qualified, and under-bred, but clever women, who really know what they profess to teach.'* It is the case, in fact, of 'superficial v. vulgar.' And this we suspect is the true account of the average number, though of course there are prizes in this as in other lotteries. Yet after all, as of all systems this is the least objectionable, to this ought mainly to be directed our efforts at imOur aim should be so to answer the query 'quis provement. erudiet ipsas eruditrices,' as to ensure the combination of high and thorough education with careful home nurture and rearing. 'Here, then,' cries the advocate of Ladies' Colleges, here is our basis of operations. We propose to supply the defects you point out. We offer you a collegiate institution with a staff of most eminent professors in their various departments, and we invite you to encourage the resort to it of at least those of the gentler sex who desire to qualify as instructresses.' There is reason in the proposal. There is philanthropy in the scheme. Yet surely it is to be accepted only with reservations and limitations; and then not as the best means, but as good in default of better. Poll the educated men and women of England, and an immense majority will vote for confining the education of each sex to its own members. And, in truth, without sighing for a female college for governesses after the model of Princess Ida's,

With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,

And sweet girl-graduates with their golden hair,'

we should augur more unmixed good from training-schools for governesses under the control and tuition of women of good sense and fair endowments, than from the best Ladies' College with the most earnest gentleman professors. That such would discharge their duty, no one can doubt. But will they, or can they, so well as women teachers, gauge the female intellect and calibre? Will they learn to accommodate their thoughts to women's thoughts? And if they try, will they not trivialize and impoverish them by the endeavour? That were bad enough! But we apprehend a worse effect upon the taught. And here, as before, we deem it prudent to shelter ourselves under the ægis of Miss Sewell, whilst we notice a feature, the exposition of which by our own pen might involve us in a fate resembling that of Pentheus. Any one who has had much to do with young girls of the educated classes will probably own that in most instances there are but three points of view in which they are likely to regard their gentlemen teachers. Either they will be afraid of them, or they will quizz them, or they will make romances about them. Fear, ridicule, and romance are not very elevating influences. The last

*Principles of Education,' II. p. 257.

indeed will often be hidden under the veil of respect; but if examined, it will be seen that underneath lies a very large admixture of vanity and excitement, which cannot fail to do grave injury.' Is not all this easily conceivable? Without formal or stealthy admission to the mysteries, a vision of them has floated to us. The timid Blanche was just collecting her senses, and beginning to get the better of her fears, as the astronomical lecturer was perorating his subject and coming down to earth. Hippodamia and Myrtila were filling their note-books with-caricatures of their Mentor for the time being; nought recking of the Lady Visitor who, let us hope, is from a vantage-ground taking account of their proceedings. Gushing Melissa is soaring in thought, not indeed to the starry heavens, but to those lower, yet not less interesting orbs, the 'dear' professor's eyes. She will wake from her reverie in time to rush to the door, and, with reverential awe, rejoice to hold it open for his exit from the lecture-room. To be serious, the order of things is reversed: the relations of the sexes confused in a most unchivalresque degree, and this, so far as we can see, for little certain gain, with much probability of loss. Doubtless this last will be diminished in proportion as the element of strong womanly influence predominates in the Ladies' College; and we are not unaware that at the best of these institutions it is carefully brought to the foreground. Still it is but natural to fear diminution of the sweet simplicity of girlhood from habituating them to male instead of female teachers; and many old-fashioned people will prefer the mild level of female education as it is, to the heights which, under masculine auspices, it may be destined to scale. There is indeed a conceivable case where man's teaching may be all gain to woman; we mean, where Miranda sits at the feet of Prospero; where a highlyeducated and well-read father directs his daughter's studies, and finds time to make her mental development the occupation and delight of his leisure. The relation subsisting between teacher and taught here is a great security against the pupil's strength being overtaxed, while the desire of a father's approval is a higher stimulus than honours or classes. Some branches of teaching will probably have to be neglected: but what is taught will be taught accurately and soundly. In this case the most straightlaced can have no objection to Latin forming part of the course of instruction. There occur to us at least three or four of the most accomplished female writers of our day, whose strength of mind and solidity of attainments is principally owing to such early influence and direction: nor is there in these in

*Principles of Education,' II. p. 261.

stances

It

stances any diminution of pure womanly grace and nature attendant upon a more masculine training than common. were to be wished that our clergy, where able and at leisure, would bestow time and pains upon this mode of improving female education, and so qualify their daughters, if need should arise, for becoming real prizes in the governess lottery; or, if not necessitated to go out as teachers, for influencing the more thorough instruction of their sex, as writers, as mothers, as women of high mental culture. If but a few such women would combine here and there to elevate the tone of governess-dom by trying to mould others to a standard approaching their own, and where they found young persons anxious to qualify for the teacher's office, would direct their studies and advise upon their course of reading, more fruit might spring from seed thus unostentatiously sown, than from more ambitious schemes, beset with radical difficulties. For by women, mainly, must the young of their own sex be educated, whether it be in the school, or in the home. The principle is unassailable, though the practice has been hitherto defective. The hints which have been hazarded in these pages, towards the amendment of the latter, will not have been in vain, if they help to ventilate the subject.

