The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-31 00:00:00

crnrt 1 '
/ trzu

lIER MAJESTY.

WINDSOR CASTLE, March 30.
The Queen walked in the grounds this morning
and drove, accompanied by Princess Louise.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

Her Majesty left IVindsor Castle at four o'clock
this afternoon, and arrived at Buckingham Palace
at five o'clock.

'The Prince of Wales, attended by Major Grey,
rode out yesterday forenoon.

The Princess of Wales drove out, attended by
the Marchioness of Carmarthen.

MI?. DIXON AZVD HIS LAST BOOK.

In the form of a note to the fourth edition of
" Spiritual Wives," a note designed to be read
after the book, Mr. Dixon has written the subjoined
earnest words of explanation :
So many persons have asked me for what is called
a " little help" in reading the story told in " Spiri-
tual Wives," that I am led to offer, by way of final
note, a few words on what the author meant to do,
and on what he takes to be the moral bearing of
the strange facts which it became his duty to set
forth.

One day, when standing near the Holy Sepulchre,
he saw two swarthy penitents start from their knees
and fly at each other's throats—knives flashed out
from belts, mob rushed against mob, and the holy
fane had to be cleared of these worshippers by the
Arab guard. " What is it all about ?" he asked a
Turk. The grave Oriental smiled :—" No one can
tell. The young men are converts and full of pride.
Their heads are turned ; they have no longer any
habits to curb their zeal ; they would take the life of
man, and call their crime the act of God. Pest° l
they are mad."

At that time he was studying on the spot the
first plantation on this earth of a Religion of Love.
And here was tragic proof of what spiritual pride
and ignorant zeal could make of even a religion of
love ! That reflection was the germ of his present
book, to which further thought and wider travel
have given the actual name and shape.
" Spiritual Wives" was a term well known to our
old divines, by whom it was used to describe the
demons which enter into wandering and corrupted
hearts. Bishop Bale, in a famous passage, tells
that story of the " three spiritual wives"—namely,
Pride, Covetousness, and Lechery—whom Richard
Lion Heart assigned to certain holy men. The
fanatics of our own time have given to the term a
new importance.
In this work an attempt is made to describe the
morbid growth of certain feelings, from their birth
in the revival camp to their wreck on the domestic
hearth ! to paint in its diseased activity one of thosa
passions which control the innermost lives of men ;
to show in what subtle and seductive ways the poison
of spiritual pride can work into the heart ; and, in
the end, to warn the young seeker after a " newer
way" and a " higher law" what perils beset his feet
the moment he quits the safe old path of experience,
on any imaginary " leading of the spirit."

All the men and women whose lives are hero
traced—from Archdeacon Ebel and Countess Ida,
down to the Rev. Abram C. Smith and Mary Cragin
-- began by seeking for a higher kind of good.
They wandered into peril, not through a will in-
dining them to evil, but through the yearning to
live a better and a purer life. They fell by spiri-
tual pride, by wishing to be " wiser than what is
written ;" and they passed into the stage of mental
craze and moral death through having set their
hearts on a perfection never to be reached on earth.
It is this moral element in the story of their lives
which moves our pity for women like Countess Ida
and Mary Cragin.

Then the facts of this story show us how re-
vivals test the conservative powers of church and
society in countries which are all of the highest
type, and have many fine elements of a common life.
A storm breaks out in England, Germany, and the
United States. In England that storm sweeps by
and leaves the fabric of our church and our society
untouched. In Germany it produces social wreck
and ruin. In the United States it gives rise to no/
forms of society and wild experiments in domestic
life. 'Why this difference of result ? Is it not
mainly because in England church and society are
friendly, while in Germany they are hostile, and in
America indifferent ?

