59

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dans," and then by the more agitating certainty that CHAP. the Turkish crescent was floating in the long but fruitlessly resisting capital of Greece; and this intelligence was in three years more succeeded by a formidable irruption into Hungary, to add that kingdom to their new empire. It was happily repressed,00 but only to be followed by new efforts to obtain the monarchy of Europe, with an alarming perseverance which the most intelligent minds contemplated with manifest terror." These apprehensions and this danger, increased to those who lived near the sea shores of Italy and Spain, occasioned the pontiffs to make repeated calls on every Christian nation to

58 Uladislaw perished in the battle of Varna, in 1444; Ladislas succeeded, and the brave John Huniades was made governor of the kingdom. Zopf. v. 2. p. 619.

59 It was taken by Mahomet II. on 29 May 1453. Gibbon's description of the general assault is one of the best passages in his History, c. 68. p. 492–504. The German emperor, Frederic, who died in 1493, after a reign of 53 years, is represented by the monkish chronicler, who knew him, as a Vir optimus, who was anxious to keep his kingdom in peace; but who, from this laudable abstinence from war, enabled the Turks to make their great progress in Europe during his reign. Lang. Chron. 884.

60 The defeat of Mahomet's army in Hungary, in 1456, with a loss of 40,000 men, saved both Belgrade and Europe at that crisis. This victory is in a great degree ascribed to the Stentorian preacher, John de Capistrano, mentioned in note 40. When the Christians gave way to the fury of the Turkish charge, his eloquence rallied and roused them to renew the combat, and to fight till they conquered. Mag. Chron. Belg. 383. He had assembled 100,000 crusaders, and not only animated them by his words, but went into the battle at their head, with a great cross instead of a banner, fought with it most furiously in the first ranks, and slew many of the Turks. Whart. add. to Cave's Script. p. 98.

In 1475, Matthias Corvinus, the son of J. Huniades, was made by the Hungarians their king, and his great spirit and exertions kept the Mussulmen at bay.

6 Melancthon's feelings may be adduced as a specimen. Turkish ferocity menaces our churches, and the whole nation, with ravage and extermination. It is preparing a mighty war on the frontiers of Germany, cursing the Son of the Deity in its public edicts, and planning the slaughter of the pious. Amid so much terror and danger, it is difficult to cherish hope.' Mel. Op. v.

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unite in a crusade against the common and undeterred enemy of all. Selyman the Magnificent renewed the alarms, and emulated the triumphs of his predecessors, when the hostilities of Persia operated to the preservation of Europe. This overhanging peril of the Turkish sabre continued, until the naval power of the Ottomans was annihilated in the bay of Lepanto. After this reverse, luxury and selfish policy concurred to extinguish the daring spirit of their sultans for all land aggressions, in the voluptuous and enervating seraglio.

The irregular, the wild and the discreditable, had also their attractions. The tendency of many to join mysterious Rosicrucian societies; of others, to pursue

64

62 It was on 8 October 1526, that Sir John Wallop sent to the English court a detailed account of the great battle on Solyman's invasion, in which Louis II. the king of Hungary and Bohemia fell, and his troops were totally defeated. MSS. British Mus. Vitell. B. 21. This ambitious sultan having taken Belgrade and Buda, in 1529, advanced to Vienna, but its sovereign reinforced its garrison with 20,000 men, and Solyman was baffled, and withdrew. But in 1532 he renewed his formidable invasion, and penetrated to Lintz, which successfully resisted him. Sagredo. Hist. Ottom. 151-191.

63 The Persian war diverted and consumed his forces in 1535; yet in 1538 he again invaded Hungary. In 1541 he renewed his attack, and became master of its capital, and in a future year attempted Transylvania. Cardinal Pole, in his address to Charles V. thus speaks of this dangerous sultan: If the money you have expended elsewhere had been applied against the Turks, would Solyman have taken the two bulwarks of the Christian world, Belgrade and Rhodes? Would he have devastated Hungary, and penetrated to Buda? and have subdued all the region which the Danube washes, and the adjacent provinces? How long shall we see his fleets, every year hovering about Italy, and taking off its people as their captives? If the sophy of Persia had not been his powerful enemy, and limited his audacity, he would have enjoyed by this time universal empire.' Orat. de Pace. Quir. v. 4. p. 410. Sir Thomas Moryson, in his despatch of 4 April 1553, shews also the importance of the Persian hostilities: The Turks are now quiet in Hungary, by reason that the Sophy doth occupy them the other way.' I Lodge's Illust. p. 170.

64 This fraternity claimed a German as their founder, who visited Damascus, and died in 1484. They called themselves les Freres de la Rose Croix, and also the illumines, the immortals, and the invisibles.

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the incoherent dreams of the Jewish Cabala, and CHAP. of some, both to study and to vaunt of the possession of Magical powers, affords a further specimen of the restless activity of the mind to deviate, at that time, from the ordinary and straight-forward paths of quiet and contented life. But useful improvements were the more general pursuits; and our most warlike," as well as our most splendid, king became fond of Music; and the latter, as well as his opponent Luther, composed it; and that this sweet art might exhibit also its participation of the general

68

They took oaths of secrecy and fidelity, pretended to great discoveries, and wrote in enigmas. Moreri, Rose Croix. Dee, in publishing Friar Bacon's Epistolæ, added a 'responsio ad fratres Rosacea crucis illustres.' Hamb. 1618.

