6

have given uncatholic meanings to catholic forms, or have made merchandise of the faith; but we never have had a Loménie, De Brienne, a Dubois, a Teucin, a Talleyrand. Had such men appeared in English society, they would have been in some form. or other overtaken by the Law Ecclesiastical. In France the Church had vigour and consistency enough to force on the desolation of Port Royal; to crush the Jansenists and Quietists. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the like energy, putting in force a like machinery, would have speedily weeded the Church of such prodigies of vice as those we have named, or would have compelled them to adopt the art of hiding' in deference to the force of public opinion. But the Divine One has said, 'If the salt have lost its savour!' The possibility of a large part of the Church becoming corrupt, is one that we should have ever before us, lest in the blind conviction of our own faultlessness, we betray ourselves, and the nations, with whose eternal destinies the Church is charged, to destruction. Ecclesiolatry is a dangerous thing. It cannot be urged indeed that no wonder the Church of France was visited as it was, when the Jesuits were banished, and the Church itself stood in such a suspicious attitude towards the Pontiff. But it was the Pontiff who disbanded the great Society; and it was under the Gallican Bossuet, that the French Church achieved its most dignified position. To the revolting degeneracy of the French Church, then, we trace chiefly, and above all other causes-and for this reason we have placed it last-the dread visitation of the Revolution. And recalling to mind how many prelates and priests openly apostatised, how their falling away made room for the manifestation of the whole spirit of misrule, we cannot help being filled with awe and astonishment at the foreshadowing thus presented to us of what shall be in the end of the days, when Terror and Revolution will be wherever man is.

We welcome Professor Yonge's book for the very simple reason, that of all the teachings of History save that one Divine story, there is not one the moral and lesson of which so deeply concerns the nations to keep alive and fresh upon their thoughts. That terrible convulsion was so full of Apocalyptic terror, that of all modern interpreters of the last Book in the canon, they seem the most trustworthy and wise who seek the echo of S. John's thunder in the events which swept away the House of Bourbon. When Bishop Butler in his garden put that memorable inquiry about a national insanity, he would have wondered, had he lived, at seeing the realization of his scarcely-admitted conception in the crisis of 1789. As long as this lesson is remembered, it will never more be said that the Vox populi' is the 'Vox Dei;' unless by the Dei' we understand a Fate or a

Brahm. So long as that lesson is before us, so long will it be humbly remembered that no mental and intellectual culture, no political blessedness, can guarantee the security of society. The French Revolution is far and away the sublimest instruction ever given to humanity, since that humanity in its representatives was gathered round the Cross of God. And it is fortunate for our own time that this truth is generally admitted, if not always consciously asserted. True it is that the commerce between the nations has popularized among us the fictions of the ex-minister Thiers, and the more innocent fancies of the poet statesman Lamartine. But since the thrice honourable recantation of Romilly, England has produced no known Gallic vindication. Ah! is it possible that ever the ears of all the nations should cease to ring at the bruit of that incomparable catastrophe, in which a nation so famed in arts and arms, so rich in saints, so adorned with poets in every department wherein the creative faculty of man can expatiate, so illustrated with all the historic humanities, passed as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, from its pride of place, was so abruptly and fearfully demonized, as for years to know only the change from the fires of political exciteinent to the waters of terror and death! The old adage was wrong, and the Subito turpissimus' is true. Violence had killed the old royal spirit of judgment in the earth. The Salmonean thunders of the Vatican, even these were no more. The crusading energy is done with; there is machinery enough to guide the hand which shall stab a Huguenot prince, and skill enough to reason away the oath which binds the subject to a heretic king; but, in the breaking up of all faiths, the central and infallible power of Christendom, save for that last cry of his priests for leave to burn the heretics, is as though he was not. Some blessed hierarchical souls inly crowned with martyr grace, and in the strength of the Divine Sufferer, encountered death. But, great God, where are the nine?' And these witnesses in sackcloth taken away, who so long 'let' and hindered by their influence the development of the evil, the 'iniquity of the Amorites' soon became 'full.'

Let us hear one whose prophetical predictions are not ours; whose horizon probably is not ours; who, nevertheless, as Gibbon before him (not that we mean any comparison), often unconsciously vindicates the teaching of inspiration. Speaking of the rise in the last hours of feudal France, of a noblesse of lawyers,' of commerce and of literature, he goes on to say, that beside all there was French philosophism:

'Here, indeed, lies properly the cardinal symptom of the whole wide

1 They formed eleven-twelfths of the Assembly!

spread malady. Faith is gone out, scepticism is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates. No man has faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending himself; it must ever go on accumulating. While hollow languor and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of the Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing is certain ? That a lie cannot be believed? Philosophism knows only this; her other belief is mainly that in spiritual supersensual matters no belief is possible. Nay, as yet, the contradiction of a lie is some kind of belief; but the lie with its contradiction once swept away, what will remain? The five unsatiated senses will remain; the sixth insatiable sense (of vanity); the whole demonic nature of man will remain, hurled forth to rage blindly without rule or rein; savage itself, yet with all the tools and weapons of civilization: a spectacle new in History.'-Carlyle's Fr. Rev. I. b. ii. c. 2.

Had the writer added the seventh sense of intellectual pride the sketch would have been more complete, and more expressive of the Scriptural idea.

