scribes a man who has nine children, who is very poor and very happy, and extremely good; and he thinks he has set tled the question. But lest any lingering doubt should remain, he clenches his argument by the reverse picture. "Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realitiesa man of facts and calculations—a man who proceeds upon the principle that twice two is four and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir; peremptorily Thomas. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure out any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to." Now, Mr. Gradgrind has two children only; he is rich and miserable. We can say no other of Mr. Dickens's political economy, and no worse, than that it is on a par with Mr. Ruskin's. Indeed, he is always impatient

of scientific restraint.

Spontaneous combustion is just one of the subjects which might be expected to be attractive to a writer with a taste for melodrama. There is something sug. gestive and mysterious in the notion of a man setting fire to himself. The surrounding circumstances are all of a kind which admits of effective grouping, and although we do not believe that the theory is now maintained by any single scientific authority, there is a popular feel ing that it is an institution and a privilege which ought not to be taken from us. Accordingly, in Bleak House, a man of the name of Krook is predestined to this form of death. Krook is an eccentric man, much addicted to brandy, living alone in a garret near Chancery Lane, and with a habit of keeping important papers in his cap. With him an appointment is made for twelve o'clock one night by an attorney's clerk of the name of Guppy. Mr. Guppy goes at the appointed hour, and finds the room full of smoke, the window panes and furniture covered with a dark greasy deposit, and some more of this deposit lying in a small heap of ashes on the floor before the fire. Krook has spontaneously burned himself. We are bound to admit that Mr. Dickens has introduced with great fidelity all the circumstances which have been actually observed in the cases in which this death is said to

have happened, and he has made a powerful use of them. The instinctive horror of Mr. Guppy on finding a lump of grease on his sleeve, before he had any suspicion where it came from, is very finely conceived. Now all this would have passed without remark, had it not been that the author insisted on its scientific accuracy;* upon which Mr. Lewes pointed out that spontaneous combustion does not as yet rank among the accepted truths of science. In a preface to a later edition of Bleak House, Mr. Dickens delivers himself as follows:

"I have no need to observe that I do not

wilfully or negligently mislead my readers, and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de Bandi Cesenate, was minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished

in letters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The appearances beyond all rational doubt observed in that case, are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case. The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier; and the historian in that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France. . . . I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at page 27, vol. ii., the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall

not abandon the facts until there shall have

been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received."

We think it evident that Mr. Dickens entirely misconceives the point in issue. The dispute is not as to the facts, but as to their explanation. No one doubts that certain persons have been burned to death under circumstances not perfectly accounted for. The testimony of Bianchini and Le Cat may be perfectly trustworthy as far as the appearances they actually observed are concerned, and it may be absolutely valueless as regards their explanation. On the latter point, indeed, it is not likely to be worth much, for the simple reason that they both lived several years before the theory of com

*Bleak House, vol. ii. p. 27.

bustion was understood. And there is a simplicity which is very refreshing in the faith which is placed in the sixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions.

It is hard to be obliged to find fault with Mr. Dickens. We owe him too much. He is a man of genius; in many respects rarely gifted. He has exceptional powers of observation and description, great imagination, and an intuitive tact in appreciating many of the more delicate shades of passion. On the other hand, his intellect is, we will not say ruled, but crushed and dwarfed by his emotional faculties. Partly from a defective education, and partly from a constitutional bias, he seems unable to take either an extensive or an intensive view of any subject; neither grasping it as a whole, nor thoroughly exhausting any single part. His writings show the same union of strength and weakness; his plots inartificial, his genesis of character rude and unphilosophic, his literary execution oscillating with tolerable evenness between the intensely vulgar and commonplace, and passages of the most striking beauty.

We cannot think that he will live as an English classic. He deals too much in accidental manifestations and too little in universal principles. Before long his language will have passed away, and the manners he depicts will only be found in a Dictionary of Antiquities. And we do not at all anticipate that he will be rescued from oblivion either by his artistic powers or by his political sagacity.

