have looked for hitherto. In some respects it is not quite worthy of the occasion or the man. It was not for Earl Russella man trained in the politics of the last fifty years-to speak of the Secession conspiracy as "the uprising of a community of five million people." Considering the circumstances of the case, it was hardly for him to apologize for "the mere fact of rebellion" by historical precedents that suggest a lurking sympathy with its cause. With the whole

later history of the Alabama, the Florida, the Georgia, and the Nashville, as the world knows it, the real complaintthat British ports are still suffered to be the naval base of operations against a friendly power, and that captured ships, without the sentence of any prize court, are suffered without remonstrance to be burnt on the open sea is pitifully evaded by the admission, that "we allowed a ship to leave the port of Liverpool which afterwards committed depredations on their commerce." And surely the minister who was party to the singular mixture of violence and concealment that characterized the Trent diplomacy has little right to attack the warning speech of Mr. Sumner as "tending to the bloody end of war between these two nations." We also censure Mr. Sumner's rhetoric; but we fear his real offence is in his facts. Let these facts, if possible, be explained, or fit reparation made through friendly negotiation; at least, it is neither wise nor right that they should be forgotten. Meanwhile, we accept the motive and temper of Earl Russell's speech as ominous of good. And we respond cordially and frankly to such sentences as these, which we are glad at this time to copy from such a source:

"Let us recollect that we are descended from the same ancestors; that we have the same inheritance of freedom; that many of our institutions are identical; that thus united, having the same spirit of law, having the same spirit of literature, having the same spirit of freedom, we ought, when this unhappy contest is over, to embrace one another as friends; and that we in the Old World, and they in the New, ought to be the lights to promote the civilization of mankind."

VOL. LXXV. - 5TH S. VOL. XIII. NO. III.

38

It is well said by Mr. Gillett, in the Introduction to his voluminous history, that the earlier Reformation in Bohemia has been unduly obscured in the splendor of interest and achievement belonging to the religious revolutions of the sixteenth century. But his words imply too much, if they mean that the world has been indifferent to the name or fate of him who has, perhaps, the purest as well as most tragic fame of all the great Reformers. The noblest historical picture that has been seen in this country- we are almost ready to add, or in Europe either simply concentrates and renders vivid what we suppose to be as widely felt an interest as is apt to be felt in any actor on a scene so remote. And though the details of that story have not till now been spread before us on a scale proportionate to those of Luther or of Orange, yet we have to look back to the fifty pages of Milman, or the brief outline usually accorded to the Council of Constance, to realize how much was needed to bring our knowledge up to the scale of our sympathy and our understanding. All students of that premature but heroic effort to put the claims of conscience above the authority of the visible Church, have occasion to thank the author of these volumes for his faithful and painstaking labor.

For a book of popular interest, Mr. Gillett has made his work too large. An historical student of those times requires the documentary evidence in full for the sake of the facts, and the philosophical student needs them for the light they throw on the laws of opinion and the motives of human conduct. Such will not only pardon, but be grateful for, the length at which the points brought before the Council are set forth, and for the patience with which the earlier movements of thought in Bohemia are exhibited. But we do not find, as in the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," that the book is its own justification. It is far from having the nerve, the fire, the easy handling and vivid presenting of the mass of details that go to make the history, which require and vindicate so voluminous a work. It would do better service, probably, with half the bulk. And, with the majority of readers, this is a serious evil. It seems to us, also, that it errs by disproportion of parts; giving too much space to the details which interest the biographer, or more specially the theologian, and too little to the historical movement at large, and to the episodes which mark that cruel and devastating revolution wrought in Bohemia. Still, it is better to accept than criticise the plan which a diligent and zealous author has had in view. The interest of the main subject makes the partial mistake of less account.

