is as yet utterly uncertain. Every thing is doubtful. No one can venture positively to predict that the cotton of the Confederate States will, or that it will not, be liberated this year. None can say what quantity of cotton actually exists there. We have seen estimates, official, commercial, and speculative, ranging from two to five millions of bales. The first figure is probably too low; the last is almost certainly too high. Our own impression, gathered from a comparison of conflicting statements, is, that not more than three millions of bales would be forthcoming, if peace were declared to-morrow; a quantity which would suffice us until the crop of 1863 came forward, but which would not reduce the price of cotton to its normal rate. If-which is hardly to be hoped-peace should be restored before the planting season of 1863 arrives, we should probably be able to rely on a sufficiency to keep the mills in full work for the future; if not, little or no cotton will be planted this year, and that already existing will, whenever liberated, have to last us until the winter of 1864-5. In the absolute impossibility of forming any reliable opinion on the time and conditions of peace in America, those who have endeavoured to forecast the future of Lancashire have turned their eyes elsewhere, and chiefly to India. The Economist, which expresses the views of the most sanguine, anticipates a supply of 2,175,000 bales; which, it affirms, would suffice to provide for the foreign demand (calculated at 12,000 bales per week), and to keep the mills of Lancashire working forty hours weekly. A correspondent of that paper impugns its conclusions, on grounds which we are inclined to think substantially sound.* But the controversy is one on which we cannot pretend to pronounce judgment. It certainly seems to us that the

*"To the Editor of the Economist.

Sir,-Allow me to say that your 'Resources of the Cotton Trade for the next Year,' in the Economist of 15th inst., are not likely to be borne out by facts.

1. You under-estimate full consumption.' The consumption in 1861 was not 42,000 bales per week, but 45,454 bales per week, according to George Holt and Co.'s statement, which is admitted to be the best authority. But 1861 was not a year of full consumption, owing to considerable reduction having already taken place during the last months. In 1860 the deliveries for home consumption were over 50,000 bales per week: making allowance for extra stock in spinners' hands, the real consumption, according to Holt, amounted to 48,523 bales per week. For the sake of round numbers, we will say that full consumption in the kingdom requires 48,000 bales a week.

2. You under-rate the consumption of the Continent. The average of the two years 1860 and 1861 has been 1,746,000 bales-say 33,577 per week - which I will prove to you, if you wish it.

3. You forget that the average weight of India cotton is only 380 lbs. per bale, and of Brazil cotton 180 lbs. per bale; while the average weight of bales consumed in Great Britain in 1861 was 426 lbs., and in 1860 429 lbs.

4. You begin your statement with the supposed stock in ports on 31st De

millowners do not believe in the immediate large relief which the Economist expects; and that a gloomy view of the future prevails generally among those who are best acquainted with the circumstances of the trade. If that view should unhappily be realised, some years may elapse before prosperity returns to Lancashire; and during those years no small proportion of the industry that has made her what she is may be withdrawn, and no small part of the wealth on which that industry depends may have perished. The evil effects of this terrible season will not soon pass away. Nor, we trust, will the lessons it has taught-lessons of mutual trust and goodwill between masters and men, lessons of charity, good understanding, and frank and fair dealing-be lost on either rich or poor. England has learned to be proud of Lancashire; Lancashire men have learned to be proud of and grateful to one another; and we hope and believe that the adversity which they have endured together will bind them closely and kindly to one another through the years of plenty which Providence may yet have in store for them.

cember next, which is a guess; while it would be better to take the stock on 31st October last, which is a fact.

The amount then will stand thus for England and the Continent: Stock in British ports, October 31, 1862, 365,000; ditto, in Continental ports, 50,000total 415,000, of which the average weight at the outside is 380 lbs.: these 415,000 bales are, therefore, equal to 370,000 bales of 426 lbs. Suppose India sends you 1,400,000 bales during the twelve months October 31, 1862, to October 31, 1863, they are equal to 1,248,000 bales of 426 lbs.; Egypt you estimate at 200,000 bales, which I will increase to 240,000 bales of 426 lbs., including what goes to Marseilles and Trieste; Brazil you estimate at 150,000 bales of 180 lbs., equal to 64,000 bales of 426 lbs. ; and the other small kinds, 25,000 bales of 426 lbs.; which will give a total supply of 1,947,000 bales of 426 lbs.; stock, October 31, 1863, England and Continent, 123,000 bales of 426 lbs.; would leave for consumption 1,824,000 bales of 426 lbs., or 35,077 bales per week. Full consumption of Great Britain is at least 48,000 bales per week; ditto of Continent, 33,577-total per week, 81,577 bales. The highest possible supply for the twelve months ending October 31, 1863, is therefore equal to 43 per cent of full consumption, or sufficient for 2:58 days per week, provided always no cotton comes from America and no cotton goes to America.

