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accomplished scholar and divine, we may leave the extracts we have made from his works to make their own impression on the reader's mind. Amongst Baxter's fifty reasons why the Pope was Antichrist,' the twenty-seventh is (we are quoting from memory, and cannot be responsible for the exact figure) be'cause if the Pope be not Antichrist, he hath ill luck to be so 'like him.' We will adopt the form of expression and apply it to our author, and perhaps the reader will be able to follow us in our summary of the character of Bishop Burnet. We think the extracts we have collected together from his writings distinctly prove him to have been a dissembler, a time-server, and a sycophant--a man too prejudiced to understand the force of an argument when it told against him, too obtuse to see the point of a witticism, whether affecting himself or another, too selfish to venture to make sacrifices for himself, and too canny to be able to appreciate them in others. We might have made extracts from his history in evidence of the charge that he was a calumniator of his brethren, and especially of the meek and gentle Sancroft. But his character for assertion of calumnies which he could not prove is too evident to be denied. As to whether he believed what he said, we abstain from offering an opinion, and shall be content to say, that if he was not a deliberate liar, he had ill luck to be so like one.

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ART. IV. The Catastrophe of Santiago. The Weekly Register, February 13, 1864.

THE recent frightful calamity at Santiago has, from the first, refused to be classed among mere accidents-among those visitations of God before which we must hold our peace in awed uninquiring submission. Perhaps the mere vastness of the calamity accounts for this general sentiment. Perhaps it is simple human nature to trace to some cause, and to pursue to some end, any gigantic mischance, the consequence of human mistake or folly; but there are circumstances in this case, which undoubtedly quicken, and--as many say-justify this tendency; and which, from the first, asserted for it, alike in spectator and listener, a moral weight, as a thing full of teaching and of consequences. Not only were the two or three priests who saw the flames spread with what must have seemed miraculous speed-and the lookers on-who in frenzied helplessness had to endure an ordeal only less terrible than what was passing within those doomed walls-engaged in the very moment of agony in seeking a meaning, accounting for, making resolutions, deriving some lessons from the hideous scene enacting under their eyes; but the world of men to whom the news was brought, received it in the same didactic attitude of mind, as a thing from which something was to be learnt; and (in direct opposition to the habit of thought belonging to our time), never for a moment entertained the idea merely as an inscrutable event, over which they could only sigh and wonder. By every one it has been received as something designed to convey a lesson; as something with a meaning, which it is given us to discover and to profit by. It has been assumed on every side that the lives of those two thousand victims cannot have been poured out in vain; they must effect some change in the world's mode of thinking and acting; there must be a purpose in this huge sacrifice-in this concentration of human suffering. An event so startling and appalling must needs, through the agency of pity and terror, enforce some conviction on men's minds, and compel to consideration. We are aware that this natural train of thought is open to grave abuse; that it may, to many persons, on consideration, appear even unreasonable; but this is no argument that it ought to be suppressed as wrong or unjust on the face of it, for we are constituted to look for a Providence in great events, using this word in marked distinction from a Divine judgment.

This need of being accounted for led the priests, in the very

sight of the conflagration, to attribute it to the direct favour and mercy of Heaven. Possibly apprehending that some might call it a judgment, they were driven to assert it a crowning and distinguishing grace; they were compelled to declare every sufferer a saint, and each death a martyrdom; and their country, which hitherto had wanted martyrs, an infinite gainer by this new army of intercessors. And we really do not see that there was anything else for them to say, not only to the miserable relatives, but to themselves. Such an event, happening on such a day, and in consequence of unparalleled exertions to do honour to that day's especial object of adoration, and befalling the particular class who had been most docile to their teaching -who had lived in the dogmas then celebrated, with absolute submission and a very passion of enthusiasm,-and, considering too, that the object there exalted had been systematically set forth to these victims as a more intelligible Providence, a more intimate and familiar guardian, tenderer and more indulgent to human infirmity than even the Redeemer of the world:-in such an event they ought, we repeat, to labour to trace the direct visible finger of Heaven, marking its approval. As honest men they ought to receive it as a strong confirmation of their faith, or it ought to shake their belief to its centre. We do not say that indifferent persons, or members of other communions, would be led to see any particular or supernatural intervention in this event, or that they need regard the catastrophe on that particular day as other than a mere coincidence; but men who teach of the Blessed Virgin as perpetually manifesting herself on especial occasions and crises of men's fate, and working always in mercy of the most intelligible character, and who saw the multitudes whom they had trained in these ideas, struck by death in the moment of prompt obedience and eagerest devotion, they must welcome it as a mark of, we will not vaguely say, Heaven's, but of the Virgin's signal and distinguishing sanction and grace, and of the Divine favour promised by her. This was on the one side a necessary interpretation of the event. The lay inference was as inevitable. If the men of Santiago had not devotion enough to be present at the magnificent celebration that had collected so vast a crowd of women, it is very certain that the sights and sounds of that terrific half-hour would not change indifference into belief; we may say, on the contrary, that coldness or contempt turned very naturally into fury towards all who were concerned in collecting that excited feminine gathering, whether by impassioned exhortation, or reckless splendour of decoration.

