vent in books.

-

They would not speak in measured tones,
If awe had in them wrought

Until their spirits had been hushed

In reverential thought.

They would have smiled in playful ways," &c.

Again

"The solemn face, the downcast eye,

The words constrained and cold-
These are the homage, poor at best,
Of those outside the fold.
They know not how our God can play
The babe's, the brother's part;
They dream not of the ways He has
Of getting at the heart."

Following out this view, we find these stanzas in a hymn entitled "The True Shepherd," for the use of a ragged school. We recognise the characteristic Revivalist rhymes:

"He took me on His shoulder,

And tenderly He kissed me;
He bade my love be bolder,

And said how He had missed me;
And I'm sure I heard him say,
As He went along this way,

O silly souls come near Me;
My sheep should never fear Me ;
I am the Shepherd true!

Strange gladness seemed to move Him
Whenever I did better;

And He coaxed me so to love Him
As if He was my debtor:

As He went along this way, &c.

Let us do, then, dearest brothers,
What will best and longest please us;
Follow not the ways of others,

But trust ourselves to Jesus;

We shall ever hear Him say," &c.

He thus treats of ineffable mysteries:

"God's glory is a wondrous thing,

Most strange in all its ways,
And, of all things on earth, least like
What men agree to praise.
As He can endless glory weave

From time's misjudging shame,
In this our world He is content

To play a losing game.

At one time the repetition, which is one characteristic of Revivalism, is regarded as a sign of love, even when practised to imbecility:

"O Jesus, Jesus! dearest Lord,
Forgive me if I say

For very love Thy sacred name
A thousand times a-day.

The craft of this wise world of ours
Poor wisdom seems to me;
Ah! dearest Jesus! I have grown
Childish with love of Thee!"

"O I am burning so with love,

I fear lest I should make too free."

There is the same easy explanation of the

scheme of redemption, which abounds in our series. The soul is thus addressed :

"O wonderful, O passing thought,

The love that God hath had for thee;
Spending on thee no less a sum

Than the undivided Trinity!
Father and Son and Holy Ghost
Exhausted for a thing like this."

If we are to have irreverence, we prefer it
of the rude unconscious sort, not put on as
something that will answer as a sort of ex-
periment, as thus:-

"How can they tell how Jesus oft His secret thirst will slake,

" Ay, but mine's true and yours isn't," was the rejoinder. A great deal of what the teetotallers say is true but it isn't poetry. Their vocabulary is hopeless: Twist the leading ideas as you may, insinuate them into the middle of a line, or dignify them with an answering rhyme, they defy management. Every person, thing, or part of speech whatever connected with liquor, has the same insolent prominence and knack of keeps its company. The changes are rung overpowering every other noun or verb that upon" temperance" and "teetotal," "strong drink," "wine," "gin," "beer," "publichouses," "landlords," "drunkards," "tipplers" and "sots," "takers of the pledge'

On those strange freedoms childlike hearts and "abstainers," always with the same

Are taught by God to take?"

Vulgarity in rhythm and rhyme are affect edly adapted to his peculiar tenets. This is how boys are taught to address St. Philip:

"Sweet Saint Philip! we are weeping
Not for sorrow, but for glee;
Bless thy converts bravely keeping

To the bargain made with thee.
Help, in Mary! joy in Jesus,

Sin and self no more shall please us.
We are Philip's gift to God," &c. &c.

We have dwelt so long on one part of our subject that the voluble Muse of Teetotalism has little room left for the display of her gifts. And yet nothing more clearly illustrates the different influences at work in the training of the lower and higher classes of society

effect upon the ear; and it must be owned, most of these are awkward terms, not to hint at but to name in full. Our readers must be satisfied with a few specimens, a

line culled here and there from this mass of strenuous effort to give vivacity, stimulus, and pathos to the teetotal cause. A hymn is opened with such exordiums as the following:

or

"Six hundred thousand drunkards sink."

One poem lays down the rule

than the numerous collections of temper- One begins to the tune of "Stevens”. ance and teetotal songs and hymns sold by their thousands, nay hundreds of thousands. We have half-a-dozen by us drawn up for the Band of Hope alone, in which its children are taught it is a paramount duty to instruct and reprove their elders, and to regard as a drunkard in act or in anticipation every person they see drink a glass of beer. They are the reformers, they are to conquer King Alcohol," and to bring in a reign of One is figurative — liberty and peace. But the fact is, the subject is incurably prosaic. The excuse for this is probably of the nature of the sailor's

"All public-houses must be closed,
Abstaining is the plan proposed.'

"The abstinence light is breaking."

contending with his fellow for the palm of One rhetoricalverse: one begins —

Kneel on the grass

That fringed its side,
And make its tide
Her looking glass.

And when the man of God
From Egypt led his flock,
They thirsted, and his rod
Smote the Arabian rock,
And forth a rill

Of water gushed,
And on they rushed
And drank their fill.

Would Eden thus have smiled
Had wine to Eden come?
Would Horeb's parchéd wild
Have been refreshed with rum?
And had Eve's hair
Been dressed in gin,
Would she have been
Reflected fair?

Had Moses built a still,
And dealt out to that host
To every man his gill,
And pledged him in a toast,
How large a band
Of Israel's sons
Had laid their bones
On Canaan's land!

Sweet fields beyond death's flood
Stand dressed in living green;
For, from the throne of God,
To freshen all the scene,

A river rolls,

Where all who will
May come and fill
Their crystal bowls.

If Eden's strength and bloom
Cold water thus hath given,
If e'en beyond the tomb

It is the drink of heaven

Are not good wells
And crystal springs
The very things
For our hotels?"

Seriously speaking it is difficult to believe that the concluding clencher to the argument could be written in grave earnest by so neat a versifier; but a study of the dozen temperance hymn-books and melodists before us satisfies us that the thing is possible. Teetotalism is of the nature of a hobbya state in which the mind is insensible and dead to the absurd.

With regard to the body of verse from which we have selected, it is superfluous to adduce it as testimony to the doctrine that the religion of the multitude is always a vulgar religion. It is like telling the cabman he is no gentleman. And no one can hear the excitement of these wild services parodied by street boys, or Hallelujahs hummed by them at their rough play, without a serious alarm for the consequences of making sacred things thus common and profane. But one redeeming point we note in all these collections. Whatever is distinctive is, indeed, vulgar and boisterous, and, from mere coarseness of perception, if from no worse alloy, irreverent. But mingled with these effusions are uniformly many of the best hymns in our language, and often tender and graceful modern compositions, in startling discrepancy with the prevailing tone. All we can say is, if a penitent prizefighter or reformed drunkard, in his moments of contrition can be brought to understand and estimate them at their true worth, a work has been effected which cannot be regarded as other than a good one.

ARTIFICIAL birds' nests are now being man- has placed such nests in the public walks and ufactured in Switzerland, under the direction communal forests, on the borders of lawns, &c.,, of the society formed there for the protection and found them all occupied by hedgo-sparrows, of insectivorous birds. The Yverdum Society redstarts, creepers, and tomtits.. FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. V. 106.