man may make his house a cloister, and collect a library around him for study, and at the same time increase the value of book knowledge, and turn it to practical account, by mixing daily with the men of the world. The present age of the world is pre-eminently practical in its character, and the clergy will not be able to guide it, unless they are ready as well as able-unless they are scientific as well as learned men. Learning, however sound-theology, however deepwill not enable men successfully to grapple with the difficulties which now meet the Church in her great duty of the moral guidance of mankind.

The dangers which beset men at present are not such as arise from ignorance, but from the misapplication of knowledge. All men are now very knowing; multitudes who have never learned the letters of the alphabet are very knowing; they have imbibed the spirit of the age, which is preeminent for intelligence-one in which general information is the rule, and ignorance the rare exception.

The Church itself partakes of this general impulse in many ways: first, in the youths who, before entering the Church, have mingled with their equals in years at school and at college, and have all caught the spirit of enquiry and of enterprise. Secondly, in the number of laymen who, after having been engaged for a time in secular occupations, take orders that they may devote themselves entirely to God by serving in his Church. The number of such cases appears to us progressively increasing; and we reckon them among the most valuable auxiliaries to the cause of truth, and one of the most hopeful signs of the times; for these men know by experience the present form in which the evil works, which is ever equally active, though it changes its aspect to suit the varying temper of the times: and these men bring not only a knowledge of the world, but frequently great scientific knowledge, which cannot be so fully acquired in colleges and lecture-rooms as when it has been made a matter of business, and men have had their intellects sharpened, by science being to them not only an amusement or a theory, but by its being brought home to them in the direct practical form of profit and loss. Scientific infidelity we know, from our own experience, to be the most prevalent and the most dangerous evil of the day-it steals on unsuspected in the most plausible insidious form-scarcely any one can detect it until he has had some experience of its workings; and none can successfully meet and overcome it in others who have not first obtained a victory over it in themselves. Such services, we think, is being rendered by those to whom we allude.

We rejoice to notice also the great advance, both in learning and science, which has been made in our days by Dissenters of every denomination. The schools and colleges which they have recently established are beginning to tell upon the several bodies to which they belong; and the Reviews" brought out lately by the Independents at Manchester, and by the Seceders at Edinburgh, are honourable testimonies to the desire which exists in those bodies for literature of a higher order than that which formerly satisfied them, and of the talent to be found among them, so ably and creditably to answer to the call. We regard the great increase of learning and talent among the Dissenters as one of the most hopeful signs of the times.

But it is to Protestant countries alone that we look with any satisfaction for the present, or any buoyancy of spirit concerning the future; for, when we look to countries where Romanism prevails, there is not one symptom of a cheering kind, and most of the appearances forebode one of two equally terrible catastrophes either a relapse into the superstition and ignorance of the dark ages, or a lapse into absolute and complete scientific infidelity: and when we remember how large a portion of Europe is entirely under the dominion of Rome, and how great is the influence she exercises in those countries which are nominally independent, these things are sufficient to moderate the high expectations we might otherwise form, and to fill us with the most gloomy apprehensions for the future.

The Reformation grew out of that spirit of enquiry which the revival of letters in the fifteenth century had produced; the effects of which revival appeared principally in the laity, and among them was most conspicuous in raising the middle classes. It is in this rank of society that the doctrines of the Reformation take the deepest root; and both on this account, and from their superior numbers, as well as their intelligence, the middle classes have ever formed the chief strength of the Reformation. In Protestant countries the same causes are still in operation-a spirit of enquiry continues-the middle classes are elevated thereby, and ground of encouragement and of hope for the future remains; but it has been the policy of Rome at all times to check enquiry, and to keep down the middle classes, and to depress the laity, as far as possible, to a lower grade. We have a terrible example, at our own doors, of the extent to which this is sometimes carried, in the degradation, superstition, and wretchedness of the Roman Catholic part of the population of Ireland.

VOL. XXII.-U

This is sometimes attributed to the Irish natural character; but we do not find the same extremity of misery in the Protestant parts of Ireland; and we, therefore, think that the difference may, with greater probability, be ascribed to the depressing influences of the Roman priesthood. But few of the continental nations can be much longer kept down: none of them can be thrown back into that state of imbecility and superstition which existed before the revival of letters: they must have a religion in which free scope will be allowed for the exercise of reason—which shall not be incompatible with science and with high intellectual attainments or they will have none at all.

And we know full well that infidelity is rife and rampant throughout nearly the whole of the continent; for, what with the recoil from Roman absurdities in Italy and Rome itselfwhat with communism, antijesuitism, and indifference to all religion in France-and what with Straus and Fichte, and the other forms of neology, in Germany, truth in its highest form is well nigh banished and forgotten; and there seems to be scarcely soil enough for the mere seed or first elements of faith to take root in the heart; and it is a strange phenomenon, but nevertheless true, and of frequent occurrence, that men can perceive, with the most perfect accuracy, the exact force of all other truth save divine truth, and can reason conclusively concerning all the works of God, and yet studiously keep out of view all allusions to the divine Artificer.

