many dangers. He now had recourse to | retinue. Masaniello appeared, clad in a means of conciliation, and endeavored also garment richly embroidered with silver. to disunite the partisans of the insurrec- A religious service was performed, and a tion. He vainly tried every treasonable solemn reading of the treaty took place. process and subterfuge. Their discovery The Duke swore to abide by it. Deafenrendered every conciliation impossible, ing cries of joy burst from all. But an whilst they exasperated Masaniello. The inner revolution had already taken place latter soon organized regular military in Masaniello. Now, the poor fisherman, bands, all in rags, but full of spirit. He his eyes flashing, his face burning, came marched at their head bravely, and put forward with extraordinary gesticulations; to flight the Spanish troops that were ap- addressed incoherent words to the people; proaching to the assistance of the Duke, then burst into tears, tore his garments, and took possession of the dépôt of Span- and kneeling, he implored the Archbishop ish arms. In fine, the victory became to be restored to his former humble lite complete. Masaniello passed a review of and liberty; after which he fell in a state 115,000 men, mostly half-naked, but of prostration. All present withdrew in armed and ready to obey him. Now, deep agitation. Now, deep agitation. Evidently, the sudden daily from a window, still in his fisher- change from obscurity to a high station; man's dress, he pronounced orders and the sense of responsibility fallen upon decrees; fixed the price of bread; ordered him; his sense of incapacity for such a pothe burning of some palace or other. The sition, despite his ardor and heart-born exigencies of the people increased with gleams of genius, all gave rise to an inward their sense of security in their triumph. struggle that broke down and shattered They rejected the offers of conciliation of the poor fisherman's mind. It was totally the Duke of Arcos, to the great dissatis- gone. During the banquet, and the fesfaction of Masaniello, who, simple-minded tivals of the evening of that solemn day, and sincere, was anxious to behold peace affecting scenes of his insanity took place and harmony restored in Naples. At this again. He was burning with fever. We conjuncture, commenced a series of tu- will not relate his extravagancies, insane multuous meetings; deputations with measures, and incoherent speeches during propositions and counter-propositions; the following days. It is easily conceived abortive treasons on the part of the that he lost all credit in the eyes of the Spaniards: finally, a treaty, establish- people. Still, they gazed upon him and ing on a new basis, the relations be- his follies with tender emotions of pity; tween the Neapolitans and the crown others, however, flung stones at him. The was agreed upon. A splendid ceremony Duke considered his state as an admiratook place for its inaguration. It was ble opportunity for striking a decisive the most glorious day in the life of the blow, which would at once avenge him fisherman, who, for the first time, appeared and annihilate the revolution. Scarcely magnificently attired, in obedience to the a fortnight had elapsed when, on the great Archbishop. We now possess all the au- day of the fete of the Virgin, again a thentic accounts of his meetings with the solemn general assembly took place in the Duke; of the speeches, courtesies, pa- Church of the Carmel. This time the geantry, conversations, and final arrange- multitude was silent and gloomy. The ments, signed by the Viceroy and Masa- Duke appeared, but with armed troops. niello, who found himself recognized as Masaniello rushed from his house into the Captain-General by the representative of church, rushed into the pulpit; and such the King of Spain. But here commenced was the incoherent vehemence of his his embarrassments, his hasty, violent speech that he soon fell exhausted. The measures and cruelties-finally, the testi- Divine Service was performed whilst he mony of his utter incapacity for his func- lay prostrate in the cell of a monk close tions, which were those of Civil Governor. to the sacristy. As soon as it was over, Novelists, and even historians, have stated the crowd was withdrawing slowly, silentthat the Spaniards had poisoned him; ly, mournfully, when three armed men however, no trace, not a shadow of a sus penetrated into the church, cryingpicion of the kind can be found any where."Death to Masaniello!" All present fled. At the final ceremony of the oath, held in the cathedral, richly adorned for the purpose, the Viceroy arrived with a princely