But you will not even get the 2:58 days per week; because the Continent, as a whole, will take more than its proportion. Spinning on the Continent has not been reduced, and, unless you prohibit the export of cotton from Liverpool, will not be reduced in the same proportion as is done at Manchester, for which I will state my reasons if you should wish it.-Your obedient servant,

Zurich, Nov. 18, 1862.

OTT-TRUMPLER.”

R

CURRENT LITERATURE.

I. Eugénie de Guérin, Journal et Lettres. Publiés par G. S. Trebutien. Didier.

Two years ago this Review contained a short notice of Mdlle. de Guérin's journal and letters, which had then only been printed for private circulation. The wish expressed in these pages, and felt we believe by many in France and England, that a book of rare charm and value should be given to the world, has at last been acceded to by the author's relatives. M. Trebutien, to whom the task of editing it has been intrusted, was singularly fitted to perform it, from his antiquarian habits of accuracy no less than from the instinctive good taste which is born of profound sympathy. He has omitted the dithyrambic preface, which formed the one blemish of the first edition, and has replaced it with a few pages of his own, which we could wish longer. A happy chance has enabled him to recover a large portion of the journal which had been given up as lost, and which now therefore appears for the first time. A more thorough or vivid picture of country and home life in France, as it was lived within our own generation by a woman of singularly strong and deep character, cannot be desired. We can only regret that M. Trebutien has omitted the description of Mdlle. de Guérin's daily life by her surviving sister, which we quoted from the first edition in our former article (Jan. 1861). But it will be easy to replace it; and we hope a third edition may also contain a few more of the numerous letters which are said to exist in manuscript. There are books of which it is difficult to have too much, and this is one of them.

In speaking thus strongly, we would yet guard against all misconception. Mdlle. de Guérin's life and letters are not meant to amuse an idle hour or a frivolous mind. Her casual description of one of her days," a reel of thread, a little reading, a little writing, a little looking out on the rain,”—may pass for a fair account of the ordinary routine of her life. But she adds a saving clause, "I do not speak of what has passed in my soul ;" and herein lies the whole difference between herself and an average squire's daughter. A woman of strong will and clear mind, living in a narrow circle, with no interests but intense family loves, no support but an intense faith, she grew inwards and upwards, so to speak, rather than outwards, and having few points of contact with mankind, fed all the more upon her own heart and heaven. The old father, whom she sustained; the gifted, weak, errng brother, whom she hoped for, prayed for, and trembled for, in whose grave the best part of her own life was buried,—are the realities of her existence on earth. "My thought," she once says, only a reflex of my brother's; so vivid when he was there, then changing into twilight, and now gone. I am on the horizon of death; he is below it. All that I can do is to strain my gaze into it; to see every thing without sympathy and without love." It was probably

was

from this ideal of friendship, as the union of thought and soul, that she conceived a certain distaste for the less intellectual society of her own sex. "A woman's friendship is soon made up; a charm of manner, a word, a nothing, is sufficient for a liaison,-but they are commonly like ribbon-knots, so that it is said women cannot love one another. I do not know; we can love for a day or two, more or less, but can we love perfectly?" Gradually, as her life was left desolate, she seemed to grow in grasp of thought and insight into the spiritual order. "In the desert," as she once observes, "one can only learn thought. I told Maurice, when he talked to me about Paris, that I could not understand its language. And yet I have met people there whom I could understand. Certain souls meet through all distance. One rises, the other descends; and thus is there the meeting; thus has the Son of Man descended among us. May we not believe that those who go before us in the great things of life have pity on us, and in love send us some impulse toward the other world, some gleam of faith, some flash of light, which had else been wanting to the soul?" An ascetic by one half of her nature, finding "void and nothing every where in the world," she had the ascetic's power of rising above suffering and the things of sense. "It is true we are all born, as it were, devoted to misery. Every one has some grief; but the Christian is like the martyr, he suffers, but he sees the heavens open."

