The philosophy of nature, a science distinct from that called general physics, also acquired a consistence and developements which make it one of the most sublime branches of knowledge of which the genius of man can boast. It is to Kant also that it is indebted for its renovation and its principal bases. The intrepid Schelling has enriched it with the most sublime ideas. The system of Brown, which is only an organized philosophy of nature, originated in Scotland; has been cultivated and developed in Germany; and is despised in France, where it is hitherto only imperfectly known.

With respect to the military science, which is usually treated as an appendix to the mathematical sciences, the north of Germany seems in modern times to have been destined to furnish it with its principal additions. The infant state of tactics before the thirty years' war is known, Gustavus Adolphus was its reformer, and under him this art acquired a new aspect in the fields of Saxony and Bohemia. On this same soil, Frederick II., king of Prussia, nearly a century later, also contending against the same house of Austria, which had been humbled by the Swedish hero, completed the work of Gustavus Adolphus, and brought modern tactics to a degree of perfection, at which it will no doubt remain for the future as far as regards its essential elements.

With respect to the belles lettres, and to modern languages.

Since the reformation redoubled the ardor for a knowledge of the ancient languages, the study of which it rendered more necessary and more general, as well among the Catholics as among the Protestants, it cannot be denied that it contributed greatly to the culture of the belles lettres, and to the restoration of a good taste. In proportion as the classic works of antiquity, those eternal models of the beautiful, genuine and sublime as nature, were more dispersed and read, men's minds were gradually elevated to their pitch, and shook off the barbarism of the Gothic ages.* This revolution had been commenced in Italy by the Greek refugees, who had fixed themselves there in particular. The reformation assisted in propagating its benefits to the European nations farthest distant from this focus.

Nevertheless, a language in which they might give vent to their ideas-a flexible and living organ, by which they might express their living conceptions-was necessary to those in whom the spark of ancient genius had kindled an enthusiasm. The modern idioms were in the uncultivated, rude state in which long want of use had plunged them. In the south alone, the Italian, and, perhaps, the Provençal, its ally, had assumed a purer form. In the rest of Europe they wrote in Latin. Latin was the language of the schools and the books: and what Latin a jargon bearing all the blemishes of eleven centuries of corruption and bad taste. Although the reading of Cicero, and the other masters of good Latin might have ameliorated and purified this jargon, whether good or bad, as in fact it did, this Latin was only the language of a very small number of individuals, and remained a dead letter to the people. Now the higher sciences may, without inconvenience, be well expressed in the language of the adepts: the learned might treat on subjects in Latin, which only the learned were to read.

* See Stock's work, entitled De bonarum literarum Palingenesia, sub et post Reformationem. See also Morhoff, &c.

In this manner mathematics, physics, philosophy, might be tolerably cultivated. But how could they have a literature without a vulgar tongue, without a people; or, as it may be said, without a public? Every one has a right to decide on productions of taste and sentiment. The auditory of a wit or a poet cannot be restrained to Latin scholars; he requires all classes, all ages, all sexes; he must speak the language of courts and of taverns, of closets and camps, of citizens and peasants; his business is with all minds, all hearts, and more particularly those most ingenuous, most open to all impressions, with those who know least of Latin. While Vaniere can scarcely number a hundred readers, Delille will find thousands. In order, therefore, that each nation might have a literature, it was necessary to write in its language; it was necessary that all classes should be accustomed to read; a great event, a powerful interest, a subject which should become the favorite topic of every one, which should agitate all minds, which should find access every where, was wanted : then alone would authors be found willing to write for the people, and a people who would read their writings with eagerness. The reformation was such an event, and became the active source of a general and inexhaustible interest to all classes.

The reformation, conceived by men of learning, and brought forth within the narrow boundary of a Latin speaking public, could never have been consummated, if it had remained within these limits. It was requisite that it should quit them, that it should become the cause of the multitude, that it should gain millions of heads, to arm millions of hands in its favor. An appeal to the people was the first step of the reformist, and this must necessarily be made in their language. When once the people were, in this manner, called upon and made judges, the opponents of the reform were also compelled to appear and plead at this tribunal, and were not sparing in their efforts to retain or bring back the multitude to their side. This controversy, which had left the schools, and become the great business of the whole of Europe, was the first active principle by which modern languages were really fertilized. Before they were only jargons, as rude as the vulgar who made use of them. A few amorous sonnets were not enough to give them that richness and flexibility which they required, to become capable of treating on all descriptions of subjects. The universal animosity between the papists and the reformists; the long troubles of Germany and Switzerland; those of the league in France; those of the Low Countries; those of Scotland and England, became so many furnaces in which the different languages of these countries were elaborated and purified. In his Histoire de l' Esprit Humain, (Tom. i, p. 258,) the Marquis D'Argens, after having described the state of letters previous to the sixteenth century, says :"In these times of ignorance Luther appeared, like one of those cheering lights, which, after a long tempest, announces to mariners an approaching calm. This great man did as much good to science, as he did injury to the court of Rome. He showed the absurdity of the errors which long respect and ancient custom had rendered sacred; he not only ridiculed the opinions of the theologians, but their language and their manner of writing. He was seconded in his undertakings by Calvin; and it is to these disputes on religion that we are