Our prospects are not at all brightened by the liberal character of the present Pope; for every day makes it more and more manifest that it is as a Liberal that he is popular, and not as a Pope: and that, if he should now cease to be a Liberal, he would soon cease to be a Pope. That O'Connell, the greatest of modern demagogues, should have the Roman priesthood at his beck, was an extraordinary thing; and that the Pope should so identify himself with the principles of O'Connell, as he has done since the death of the latter, was still more extraordinary: but these things furnish the key to open the equally extraordinary things that are now transacting in Italy, where pope and emperor are coming into collision as in the days of Hildebrand. But times are changed-both must fall back upon the people-and whether it may prove a spark to inflame the populace of every country in Europe, God only knows. As we have already said, our hope lies in the middle classes, and in the Protestant States of Christendom.

And our stronger hope lies in the Church, and in the promises made by Christ to be with her to the end. We know that those who truly belong to the Church, and those who put their trust in God, shall be carried safely through every time of trial; but it is our wisdom to hearken to the warnings that are given beforehand, and to mark the signs of the times and prepare for coming trials, lest by forming false expectations of peace and prosperity we become unprepared for tribulation when it comes, and not only suffer more than is necessary by being taken off our guard, but may, perhaps, lose our faith in things that are true, because we find ourselves mistaken by having placed our confidence on things that are false. Our own expectations may prove fallacious: our trust in ourselves will be vain and will fail us in the day of trial; but faith, resting on the word of God, shall endure every trial, and shall carry us safely through.

ART. II.-History of the Reformation in Germany. By LEOPOLD RANKE. Second Edition. Translated by SARAH

AUSTIN. Vols. I. and II. London.

AMIDST all the changes which the idea of science has introduced into human affairs great stress must be laid upon those it has produced in the mode of writing history. Pure history is merely a record of public events, their causes and effects: whatever additions are made to these are extraneous to the simple subject. Nor, until this distinction is truly understood and observed, can we hope to see the world's history reduced within readable dimensions. The unscientific form of so many past histories must be regarded as one principal cause of those endless digressions and discussions which have swelled them out beyond the bounds of human patience and human life. Uncalled historians, too, have been almost as numerous as uncalled poets. We might ask of many an author, what business he had to write history? For men should be warned that the historian's is an awful task, exposing him who volunteers it to moral dangers which might be regarded as perilling his soul's welfare: he might tremble at the warning, "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned;" for every fact recorded, every inference drawn, every character pourtrayed, is either true or false-litera scripta manet-it cannot be blotted out. And to put the try

ing question, how does a writer of events, dated centuries back, know that he is writing what is true? Is it enough to screen a man from the moral guilt of propagating untruths of facts and inferences because (for example) he has copied from Hume's "History of England?" We fear not.

Historical writers have covered page after page with ingenious guesses and conjectures as to the causes of particular events, which, though they appear under the imposing form of elaborate and learned discussions, are yet but conjectures. The unscientific writer of history meets with an event for which he must account. If it be single, there will, probably, be some simple cause for it: if it is complicated, there will be, probably, an accumulation of causes, which must baffle the best conjectural skill. For mere probability opens a wide field, unenclosed by hedges; and hence it will happen as often as not that, after an enumeration of ingenious causes, the most probable of them all may be the furthest removed from the true one. Now scientific history is opposed to this uncertainty: it asks, do any authenticated records, public or private, exist of the thoughts, and words, and acts, and speeches of the individuals by whom the particular event was brought about? A particular case will help to illustrate our meaning.

A reserved and proud man pursues a particular course of conduct towards one committed to his charge, which seemed so peculiarly harsh as to be attributed to envy, personal dislike, pride, or even the mere love of inflicting pain on a sensitive mind by secret attacks upon its vulnerable points. The results of their daily intercourse, under such continued irritating circumstances, are scarcely short of deep dislike on both sides. Years pass away, and the impression still remains on the mind of the younger that failure in a chosen profession was to be traced up to that connection, until, almost by accident, a letter was produced, written to the elder by anxious parents, dictating plans which accounted, substantially, for all that had happened. This was an original document, preceding the events of the history. We have nothing to do with the propriety or impropriety of the elder, who, feeling himself annoyed by the petulance of the younger, proudly withheld the voucher and authority for all he did. It is enough that this true story illustrates our meaning, that, though facts of conduct may be truly described, yet the supposed causes of them, though not at all improbable in reference to character (i.e., they may be most ingenious conjectures), may yet be so grossly false as to amount to cruel and injurious slanders. An original document alone vindicated a calumniated friend.