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REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



sidised by the Russian Government, of 

 being a traitor to his country, and other 

 equally absurd things. To-day Great 

 Britain and Russia are in cordial alli- 

 ance ! He laboured incessantly for bet- 

 ter relations with Germany, and was ever 

 an advocate of universal arbitration. If 

 these two things also come to pass what 

 a boon it would be to the world ! I 

 -came across a good illustration of his 

 far-sightedness the other day in reading 

 an article he wrote twenty years ago. In 

 it he said the time would come when a 

 United Australia would send for an 

 English General to advise her about her 

 defence, when the Overseas Dominions 

 began to take up the burden of Empire. 

 Eighteen years later that prophesy was 

 fulfilled ! 



HIS FAVOURITE POET. 



I have mentioned that he admired 

 Washington, but his hero was Crom- 

 well. He early inculcated a vast respect 

 in us for that rugged genius, to whom 

 the Empire owes the foundation of its 

 greatness. Queen Elizabeth was another 

 heroine of his. His favourite poet was 

 Lowell, who, indeed, he popularised in 

 England. Writing a preface to an 

 edition of his poems, father said : 



' In some of the critical moments of 

 my life I found in Lowell help such as 

 I found in none other outside Carlyle's 

 ' Cromwell ' and Holy Writ. I found 

 that which I sorely needed, and which 

 became an abiding possession and a 

 strength for evermore. I was little more 

 than a boy of fifteen when first I felt 

 the inspiration of Lowell's word. It 

 was not till several years later that I 

 ever bethought myself of journalism as 

 a profession ; but I think I can trace the 

 first set of my mind in a journalistic 

 direction to reading the preface to the 

 Pious Editor's Creed, which I make no 

 scruple about quoting almost entire. 



THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED. 

 ' I know of no so responsible posi- 

 tion as that of the public journalist. 

 The editor of our day bears the same 

 relation to his time that a clerk bore to 

 the age before the invention of print- 

 ing. Indeed, the position which he 

 holds is that which the clergyman 

 should hold even now. But the clergy- 



man chooses to walk off to the extreme 

 edge of the world, and to throw such 

 seed as he has clear over into the dark- 

 ness which he calls the Next Life. As 

 is "next did not mean nearest, and as if 

 any life were nearer than that immedi- 

 ately present one which boils and eddies 

 all round him at the caucus, the ratifica- 

 tion meeting, and the polls! Who 

 taught him to exhort men to prepare 

 for eternity, and for some future era of 

 which the present forms no integral 

 part ? The furrow which Time is even 

 now turning runs through the Everlast- 

 ing, and in that must he plant, or no- 

 where. Yet he would fain believe and 

 teach that we are going to have more of 

 eternity than we have now. This going 

 of his is like that of the auctioneer, on 

 which gone follows before we have 

 made up our minds to bid — in which 

 manner, not three months back, I lost 

 an excellent copy of Chappelow on Job. 

 So it has come to pass that the preacher, 

 instead of being a living force, has 

 faded into an emblematic figure at 

 christenings, weddings and funerals. 

 Or, if he exercises any other function, 

 it is as keeper and feeder of certain 

 theologic dogmas, which, when occasion 

 offers, he unkennels with a slaboy! "to 

 bark and bite as 'tis their nature to," 

 whence this reproach of odium theologi- 

 cum has risen. 



Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the 

 editor mounts daily, sometimes with a 

 congregation of fifty thousand within 

 reach of his voice, and never so much as 

 a nodder, even, among them. And from 

 what a Bible can he choose his text— 

 a Bible which needs no translation, and 

 which no priestcraft can shut and clasp 

 from the laity — the open volume of the 

 world, upon which, with a pen of sun- 

 shine and destroying fire, the inspired 

 Present is even now writing the annals 

 of God ! Methinks the editor who 

 should understand his calling, and be 

 equal thereto, would truly deserve that 

 title which Homer bestows upon princes. 

 He would be the Moses of our nine- 

 teenth century ; and whereas the old 

 Sinai, silent now, is but a common 

 mountain stared at by the elegant tour- 

 ist, and crawled over by the hammering 

 geologist, he must find his tables of the 



