against your Majesty, or to renounce our allegiance, but ""because you call us heretics, and we believe that we are We have our learned men, your Majesty has yours. "Let the question be discussed in your presence, and we bind "" ourselves to abide by your decision."

"none.

'I answered that I was not learned, but that the learned men might argue the matter among themselves, and that mine would report to me the result. Now if I had acted otherwise, ' and these heretics had got any of their doctrine into my head, how could I have got it out? For this reason I never would hear them, though they promised, if I would do so, to join me 'with all their troops. Afterwards when I was flying before Maurice, with only six horsemen for my attendants, two 'princes of the Empire, speaking again in the name of all, implored me to hear them explain and defend their religious opinions, and no longer to treat them as heretics, promising on that condition to support me with all their forces, to drive the Turks from Hungary, and either to make me master of • Constantinople, or to die in the attempt. I answered, that I would not buy, at that price, all Germany and France, and Spain and Italy: so I spurred my horse and left them.'*

Charles was one of the ablest men of his age, indeed of any age. His powerful natural talents had been exercised and strengthened by the constant management of great affairs, and by constant intercourse with eminent men. Yet such are the strange delusions by which the most powerful intellects may be abused on matters of religion, that he believed that the adopting, after full conscientious inquiry, an erroneous doctrine, was an injury to God and to man, a crime and a sin; to be punished by a cruel death here, and by eternal misery hereafter. With a strange confusion of thought, he considered such errors voluntary, or he would not have punished them; and yet involuntary, or he would not have feared their being implanted in him by discussion.

That error may sometimes be voluntary must be admitted. The man who from carelessness or timidity neglects or refuses to ascertain the real grounds on which he believes and disbelieves; the Roman Catholic who, for fear of unsettling his mind, will not hear what the Protestant has to say, the Trinitarian who refuses to discuss his faith with the Socinian, is right or wrong only by accident. The errors of a man who rejects information are as voluntary as any other part of his conduct.

* Cited from Sandoval by M. Gachard, Bulletins de l'Academie Royale de Bruxelles, tom. xii. p. 251. Ier partie.

But the error of those who have never had an opportunity of ascertaining the truth, and of those who, after patient and candid examination, have come to a wrong conclusion, depends no more on the will than the bitter taste of camomile or the hot taste of pepper. We might as usefully punish a man for being sea-sick as for being convinced.

Again, it must be admitted that error, though involuntary, may lead to sin. A man may sin from not knowing what is his duty, or from believing that his duty consists mainly in the performance of things really useless, or from believing that his duty consists in doing acts absolutely mischievous: in other words, he may sin through ignorance or through superstition. But in such cases the danger of the error arises from its practical nature. If error be merely speculative, if it relate, for instance, to the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the Pre-existence of the Father, or the Immaculate Conception, there seems to be no reasonable ground for imputing to it any guilt.

Now, purely speculative questions are precisely those which have been most furiously debated. They have created more hatred, more bloodshed, more wars, and more persecution than all practical questions put together. And for this reason, that practical questions generally admit of a decision. They are debated and disposed of. Speculative questions are eternal. Their premises are generally ambiguous, often unintelligible. The discussion resembles an argument between two deaf men, in which neither attaches any meaning to the words uttered by the other. What is the real difference between the Transubstantiation of the Roman Catholics and the Consubstantiation of Luther? The former believes that by consecration the substance of the bread and wine are changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. The latter affirmed that The true body of Christ is present under the appearance of bread, and also his true blood under the appearance of wine, And that that body and blood are not spiritual and fictitious, but the true and natural body which was born of the most 'Holy Virgin, which same body and blood are now sitting at the right hand of the Majesty of God in that divine Person "who is called Christ Jesus."*

And for the one or for the other of these opinions, each of them we venture to say devoid of meaning, thousands have thought it their duty to kill, and thousands have thought it their duty to die.

We have said that Charles was a man of extraordinary

• Cited-Waddington's History of the Reformation, vol. iii. p. 217.

ability. He was also a man of extraordinary piety. Immersed as he was in politics and in wars, ruling and even administering great and dissimilar kingdoms, surrounded by enemies both foreign and domestic, managing the home affairs and the foreign affairs of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy, providing and then commanding their armies and their fleets, his principal business, the matter which engrossed the most of his attention, was the working out his own salvation. And he believed the first requisite to salvation to be a correct faith. Such, however, was his conduct as to involve him in errors, the public mischief of which cannot be exaggerated, or, if there be any guilt in error, the private guilt. In the first place, his errors belonged to the class which we have termed voluntary. They were the result of his obstinate determination not to inquire. If on a march he had been told, 'Your maps are false, your guides are ignorant or treacherous, if you advance in this direction you will destroy your army. Here are the proofs;' would he have refused to look at the evidence, burnt alive the informants, and continued his course?

6

In the second place, his errors led him not merely to reliance on useless observances and charms, but to ferocious cruelties, and, what was much worse, because much more permanent, than any death or torture inflicted on individuals, to measures which have kept in darkness and semi-barbarism one of the most energetic races, and perhaps the finest country, in Europe.

This is not the place to discuss Charles's chances of happiness in another world. We have to do only with his reputation in this. And we must say that, judging by the event, estimating him by the influence which his conduct has had over the subsequent fortunes of Europe, and indeed of America, we allot to him a conspicuous station among the enemies of mankind. He might have done more good, and he actually did more harm, than any sovereign that has reigned since Charlemagne.

ART. IV.-1. Etudes sur la Littérature Française du Dixneuvième Siècle. Par A. VINET, Paris: 1849.

2. Histoire de la Littérature Française du Dix-huitième Siècle. Par A. VINET. Paris: 1853.

SUMM

UMMARY views and elaborate expositions of the History of French Literature having been already given to the world by men of the accomplished erudition and masterly grasp of

mind of Barante and Villemain, it might have seemed that a work on the same subject by a writer of certainly not equal though more than respectable powers, was scarcely needed. But there is this valid plea for the publication of the lectures which we have placed at the head of our article:- The authors we have named approached their task mainly, if not exclusively, in an æsthetic or a philosophic spirit; Vinet approaches it mainly, though not exclusively, in a religious temper. On the debateable ground where Literature and Christianity mingle they were neutral; he is an earnest and sincere believer, and is disposed to regard and judge the great writers of this age and of past ages by a standard which, if severer, is certainly in some respects loftier and purer, than that which it has been the custom to apply. Not that we mean to intimate that Vinet's estimates are either bigoted or narrow, but they are those natural to a mind coloured and imbued with earnest feelings and rooted convictions on the great subject of Religious Faith.

Alexandre Vinet, who died about seven years ago, was Professor of French language and literature, first at the Gymnasium at Basle, and afterwards at the Academy of Lausanne, his native city, where he delivered, in 1844, the lectures that are now before us. At an early age he became a minister of the Gospel in the Protestant Church of Switzerland-a Church remarkable for its liberality, or what many would call its latitudinarianism. The tendencies of Vinet were, however, more evangelical than was usual among his brethren, and a spirit of deep and somewhat enthusiastic piety breathes through his numerous brochures; and when, in 1841, the constitution of the Church was modified by the Council of State in a manner he could not approve, he resigned his position, both as preacher and as Professor of Theology at Lausanne (to which he had been appointed in 1837), and devoted the remainder of his life to his favourite pursuit-that of Literary History.

Abridgments are notoriously profitless, meagre and jejune; the attempt to sketch in a few pages the characteristics of a whole century of intellectual production must always be unsuccessful and unsatisfactory, and the more fertile the age the more inadequate must generally be the portraiture. Yet it cannot be doubted that generations and epochas have for the most part certain distinctive features, at once salient and pervading, which, as they belong to the political circumstances or the social condition of the period,-to those influences, that is, which most powerfully modify the intellect of the time and country, are traceable in all departments in which that intellect exerts itself, and give a peculiar cast and colouring alike to the

poetry, the fiction, the oratory, the philosophy, and the controversy to which that age gives birth. More powerful still, perhaps, are they in deciding on what departments the intellect of the time shall be most active; determining its bent sometimes towards religion, sometimes towards speculation, at one period towards the realms of fancy, at another towards those of practical life.

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The seventeenth century was one of vast mental activity and vigour. Few eras present such a galaxy of great names in nearly every walk of literature-great preachers, great poets, great dramatists, great moralists,-Bossuet and Massillon, Pascal and Fenelon, La Bruyère and La Rochefoucauld, Corneille and Racine, Molière and Descartes. These were men of various genius, of discrepant opinions, of irreconcilable tastes. Still, certain qualities and certain negations characterise all their productions. Their age was preeminently the age of settled, though not of earnest convictions, of unquestioning but scarcely of stirring faith. It was an age of obedience, when the yoke of authority weighed upon every channel of intellectual pursuit, but was not yet felt to be a yoke. The literary world then embraced but a narrow circle, and on that circle the influence of the court rested with a pervading pressure that was scarcely recognised as pressure, because never resisted. Philosophers speculated energetically, but always with submission, under correction, and within the limits which the Church prescribed. Literary talent was never more active, but it expatiated under the overshadowing authority of the ancients, and according to the conventional rules of polished society. All the productions of the time bore the classic stamp. They were 'correct' above every thing. It is impossible to call them shallow, yet they were scarcely profound. They did not stir the secret depths of the inner man. They contain no aspirations after the Infinite, no pictures of a soul in conflict with the primary mysteries of its being, no subtle questionings and gropings about the roots of the Tree of Knowledge, no thoughts that wander through Eternity and find no resting-place.' On the other hand, there is nothing wild, nothing morbid, nothing extravagant. The age has all the characteristics of a classic, as distinguished from a romantic epoch.

Other features, too, distinguish it notably from the age which followed. The subjects selected by men of letters were different, their interests ran in a different channel, their ambition was directed to a different aim. They were more purely literary than their successors. They were immeasurably more exclusive in their social sympathies. They wrote for Court circles, and