6

With all this, and perhaps all the more that she was real as only intense natures can be, she had a power of appreciating the little surroundings of life, and of seeing beauty everywhere where there was not sin. Her style, which is commonly marked by the strength of severe concision, at times rises into eloquence, and at times plays round her thought with the purity and light of a sunbeam. "Louise told me the other day that I found a great deal to say where other people see nothing. Hold!' she said; you would say a hundred things about that.' It was a door-latch which she raised as she went out. Assuredly there is much to say and think about this bit of iron, which so many hands have touched; which has sprung up under so many different emotions; under so many looks, under so many men, days, years. Oh, the history of a door-latch would be long!" "What can be more womanly, in the pleasantest sense, than the following, or more instinctively just than the criticism of bourgeois government under Louis Philippe ! "The gods have only made two things perfect -the woman and the rose.' Amiable saying of a philosopher, whose tribe are not famous for them, and which for that very reason has been preserved, and which for that very reason I have extracted from a journal where it lay among the dry politics, like a flower in the shingle. I am not fond of state matters, in spite of the great interest that attaches to them; because the way in which they are treated makes one despise the men; a feeling that is painful for me: then these great and cold questions have no meaning for me, and I understand nothing where the springs of action are speculation and diplomacy. When his papers come, my father seizes on the debates, and I on the feuilleton. It is there that I read the Rose, and Solon's

pretty speech about the flower and us. It is a trifle, a perfume from the East, which has pleased me; a scent-box in a wilderness. It was some pretty Greek who made him say that; or perhaps it is true; how shall I say? Is there any thing to compare with the rose? Is there any thing to compare with the woman? When these two flowers of the earthly paradise appeared, the question must have been asked of God himself which he thought the more beautiful." Almost invariably these playful thoughts end in religion. In the early part of her journal, written when she was quite young, she has a great grief for a sick dog. "My Bijou is so pretty, so winning, so wellbred, so unspeakably dear as coming to me from Lili. A dog is so cheerful, so caressing, so tender, so quite our own. I think I shall cry over it; but it will be here in my room, where all my secrets pass." And she goes on to decide, that she will be justified in praying to God to save it. Similarly, on one occasion, she sees a figure on the wall. "Never have I seen a head more sublime, more divinely sorrowful, with the features attributed to our Saviour. I am struck by it, and admire the effect of my candle behind the handle of a water-jug, whose shadow encircles three flowers on the tapestry, which make up this picture." Among the secular hooks which composed her little library, Xavier de Maistre seems to have been the only one which at all influenced her style. Competent French judges say that no better has been written by a woman since the days of Mme. de Sévigné. The masculine thought underneath it was probably fed by Corneille, Shakespeare, St. Augustine, Pascal, Bossuet, and Lamennais. After all, a modern lending-library might not have added much to this list. Βαιὰ μὲν ἀλλὰ ῥόδα ought to be the motto of every private collection. Perhaps no better could be found for Eugénie de Guérin's Journal and Letters.

II. The History of English Nonconformity.

By R. Vaughan, D.D.

Dr. Robert Vaughan is in some sense a representative man; for he is one of the best known, and not the least successful, of those numerous writers who think they are leading opinion when they are following in its wake, and who contrive, with the best intentions, to degrade great truths into very commonplace truisms. No province of literature is more infested by these feeble platitudinarians than the history of the English Puritans. At the beginning of the century no slander was too foolish to be believed against the men who ruled England at nearly the most critical crisis of her fate. The progress of historical investigation, a gradual change in political feeling, and, above all, the publication of Cromwell's Letters, has brought about a revolution in sentiment; and now there is perhaps no one living except the lady writers of high-church novels, who either believes that Cromwell was a brewer, or that Charles was a martyr. This is just the state of things to enlist on the Puritan side the disastrous aid of dull defenders. There is still a certain appearance of boldness in saying, with Dr. Vaughan, "our spiritual forefathers may not have been