Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed for a time over religion accidentally associated with political and social abuses. Every thing gave way to the zeal and activity of the new reformers. France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every In lay in the truth which was mingled at the sacraments, but ready to enwith their errors, and in the generous counter principalities and powers in enthusiasm which was hidden under the cause of justice, mercy, and toletheir flippancy. They were men who, ration. with all their faults, moral and intellectual, sincerely and earnestly desired the improvement of the condition of the human race, whose blood boiled at the sight of cruelty and injustice, who made manful war, with every faculty which they possessed, on what they considered as abuses, and who on many signal occasions placed them-year gave birth to works in which the selves gallantly between the powerful fundamental principles of the Church and the oppressed. While they as- were attacked with argument, invecsailed Christianity with a rancour and tive, and ridicule. The Church made an unfairness disgraceful to men who no defence, except by acts of power. called themselves philosophers, they | Censures were pronounced: books were yet had, in far greater measure than seized: insults were offered to the retheir opponents, that charity towards mains of infidel writers; but no Bosmen of all classes and races which suet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Christianity enjoins. Religious per- Voltaire. There appeared not a single secution, judicial torture, arbitrary im- defence of the Catholic doctrine which prisonment, the unnecessary multipli-produced any considerable effect, or cation of capital punishments, the delay and chicanery of tribunals, the exactions of farmers of the revenue, slavery, the slave trade, were the constant subjects of their lively satire and eloquent disquisitions. When an innocent man was broken on the wheel at Toulouse, when a youth, guilty only of an indiscretion, was beheaded at Abbeville, when a brave officer, borne down by public injustice, was dragged, with a gag in his mouth, to die on the Place de Grêve, a voice instantly went forth from the banks of Lake Leman, which made itself heard from Moscow to Cadiz, and which sentenced the unjust judges to the contempt and detestation of all Europe. The really efficient weapons with which the philosophers assailed the evangelical faith were borrowed from the evangelical morality. The ethical and dogmatical parts of the Gospel were unhappily turned against each other. On one side was a Church boasting of the purity of a doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by the war of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port-Royal. On the other side was a sect laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue which is now even remembered. A bloody and unsparing persecution, like that which put down the Albigenses, might have put down the philosophers. But the time for De Montforts and Dominics had gone by. The punishments which the priests were still able to inflict were sufficient to irritate, but not suflicient to destroy. The war was between power on one side, and wit on the other; and the power was under far more restraint than the wit. Orthodoxy soon became a synonyme for ignorance and stupidity. It was as necessary to the character of an accomplished man that he should despise the religion of his country, as that he should know his letters. The new doctrines spread rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of the whole continent. French was every where the language of polite circles. The literary glory of Italy and Spain had departed. That of Germany had not dawned. That of England shone, as yet, for the English alone. The teachers of France were the teachers of Europe. The Parisian opinions spread fast among the educated classes beyond the Alps: nor could the vigilance of the Inquisition prevent the contraband importation of the new heresy into Castile and Portugal. Governments, | butchered by scores without a trial, even arbitrary governments, saw with drowned, shot, hung on lamp-posts. pleasure the progress of this philoso- Thousands fled from their country to phy. Numerous reforms, generally take sanctuary under the shade of laudable, sometimes hurried on with- hostile altars. The churches were out sufficient regard to time, to place, closed; the bells were silent; the shrines and to public feeling, showed the ex- were plundered; the silver crucifixes tent of its influence. The rulers of were melted down. Buffoons, dressed Prussia, of Russia, of Austria, and of in copes and surplices, came dancing many smaller states, were supposed to the carmagnole even to the bar of the be among the initiated. Convention. The bust of Marat was The Church of Rome was still, in substituted for the statues of the maroutward show, as stately and splendid tyrs of Christianity. A prostitute, as ever; but her foundation was under-seated on a chair of state in the chancel mined. No state had quitted her communion or confiscated her revenues; but the reverence of the people was every where departing from her. The first great warning stroke was the fall of that society which, in the conflict with Protestantism, had saved the Catholic Church from destruction. The order of Jesus had never recovered from the injury received in the struggle with Port-Royal. It was now still more rudely assailed by the philosophers. Its spirit was broken; its reputation was tainted. Insulted by all the men of genius in Europe, condemned by the civil magistrate, feebly defended by the chiefs of the hierarchy, it fell and great was the fall of it. The movement went on with increasing speed. The first generation of the new sect passed away. The doctrines of Voltaire were inherited and exaggerated by successors, who bore to him the same relation which the Anabaptists bore to Luther, or the Fifth-Monarchy men to Pym. At length the Revolution came. Down