which serpentine and other pleasing qual ities were very remarkably exemplified in the St. Bartholomew. But still it is not obvious why Englishmen of any creed should particularly concern themselves, except in the way of abstract sympathy, with the erection of a monument to Coligny at Paris. However that is a matter which must be left to their own judgment and their own pockets to decide. Such assistance as the scheme may derive from a brief notice here of what is assuredly a memorable epoch, in a century exceptionally rich in eventful memories, we need not grudge it.

tal Samuel Pepys. Only last year the first steps were taken, certainly not at all too soon, for the erection of a monument to Grotius at Delft, and it has just been proposed with far more questionable reason or fitness to put up a monument at Frankfort to Schopenhauer, the chief modern apostle of pessimism, who conspicuously illustrated the worst features of his philosophy in his life. No such objection can be raised against the very natural proposal advocated the other day by two leading members of the French Protestant Church, at a meeting held in the Westminster College Hall, under the presidency of the dean, to erect a monu- Mr. Lecky, who of course disapproves ment in honor of Admiral Coligny at himself of religious persecution, but, like Paris. But we fail to understand why some other writers of his school, is always Englishmen should be asked to take part anxious to insist that it is the only conin what is mainly, if not exclusively, a sistent policy for those who have any matter of national interest for French- positive beliefs to maintain, has selected men; neither indeed can we quite accept, as one of his proof-cases the Massacre of even on the authority of Voltaire, the St. Bartholomew. "France," he observes, dean's somewhat enthusiastic estimate of "is still ostensibly, and was long in truth, Coligny as, "if not the greatest of French- the leading champion of Catholicity, but men, one of the most illustrious of the the essential Catholicity of France was sons of France," or M. Bessier's com- mainly due to the Massacre of St. Barmendation of him as a martyr for "liberty tholomew and the revocation of the Edict of conscience" and bright example of of Nantes." On the contrary, it would be "perfect self-devotion to the service of less of a paradox, though no doubt an God." Dean Bradley was careful to dis- exaggeration, to say that the widespread claim any sectarian bias, yet it is difficult scepticism of modern France is mainly to see how, except as a demonstration of due to those causes. For the moment the Protestant sympathy, any but his own plot succeeded, though even Catherine countrymen can be asked to join in com- found herself obliged, almost immediately memorating one whose only title to dis- afterwards, to disavow her share in it; tinction beyond that of a national hero is but, as Ranke, a higher authority than that he was a leading Huguenot. And Mr. Lecky, very justly asks, "Can crimes the names neither very numerous nor of so bloody a dye be crowned with lastvery illustrious of English attendants ing success? Are they not at variance at the meeting seem to point in the same with the deeper mysteries of human direction. Of course the Massacre of St. events, and with those inviolable laws of Bartholomew was an event of European nature which, even when not understood, interest, and those whose knowledge of are in constant though silent operation?" history, ancient and modern, does not go It is instructive to remember that the much further than a schoolboy recollection Massacre of St. Bartholomew preceded by of Lord Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient little above two centuries the no less horRome," and his hardly less popular Puri-rible noyades of Carrier, and the enthrone. tan and Huguenot ballads, must have, cursorily at least,

ment of Reason, in the person of a naked prostitute, on the higher altar of Notre Dame. But there is a further objection to Mr. Lecky's method of stating the case. The dragonnades of Louis and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes do afford an example of a genuine religious persecution, alike cruel and impolitic, and for the time it went far to extirpate from France the Protestant minority. But it was and always had been a very small minority among the people generally, though at one time including about a third of the aristocracy, and it was certainly

vive to reproach me." Catherine declared that she only desired the death of six men and would charge her conscience a tolerably elastic one with no more; fifty thousand actually perished. There is no need to repeat here the too familiar details of the hideous tale. But it must be noted that the whole north of Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant, including a large portion of the French Catholic

crime. Charles found it prudent on the same day to have letters written by his secretaries of state signed by his own hand, representing the affair as a private quarrel between the partisans of Guise and Coligny, and despatches were sent soon afterwards to warn the Cardinal of Lorraine that he must cease to extol it as a glorious triumph. When the pope sent a legate to congratulate Charles, he was coldly received by the queen mother, and the court of Rome had the discretion to make no parade of the present sent it by some zealots among the assassins of the head of Coligny.

not their expulsion which preserved, to use Mr. Lecky's phrase, "the essential Catholicity of France." The leading motive however was a religious one, Louis being at the time under the influence of his Jesuit directors. It is no excuse for the odious policy of Catherine de Medicis, but rather the reverse, that its inspiring motive was clearly not a religious but a political one; but it places the Huguenot massacre in a somewhat different category nobility, protested against the ruffianly from the dragonnades of the next century, and a still less respectable one. Neither party, Catholic or Protestant, in the sixteenth century had the least idea, begging M. Bessier's pardon, of what we understand by "liberty of conscience," or felt the slightest scruple, when they got the upper hand, of inflicting on their rivals the persecution they naturally exclaimed against when their own turn came to suffer it. Mary's Protestant martyrs only "got as good as they gave," to put it bluntly; Cranmer had enforced on the boy king the burning of Anabaptists, and Latimer in the previous reign had preached a brutally jocose sermon while Prior Forest was being roasted to death suspended over a slow fire for denying Henry's spiritual supremacy. Coligny and his Huguenots, to cite Ranke's words, “gave no quarter," because "in the Papal soldiers they beheld the army of Antichrist." But Catherine de Medicis, like her rival Elizabeth of England, was, consciously or unconsciously, a true disciple of Machiavelli, and for religious ends as such she cared nothing. As Mr. Froude puts it and his testimony may be trusted here, for Catholicism is even more offensive to him than Catherinė"religion, in its good or in its bad sense, was equally a word without meaning to her." She had favored the plan for the marriage of Anjou, and, when that fell through, of her third son, D'Alençon, with the heretic English queen. When the crisis came, and her interests required the sacrifice of Coligny, who had already been wounded but not killed by the shot of a hired assassin of the Duke of Guise, she would apparently have been satisfied with his death only. But the feeble and frightened boy in whose name she misgoverned France dared not go so far without going further. It was he who cried out in a paroxysm of tears, when driven to desperation by the fierce insistence of his infamous mother: "Since you will have the life of the admiral, take it; but, at the same time, you must kill all the Huguenots in France, so that not one may sur

