of delay before taking work in hand, which vexed and puzzled his friends, but was designed to make sure that all he undertook accorded with the Divine will; Montrose, that serene and equitable temper, which never deserted him, and was so stamped upon his face that it made of his death a triumphal progress. These are the distinctive traits of a Christian and a gentleman, the outcome of those great conceptions of character to which Burke, the genius of an enlightened Conservatism, pointed as the noblest flights of the human spirit and the elemental forces in our modern civilisation. Their strength was very apparent in those three typical Englishmen of greater promise than performance, whose memories are still very fresh in the minds of many Conservatives; but always their presence is latent, irrespective of birth or creed, wherever faith and honour, rather than happiness, is become the end of life. We are leaving the mountain-scenery of history with its romantic enthusiasms and its high and splendid passions. As we pass into the great plains, it is no small thing to fancy the breath of the hills upon our faces, and to carry the visions and the voices of the glens within our hearts. Quickened by such memories, the guiding pillar of a mysterious destiny will not be withheld from our sight. Our eyes will perceive the symbols of that 'blessed obedience and order' which Hooker took to be the peace of heaven and dreamed of as the law of earth. And we shall discern brooding above our march the wraiths of that great company of patriots, whom our historian has sought in vain to number.

Such influences are the best companions of the patriotic character, even as the golden mean is the best canon of the patriotic creed.

ALGERNON CECIL.

Art. 12.-MODERN MYSTICISM: SOME PROPHETS AND

POETS.

1. The Works of Francis Thompson. Three vols. London: Burns and Oates, 1913.

2. Gitanjali (Song Offerings). By Rabindranath Tagore. London: Macmillan, 1913.

3. Immanence-a Book of Verses. By Evelyn Underhill. London: Dent, 1912.

4. The Spiral Way-being Meditations on the Fifteen Mysteries of the Soul's Ascent, and The Path of the Eternal Wisdom-a Mystical Commentary on the Way of the Cross. 2nd Edition. By John Cordelier. London: Watkins, 1912.

5. Michael Fairless, Her Life and Writings. By W. Scott Palmer (M. E. Dowson) and A. M. Haggard. London: Duckworth, 1913.

6. Mysticism. By Evelyn Underhill. 3rd Edition. London: Methuen, 1912.

7. The Mystic Way. By Evelyn Underhill. Dent, 1913.

London:

GEORGE TYRRELL in his posthumous book, 'The Church and the Future,' said that the religion to which he looked forward would consist of 'mysticism and charity.' Whatever be true of charity, his prophecy would seem to be in a fair way of fulfilment with regard to mysticism, so far at least as the immediate future is concerned. Judging merely by the output of literature on mysticism in the last year or two, we seem to be in the full flood of what a recent writer has called the 'mystical revival.' But the books and articles published on the subject are only the straws, sticks and logs floating on the surface of a much deeper and stronger current of interest and even enthusiasm for the phenomena of the spiritual life. This rising tide has almost completely swept away the narrow limits of toleration imposed by that older rationalism, dominant in the intellectual life of thirty or forty years ago, for which the mystical revival' would have seemed an obscurantist reaction.

A reaction, no doubt, has set in, whatever be its nature. The causes of this may be traced in many directions. In the first place, the widespread introspectiveness

of an age, which follows upon the attainment of great material success and a partial disillusionment with external ideals, has led to an almost morbid fascination for all the interior concerns of humanity. The passing of Victorian optimism, and even of the Edwardian' compromise with pessimism, has turned the thoughts of all who have time to think towards the great question of the value of life which is bound up with the nature of consciousness and its relation to the universe. Here the mystic appears to have something important to say and is now listened to with avidity.

Besides this condition and combining with it, has gone the rise of that more specifically psychological study, which has its home in the researches of the professors and has been popularised partly by some of them, especially William James, but more largely by the modern novel. This interest in men, merely as such, is of course deep-rooted in the human heart, being a compound of curiosity and sympathy. But it takes to the study of books where they are accessible and readable, and where the horizon of the individual seems too narrow and his surroundings too commonplace. In this sphere the mystics must immediately come to occupy a prominent place, owing to the unusual type of experience that they represent. This, along with the obviously firsthand character of the facts as presented, makes them combine for the reader all the interest of memoirs and books of exploration; and where poetry is thrown in they become irresistible.

