the way-faring man, though a fool, cannot err therein.” Then why, in the name of common sense, have we not learned it, seeing that it so closely concerns our peace, our security, and our happiness? Surely a thousand years is time enough to teach that which is so plain, and of such immense importance! We call ourselves civilized, yet we are daily perpetrating the grossest outrages; we boast of our knowledge, yet we do not know how to live one with another half so peaceably as wolves; we term ourselves Christians, yet the plainest injunction of Christ, “to love our neighbour as ourselves,” we have yet, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight years after his death, to adopt! But most monstrous of all has been the moral blindness or the savage recklessness of ourselves as Englishmen. Secure from actual warfare, we have loved To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war! Alas! for ages ignorant of all Its ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague, Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,) We, this whole people, have been clamorous For war and bloodshed; animating sports, The which we pay for as a thing to talk of, Spectators and not combatants! Abroad Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names, And adjurations of the God in heaven, We send our mandates for the certain death Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls, And women, _that would groan to see a child_ _Pull off an insect’s leg_, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning’s meal! The poor wretch who has learnt his only prayers From curses, who knows scarce words enough To ask a blessing from his heavenly Father, Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute, Technical in victories, and deceit, _And all our dainty terms for fratricide_; Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues Like mere abstractions, empty sounds, to which We join no feeling, and attach no form! As if the soldier died without a wound; As if the fibres of this god-like frame Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds, Passed off to heaven, translated and not killed; As though he had no wife to pine for him, No God to judge him! Therefore evil days Are coming on us, O my countrymen! And what, if all-avenging Providence, Strong and retributive, should make us know The meaning of our words, force us to feel The desolation and the agony of our fierce doings? _Coleridge._ This is the aspect of the Christian world in its most polished and enlightened quarter:—there surely is some need of serious inquiry; there must surely be some monstrous practical delusion here, that wants honestly encountering, and boldly dispersing.