Masaniello, ghastly pale, but smiling, appeared on the threshold of the sacristy. "Is it you, my beloved people?" he ex

claimed; "I am coming to you." The gratitude to those who devote themselves assassins fired deliberately, and he fell dead. to such researches. Such men are the The impressionable Neapolitans shed patient and indefatigable miners who defloods of tears over the body of the un-rive but little popular influence and repute, fortunate fisherman whose funeral was on if their labors are confined to such pura regal scale. During one long day his suits. In England, one of the most strikbody was exposed to the gaze of the peo-ing instances of the effects resulting from ple, who came once more to behold the beautiful head they had loved so deeply. The Duke of Arcos soon discovered that his crime could not be followed by any solution in his favor. The revolution continued, and assumed another phase under the Duke of Guise and his partisans, who, after many difficulties, sanguinary contests, and chivalrous combats, fell, without exception, under the new Spanish forces, commanded by Don John of Austria. The city and kingdom of Naples made their submission; and although the tax upon fruits was not renewed, the government of the Spanish Viceroys resumed its former despotism.

the publication of original documents was Mr. Carlyle's "Letters and Speeches of Cromwell." The British public beheld for the first time, the stern Puritan-the real Protector. Others will follow the example given by Mr. Carlyle. Subsequently appeared the late Mr. John Kemble's publication of invaluable state papers with excellent biographical notices. Thus, the British public will now be in the legitimate expectation of the appearance of new sources of history. At Florence, under the auspices of the Minister, Baldasseroni, M. Bonaini has very recently arranged and classified the Tuscan Archives with infinite skill in the beautiFrom the various instances we have ful palace of the Uffizi; and thus Florence sketched, may be seen the nature of the possesses now, collected together and acknowledge obtained from original docu-cessible to all, the state papers, correspondments and state papers, and how much they facilitate verification in the attainment and appreciation of truth. The discriminate use of such materials for the investigation of historical facts will shed a new light, we repeat it, on the science of history, as well as on the labors of historians and professors of history. Let us add that the public owes a great debt of

ence, in short, all the documents relating to her history-sad remains of her antique liberties! It would be worthy of the British Government to assist in, and encourage the researches for state papers and valuable documents. It is well known that they abound in the British Museum and the Foreign Office, as well as in all the public offices and archives of Europe.

dent in his cell. The returning comet, the new planet, answer from the remote verge of the solar system to his summons, and demonstrate the laws of the human intel

those readers"in all parts of the country," who, we are told, have induced the publication by their demand for copies of a former private edition. In short, the appearance of this book betokens the ex-lect to be the laws of the universe. With istence in the Church of England of a party more or less numerous and influential, prepared to welcome its doctrines. And in the preface, Mr. Powell avows his belief that there is a considerable and fast-increasing proportion, both of clergy and laity, "fully alive" to what he is pleased to term "liberal and enlightened views" of Christianity. This of course means the views which Mr. Powell himself happens to have espoused. This cant about liberality and enlightenment runs through the volume, and is one of its most offensive characteristics. There is a class of minds who mistake the history of their own opinions for the progress of human intellect in general, and can never be persuaded that they hold any other position than that of intellectual leaders in the foremost rank of the age. To this class Professor Powell belongs. Those from whom he differs have their choice between bigoted narrow-mindedness, prejudice, and confusion of thought, which hinder them from seeing that he is right; and dishonest cowardice which withholds them from confessing it. He assaults the infallibility of the Bible, with the most undisturbed confidence in his own, (for the mind of man demands infallibility somewhere;) and explodes Calvinism, or sets down poor Hugh Miller, with the same air of serene superiority with which he abolishes the Sabbath, convicts Moses of ignorance, and assigns to the ancient Hebrews their proper rank as a barbarous nation, "in the lowest and most puerile state of intellectual and moral enlighten

ment."

This conceit of infallibility seems to be a besetting danger of scientific culture. In the study of pure science the mind acquires the habit of absolute confidence in its own conclusions. There is no room for modesty in mathematics. There is no presumption in affirming of the result of a carefully conducted calculation that it is true for all minds and for all time; and that if any one can not perceive its truth, this proves only his ignorance, not the uncertainty of the conclusion. The stars in their courses record in characters of light, in the depths of unmeasured space, the equations wrought out by the lonely stu

