6 submission under persecution cannot be guaranteed.' The same year, 1756, was published an important work by M. Rippert-Monclar, entitled Mémoire théologique et politique au sujet des mariages clandestins des Protestants de France. The author was a Catholic gentleman, member of the Parliament of Aix; and his treatise affords a very significant token of the advance that the principles of justice and liberality had made in the classes behind the clergy and the Court since the time when the last edict of Louis XIV. was promulgated. According to the jurisprudence of this kingdom,' said Monclar, 'no Protestants exist in France. Nevertheless, according to facts, there are more than three millions of them. These imaginary beings fill the towns, the provinces, the country districts; and the capital city of the realm alone contains more than sixty thousand.' M. Hugues observes that this treatise of Monclar's, which was supposed at first to proceed from a Protestant pen, proved in effect the medium by which the Protestant question' was placed on the order of the day' for the eighteenth century. The practical remedy proposed by the writer was the institution of civil marriages for members of the Reformed religion in France, analogous to the practice in Holland; 'the publication of banns, for instance, in a tribunal of justice, and the celebration of marriages before the magistrates.' Is it safe,' he asked, 'to ill treat three millions of men who are scattered through all parts of the kingdom, even to despoiling them of all they hold dearest in the world -their goods, their wives, and their children; above all, when it is conceded that these three millions are all faithful, serviceable, nay, even indispensable citizens ?' In point of fact, it was far more the pressure of the danger and social inconvenience caused by the non-recognition of their civil status, than the application to the Protestants of the abstract principles of mental freedom now working in the philosophical ranks which determined the bent of public opinion in their favor. Men of State and men of law felt the evil, and knew how inadequate military force really was to contend with it, how dangerous it was to alienate permanently so important a section of the population; and but for the vehemence of the clergy, totally unable as yet to read the signs of the times, persecution would doubtless have ceased some decades of years before it actually did cease. As it is, it sounds like an anachronism to hear of an ordinance issued in Guyenne as late as October 15, 1760, against assemblies, baptisms, and marriages. It was the last; the standing point of the clergy had been undermined; two years later took place the judicial tragedy of the Calas family, and Voltaire's spirited intervention on behalf of the victims of the Parliament of Toulouse. The case of the Calas' turned upon a question of legal procedure primarily; but it involved the interests of clerical fanaticism in its immediate issues; and the triumph of Voltaire was the initiative victory of religious toleration. Antoine Court died at Lausanne in 1760. He lived to see the restoration of the Protestant Church in France an irreversible fact. If the number of three millions, at which its apologists rated its members, was an exaggerated estimate, that of four hundred thousand, suggested by Romanist statisticians, was probably at least as far removed from truth on the other side. Three years after Court's death the nunber of pastors amounted to sixty-two; of proposants, to thirty-five; of students, to fifteen. The Seminary of Lausanne was in a most flourishing condition. The days of struggle were over. But legally the ban on civil rights was still in force; and it required the continued efforts of sagacious statesmen to get it removed. Malesherbes and Rulhières took the matter pertinaciously in hand, and at last, in 1787, Louis XVI. issued an edict which recognised the existence of a Protestant community in France, and granted to its members full civil rights as connected with the marriages and baptisms performed after their own fashions. Thus was finally reversed and contradicted the decree laid down by Louis XIV. in 1715. Although it required a further turn of the political wheel to bring Protestantism to a complete level with Romanism as to State recognition, still the vital change was effected by this law of Louis XVI., passed before the meeting of the National Assembly, before the full pressure of the Tiers Etat had been brought to bear on the hereditary traditions of royal and clerical autocracy. A Protestant, writing under the Empire, thus describes the eagerness with which the members of the Reformed Churches availed themselves of the relief afforded by this measure: There might be seen the Reformed hurrying in crowds to the judges to have their marriages and the births of their children registered. In many provinces the judges were obliged to go themselves to the different communes of their jurisdiction, to prevent the assembling of such great crowds, and to spare Protestant families the expense of long journeys. In many cases old men registered their marriages along with those of their children and grandchildren. -Fraser's Magazine. PROPHETIC DAYS. WOULD-BE weatherwise folks would be saved a world of trouble if experience justified the popular faith in certain days. of the year-saints' days, of course, most of them having such a prophetic power attached to