Good Words.

THE OLD AGE OF ISAIAH, BY REV. E. II. PLUMPTRE, M.A., PROF. OF DIVINITY

AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.

THE death of Hezekiah forms a dividing-point in the life of the great prophet of glad tidings between what we know with certainty and the obscurities of conjecture and tradition. Up to that point we trace his history, partly through his own writings, partly through what is recorded of him in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. We see the solemn call to his work as the spokesman of the Lord

of Hosts in the vision, full of awe and sorrow, in the year that King Uzziah died, the insight then given him into the evils that were eating into the nation's life, the foresight of the penalties sure to follow upon those evils (6: 1-13.) After a period of comparative tranquillity under Jotham, he comes before us in full activity, when the weakness and wickedness of Ahaz were wearying both men and God (7: 13). He rebukes king and people for their falsehood and cowardice; bids them look on without fear at the attempt of the kings of Syria and Israel to depose the dynasty of David and to set up an unknown ruler, some son of Tabeal, as their own creature in its place (7: 4-6); warns them, of the coming flood of fierce invaders from Assyria, and tells them that, while it will sweep away utterly the nations of which they were most afraid (7: 8), it would also be in God's hands an instrument to punish them and make their land, the land of Judah, desolate (7: 1725). With the reign of Hezekiah the brightest phase of his life begins. The king is young, and he is his chosen friend and counsellor. We trace his influence in the restored worship, the revived unity of national life, the glorious Passover, the zeal against idolatry and its defilements, perhaps also in the thoroughness which did not shrink from the work of reform even when it involved the destruction of a relic so venerable and, as it might seem, so sacred, as the Brazen Serpent (2 Kings 18: 1-8; 2 Chron. 29: 1;30:27). When the armies of Sennacherib fill men's minds with terror it is to him that king and people turn, and from his lips comes the assurance of a marvellous deliverance (2 Kings 19:2; 2 Chron. 32: 20; Isaiah 37). When the king is sick unto death he is at once prophet and physician (2 Kings 20; Isaiah 38.) When Hezekiah, in the glory and state of his later years, is tempt ed to court the alliance of the rising king dom of Babylon, just asserting its independence against the overwhelming power of Assyria, the prophet, faithful to the last, rebukes even the devout and good king, warns him of the coming judgments, and bids him trust in no arm of flesh, but in the might of the Lord of Hosts (2 Kings 20: 12-19; Isaiah 39).

But here our knowledge ends. All that comes later is wrapt in legend and tradition. Jewish writers tell us that he

protested against the sins of Manasseh and was put to death with a singular refinement of cruelty, and Christian commentators find a reference to this in the mention, among the heroes of faith, of those who 66 were sawn asunder" (Heb. 11:37). A wilder fable* reports that the ostensible ground of the sentence was the charge of blasphemy in having said that he had "seen the Lord" (Isaiah 6: 1), that the king's baseness was aggravated by the fact that his mother was the prophet's daughter. It is now proposed to fill up the gap thus left from notices scattered, fragmentary, incidental, in what may well be described as the second volume of Isaiah's writings, the great closing series of his prophecies which, in our present division, fills the last twentysix chapters of the book that bears his name. It is possible, I believe, to reconstruct out of those fragments the personal history of the man, and much of the his tory of a time of which we otherwise know but little. Once again the pictures of the past, long obscured and faded, will grow clear, and the Old Age of Isaiah will come before us with a new completeness.

