Keble with the framework in which most of his lyrics are set, the mould in which they are cast. Some whole poems, as that beginning "Lessons sweet of spring returning," are little more than descriptions of some scene in nature. Many more take some natural appearance and make it the symbol of some spiritual truth. Two small rills, born apart and afterwards blending in one large stream, are likened to two separate prayers uniting to bring about some great result. The autumn clouds, mantling round the sun for love, suggest that love is life's only sign. The robin singing unwearily in the bleak November wind, suggests a lesson of content "Rather in all to be resigned than blest." These and many more are the natural appearances, which, some by resemblance, some by contrast, furnish him with key-notes for religious meditations. In many you feel at once that the poet has struck a true note, one which will be owned by the universal imagination, wherever that faculty is sufficiently cultivated to be alive to it. In some you feel more doubtful,-the analogy appears to be somewhat more faint or farfetched. In others you seem to see clearly that the resemblance is arbitrary and capricious, a work of the mere fancy, not of the genuine imagination. An instance of the last kind has been severely commented on by a contemporary critic, who, on the strength of some doubtful analogies which occur in Keble's poems, has voted him no poet. This critic specially comments on one poem, in which the moon is made a symbol of the Church, the stars are made symbols of saints in heaven, and the trees in Eden of saints on earth. This, if it be not some remote allusion to passages of Scripture, must be allowed to be a mere ecclesiastical reading of nature's symbols, repudiated by the universal heart of man, and therefore by true poetry. But if this and some other instances, pitched on a false key, can be pointed out, how many more are there where the chord struck answers with a genuine tone? Even in the very poem which contains the symbolism condemned, is there not the following? "The glorious sky embracing all Is like the Maker's love, Here Keble has Christianized an analogy, acknowledged not only by the Greek con ception of Zeus, but more or less, we believe, by the primeval faith of the whole Aryan race. As might be looked for in a real lover of nature, Keble's imagery is that which he had lived in the midst of, and knew. The shady lanes, the more open hursts and downs, such as may be seen near Oxford, and farther west and south, " England's primrose meadow paths," the stiles worn by generations, and the grey church-tower embowered in elm-trees, with these his habitual thoughts and sentiments suit well. Seldom does his poetry visit mountain lands— once only in The Christian Year. poem for the 20th Sunday after Trinity, though good, might have been written by one who had never seen mountains, if only he had read descriptions of them. The Besides the English there is another kind of landscape in which he has shown himself at home. Dean Stanley has noted the fidelity with which Keble has pictured scenes in the Holy Land. This shows not only a close study of the hints that are to be found in the Bible, and in the modern books about Palestine, it proves how quick must have been the insight into nature in one who, though he had never himself beheld that country, could from such materials call up pictures true enough to gratify one of the most graphic of modern travellers while he gazed on those very scenes. There are two sides which nature turns towards the imagination. One is that which the poet can read figuratively, in which he can see symbols and analogies of the spiritual world. This side Keble, as we have seen, felt and read, in the main we think truly, though sometimes he may have erred. What the true reading is, and how it is to be discerned, is a weighty matter. One thing, however, is certain, that the correspondency between the natural object and the spiritual, between nature and the soul, is there existing independently of the individual man. He did not make the correspondency; his part is to see and interpret truly what was there beforehand, not to read into nature his own views or moods waywardly and capriciously. The truest poet is he who reads nature's hieroglyphics most truly and most widely; and the test of the true reading is that it is at once welcomed by the universal imagination of man. This universal or catholic imagination of man is far different from the universal suffrage of man. It means the imagination of those in whom that faculty exists cultivated to the highest possible point of truthfulness and sensibility. The imagination is the faculty which reads truly, the fancy that which reads capriciously, and so falsely. The former seizes true and real existences, analo- | humanized, that is, to be interpreted by gies between nature and spirit; the latter man's faith and devout aspirations. This was makes arbitrary and fictitious ones. In this the side that suited his religious purpose, school of imagination Keble was a faithful and to this he limited himself. Within this and devout student. It was the music of hisrange few have ever interpreted nature more pious spirit to read aright the symbolical side soothingly and beautifully. These are a few which nature turns towards man. of the qualities that would strike any one on first opening The Christian Year. They are not, however, enough to account for its unparalleled popularity. Indeed, popularity is no word to express the fact, that this book has been for years the cherished companion in their best moods of numbers of the best men, of the most diverse characters and schools, who have lived in our time. The secret of this power is a compound of many influences hard to state or explain. It has not been hindered by the blemishes obvious on the surface to every one, inharmonious rhythms, frequent obscurity, here and there poverty and conventionality of diction. In spite of these blemishes, it has won its way to the hearts of the highly educated and refined, as no book of poetry, sacred or secular, in our time has done. Will it continue to