Among the points which will attract the general reader, we would mention the striking sketch which is given of Bohemia in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and of its noble capital, Prague, as one of the

*The Life and Times of John Huss; or, The Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century. By E. H. GILLETT. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 8vo. 2 vols.

chief centres of European art and culture, with the wise munificence of the Emperor Charles IV., to whom it was the chief imperial seat; the early incidents in the life of Huss, showing how a certain ascetic temper, and a sympathy almost morbid with the spirit of the early martyrs, prepared him for the singular part he was to play in the great revolution of religious thought; the details of the trial, as showing the topics and style of his fearless charges on ecclesiastical corruption; and the clear though too rapid survey which is made of the events of nearly two and a half centuries, closing with the great desolations inflicted in the Thirty Years' War. The martyrdom of Huss himself, and of his companion, Jerome of Prague, extend a considerable space into the second volume.

Hardly any period of human history, in the general view taken of it, has seemed one of tragedy so unrelieved as that noble effort at religious independence in the fifteenth century, which sprang out of the corruption and division of the Church, and was crushed by the remorseless spirit of that corruption, and the efforts at compromise to bridge over that division. But the unscrupulous betrayal of Huss to his persecutors was a crime that not only avenged itself in the storm of war which burst upon Bohemia, but rankled in the conscience of Germany for more than a century, and had its full share in nerving the great spirits of the Reformation to their task. Not only, by its seeming impunity and triumph, it encouraged that lewd and insolent temper in the Papacy which "proved at length its ruin, but by the spirit of pathetic and noble fidelity it displayed, and the singular interest that clung to the story, it persuaded the hearts of men, both that the overthrow of spiritual tyranny was needed, and that the work was service and sacrifice to the God of truth. And the writer of the work before us deserves the gratitude of the public, by his attempt to place that earlier Reformation, with the points of great religious interest contained in it, in as clear and full a light as we have been accustomed to in those more famous events which were needed to develop its true importance.

MR. BEECHER does not appear to his best advantage in a printed volume. With some of the very highest merits as platform oratory, his style has some of its worst defects, being turgid, diffuse, and manneristic to a degree quite unpardonable for the reader who only sees him in the coolness of the blood. The splendid rhetorical gifts, the voice and presence, the histrionic skill, the infinite and changeful vitality, the keen appreciation of the temper of an audience, the ready wit to take advantage of it, above all, the magnetism of the real occasion itself, are all wanting. Paper and type tell less than half; and that, far the less brilliant and impressive part.

The new volume of sermons,* caught many of them hastily as they were uttered, and printed in the next morning's newspaper, or else taken from a series published at the rate of two a week for months or even years together, have, naturally, only such literary merit as belongs to the chance words of a bold, able, and popular religious orator; and

*Freedom and War: Discourses on Topics suggested by the Times. By HENRY WARD BEECHER. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

such other merit as comes from the events into which they are poured. The sermon style, with the textual matter that makes the preface of most of them, are simply an encumbrance. We do not go to a volume on "Freedom and War" for our pious reading or our Scripture exegesis. The reader skims half the bulk of matter as he can, to come at the pith and marrow. One thing he seeks in the book, and one thing he finds, the phase of the public events of the last four years that struck and was reflected successively in the speaker's mind. In this single view the book has an undoubted value. There is also something more, which is implied in this, fruitful hints and glimpses as to points of public policy, and a manly, patriotic, Christian manner of speech in dealing with them. Any well-thought system of public policy - even consistency of opinion in treating such as do occur it would be unreasonable to look for and unjust to demand. As a specimen of the style, we copy the following from the Discourse entitled "The Battle set in Array," preached April 14, 1861 :

"There has been a spirit of patriotism in the North; but never, within my memory, in the South. I never heard a man from the South speak of himself as an American. Men from the South always speak of themselves as Southerners. When I was abroad, I never spoke of myself as a Northerner, but always as a citizen of the United States. I love our country; and it is a love of the country, and not a love of the North alone, that pervades the people of the North. There has never been witnessed such patience, such self-denial, such magnanimity, such true patriotism, under such circumstances as that which has been manifested in the North. And in the South the feeling has been sectional, local. The people there have been proud, not that they belong to the nation, but that they were born where the sun burns. They are hot, narrow, and boastful, — for out of China there is not so much conceit as exists among them. They have been devoid of that large spirit which takes in the race, and the nation, and its institutions and its history, and that which its history prophesies, the prerogative of carrying the banner of Liberty to the Pacific from the Atlantic." pp. 93, 94.