indebted for the restoration of the fine and good style. The theologians of the different parties eagerly strove with each other to write correctly, and to prejudice their readers by the purity of their style."

The German nation acknowledges Luther for the reformer of its literature and its idiom. One of his first cares was to publish a faithful translation of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, executed by him and some of his co-operators, from the original. It may be conceived with what avidity this immense work was received, and what a general sensation it excited. It is still taken as authority, and is the principal classic foundation of what is called high German. In this idiom he wrote the greater part of his treatises, letters, discourses, and poems, the collection of which forms twenty-two quarto volumes. One of his first writings was that entitled Of the Christian Liberty, at the head of which he placed an epistle dedicatory, as decent as open and liberal, to Pope Leo X. "No writer for many ages (says M. Georges Muller, of Schaffhausen, in his Lettres sur les Sciences,) had seen his writings bought up with such avidity, and so universally read from the throne to the cottage. They were all reprinted several times, pirated, hawked over all the empire. The popularity, the natural ease, the energy of expression which prevailed in them, a doctrine which cheered and elevated the soul, gained him the most upright and judicious of all classes. A multiplicity of pamphlets, loose sheets, songs, which have reached us from that period, testify the universal ecstasy which this vivifying light inspired." Wickliff had previously translated the New Testament into English. As soon as the reformation had rendered the reading of the sacred books of the first necessity to the people of England, Tindal, Roye,* and others, published a version of them. The same thing occurred in France, where the reformation multiplied the French Bibles, and placed them in the hands of every one.† When the Catholic theologians saw these great mysteries of religion become the prey of the ignorant, they resolved to countermine them, and to publish also their translations, their commentaries, their explanations of the sacred books. We shall content ourselves with observing generally, that the European languages were perfectionated by these religious and political controversies, by these translations and explanations, which is sufficient to the object in discussion. I

It would, doubtless, be hazarding too much, to say more of the in

*This is probably intended for Rogers, who in conjunction with Coverdale, revised Tindal's translation, and added the prefaces and notes from Luther's Bible. This translation was dedicated to Henry VIII. in the feigned name of Thomas Matthews, and is known by the name of Matthews's Bible.-T.

It is true that in his Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, p. 332, Father Simon asserts that the first French Bible was that of Anvers, of 1530, revised by the theologians of Louvain, and that thus "it was the Catholics who were the first authors of the French Bibles read at present." But Father Simon did not know that that Bible was the work of Jacques Lefebvre of Estaples, commonly called Father Stapulensis, the confidant of the queen of Navarre, suspected with good reason of being a partisan of Luther, declared to be a heretic by the Sorbonne, and deprived of his doctorate. This translation of the Bible was also used as the basis of that of Geneva.

We must not omit here the real services rendered by Bayle to the French language, which he contributed greatly to the production of a taste for, which he made capable of being modelled to every subject, and even of treating on matters which before had only been treated of in Latin.

