The Express.
London, England, 1868-05-28 00:00:00

terAIEPID 11. ADDinoirarhj

LITERATURE.

Thr elturrli rihd 110 World : Essays on Questions
of the Day in 1868. By various Writers. Edited
by the Rev. 011.31" SIIIPLCV, M.A. Longman* :
1868.

There are representative books as well as repre-
sentative men, and the main interest of the volume
before us is of this character. Like the two aerie,
of essays already published under the same title, it
treats of ecclesiastical and social matters from the
standing point of the Anglo-catholica ; and every
one who is watching with curiosity the eccentric
movements of modern thought will do well to
study these essays. They express, in some cases
with considerable ability, and in all cases with
perspicacity. the views of men who, as laymen or
as priests, while professedly members of the church
of England, have renounced the name of protes-
tants, and are anxious, both in doctrine and cere-
monial, to revive the faith and usages subverted at
the reformation.

There is, of course, much in a work like this
which it would be unfitting to discuss in the
columns of a newspaper. Theology proper is
beyond the province of the journalist ; but there
are secular subjects handled by the essayists, and
there are topics partly of theological, partly of
social interest which it is quite legitimate to dis-
cuss.

The book consists of 17 essays. snd of these only
three are anonymous—one on "Immoral Litera-
ture," another, by a mother, on the "Defects in
the Moral Training of Girls," and a third entitled
" The Natal Scandal," by a layman. Among the
papers more distinctively illustrative of Anglo-
catholic aims may be mentioned the " Invocation
of Saints and Angels," by the Rev. Henry Humble;
" Retreats," by the Rev. T. T. Carter ; " Prayers
for the Dead," by the Rev. Patrick Cheyne ; and
au essay by the Rev. S. Baring Gould, on the
" Origin of the Schools of Thought in the English
Church," the most dogmatic, and, perhaps, the
least liberal of the series. In reading the volume
nothing has struck us so forcibly as the peculiar
tone by which it is marked throughout. We
breathe a strange and a somewhat oppressive
atmosphere, and find it difficult to believe that we
are conversing with living Englishmen upon
English soil. Probably, if we take up " The
Church and the World" after a full course of me-
direval theology, we might have been less struck
with the quaint—shall we say the superstitious
cast of thought that pervades the volume. There
is so much in it from which we utterly dissent,
so much that seems loose in statement and feeble in
argument, so much, too, that seems to our thinking
narrow-minded and credulous, that we are, per-
haps, unable to do justice to the more reasonable
arguments of the writers. When we meet with
essayists who affirm that the confessional is a most
invaluable element for good in the education of the
I young, that relics of the saints have proved of un-
I doubted efficacy, although it may be questioned
whether " touching the saint's figure with a little
wool and applying it to some sore or infirmity of a
petitioner would exercise the same effects"; that
the saints are to be invoked, although " invocation
may not be absolutely requisite for salvation" ;
that priests are endowed with supernatural powers ;
that intolerance is essential to protestantiam, as its
basis of belief is illogical, and it has absolutely no
intelligible standing-ground in the world of
I thought ; and that it has become a matter of ex.
perience to find among dissenters " the most de-
Plorable deterioration of morals, combined with
; the loudest protestations of faith"—it is difficult to
find a point of sympathy between ourselves and
writers who can make statements so inaccurate and
hold opinions so irrational.
There is mu .1, however, in the volume of common
interesting to Anglicans and Protestants. The
essay on Immoral Literature" is written with an
ability and good feeling to which we gladly do
justice. Eliminate from the paper its peculiar
theological teaching, and we have a subject of
I popular importance, luminously treated, and in a
spirit with which all right-thinking men may sym-
pathise. The publication of novels not, indeed,
I wholly impure, but so written as to skirt the bor-
dere of impurity and please a prurient fancy, is an
evil sign of the times. That books of this half
I vicious and sensational class are issued by respect-
! able publishers may well excite wonder, but that,
in the worst eases, they should be the work of
lEnglish ladies is yet more surprising. The writer
,gives no niggard praise to Dickens and Thackeray,
Ito Anthony Trollope and the author of " John
Halifax," for the high morality, and the tine spirit
of humanity which pervade their writings, and
allows that the novelist, like the poet, has an office
and a purpose not lightly to be esteemed. But he
adds, while turning from the great masters
of fiction to the writers of the " sense-
tional" school—" Surely the time is come for
, very plain outapeaking ut the matter, now that
the press is pouring forth a flood of novels which
I seem to contend in nameless rivalry, and expressing
loose morality in yet more loose grammar, in un-
dermining, with equal recklessness, the purity of
English morals and- the purity of the English btu-
,
guage." In the indignation expressed by this
anonymous essayist against several recent fictions
which he names and analyses he has our entire sym-
pathy. It is a disgrace to English society that
such works should be tolerated in respectable fami-
lies—a tenfold disgrace that young ladies should
openly read them and discuss their merits as if the
scenes they describe were alike familiar and agree-
able. And this is not all. The foulness of the
worst French novels is as yet unknown in English
fiction ; but as every one reads French, the " unut-
terable nastiness" of these books is not confined to
I France. "In them," we quote from the essayist,
"purity of thought or chastity of life become sheer
unrealities, the dream of the fanatic, or the delu-
lion of the devotee. In them the holiest words are
a sociated with the most hideous meanings, and
; most terrible mockeries of truth. In them love is
a synonym for sensuality, and purity that which
lends a zest to passion, and marriage only a social
state that renders adultery possible. And it is a
' simple fact that these novels are largely imported,
extensively sold, and widely read. It is not for us
; to say among what classes of society they circulate ;
but it must be remembered that the ability to un-
derstand and to enjoy them implies a certain
amount of education and the possession ce
to a r-
tain degree of intellectual refinement.,