65 The Cabala was in its greatest credit in the 16th century. The Jewish literati were particularly attached to it. It was supposed to have great magical power. It was divided into two kinds; Mercava, or the Science of the Chariot, and Beresith, or that of the Creation. Moreri in voce. Kircher, Mirandula, and others, wrote upon it. The Jezirah, its most ancient book, and the other treatises in the Cabala denudata,' inform us of the chief part of the published mysteries of the system. The much praised Reuchlin Capnio addressed three books de arte Cabalista to Leo X., which are printed among the Scriptores de arte Cabalistica. Bas. 1587.

66 We can hardly now believe that a delusion so extravagant as the art of Magic should have prevailed in modern Europe. But Trithemius thought it necessary to resolve on writing a work of twelve books on the Demoniacal sciences, to expose quam vanissima' they were. Ep. Fœm. p. 565. He particularises one man, Sabellicus, as professing himself in 1507 to be a chieftain of the necromancers. He gave himself this title, Magister Georgius Sabellicus; Faustus junior; fons necromanticorum; astrologus, Magus secundus; chiromanticus; agræmanticus; pyromanticus.' The abbot met him at Galenhusen, but wishing to reason with him on his art, the impostor disappeared. He pretended to such knowlege, that if all the works of Plato and Aristotle were burnt, he could restore them from his own memory. Ep. Fam. 559, 560.

67 Henry V. was an admirer of church music, and amused himself with playing on the organ. Dr. Henry, v. 10. p. 227. from Elmham, p.12. 68 We have an anthem of Henry VIII. still remaining. Luther has also left those noble yet simple compositions on the day of Judgment, and the 100th Psalm. James I. of Scotland was a capital performer on the organ, and composed several pieces of sacred music.' Dr. Henry, p. 228. from Ford. Scot's Ch. 1. 16. c. 28.

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SO

BOOK progression, Counterpoint or harmony, tho not actually invented at this time, yet was so peculiarly brought into social use from its ineffective obscurity, as to be called a new art.' Scotland had the honor of enriching its then few but increasing treasures from her national melodies, which are plaintive and so pleasing.70 Other princes improved it; and from many cultivators, this delightful art, which beyond all others combines intellectual with popular enjoyment, acquired novelties of modulation, conceptions and subjects, which were from this period continually multiplied with the grandest and most delicious improvements. Happily, after a contest, the Council of Trent allowed its continuance in the Catholic church service;73 and the English reformers, shunning the unnecessary extreme of the Calvinistic simplifiers, retained it also in their cathedral chants and anthems. These wise permis

72

69 It is John Tinctor, a writer of this period, who so terms it; 'of which new art, as I may call it, viz. Counterpoint, the fountain and origin is said to have been among the English, of whom Dunstable was chief or head.' Burney's Hist. Mus. v. 2. p. 450. Dunstable, who died 1458, did not invent, but may have applied it in a more specific

or new manner.

70 Tassoni has left this memorial of James I., the contemporary of Henry V. James not only composed many sacred pieces of vocal music, but also invented a new kind, plaintive and melancholy, different from all other.' Tass. Pens. Div. 1. 10.

71 Tassoni adds: In this he has been imitated by Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa, who in our age hath improved music with new and admirable inventions. Ib. Hawk. Hist. Music, v. 4. p. 5, 6. Dr. Henry, v. 10. p. 231. Gesualdo's style of modulation was preferred by musicians to their preceding music. Hawk. v. 3. p. 212. Henry, 232.

72 Godeau mentions, that the greatest number of the bishops at the council wanted to suppress it, as injurious if bad, and as more fit when excellent, a chatouiller les oreilles qu'a elever l'esprit a Dieu, but it was at last retained. Vie de S. Ch. Borrom. p. 120.

73 No formal decree was made in its favor, but the prohibition was limited to expel from the churches musicas eas, ubi, sive organo, sive cantu, aliquid lascivum, aut impurum miscetur.' Sess. 22, Plat. Canones et Decret. p. 207.

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sions have provided, from the subsequent inventions CHAP. of human genius, a varied profusion of the most elevating, soothing and pathetic combinations of melodized sound, to which antiquity had no parallel, and which alone exalts modern times and modern Mind to a superiority, that in the days of Orpheus neither hope nor fancy could have anticipated."

76

The new establishment of English factories on the continent in the fifteenth century, enlarged and spread the activity and spirit of the nation 75 under that king, whose continental peregrinations and adventures made him most able and willing to appreciate and encourage the foreign commerce of his kingdom. The large views of Richard III. favored its adventuring ambition." Nor was the fond practice of pilgrimages to Spain,78 and of foreigners to Canterbury, ineffective to promote the general movement to the restless and the new. This humor was so beneficial to the trading part of the Romish clergy, that no heresy was more instantaneously punished than that of questioning the use or duty of what every

74 In quantity, diversity and pathos, none can excel, though many English composers have equalled in less amount, the Catholic church music; but no part of this can parallel in sublimity the three chief choruses of Handel's Messiah. In the grandeur and full feeling of these magnificent devotional harmonies, this great musician stands yet not only unsurpassed, but also unreached.

75 In 1404, Henry IV. granted a charter to the English merchants residing in Germany, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, to hold general assemblies, make laws, and chuse governors; and in 1406, a similar one to the English traders in Holland, Zealand, Brabant and Flanders. Henry's Hist. p. 241.

76 Henry IV. when exiled by Richard II. travelled thro the north of Europe, as far as Lithuania.

77 Henry's Hist. p. 241, 7. It was not until Richard's reign, that the English merchants obtained any solid footing in Italy. ib. 247.