his father Julius and the fickleness of Lipsius. His intellect was little less comprehensive, his learning more exact than that of Leibnitz. His work, "De Emendatione Temporum," in which, with the confident strength of genius and with boundless learning, he labored at restoring Eusebius, placed him at the summit of universal philological learning. The friendship and correspondence of Casaubon cheered and confirmed him in his researches. He left behind him some illustrious disciples, but no successor; and the intervals between the greater luminaries of philology, between Scaliger and Bentley, between Bentley and Niebuhr, resemble the distant manifestations of the epic muse.

Mr. Hallam's second chapter is a necessary but most instructive digression into the domain of political history. The revolutions of opinion immediately affect the forms and the development of literature, and the sources or the effects of opinion must be sought in the records of the church or the state. A decree of the diet of Augsburg in 1555, confirming the pacification of Passau, recognized the members of the Lutheran confession as an established Christian society, whose rights from that period became part of the public law of Germany. The consequences of this decree are among the most interesting phenomena of the Reformation; and the lesson to be derived from them is of peculiar moment to a transitional period of opinions like the present, when both Protestantism and Catholicism seem destined to undergo further changes, perhaps to revive their ancient collision. The progress of the reformed religion was at first signally rapid and triumphant; most of the Franconian and Bavarian nobility, and the citizens of every considerable town, though subjects of Catholic princes, became Protestant. The reports of the Venetian envoys are remarkable for their judiciousness and accuracy; and an ambassador of that republic in 1558 estimated the Catholics of the German empire at only one-tenth of the population. In France the common people still frequented the churches, but all other classes, and especially the nobles, had fallen off. The defection was most remarked in the rising generation. The earnestness of England, the violence of Scotland in embracing the various forms of Protestantism are well known; the more genuinely Teutonic races of these countries had always evinced a preference for abstract and intellectual doctrines, and imperfectly sympathized with the more sensuous devotion of the South. But even where, from analogy, ancient prejudices and a semi-idolatrous form of worship might have been supposed most acceptable to the people, the new religion was cordially entertained; and Protestantism gained innumerable converts along the shores of the Danube, the Drave and the Vistula. It is not surprising that this religious ferment affected the political relations of many countries. In Southern Europe, indeed, the orthodoxy of the Catholic sovereigns was protected or confirmed by the more resolute bearing of the church; while in the passive submission of the lower orders to their spiritual guides the new opinions found no resonance to the appeals of argument or invective, but rather a stubborn or a passionate obstruction to their approach. But beyond the Alps some Catholic governments wavered for a time, and hesitated to oppose the weakened

and undefined barriers of an ancient system to the rude assaults of popular feeling and inquiry, lest, in the prostration of ecclesiastical authority, the civil power might not escape unharmed. The emperor Ferdinand I. was tolerant in disposition, and, at least before the pacification of Passau, had his private reasons for desiring an accommodation. His successor, Maximilian II., incurred the suspicion of a secret leaning towards the reformed tenets. In Bavaria there seemed little prospect of the permanence of Catholicism; and although Sigismund Augustus did not quit the church of Rome, yet he probably wavered in his allegiance, and the Polish court and nobility became extensively Protestant. In Austria and Hungary the nobles and the burghers who professed the doctrines of the Reformers were so numerous, that they obtained a full toleration and equality of privileges. Under the weak and youthful successor of Henry II., the spirit of reformation broke out in France with an impetuosity proportioned to the severity with which it had been restrained. The Low Countries very early caught the flame, and presented in their northern states the august spectacle of a people whom persecution for conscience' sake elevated from the condition of a subject-province to the dignity and importance of a free, intelligent and powerful confederation. "In the year 1560," says Mr. Hallam, " every Protestant in Europe doubtless anticipated the overthrow of Popery; the Catholics could have found little else to warrant hope than their trust in heaven. The late rush of many nations towards democratical opinions has not been so rapid and so general as the change of religion about that period." Yet in a few years the tide was setting the other way, and "it is important and interesting to inquire what stemmed this current."

