GRACE.

_ti_ the many ambiguities of English speech,

_

probably there is none of a more perplexing kind than that which allows us but one word to expresss gracefulness, and the grace granted to the heart of man. In both senses, we sup- pose that grace was originally a religious word ; but the religion of the old pagan world regarded gracefulness as the highest of divine gifts, while the deeper religion which supplanted paganism perceived that that which gives grace to human gestures and actions is often as far as the poles asunder from that which excludes the spirit of selfishness, and binds man to the higher world for which he is destined. Still, there is some- thing strange in the strict limitation of grace in its lower sense,—in the sense of gracefulness,—to superficial beauties which at heart we are disposed to depreciate almost at the very moment when we most admire them. Take the mean- ing of the word as a quality of poetry. Do we really regard

graceful as a term of praise when we apply it to verse? Here, for instance, is a first-rate judge, a most skilful and happy com- poser of our own.day, giving us this line as the true interpre-

tation of womanly .grace,—" It was all that. was 'graceful, intangible, light." Apply that to.any poem worthy of any great poet at his best, and would he be content with such praise ? Would lie not feel that the limitation of the praise was far more emphatic than the praise itself Do we mean by grace, when we attribute it to poetic work, anything beyond what pleases us by its airy, transient, almost impalpable harmony of effect;- and not only so, but does not the word rather suggest to us what is •essentiallydeficient in strength and durability,—something mutable, evaneseent-and that wins rather by ease and happy modulation of tone orform,thanhyits intrinsic virtue? Yet grace, in the higher sense, in the theologie sense, is the security for all that is strongest and most durable,—is, indeed, that without which nothing can be strong or durable at all, being, as it is, the moulding power whereby man is really transfigured into the higher nature of the divine and the immutable. How is it that the same word in its different significations should represent both that which is most accidental and that which is most essential, that which is most mutable and that which is most constant, that which is most intangible and that which is most real ?

We suppose the reason to be that in each case alike the• quality which is represented by the word 'grace' is known to be absolutely involuntary, and, indeed, beyond the reach of effort. No clumsy person, whether clumsy in mind or clumsy in body, ever yet acquired grace for himself, though he .may, perhaps, have reduced his clumsiness to a minimum. .And.no graceless person, with all his striving, ever wrested divine grace for himself by any efforts of his own, though he mayhave received it, if he were humble enough in spirit, as the reward of humility and obedience. Thusthe two kinds of. grace resemble each other in being, when given, absolutely spontaneous, absolutely inde- pendent of. painstaking efforts. Again, not only are both kinds of ,grace beyondthe acquisition of- effort, however painstaking, but both, in their very different spheres, produce the same effect of harmonising all the movements that are within their influence. Grace of body harmonises every -gesture so as to be in keeping with the expression of the countenance. Grace of mind gives singleness of effect to a :great variety of different expressions, where we might have expected dispersed and in- consistent traits. Grace of spirit brings all the motives into subjection to one ruling and assimilating purpose. Here, for instance, in a volume of very graceful society-poems, is a play- ful picture of grace of mind, in which, perhaps, deeper totuthes implying the higher kind of grace are not entirely absent-t- " THE CURE'S PROGRESS.* Monsieur the Care.down the street Comes with his kind old face,—

With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, And his green umbrella-ease.

You may see him pass by the little 'Grande Place,' And the tiny tel-de-Viile,' He smiles-as he goes, to the fieuriste Rose, And the pompier Theophile.

He turns, as a rule, through the Marchd ' cool, Where the noisy fish-wives call ; And his compliment pays to the belle The freic,' As she knits in her dusky stall.

There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop, And Toto, the locksmith's niece, Has jubilant hopes, for the Clare gropes In his.tails for a pain d'ipice.

There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit Who is said to.be heterodox, That will ended be with a 'Ma foi, oui !' And a pinch from the Cures box.

There is also a word that no oneleard

To the furrier's daughter Lou.; And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red, And a 'Bon Dieu garde M'sieu ! '

But a grander way for the Sous-Prejet, And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne ; And a mock 'roff-hat ' to thediotary's cat, And a nod to the Sacristan :—

For ever through life the Ca;i1 goes With a smile on his kind old face—

With his coat worn bare, and his straggling ha:r, And his green umbrella-case."