do so? Will its own imperfections, and the changing currents of men's thoughts, not alienate from it a generation rendered fastidious by poetry of more artistic perfection, more highly coloured, more richly flavoured? Without speaking too confidently we should expect it to live on, if not in so wonderful esteem, yet widely read and deeply felt; for it makes its appeal to no temporary or accidental feelings, but mainly to that which is permanent in man. It can hardly be that it should lose its hold on the affections of English-speaking men as long as Christianity retains it. For if we may judge from the past, it will be long ere another character of the same rare and saintly beauty shall again concur with a poetic gift and power of poetic expression, not certainly of the highest, yet still of no common, order. Broader and bolder imagination, greater artistic faculty, many poets who were his contemporaries possessed. But in none of them did there burn a spiritual light so pure and heavenly, to make these gifts transparent from within. It is because The Christian Year has succeeded in conveying to the outer world some effluence of that character which his intimate friends so loved and revered in Keble, that, as we believe, he will not cease to hold a quite peculiar place in the affections of posterity. But nature has another side, of which there is no indication in Keble's poetry. We mean her infinite and unhuman side, which yields no symbols to soothe man's yearnings. Outside of and far beyond man, his hopes and fears, his strivings and aspirations, there lies the vast immensity of nature's forces, which pays him no homage, and yields him no sympathy. This aspect of nature may be seen even amid the tamest landscape if we look to the clouds or the stars above us, or to the ocean roaring around our shores. But nowhere is it so borne in on man as in the midst of the vast deserts of the earth, or in the presence of the mountains, which seem so impassive and unchangeable. Their permanence and strength so contrast with man-of few years and full of trouble; they are so indifferent to his feelings or his destiny. He may smile or weep, he may live or die: they care not. They are the same in all their ongoings, happen what will to him. They respond to the sunrises and the sunsets, but not to his sympathies. All the same they fulfil their mighty functions, careless though no human eye should ever look on them. So it is in all the great movements of nature. Man holds his festal days, and nature frowns; he goes forth from the deathchamber, and nature affronts him with sunshine and the song of birds. Evidently, it seems, she marches on having a purpose of her own with which man has nothing to do: she keeps her own secret, and drops no hint to him. This mysterious silence, this unhuman indifference, this inexorable deafness, has impressed the imagination of the greatest poets with a vague yet sublime awe. The sense of it lay heavy on Lucretius, Shelley, Wordsworth, and drew out from their souls their profoundest music. This side of things, whether philosophically or imaginatively regarded, seems to justify the saying, that" the visible world still remains without its divine interpretation." But it was not on thoughts of this kind that Keble loved to dwell. If they ever occurred to him, he has nowhere expressed them. He was content with that other side of nature, of which we spoke first, the side which allows itself to be THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. NO. XC. FOR DECEMBER, 1866. ART. I.-CONCLAVES. MUCH as has been written about the Papacy, the subject of Papal Elections may hardly be said to have been touched. The reason thereof is very simple. The matter out of which alone their history can be constructed has been hitherto inaccessible. It lies buried in Italian archives; and Italian archives, especially in all that touched on Rome, bave until recently been closed against inspection with systematic jealousy. In the libraries and archives of individual families, it is indeed often possible to glean an astonishing amount of historical information, which would be little looked for in these quarters, and from such sources Professor Ranke mainly drew his materials. It is surprising how much of the highest value for the historian has been deposited in the munimentrooms of Italian families of distinction, whose ancestors held high posts. It would seem as if it had been the rule with those astute statesmen of former times to keep for their private use a copy of every important document connected with their official actions. But then these family collections are guarded for the most part with a jealousy not a whit less inexorable than that which until recently prevailed in regard to those of the State. In Rome, for instance, there are several family archives, about whose wealth in precious documents for the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are traditions, but whereof no student-at least no foreign student-has ever been allowed to see more than the outside. Yet even these family archives would hardly furnish the information for a full insight into the various incidents which marked Papal elections, and caused then to turn in favour of N-10 VOL. XIV. particular candidates. Every other historical event of the family ancestors would be illustrated rather than their doings in Conclave, because while in all other situations these stood more or less in the character of agents who could not avoid correspondence with their superiors, in Conclave every ancestral Cardinal was actuated with the feeling of a principal, and operated, not through the agency of a surviving instrument, but as much as possible through the impalpable element of colloquy and personal persuasion. To preserve tracings of such proceedings it required that a watchful looker-on should be in a position to take notes, which the chief actors had no interest in perpetuating. Now this is precisely what was done by the confidential agents whom each Italian sovereign kept about a Conclave. These agents were not mere newsmongers, ministering to a morbid craving for gossip in their reports; they were