respect to the subjects of pure science, the man of science stands on a platform of infallible certainty, from which he looks down with conscious superiority on the mass of mankind, who must remain ignorant, for the most part, of the processes of science, and be content to take its results as matter of faith, which to him are matter of demonstration. No wonder that he is tempted to attribute to the superior strength of his own intellect that infallible certainty which, in reality, results from the superiority of the intellectual instruments he employs. He forgets that his intimate familiarity with the reasoning process by which those great results are demonstrated, which the majority accept on trust, is merely one instance of the advantage which every artist has in his own art over other men; for science becomes art when it is employed to extend its own boundaries. He grows impatient of doubt, of humility, and of difference of opinion. He desires the certainty of mathematics in all other branches of knowledge; and as he can no longer find that certainty in the processes by which his conclusions are reached, he finds it in the fact that he has reached them. Science has taught him that the solitary reasoner may be right, and the whole world wrong. He simply generalizes the lesson, and infers that whenever he differs from other people they must needs be wrong, because he is infallibly right. His own opinions become, in his eyes, the high-water mark of the intellectual progress of the age; and any opposition to them the sure token of ignorance, narrow prejudice, or dishonesty. The most splendid warning of these dangers of scientific culture is furnished by the late Auguste Comte, the man of science, par excellence, of the present age. As incapable beyond his proper province as he was powerful and unrivaled within it, he mistook the narrow pale of accurate science for the wide horizon of human knowledge. Confounding science sometimes with philosophy, and sometimes. with art, he imagined that, in classifying the sciences, he was mapping out the whole domain of the human intellect, and was unable to see that our largest and

most precious treasures of knowledge lie beyond, or above, where the foot of science has not trodden, nor her wings soar ed; in the world of consciousness and of emotion, which defies science; in the world of actual individual experience, where science is the disciple, not the teacher; and in the world of faith, where the demonstrations of science are superseded by a sublimer certainty.

tions of a belief in revelation, and its received external evidences. These, however, are questions which will not fall within the scope of the present discussion, but will be reserved for a future opportunity. With reference to our more immediate subject, it will suffice to remark, that notwithstanding the acknowledged benefits to pure religion which result from the scientific enlightenment of the age, there has too commonly existed a feeling of hostility against it on the part of some very religious beset with a spirit of a narrower kind, unwillpersons. Theology has too commonly been

enlightening truths; and thus from the first dawn of the true inductive philosophy there has always existed on the part of a bigoted and exclusive class of theologians, a deeply-seated jealousy and suspicion of the advance of physical discovery. Some better informed theolowisdom to pursue a better policy; and it is gians, indeed, of several schools, have had the now mainly the spirit of Puritanism which is arrayed in the most inveterate hostility to science. And in a more especial manner has this been evinced at the present day, when the discoveries of geology have made advances far more formidable to its claims, and subversive of saults made by the heresies of Copernicus and its Judaical principles, than were all the asGalileo on the authority of the Catholic decrees in a past age."-Pp. 11-13.

These remarks are not very recondite; but we venture to say that they expressing to acknowledge those broader and more truths of which the author of the work before us has not the remotest suspicion. In his mind, scientific culture is the prevailing inspiration. His ideal of certainty is "positive philosophy." He is evidently incapable of perceiving that there is in the words spoken by the divine voice on Sinai an authority and certainty of a higher description than can attach to the inferences of geology, or even to the opinions of the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford. He would think it, no doubt, a very narrow-minded and ignorant remark, that a clever man may not be a better theologian, but a much worse one, for having made profound and various attainments in pure science. The remark is nevertheless true; not because theology and science are at variance for all truth is one-but because such is the imperfection and feebleness of the human mind that it can scarcely attain eminence in more than one direction; and by the intense and exclusive study of one kind of evidence, and one class of truths, it is too often unfitted, rather than prepared, for the study of other kinds of truth, and the appreciation of other kinds of evidence.

The following passage will suffice to illustrate these remarks, and to indicate the Professor's own view of the bearing of modern science upon theology:

"The unparalleled advances in physical science which characterize the present age, alone suffice to stamp a totally different character on the spirit of all its discussions; and they now are, and will be to a far greater extent, influential on the tone of theology. It is now perceived by all inquiring minds that the advance of true scientific principles, and the grand inductive conclusions of universal law and order, are at once the basis of all rational theology, and give the death-blow to superstition. The influence of the advance of physical science on religion is, in truth, a very wide subject, and involves some topics at once of great difficulty and high import in regard to the very founda