Here is a picture, as graceful as it is playfulkof the mind which is kindly to its very depths, so kindly that all the actions it originates are in harmony with the wish to make others happy. In the sante-sense; we should. say that there is no grace in any of * At the Sign of the Lyre. By Austin Dobson. London : Kogan Paul, Trench. and Co.

our modern poets or writers so perfect as the grace of Goldsmith; whose conceptions, whether humorous or pathetic, seem to be permeated by an atmosphere of sympathy that subdues and mellows the whole; and gives it its well-marked effect of moral grace,

What we want, however, to insist on is the connection between the meaning of grace in its lowest sense of mere beauty or harmony of life and movement, with its meaning in that highest sense in which it implies a definite divine gift, a heart overruled by an influence higher than its own. Grace, in the former sense, usually implies somethings, rather superficial in its character, some- thing that is due to the harmonious proportion of the various powers, rather than to any nobility of spirit that moves in them. Grace, in the latter sense, always means that which transfigures and harmonises man from a source that is above man, and, there- fore, from a source that corresponds much more closely with the higher elements of man's nature than with the lower elements. And yet how closely the two kinds of grace are associated. we shall see in a moment, if we take the highest- specimen s we can find of grace in literary style,—grace like that of Mr. Austin Dobson's delicate verses, with such grace as the grace of Bacon's noblest passages, or Ruskin's, or Newman's, or the grace of that kind of poetry which especially takes the mind by its spiritual harmonies. The lightness and ease. of movement which always belongs to grace in the lowest sense, belongs also, though in a region where lightness and ease of movement would seem difficult if not impossible, to that which is the fruit of what we would venture to call divine grace. Take such a sentence, for instance, as this of Bacon's :—" Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet even in the Old Testa- ment, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearselike airs as carols. And the pencil of the Holy Ghost bath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon." Here we have grace of style in a far higher sense than that whieh denotes mere lightness and ease of movementaor mere harmony between thought and word. It Implies also a. consent and concurrence of Bacon's own• soul with the greater realities behind Nature,—a consent and con- currence which we are accustomed to attribute to the over- mastering .power of divine grace. Or take Mr. Ruskin :—" Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beautiful, and always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange how many deep sources of delight are gathered into the compass of their glens and vales ; and how, down to the most secret- cluster of their far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets, the whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding forth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so passionate, that our utmost observance and thank- fulness are but, at best, neglect of her nobleness, and apathy to her love." There, surely, you have a grace which endeavours to kindle our gratitude rather than to excite our admiration, and which yet excites our admiration also by its gracefulness, even while it effects its deeper purpose. Or, take again the celebrated passage in which Newman descants on the marvels of music and the. wonder of their evolution out of elements apparently so crude and simple,—and insists that to analyse so much into so little is to explain away the mystery, not to explain it :—" There are seven notes in the scale; make them fourteen, yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enter- prise ! What science' brings so much out of so little ? Out of what poor elements does some great master in it create his new world ! Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning ? We may do so, and then perhaps -we shall also assert the science of theology to be a matterof words ; yet as there is a divinity in the theology of the Church- which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many men the very names which the science employs are utterly incompre- hensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems. to be fanciful or trifling ; to speak of the views which it opens upon us - to be childish extravagance-; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes; so-rich yet so, simple, so -intricate- yet so regulated, so various-yet to majestic, should be a mere, sound which is gone and perishes P Can it be that these mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen-emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should, be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes,

and begins and ends in itself? It is notso ; it cannot be No-; they have escaped from some higher sphere ; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created. sound ; they are echoes from our home ; they are the voice of angels, or the magnificat of saints; or the living laws of divine governance; or the divine attributes ; something are they besides themselves

which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter,—though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them," The grace of that passage surely is grace in a very different sense of the word from-that in which we apply it to a graceful gesture or a graceful acknowledg- ment of thanks. It is a passage of which the harmonies seem to be as much translated from some higher sphere, as even the- greatest choruses of Handel-or Mendelssohn. The grace there: is grace, surely, in the highest sense, .though it includes grace in the lowest ; the grace of the modulation is lost in the grace of the thought; the grace of the thought is absorbed in the grace of the feeling ; and the grace of the feeling is a mere effluence of that higher influence which attuned, the. feeling to its AWIl.movementAg. Or, to.paes from prose to poetry; who, does not feel that such lines as.these -of Henry Vaughan's, though full of grace in the weaker sense of gracefulness, are- still fuller of grace-in that deeper sense which we ascribe to the-

Psalms of David and the letters of St. Paul :—

"They are all gone into the world of light, And I alone sit lingering here ; Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast Like stars upon some gloomy grove, Or those-faint beams-in which this hill is +Rest After the sun's remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days;

My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Mere glimmering and decays.

0 holy hope and high humility,— High as the Heavens above ! These are your waits, and-you have showed them-me

To kindle my cold love" Surely we see there the link between that poorer grace which is merely gracefulness-, and the grace which is a divine gift, and, a divine gift, moreover, which BO takes command -of the mind as to weave all its thoughts and feelings into the context of some sweet and rich harmony. It is no accident of language-which- connects- so strangely the harmony of gesture or motion-with a deeper and richer harmony of moral temper and attitude,, such as cannot be secured at all for man except by the responee of-his whale nature to an influence shed upon it from above.