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bladores; in fact, it was only by them that most of the Indian tribes were introduced to civilised life. . . . . Altogether the treatment of the Indians was as gentle as their childishness and the security of the Spanish dominion allowed. . . . . Whereas the colonies of the other European nations regularly brought about the extermination of the native barbarians wherever they came into contact with them, the Spaniards succeeded not only in preserving but in converting and partially civilising them. Horrors were indeed committed, such as an unbridled soldiery commit in every war; but only whilst the conquistadores remained almost independent of the government at home. . . Every colonising nation that chooses, may learn of the Spaniards how to proceed with humanity towards the original inhabitants."*

It is impossible to reproach M. de Montalembert with the constancy with which he persists in hoping in a hopeless cause, and refuses to recognise the deeper causes which make liberty impossible in France. It is because of his confidence in his own high spirit that he refuses to despair of his country. Yet the reproaches he hurls at the government and its sycophants manifestly touch a vast proportion of his countrymen. The servitude of the whole nation is justified by the servility of the majority. The long duration of a despotism, exercised by a man of no conspicuous virtues and of no conspicuous ability, bespeaks a nation singularly fitted for such a yoke. Against the resistance of moral forces the material force of the imperial bayonets could not permanently prevail: "Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,

Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.”

The victims of the imperial despotism are for the most part themselves its instruments. Tollenda est culpa, ut cesset tyrannorum plaga.

Yet though the Count's appeal to the better feeling of his countrymen seems likely to meet but a feeble response, the decline of the imperial power is betokened by many familiar signs-by none more significantly than by the folly of the present prosecution. A legal discomfiture would not be more fatal than the moral injury of an ignoble victory over the best remaining elements in France. Nor need we wait for the end to say, that the Emperor, who was hailed as the saviour of society, has signally failed in the mission it was given to him to fulfil. When he is gone, the revolution, for which the only remedy is freedom, will be found to have increased in energy * Roscher: Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 1856, pp. 146, 147, 149, 151, 153.

in consequence of his boasted repression. It was of no avail to restore Barabbas to his fetters, without at the same time loosening the bonds of Christ.

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With reference to the remarks on the Indian debate, we need not allude to certain minor errors which prove that the mind of the writer was not in India. We will only say, that the memorable despatch of the 7th June receives too little attention; and that it is a manifest injustice to speak, in the face of it, of a change in Lord Canning's Oude policy produced by the remonstrances from home. But, in substance, the Count's views on our Indian empire are indisputably true, and such as cannot be too often or too loudly repeated. He has understood that this semi-Protestant country has the glorious mission of representing in Asia the civilisation of Christianity. The cause of religion will be more truly served by our victories in India than it ever was by the arms of the Crusaders. With the English dominion must stand or fall the hope of converting and civilising Asia; and our troops are fighting the battles of the Pope as much as of the Queen. Whilst admitting that M. de Montalembert is, in the present instance, the true exponent of a great Catholic principle, and that the Catholic religion is threatened in his person, it was incumbent upon us to specify the points in which his essay less fully and accurately corresponds with our Catholic feelings. They are not new or unexpected to those who have followed his previous career; but at no period of his public life has he stood forward with more honour and universal esteem, as emphatically the champion of the Catholic cause, than at the present moment.

It is a significant coincidence, that whilst the chief organ of Catholic opinion in France is being prosecuted by a despotic government, the first Catholic journal in Germany is undergoing similar treatment at the hands of the Catholic and constitutional government of Bavaria. The Correspondant and the Historischpolitische Blätter are the most powerful and consistent defenders of ecclesiastical independence, of political liberty, and of freedom of thought. This Protestant country has certainly one great superiority over the so-called Catholic states of the Continent,-here at least it is not government interference that will attempt to crush the independence of a Catholic Review.*

* See note on p. 432.

429

Literary Notices.

