1860.] Spain-Norway-Sweden. who is said to work miracles, and who certainly has converted Queen Isabella. That illustrious lady all her life has been subject to periodical fits of superstition, and is now extremely anxious that her Prime Minister should declare war against Sardinia, and assist the King of Naples. This she thinks would be the best way of extricating the Pope from his inconvenient position. General O'Donnell, who has not yet been converted by the nun, very wisely declines to go to war for the Pope and it is the object at present of a certain clique in the Palace to get rid of him. He is not a man to be got rid of without some trouble. The Spaniards know that he is the most Liberal Minister they are likely to find that can keep her worthless Majesty in order. Since the war in Morocco the army are devoted to him. The Liberal Union, a party comprising the great mass of Spanish Liberals, and formed on the basis of mutual concession and Constitutional progress, regard him as their chief and founder. His dismissal would be very likely the signal for disturbances, and he would be raised to power again, as he has been before, by a successful insurrection. He will probably compromise the dispute by agreeing to lend Pio Nono some money. The Moors have just paid into the Royal treasury thirty million reals of their debt, so that Spain can afford to be charitable. His Holiness will repay her, it is said, by taking refuge at Madrid if Rome becomes too hot to hold him. Some trifling émeutes have lately been heard of in Catalonia and Andalusia. Nothing has, however, occurred to justify alarm. The Carlists for the present are powerless and disheartened. The Count de Montemolin wrote, a short time ago, to the head of his House, the Count de Chambord, to explain why he had withdrawn the promise to which he had subscribed in order to save his person when in prison. He stated that in thus retracting his plighted word he was only following the counsel of some eminent theologians, and the first men of the French Legitimist party. The 421 Count de Chambord has replied that a brave man would never have given the original promise, but that most gentlemen would have kept it; and he regrets to hear that any of his Legitimist friends approve of an act of such questionable morality. The new King of Norway and Sweden, Charles XV., who was crowned at Stockholm three months back, was crowned again the other day at Throndheim. The last King was never crowned at all in Norway, and the recent coronation shows that a mutual spirit of attachment is springing up between the two sister countries. The King himself is personally loved by the Norwegians, having lived as Viceroy at Christiania during his father's illness. Though Sweden and Norway are united under one sovereign, they have different political institutions, and their commercial tariff and their customhouse regulations have never been adjusted to suit one another's interests. Norway is the most liberal of the two; and Sweden must improve her Constitution if she wishes to be in complete harmony with her neighbour. The Swedish Diet is labouring to reform the system of national representation, and with a little goodwill and forbearance on both sides we may soon hope to see the two nations thoroughly at one. Charles XV. is an intimate friend of Frederick VIL, King of Denmark. If he can persuade the Danish Monarch to be a little more conciliatory towards Prussia and Germany with reference to the disputed rights of the two Duchies of Slesvig and of Holstein, he will deserve the thanks of all who wish for peace in Europe. At any rate, the consolidation of the Scandinavian race, will be a great thing for the future of the respective populations that are branches of this great family; and an additional guarantee for the order and quiet of the world. The principle of nationalities is an important one, and whether good or bad, is likely to influence the history of Europe in years to come. What is really objectionable is, that France should constitute herself the armed apostle of the doctrine. But the Imperial system of propaganda in this, as in some other points, will end by destroying the influence of France. When once a knot of powerful nationalities, at peace with one another and among themselves, has risen up round the French frontier, France will be compelled, in spite of herself, to mind her own busi ness. The horrible news of a further massacre at Damascus, and the slaughter of three thousand Christians, has excited fresh alarm and indignation in Europe. Suspicion is current that the original quarrel between the Druses and Maronites has been fanned by European agents into a flame. Mr. Kinglake hints that muskets were distributed among the Maronites in the spring, bearing the wellknown stamp of certain foreign arsenals. M. Jules Ferretti, a French Protestant missionary, attributes the late disasters to the miserable policy of the Turkish Government, which governs its outlying provinces by setting one barbarous tribe against another. However, the conflict is no longer between Druses and Maronites, but between the Moslem and Christian populations of Syria. In all the carnage and violence that has occurred, Turkish officials figure either as active or as passive accomplices. At Hasbeya, Othman Bey, the creature of Ahmed Pasha, Governor of Damascus, presided in person at the scene of bloodshed. The Druses on that occasion, though they murdered Christian men, at least abstained from outraging Christian women. This last atrocity was the work of the Turkish soldiers. Kutschid Pasha's troops at Zahleh helped to sack the town on their arrival. The Governor of Deir-elKamar himself gave orders for the massacre of every male within the walls of his own town. At Bleddin the Turkish garrison fired on the miserable Christians who had fled thither for refuge, while at Damascus the authorities stood quietly by, and saw the Christian population