Fifth Series, } No. 1587.-November 7, 1874. SFrom Beginning, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. From The Contemporary Review. BY W. E. GLADSTONE. meanings as many as the ripples of the smiling sea; as the shades of antagonism to, or divergence from, the most overloaded Roman ceremonial. When the term is thus employed, sympathy flies, as if it were electricity, through the FOR some months past, and particularly during the closing weeks of the Session of Parliament, the word Ritual-crowd; but it is sympathy based upon ism has had, in a remarkable degree, the sound and not upon the sense. Men possession of the public ear, and of the thus impelled mischievously but natupublic mind. So much is clear. The rally mistake the strength of their feeling road is not so easy, when we proceed to for the strength of their argument. The search for the exact meaning of the term.heated mind resents the chill touch and And yet the term itself is not in fault. relentless scrutiny of logic. There could It admits, at first sight, of an easy and be no advantage, especially at the present unexceptionable definition. Ritualism time, in approaching such a theme from surely means an undue disposition to this point of view. ritual. Ritual itself is founded on the Apostolic precept, "Let all things be done decently and in order;" evoxnuóvws KaÌ KATÙ Túžw, in right, graceful, or becoming figure, and by fore-ordered arrangement, I Cor. xiv. 40. The exterior modes of divine service are thus laid down as a distinct and proper subject for the consideration of Christians. But the word Ritualism passes in the public mind for something more specific in terms, and also for something more variable, if not more vague, in character. In a more specific form it signifies such a kind and such a manner of undue disposition to ritual as indicate a design to alter at least the ceremonial of religion established in and by this nation, for the purpose of assimilating it to the Roman or popish ceremonial; and, further, of introducing the Roman or papal religion into this country, under the insidious form, and silent but steady suasion, of its ceremonial. All this is intelligible enough; and, if we start with such a conception of Ritualism, we, as a people, ought to know what we think, say, and do about it. But there is another and a briefer account which may be given of it. There is a definition purely subjective, but in practice more widely prevalent than any other. According to this definition, Ritualism is to each man that which, in matter of ritual, each man dislikes, and holds to be in excess. When the term is thus used, it becomes in the highest degree deceptive; for it covers under an apparent unity But perhaps it may be allowable to make an endeavour to carry this subject for a few moments out of the polemical field into the domain of thought. I have but little faith in coercion applied to matter of opinion and feeling, let its titles be ever so clear. But a word spoken in quietness, and by way of appeal to the free judgment and reason of men, can rarely fail to be in season. I propose, accordingly, to consider what is the true measure and meaning of ritual, in order thus to arrive at a clear conception of that vice in its use which is designated by the name of Ritualism. Ritual, then, is the clothing which, in some form, and in some degree, men naturally and inevitably give to the performance of the public duties of religion. Beyond the religious sphere the phrase is never carried; but the thing appears, and cannot but appear, under other names. In all the more solemn and stated public acts of man, we find employed that investiture of the acts themselves with an appropriate exterior, which is the essential idea of ritual. The subject matter is different, but the principle is the same: it is the use and adaptation of the outward for the expression of the inward. It may be asked, Why should there be any such adaptation? Why not leave things to take their course? Is not the inward enough, if it be genuine and pure? And may not the outward overlay and smother it? But human nature itself, with a thousand tongues, utters the reply. The marriage of the outward and the to tell their own tale. When we come to inward pervades the universe. They wedded form, with artful strife, pure art, we find ourselves beaten by great countries, and even, in one case at least, by small. But it is not of pure art that I would now speak. It is of that And the life and teaching of Christ Him-vast and diversified region of human life self are marked by an employment of signs in which are laid the ground, and the foreshowing, both of sacraments and of ritual. and action, where a distinct purpose of utility is pursued, and where the instrument employed aspires to an outward form of beauty. Here lies the great mass and substance of the Kunst-leben — the art-life, of a people. Its sphere is so large, that nothing except pure thought is of right excluded from it. As in the Italian language scarcely a word can be found which is not musical, so a music of the eye (I borrow the figure from Wordsworth) should pervade all visible production and construction whatever, whether of objects in themselves perma True indeed it is that the fire, meant to warm, may burn us; the light, meant to guide, may blind us; the food, meant to sustain, may poison us; but fire and light, and food are not only useful, they are indispensable. And so it is with that universal and perpetual instinct of human nature which exacts of us, that the form given externally to our thoughts in word and act shall be one appropriate to their substance. Applied to the circle of civ-nent, or of those where a temporary colilized life, this principle, which gives us ritual in religion, gives us the ceremonial of Courts, the costume of judges, the uniform of regiments, all the language of heraldry and symbol, all the hierarchy of rank and title; and which, descending through all classes, presents itself in the badges and the bands of Foresters and Benefit Societies. a location only of the parts is in view. This state of things was realized, to a great extent, in the Italian life of the middle ages. But its grand and normal example is to be sought in ancient Greece, where the spirit of