At the death of Hezekiah, the prophet must have been already far advanced in life. Sixty-one years had passed since that vision in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died, and he could hardly have been under twenty when he entered on an office that called for so much energy and insight. What had been the last great interests of the old man of fourscore during the reign of the king who loved and honored him? The later chapters of the first part of his works supply the answer. They were (1) the prospect, long delayed, of an heir to the throne of David; (2) the vision, long familiar to the prophet's mind, and recently revived, of a calamity about to fall at no distant period on both king and people-a life of exile in the far lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

(1.) Manasseh was but twelve years old at his accession, and it is natural to infer that Hezekiah's marriage with his mother had taken place comparatively late in life. The name of that mother is given as Hephzi-bah (2 Kings 21: 1). The

prominence given in the king's elegiac 'writing, when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness," to the thought of his doing a father's work, should his life be spared, in the training of his child, indicates either that that child was as yet unborn or still in his infancy. His passionate craving for life appears in this light with a nobler aspect:

"The living, the living he shall praise thee, The futher to the children shall make known thy truth."

Such a marriage, we may well believe, would have been hailed by Isaiah at the time as likely to be fruitful in blessing. All its circumstances would acquire in the light of his hopes a new and mystical significance. Even when the hopes had been disappointed he would yet turn to them as suggesting the fittest imagery for the fuller and diviner hopes which still remained. Throughout the later chapters this thought recurs again and again in varied aspects:

"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

My soul shall be joyful in my God; For he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation,

He hath covered me with the robe of right

eousness,

As a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments,

And as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels."-61: 10.

"As I live, saith the Lord,

Thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, And bind them on thee, as a bride doeth." -49: 18.

"As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, So shall thy God rejoice over thee."-62: 5.

And that there may be no doubt what marriage is in his thoughts, he turns, with his characteristic fondness for finding a deep significance in names (as e.g., in Immanuel, 7: 14; Shear-jashub, 7: 3; Maher-shalal-hash-baz,* 8: 3), to that of the queen whose espousals he had wit

nessed:

"Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; Neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate :

But thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah (‘my delight is in her '),

Another remarkable instance will be noticed

lated, and much mis-quoted, both nomen et omen

And thy land Beulah ('married'): For the Lord delighteth in thee, And thy land shall be married." *-62: 4. (2.) In the earlier days of his prophetic work, Isaiah had foretold, distinctly, though with some vagueness as to times and seasons, what was given him to see of the great period of the world's history then just opening, and the foreign policy of Hezekiah had been guided for the most part by his foresight. First, Assyria was to be the scourge of God, "the rod of his indignation" (7: 17-8: 8; 10: 1-11). Then that burden should pass away. The great monarchy should crumble and fall (10: 12-19, 24-26). From Egypt, unstable and treacherous, little was to be hoped or feared (19: 125). But another empire should rise in its place mightier and more terrible. "The glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency," should become the oppressor of the nations, and lead Israel into captivity (14: 2). Babylon was to succeed Nineveh. To Isaiah accordingly Hezekiah's policy in courting the king of Babylon seemed fatally suicidal (39: 5-8), accelerating the destined end. But he saw also, in his trust in a righteous Ruler of the world, that that empire, founded as it was on brute colossal strength, could not stand. From those who had come as messengers from the king of Babylon, or from previous intercourse with Israelites who had travelled there, he had already heard the names of new tribes, young and vigorous, that were hovering on its frontiers, and had been led to see in those tribes the future destroyers of the "Golden City" that oppressed the world.

"I will stir up the Medes against them."

-13: 17.

"Go up, O Elam (= Persia): besiege, O Me

dia."-21: 2.

the Medes and Persians were already familiar to the prophet's mind as destined to overthrow Babylon, and so to be the deliverers of Israel. One who had that knowledge might easily learn more. He might hear that that people differed from Assyrians and Chaldeans with a difference which brought them into close sympathy with the faith of Israel. They too were monotheistic, bowed down before no idols, were worshippers of the God of Heaven, saw in Light and the glory of the Sun the one visible symbol of the Divine.* Assume only that Isaiah learnt this, and can we wonder that his faith in their future should become stronger? Here at last was a people before whom "Bel should bow down, and Nebo stoop" (46: 1). The leader of that people, bearing what was probably a titular name embodying their faith, Koresh, or in its Greek form, Cyrus, the Sun, would come, whenever the right time arrived, as a deliverer. With a wonderful expansion of thought, far above the narrowness into which later Judaism stiffened, he could see in such a king, heathen though he might be, "the righteous man from the East" (41: 2), the ally of Israel as the true servant of the Lord (41: 9), the shepherd of the Lord, performing all

* See Ezra 1: 2; 2 Chron. 36: 22; Herod. i.