them, that by merely using our eyes and our almanacs, we may learn what the future will bring of good or evil luck, of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality.' These ominous days are but few in number, something under a score; and it is impossible to guess why they, any more than their fellows, should be invested with such a valuable attribute. If the New year's first morning sky is covered by clouds of a dusky red hue, there will be much debate and strife among the great ones of the earth, and— this we may readily believe-many robberies will be perpetrated before the year has run its course. Should the sun deign to shine upon St. Vincent's Day, dwellers in wine-growing lands may take heart and rejoice, for they will see more wine than water-that is to say, they may calculate upon a dry season, especially conducive to a profitable vintage. Less limited in its application is the fore-knowledge acquirable by meteorological students upon the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, according to the old monkish rhymes, one of the many translations of which runs : If St. Paul's Day be fair and clear, Then war shall vex the kingdom oft. Candlemas prognostications go, as those of dreams are said to do, by contraries; fine weather on Candlemas Day being prophetical of a long succession of unseasonably cold days, and necessarily a failure of the crops; while foul weather on that day is a sure promise of a bright spring, with a summer to match: Or If Candlemas Day be dry and fair, as a southern version puts it: If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, But if it be dark with clouds and rain, In Germany, they aver that the badger peeps out of his hole upon Candlemas morning, and if the ground be white with snow, takes his walks abroad; but should the sunshine greet his eyes, he will not venture from his snug abiding-place; being of one mind with the shepherd, who would rather see a wolf enter his fold, than the sun, upon Candlemas Day. So in Norfolk the proverb goes that a shepherd would prefer seeing his wife on the bier, than the sun shining clear upon Candlemas Day; and they firmly believe in the wisdom of the rhymes: On Candlemas Day, if the thorns hang a drop, Then you are sure of a good pea-crop. As far as the sun shines in on Candlemas Day, So far will the snow blow in afore Old May. In 1855, a correspondent of Notes and Queries announced that the Candlemas prognostication had been verified in Norfolk, if nowhere else, when a spell of rough winter weather was brought to an end by a fair and sunny Candlemas Day. On the following evening, about ten o'clock, a thaw suddenly commenced; but on the evening of the fifth, frost again set in with increased intensity, which continued uninterruptedly to February the twentyfourth, the ice in the "broads" ranging from eight inches to a foot in thickness.' But he had forgotten to take the change of style into account; so the striking verification of the ancient superstition was no verification at all. The Hebrideans observe, or did observe, an odd custom. On Candlemas Day, in every house, a sheaf of oats was dressed in feminine attire, and laid, with a big club by its side, in a basket, 6 called 'Brüd's bed.' Before turning in for the night, the mistress and her maids cried in chorus: Brüd is come! Brüd is welcome!' If, next morning, an impression of the club was visible in the ashes on the hearth, it was held a sure presage of an abundant harvest and a prosperous year; if the club had not left its mark, it was an omen of coming bad times. Down Winchester-way it is commonly believed that from whichever quarter the wind blows chiefly upon Palm-Sunday, it will blow during the best part of the summer. In Hertfordshire they hold that A good deal of rain upon Easter Day If the sun shines clearly on Easter Day, good weather and good times are in store, and one may make sure of seeing the sun upon Whitsunday. The lightest of showers falling upon Ascension Day is an omen dire, foretelling sickness among cattle, and great scarcity of food for man. A reverse result follows a dry Holy-Thursday, and pleasant weather may be expected almost up to Christmastide. A fine Whitsunday means a plentiful harvest, but if any rain falls then, thunder and lightning, bringing blight and mildew with it, may be expected. Almost as ill-omened is a wet Midsummer Day, for although apples, pears, and plums will not be affected thereby, nut-bushes will prove barren, and the corn-fields be smitten with disease. It was a proverb in Scotland that if the deer rose dry and lay down dry on Bullion's Day, there would be an early harvest. Considering the soldier-saint was the chosen patron of publicans and dispensers of good liquor, it seems odd that a shower falling upon St. Martin's Day should be supposed to indicate a twenty days' opening of heaven's sluices. Martin, however, when he went in for wet, was more moderate than his uncanonised brother Swithun, commonly called St. Swithin; he, as every one knows, is content with nothing under forty days: Saint Swithin's Day, gin ye do rain, For forty days it will remain; Saint Swithin's Day, an' ye be fair, For forty days 'twill rain nae mair. Why this should be, has been explained in this wise: When the good Saxon Bishop of Winchester departed this life some thousand years ago, he was, in accordance with his expressed wish, buried in the churchyard, so that his humble grave might be