massacred before their very eyes. The Turkish colonel who presided at the tragedy of Hasbeya, is said to have since excused himself on the ground that he was acting under orders. Fuad Pasha, who has been despatched to tranquillize the Lebanon, at once arrested the Pashas of Damascus and Beyrout, as being guilty either of cowardice or complicity. Accounts seem to show that they have been less weak than wicked. It is thought by many that the recent outbreaks are part of a widelyspread Moslem movement, organized by the old Turkish party at Constantinople, who are reactionists. If so, the real criminals will, it is to be feared, escape. The arrival of the French expeditionary force may prevent the fanatical passions of the Syrian Mussulmen from breaking out in any new quarter; but the situation is one of grave anxiety for Europe. FRASER'S MAGAZINE. OCTOBER, 1860. CONCERNING SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS; WITH SOME THOUGHTS UPON THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM.* I HAVE eaten up all the grounds of my tea,' said, many years since, in my hearing, in modest yet triumphant tones, a little girl of seven years old. I have but to close my eyes, and I see all that scene again, almost as plainly as ever. Six or seven children (I am one of them) are sitting round a tea-table; their father and mother are there too, and an old gentleman, who is (in his own judgment) one of the wisest of men. I see the dining-room, large and low-ceilinged; the cheerful glow of the autumnal fire; the little faces in the soft candle-light, for glaring gas was there unknown. There had been much talk about the sinfulness of waste-of the waste of even very little things. The old gentleman, so wise (in his own judgment, and indeed in my judgment at that period), was instilling into the children's minds some of those lessons which are often impressed upon children by people (I am now aware) of no great wisdom or cleverness. He had dwelt at considerable length upon the sinfulness of wasting anything; likewise on the sinfulness of children being saucy or particular as to what they should eat. He enforced, with no small solemnity, the duty of children's eating what was set before them without minding whether it was good or not, or at least without minding whether they liked it or not. The poor little girl listened to all that was said, and of course received it all as indubitably true. Waste and sauciness, she saw, were wrong, so she judged that the very opposite of waste and sauciness must be right. Accordingly, she thought she would turn to use something that was very small, but still something that ought not to be wasted. Accordingly, she thought she would show the docility of her taste by eating up something that was very disagreeable. Here was an opportunity at once of acting out the great principles to which she had been listening. And while a boy, evidently destined to be a metaphysician, and evidently possessed of the spirit of resistance to constituted authority whether in government or doctrine, boldly argued that it could not be wicked in him to hate onions, because God had made him so that he did hate onions, and (going still deeper into things) insisted that to eat a thing when you did not want it was wasting it much more truly than it would be wasting it to leave it; the little girl ate up all the grounds left in her teacup, and then an *For the suggestion of the subject of this essay, and for many valuable hints as to its treatment, I am indebted to the kindness of the Archbishop of Dublin. Indeed, in all that part of the essay which treats of Secondary Vulgar Errors, I have done little more than expand and illustrate the skeleton of thought supplied to me by Archbishop Whately. I regret that the pressure of more important duties prevented the article from being entirely written by the eminent prelate himself. It should be added that for the title of the essay the Archbishop is not responsible. VOL. LXII. NO. CCCLXX. FF nounced the fact with considerable complacency. Very, very natural. The little girl's act was a slight straw showing how a great current sets. It was a fair exemplification of a tendency which is woven into the make of our being. Tell the average mortal that it is wrong to walk on the left side of the road, and in nine cases out of ten he will conclude that the proper thing must be to walk on the right side of the road; whereas in actual life, and in almost all opinions, moral, political, and religious, the proper thing is to walk neither on the left nor the right side, but somewhere about the middle. Say to the shipmaster, You are to sail through a perilous strait; you will have the raging Scylla on one hand as you go. His natural reply will be, Well, I will keep as far away from it as possible; I will keep close by the other side. But the rejoinder must be, No, you will be quite as ill off there; you will be in equal peril on the other side: there is Charybdis. What you have to do is to keep at a safe distance from each. In avoiding the one, do not run into the other. It seems to be a great law of the universe, that Wrong lies upon either side of the way, and that Right is the narrow path between. There are the two ways of doing wrong-Too Much and Too Little. Go to the extreme right hand, and you are wrong; go to the extreme left hand, and you are wrong too. That you may be right, you have to keep somewhere between these two extremes; but not necessarily in the exact middle. All this, of course, is part of the great fact that in this world Evil has the advantage of Good. It is easier to go_wrong than right. It is very natural to think that if one thing or course be wrong, its reverse must be right. If it be wrong to walk towards the east, surely it must be right to walk towards the west. If it be wrong to dress in black, it must be right to dress in white. It is somewhat hard to say, Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt-to