distinction into creeds.' The whole burden of the argument in both works is concerned with justifying this fundamental belief in Christ's message to mankind, and not with any distinctively Roman Catholic position. The question of belief in miracles involves considerations so special that Newman devoted to it a separate essay, in which he carefully points out exactly how far his principles apply to them. And he summarised his argument when replying to Kingsley in the Apologia. I am not concerned with justifying all his personal beliefs as to individual alleged miracles, which varied somewhat at different periods of his life, but, on the whole, it seems to me that the attributes that Mr. Hutton singles out of 'candour and reasonableness,' of 'sobriety and discrimination,' in his treatment are deserved by the second Essay on Miracles (which gives his final position on the subject), and that of excessive credulity is an absurd charge if made by one who believes miracles to be possible at all. Anyone who knows the essay will recollect that he does not in it seek to establish the miracles he reviews as being provable by the principles applied in the Grammar of Assent to our belief in revelation; that is to say, by personal reasoning more various and more cogent than we can adequately express. He treats miracles as entirely a question of evidence-first for the alleged fact, secondly for its being outside the ordinary course of nature, and on this second point he considers that modern science makes it probable that natural causes account for various facts previously regarded by Catholics as supernatural (Apologia, p. 303). The chief argumentative point which may be drawn from his essay is that those who already do believe in the Incarnation and the miracles of the New Testament are often such loose thinkers as not to recognise the full extent of their concession. A number of the objections which make modern miracles so absurd and incredible in their eyes that they will not look at reasons alleged for them apply quite equally to the Miraculous Draught of Fishes or the Multiplication of the Loaves. Newman does therefore contend strongly that it is unreasonable for a believer in the Miracles of the New Testament to indulge in an excessive a priori incredulity as to the bare possibility of alleged miracles in our own time, which is reasonable enough for a man who accepts no miracles at all. Beyond this his controversy does not go.

I will add just a word on one of the specific monstrous superstitions' alluded to by the reviewer. He twice intimates his own scorn and Kingsley's at an educated man being able to believe (as Newman did) in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples. Ignorance is the close ally of scorn, and the reviewer is evidently unaware that the fact of its liquefaction has been admitted by agnostic men of science who have examined.

the evidence, as well as by Catholics. In the Rendiconti of the Academy of Sciences of 1890 may be read the theory advanced by one of these, Professor Albini, of Naples, to account for the liquefaction. The point pressed home, on the other hand, by Professor Albini's critics is that he has been unable himself to produce any such liquefaction elsewhere.

Many, I think, will read with interest the following description of the phenomenon in question kindly placed at my disposal by a member of a profession well accustomed to weigh evidence, the present Lord Llandaff:

He

I have twice witnessed the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The first time was in January 1848. Italy was then in a state of wild political excitement. The recent election of a 'liberal Pope' had raised expectations of great changes in the government of the States of the Church. Even in Naples the words Viva Pio Nono were scrawled in chalk upon every dead wall in the city. There were not wanting persons among the conservative classes who predicted that St. Januarius would show his displeasure at these manifestations of opinion, and that the liquefaction would not take place. When the day arrived, the church was crowded to excess with lazzaroni, working-men, and their wives. The priest who carried the reliquary advanced to the rails separating the chancel from the nave. stood on a level some two or three feet above the nave. The coagulated blood is contained in a small phial which is fixed upright within a glass cylinder about eighteen inches long, provided with handles projecting from each end of the cylinder. Holding these handles, the priest lifts up the cylinder in view of the whole congregation, and inclines it first on one side and then on the other, so that if any liquefaction of the black clot in the phial took place, the flow of the liquid this way and that would be plainly visible. He repeats this operation every minute, while the cathedral clergy around him are earnest in prayer. On this January day, 1848, this uplifting and swaying of the glass cylinder continued for about an hour without the slightest change. The black clot in the phial remained solid and immovable. It is well known that the Neapolitan populace regard the non-liquefaction of the blood as portending some disaster to them and to their city-pestilence, famine, or war. Accordingly during this long interval of suspense there were heard groans and sobs from all parts of the church, and ultimately there were passionate execrations and curses loud and unseemly to English ears in the sacred edifice. At last, without any change in the surrounding circumstances, in the twinkling of an eye, the uplifted phial was full of a blood-red liquid which flowed from side to side as the cylinder was tilted.

The second time I saw the liquefaction take place was on the 12th of September 1875, in the same church. I was in the company of Mr. J. N. Higgins, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and a Protestant. We were fortunate enough to get places in the chancel close to the priest who held the glass cylinder and dealt with it in the way above described. But on this occasion the black clot in the phial liquefied after a few minutes. The liquid was dark brown, as it seemed to me, and not bright red. Mr. Higgins and I both had a close view of this change from solid to liquid.