History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great. By Thomas Carlyle. (London, Chapman and Hall, 1858. Vols. I. and II.) Most of the reviews of this book that have appeared are deprecatory of criticism rather than actually laudatory. There are so few among the writers of the day who have not experienced more or less the influence of Mr. Carlyle's former writings, that almost all are interested in the preservation of his fame. Yet there is no English historian who has a right to be judged by a higher or severer test, for no one has spoken more deeply and truly on the character and dignity of history. All history," he writes, in one of the lucid intervals of his Latter-Day Pamphlets, "is an inarticulate Bible, and in a dim intricate manner reveals the Divine Appearances in this lower world. . . There is no biography of a man, much less any history or biography of a nation, but wraps in it a message out of heaven, addressed to the hearing ear or to the not hearing." Of this conception of history Past and Present and The French Revolution were not entirely unworthy. The disgust which Mr. Carlyle feels for the men and things of his own time seemed to give him a clearer eye for the past than most of those possess whose vision is distorted by the prejudices of their age. He showed an intelligence of things which no other English historian has understood. He dwelt upon the invisible impersonal forces that act in history, and appreciated, often with rare sagacity, the true significance and sequence of events. But he was unable to follow the course he had pointed out, and failed even to maintain himself on the high ground he had reached. He could not distinguish in history what was unknown to him in religion: thus he fell to the exclusive contemplation of certain typical individuals, whose greatness appeared to supply what he wanted, an object of worship, and personified invisible elements in visible men. And now the belongings of his hero possess so great an importance that they distract his attention from him; he invests with an absurd dignity not only his relations, but their goods and chattels, and allows merely material things to eclipse the human interest of his subject. It is a history made up of eccentricities. This is the way that Mr. Dickens writes novels; for whom the spectacles of an elderly gentleman, a pair of mulberrycoloured hose, or a wandering American pig, have greater attractions than any psychological problem. Mr. Carlyle told us long ago, "I have to speak in crude language, the wretched times being dumb and deaf." But if the history of the house of Brandenburg was worth relating, as a prologue to the life of Frederick, in two volumes almost equal in bulk to Hume's History of England, it was worth giving in its natural colours. Instead of that, however, events and persons the least suggestive of humorous ideas are converted into a list of extravagant oddities. We have an agreeable episode concerning a "thrice-memorable shoe-buckle," swallowed by the father of Frederick "31 December 1692;" and are informed with pharmaceutical accuracy that "a few grains of rhubarb restored it safely to the light of day." The prince who so narrowly escaped an untimely end was "an unruly fellow, and dangerous to trust among crockery;" a solid, honest, somewhat explosive bear," to whom Leibniz, "with his big black periwig and large patient nose" and "bandy legs," was not likely to teach much metaphysics. The pendant to this flattering sketch of the philosopher is

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"Prince Eugenio," with a "nose not unprovided with snuff, and lips in consequence rather open." In Albert the Bear's time "the Wends are finally reduced to silence; their anarchy well buried, and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted over it." There is a succession of pleasing pictures of "a poor old anatomy, or lean human nailrod;" betitled, betasselled, elderly military gentleman, of no special qualities, behung with titles, and no doubt a stomach in the inside;" " solid dull man, capable of liquor among other things, not wiser than he should be;" and "an ugly dragoon-major of a woman." We are told how "simple Orson of a Prussian majesty" falls in with "a bepainted, beribboned, insulting playactor majesty," and how he subsequently "looks down like a rhinoceros on all these cobwebberies." In this wise Mr. Carlyle beguiles the prodigious tedium of his subject, and refreshes himself after the study of" watery quartos.' He abuses at every turn, in sentences as humorous and epigrammatic as they are unjust, the German historians, who will be rather surprised at the way he has done their work for them. What most provokes him in their books is the absence of curiosities. He makes much of a certain old gun called Lazy Peg, and distinguishes it above all other old guns: "I have often inquired after Lazy Peg's fate in subsequent times; but could never learn any thing distinct. The German Dryasdust is a dull dog, and seldom carries any thing human in those big wallets of his." Judged by such canons, what a dull dog he must deem the Attic Dryasdust Thucydides! There is, however, very little pretence of going to the real authorities for the purpose of mitigating the insipidity of the early part of the history. These absurdities are sometimes relieved by bits of the old rugged eloquence, and by felicitous passages, such as the description of the Emperor Charles IV.: "He kept mainly at Prag, ready for receipt of cash, and holding well out of harm's way;.... much blown to and fro, poor light wretch, on the chaotic winds of his Time-steering towards no star." His judgment of Bayle's philosophy is worthy of his better time: "Let us admit that it was profitable, at least that it was inevitable; let us pity it and be thankful for it, and rejoice that we are well out of it. Scepticism, which is there beginning at the very top of the world-tree, and has to descend through all the boughs, with terrible results to mankind, is as yet pleasant, tinting the leaves with fine autumnal red."