On the top of these incentives too has come the stimulus of comparative religion-the discovery by the great mass of people in the West that there are ancient and great faiths in the world besides that which has challenged their acceptance or rejection at home, and the consequent attempt to adjust themselves by postulating a common element which is the same in all true religions and may be accepted as the only reality underlying them all. Here the mystics are indeed treasure-trove, a Godsend, since of all the products of religion they, at least at first sight, seem most to belong to a common type.

Now all these three tendencies converge to make mysticism interesting, but they do not necessarily, or even probably, produce mystics. It is very remarkable

that, while we have quite a large number of recent books by various authors dealing with other people's mysticism, there are very few which even profess to give personal accounts of the writer's own mystical experience or belief. The number of those which do this is so strictly limited that they may, in fact, be quite adequately represented by the first five names placed at the head of this article ; the rest, and even parts of these, are studies of what seemed true to certain people who are called mystics, and may or may not be so, but is presented more as an hypothesis than as a conviction, or, if as a conviction, rather that of a truth known by description and not by acquaintance.

It is, however, clear that only those writers who are also seers and knowers in themselves possess real value. To any serious student, second-hand statements of experience, whether by the psychologist or the novelist or the propagandist, can never be very important; but the study of contemporary religion and religious thought, where it is based on and expresses direct personal appreciation of its object, must always be profoundly interesting and instructive. It is as the words of modern mystics' who claim to give utterance to some experience and convictions of their own, that we propose to study these writings, only referring to Miss Underhill and John Cordelier in passing in order to illustrate particular points, while studying slightly more in detail the works of Francis Thompson and Rabindranath Tagore, along with some reference to Michael Fairless as seen, not in her own works, but in an account of her life and writing, which has been recently given to the world.

From these works it may be possible to arrive at some understanding of modern mysticism. For an attempt to estimate how far these examples of it are all fundamentally in agreement with each other should give some definition of the characteristics peculiar to it; and this may be underlined by a few references to the great classical mystics, and perhaps lead to some indication of their value and shortcomings as estimated by that standard. But, as a preparation for this, it will be necessary to make a few remarks about mysticism in general and these socalled modern mystics in particular, first as a class and then as individuals.

At the outset we stumble on a tangled problem-what is meant by mysticism? The definition of this is always a burning question. The term has been used as the worst abuse or the highest praise according to the taste of the writers; and the description they give of it has varied in sympathy with their views. To take two modern examples of popular definition. Max Nordau, in his book on 'Degeneration' (p. 45), describes mysticism (which he considers a symptom of the disease he treats) as

' a state of mind in which the subject imagines that he perceives or divines unknown or inexplicable relations amongst phenomena, discerns in things hints at mysteries, and regards them as symbols, by which a dark power seeks to unveil or, at least, to indicate all sorts of marvels which he endeavours to guess at though generally in vain.'

On the other hand, Miss Evelyn Underhill, in her book 'Mysticism,' which has done more to popularise the subject than any other single work, offers in her preface (p. x) the following definition of it as the science or art of the spiritual life': 'the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order'; this, she says, 'in great mystics gradually captures the whole field of consciousness; it dominates their life and, in the experience called "mystic union" attains its end.' She believes this movement to represent the true line of development of the highest form of human consciousness.' And in the preface to her 'Mystic Way' she says it is the process by which the mystics 'move from the condition of that which we like to call the "normal man" to that state of spiritual maturity, of an actually heightened correspondence with Reality, an actually enhanced power of dealing with circumstances, which they sometimes call the "Unitive Life”' (p. viii).

Such are two modern estimates of mysticism. Between these who shall judge? And on one side or other of them lie a variety of other descriptions of mysticism. But if we approach the term, not so much as a definition of what the thing really is in itself, but rather as a general title used to cover a number of facts, we may perhaps find a description of it sufficient for our present purpose. If we define mysticism as the religion of firsthand feeling, we should seem to beg a large number