beauty was so profusely poured forth, that it seemed to fill the life and action of man as it fills the kingdoms of nature the one, like the other, was But if there be a marriage. ordained in its way a Kosmos. The elements of by Providence and pervading nature production, everything embodied under of the outward and the inward, it is re- the hand or thought of man, fell sponquired in this, as in other marriages, that taneously into beautiful form, like the there be some harmony of disposition glasses in a kaleidoscope. It was the between the partners. In the perception gallant endeavour to give beauty as of this harmony, a life-long observation matter of course, and in full harmony has impressed me with the belief that we with purpose, to all that he manufactured as a people are, as a rule, and apart from and sold, which has made the name of special training, singularly deficient. In Wedgwood now, and I trust forever, the inward realms of thought and of im-famous. The Greeks, at least the Attic agination, the title of England to stand Greeks, were, so to speak, a nation of in the first ranks of civilized nations need Wedgwoods. Most objects, among those not be argued, for it is admitted. It which we produce, we calmly and withwould be equally idle to offer any spe- out a sigh surrender to ugliness, as if cial plea on its behalf in reference to we were coolly passing our children developments purely external. The rail-through the fire to Moloch. But in way and the telegraph, the factory, the Athens, as we know from the numberless forge, and the mine; the highways beaten relics of Greek art and industry in every upon every ocean; the first place in the form, the production of anything ugly trade of the world, where population would have startled men by its strangewould give us but the fifth; a commer-ness as much as it would have vexed cial marine equalling that of the whole of them by its deformity; and a deviation Continental Europe: these may be left from the law of taste, the faculty by which beauty is discerned, would have| But the English garden is proverbial for been treated simply as a deviation from beauty; and the English cottage garden the law of nature. One and the same stands almost alone in the world. Exprinciple, it need hardly be observed, cept where smoke, stench, and the havoc applies to material objects which are pro- of manufacturing and mining operations duced once for all, and to matters in have utterly deformed the blessed face of which, though the parts may subsist nature, the English cottager commonly before and after, the combination of and spontaneously provides some little them is for the moment only. The law pasture for his eye by clothing his home that governed the design of an amphora in the beauty of shrubs and flowers. or a lamp, governed also the order of a And even where he has been thus viospectacle, a procession, or a ceremonial. lently deprived of his life-long communion It was not the sacrifice of the inward with nature, or where his lot is cast in meaning to the outward show: that huge cities from which he scarcely ever method of proceeding was a glorious dis- escapes, he still resorts to potted flowers covery reserved for the later, and espe- and to the song of caged birds for solace. cially for our own time. Neither was it This love of natural objects, which are the sacrifice even of the outward to the scarcely ever without beauty or grace, inward. The Greek did not find it ought to supply a basis on which to build requisite; nature had not imposed upon all that is still wanting. But I turn to him such a necessity. It was the deter- another chapter. The ancient ecclesiasmination of their meeting-point; the ex-tical architecture of this country indipression of the harmony between the cates a more copiously diffused love and two. It is in regard to the perception pursuit of beauty, and a richer faculty for and observance of this law that the Eng- its production, in connection with purlish, nay, the British people, ought prob- pose, than is to be found in the churches of ably to be placed last among the civilized any other part of Christendom. Not that nations of Europe. And if it be so, the we possess in our cathedrals and greater first thing is to bring into existence and edifices the most splendid of all examinto activity a real consciousness of the ples. But the parish churches of Engdefect. We need not, if it exist, set it land are as a whole unrivalled; and it down to natural and therefore incurable has been the opinion of persons of the inaptitude. It is more probably due to widest knowledge, that they might even the disproportionate application of our challenge without fear the united parish given store of faculties in other direc-churches of Europe, from their wealth of tions. To a great extent it may be true beauty in all the particulars of their own that for the worship of beauty we have styles of architecture. substituted a successful pursuit of comfort. But are the two in conflict? And first of all, is the charge a true one? Still, it does not appear that these exceptions impair the force of the general proposition, which is that as a people we To make good imputations of any kind are, in the business of combining beauty against ourselves is but an invidious with utility, singularly uninstructed, unacoffice. It would be more agreeable to complished, maladroit, unhandy. If inleave the trial to the impartial reflection stances must be cited, they are not far to and judgment of each man. But one of seek. Consider the unrivalled ugliness the features of the case is this, that so of our towns in general, or put Englishfew among us have taken the pains to men to march in a procession, and see form, in such matters, even a habit of how, instead of feeling instinctively the observation. And, again, there are cer- music and sympathy of motion, they will tain cases of exception to the general loll, and stroll, and straggle; it never rule. For example, take the instance of occurs to them that there is beauty or our rural habitations. I do not speak of solemnity in ordered movement, and that their architecture, nor especially do I the instruction required is only that simspeak of our more pretentious dwellings. ple instruction which, without speech, |