Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Soleure, resolved should take place, but they determined that the cantons of Zurich and Basle, and the towns of St. Gallen and Mulhausen, should have no part in the renewal of the alliance." The federal government, in fact, arrayed itself thus early against the Reformation. Geneva at this time was not numbered amongst the cantons of Switzerland, but was only an ally. That the distinction of race can have very little to do with the boundaries of the Reformation, is proved by this-that in no country were the reformed doctrines received more zealously than in France. This may not be a familiar truth to many, but a perusal of the history will confirm the assertion. But they encountered here a resistance such as in no country have they ever been able to overcome. During a turbulent and unsettled period, the Reformation did make way; but when the kingly power is again strong, and ranged on the side of the Church, it is seen directly that it must succumb. It must succumb, or France must be disremembered. But though it is impossible to admit that a Celtic population may not be as good Protestants as a Teutonic, we may observe a noticeable difference in the manner in which the new doctrines were embraced in France and in Germany. The Frenchman had no sooner received his new light, than he was for convertingand that by all means in his power-the rest of his countrymen; he was impatient of what he called idolatry, and the moment he had deserted the Virgin Mary, he was for throwing her image into the river in spite of the adoration of all her remaining votaries. Farel meets upon a bridge a procession "which was advancing, repeating prayers to St. Anthony, and having at its head two priests with an image of that saint; Farel seizes the holy hermit out of the arms of the priests, and throws it from the bridge into the river, 'Poor idolaters!' he exclaims to the people, will you never leave off your idola try? Priests and people stood still in amazement. A religious dread seemed to arrest the multitude. But the torpor soon ceased. The image is drowning!' exclaims one of the crowd, and to the silence succeed transports and cries of fury. But Farel, we know not how, escaped their rage." D'Aubigné gives se veral such anecdotes. No sooner had an assembly of French Protestants been gathered together, than they begin to manifest an intolerance against the public worship and public processions of the Catholics. Contrast this impatience, this impetuous proselytism, with the slow progress of the Lutherans. For a long time they submitted to the old ritual, though they had embraced quite incompatible doctrine. "The doctrine had been preached for four years in Wittemberg, and yet the ritual of the Church went on as usual." "There was a new doctrine," D'Aubigné continues, "in the world, but it had not given itself a new body. The language of the priest formed a striking contrast with the proceedings of the priest. He was heard thundering from the pulpit against the mass as an idolatrous worship, and then seen descending and taking his place before the altar to celebrate the pompous ceremony with scrupulous exactness. Every where the new gospel resounded beside the ancient ritual." Admirable instance of Teutonic forbearance! Let but the man possess his own soul in peace, and what ritual or other practical arrangements you make, does not greatly distress him. There Our Luther himself but for one doctrine which had become the very life and soul of the man, would have been persuaded or alarmed into an accommodation with the Church of Rome. was one period in the negotiations between the two parties when, by mutual concessions, a compromise appeared possi ble, if Luther could have but relinquished his doctrine of "justification by faith alone." Writing of the great German reformer, Mr. White says: "Hungering after better things than the works of the law-abstinence, prayers, repetitions, scourgings, and all the wearisome routine of mechanical devotion-he dashed boldly into the other extreme, and preached free grace-grace without merit, the great doctrine which is called, theologically, 'justification by faith alone.'" This other extreme was the sheet-anchor of Reformation. And it is curious to notice that a doctrine, on which Protestants are now divided, was precisely the doctrine which irrevocably separated the separated the Reformed churches, in the first instance, from the great Catholic hierarchy, so far as the Reformation depended upon Luther and his faithful disciples, it was the only vital point on which no compromise was possi- | energetic, that can arrest or determine a ble. The doctrine of transubstantiation, movement like that of the Reformation. which to the Protestants of a later period It ran its destined course. And now, seemed the most astounding error of the looking round upon the nations of Europe, ancient Church, was maintained to the we may assuredly congratulate those last by Luther. Some slight modification countries in which, owing to favorable cirhe may have made, which is indicated in cumstances, the doctrines of the Reformed controversial language by the substitution Church were able freely to develop themof the term consubstantiation, but if selves. There is no room for doubt or Luther could have kept his disciples upon cavil on this head. It is not a question of that line at which he himself rested, there subtle or disputable tenets. There is this would have been no incurable schism on broad matter-of-fact distinction between this head. D'Aubigné gives us a most Protestantism and Catholicism-the one /spirited and graphic account