But for the part played in the business by the popes of the day there is unfortu. nately nothing more to be said. It cannot be proved, as Ranke points out, that Pius V. was privy to the preparations for the massacre, "but he did things which leave no doubt that he, as well as his successor, would have sanctioned them." He had formally approved the butcheries of Alva in the Netherlands, and had privately encouraged plots for the murder of Elizabeth. But Pius had gone to his grave four months before the fatal day. His successor, Gregory XIII., best known to the world as the reformer of the calen dar, was an able and cultivated man, and is described in the memoirs of Richelieu, with imperfect accuracy, as "prince doux et benin, meilleur homme que bon pape." He at all events did not leave doubtful his estimate of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He celebrated the event by a solemn procession of thanksgiving to San Luigi, and by medals struck to commemorate it, where the archangel is depicted presiding over "the slaughter of the Huguenots," and a picture of it was painted, which may still be seen at the Vatican. It is curious that the Venetians, who had no interest of any kind in the matter, should have expressed in official despatches to their minister at Rome their satisfaction at "this mark of God's favor." Cardinal Santorio, who was the Spanish favorite some years later, in the Conclave of 1592, and narrowly missed his election

to the papacy, has designated the event for the peculiar atrocity of the transaction in his autobiography, still extant in MS., we are immediately concerned with, and "the celebrated day of St. Bartholomew, it must be imputed partly to "the fool most joyful to the Catholics." He tells fury of the Seine," which has again and us by the by, in this same autobiography, again since then deluged Paris with blood that the night after learning his failure of shed by her own citizens, partly to its the election, which he had reckoned upon Medicean authorship. That family conas certain, "was more painful than any centrated in itself, as in a microcosm, the moment I ever endured. The heavy grief darkest corruptions of the moral side of of my soul and my inward anguish forced the Renaissance, and it rejoiced them to from me incredible to say a sweat of revel in a carnival of lust and blood. blood." Such little "grain of conscience" as they retained and we have seen that Cath

On the whole it is impossible to exculpate the court of Rome from full complic-erine could talk about her conscience ity at least after the fact. In the chief perpetrators the crime must be attributed rather to political Machiavellism of the worst kind than to religious bigotry. In the subordinate agents there was probably a mixture of political and religious fanaticism, as the Huguenots were always looked on as the unpatriotic, and therefore naturally became the unpopular, party in the country. And this of course helps to account for the acquiescence, if not approval, accorded by public opinion to the persecuting policy of Louis XIV. But some further explanation is needed

only served to "make them sour" towards heretics, whose Puritanism was offensive, and whose destruction might possibly prove acceptable to heaven as a makeweight against many pleasant sins. Charles IX. indeed is said to have suf fered agonies of remorse on his deathbed, though he was really far less guilty than his wretched mother, but he had in his veins French as well as Italian blood. And to "the serpent of Florence" must be chiefly traced the original sin of the terrible tragedy of St. Bartholomew.

ANATOMY OF PANIC.-The phrase "the vidually determine to keep their wits about anatomy of melancholy" amply justifies "the them, and stating the number and location of anatomy of panic." The mental state desig- the places of exit. Again, the manager and nated panic is, psychologically, a paralyzing chief performers at a theatre should make it a perception of peril. The power of self-control point of honor to keep their self-possession, is suspended. The judgment cannot inhibit and preserve smiling faces above the footlights impulsive or emotional acts. The processes if any hitch occurs. It is useless to speak or of reason in its higher manifestation are shout; nothing can so rapidly reassure a thein abeyance. Panic spreads from one indi-atrical audience in panic as the sight of a selfvidual to another, as well as affects many in common. The same impression which is produced on one sensorium may be produced on any number simultaneously by the primary cause of fear; but there is nothing else so calculated to produce panic as the evidence of panic in the mind of another person, especially one or many with whom the mind inpressedin this secondary way-may chance to be in habitual or occasional sympathetic relation. It matters little to the general result whether the impression be produced or extended through the sense of sight or hearing, or even general sensation. It is sufficient that it can be produced and propagated in either of several ways. The true remedy for panic must be, in great part, preventive. It is a capital suggestion that a permanent notice which all can read should be displayed across curtain and act drop "writ large," and plainly stating the time in which the auditorium of a theatre can be emptied if only the audience will indi

possessed and smiling face instantly presented on the stage. One man may do more in this way than can be done by half a dozen in any other. Another point of moment is to impress the mind through the ear. Let the orchestra instantly strike up a cheerful tune. We heard the other day how an organist saved hundreds from panic in a church by playing a tune which instinctively brought the audience on their knees. On the same principle the orchestra in a theatre should call the panic-stricken spectators back to their seats by a bright burst of music. Surely managers and conductors might contrive these "effects" and train a few faithful followers to support them. Another matter of the highest practical moment is to make the ways of exit ways of common ingress. It is impossible to lay too great stress on this obvious precaution. It is worth while to study panics at leisure, and devise means for their prevention or prompt arrest.

Lancet.

VIII. THE BALlad of the Midnight Sun, 1883, Contemporary Review, .

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