fluence exerted on the belles lettres by the reformation. So many different causes have contributed to their culture, and to the different modifications they have experienced in the various European nations, that whoever enters this labyrinth will be in danger of missing his track, of blending objects, and of giving ingenious conjectures instead of certain results. The Protestant nations, which may be called the Germanic race, have such a similarity of features among them in their manners, language, and climate, that we must be careful of taking a conformity in the characters or genius of their literary productions, for the immediate effects of the great revolution which was common to them. The spirit of each people, so powerfully modified by such a number of events, and of generations, has its own tendencies, its natural dispositions, which cannot be attributed to one insulated circumstance. Without doubt, the unanimity with which the Protestant nations of the present day adopted the reform as soon as it presented itself, was only a result of this mutual conformity of their spirit. Their progress in this respect (the matter being adopted in general) has always tended to simplify religion, to render it more strict and more intellectual, remaining inviolably attached to Deism, and to that morality which is the basis of it. The manners of the Protestant are also incontestably better and more grave than those of the Catholic nations. Is it because these nations are Protestant that they have acquired this character; or, is it because they have this character that they became Protestant? I must leave the decision of this question to others. I am only desirous of showing the influence of this character on the culture of the belles lettres. The French and Italian literature is rich in a multitude of works, in which love is treated with the most exquisite delicacy and grace. Such a number of these agreeable productions would be sought for in vain among the English or Germans; I might even dare to assert, that the few they have are merely imitative, and that they are not indigenous plants in their soil. Among them, love would not dare to appear escorted by the desires, and associated with voluptuousness. Their Bocaces, Grecourts, and Lafontaines, have not yet been born. Should they appear they would be coldly received; and it was not by the softened imitations of this description, which Wieland hazarded, that he conciliated the most of the esteem of his countrymen. In a word, their songs, their romances, the ideal world of their poets, are totally different from what is seen among their neighbors. I dare not give this as a consequence of the reformation, but rather as a coincidence. It is, however, very deserving of notice, that the two most sublime epic poems, in which the God of Christians, and the inhabitants of heaven are the actors, and in which these actors speak a language worthy of them; the two most wonderful pictures of celestial innocence and virtue, that of the fall of the first human beings, and that of their redemption, are Protestant productions. If the too short golden age of Italian poetry had not produced the Jerusalem of Tasso, Paradise Lost and the Messiah

* Nevertheless it may also be added, that the inhabitants of the towns and the country, who hear Divine service regularly in their own tongue, who sing psalms, canticles, and rich pieces of poetry in it, written as they are in Germany by the best national poets, acquire by that means a crowd of ideas, a taste and a notion of the beautiful, which can never be attained by those who assist at a service performed in bad Latin, which they do not understand.

would have been the only two epic poems of which modern literature could have boasted.

Finally, the investigating and reasoning spirit, to which the reformation opened a free career, as has been shown above, was also introduced into the domain of the imagination, and took such a post in it as it was capable of; that is to say, it took refuge in the theoretic department of the belles lettres, in the systems connected with sentiment, taste, the beautiful and sublime, &c.

It is known, that in proportion the Protestant literati have done more on these subjects, and perhaps have penetrated more deeply into them than the others. It is among them that the rational part of literary criticism has assumed the form of a science, under the name of esthetics. This name was given to it by Baumgarten, a German, from a Greek word signifying sentiment. Lessing, as well as Sulzur and his followers, have published some valuable pieces of this description. Kant has founded a new esthetic school, in his Criticism on the Judgment. He has had numerous and ingenious disciples: the most remarkable among them, both in theory and in practice, is the illustrious Schiller.

With respect to the fine arts.

It is when a pompous worship requires magnificent temples, imposing ceremonies, and a striking appearance; it is when religion exhibits the sensible images of the objects of public veneration, when it rests on a sacred mythology; when the earth and the heavens are peopled with supernatural beings, to whom the imagination can lend a form; it is then, I say, that the arts, encouraged, ennobled, reach the summit of their splendor and their perfection. The architect, called to honors and wealth, conceives the plan of these basilisks, these cathedrals, the appearance of which inspires a religious awe; of which the rich walls are decorated with the master pieces of art. This temple, these altars are adorned with marble and the precious metals, out of which sculpture has formed angels, the blessed, and images of illustrious men. The choirs, the galleries, the chapels, the ⚫ sacristies, are decorated with pictures hung in all parts. Here, Jesus dies on the cross; there he appears on Tabor, in all the resplendance of Divine majesty. Art, so much the friend of the imagination, which can find gratification only in the heavens, goes there in search of its most sublime creations; a St. John, a Cecilia, and more particularly a Mary, that patroness of all tender and ardent minds, that virgin model of all mothers, the mediatrix of mercy between man and his God, the august and touching Elysian being, of which no other religion offers a resemblance or a model. During the solemnities, the choicest stuffs, precious stones, and embroidery, cover the altars, the vessels, the priests, and even the partitions of the holy place. By the most exquisite songs, by the harmony of orchestras, music completes the charm. These encouragements, of such powerful efficacy, are renewed in a hundred different places; the metropolises, the parishes, the numerous convents, the simple oratories, vie in splendor, and captivate all the powers of the religious and devout soul. Thus the taste for the arts, assisted by such a powerful lever, becomes general; artists are multiplied, and rival each other in their efforts.