*

Ir is a principle of collectors and relic-hunters, that every scrap of a great man's writing is intrinsically precious. Only on this principle can the volume of Voltaire's hitherto unpublished letters, which the Junior Coquerel has so carefully prepared and edited, be regarded as valuable. Of the one hundred and twenty-eight letters in this volume, not one would have any special worth, if written. by anybody else. Nearly all are mere slight notes, confined to matters of fact, neither wise nor witty. Most of them are occupied with the affair of the Calas family, which has already been abundantly treated by M. Coquerel in a previous volume. There is no discussion of "Toleration," and the title in this regard is quite misapplied. Only in a few of the letters does the sceptical and mocking spirit of the great foe of the Church appear, and there is a singular absence of his peculiar sarcasm. In the thirty-ninth letter he pleasantly says that he knows that the Protestants will "all be

*VOLTAIRE. Lettres Inédites sur la Tolerance. Publiées avec une Introduction et des Notes par ATHANASE COQUEREL Fils, Auteur de Jean Calas et sa Famille. Paris: J. Cherbuliez. 1863. 12mo. pp. xii. and 308.

damned in the next world, but that it is not just that they should be persecuted in this world"; and in the fifty-first letter he remarks, that one may insult the human race without any risk, since no one will take the insult to himself, but that it is not safe to attack any particular sect. Two or three such observations as these are all that redeem the volume from dulness.

As a "justifying" Appendix to his story of John Calas, M. Coquerel has, perhaps, done well in publishing this volume. It proves conclusively that the interest taken by the philosopher of Ferney in the fortunes of the martyr of Toulouse was not feigned and not selfish; that the vindication of the memory of Calas, and the restoration of the family to their rights, were mainly owing to the exertions of this unexpected friend. In no circumstance of his life does Voltaire appear to more advantage than in the zeal, the skill, and the persistence which he brought to this obscure matter. One new character, however, the volume introduces to notice, the Protestant minister Paul Moultou, upon whom the Biographical Dictionaries, even in their latest editions, are strangely silent. A remarkable article in the Revue des Deux Mondes of March, 1862, by Saint-René Taillandier, had excited our curiosity to learn more of this hitherto unknown friend of religious freedom. In this volume we find that Paul Moultou was prized by Voltaire for a long series of years as a philosopher, a scholar, a noble man, and a true friend. He is addressed always with more than politeness, with affection, respect, and admiration. Though not a rationalist in the modern sense, and retaining to the end his Evangelical faith, he becomes in these revelations of Voltaire (and, we may add, of Rousseau), a prominent pioneer of the liberal theology of the nineteenth century.

HISTORY OF LITERATURE.

To collate the manuscripts of Petronius was a fitting task for the scholar who has determined for us the age in which he lived. All that the libraries of Europe afford in the way of material for the restoration of the text of Petronius so long obscure and corrupt has been brought together and arranged by Dr. Beck, with that careful research and that masterly skill which have placed him among the best scholars of the age. And though there may be but few competent to appreciate his work, it becomes us all in the interest of letters to applaud it. For it is only thus, by scientific investigation, by unwearied effort, not by flippant criticism or dogmatic assertion, that any advance is to be made in knowledge, any new ground won from that great sea of oblivion which forever threatens all earthly things. It remains for Dr. Beck but to finish and crown his labors by an edition of Petronius which shall embody at once the results of his researches and his criticism. In all the Roman literature there is no work like the Satyricon of Petronius. With the exception of the Metamorphoses of Apulejus, not for a mo

*The Manuscripts of the Satryicon of Petronius Arbiter described and collated, By CHARLES BECK. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. Printed at the Riverside Press. 1863.