of the con- is the religion of the Book, the other of ference held upon this subject before the the Priest. In the one, every peasant Landgrave at Marburg, between the Swiss consults his Bible as his sacred oracle; in reformer, Zuinglius, and Martin Luther. the other, the Priest is his sacred oracle. Luther was supported by Melancthon, The immense influence this must have on Zuinglius by colampadius. The Land- the education of the people starts to view grave sat behind a table; "Luther taking at once. In the one, a grave responsibility a piece of chalk, bent over the velvet is thrown on each man's mind, and he is cloth which covered it, and steadily wrote prompted to reflect seriously and studiousfour words in large characters. All eyes ly on the most momentous subjects of hufollowed the movement of his hand, and man thought; in the other, such studious soon they read, HOC EST CORPUS MEUM. reflection is habitually repressed. When Luther wished to have this declaration reflection does come, as at times it cercontinually before him, that it might tainly will, it takes the form of sudden, strengthen his own faith, and be a sign to impetuous, extreme opinion. We have his adversaries." And no Catholic could not the least doubt that if the Reformed have adhered more pertinaciously to the doctrines had been allowed by the civil literal meaning of his text. "I differ, and power to spread generally over France, shall always differ," he exclaimed. "Christ the political revolutions of that country has said, This is my body. Let them would have been conducted in a less vioshow me that a body is not a body, I re- lent manner, with more steadfast aim, and ject reason, common sense, carnal argu- to a far happier result. France would ments, and mathematical proofs. We have been spared much crime and much have the word of God. This is my disaster. body," he repeated, pointing with his finger to the words he had written; "the devil himself shall not drive me from that. To seek to understand it, is to fall away from the faith." Zuinglius objected, that Christ's body had ascended into heaven; and if in heaven, it is not in the bread. Luther replied: "I repeat that I have nothing to do with mathematical proofs. I will not, when Christ's body is in question, hear speak of a particular place. I absolutely will not. Christ's body is in the sacrament, but it is not there as in a place." Then, no longer content with pointing his finger at the text he had written, he seized the velvet cover, tore it off the table, and held it up to the eyes of Zuinglius and Ecolampadius. "See! see!" he said, "this is our text; you have not yet driven us from it, and we care for no other proof." Happily it is not one mind, however VOL. XLV.-NO. II. Action and reäction is as much a social as it is a mechanical law. Knowledge and the arts-whatever we embrace under the name of civilization-led to the Reformation; but the Reformation, again, (this reflective and studious religion of the Sacred Book, to which man is to bring his understanding and his heart,) reäcts on civilization. It maintains a steadfast intellectual energy, whose influence is felt in every department of human enterprise; even in trade and commerce, in colonization and war, it is the steadfast and somewhat pensive Protestant that ever shows the most persistent zeal and determination. We will not harp upon the right of private judgment; we prefer to say that if you remove from the individual the responsibility of thinking on religion-a responsibility he is often too willing to be relieved of and to throw upon his teacher-you abstract from the 16 intellectual and moral life of man one of its most important elements. Of all the countries which have received the Reformation, none has displayed the subtle, constant influence it has on the national character in so striking a manner as Great Britain. The national characters of the English and of the Scotch can not be said to be eminently peaceful, and in that respect it may be said they are not preeminently Christian. But what marks the character of both people, and of the Scotch in particular, is that steadfastness of purpose which comes from the union of high physical power and a constant habit of reflection. We say that this habit of earnest reflection is due in a great measure to the religion of the Book. Each father of the family who his Bible and reads it to his children is a priest himself, and looks from the page before him directly up to God. Such a man will walk sure-footed through life, whether he treads the pavement of a commercial city, or marches under the heat of an Indian sun with a rifle in his hand. opens The eighteenth and last century of Mr. White's agreeable volume displays, as he says, a still widening prospect, new nations coming into being, and the old extending the sphere of their activity. "The characteristic of this period is constant change on the greatest scale." The United States rise into existence; Russia and Prussia advance upon the arena; England creates by conquest an empire in India, and enters on her still wiser course of colonization in Australia. These are topics far too vast for us here to touch upon. Mr. White is not deficient in a certain spirit of patriotism, or John Bull ism, as it is sometimes called. The following passage, with which we must quit his agreeable pages, suggests something for exultation, and something, also, for grave reflection. We are not, it has been often said, "a military nation." "Not a military nation! How this astounding proposition agrees with the fact that we have met in battle every single nation, and tribe, and kindred, and tongue on the face