Some people have denounced the atheism of the enraged clamourers against priestcraft and 'idolatry,' as though this

were the worst feature of the whole tragedy, but the impartial reader feels that such a spectacle could not be witnessed in utter forgetfulness of the occasion which had lit up the disastrous conflagration; nor could the carelessness of a few subordinate officials, or the want of vomitories' for the imprisoned crowd, be reasonably expected to satisfy the cry for a reason and a cause, which the heart sends up under such terrible appeals. Thus, while the clergy were led by an inexorable logic to congratulate Chili on its new army of martyrs, the laity were led, by what they thought the logic of facts, to denounce fanaticism, and a blind obedience to fanatical teachers, as the very ground and source of their present anguish.

The British public, of course, has viewed the event as a warning against what it calls mariolatry,' which, it sees written with fingers of flame, without nicely considering whether this instruction can be logically deduced from it. The tone of 'enlightened public opinion,' which would interfere with no one's creed, and leaves every soul to the free exercise of its religious convictions, spoke in the Times. But here, again, accident was not allowed free scope as an agent. The event was made a lesson against extravagance and want of moderation: whatever is immoderate entails disaster; whatever we do, whatever we believe, let us be reasonable. A dogma it was explained may even be true in itself, but if held without moderation it ceases to be true, and sooner or later comes an explosion. It has not fallen in our way either to see or hear this calamity called a judgment: most people, indeed, carefully guard against this interpretation; for the most unreasonable Protestant cannot say that the priests' scholars were more guilty in the matter than the priests themselves, and yet these were the victims while the priests escaped. However, we are given to understand that, in certain obscure quarters, the event is made capital of as a judgment-a judgment upon poor ignorant women, maidservants, and children.

The Christian Observer we see, in addition to the train of reflection obvious to a Protestant organ, uses the event as an occasion for (we suppose) backing Mr. Kingsley, without, however, falling into his snare-the snare fatal to rhetoricians, of proper names. It is not very easy to get at the exact truth in that confusion of horrors; but, choosing those reports which reflect most strongly on the priests-it declares its resolve not to be shaken by any counter-statement. It will believe no Roman Catholic priest in the world, even on his oath, in any matter affecting the interest of his Church.

The English Roman Catholic press, in a natural dilemma, finds it an occasion for saying a great many things. Indirectly,

the event gives an opportunity for the use of that copious and resounding vocabulary of abuse, which is its speciality. It is furious against every comment from without. Remarks which seem to us inevitable, they call blasphemous; and as in all public excitements, the second thought of everybody is the Timesthey fly out into transports at that organ's comments; and, because the Times says that if the priests had wished to set the church on fire, they could not have laid their plans better, they assume that the Times charges the priests of Santiago with a deliberate plan for burning church and congregation together. 'It is hideous and horrible,' says the Tablet; it is revolting 'to the mind and degrading to our common nature, that a 'catastrophe so awful should have called forth such comments as the Times and many of the London newspapers have this 'week published.' The Times of Monday, February 1st, refreshed and edified the English public with all the resources ' of its hideous blasphemy; according to the diabolical suggestion of the writer in that paper, the conflagration was more than an accident,' &c. Could the arch-fiend himself insinuate better than this?' &c. Incidentally, this event furnishes an occasion to mark the difference of tone so constantly observable between Roman Catholics of the old stock, and the more zealous body of converts who must, one would think, not seldom disconcert their brothers older in the faith. Thus, in a letter signed Robert Canon Smith,' we find the Virgin's Post-office thus explained away :

'Among other assertions of a Chilian writer, for the purpose of exciting hatred against the clergy, is one to the effect that there was a letter-box into which the superstitious women of Santiago were instructed by Father Ugarte to throw their letters to the Blessed Virgin. The Chilian who wrote this knew well, as the editor of the Register remarks, "that he was giving a maliciously false version of a very simple circumstance, which all Catholics understand." The editor gives a perfectly clear explanation, he says:-" We presume no Christian will deny the efficacy of prayer. We are told on Divine authority, that when two or three are gathered together in the name of the Lord, He is amongst them.

Catholics, it need not be said, believe in the communion and intercession of the saints. Novenas, in honour of particular saints in every country, and of the queen of all saints in all countries, are ordinary incidents of Catholic devotion.

"On these occasions it is a common practice for the faithful to intimate in writing, but anonymously, to one of the priests of the church, their desire that the prayers of the flock might be requested in favour of the 'intention' (which is not expressed) of the writer, A.B. or C.D., or any other anonyme that the postulant may have chosen for the occasion; and before the commencement of divine service the officiating clergyman, whoever he may be, requests the prayers of the faithful for those unexpressed intentions accordingly." This is the whole mystery of the "Letter-box," which has called forth so many vile calumnies and blasphemies, both here and in South America.'-Weekly Register, February 13th, 1864, p. 106.