CXXXI.

Luther was a native of Eisleben, in Saxony, and, though born of poor parents, had received a learned education, during the progress of which he gave many indications of uncommon vigour and acuteness of genius. His mind was naturally susceptible of serious sentiments, and tinctured with somewhat of that religious melancholy which delights in the solitude and devotion of a monastic life. The death of a companion, killed by lightning at his side in a violent thunderstorm, made such an impression on his mind as cooperated with his natural temper in inducing him to retire into a convent of Augustinian friars, where, without suffering the entreaties of his parents to divert him from what he thought his duty to God, he assumed the habit of the order. He soon acquired great reputation, not only for piety, but for his love of knowledge and his unwearied application to study. He had been taught the scholastic philosophy and theology which were then in vogue by very able masters, and wanted not penetration to comprehend all the niceties and distinctions with which they abound; but his understanding, naturally sound, soon became disgusted with those subtle and uninstructive sciences, and sought for some more solid foundation of knowledge and of piety in the Holy Scriptures.

CXXXII.

Scarcely any private quarrel ever happens in which the right and wrong are so exquisitely divided that all the right lies on one side, and all the wrong on the other. But here was a schism which separated a great nation into two parties. Of these parties, each was composed of many smaller parties. Each contained many members who differed far less from their moderate opponents than from their violent allies. Each reckoned among its supporters many who were deter

mined in their choice by some accident of birth, of connection, or of local situation. Each of them attracted to itself in multitudes those fierce and turbid spirits, to whom the clouds and whirlwinds of the political hurricane are the atmosphere of life. A party, like a camp, has its sutlers and camp followers, as well as its soldiers. In its progress it collects round it a vast retinue, composed of people who thrive by its custom or are amused by its display, who may be sometimes reckoned, in an ostentatious enumeration, as forming a part of it, but who give no aid to its operations, and take but a languid interest in its success, who relax its discipline, and dishonour its flag by their irregularities, and who, after a disaster, are perfectly ready to cut the throats and rifle the baggage of their companions. Thus it is in every great division; and thus it was in our civil war. On both sides there was, undoubtedly, enough of crime and enough of error to disgust any man who did not reflect that the whole history of the species is made up of little except crimes and errors. Misanthropy is not the temper which qualifies a man to act in great affairs, or to judge of them.

CXXXIII.

Without these intervening storms of opposition to exercise his faculties, he would become enervated, negligent, and presumptuous; and in the wantonness of his power, trusting to some deceitful calm, perhaps hazard a step that would wreck the constitution. Yet there is a measure in all things. A moderate frost will fertilise the glebe with nitrous particles, and destroy the eggs of pernicious insects that prey upon the fancy of the year; but if this frost increases in severity and duration, it will chill the seeds, and even freeze up the roots of vegetables; it will check the bloom, nip the buds, and blast all the promise of the spring. The vernal breeze that drives the fogs before it, that brushes the cobwebs from the boughs, that fans the air, and fosters vegetation, if augmented to a tempest, will strip the leaves, overthrow the tree, and desolate

the garden. The auspicious gale before which the trim vessel ploughs the bosom of the sea, while the mariners are kept alert in duty and in spirits, if converted to a hurricane, overwhelms the crew with terror and confusion. The sails are rent, the cordage cracked, the masts give way; the master eyes the havoc with mute despair, and the vessel founders in the storm.

CXXXIV.