declare, as if that were a statement of the whole truth, that fools mistake reverse of wrong for right. Fools do so indeed, but not fools only. The average human being, with the most honest intentions, is prone to mistake reverse of wrong for right. We are fond, by our natural constitution, of broad distinctions-of classifications that put the whole interests and objects of this world to the right-hand and to the left. We long for Aye or No-for Heads or Tails. We are impatient of limitations, qualifications, restrictions. You remember how Mr. Micawber explained the philosophy of income and expenditure, and urged people never to run in debt. Income, said he, a hundred pounds a year expenditure expenditure ninety-nine pounds nineteen shillings: Happiness. Income, a hundred pounds a year; expenditure a hundred pounds and one shilling Misery. You see the principle involved is, that if you are not happy, you must be miserable-that if you are not miserable, you must be happy. If you are not any particular thing, then you are its opposite. If you are not for, then you are against. If you are not black, many men will jump to the conclusion that you are white: the fact probably being that you are grey. If not a Whig, you must be a Tory: in truth, you are a Liberal-Conservative. We desiderate in all things the sharp decidedness of the verdict of a jury-Guilty or Not Guilty. We like to conclude that if a man be not very good, then he is very bad; if not very clever, then very stupid; if not very wise, then a fool whereas in fact, the man probably is a curious mixture of good and evil, strength and weakness, wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance, cleverness and stupidity. Let it be here remarked, that in speaking of it as an error to take reverse of wrong for right, I use the words in their ordinary sense, as generally understood. In common language the reverse of a thing is taken to mean the thing at the opposite end of the scale from it. Thus, black is the reverse of white, bigotry of latitudinarianism, malevolence of benevolence, parsimony of extravagance, and the like. Of course, in strictness, these things are not the reverse of one another. In strictness, the reverse of wrong always is right; for, to speak with severe precision, the reverse of steering upon Scylla is simply not steering upon Scylla; the reverse of being extravagant is not being parsimonious-it is simply not being extravagant; the reverse of walking eastward is not walking westwardit is simply not walking eastward. And that may include standing still or walking to any point of the compass except the east. But I understand the reverse of a thing as meaning the opposite extreme from it. And you see, the Latin words quoted above are more precise than the English. It is severely true, that while fools think to shun error on one side, they run into the contrary error-i.e., the error that lies equi-distant, or nearly equi-distant, on the other side of the line of right. One class of the errors into which men are prone to run under this natural impulse are those which have been termed Secondary Vulgar Errors. A vulgar error, you will understand, my reader, does not by any means signify an error into which only the vulgar are likely to fall. It does not by any means signify a mistaken belief which will be taken up only by inferior and uneducated minds. A vulgar error means an error either in conduct or belief into which man, by the make of his being, is likely to fall. Now, people a degree wiser and more thoughtful than the mass, discover that these vulgar errors are errors. They conclude that their opposites (ie., the things at the other extremity of the scale) must be right; and by running into the opposite extreme they run just as far wrong upon the other side. There is too great a reaction. The twig was bent to the right-they bend it to the left, forgetting that the right thing was that the twig should be straight. If convinced that waste and sauciness are wrong, they proceed to eat the grounds of 425 their tea; if convinced that selfindulgence is wrong, they conclude that hair-shirts and midnight floggings are right; if convinced that the Church of Rome has too many ceremonies, they resolve that they will have no ceremonies at all; if convinced that it is unworthy to grovel in the presence of a duke, they conclude that it will be a fine thing to refuse the duke ordinary civility; if convinced that monarchs are not much wiser or better than other human beings, they run off into the belief that all kings have been little more than incarnate demons; if convinced that representative government often works very imperfectly, they raise a cry for imperialism; if convinced that monarchy has its abuses, they call out for republicanism; if convinced that Britain has many things which are not so good as they ought to be, they keep constantly extolling the perfection of the United States. Now, inasmuch as a rise of even one step in the scale of thought elevates the man who has taken it above the vast host of men who have never taken even that one step, the number of people who (at least in matters of any moment) arrive at the Secondary Vulgar Error is much less than the number of the people who stop at the Primary Vulgar Error. Very great multitudes of human beings think it a very fine thing, the very finest of all human things, to be very rich. A much smaller number, either from the exercise of their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme: undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise it. I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will so misunderstand that exquisite song of 'Fortune and her Wheel,' as to see in it only the charming and sublime embodiment of a secondary vulgar error,-the error, to wit, that wealth and outward circumstances are of no consequence at all. To me that song appears rather to take the further |