it; I shall content myself with one or two observations at its close. I am aware there are many persons who think that when a prisoner returns to the world he owes it to his fellow-creatures at least to hide his diminished head. If he have any opinions in regard to prison treatment or prison administration, they are ascribed to a mere prejudice against that authority which he found to be unpleasant. If he have anything to state in reference to his late fellow-prisoners, their views, sentiments, ideas, and so on, there is, I fear, a disposition to regard a man who has been in prison, whatever his offence may have been, as having acquired an incapacity to tell the truth upon any subject. Knowing how prevalent are these views, I hesitated before setting about the writing of this article. I have done so with no motive except to say what I think and believe on a matter which is, after all, one of great national importance. I have no axes to grind. I have no prejudice against prison officials or in favour of prisoners. I have written this article because, and simply because, the subject of it is a matter on which I think an ex-prisoner has some claim to be heard, and in regard to which the views of an ex-prisoner, if they be impartially expressed, may be of some assistance to those who are charged with the important duty of legislating for and administering the prison service. I write it, moreover, because I came to the conclusion, when I read Sir Robert Anderson's article, that his suggestions were impracticable and inhuman, and that any attempt to put those suggestions into practice would merely result in a largely increased cost to the country and an increase of crime within our prisons, even should there be, as Sir Robert Anderson contends there would, a diminution of crime without them.

H. J. B. MONTGOMERY.

SERMONS AND SAMUEL PEPYS

WITH Some men, nothing less than a centenary of their deaths will serve to remind the public of their names. It is true that Samuel Pepys departed this life just two hundred years ago, yet no one has owed less to the calendar than he, nor achieved a more fortuitous immortality. His unconscious self-revelation has not only produced one of the most delightful books in the English language, but has given him a place in the hearts of his countrymen which wiser and better men could never fill. In his Diary he has laid bare his soul, unwitting that one day his most secret and unmentionable thoughts should be torn from their wrappage of cipher and foreign tongues, that upon them his later descendants should pour a cool scrutiny so searching that no human being could hope to sustain it with unimpaired credit. Through the whole of one century and the quarter of another, the diarist lay dead and buried in the library of his old college of Magdalene at Cambridge, until an Oxford graduate broke open the six books of his sepulture, and showed him alive and speaking.

In these pages we have-not the unblushing revelations of a Rousseau deliberately untrussing his points before the common gaze-not the studied unconsciousness of Montaigne, writing for effect, and with an eye on his readers-not the posturings of Chateaubriand, nor the morbid dissections of Marie Bashkirtseff, ever hovering above herself with a scalpel, but Pepys himself. So real was the presentation, that when he ordered his affairs before quitting this world, he had not the heart to destroy it, thus contributing at once to his own loss of reputation, and his own undying

renown.

At first sight there appears to be little connection between Pepys and the pronouncements from a pulpit. Known to the men of his day as the friend of Royalty and the dignified official, it has been his fortune to exhibit the worst and most contemptible side of his character to later generations. To us, the Fellow of the Royal Society and Secretary to the Navy is the 'Dapper Dicky' of an improper correspondence. We are not impressed with his courage in the House of Commons, for we have seen the contemptible

cowardice which could kick a servant maid at home. Indulging in coarse delights with the rabble of actors, courtiers, and courtesans who riot through his pages; intemperate and given to vulgar intrigues; using his learning as a cloak to the more scandalous of his confidences; miserly-with a love of money which grew upon him as he otherwise improved in morals, so that his iniquities were not abandoned but retired on a pension: ostentatious, bragging of imaginary estates, and clothing himself in scarlet and fine linen, though his wife should go bare; marked by a credulity which made his mind sway like a leaf in the wind before every breath of the superstitious; it is thus he presents himself before us, and it is in the light of these disclosures he is convicted of being a very sorry individual.

When the facts of his life are summoned from the past, the awful shade of an injured wife moves solemnly among them. Remembering, however, that Mrs. Pepys avenged herself of her wrongs as only a woman can, we may dismiss that phantom. If he deceived and played the niggard with her, if he laid his hand upon her in wrath, she pulled his hair, and on a memorable occasion scared him from the covert of his midnight blankets with the terrors of a heated poker. Having found him out in his infidelities, she considered no usage too ill for him. Thereafter, until the touch of Death relaxed the tyranny, he remained a submissive and henpecked man. Yet, between these two love was not a-wanting. If, after their quarrels, one of them would always leave the other for ever, the dawning of the day seldom found them unreconciled.