the selected secret instruments set craftily in motion to effect the election of their pet candidates by the ever-scheming individuals who ruled the various principalities of Italy, passing their lives in one perpetual exertion to supplant each other, to smite each other on the hip, and for whom to compass the elevation to the Papal See of a particular individual, at whose hands they had reason to expect personal advantage, was always a capital object of statesmanship. In the despatches of these agents to their employers can one alone expect to find the revelation of the crafty steps and countersteps which, springing from no higher source than intrigue of the lowest stamp, have had memorable consequences, by lodging at critical moments the supreme prerogatives of the Papacy, and therewith the religious and political destinies of a large section of the hu man race, in hands that had too often no that are recognised as legitimately qualified title to wield this preponderating authority to intervene in the election of a Pope,beyond the favour and the successful craft would accordingly furnish a bird's-eye view of a patron. History presents no more aston- of the constitution of the Roman See. Here ishing spectacle than the contrast between we should have a succinct abstract of the the mean causes which have frequently decid- organic outgrowth-in all that concerns ined the fate of Papal elections and the mo- ward constitution-of that Roman See, as mentous issues that have flowed from them. manifested upon its constituent members in It is to be hoped that students will turn faculties, which are so many commemorative their attention to the great Italian Archives, marks of successive stages of development. which now are freely open to inspection, and An exposition of these circumstances could furnish us with the documentary records for not fail to possess varied interest. It is not this interesting and unwritten portion of his- the antiquarian alone who would feel his tory. The richness of these all but virgin curiosity attracted here to illustrations of mines of historical knowledge exceeds ima- historical incidents. The practical politigination; for jealousy, and vigilance, and cian, living only for immediate interests, intrigue were the three cardinal qualities and absorbed in the desire of devising the that entered into the necessary constitution means of satisfying them, might find much of Italian Princes, who therefore spent their in a survey of this nature that may serve lives in incessant correspondence with the his purpose. For amongst the contingenagents of their cunning devices. But if it cies which the imagination of busy minds is is impossible to recover the exact features of fond of looking to, as likely to prove the particular Conclaves until the curious con- occasion for working a solution of the angry tents of these archives are dragged to light, problems which have divided the Court of there are yet other points of interest bearing Rome from Italy, none has presented itself on the general subject of Papal elections, oftener than that Conclave, which, in the which, though enveloped in no denser mys- ordinary course of human events, cannot be tery than some amount of intricacy, have far off. The future Conclave has floated been likewise very imperfectly treated-at before the minds of many curious and anxleast by writers with any pretence to popu- ious inquirers as an inevitable but mysterilar style. The points we allude to have ous fact-looming on the political horizon reference to the constitutional forms of a with perplexingly impenetrable certainty. Conclave-the modes in which a Pope might Every one indeed feels that the Conclave be created, the provisions devised to meet which will assemble on the decease of the the exigencies of an interregnum, and the reigning Pope will be invested with unusual forthcoming political prerogatives that are importance. Speculation is instinctively called into existence on the occurrence of attracted towards this mystery of the future, a Pope's decease. An exposition of these which cannot possibly be avoided. It is not various matters would furnish a complete our purpose to attempt to cast our horoscope view of the organization of the Holy See, for the issue of the next Papal election-to for it is only during assembly for the crea- venture on the impossible task of anticipattion of a Pope that the members of that Seeing the sensitive and shifting elements of a are in possession of their full powers. As an institution regulated by distinct laws, the Papacy exists only in the season of its creation; the moment it has been embodied it passes into the state of irresponsible incarnation, above all conditions, all liens, and all obligations. The privileges and provisions that authorize and limit the actions of a Cardinal are absolutely non-existing for him the instant he has been transformed into a Pope. The proclaimed Pope can at once decree, and suspend and abrogate, as he may please; but as long as there are only Cardinals in question, their liberties are secured to them by instruments that at the same time define and tie them down. An account of the state of things constitutionally created by the advent of an interregnum-of the chartered privileges and powers which can then come in question, and of the elements personal nature that enter into the actual conformation of every Conclave; but what, at a moment like the present, would prove no less instructive than interesting, would be an accurate statement of all the circumstances and incidents which, according to prescription, might come into play during a Papal interregnum. It will hardly be necessary to remind the reader that the existing mode of Papal election, by which the prerogative of naming the Supreme Pontiff is vested exclusively in those ecclesiastical dignitaries who have attained the rank of Cardinals, is a matter of comparatively late creation; and that for centuries, during the many political vicissi tudes which, with frightful rapidity, came tumbling over Rome in wild confusion the election of its bishop, who was ever growing steadily in power, was fixedly lodged in a |