against those who inculcate and support these infamous doctrines that society in France is now imperatively called upon to make a determined stand. It is against this new barbarism, this impending evil, this threatened anarchy, that all who have a heart to feel, or an arm to raise, must unite to save their common country from ruin and desolation. Whatever may have been the dissensions of the past, they must be obliterated and forgotten. Society itself is menaced and in danger. The time for compromise has passed away. Error must be confronted in the tribune, and combatted in the street. The contest between civilisation and barbarism has commenced. On the one side are ranged those who desire to maintain social order, to encourage virtue, to defend religion, to render society durable by recognising the great institutions of family and property, and to teach mankind that it is their pride, their privilege, and their prerogative, to emulate, to aspire, and to excel. On the other side stand the sworn enemies to those sacred and eternal laws of human nature, which, if they were abolished, must plunge society into the depths of a savage barbarism, must break down the basis and superstructure of civilisation, must dissolve the bonds of authority, obedience, and order, and, finally, destroy the very foundation stone upon which man's highest destiny in this world is intended to stand and to endure. Let us conclude, then, by expressing a fervent hope that Socialism has already began to recede from its culminating point, that its impious doctrines emanating as they do, not altogether from credulity and ignorance, but from knowledge ill-directed, and human reason perversely misapplied, will at least be circumscribed and limited to their present sphere. The extinction of so wide-spread an error, we cannot dare to anticipate, for it is vain to expect that the world will ever exist without the presence of those ambitious, yet giddy minds, who, presumptuously attempting to penetrate the very arcana of Providence, imagine that their limited vision can search farther than the eye of Infinite Wisdom. To such, indeed, we may well address the rebuke Go wiser thou, and in thy scale of sense SIR JOHN DENHAM. THE early life of this eminent poet is involved in great obscurity. He was born at Dublin, in the year 1615, the only son of Sir John Denham of Essex, then Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and one of the Lords Justices of that kingdom. His mother was Eleanor, daughter of Sir Garret More, Baron of Mellefont. About two years afterwards, Sir John being appointed a Baron of the Court of Exchequer in England, the family removed to London, where young Denham received a grammatical education to prepare him for college. In the year 1631, he was entered a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, where, says Wood, he was looked upon by his seniors and contemporaries as, "a slow and dreaming young man, given more to cards and dice than to study, so that they could never then in the least imagine he would ever live to enrich the world with his fancy or the issue of his brain as he afterwards did." Aubrey relates, that "he would game extremely, and that when his money was gone, he would play away his father's caps wrought with gold." However, after residing for three years at the University, Denham underwent his examination and obtained his degree as Bachelor of Arts. From Oxford he removed to Lincoln's Inn, where he applied himself to the study of the law, being intended for that profession, probably from the idea that his father's interest at court would procure his advancement. It is not difficult to imagine, that a man of wit like Denham, would prefer the pleasures of society to the prosy details of forensic research; and as the restraint of preceptors was now removed, he acquired by habit such a taste for conviviality and gaming, that all hopes of his attaining eminence in the law were at an end. After being seriously reproved by his father and threatened with disinheritance, he professed repentance, and wrote an Essay on Gaming to prove that his conversion was sincere. Disliking the study of the law, he now turned his attention to the Muses, and translated the second book of the Æneid, a performance which, though strikingly inferior to the verses of Dryden upon the same subject, displayed some promise of his future powers. While studying at Lincoln's Inn, his associates were not of the most creditable character; one of his biographers remarking that he was then much rooked by gamesters, and fell acquainted with that unsanctified crew to his ruin. Indeed, his life at this period appears to have displayed all that irregularity and improvidence which so commonly distinguish literary men, and which either confine them to garrets or transfer them to a debtor's prison. Instead of poring over Coke, or making a digest from Fortescue, he was generally to be found playing at New Cut, in a tavern, or taking part in some midnight frolic. Upon one occasion we are told, that being merry late at night, a whim came into his head to get some ink and a plasterer's brush to blot out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross, which made a strange confusion the next day, it being Term Time. His father dying in 1638, he inherited the family property, but notwithstanding his Essay and the professions of the past, he returned to his former vice, and dissipated a legacy of several thousand pounds that he had received. Shortly after this event, he began to aim at obtaining a literary reputation, and as the Puritans had not yet succeeded in proscribing dramatic entertainments, Denham attempted to gain a hearing upon the stage. In 1641, his tragedy, the Sophy, was acted in a private house at Blackfriars with such success, that Waller, who admired the piece, goodnaturedly declared, "the author had broken out like the Irish Rebellion, three-score thousand strong, when nobody in the least suspected it." The Civil War commencing soon afterwards, Denham who had estates at Egham, was pricked as high sheriff of Surry, and appointed governor of Farnhan Castle, but finding himself a very indifferent captain from not understanding military tactics, he resigned his charge and retired to join the King at Oxford. At this city, in 1643, he published "Cooper's Hill," a poem, which forms the corner stone of his fame, and which even amidst the flood of modern poetry has never lost the favour of public esteem. Dryden remarked of this work, that, "for majesty of style, it is, and ever will be, the standard of good writing," while |