But we turn to the Samuel Pepys who claims and deserves our respect. After all, it is probable that his faults were largely the blemishes of an early and exuberant manhood, and that with the growth of years and reputation there came that steadiness of character which earned for him the confidence of the nation and the friendship of Evelyn and Dryden and Sir Isaac Newton. Let us recall how many signs he gave of a true contrition, and of a desire to walk humbly before his Maker; how, remembering that God has an altar in every man's dwelling, he gathered his household around him for daily devotions; how Sunday by Sunday he studied his good resolves upon his knees; how loyal to his friends; how generous he could be in his gifts; his courage during the Plague when he remained at his post among the faithful few; his love of the ennobling arts; his delight in the converse of good men; his concern for his country; his splendid devotion to the duties of his office; his refusal to enrich himself through the baser channels of official gain. To remember all these things is to be aware that when Pepys is weighed in the balance he is not found wanting in many of the elements of a noble character. As he lived, so he died. Dr. Hickes, whose sincerity may not be gainsaid, had known him long

and closely, and when he laid down the burden of this life, and passed on his way down the Valley of the Shadow, the Dean said of his conduct in that solemn hour: 'I never attended any sick person that dyed with so much Christian greatness of mind, or a more lively sense of immortality.'

That Pepys considered himself a competent judge of preaching is indicated by many of his entries. In some respects he was well equipped. He was a scholar and man of letters, quick to detect false quantities and a lack of good taste. He had laboured with current theology such as Ussher's Divinity, and Stillingfleet's Origines Sacra, while the ecclesiastical problems of the day found in him an eager student. He could estimate not only the matter but the manner of a discourse; for it is on record that he himself excelled as a speaker, and had offered a remarkable vindication of his department in Parliament.

But his judgment has been called in question by some Church historians as that of a man with a prejudice against the clergy. The fact is, Pepys was never a good Churchman. The old leaven of the Puritanism in which he was cradled continued to work in him. On one side he was bitter against Nonconformity. He sneers at its preaching and manners. He observes with disdain the symptoms (grown in our day into a formidable disease) of 'tender consciences.' He ridicules the exaggerated genuflections at Court of that Presbyterian knee which Calamy had sworn should never bow to Baal. When a boat-load of dissenting divines are drenched off Schevling he hugs himself with delight.

But at heart Pepys remained a Puritan. Ruffle it as he will with the roaring, dissolute courtiers, he cannot carry his frolics with the true Cavalier air. He is more true to himself in his repentances than in his cups. Rome remains to him the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse, whilst there is no doubt he thoroughly deserves the Protestant reputation which his wife gave him in a tender description of his merits as a spiritual director. Ignorant of the ordinary ceremonial of his Church, a surplice is to him at first a fearsome object, and he requires to be led up to it as gently as a shying steed.

Puritan, too, is the quality which made him that most pleasing of all personages, the unconscious humourist. The Commonwealth had endeavoured to suppress the gayest, happiest side of things, turning festivals into fasts, and frowning on innocent joys, but that flavour of character which we call humour refused to be extinguished. Only it grew slyer in expression, and learned to say droll things with the old family face. The humour of Pepys is involuntary or Puritanic. Who but he could have written down with unwinking eye the words with which King Charles acknowledged the gift of.a. Bible, or have recorded the great satisfaction given to all by the.

same monarch's Proclamation against drinking, swearing, and debauchery'? Who but he could have confessed so quaintly his relief at the death of his annuitant, or defended his drinking an intoxicating liquor when under vow of total abstinence? Nay, who but he could have reserved his most magnificent apostrophe to the Almighty for the occasion of a larger balance at the bank?

It is not the least of the Diary's merits that in it we behold the religious life of the seventeenth century lifted out of its darkness, and made visible as on the screen of a magic lantern. We behold it, moreover, with the eager eye of Pepys. It was a time of transition and revolt. Puritanism had in turn become a persecutor. Her sympathies lay not with her brethren at home, but with the Reformers on the Continent. She read from a Geneva Bible, her only authority; she preached in a Geneva gown, her only ritual. Sympathising with the views of Luther and Zwingli, who had, so to speak, cantonised Christianity, and regarding Anglicanism as the handmaiden of Rome, she had treated the rules and ceremonies and teaching of the Church of England as betrayals and acts of treason. She had scattered the clergy, usurped their parishes, banished the Liturgy from houses of prayer and private dwellings. To her a 'scandalous schoolmaster' was one who, amongst other such offences as dicing and duelling, 'publicly and frequently read or used the Common Prayer Book.' Religious men and women were no longer Church people, but 'professing Christians,' a title which after all seemed to promise a paucity of performance. Nor had her fury been spent on the clergy alone, but on their buildings. The intemperance of zeal had smitten the decency and comeliness of so many churches that they had become houses of mourning rather than praise.

From this unendurable tyranny there was now to be an indignant reaction. The clergy had gladly returned (on the whole with restraint) to beloved customs and traditions, but the nation, in 'the wildest outbreak of moral revolution that this country has ever witnessed,' whirled away in the current of its hate all that was noblest and best in Puritanism. Intolerance was again met with intolerance, so that the flower of dissent, the thinkers and theologians like Howe and Baxter, whose presence at this juncture would have meant much to the well-being of England, were driven out into the wilderness. Many who remained behind-Independents, Presbyterians, and even Baptists who had become rectors or vicars during the Commonwealth-remained only at the expense of their scruples, or to become mere traffickers in holy things. Within the Church itself, in this time of unrest and upheaval, the scum of its ecclesiastical life rose to the surface. Younger sons, hangers-on to the skirts of nobility, social derelicts, and the purely professional parson now came to the front, and clamoured for livings. At this period it