In conclusion. From the home of our obscurity and unworth, we render thanks to God for the good work of the Empress of the French in collecting all memorials of the last of the queens of France. A nation cannot be wholly lost which can be recalled to the emotions of pity, and can be brought to taste the delicious humility of repentance. An acknowledgment of this kind is specially due to the memory of Antoinette. Her Imperial Majesty, too, may perhaps in time be induced to place some memorial in the Church of S. Margaret, where, undistinguished among the dead, lie the remains of that dear child who, in the Temple-name not inappropriate-learned, under the stern teaching of a rare adversity, to be conformed to Christ. France reckons in her annals a Saint, founder of the House of Bourbon, -one of the very few men who really was entitled to canonization. May she awaken to the realization of a yet higher blazon, that to her belongs that bright and, if blemished, yet unstained being, who, in the unconquerable majesty of her womanhood, and in her faith, which no whips and scorns of time could quell, stands forth as the noblest type of her sex in all Christian time since the Mater Dolorosa' of us all. Her life of suffering and her death of shame, abide the most pathetic lessons that the Christ-anointed sovereigns of Europe have ever been presented

with.

Nor she alone speaks. From the passionate life of Henry, and the guile of his son; and the vanity and selfishness of the great monarch, and the incestuous chambers of the fifteenth Louis-from the click of the guillotine, the din of the Assembly, and all the glare and agony of revolutionary Paris, let us turn and watch the last moments of the last of the Bourbons. 'The day before that which was his last, he had said—the tears

1 And what and if the strong delusion be sent ?

running down his cheeks-" Still alone, and my mother in the next room." When one spoke loudly on a previous day, he had said, "Don't speak so loud, for they might hear you overhead; and I would be sorry they should hear I am ill, it would alarm them." They were his mother and aunt, now dead. On the 8th June, he said to one who showed him some kindness, "Be consoled; I shall not suffer long." This person seeing him stretched out quite motionless and silent, said, "I hope you are not in pain." "Oh yes!" he replied, "still in pain, but less; the music is so fine." There was no music-no sound of any kind reached the room. "Where do you hear the music?" "Up there." "How long?" "Since you were on your knees. Don't you hear it? Listen! Listen!" And he raised his hand and opened his great eyes in ecstasy. Gomin continued silent, and after a few moments, the boy gave another start of convulsive joy, and cried, "I hear my mother's voice amongst them!" and directed his eyes to the window with anxiety. Gomin asked once, twice, what he was looking for; he did not seem to hear, and made no answer.

'It was now Lasne's hour to relieve Gomin, who left the room, and Lasne sat down by the bedside. The child lay for a while still and silent: at last he moved, and Lasne asked if he wanted anything? He replied, "Do you think my sister could hear the music? How she would like it!" He then turned to the window with a look of sharp curiosity, and uttered a sound that indicated pleasure; he then (it was just fifteen minutes after two P.M.) said to Lasne-Lasne took his hand and bent over to him-“I have something to tell you." There was no more to be heard

the child was dead.

Oh! sublime and pathetic, yet warning voice, with which a kingdom and race passed away for ever!

1 Croker's Essays, p. 296.

233

NOTICES.

MR. GREGORY SMITH'S collection of detached Essays, published in various periodicals, add one, and a valuable, volume to the series which was well commenced by the first Essays and Reviews,' by Mr. Church. A general title, approximately appropriate but somewhat vague, has been selected, 'Faith and Philosophy' (Longmans), which we like less than the book itself: for it seems to suggest, what Mr. Smith would be the last to accept, a division between the Christian habit of mind and its best instrument. The last Essay, that on Comte's system, is the most sinewy; and we shall look for Mr. Smith's aid in combating that science, falsely so called, which has at least this value, that it clears the field. Comte has done some service in demolishing most of the old idols and jargons, and when he has the field to himself and a single adversary, the Gospel need have no fears for the result. The Church has suffered from the assault not being concentrated. We are told, and by a considerable authority, that modern thought is gathering itself together in the direction of Positivism and of Comte's system alone. So much the better for the Church.

Scriptural Studies: our Church and our Times' (Saunders and Otley), are in their way a creditable performance; creditable, that is, to a certain uninstructed amiability and good intention on the part of the writer. He --or it may be she-is one of those good people who think that a right judgment on all points ecclesiastical and religious comes as a matter of course to every one who desires to be right. The present writer's temper is one from which we cannot withhold sympathy. But why should he write? He will not instruct, though he will show his readers that he is a writing person. But this is all.

Mr. Ffoulkes's second part of his very able historical work, 'Christendom's Divisions' (Longmans), has appeared. The work seems to have outgrown its original title, or rather original plan. As we understood Mr. Ffoulkes's object, it was, and with a reference to the present position of the Church, to investigate the isolated schisms, and their isolated teachings or attempts at teaching. In fact, however, and it is a melancholy one, the history of the divisions of the Church is found to be the history of the Church itself; and the present author is embarked on the vast ocean of troubles whose waves and waters spread over some seventeen centuries. In his elaborate treatment of the Council of Florence Mr. Ffoulkes uses for the first time materials new to the Church historian. Bishop Alexander Forbes has earned an hereditary right to comment on the Articles. His recent work, Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles' (J. H. Parker), contrasts very favourably with the Bishop of Ely's monograph. We have at present only the first volume; but the first Articles, being more purely theological than occasional, are most suited to the Bishop of Brechin's mind, which is one unusually suited to dogmatidiscussion. He is one of the very few writers of the day possessed of a theological mind of the old and accredited type. Not the least interesting portion of his volume is the Introduction—a letter to Dr. Pusey—in which the Bishop, with great care, points out the exact relation which the Articles of the Church of England have to the various Reformed branches of the