England can shake off men like Prince and his
followers, because her society is old, her churches.
are the churches of her upper ranks, and her reli-
gious condition is fixed by the action of her educated
lay mind. Germany cannot so quickly put down
men like Ebel and Diestel, because her laymen and
her theologians are at feud ; the church is not in
real union with society, and the intellect of the
country can only act on the divines in open fields
of conflict. The United States, ignoring churches
altogether as public bodies, have hardly any means
(in spite of their many and noble religious institu-
tions) of controlling the freaks of a revival preacher',
except in the last resort, when some rustic crowd 0'
miners and woodmen, maddened by what they think
bad doctrine and worse practice, rise on the saint'
and vindicate public morality with a bag of feathers
and a box of tar.
Is there not in all these details food for serious
thought ?
Yet a wise reader may find some comfort even in
the sad and fearful facts displayed. This doctrine
of Spirit- brides is but one of our greatest virtues
run to waste. It is an offspring of that Gothic race
which invented Home, which elevated Wail'
which purified Chivalry ; and it springs, indee
from no other source than excess of reverence 1111
misdirected love. Under all the evils here depicted
.
there lies a ground for rational hope of better thing",
The best of men must have the defects of their pro
of
per virtues ; must have these defects on the s.cale.,a
their superior gifts. It may increase our pity our
lessen our dismay—though it need not deaciell, °_„o
sense of peril—to find how many of our bretn"o
have been led astray by instincts which were. el!"
noble, as well as by motives which were origui'"

pure.
To critics who suggest that my pirpoSe
have been to corrupt, and not to warn, 1 have 13°:
thing to say. My writings during twenty years at
before the world.
DR. TYNDALL'S BOOK ON FARADAY.---Mich3tel
Faraday was born at Newington Butts on the 22d of Ser."
1791, and died at Hampton Court on the 25th of A-ug,13,,1
1867. Dr. Tyndall—believing in the general truth of
doctrine of hereditary transmission, and sharing
Carlyle's opinion, that a really able man never Pr.!:
ceeded from entirely stupid parents "—once used the
vilego of his intimacy with Mr. Faraday to ask him whet—T/-0c
his parents showed any sign of unusual ability. —or
could remember none. His father was a great futger-0
during the latter years of his life, and that inighg' But
masked whatever intellectual power he possessed.
mental capability will often remain latent until soranthin;
special occurs to call it into action. Even when cir Went
to exercise its faculties, its highest manifestations are 13-6
always produced. Lord Lytton (in his Student) sh 3! 0
that an author's best works may be those which irt,-e a
pot written, but only projected. In 1804, when h'r—ad
years old, Faraday was apprenticed to a bookrileraf and
binder, with whom he spent eight years of his life; But
which he worked as a journeyman elsewhere. ds•
with whatever employer, his heart was iu the
his
~orlr,
It was iu the books he bound, in the hours after ?,hero
that he found the beginning of his philosophy
;,,dit
wore two that especially helped him: the “B"Ye'°`
Britannica," from which he gained his first notions of eloc
trieity, and Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on CheolisattrrY;.
which gave him his foundation in that science. 'wit,'
ducod to Sir Humphry Davy's last lectures at tit°, oat,
Institution, he took notes a them, wrote them 011.4 gait
and sent them to Davy, entreating him to enable him "'boil
the trade, which he detested, and to pursue science,,fdv
he loved. Davy (be it never forgotten) wrote to 13'
rre-
na'
at once, and afterwards,' when an opportunity oc" .00,1
made him his assistant. Showing to au influential fr'rs
of
this application from "a youth of twenty-tvvn Yletter
is attend"
r'
age," he said, " Pepys, what am Itodo ? Hear
from a young man named Faraday. Ho has beoei out
lug my lectures, and wants me to give him ou"tlo re"
at the Royal Institution. What can do ? good for
Plied Pepys ; "put him to wash bottles ; if he
is ('
i 6 goo
Nve re-
anything, ho will do it directly ; if he refuses, he
must trY
for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy,
r„sult was
him with something better than that." The
ry
that Davy engaged him to assist in the laborato
weekly wages.— Dickens'„ Au the Year Round.