complain--they
accept life and fate with calm sadness, and perhaps with prayerful
resignation. We have learned to know how little we can know, and we
see with composure that even the miracles already achieved by the
restless mind of man are as nothing.

* * * * *

There is a far better reason than this for the sadness of thinking
men. It is that, with all the progress of science, art, and education,
poverty, misery, disease, and crime still afflict society as they did
in ruder ages, and our progress is _onward_, but not _upward_. It is
_upward_ progress to which the JOURNAL OF MAN is devoted.

In the foregoing sketch very little is said of the real progress of
the age--the increase of education, the uprising of the people into
greater political power and liberty, the prostration of the power of
the church, which is destined to disestablishment, and the uprising of
spiritual science.

What is there in the reign of Victoria to be celebrated? Was there
ever a more perfect specimen of barely respectable commonplace than
the reign of Victoria? What generous impulse, or what notable wisdom
has she ever shown? What has she done for the relief of Ireland, for
the improvement of a society full of pauperism, crime and suffering,
or for the prevention of unjust foreign wars? When has she ever given
even a respectable gift to any good object from her enormous income?
But virtue is not expected in sovereigns; they are expected only to
enjoy themselves hugely, to make an ostentatious display, and consume
all their benighted subjects give them.

Mrs. Stanton says:--"The two great questions now agitating Great
Britain are 'Coercion for Ireland,' and the 'Queen's Jubilee,' a
tragedy and a comedy in the same hour."

Speaking of the Queen's Jubilee she says:

"In this supreme moment of the nation's political crisis, the
Queen and her suite are junketing around in their royal yachts
on the coast of France, while proposing to celebrate her year of
Jubilee by levying new taxes on her people, in the form of penny
and pound contributions to build a monument to Prince Albert.
The year of Jubilee! While under the eyes of the Queen her Irish
subjects are being evicted from their holdings at the point of
the bayonet; their cottages burned to the ground; aged and
helpless men and women and newborn children, alike left
crouching on the highways, under bridges, hayricks