1

I repeat, however, that such beliefs as that in the liquefaction. of St. Januarius's blood, which Newman shared with others who have examined the evidence, and which those who have not

examined it denounce as absurd superstitions, are not justified in his writings by the theory of 'personalism,' which the reviewer criticises, but by a candid and unbiased examination of evidence open to all. Newman, no doubt, holds that a believer will see God's hand where an unbeliever looking at the same facts does not see it, for the simple reason that the facts do not by themselves suffice to prove that there is a God at all, or that miracles are provable even by any amount of testimony. These are more fundamental questions than that to which the evidence relates, and other considerations are relevant to their solution. All that Newman demands in the treatment of alleged miracles is the belief that miracles are not antecedently improbable, and a candid and impartial scrutiny of the evidence in the particular case. He would not have hoped to convince a reviewer who does not look at the evidence, but he would not on this account have felt convicted of intellectual inferiority. He would probably have replied to such an a priori dogmatist, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

But while the Edinburgh article is, as Mr. R. H. Hutton said of Dr. Abbott's Philomythus, 'poisoned by suspiciousness,' which has made the reviewer find in Newman the tricky and credulous mind he is looking for, there is another fact to be remembered in accounting for such an article being possible at all. Newman's treatment of the philosophy of fundamental religious belief was avowedly tentative, gradual, and never reduced to scientific form. The premature definition sometimes involved in fixed scientific terminology is (he held) apt to prejudge or confuse essential distinctions which only become manifest gradually in the course of an inquiry. The full title of the Grammar of Assent marked its quality as only the beginning of a beginning-an Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent.' 'In deep subjects which have not been fully investigated,' he writes of the University Sermons, I said as much. as I believed and about as far as I saw I could go, and a man cannot do more; and I account no man a philosopher who attempts to do more' (Apologia, p. 322).

These characteristics of Newman's philosophical writing make such an article as that in The Edinburgh Review possible. For one can criticise expressions which need explanation, and ignore the explanations given or implied elsewhere in his writing. And the average reader does not know enough of Newman's writings to find out the method employed. But the characteristics which make such a course possible make it the more unjustifiable and unprofitable. If ever there was a case in which no discussion is worth while which is not preceded by a serious endeavour to enter into the writer's mind and grasp his main

drift, it is the case of such essays as those of which I speak. Newman invites corrections of and additions to his partial expression of a deep theory. To seize instead on isolated phrases in his essay apart from their context and criticise them as though they were formal and final propositions standing by themselves, while the general argument is passed by altogether, is obviously as unjust as it is absurd. What the use of such an article is it is hard to conceive. Frederick Ozanam once said that some writings are designed to convert your opponents: others only to gratify the passions of your own party. Whatever may be the object of the article I am reviewing, its result can only be the latter. There are doubtless many who share Kingsley's antipathy to Cardinal Newman's mentality, and it may gratify them to read an account of his teaching which makes it irrational and shallow, and identifies all his positions with a defence of absurd credulity. If it is well to gratify such readers at the expense. of omitting all attempt at accuracy, then the reviewer has done well. As a serious contribution to the consideration of the value of what Newman held and taught the article is worthless, for the simple reason that its writer has apparently taken no trouble to ascertain or understand either. The added note of intellectual contempt on the part of the critic is in these circumstances positively sublime, and recalls the attitude of the Chinaman of our youth towards European civilisation.

I have not failed to note the polite words regarding Cardinal Newman's virtues with which the Edinburgh article terminates. So also to the nastiest criticisms on Miss Myrtle, in the late Lady Dufferin's famous song, is appended the reminder but she's really a charming woman.'

WILFRID WARD.

RIVAL LAND POLICIES

A REPLY

To the Nineteenth Century of last month the Marquess of Lincolnshire contributes an article under the above heading. It is evident that before any decision can be arrived at as to the merits of two schemes, the particulars of each of them must be fairly and fully set forth. The noble Marquess says that there is no difficulty in describing the Unionist land policy, though in his description of it he takes many and great liberties with facts. With regard to the Government land policy he is more reticent, saying only-quoting Lord Crewe that it is sufficiently indicated in the measures which the Government had passed into law.

It would be well, therefore, to examine and compare the two policies that of the Unionist party as defined in the utterances made and the pledges given by the Unionist leaders, and that of the Coalition Government as indicated by the measures passed into law.' The first of these measures is the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1906, which no doubt, in the interests of the agricultural community, is a great improvement on the Act of 1900. The next is the Small Holdings and Allotments Act of 1907.

The noble Marquess in the article referred to states that the policy of the Liberal party is to give the farmer security of tenure as being all that he really needs but he omits to say how that condition is to be secured. This oft-repeated phrase, Security of tenure,' is a favourite one-a catch-phrase for popular consumption. On reflection, it will have to be admitted that it passes the wit of man to frame a measure to give security of tenure without doing grave injustice to either landlord or tenant. An attempt was made in Ireland to secure this tenure by a system of dual ownership, but it had to be abandoned as being disastrous to all concerned. Security of tenure, together with freedom of cultivation and other advantages, can only be secured by making an occupier his own landlord.

In the Act of 1907, referred to above, no attempt was made to carry out what Lord Lincolnshire declares is the 'Liberal policy.' Under that Act there is no security either of rent or