Acts xxiv. 6. The Sinaitic Codex omits 'And would have judged according to our law.'

Acts xxiv. 7. This verse is entirely wanting, as in the Vatican MS. Acts xxiv. 8. The words 'commanding his accusers to come unto thee' are omitted.

Such are some of the more striking readings of the Sinaitic MS. occurring in the Gospels and Acts. We cannot at present proceed with the remaining books of the New Testament. We have mentioned most of the important places in which the Codex differs from the received text-especially those passages which are of dogmatic importance-omitting all, except one or two, noticed in a previous volume of our Journal. Nor have we omitted to notice the faults which disfigure this ancient copy of the Greek Scriptures, and which seriously detract from its value.

Undoubtedly the omissions of the Sinaitic Codex constitute a striking feature of the MSS.; one, however, in which it agrees to a remarkable extent with the Vatican MS. These omissions are of course proofs of carelessness on the part of the scribe; but all who know the peculiar mode in which ancient MSS. were written will make great allowance for such blunders. For as the words ran one into another, without any spaces between them, mistakes would constantly occur. The scribe would be in constant danger of looking at the wrong word or line, and thus omissions would be the necessary result. A still more striking feature of the Codex is the extent to which it agrees with the Vatican MS. in its readings, and with certain other ancient Codices which contain substantially the same text. The Sinaitic Codex, therefore, although exhibiting many readings of the Textus Receptus, must undoubtedly be assigned to that class of MSS. represented by the uncials B D L, and the few cursives which agree with them-a class which stands altogether opposed to the ancient uncial MS. A, the fragments N and I, and the later Uncials E F G, as well as the multitudinous list of cursives.

ART. IV.-The Polish Captivity: an Account of the Present Position of the Poles. By SUTHERLAND EDWARDS. Two Volumes. London: Wm. H. Allen & Co. 1863.

WE believe it is doing our readers no injustice to suppose that, notwithstanding all the interest they have taken in the Polish insurrection, the telegrams describing its progress and events have given occasion to but vague ideas and very general

impressions.

Popular Ignorance of Poland.

369

Où donc est la Pologne?' asked Madame Dubarry; and What sort of person is a Pole? and What sort of life is lived in Poland? are questions which might very properly be asked by numbers of our countrymen. For, as a rule, there is really very little known in England about either Poland or its people. In many things besides its geography and topography it is to the popular mind a sort of terra incognita. Mr. Bright, as we have already informed our readers, knows nothing of any Poland beyond Leicester Square. Mr. Cobden boasts of almost equal ignorance, and has taken pains to confess it in a pamphlet by 'A Manchester Manufacturer.' To some persons the idea of a Pole is inextricably mixed up with that of a Jew who has no apparent means of livelihood, and who is in a chronically interesting state of mind with regard to Christianity and the Messiah. To other persons a Pole appears to be the synonym of a foreign nobleman who gesticulates in his talk, has lost his estates by confiscation, and whose brother or cousin or bosom friend is a political prisoner in Siberia. To a somewhat larger class of persons, and a much better informed one, Poland appears to be the factious remnant of a once powerful nation which faction destroyed, and which, while it has any existence at all, neither good government can wean nor barbarous government drive from its recalcitrant habits and hereditary sedition. We are all alike, however, in sympathizing with the Poles. They appear to us to have been ill-used and in the highest degree unfortunate, and we are ready with soft words and hard cash accordingly.

It is not perhaps one of the least of Poland's misfortunes that this sentiment of pity is the sentiment which it most frequently excites in the Western European mind. It is true that our pity is in this instance nearly related to a sense of outraged justice, but it does not occur to us that we are ourselves very frequently unjust through the very urgency of our compassion. We fail to understand that the Poles are worthy of much more than our pity, and that, not only for a brief and gallant heroism, but for deep and earnest qualities and thoroughly worthy and noble performance, they have a substantial claim on our admiration and respect.

It has repeatedly occurred to us that some brief glance at the several forms which the captivity of the Poles has assumed would be useful and welcome to our readers, and availing ourselves of our best sources of information, and gathering together materials which, in Mr. Edwards's pages, are widely and immethodically scattered, we shall endeavour to present one.

Prussia, whose share in the tri-partite division of Poland is

the least extensive, appears to govern her alien subjects quite as stupidly though rather less harshly than either Austria or Russia. She is bent on converting her Poles into Prussians, but finds herself baffled. The Saxon and Slavonic elements have refused to combine, and the most that has been accomplished is their juxtaposition. But there is much in a name, and Prussia being well aware of that has administered baptisms somewhat freely, hoping that by her false labels and false entries the Western nations may mistake the children she has stolen for a merely wayward progeny of her own. You remark their obvious differences in appearance, in manner, and speech, but are assured that these are owing simply to accident and circumstance, that her children are all Prussian, and that those of them in Posen who seem so different are Prussian just as the others, only they speak the Polish tongue and are naughty and unsocial.