trodden by the feet of passers-by, and receive the eaves-droppings from the abbey roof. Thus he was permitted to rest undisturbed for a hundred years; then the clergy of the diocese took it into their heads to have the saint taken up, and deposited inside the cathedral; but when they set about the work, the rain came down with such violence that they were compelled to desist, and finding the deluge continued for forty days, interpreted it to be a warning against removing Swithin's remains, and therefore contented themselves with erecting a chapel over his grave. As poor Robin sings: Whether this were so or no, Is more than you or I do know. And to make hay while sun doth shine, Mr. Earle, however, has shewn that while it is true that St. Swithin did leave directions that he should be buried in a vile place, under the eaves-droppings, on the north side of Winchester church, there was no supernatural protest on his part. against his relics being removed to the magnificent shrine prepared for them in Ethelwold's cathedral. On the contrary, the weather was most propitious for the ceremony. Whoever was at the pains of inventing the story of the forty days' tempest, misapplied his imaginative faculties altogether, since the phenomenon popularly associated with St. Swithin is as apocryphal as the story concocted to account for it. From observations made at Greenwich in the twenty years ending with 1861, it appears that during that term forty days' rain was never known to follow St. Swithin's Day; while, oddly enough, the wettest weather came when the saint failed to 'christen the apples.' In only six instances-in 1841, 1845, 1851, 1853, 1854, and 1856-did it rain at all upon the fateful day; and the forty days following shewed respectively twenty-three, twentysix, thirteen, eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen. rainy ones. On the other hand, there were twelve wet days out of the forty after the dry St. Swithin of 1842, twenty-two after that of 1843, twenty-nine after that of 1860, and no less than thirty-one after that of 1848. Not that any evidence is likely to shake the faith of believers in the ancient notion. Convinced against their will, they will hold their old opinion still, like Hone's lady-friend, who, finding her favorite saint's day fine, prophesied a long term of beautiful weather; but when a few drops of rain fell towards evening, veered round, and was positive six weeks of wet impended. Her first prophecy turned out to be the correct one; but the obstinate dame would not have it so, declaring stoutly that if no rain had fallen in the daytime, there certainly must have been some at night. There are rainy saints beside Swithin; in Belgium they pin their faith to St. Godeliève; in France, to Saints Gervais and Protais, and St. Médard. If Bartholomew's Day be ushered in by a hoarfrost, followed by mist, a sharp, biting winter will come in due time. A fine Michaelmas Day betokens a sunshiny winter, the pleasantness of which will be neutralised by nipping, long-staying northeasters. Merry Christmas sadly belies its name in its prognostications, which are of such a very lugubrious order, that, did we trust in them, we should be inclined to parody Carey's famous song, and pray: Of all the days that are in the week, A Sunday Christmas Day is the only one prophetic of unalloyed good, being the harbinger of a new year in which beasts will thrive, fields flourish, and all lands rest in peace. When Christmas Day falls upon a Wednesday, we may hope for a genial summer, as recompense for a stormy winter; but when it falls upon any of the remaining five, a severe winter without any compensation is in store for us; supplemented by war and cattle-plague, when the festival comes upon a Monday; with mortality among kings and great people, when it comes upon a Tuesday; and by a great clearing-off of old folks, when it falls upon a Saturday. If Childermas Day be wet, it threatens us with dearth; if it be fine, it promises us abundance; and as the wind blows on the last night of December, it tells what the unborn year will bring-for If New-year's eve night-wind blow south, Not the least amusing thing about all these sage predictions, as regards weather, is that they take no account of the change from old to new style, which altered the exact position of the days named; there being now, for example, a difference of twelve days between old St. Swithin's and new St. Swithin's Day. Weather prophets are above minding this awkward trifle.Chambers's Fournal. STRAUSS AS A POLITICIAN. DR. STRAUSS will hardly have any honor in his own country as a politician, and perhaps he ought not to be so considered elsewhere. It is true he represented his native town of Ludwigsburg for a short period in the Würtemberg Diet, compelled at length to resign because of his Conservative views; but he has never pretended, up to the present time, to be anything more than the leader of the chivalry of doubt, in which capacity, should future generations clothe him with the clouds of mysticism he has rent asunder from other names, he may become a veritable Arthurian hero. But no apology is needed for taking a man at his own estimate, where he is so fully entitled to be measured by it, and if the process should seem ungracious, it is, at least, not unprovoked. A portion of his recent Confession, if not ad dressed to politicians, deals with politics in a very free and brusque fashion. Philosophically, the