went the old Church of France, with all its pomp and wealth. Some of its priests purchased a maintenance by separating themselves from Rome, and by becoming the authors of a fresh schism. Some, rejoicing in the new license, flung away their sacred vestments, proclaimed that their whole life had been an imposture, insulted and persecuted the religion of which they had been ministers, and distinguished themselves, even in the Jacobin Club and the Commune of Paris, by the excess of their impudence and ferocity. Others, more faithful to their principles, were of Nôtre Dame, received the adoration of thousands, who exclaimed that at length, for the first time, those ancient Gothic arches had resounded with the accents of truth. The new unbelief was as intolerant as the old superstition. To show reverence for religion was to incur the suspicion of disaffection. It was not without imminent danger that the priest baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers, or listened to the confession of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of Reason was, indeed, of short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux was not less hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism of Clootz and Chaumette. Nor were the calamities of the Church confined to France. The revolutionary spirit, attacked by all Europe, beat all Europe back, became conqueror in its turn, and, not satisfied with the Belgian cities and the rich domains of the spiritual electors, went raging over the Rhine and through the passes of the Alps. Throughout the whole of the great war against Protestantism, Italy and Spain had been the base of the Catholic operations. Spain was now the obsequious vassal of the infidels. Italy was subjugated by them. To her ancient principalities succeeded the Cisalpine republic, and the Ligurian republic, and the Parthenopean republic. The shrine of Loretto was stripped of the treasures piled up by the devotion of six hundred years. The convents of Rome were pillaged. The tricoloured flag floated on the top of the Castle of St. Angelo. The successor of St. Peter was carried away captive by the unbelievers. He died a prisoner in their hands; and even the honours of sepulture were long withheld from his remains. society, had, through great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable Church was still there. Some future historian, as able and temperate as Professor Ranke, will, we hope, trace the progress of the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century. We feel that we are drawing too near our own time, and that, if we go on, we shall be in danger of saying much which may be supposed to indicate, and which will certainly excite, angry feelings. We will, therefore, make only one more observation, which, in our opinion, is deserving of serious attention. It is not strange that, in the year 1799, even sagacious observers should have thought that, at length, the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An infidel power ascendant, the Pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of Victory, or into banqueting-houses for political societies, or into Theophilan- During the eighteenth century, the thropic chapels, such signs might well influence of the Church of Rome was be supposed to indicate the approach-constantly on the decline. Unbelief ing end of that long domination. made extensive conquests in all the But the end was not yet. Again Catholic countries of Europe, and in doomed to death, the milk-white hind some countries obtained a complete was still fated not to die. Even be- ascendency. The Papacy was at length fore the funeral rites had been per- brought so low as to be an object of formed over the ashes of Pius the derision to infidels, and of pity rather Sixth, a great reaction had commenced, than of hatred to Protestants. During which, after the lapse of more than the nineteenth century, this fallen forty years, appears to be still in pro- Church has been gradually rising from gress. Anarchy had had its day. A her depressed state and reconquering new order of things rose out of the her old dominion. No person who confusion, new dynastics, new laws, calmly reflects on what, within the new titles; and amidst them emerged last few years, has passed in Spain, in the ancient religion. The Arabs have Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in a fable that the Great Pyramid was the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in built by antediluvian kings, and alone, France, can doubt that the power of of all the works of men, bore the this Church over the hearts and minds weight of the flood. Such as this was of men, is now greater far than it was the fate of the Papacy. It had been when the Encyclopædia and the Phiburied under the great inundation; losophical Dictionary appeared. It is but its deep foundations had remained surely remarkable, that neither the unshaken; and, when the waters abated, moral revolution of the eighteenth cenit appeared alone amidst the ruins of tury, nor the moral counter-revolution a world which had passed away. The of the nineteenth, should, in any perrepublic of Holland was gone, and ceptible degree, have added to the dothe empire of Germany, and the great main of Protestantism. During the Council of Venice, and the old Heive- former period, whatever was lost to tian League, and the House of Bour-Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; bon, and the parliaments and aristo- during the latter, whatever was recracy of France. Europe was full of gained by Christianity in Catholic young creations, a French empire, a countries was regained also by Cathokingdom of Italy, a Confederation of licism. We should naturally have the Rhine. Nor had the late events expected that many minds, on the way affected only territorial limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and spirit of from superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to superstition, would have stopped at an in termediate point. Between the doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits, and those which were maintained at the little supper parties of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval, in which the human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some restingplace more satisfactory than either of the two extremes. And at the time of the Reformation, millions found such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced Popery without ceasing to believe in a first cause, in a future life, or in the Divine mission of Jesus. In the last century, on the other hand, when a Catholic renounced his belief in the real presence, it was a thousand to one that he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and, when the reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came back belief in the real presence. We by no means venture to deduce from these phænomena any general law; but we think it a most remarkable fact, that no Christian nation, which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since that time, become infidel and become Catholic again; but none has become Protestant. Here we close this hasty sketch of one of the most important portions of the history of mankind. Our readers will have great reason to feel obliged to us if we have interested them sufficiently to induce them to peruse Professor Ranke's book. We will only caution them against the French translation, a performance which, in our opinion, is just as discreditable to the moral character of the person from whom it proceeds as a false affidavit or a forged bill of exchange would have been, and advise them to study either the original, or the English version, in which the sense and spirit of the original are admirably preserved. LEIGH HUNT. (January, 1841.) In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is no means concur. age of The plays to which he now acts as introducer arc, with few exceptions, such as, in the opinion of many very respectable people, ought not to be reIn this opinion we can by printed. We cannot wish that any work or class of works which has exercised a great influence on the human mind, and which illustrates the character of an important epoch in letters, politics, and morals, should dis society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of exposing himself to the influences of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the felon who begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his head from the door of Newgate to the gallows, be cause it was a drizzling morning, and he was apt to take cold. The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all keeps out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. It would be indeed absurd to attempt to keep men from acquiring those qualifications which fit them to play their part in life with honour to themselves and advantage to their country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy which cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a walk from Westminster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy. appear from the world. If we err in this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men in the empire, and especially with the Church of England, and with the great schools of learning which are connected with her. The whole liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the principle, that no book which is valuable, either by reason of the excellence of its style, or by reason of the light which it throws on the history, polity, and manners of nations, should be withheld from the student on account of its im-spirited exertion, not a virtue which purity. The Athenian Comedies, in which there are scarcely a hundred lines together without some passage of which Rochester would have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the Pitt Press, and the Clarendon Press, under the direction of Syndics and delegates appointed by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by reverend, very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined by bishops But we should be justly chargeable and professors of divinity in such works with gross inconsistency if, while we as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes and defend the policy which invites the the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is youth of our country to study such certainly something a little ludicrous in writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we the idea of a conclave of venerable were to set up a cry against a new fathers of the church praising and re-edition of the Country Wife or the Way warding a lad on account of his intimate of the World. The immoral English acquaintance with writings compared writers of the seventeenth century are with which the loosest tale in Prior is indeed much less excusable than those modest. But, for our own part, we of Greece and Rome. But the worst have no doubt that the greatest societies English writings of the seventeenth which direct the education of the Eng-century are decent, compared with lish gentry have herein judged wisely. much that has been bequeathed to us It is unquestionable that an extensive by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have acquaintance with ancient literature enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more useful to the state and to the church than one who is unskilled, or little skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all the influences of such a state of little doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things at which Sir Georgo Ethercge would have shuddered. Buckhurst and Sedley, even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which they were pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King's Bench, would never have dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phædrus on that fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the fountain warbled at their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we thiuk it is, desirable that an English gentle |