131. Compare also the article "Magi," in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

The analogy of Pharaoh, as having the same The fact that such a name should, in the case of meaning (Ra: the Sun), is at least interesting. the historical Cyrus, supersede for foreigners like the Greeks and Jews the name (Agradates) which the ruler had previously borne, has its exact counterpart in the looseness with which Pharaoh is used as the proper name of Egyptian kings by the earlier Jewish historians. The view here taken of the occurrence of this name in Isaiah's

The credit of having made this coincidence familiar to English readers must be assigned to the late Professor Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, iii. 5.

Jonah's journey to Nineveh (Jonah 3 : 2), and Jeremiah's to Euphrates (Jer. 13: 5), may be mentioned as showing that such intercourse was at least probable.

zon.

It was well for the prophet that he had this glorious vision in the far horiThe immediate prospect, the actual surroundings of his life, were dark and dreary enough. Of the two parties that had been struggling for mastery under Hezekiah-one following the king and the prophet in their zeal for Jehovah, the other courting foreign alliances and favoring foreign idolatries- the latter had got the young king into its hands, and he threw himself into its policy with a fanaticism which has no parallel but in the history of the Zidonian Queen of Israel. The sins of Ahaz were revived. The ritual of Assyria and Chaldæa, especially in its astrolog. ical and thaumaturgic forms, superseded the worship of the temple. Foul symbols of a yet fouler worship appeared in the holy place. Women wove hangings, probably, that is, wreaths or garlands, for the "Grove" and its orgies, and men gave themselves up to yet darker abominations. Sabbaths and Sabbatical years were alike neglected. The adherents of the old régime kept up for the most part the form without the life. A few faithful ones among the inner circle of the late king's household still remained. As they died out it was but too evident that yet darker days were close at hand.t

So in like manner Jeremiah does not hesitate

to speak of the Chaldean Nebuchadnezzar as "the

servant of the Lord," 25: 9; 27: 6.

I must again refer to the article on "Manasseh," in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

Such is the picture, traced in outline, of the opening years of the reign of Manasseh. It remains for us to see whether the second volume (as we have called it) of Isaiah's prophecies fits into it and throws light on it. Our first illustration, however, must be taken from the preface to the earlier collection of his writings, written, we may well believe, like most other prefaces, after the latest of them, and therefore belonging to nearly the same period as the second.

Could the evils which have been spoken of be indicated more clearly than in the words which there meet us?

(1) Manasseh's youth made him a mere tool in the hands of others, probably of the queen-mother.

"As for my people, children are their oppressors,

And women rule over them."—3: 4, 12. "The child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient,

And the base against the honorable."--3 : 5.

(2) There are the two concurrent evils, coexisting then to a degree to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in either earlier or later periods, of a hypocritical formalism, the poor residuum of Hezekiah's reformation, and an open, shameless adoption of heathen usages; and the language of the prophet, in the earlier and later volumes, is pitched in the same note as regards both

of them.

"Your new moons and your appointed Sabbaths my soul hateth:

They are a trouble unto me; I am weary to hear them.

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; Yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear."-1: 13, 14.

"Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, And to smite with the fist of wickedness:

Is it such a fast that I have chosen?
A day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush,
And to spread sackcloth and ashes under
him?

Wilt thou call this a fast,

And an acceptable day to the Lord?"

-58: 4, 5.

This was one side of the picture. On the other was an abject imitation of Chaldæan soothsaying, against which the prophet bears his protest: