to the inferior conditions of life. The impress of these two origins remains distinctly marked in the two communions. "The reformed communion has never been so popular as the catholic faith. Being of princely and patrician origin, it does not sympathize with the multitude. Protestantism is equitable and moral, punctual in the discharge of duty; but its charity partakes more of reason than of tenderness; it clothes the naked, but does not warm them in its bosom ; it shelters the poor beneath its wings, but does not dwell and weep with them in their most abject haunts; it relieves, but does not feel for misfortune. The monk and the priest are the companions of the poor man: poor like himself, they have for their companions the bowels of Jesus Christ. Rags, straw, disease, and dungeons, excite in them no disgust, no repugnance; charity imparts a perfume to indigence and misery. The catholic priest is the successor of the twelve lowly men who preached Christ raised from the dead; he blesses the body of the deceased beggar, as the sacred remains of a being beloved by God and raised to eternal life. The protestant pastor forsakes the beggar on his death-bed-to him the grave is not an object of religious veneration; he has no faith in those expiatory prayers by which a friend may deliver a suffering soul. In this world the minister does not rush into the midst of flames or pestilence; he reserves to his own family that affectionate care which the priest of Rome bestows on the great human family. "In a religious point of view, the reformation is leading insensibly to indifference, or the complete absence of faith: the reason is, that the independence of the mind terminates in two gulfs-doubt and incredulity." "Though the English colonies have formed the plebeian republic of the United States, yet those states do not owe their liberty to protestantism. They were not emancipated by religious wars; they rebelled against the oppression of the mother country, which, like themselves, was protestant. Maryland, a catholic and very populous state, made common cause with the others, and now most of the western states are catholic. The progress of this communion in the United States of America exceeds belief. There it has been invigorated in its evangelical aliment-popular liberty-whilst other communions decline in profound indifference." "An attentive examination of facts must lead to the conclusion that protestantism has not promoted popular freedom. It has given to mankind philosophic liberty, but not political liberty. Now, the former liberty has no where led to the attainment of the latter, except in France, the true land of catholicism. How happens it that Germany, naturally philosophic and already armed with protestantism, has not advanced a single step towards political liberty in the eighteenth century; whilst France, of not very philosophic temperament, and under the yoke of catholicism, gained during that century all her liberties?" "The man of theory has a sovereign contempt for that which is practical. He looks down from the height of his lofty doctrine, judges men and things, meditates on the general laws of society, directs his bold enquiries even into the mysteries of the divine nature, and feels and thinks himself independent because only his body is chained. To think every thing, and do nothing, is at once the character and the virtue of philosophic genius. The philosopher wishes to see mankind happythe sight of liberty charms him; but he does not care to see it through two windows of a prison. Like Socrates, protestantism may be said to have called minds into existence; but, unfortunately, the intelligences which it has ushered into life have hitherto been only beautiful slaves. "Be it observed, however, that most of these reflections on the reformed religion are intended to apply only to the past: the protestants of the present day are not, any more than the catholics, what they formerly were. The protestants have gained in imagination, in poetry, in eloquence, in reason, in liberty, and in genuine piety, what the latter have lost. The antipathies between the different communions no longer exist. The children of Christ, from whatever line they spring, unite at the foot of Mount Calvary, the common birth-place of the family. The licentiousness and the ambition of the court of Rome have ceased; and the vatican is now distinguished by the virtues of the early bishops, patronage of the arts, and the majesty of recollections. Every thing now tends to restore catholic unity; with a few concessions on either side, concord would soon be established. To be enabled to shine forth in renewed glory, Christianity wants only a superior genius, coming at the proper time and place. The Christian religion is entering upon a new era; like institutions and manners, it is undergoing the third transformation. It is ceasing to be political, according to the old social mechanism; it is advancing to the great principle of the gospel-natural democratic equality between man and man, as it is acknowledged before God. Its flexible circle extends with knowledge and liberty, whilst the cross for ever marks its immovable centre." Vol. I. pp. 191-205. The reckless assertion of the above paragraphs may excite the surprise of the reader, but their ingenious sophistry will but induce the smile of contempt. Our author hastens on till he arrives at Shakspeare. His notice of Surrey, More, and Spenser, is miserably defective. Upon Henry VIII. (whom he is pleased to consider one among the list of the protestant literati of England) he rests for a few minutes-being a fine theme for eloquent invective. A striking sketch of the tyrant is presented in these lines: "Henry VIII. wrote poetry as well as prose. He played on the flute and the spinett. He set to music ballads for his court and masses for his chapel, and he left behind him a motett, an anthem, and many scaffolds. He was certainly a troubadour of most imaginative genius. This man, who employed a wooden image of the Virgin as part of the materials for the pile at which the confessor of Catharine of Arragon was burnt; who summoned before his tribunal the dead body of St. Thomas of Canterbury, tried it and condemned it to death, in spite of the legal maxim, non bis in idem; who caused fagots to be bound on the backs of five Dutch anabaptists, and regaled his eyes with the spectacle of five moving auto-da-fés.;-he had a fine subject for a romantic sonnet when, from the summit of a solitary hill in Richmond Park, he saw the signal which was transmitted from the tower of London, announcing the execution of Anne Boleyn. What delicious satisfaction he must have enjoyed at that moment! The axe had severed the delicate neck, and stained with blood the beautiful hair, on which the poet king had lavished his fatal caresses." Vol. I. pp. 217, 218. At the name of Shakspeare he stops, "in order to consider him at his leisure, as Montesquieu says of Alexander." For him he professes extreme admiration; and yet, from certain VOL. XXI. NO. 41. 6 "As to the means of illusion, some idea may be formed of them from the burlesque picture drawn by Shakspeare in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' A man, having his face smeared with plaster, is the wall which intervenes between Pyramus and Thisbe, and he spreads out his fingers to represent the chinks in the wall through which the lovers converse. A lantern, a bush, and a dog, are employed to produce moonlight. In rude dramatic performances of this kind, the scene, without changing, alternately represented a flower-garden, a rock against which a ship was to strike, or a field of battle, where half a dozen miserable-looking soldiers would personate two armies. There is extant a curious inventory of the property of a company of English players; and in this document we find set down a dragon, a wheel employed in the siege of London, a large horse with his legs, sundry limbs of Moors, four Turks' heads, and an iron mouth, which was probably employed in giving utterance to the sweetest and sublimest accents of the immortal poet. False skins were also employed for those characters who were flayed alive on the stage, like the prevaricating judge in Cambyses. Such a spectacle nowa-days would attract all Paris. But, after all, correctness of scenic accessories and costume is far less essential to the illusion than is generally imagined. The genius of Racine gains nothing by the cut and form of a dress. In the masterpieces of Raphael, the back-grounds are neglected and the costumes incorrect. The rage of Orestes, or the prophecy of Joad, recited" in a drawing-room by Talma, habited in his own dress, produced not less effect than when delivered by the great actor on the stage, in Grecian or Hebrew drapery. Iphigenia was attired like Madame de Sévigné, when Boileau addressed to his friend the following fine lines: 'Jamais Iphigénie, en Aulide immolée N'a coûté tant de pleurs à la Grèce assemblée, "Accuracy in the representation of inanimate objects is the spirit of the literature and the arts of our time. It denotes the decay of the higher class of poetry, and of the genuine drama. We are content with minor beauties, when we cannot attain great aims. Our stage represents to perfection the chair and its velvet coverings, but the actor is not equally successful in portraying the character who is seated in the chair. But, having once descended to these minute representations of material objects, it cannot be dispensed with, for the public taste becomes materialized and demands it. "In Shakspeare's time, the higher class of spectators, or the gentlemen, took their places on the stage-seating themselves either on the boards, or on stools which they paid for. The pit was a dark and dusty hole, in which the audience stood crowded together. The spectators in the pit, and those on the stage, were like two hostile camps drawn up face to face. The pit saluted the gentlemen with hisses, threw mud at them, and addressed to them insulting outcries. The gentlemen returned these compliments by calling their assailants stinkards and brutes. The stinkards ate apples and drank ale; the gentlemen played at cards and smoked tobacco, which was then recently introduced. It was the fashion for the gentlemen to tear up the cards, as if they had lost some great stake, and then to throw the fragments angrily on the stage-to laugh, speak loud, and turn their backs on the actors. In this manner were the tragedies of the great master received on their first production. John Bull threw apple-parings at the divinity at whose shrine he now offers adoration. Fortune, in her rigour to Shakspeare and Molière, made them actors, and thus gave to the lowest of their countrymen the privilege of at once insulting the great men and their writings." Vol. I. pp. 249-252. Our author places Julius Cæsar and Richard III. on a par with Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello. We believe that he is the first critic of any pretensions who ever did so-as he is assuredly the first who ever charged him with a want of variety in the delineation of female character. Our readers might scarcely credit the assertion: but so says our author. He enters into a parallel (too long to be here extracted) between the chief female characters of French tragedy and those of Shakspeare, and points out, as he supposes, the immense superiority of the former. After a number of extracts and impassioned remarks, he exclaims, "What are all Shakspeare's females in comparison with Esther?" Her speech to Elise (fine, undoubtedly) is then given, and the comparison closed by the following rapturous apostrophe to all barbarians; no doubt, including among such those who are unhappy enough to prefer Shakspeare to Racine: "If there are any Huns, Hottentots, Hurons, Goths, Vandals, or other barbarians, insensible to the feminine modesty, the dignity, and the melody of this exquisite passage, may they be seventy times seven-fold delighted by the charms of their own native productions. 'I thought,' says Racine, in his preface to Esther, 'that I could fill up the whole of my dramatic action with such scenes as God himself has in a manner prepared.' Racine justly thought so, for he alone possessed the harp of David consecrated to the scenes prepared by God." Vol. I. pp. 284, 5. The era of Shakspeare is well described. The author groups together in a very imposing manner all the events of the times, fancying the impressions likely to be made by them upon such a mind as that of the bard of Avon. For ourselves, we believe that Shakspeare's wonderful poetic talent was one given to him by his Creator, which would have burst forth in splendour in any age; though we should not be disposed to adopt the language which Chateaubriand professes to quote, but which we strongly suspect to be his own-"that the poet was as a solitary comet, which, having traversed the constellations of the ancient firmament, returns to the feet of the Deity, and says to him, like the thunder, 'here I am.'" This is precious bombast. Still it was quite fair in Chateaubriand to conjecture the influence of the occurrences of his day upon the imagination of the bard, and it affords the writer an opportunity of showing off in the kind of composition in which he excels. The extract is long, but we wished not to abridge it, as it is well worth the perusal. "At home, Elizabeth presented in her own person an historical character. Shakspeare had attained his twenty-third year when Mary Stuart was beheaded. The child of catholic parents, and probably himself a catholic, he had doubtless heard, among his own community, that Elizabeth had endeavoured to make Rolstone the instrument of seducing her fair captive, in order to disgrace her; and that, taking advantage of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, she had made an attempt to deliver over the Queen of Scots to the vindictive feelings of the Scotish protestants. Who knows but curiosity might have led young William from Stratford to Fotheringay to witness the catastrophe? Who can say but he may have seen the bed, the chamber, the vaults hung with black, the block, the head of Mary, into which the executioner, by his first unskilful stroke of the axe, had driven a portion of the unfortunate victim's coif and gray hair? May not the eyes of Shakspeare have rested with interest and curiosity on the beautiful and mutilated corse? 66 Some time after, Elizabeth cast another head at the feet of Shakspeare. Mahomet II. had an Icoglan decapitated for the purpose of giving a painter an idea of death. Strange compound of man and woman! Elizabeth seems, during the whole of her mysterious life, to have felt but one passion, and never to have known love. The last malady of this queen, say the memoirs of her time, proceeded from a grief, the cause of which she ever kept a profound secret. She never evinced an inclination to have recourse to remedies-as if she had made up her mind long before to die-being weary of her life from some secret cause, which was said to be the death of the Earl of Essex. "The sixteenth century, the spring-time of modern civilization, flourished in England more prosperously than in other parts of the globe. It developed those sturdy generations of men, who already bore within them the seeds of liberty, in the persons of Cromwell and Milton. Elizabeth dined to the sound of drums and trumpets, whilst her parliament was passing atrocious laws against the papists, and whilst the yoke of sanguinary oppression weighed down unhappy Ireland. The executions at Tyburn alternated with the gaieties of the fashionable ball; the austerities of the puritans with the revels of Kenilworth; comedies with sermons; lampoons with hymns; literary disquisitions with philosophical discussions and sectarian controversies. "The spirit of adventure animated the nation, as at the period of the wars in Palestine. Protestant crusaders volunteered to combat the idolaters-that is to say, the catholics. They followed across the seas Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, who, like Peter the Hermit, were friends of Christ, but enemies of the Cross. Engaged in the cause of religious liberty, the English lent their aid to all who sought to shake off the yoke of tyranny; they shed their blood beneath the white plume of Henry IV. and the yellow flag of the Prince of Orange. Shakspeare witnessed all this, and he also was witness to those auspicious tempests which cast the wrecks of the Spanish vessels upon the shores of his delivered country. "Abroad, the picture was not less favourable to poetic inspiration. In Scotland, there were the vices and ambition of Murray-the murder of Rizzio-Darnley strangled, and his body cast to the winds-Bothwell espousing Mary in the fortress of Dunbar, and afterwards becoming a fugitive and a pirate in Norway-Morton delivered up to the executioner. The Low Countries presented all the miseries inseparable from a nation's emancipation: Cardinal de Granvelle, the Duke of Alva-the tragic deaths of the Count d'Egmont and the Count de Horn. "In Spain, besides the death of Don Carlos, we find Philip II. erecting the sombre Escurial, multiplying his auto-da-fés, and saying to his |