When Prussia first took possession of Posen she was disposed to treat it with lenience, and promised to respect the institutions which were regarded as the best security for the continuance of its distinctive nationality. Only a few days after the treaty of 1815 had been signed, Frederick William III. addressed to his new subjects a proclamation in which he endeavoured not only to disarm their resentment but to conciliate their good will, promising, 'on the word of a king,' that their religion should be respected and their personal rights and property be regulated by laws of their own making. Your language,' declared the wellmeaning plunderer, shall be used on all public occasions, side by side with the German. You shall fill all the Government appointments in the Grand Duchy of Posen. My viceroy, born in your country, shall reside among you.' What a comment on this text has been furnished by the disclosures of the past few weeks and by the general history of the Prussian domination! My viceroy' is a Prussian general at the beck and bidding of another Prussian general, and the Grand Duchy of Posen may at any moment be deprived of all law but martial law, without the advice or control or debate or delay of any constitutional authority whatever. That, when stripped of glosses and rhetoric, is the real meaning of the promise that the personal rights and property of the Poles should be regulated by laws of their own making. How the royal pledges have been kept in respect of the use of the Polish tongue may be gathered from Mr. Sutherland Edwards.

'At the railway-station no language but German is heard. You see German inscriptions over all the public offices, you are driven by a German to a half-German half-Polish hotel, a polyglot waiter

How Prussia governs Posen.

371 brings you the bill of a German theatre, and when you ask if the Polish theatre is open he stares and tells you that in Posen no such thing is known. If you were a Pole and had a son whom you wished to send to a Polish school, you could not at the present moment do so, even if you did not object to his learning everything in the fourth, fifth, and sixth classes in German, which is the invariable rule at all Polish schools in Posen.'

A like injustice prevails in the distribution of Government appointments. We are assured that, save in the tribunals (where, if there were not a few Poles, the business of the province could not be carried on), 'there is not one Pole in the 'Government service of Posen.' Even the village mayors are selected from the numerous German immigrants, and the district counsellors (Landrathe), who in other parts of Prussian territory are elected by their fellow-townsmen, are, in Posen, Germans nominated by the Prussian Government.

'In the Prefecture there are two interpreters, but not one official who understands Polish. In every department under Government control-and what is not under Government control in Prussia?— the same system exists. No Poles need apply. The clerks, conductors, even stokers on the railway, are Germans. In all this there is a double injustice. If Polish and German were spoken indifferently throughout the province it would still be unfair that none of the places at the disposal of the Government should be given to Poles; but the crying shame is that by appointing Germans to every office the Government imposes its language on the whole population, causing inconvenience to many, positive injury to a few, and natural legitimate offence to all.'

But how do the Poles of the Grand Duchy regard this state of things? Powerless to prevent their wrongs, they can at least say what they think of them. They publish a newspaper, the Djennik Poznanski, which attacks the Prussian Government and the Prussian rule generally, with frequent and vigorous criticism, and which is frequently seized accordingly. It is only just, however, both to the Government and the newspaper, to add that it is seldom condemned. The decision of the judges has repeatedly been adverse to the zeal of the underling pro

secutors.

The German theatre is attended only by Germans and other foreigners, while the Poles absent themselves partly from motives of patriotism and partly from sentiments of hatred and disgust. Their higher classes refuse to mix in any way they can avoid, with Prussians socially their equals and intellectually probably their superiors. And with regard to the numerous elements of a more Western civilization, which Prussia boasts of

having introduced into Posen, there is as little agreement as with regard to other things. A Polish gentleman said one day to Mr. Edwards

The Germans declare they have civilized us. Perhaps they mean that they have broken our spirit; but I am not at all sure of that; as for civilization, I cannot understand how the Prussians of the eighteenth century could civilize any one. Even now they are only civilized, in a political sense, in so far as they have adopted some of the principles of our Constitution of 1791, which they joined the Russians in subverting, and the promulgation of which was made the pretext for destroying the existence of our country. As far as I am concerned, I can boast that they have not civilized me. I may be a Polish barbarian, but I certainly owe nothing to German civilization. No German ever sets foot in my house, and neither I, nor my father, nor my grandfather, ever had a German master, or a German steward, or a German servant, or ever had anything to do with the Germans, except in the way of fighting them, and suffering from their persecution."

Meanwhile, and in spite of the influx of Prussian immigrants, the peasants of Posen are all Polish; the clergy and the landed proprietors are nearly all Polish; its members in the Upper House of the Prussian Assembly are all Polish, while in the Lower House they are Polish in the proportion of about four to three. So that it is clear the Polish element in Prussian Poland is still vital. It tills the soil, performs almost all the manual labour, it owns most of the fields, it supplies the greater part of the thinking and public teaching of the province, and very persistently indeed refuses to be in any way modified, converted, or absorbed. There has been no fusion of the two races, notwithstanding all the use of artificial stimulants to that end. The Slavonic element insists on its own isolation and free action, and has proved, during half a century of trial, that it has a selfsustaining power which is probably inexhaustible, and, by any methods to which a civilized government can resort, is indestructible as well. In Posen, at least, there is no miserable and quarrelsome sham-Polish aristocracy, but what aristocratic element there is, is of undoubtedly Polish origin, and of thoroughly Polish sympathies and antipathies. The peasant element is no less national than the aristocratic, though less patriotic and less demonstrative. It has been found less obdurate-and who can wonder that it should have been less obdurate ?-to the arts of Prussian corruption. It is on the whole, however, sufficiently obvious that Prussia holds Posen by an uncertain and precarious tenure. She has nothing but her own right hand to trust to, and, unless she yields to the remonstrances of her conscience,