The magniloquent vagueness and the tone of oracular authority which our readers will be struck with in this passage, are characteristic of the volume. One is perpetually inquiring what definite meaning may lie concealed beneath the pompous folds of loose and sweeping generalities in which the author is wont to array his ideas. What, for example, exactly, are "those broader and more enlightening truths," and with what are they compared? With the narrower and less enlightening truths of religion, or merely with the "spirit of a narrower kind," which has "too commonly beset" theology? Again, what are, precisely, the

66

acknowledged benefits to pure religion, which result from the scientific enlightenment of the age"? Pure religion is a certain state of heart towards God, consisting essentially of faith, love, and obedience, which influences habitually the whole character and conduct. No disparagement to the claims or triumphs of science is implied in saying that all the "scientific enlightenment of the age" can not render faith, or love, or obedience, more powerful in their influence, or more easy of attainment. Professor Powell's assertion is about as coherent and intel

ligible as if one were to affirm that rail- | but point to him, and bid us seek elseways and the electric telegraph have done where the light which it can not furnish, much to simplify the theory of equations, yet in which alone its deepest lessons can or that the discovery of the interior of be read. So far from furnishing a “basis” Africa may be expected to ameliorate for theology, physical science can not add considerably the English climate. one single fundamental proposition to those primary biblical truths of which we have just cited a few examples, and on which theology rests. It is only by being united with moral and metaphysical considerations, that the inductions of physical science can even supply evidence of the great fundamental truth of theology-the existence of God. The intelligent theologian, indeed, will be far from underrating the light which modern science can shed upon his majestic and profound theme. It can not show the depths, but it can illuminate the surface. It can not solve the mysteries, or answer the solemn doubts and awful questions of theology, but it can pour upon some of its plainest and yet sublimest doctrines the rich glow of profuse and glorious illustration. It can tell us nothing new of the divine character, will, or nature. On the most urgent problems of theology-the theory and consequences of the divine conduct towards men, as the Father-Creator towards his offspring, and as the Supreme Ruler towards his disobedient subjects-inductive science can shed no ray of light. It possesses no data. In the perpetual flux of human affairs, the same individuals, the same circumstances, never recur. In the wide expanse of this world's history, induction finds no rest for the sole of its foot; from the shoreless waste of the desolate past it can not bring a single olive-leaf of promise and hope. What science can do to illustrate theology, should be acknowledged, not only thankfully, but devoutly; for creation also is the word of God, and it is a noble task to decipher, though slowly and imperfectly, its divine lessons. It can illustrate truths which it never could have revealed. It can attest the unity of creation by showing that the sunbeam in which the tiny gnat dances and the violet expands, is identical with the rays that have been millions of years on their passage from those vast hives of suns and systems which are but nebulous points in our heaven; and that beyond those inconceivable wildernesses of boundless space the same law reigns by which the thistledown floats and the rain-drop falls. It can exemplify, with the most dazzling

But, according to this writer, modern science has done much more than simply benefiting religion. It has supplemented, if not superseded, the Scriptures; or rather, to speak in accordance with the general tone of his work, it has superseded the Old Testament, and supplemented the New. "All inquiring minds"-a tolerably large category, in the nineteenth century, and in the English nation-now perceive, he assures us, "that the advance of true scientific principles, and the grand inductive conclusions of universal law and order, are the basis of all rational theology." The reference, as the context shows, is to principles of physical science. Certainly, this is a remarkable assertion for a Christian divine. That the "advance" of scientific principles should form the "basis" of theology is paradoxical enough. It must be a very movable basis, one would think, little better than a quicksand. But "the grand inductive conclusions of universal and eternal law and order”-if one only knew what those sublime "conclusions" are have a sound of more ambitious promise. Where are they? What are they? Are they truths of a loftier order, of a wider universality, of a more unchangeable eternity, than those ancient declarations that "God is light;" that "God is love;" that "Love is the fulfilling of the law;" that "All lawlessness is sin," ," and "the desert of sin is death;" that "He that believeth on the Son of God hath life," and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God"? Such statements as these, as sublime in the simplicity of their expression as they are unfathomable and immeasurable in their fullness of meaning-such direct, authoritative declarations of divine truth, uttered by the Son of God himself, or by his authorized messengers, have hitherto furnished the "basis" of theology. It is not only a rational" one-for it satisfies reason with the highest evidence; but it is the only possible one, under the conditions of our present existence. The loftiest, broadest, surest inductions of modern science can not soar beyond the atmosphere of observed facts. No induction from nature can include God. It can

66