The unity of the visible church has in all ages been a powerful plea, a pleasing delusion, or a useful prejudice. In the formative ages of modern Europe the church was the only centre around which the warring elements, or the imperfect affinities of crude civilization could find a resting place. By this common soil some of them were presently absorbed and disappear altogether, the feeble and immature germs which had no root in themselves. Others were concealed for a time until a more genial season or climate allowed of their expansion, and others immediately struck root and flourished as the archetypal forms and ideas of a rude but vigorous era. In the Middle Ages, when the most living of these forms and principles were established, and Christian Europe, in its political structure, exhibited a grand but irregular combination of what was permanent in the old, and of what was progressive in the new order of things, the unity of the church, although less secure and conspicuous than before, was still the acknowledged centre and bond of the Christian federation, and retained and exerted its proper position and its legitimate functions. The civil power had outgrown its infancy, but had not yet reached the first period of its manhood; and if it was beyond the nurse, it still required the salutary and uniform discipline of an instructor. Up to this point, therefore, as the supremacy of the ecclesiastical power was useful, its outward unity at least was essential; and it was equally the interest both of the guardian and the ward to avoid the indecorous blots of schism.

But in the sixteenth century the European states had passed the period of tutelage. For the most part they were capable of self-government, and stood in need of such an external union only as would combine the welfare of the whole Christian republic with the free and natural expansion of its several members. From this epoch the unity of the church became inefficient, perhaps impracticable, since it was exposed to the accidents of place and circumstance, and to the varying tempers of individuals and nations. By the Reformation, Europe was parted into two principal fragments, which even after their schism retained many points of resemblance, yet whose reunion was impossible, since the rent was at the foundation. Each of the dissident parties, in its attempts at accommodation, admitted the importance of unity as a principle, while each, in its anxiety to form of itself an integral and independent body, confessed the necessity of separation. The equal attraction of these polar forces, from the sixteenth century to the present, has involved Christendom in manifold controversies both of the pen and the sword, and imparted to modern history some characteristics equally unknown to the earlier times of the church, and to every age of the ethnic world. We shall follow Mr. Hallam in briefly tracing the principal features of the change, and of the causes of that singular reaction which, by the close of the sixteenth century, seemed very nearly to have repaired the mischief sustained by the ancient church.

The first of these causes was the disunion of Protestants themselves. In religious dissensions, the language of the weaker party is in favor of toleration, but it is generally the first to forget its own claims to an indulgent hearing, when any fortunate accidents have put it in possession of security or power. The concessions they had extorted at the Diet of Augsburg from the Romish church, the Lutherans refused to extend to their Helvetic or Calvinistic brethren; and, though both asserted a common principle-the necessity of an orthodox faith-yet " this orthodoxy,” Mr. Hallam justly adds, "meant evidently nothing more than their own belief, as opposed to that of their adversaries." They had agreed in demolishing the idea of an infallible church, when the claim to infallibility was set up by a common opponent; yet each of the reformed communities maintained its own exemption from error, and in one breath rejected and appealed to some unquestionable standard of authority. That both parties proved their cause by reason and Scripture was rather an argument in favor of their ancient adversary; since the general consent of the church in all ages, as the Catholics defined tradition, could be met only by proving either that this "general assent" was insufficiently or fraudulently assumed, or by substituting for it a universal consent, or by recurring to the right of private interpretation. But private interpretation the Reformers utterly abjured; or if they seemed, when driven to extremities, to concede it in words, in practice they rigorously denied it, and generally with a zeal in proportion to the success of their cause. A more universal assent their perpetual disputes and irreconcilable animosities prevented them from establishing; nor, under the influence of the fierce and tumultuous spirit of the times, could they calmly dissect church

antiquity, and employ the arguments from essentials only against their various opponents. Thus in the sixteenth century, as in the earlier and darker periods when the church stood between a dissolving empire and its destroyers, men of moderate and truthful dispositions, now that the grosser abuses of the hierarchy were softened or withdrawn, became more anxious for repose than for victory, and preferred the lighter bondage of the ancient faith to the unquiet liberty of the new opinions. The outworks of the church of Rome had been broken down, but its doctrines had not been compromised; and the peaceful but sincere professor might find within its precincts a shelter from the turbulence of the times, and sufficient latitude in its doctrines for the peculiarities of his own belief.