In such a book it seems hardly fair to take note of errors in matters of fact; but in one place Mr. Carlyle, contrary to his wont, makes a clumsy show of quoting an authority to establish the truth of a story which it has long been disreputable to repeat. He judiciously confines his research to a writer who has been dead a hundred years. The Emperor Henry VII., he says, "died on a sudden, poisoned in sacramental wine" by a "rat-eyed Dominican;" one of the crown

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ing summits of human scoundrelism which painfully stick in the mind." Ptolemy of Lucca, himself a Dominican, is one of the accusing spirits." So far from it, Ptolemy says in one place merely, "viam universæ carnis ingressus est" (Muratori Scriptores, xi. 1208); and elsewhere, with the addition "a fide dignis accepi qui fuerunt presentes," "Moritur autem xxiiii Augusti morte naturali, quamquam aliqui malevoli dixerunt quod fuit datum sibi venenum in eucharistia" (Ibid. 1240). Now long before Ptolemy was printed, he was quoted, on the authority of manuscripts, as one of the accusers of his order. When the text was published, first of all in an extract by Bzovius, then completely by Muratori, it was found that the accusation was contained in an interpolation, with the heading "additio." Whereupon, of course, the Catholic

historians were accused of fraud; and about the time of Mr. Carlyle's chief authority, Köhler, the Protestants triumphed more loudly than ever. At last the original work was found from which the interpolated passage was taken. It proved to be by Henry, canon of Constance, from whom most of the German chroniclers afterwards borrowed the tale of poison. The origin of the calumny is easy to find; but here we have only wished to expose Mr. Carlyle's way of adopting it.

Die vortridentinische-katholische Theologie des Reformations-Zeitalters aus den Quellen dargestellt von Dr. Hugo Laemmer. (Berlin, Gustav Schlawitz, 1858).-The Pre-Tridentine Catholic Theology of the Period of the Reformation, from the original Sources. By Dr. Hugo Laemmer. Dr. Laemmer is a German Protestant, of a school corresponding to the Anglican High-churchman. He is attracted by Catholic doctrine, and yet does not choose to make his submission to the Church; so he tries to find a via media for himself, that will at once satisfy his yearnings and excuse his self-will. With this view, he has made a profound study of the writings of the Catholic divines who opposed Luther and the Reformation before the Council of Trent gave the authoritative refutation of the new heresy; and, strange to say, he finds in them that which he accepts as the pure religion. Hitherto we have heard the most romanising Protestants say that the Reformation was excusable because the Church of that age was so corrupt; and we have known even a Catholic offer to accept as the foundation of an argument, "Granting that a reformation was wanted, which was the true one, that of the Thirty-nine Articles, or that of the Council of Trent?" But Dr. Laemmer rejects both reforms, and makes out that the real traditional Christianity was that which Luther attacked, before it had been retouched and furbished by the Council. He is of Mr. Froude's mind, who hated the Reformers on the one hand, and called us Catholics "wretched Tridentines" on the other. Still, this learned work, however one-sided in intention, is a real contribution to the defensive armory of the Church. The indefectible Church must be as pure at one time as at another: we cannot admit that she was unfaithful in 1520, more than in 1850; and therefore we welcome the detailed proof of that which we were sure of previously to all proof, and are glad that this proof comes to us, by the by, from an enemy-from a man whose last thought it was to write in our defence, but whose own untenable theory led him to investigate a line which we wanted to be cleared. We should like to see his book translated; for we think it one calculated to make a deep impression on the thoughtful Anglican, who will find the last vestige of excuse struck from under his "Reformers," who are here proved to be just what Mr. Froude guessed them to be, "irreverent dissenters" from the truth; and that his Church, so far from being a return to primitive purity, is the mere protest of the flesh against the pure law which condemns it. While we have writers of Carlyle's stamp, assuming day by day, with increasing dogmatism, the purity and beauty of the Reformers' characters, and the necessity of the steps they took to dash the idol to the ground, it is instructive to have placed before our eyes the true and authentic portrait of this "idol," dispassionately drawn by a retired student, unconscious of the popular tumults without, and regardless of the unmeaning affirmations of the mob, "Great is the Luther of the Reformation."

[Since writing the above, we have had the satisfaction of learning that Dr. Laemmer has become a Catholic; the almost secure result of honest examination, in whatever direction it is made.-ED. R.]

Home and the Homeless: a Novel, By Cecilia M. Caddell, 3 vols.

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