of the whole earth, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and have beaten them all; how it further agrees with the fact that no civilized power was ever engaged in such constant and multitudinous wars, so that there was no month or week in the history of the last two hundred years, in which it can be said, we were not interchanging shot or saber-stroke, some where or other on the surface of the globe; how, further still, the statement is to be reconciled with the fact, perceptible to all mankind, that the result of these engagements is an unexampled growth of influence and empire-the acquisition of kingdoms defended by millions of warriors in Hindostan; of colonies ten times the extent of the conqueror's realm, defended by Montcalm and the armies of France-we must leave to the individuals who make it; the truth being, that the British people is not only the most military nation the world has ever seen, not excepting sible to say when these pages may meet the the Roman, but the most warlike. It is imposreader's eye, but at whatever time it may be, he has only to look at the Times newspaper of that morning, and he will see that either in the East, the West, in China, or the Cape, or the Persian Gulf, or on the Indus, or the Irrawaddy, the meteor flag is waved in bloody advance. And this seems an indispensable part of the British map, and so absorbed in speculation, so padded position. She is so ludicrously small upon the with cotton, and so sunk in coal-pits, that it is only constant experience of her prowess that keeps the world aware of her power. The other great nations can repose upon their size, and their armies of six or seven hundred thousand men. Nobody would think France or Russia weak because they were inactive. But, with us the case is different: we must fight or fall." (P. 482.) We sincerely hope this is not quite an accurate account of the position of England. Indeed, the whole paragraph is written with a certain abandonment, a certain exuberance of spirits that warns us that the author does not desire to be understood quite literally. We are warlike enough, though the statement in the above extract may be somewhat exaggerated; but we trust we are not in that perilous and frightful position that " must fight or fall." Foreign wars are not necessary to our own security as an independent people. we If the military power of France greatly exceeds our own, the danger of an invasion is not lessened by sending the largest portion of our troops to India. But we must bear in mind that, for the purpose of defense, we have not to raise a force to encounter the five or six hundred thousand troops of France; we have only to raise a force equal to such an army as France can transport to our shores. This, notwithstanding our smaller population, we can effect. We could especially keep up such an artillery, and a militia so well practiced in the rifle, that even in times of profound peace a powerful defensive army might soon be assembled. The only real danger to England lies in that "ignorant England could but learn to spend their impatience of taxation" and that habitual thousands systematically, and for proimprovidence which render her negligent spective ends, they might save the milof her necessary defenses, naval and mili- lions they occasionally squander, and rest tary. The people will rush into a war secure within their island-home. without counting the cost, and burden themselves with millions upon millions of debt; but if a single ship rots in the harbor without having received a hostile shot in her hulk, the cry is raised that it was built for no purpose, and that the money ought to have been saved. A reckless extravagance alternates with a wretched parsimony. If the people of to facilitate reference. We must now close Mr. White's book. We have run through it rapidly and with pleasure. Here and there it has seemed to us that a little more sobriety of tone or manner would be an improvement. We suggest that an index to the volume would be a useful addition; the brief headings of each division are not enough From the North British Review. CHATEAUBRIAND AND HIS TIMES. * lently; and it is to be remarked, that, since that time, the works that, in literature, for instance, have been most famous, and have had the best right to be so, have not been in strict conformity with the tendencies of the French character, or with the genius of the French tongue, the perfect development whereof is visibly marked in the illustrious writers of the age of Louis XIV. No man has exercised over modern French literature so great an influence as Châteaubriand. After the catastrophe of '89-93, by which every tradition was destroyed, every edifice overthrown, every connecting link snapped, whether in politics or religion, in morals, society, or literature-after this period of confusion and barbarism, nothing remained to France but the love of movement, noise, and conquest, and a thoroughly perverted From 1789 to 1816 the "literature of taste in the arts. Never, probably, was. France" would be a word almost devoid the taste of a nation so completely-in of sense, were it not for Châteaubriand. some respects, so irretrievably-vitiated; He alone prevents the chain from breakfor there are points on which to this day ing asunder, which connects the literary no improvement is observable. From the epoch of Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, and hour when to the love of the impure and the men of the eighteenth century, with the the distorted, was added the love of the epoch made glorious from 1814 until now, glaring and the gaudy-when the clatter by so many writers and thinkers of great and show of the Empire succeeded to the power and elevation. We would, howwould-be Roman and Greek Republican- ever, merely register here the undeniable ism of the Revolutionary days (both extent of Châteaubriand's influence, not its equally false)-from that hour the ap-quality. We are disposed to esteem the preciative powers of the public mind in France were diverted from their natural bent, the genius of the people and of the language was changed, and changed vio *M. de Châteaubriand-Sa vie, ses écrits, son influence sur son temps. By M. VILLEMAIN. 