But the ancient church had not merely withdrawn some of its pretensions, and cast a decent veil over its more palpable abuses; a spirit of renovation, coincident with Protestantism, had arisen within its own bosom. "Even in the court of Leo," says Mr. Hallam, "a small body was formed by men of rigid piety, and strenuous for a different species of reform." While they adhered generally to the doctrine of the church, they aimed at a stricter separation from the world, at a more active discharge of sacerdotal duties, the revival of the ancient discipline, and the removal of every just cause of complaint. At the same time, ecclesiastical authority was extended to some quarters where, during the previous era of security or indifference, it had occasionally slumbered. "No Catholic,” says Schmidt, as quoted by Mr. Hallan, "dared, after the Reformation, to say one hundredth part of what Gerson, Peter d'Ailly, and many others had openly preached." And in works of poetry and fiction, the dangerous license of Boccaccio and Ariosto, or the indignant reclamations of those pre-reformers, Dante and Petrarca, would not have passed the censorship of the sixteenth century. Among the consequences of this better spirit in individuals, and of awakening activity in the government of the church, must be reckoned one which enlisted popular enthusiasm on the side of the establishment, and thereby employed against the Reformers one of their most efficient weapons. Several of the religious orders were reformed, others were instituted; and, by recurring to their ancient functions, these Catholic missionaries revived in the sixteenth century, by their eloquence in preaching, their works of charity and mercy, their self-denial and aloofness from the world, the admiration excited by the Franciscans in the thirteenth.

"It must be acknowledged," says Mr. Hallam, with his wonted candor, "that there was a principle of vitality in that religion, independent of its external strength. We readily acknowledge the prudence, firmness and unity of purpose that, for the most part, distinguished the court of Rome; the obedience of its hierarchy, the severity of intolerant laws, and the searching rigor of the Inquisition; the resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic faith; the influence of the Jesuits over education. But these either existed before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand an overwhelming force of opinion. By the side of its secular pomp, however, its relaxation of morality, there had always been an intense flame of zeal and devotion. VOL. II.-No. I.

2

Superstition it might be in the many, fanaticism in a few; but both of these imply the qualities which, while they subsist, render a religion indestructible."*

The Jesuits are "among the links between religious opinions and literature:" within our limits, however, it would be impossible to trace their influence even on the intellectual world alone; while their singular organization as a society, far more compact, intelligent and pervasive than the similar priestly corporations of Babylon, Memphis or Benares, is beyond the province of literary history or criticism. And we have the less scruple in passing them over, since Mr. Hallam has briefly and emphatically described their relation and their services to literature in the following passage:

We have seen with what spirit they took the lead in polite letters and classical style, with what dexterity they made the brightest talents of the rising generation, which the church had once dreaded and checked, her most willing and effective instruments. The whole course of liberal studies, however deeply grounded in erudition, or embellished by eloquence, took one direction, one perpetual aim-the propagation of the Catholic faith. They availed themselves for this purpose of every resource which either human nature or prevalent opinion supplied. Did they find Latin versification highly prized? Their pupils wrote sacred poems. Did they observe the natural taste of mankind for dramatic representations, and the repute which that species of literature had obtained? Their walls resounded with sacred tragedies. Did they perceive an unjust prejudice against stipendiary instruction? They gave it gratuitously. Their endowments left them in the decent poverty which their vows required, without the offensive mendicancy of the friars. . . Their three duties were preaching, confession and education, the most powerful levers that religion could employ. Indefatigable and unscrupulous, as well as polite and learned, accustomed to consider veracity and candor, when they awakened an argument, in the light of treason against the cause (language which might seem harsh, were it not almost equally applicable to so many other partisans), they knew how to clear their reasonings from scholastic pedantry and tedious quotation for the simple and sincere understandings whom they addressed; yet, in the proper field of controversial theology, they wanted nothing of sophistical expertness or of erudition. Whatever may be objected, perhaps not quite so early, to their system of casuistry, whatever want of scrupulousness may have been shown in their conduct, they were men who never swerved from the path of labor, and, it might be, suffering in the cause which they deemed that of God. All self-sacrifice in such circumstances, especially of the highly gifted and accomplished, though the bigot steels his heart and closes his eyes against it, excites the admiration of the unsophisticated part of mankind.

Mr. Hallam thinks that the culminating point of Protestant intolerance was the execution of Servetus, and that a milder spirit may be said *We have slightly altered the arrangement of this passage.