good these positions, and to show their bearing on what is to follow, it will be necessary here to traverse ground that is in part somewhat beaten, and at first sight irrelevant to our topic. We will pass over it as quickly as consists with the exigencies of the argument.

That the earliest social aggregations were ruled solely by the will of the strong man, few dispute. That from the strong man proceeded not only monarchy, but the conception of a God, few admit; much as Carlyle and others have said in evidence of it. If, however, those who are unable to believe this will lay aside the ideas of God and man in which they have been educated, and study the aboriginal ideas of them, they will at least see some probability in the hypothesis. Let them remember that before experience had yet taught men to distinguish between the possible and the impossible, and while they were ready on the slightest suggestion to ascribe unknown powers to any object and make a fetish of it, their conceptions of humanity and its capacities were necessarily vague, and without specific limits. The man who, by unusual strength or cunning, achieved something that others had failed to achieve, or something which they did not understand, was considered by them as differing from themselves; and as we see in the belief of some Polynesians that only their chiefs have souls, or in that of the ancient Peruvians, that their nobles were divine by birth, the ascribed difference was apt to be not one of degree only, but one of kind.

Let them remember next, how gross were the notions of God, or rather of gods, prevalent during the same era and afterwards how concretely gods were conceived as men of specific aspects dressed in specific ways; how their names were literally "the strong," "the destroyer," "the powerful one;" how, according to the Scandinavian mythology, the "sacred duty of blood revenge" was acted on by the gods themselves; and how they were not only human in their vindictiveness, their cruelty, and their quarrels with each other, but were supposed to have amours on earth, and to consume the viands placed on their altars. Add to which, that in various mythologies - Greek, Scandinavian, and others the oldest beings are giants; that according to a traditional genealogy, the gods, demigods, and in some cases men, are descended from these after the human fashion; and that while in the East we hear of sons of God who saw the daughters of men that they were fair, the Teutonic myths tell of unions between the sons of men and the daughters of the gods.

Let them remember, too, that at first the idea of death differed widely from that which we have; that there are still tribes who on the decease of one of their number attempt to make the corpse stand, and put food into his mouth; that the Peruvians had feasts at which the mummies of their dead incas presided, when, as Prescott says, they paid attention "to these insensible remains as if they were instinct with life;" that among the Fejees it is believed that every enemy has to be killed twice; that the Eastern Pagans give extension and figure to the soul, and attribute to it all the same substances, both solid and liquid, of which our bodies are composed; and that it is the custom among most barbarous races to bury food, weapons, and trinkets along with the dead body, under the manifest belief that it will presently need them.

Lastly, let them remember that the other world, as origi nally conceived, is simply some distant part of this world; some Elysian fields, some happy hunting-ground, accessible even to the living, and to which, after death, men travel in anticipation of a life analogous in general character to that which they led before. Then, co-ordinating these general facts, - the ascription of unknown powers to chiefs and medicine-men; the belief in deities having human forms, passions, and behavior; the imperfect comprehension of death as distinguished from life; and the proximity of the future abode to the present, both in position and character, let them reflect whether they do not almost unavoidably suggest the conclusion that the aboriginal god is the dead chief; the chief not dead in our sense, but gone away, carrying with him food and weapons to some rumored region of plenty, some promised land whither he had long intended to lead his followers, and whence he will presently return to fetch them.

This hypothesis, once entertained, is seen to harmonize with all primitive ideas and practices. The sons of the deified chief reigning after him, it necessarily happens that all early kings are held descendants of the gods; and the fact that alike in Assyria, Egypt, among the Jews, Phoenicians, and ancient Britons, kings' names were formed out of the names of the gods, is fully explained.

From this point onwards these two kinds of authority, at first complicated together as those of principal and agent, become slowly more and more distinct. As experience accumulates, and ideas of causation grow more precise, kings lose their supernatural attributes; and instead of God-king, become God-descended

king, God-appointed king, the Lord's anointed, the vicegerent of Heaven, ruler reigning by divine right. The old theory, however, long clings to men in feeling after it has disappeared in name; and "such divinity doth hedge a king" that even now, many on first seeing one feel a secret surprise at finding him an ordinary sample of humanity. The sacredness attaching to royalty attaches afterwards to its appended institutions, to legislatures, to laws. Legal and illegal are synonymous with right and wrong; the authority of Parliament is held unlimited; and a lingering faith in governmental power continually generates unfounded hopes from its enactments. Political scepticism, however, having destroyed the divine prestige of royalty, goes on ever increasing, and promises ultimately to reduce the State to a purely secular institution, whose regulations are limited in their sphere, and have no other authority than the general will. Meanwhile, the religious control has been little by little separating itself from the civil, both in its essence and in its forms.

EDMUND SPENSER.

SPENSER, EDMUND, a famous English poet; born at London about 1553; died there, January 13, 1599. In 1569 he was entered at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he took his first degree in 1572. In 1580 he was appointed Secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, the Queen's deputy in Ireland. In 1586 he received a grant of land in the county of Cork. In 1590 he was visited by Sir Walter Raleigh, who took him to England, and presented him to Queen Elizabeth. In 1594 he married, and his "Epithalamion" was written to welcome his bride to their Irish home. In 1598 he was made Sheriff of Cork. His office rendered him obnoxious to the disaffected Irish, who attacked and burned his residence of Kilcolman Castle, his wife and infant son perishing in the flames. He returned to London, where he soon died, and at his own request was buried in Westminster Abbey, close by the tomb of Chaucer. The principal poems of Spenser are: "The Shepherd's Calendar" (1579); the "Epithalamion" (1594); "The Faerie Queene," the first three books of which appeared in 1590, and three others in 1595. There were to have been six more books, of which only one canto, and a fragment of another, exist. In 1590 appeared a collection of his lesser poems, entitled "Complaints;" and in 1596, four "Hymns," celebrating the Platonic doctrine of Beauty. He also wrote, in prose, a "View of Ireland,” published posthumously (1633).

THE BOWER OF BLISS.

(From "The Faerie Queene.")

THERE the most daintie paradise on ground
Itselfe doth offer to his sober eye,

In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
And none does others happinesse envye;
The painted flowres; the trees upshooting hye;
The dales for shade; the hilles for breathing space;
The trembling groves; the christall running by;
And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace,
The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place.

One would have thought (so cunningly the rude
And scorned partes were mingled with the fine)
That Nature had for wantonesse ensude
Art, and that Art at Nature did repine;
So striving each th' other to undermine,
Each did the others worke more beautify;
So diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine:
So all agreed, through sweete diversity,
This gardin to adorne with all variety.

And in the midst of all a fountaine stood,
Of richest substance that on earth might bee,
So pure and shiny that the silver flood
Through every channell running one might see;
Most goodly it with curious ymageree

Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes,
Of which some seemed with lively iollitee
To fly about, playing their wanton toyes,

Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes.

And over all of purest gold was spred
A trayle of yvie in his native hew;
For the rich metal was so coloured,

That wight, who did not well avis'd it vew,
Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew:
Low his lascivious armes adowne did creepe,
That, themselves dipping in the silver dew
Their fleecy flowres they fearefully did steepe,
Which drops of christall seemed for wantones to weep.

Infinit streames continually did well

Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see,
The which into an ample laver fell,

And shortly grew to so great quantitie,

That like a little lake it seemed to bee;

Whose depth exceeded not three cubits hight, That through the waves one might the bottom see, All pav'd beneath with iaspar shining bright,

That seemd the fountaine in that sea did sayle upright.

Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound,
Of all that mote delight a daintie eare,
Such as attonce might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: