PREFACE. CONTROVERSY cultures reflectiveness. There is no surer method of stunting and stupifying the mind than that of accustoming it to acquiesce in common opinions, and to accept of thoughts as true because prevalent or paramount. Controversy is the healthy exercise by which men assimilate and appropriate what they "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." No opinions can rightly be called our own until we have thoroughly investigated the subjects with which they deal on all sides. Nor must we be contented, like Laocoon, because it is sacred or fair-seeming, to dash the spear of inquiry but once against one side of the matter to be tested. We must try each side and examine each opening for error. Controversy is sifting investigation, is the thoughtful exercise of the mind in the search for truth, is foreseeing and far-seeing inquiry. Lord Bacon suggested the establishment of colleges of controversy; and in this Serial an attempt has been made to open to the public such a medium of impartial debate as may, to some extent, fulfil similar functions to those contemplated by the inductive teacher in his controversial colleges. Nor can any one truly say that some such organ of investigative debate is unrequired. Controversy makes itself felt in every field in which thought attempts to exercise its activities. History has never been free from debateable topics; politics is a favourite subject for intellectual contention; law acts as umpire in human disputes; literature has been as much famed for the "quarrels" as for the "calamities of authors," and social life is seldom long exempt from causes or occasions for discussion. Commerce pleads against statecraft and taxation; even the principles of government and revenue are not finally settled; logicians wage war for system against system, and metaphysicians have as yet found no satisfying fundamental principles, but are "in endless mazes lost." Science has fought its way in the face of conflict; movements antagonize with movements, and schemes with schemes; morals has always a difficulty in determining between theory and practice; even religion has never been free from the contests of sect; while the terrible controversy of war is yet unsubdued. "The old order changeth, giving place to new;" but the latter cannot be advanced, nor the former be expelled from the place it held, without the employment of controversy. Though few things are more decried in every-day life, yet controversy is alert and active in every effort for progress. It is a power to be prized, not feared; least of all need it be feared by truth. "Even the oak Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm. More fixed below, the more disturbed above." The Controversial department of this Magazine is strictly impartial. The subjects chosen are varied, and the style adopted, whether of arguing or writing, is left to the writer's discretion, subject only to the supervision which decides on the admission of the papers, if they reach the general standard applied to contributions. The articles furnished for this volume are such as may fairly be compared with those of its numerous predecessors. The Essayist has been somewhat extended, and, we think, considerably improved. The Reviewer has been made more useful and thorough-going. The Inquirer has not failed in interest, variety, or utility. The Topic is even more relished now than formerly, and brings a greater number of young adventurers to its columns. The Societies' Section, chiefly through the want of the co-operation of secretaries and other officials with the Editors, is somewhat less useful than it might be made, and than we desire it to become. Our Collegiate Course appears to require revision and remodelment, and this we shall attempt to secure for it. The Literary Notes have been selected with more fulness, and we hope have been more interesting and valuable. Of the Leading Papers the merit and attractiveness, we believe, continue unabated. To their Author, and to the numerous other Contributors who have helped in the enrichment of this volume, as well as to the encouraging Subscribers, whose approval has stirred our emotions and urged us to energy, the best thanks of the Proprietors are due, and are hereby heartily tendered. We have but one word more to say. The difficulties of the times have not been unfelt by us, and the pressure of emigration, of Lancashire's unmoneyed gloom, of competition by serials trimmed for lighter tasks than ours, has been upon us. We do not hesitate to appeal to all our readers to strive to help us from the commercial depression which we confess has assailed us, nor make our labours those alike of love and loss. The staidness of age may have crept over us; but we believe that the high purpose of our Serial is far from being fulfilled, as we know that our ends are far from being attained. If the claims of past services have any weight, need we say more to cause each reader to endeavour to his utmost to crown a new year with success? To them our hearts go forth in love and effort, and for them each we wish a new year made happy by a sense of duty done, and the contemplation of truth and knowledge gained, used, and enjoyed. THE BRITISH CONTROVERSIALIST. Epoch Men. MICHEL MONTAIGNE.-FRENCH LITERATURE. "The Essays of Montaigne make, in several respects, an epoch in literature Montaigne is the earliest classical writer in the French language."-HALLAM. "Montaigne was the first conspicuous writer who, in a modern language, philozophized on the common concerns of men, and the ordinary subjects of private reflection and conversation. [He] was evidently the founder of popular philosophy in modern times."-JEFFREY. THE ministry of wisdom is a noble one. It is entrusted only to a few rare spirits. They initiate in the ages the purposes towards the accomplishment of which the toils of the many are directed. Great thoughts are deathless. In the scheme of Providence, mighty moral forces, having issues of infinite importance, take their origin often from unexpected sources; and events of great pith and moment" frequently receive their primal impulse or their forthright birth from persons not brought prominently before the vision of the times, and not even consciously working to effect them. The past generates the future; but the life-principle of that future issues from some productive intellect, some germinal mind. Without foresight of the consequences and contingencies to which, in their ultimate results, the spirit-stir they occasion may give rise, great men perform the duty of their day-think, speak, act, dare, or suffer, as the case may be,-and even in this simple outflow of their life become the efficient agents in accomplishing God's grandest purposes. The mind to conceive, the eye to discern, the heart to feel, and the hand to do the work of the day in the right spirit and with the proper aim, are alone needful to fulfil a noble life-a life of which the influences for good may be incalculable. The brain in which a new idea springs may crumble into dust, but the living thought of it lives on, lives ever. It is an eternal energy in the universe. The ministry of mercy is not less noble, nor less persistent in its issues and activities. Is it not rather the divinest seed of influence man can sow athwart the world P-the highest type of such a sower being One who is the origin alike of being and of thought. From 1864. B the merciful spirit, tolerance, charity, and love have their course and outflow. These fertilize the world with good deeds, and fill its inhabitants with gladness. In the eternal chemistry of causation the coefficients of change are always brought together; and their resulting compounds, though they absorb, do not neutralize the old -nay, rather they fill it with new energy, effectiveness, and worth. In no man so much as in Montaigne, as we understand his life, do we see, combined in such proportions, the elements of a character uniting in itself the double ministry of wisdom and of mercy. He appears to us as the teacher of toleration, and as the advocate of the right and the duty of free inquiry. In the priesthood of letters this seems to have been the mission of Montaigne, to claim for man the free exercise of his faculties as an investigator-unpledged to foregone conclusions, and with the whole circle of thought set round him as the object of this "prudent interrogation.". con Que sçay-je ?-What do I know? This, the initial question of all philosophy, Montaigne wrote under his portrait; and above his name, as indicative of the even poise of his mind, he drew a pair of scales. Thus, by a quizzical motto and a serious emblem, he suggests to us the prominent and permanent idea he wishes us to have of him-a_thought-weighing inquirer. "I do not understand-I pause-I examine" (OKERTOμai), occupy a spicuous device in the central rafter of his library-" one of the finest," he says, "in any village." Elsewhere, in Greek or Latin, there, like cabalistic talismans, we read, "Every argument has its opposite." "It is not objects, but his opinions of them, that torment man." 66 Wind swells bladders; opinions swell men." "Dust and ashes, what have ye to be proud of?" "Man's intellect wanders blind amid darkness, and cannot seize upon truth." This is the doubt of Montaigne. It is double thought. It is pondering; wherein, if neither idea preponderates, we are content with the equilibration, and use no artificial means to turn the scale. "We are," he affirms, "I know not how, of a double nature, so that what we believe we do not believe." In this condition shall I affirm or deny? No; I shall inquire and consider; I shall try to keep the balance of my nature true; I shall shade away carefully each possible irrelevancy from thought and its objects, and look steadily, entirely, unbiassedly at myself, the world, and the ideas which arise from each or both. "I study myself more than any other subject. This is my metaphysic, this my natural philosophy;" yet "Even the things which lie within hands' reach, These knowing, we know not,-so far from us In doubt and dimness gleams the star of truth." This sense of the disproportion between the faculties of man and the certain acquisition of infallible truth Montaigne takes as the basis of his philosophy; and from it he deduces an argument against those who, in the tyrannous ferocity of self-confidence, "set their opinions at so high a rate that they |