Confession would have been complete without it, as it is curiously incomplete with it, presenting us with a strong illustration of the mental oddities observable in one-sided and vigorous minds, whether their virility be logical or romantic. The natural limit of variation, of healthy excursus, is not definitely fixed, but it exists for great minds as well as for little ones, and for the special faculties of all. The rigid logician will dream when he passes its boundary, and the coy mystic will become shrewd and commonplace. Destructive critics hesitate and become feebly conservative; constructive minds leave their glory behind them, but carry their method into mild romance. Swedenborg, Comte, and Mill, each in their own way and degree, serve to show us the two sides of the boundary. some the mystery of its superiority. Every mystery appears absurd, and yet nothing in life, in the arts, or in the State, is devoid of mystery." Here, surely, the boundary was passed, and the logician lost his cunning. Substitute the word Christianity for Monarchy in the quotation, and what a reflection we have on his own elaborate destruction of mystery! In becoming political, he slips under his thought the old false bottom-if false it be--he has labored for years to destroy. The function of mystery in religion is to hood-wink the intelligence, and so it is to be discarded; in politics, its function is to preserve an absurd enigma from the touch of unwashed hands, to deftly hide the springs of action until we may not discover the difference between a noble reality and a gaudy sham, and so it is to be preserved. We have nothing to say against Monarchy, as such; but this is a remarkable defence of it. The critic who rushes fearlessly in with scalpel and microscope, where others gaze apart with awe, waves them off with haughty hands where they have a clearer right to carry observation and logic into whatsoever length they may lead without any fear of the unknown and the unresolvable. Monarchy, exactly suited to their wants for all time. "There is," he says, Strauss is a more novel example. A thing enigmatic-nay, seemingly absurd theologian by training, disposition, and in monarchy; but just in this consists profession, the temptation to touch politics was irresistible. It moved him in 1848, but it mastered him when he sat down to write about the old faith and the new. Having unsettled everything else, a twinge of conscience impelled him to leave us a sphere where rigorous logic might pause, and events might be regarded with halfshut eyes. This sense of uneasiness, this desire to leave us the tortoise if he takes away the elephant, begins to be manifest in the introduction. When a critic who makes a clean sweep of religious fact and belief declares, "We wish for the present no change whatever in the world at large," we more than half suspect that some surprise is in store for us, and we prepare for arrested method, for some sop for our moral infirmity, or for some Comtean recipe for hygiène cérébrale. It becomes apparent that it is a good thing to go to church, though we do not believe in the sermon; and if we have, with characteristic Pantheism, elevated man into the condition of the only perfect being, we must leave him, politically, where he is, amidst the general inequality and degradation of his lot, to find room for his perfection according to "the idea of his kind," whatever that might mean when rendered into profaner language. No new Church is yet possible, the Babe is not yet even in the Manger; but a new political State, in accordance with the idea of a life restricted to threescore years and ten, concentrating all the misplaced energy directed to other-worldliness, is also impossisible, is not even to be desired, is perhaps as illusory as "the old faith" which has vanished in a puff of dust, like a hazel-nut beneath the blow of a steam-hammer. We have hitherto built upwards; in future, we must not build at all. That way, Babel lies. The destruction of religion is complete. Comte thought out a sorry substitute-the worship of the Grand Etre. Strauss did not stoop to be so weak. The substitute exists, quite independently of anything he can say or do. For him, as "a simple citizen," it is the German Constitution, rendered a little less Liberal than it is now. Nature exists for the philosophic, stripped of all mystery, as far as he can strip it. For the common herd, there is Even here, however, Strauss has parted with his penetrating acumen. Mystery being invaluable, politically, for some inexplicable reason-though chiefly, we sup pose, because it is only in this province of action and belief the unscientific boor or voter can realize and feel it when he has accepted, at second-hand, the destruction of "the old faith "-Monarchy should be the best form of government, ideally, as all men cannot belong to the intellectual caste wherein excogitation is everything, without some immense revolutionary change. Practically, it may be best, but not ideally. We have renounced ideals in the universal relativity. As if uttering a profound truth, ab ovo, Strauss checks this levity. He assures us "there cannot be an absolutely best form of government." To ask the question is to put the matter wrongly; "it is equivalent to asking what is the best form of clothing." But even this question does not seem unanswerable. The best form of government has been frequently discussed, and by logicians as |