ART. VIII.-Ecce Homo: a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. 8vo. London and Cambridge, 1866.

THE

HE author of this treatise explains his object in writing it by the statement that 'after reading a good many books on Christ he still felt constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects, and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him.' As far as he is aware, the comments of learning, genius, and piety for upwards of eighteen hundred years have left the character of our Blessed Lord an enigma, and it has been reserved for the author of 'Ecce Homo' to solve the mystery. The pretension involved in the assumption is maintained throughout the work. Views which have been set forth a thousand times with far more completeness, beauty and power, are propounded with an elaboration of method and an air of profundity as though they were important discoveries. The verbose and ostentatious form under which hacknied truths are displayed appears to have imposed upon many, and, to quote the language of Dr. Johnson, they no longer know in its new array the talk of mothers and nurses.' Apart from the affectation of originality, the only novelties we have been able to detect are rash assertions, mistaken principles, and bad

taste.

taste. The work, judged by its intrinsic merits, would have appeared to us unworthy to be distinguished from the common run of erroneous books; and the thoughtless approbation which has been bestowed upon it by orthodox persons is our sole inducement to examine briefly its claim to be accepted by members of the Church of England for a guide to the character and precepts of our Lord.

6

'What the present writer undertook to do,' says the author in his Preface, was to trace the biography of Christ from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which Church doctors or even Apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant.'

The facts must be ascertained before they can be critically weighed,' and yet the author of 'Ecce Homo,' without bestowing a single argument on the subject, sometimes quotes the Gospel of St. John alone in support of his notions, and sometimes treats it as if it was of dubious authenticity. He is thus either working with untrustworthy materials when he adopts it, or with mutilated materials when he rejects it. He preserves the same silence on his reasons for setting aside the declarations of Apostles, though he cannot pretend that it makes no difference in the interpretation of the Gospel narrative whether we accept their aid or renounce their authority. Conclusions' based upon an arbitrary selection of documents can afford no satisfaction to reflecting minds, and this mode of procedure by an author who professes to supply the solid and unambiguous views he has been unable to discover elsewhere betrays at the outset a total absence of the critical faculty to which he lays claim.

The want is not less apparent in the conclusion of the Preface, where he gives a second account of the scope of his work :—

'No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ, as the creator of modern theology and religion, will make the subject of another volume. In the meanwhile the author has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, What was Christ's object in founding the society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object?'

It is impossible to comprehend how Christ's object in founding the society of Christians can be truly set forth when religion is excluded, unless the writer has arrived at the extraordinary conviction that 'modern religion and theology' did not in any shape enter into the scheme, but are altogether an excrescence, and improperly deduced from the primitive records. The same confusion of thought and laxity of language prevail throughout the work:'Let us ask ourselves,' he says, 'what was the ultimate object of Christ's scheme? When the divine society was established and or

ganised,

ganised, what did he expect it to accomplish? To this question we may suppose he would have answered, The object of the divine society is that God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. In the language of our own day, its object was the improvement of morality.'

'The ultimate object of Christ's scheme' is not a matter of conjecture. The means and end are both unfolded with the utmost distinctness in the Bible, and there we learn that our duty towards our neighbour is inseparably interwoven with our duty towards God. A church of which the ultimate object was the improvement of morality' would not be Christian but infidel.

With these glaring defects both in conception and execution, we should still expect that the author would be extremely exact in such facts as he uses, and have a sure foundation for such conclusions as he draws, when he announces that these are his particular characteristics. Strange to say, it would be difficult to name a writer upon biblical subjects who more completely sets facts at defiance. He freely supplies them from his imagination, he remodels them at his will, and he misrepresents them without scruple. Of this habit we shall proceed to adduce a few examples, which will equally answer the purpose of testing the soundness of his theories. His method will be found to be the very reverse of what he professes; and instead of deriving his conclusions from the facts, he has adapted the facts to his conclusions.

'The Baptist,' he says, was a wrestler with life, one to whom peace of mind does not come easily, but only after a long struggle. His restlessness had driven him into the desert, where he had contended for years with thoughts he could not master.'

Where did the author find these facts, or from what facts are they the plain and legitimate deduction? The portrait, at best, is purely fanciful, and to us the assertion that the Baptist had a difficulty in attaining to 'peace of mind,' and 'contended for years with thoughts he could not master,' appears directly at variance with the announcement of the angel to Zacharias, 'He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb,' and with the declaration of St. Luke that the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit." When the same Evangelist adds that this child who 'waxed strong in spirit,' was 'in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel,' the idea conveyed is not that of 'restlessness,' but of a calm and steady piety which could be richly satisfied in solitary communion with God. The perturbed and uneasy nature of John is contrasted by the author of 'Ecce Homo,' with

6

*Luke i. 15, 80.

the