2 vols. Paris: Michel Levy. quality of that influence an exceedingly bad one. We are disposed to believe that all that was so eminently deteriorating in the power exercised by Jean Jacques Rousseau over the youth of his time-all that was so essentially weakening and Corrupt, so conducive to selfishness, vanity, and above all, to self-glorification-as to take me for a fool; but I will have him cut to pieces on the steps leading to my palace !"* And a short while after, when, to save the life of his cousin, (Armand de Châteaubriand,) the hero of M. Villemain's book addresses a petition to the Dictator, he does so, in spite of himself, in such terms, that Napoleon, receiving the letter from the hands of Josephine, crushes it in his hand, after perusing it, and throws it into the fire. This alternate attraction and repulsion between Bonaparte and Châteaubriand, which begins in 1800 and endures till the return from Elba, is a feature in the life of both not to be left unstudied. "After all, Sire, do not forget," exclaimed courageously M. de Fontanes to the Emperor, in the midst of one of his most violent outbreaks of rage-"do not forget that his name renders your reign illustrious, and will, by posterity, be always mentioned immediately after your own. He can not overthrow your sovereignty; he has but his genius; but by right of his genius he is immortal in your age!"t We will not at this moment pause to explain why we think that M. de Fontanes considerably overrated the merits of Châteaubriand; one thing is certain, namely, that at the time those words were spoken, and for a full quarter of a century after, all France, without perhaps a dozen dissident voices, would have echoed the opinion, and, with M. de Fontanes, pronounced Châteaubriand the honor and glory of the age. revived and brought into fresh activity by Châteaubriand. René, the very worst, and therefore the most indisputably influential of all Châteaubriand's productions, has far more affinity with the genius of Jean Jacques than with any thing else in the whole world of literature-far more even than with Werther, to which it has often been erroneously likened; while Valentine, Jacques, and the greater part of Madame Sand's immoral creations, derive more directly their origin from René than from any other source that can be assigned to them. It is scarcely possible to find a writer of fiction in France who does not owe a large portion of his talent and of his individuality to Châteaubriand. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive of the existence of a great number of the dreamers in prose and poetry of contemporary France, if you abstract for a moment, in your imagination, the fact of the preexistence of René. Of this most immoral but finely-written work, there is a trace in almost every writer of the class we have named. Hugo escaped it, perhaps, rather more than the others; but Lamartine owes a large portion of what he is, both in prose and verse, to Châteaubriand; Madame Sand owes to him fully as much as she does to Rousseau, and even among the more serious students of history and of science during the Restoration, you recognize the involuntary submission to an influence that is not, we again repeat, in accordance with the genius of the language or of the race. Where an influence has been so great Châteaubriand is an individuality worth and so long-enduring, where it is so im studying in other respects than in merely possible to deny either the extent or the literary ones. He is, from a curious con- strength of it, the man who has exercised course of circumstances, in perpetual an- it, is without any doubt a worthy subject tagonism to Napoleon Bonaparte; and, of study for the historical, the political, perhaps for the very reason that there or the purely literary student. A univer was at bottom a strong attraction of each sal influence exerted, supposes a peculiar towards the other, when the repulsion state of the public mind, and you can not, established itself, it was an invincibly in this case, separate the agent of the inviolent one. When these two, who had fluence from those he acts upon. It is all at first seemed destined to act together, very well to say, that those upon whom were definitively and irrevocably severed, he made an impression were wrong to they seemed to acknowledge the force of allow themselves to be thus impressed; some law common to both, and in virtue that may or may not be true, and has to of which they both hated each other in the be examined later; but the fact of the same way. "Does Châteaubriand fancy I impression produced, and produced unidon't understand the meaning of his allu-versally, denotes a certain phase of public sions ?" exclaims the Emperor, after the opinion. What the large majority of a publication of an article in the Mercure, of which paper the author of René was the editor "does he think I do not know what he would be at? He seems *“Il croit que je suis un imbécile, que je ne le comprends pas. Je le ferai sabrer, sur les marchies de mon palais !"-Chap. vii. p. 161. + Chap. vii. pp. 161, 162. |