There is another kind of literature largely circu-
lated in this country which the writer thinks may
not be so very harmful after all—the literature we
mean that describes the adventures of highwaymen,
buccaneers, and "boy pirates," but there is we think
increasing evidenoe that penny novels of this de-
scription are exerting a most pernicious influence.
The remedy for these evils is not to be found, as here
suggested, in the authority of the church, but
rather in the healthy co-operation of the clergy
and the laity. Vicious and unwholesome litera-
ture cannot be stamped out like the cattle
plague, but must be expelled by the sub-
stitution of something better. Gross vice
may indeed be kept under restraint by
law, but the vice that destroys the vitality of a
people is more subtle and more dangerous because
it is more refined. For this canker in the State
goodness is the only effectual antagonist, not as it
is stereotyped in clerical formularies, but as it is
displayed in the life of men and women who are
themselves pure and just and honest.
We do not pretend to be excessive purists, but we
do think that some of the fashions of what is called
" good society," instead of being silently accepted,
I should be distinctly reprobated by all who
care for the modesty and good name of their sisters
or daughters. " Why," writes another of the es-
sayists, are false hair, false ears, false bosoms,
and the vile fashion which induces women to sffect
a mockery of approaching motherhood, endured

ONE PENNY

for one instant anywhere out of the low haunts of
vice ? Why are our unmarried girls allowed to
wear the indecent dresses that arc the disgrace of
English drawing-moms and ball-rooms, if it is not
from a desire to attract the other sex by
appealing to their animal passions Unpleasant
questions are these, but it would be worse than
idle to blink them. IVlzen, however, the writer,
"A Mother," goes on to hint in mysterious Lan-
guage at certain moral evils to which our girls are
liable, and finds the remedy for them in the ca-
tholic system ; and when again she urges that this
system, as expressed in the Confessional, is ur-
gently needed if our wives and mothers " are not
to sink into American demoralisation,- we are
forced to part company with her, and to ask how
it comes to pass that the greatest depravity
in the relation between the sexes is to be found in
countries where the Confessional is, and for cen•
turies has been, an established institution
On the whole, the reader who is not Anglican
in his proclivities will read this collection of essays
with more curiosity than pleasure. The main argu-
ments of the writers rest, as we think, n[irot
utterly false premises, and it would be a dark
day for England were she to acept the
principles laid down by the extreme church party
as represented in these pages. At the same time
there is much in them we shall do well to ponder,
much which may serve to point a mural both to
churchmen and dissenters. The book is not one
to place in the hands of young readers who of
necessity are uninformed or ill-informed, but it
may be usefully read by men whi are interested in
the theological movements of the dam.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)