Besides the native population of Ceylon there are still to be found in the island remnants of the original Dutch and Portuguese settlers. A Ceylonese Dutchman is a coarse, grotesque species of animal, whose native apathy and phlegm is animated only by the insolence of a colonial tyrant: his principal amusement appears to consist in smoking; but his pipe is so seldom out of his mouth, that his smoking appears to be almost as much a necessary function of his animal life as his breathing. His day is eked out with gin, ceremonious visits, and prodigious quantities of gross food, dripping with oil and butter; his mind, just able to reach from one meal to another, is incapable of further exertion; and, after the panting and deglutition of a long protracted dinner, reposes on the sweet expectation, that, in a few hours, the carnivorous toil will be renewed. He lives only to digest, and, while the organs of gluttony fulfil their office, he has not a wish beyond. The descendants of the Portuguese differ materially from the Moors, Malabars, and other Mahometans. Their great object is to show the world they are Europeans and Christians. Unfortunately their ideas of Christianity are so imperfect, that the only mode they can hit upon of displaying their faith is by wearing hats and breeches, and by these habiliments they consider themselves as showing a proper degree of contempt towards Mahomet and Buddha. They are lazy, treacherous, effeminate, and passionate to excess; and are, in fact, a locomotive and animated farrago of the bad qualities of all tongues, people, and nations, on the face of the earth.

CXXXV.

In fact, the whole trial, from first to last, is sufficient to show the helplessness and inadequacy of the ordinary law to repress an illegal organisation and agitation of large dimensions. Conspiracy is a loosely defined offence, and real criminals as frequently escape the penalties reserved for it as the innocent suffer by reason of its elasticity. You may sweep into one net persons who have all sorts of objects, good or bad, who have done things of different degrees of guilt, and who have used entirely different language; a host of different issues may be put before the perplexed jury; and they may be invited to treat in much the same manner persons who merely rant about "Cromwellian land fiends," or air Red Republican doctrines, and others who meditate assassination and prompt midnight crimes. We say nothing of the inordinate length to which every prosecution for conspiracy must run-a peril partly escaped in this instance only because the AttorneyGeneral dropped the nineteenth count in consequence of the threat of the traversers' counsel to deluge the court with rebutting evidence. It ought to be pretty clear from the course of this trial that a State prosecution for conspiracy must always be a cumbrous and ineffectual means of saving society from anarchy or bringing to justice men who have made up their minds to thwart the operation of the law.

CXXXVI.

Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another individual, armed to the teeth-not, however, like the martial sheriff and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly weapons of polemical theology-was very near causing a general outbreak. A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of their preachers in a field outside the town. Suddenly an unknown individual in plain clothes and with a pragmatical demeanour interrupted the discourse by giving a flat contradiction to some of

the doctrines advanced. The minister replied by a rebuke, and a reiteration of the disputed sentiment. The stranger, evidently versed in ecclesiastical matters, volubly and warmly responded. The preacher, a man of humble condition and moderate abilities, made as good show of argument as he could, but was evidently no match for his antagonist. He was soon vanquished in the wordy warfare. Well he might be, for it appeared that the stranger was no less a personage than Peter Rythovius, a doctor of divinity, a distinguished pedant of Louvain, a relation of the bishop, and himself a church dignitary. This learned professor was easily triumphant, while the poor dissenter, more accustomed to elevate the hearts of his hearers than to perplex their heads, sank prostrate and breathless under the storm of texts, glosses, and hard Hebrew roots with which he was soon overwhelmed.

CXXXVII.

The general condition and extent of the upper eocene strata show that during the epoch when they were deposited northern Europe as a whole was considerably elevated, so that the former seas became lakes in many cases. One such lake occupied the Paris basin, and its floor still subsists as the great bed of gypsum, which forms the plaster of Paris quarries at Montmartre. The gypsum overlies the thick layer of white limestone from which the façades of the tall houses in the new boulevards are built; and from its organic remains, put side by side with the bones and leaves of these ancient English rivers and deltas, we can glean another chapter in the half-deciphered history of the later geographical ages. Here in England the forests, even at this late period, retained a generally tropical aspect, though the northern trees continued their southward march before the gradually accumulating winter snows of the still temperate pole. The fauna also marks a progressive modernisation. Three-hoofed ancestral horses, no bigger than a donkey, wandered on the plains, for which their feet were as yet but little specialised. Pigs that were half hippopotamuses, or hippopotamuses that