moral. By the mere act of reflection, by the effort which a man makes, who compels himself away from the external world in order to study and to know himself, he disposes himself to receive and retain the truth, and detaches his interest from all which has not that character. What motive but the wish to know the truth could induce him to bury himself in the deep places of the soul? There all external interests abandon him. Never had society greater cause than at present to encourage those studies which lead a man to himself."

The necessary connection, or rather identity, of political equality with anarchy is thus forcibly stated: "Equality is the madness of this age,-a madness which menaces society with destruction. Each man must be judge of all, and will measure all things with his rule. Nothing is respected, nothing is imposing, neither rank, knowledge, nor virtue; no reputation is above the most miserable calumnies. What can be the result of this spirit of independence, pride, and arrogance? Where no one obeys, where no one recognises a superior, there is anarchy, or the exclusive empire of force." This identification of anarchy and despotism is a piece of high political perception; and to appreciate it, we must remember that it was written after the first Bonaparte despotism was at an end, and before the second was dreamt of.

Here is the philosophy of the Stoics, whatever form it may assume, disposed of in four lines, which are as profound as they are simple: "Philosophers falsely conclude that what we can sometimes, we can always. This Stoic morality, sublime as it is, is contrary to the nature of man."

Among the many political reflections which apply to the persons and circumstances of our own day with full as much force as to those of forty years ago, take the following:

“Behold our liberals! See what sort of respect they have for this public opinion upon which they pretend to found all their methods of government. Opinion is what they think, what they desire in the interest of their predominance-that is their point of departure; all the world must think, wish, and act according to their understanding of it. Make them strong and powerful like Bonaparte, and they will employ the same means of directing and governing according to what they call reason, of which they are the exclusive organs and interpreters, Every thing must be sacrificed to this aim,-private affections, habits, present manners, even individual existences are counted for nothing; the present must be sacrificed to the great object in view. Robespierre, Bonaparte, and the like, have reasoned, and always will reason, as these do. But can we, in good faith, attach to such ideas of absolute good so much value? can one attribute to these fairly so much reality, or power of future realisation, that a generation, or even an individual, should be sacrificed to them? What are all our ideas, all our views of the future, all our means of realising what we

have conceived? Is there not another Power which delights in putting to confusion all our combinations by events contrary to all our expectations? In this uncertainty, can we, ought we, to attempt to compel things in a direction which opposes a general tendency of which man is not the originator; and in order to attain an end, perhaps impossible and at least very uncertain, should we struggle against the most natural and deeply-rooted habits and sentiments?"

The two following short sentences, written in 1818, show how great a revolution had taken place in the thoughts and feelings of De Biran, and how profoundly real his religion was, whatever might have been its limitations: "Religion alone resolves the problems which philosophy proposes. "At present the happiest state for me consists not, as of old, in a vivid feeling of existence, but in desiring to be nothing but what and where I am."

""

The very few who are capable of thinking will not dispute the truth of the remark, that

"The exercise of thought is at the same time a moral exercise. To place oneself above nature and organisation, above the passions and affections which appertain to the body, is the first condition of carrying on one's office as a man. And, viewed thus, intelligence and morality are indivisible. But many things are called intelligence and thought which are not so. To judge well and to do well depend on the same condition, namely, that of elevating oneself above the With the vast majority of men, the spirit is always dispersed in and mingled with the senses."

senses.

The following thoughts are taken almost at random from hundreds no less true or suggestive of truth :

"Confidence in oneself, or in one's own power, is often, though unconsciously, confidence in another power, of which one is the instrument."

"Happy are those whose condition compels them to observe fixed rules, whose hours are employed in settled daily duties. . . . . I have truly lived only whilst I have had an ever-present intellectual aim, which served as a bond to successive moments and ideas. But these aims, which the studious man gives to himself, are not permanent. He attains, passes by, and is disgusted with them. Besides, the faculties are not always disposed for action; and in those conditions of intelligential slumber which sometimes occur, what is he to do or become? A material labour, which is not subject to such perturbations, but which nevertheless sufficiently engages our activity to make us feel the need and pleasure of relaxation, is the necessary condition of a happy life."

"The good wish to be happy in God; the evil only desire to make use of Him. Instead of referring all their happiness, all their existence to Him, they refer Him to themselves, and wish to use his power as a means to the happiness of their choice. The first cause of the fall of the soul is this perversion of divine love. Malebranche says

that we love and seek God as the true good, even when we seem to be seeking only sensible pleasures. That is true in an objective sense; but in a subjective sense, if we consult our internal experience, we know well that it is no such thing."

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Nothing is more true than the distinction drawn by Kant between speculative and practical reason. . . . . I have acquired also a speculative conscience. In disapproving certain sentiments or actions, I seek the cause of that disapprobation, and find it sufficiently curious to prevent me from being angry at the cause of my reflections. Thus I distract myself from remorse, and take no precaution against repeated falls. The speculative instruction thus drawn from vice itself familiarises us with its hideousness, and makes it appear less, as the naturalist loses his horror and disgust at the monsters he occupies himself with describing. Is it not, then, an immoral habit to consider so closely the good and evil which passes in oneself? My experience bids me fear that it is so. We must have an aim, a point of support, out of ourselves and higher than ourselves, in order to be able, in observing, to act with success upon ourselves."

"The sentiment of the soul which attaches itself to good with love depends much more than I have hitherto supposed on the voluntary disposition, and regular and elevated exercise of the intellectual faculties."

"I have not, like other men, pursued the external benefits of fortune; but I have looked for all good from my interior dispositions, which are not less under the empire of fortune than external things. Under an appearance of wisdom and moderation, I have been just as blind, inconstant, and frivolous, as those who are perpetually drawn from them themselves by passion and illusion. I must think

less about myself. All men respect and honour, as by a moral instinct, those who forget themselves for others. That is the only truly moral disposition. . . . . God must occupy the place which self has hitherto been not ashamed to usurp. After God, all the reasonable objects of our affection must be loved, not for ourselves, but for themselves, and as works of God."

"Is it in the power of the soul to pass, by its own force, from an inferior to a superior condition? It is evident that it is not so unconditionally. The soul cannot of itself modify itself instantaneously. But what it can do is to conceive an aim, and to combine the means which are at its disposal in order to elevate itself progressively, and by a series of efforts. It is necessary to begin by living purely, morally, without having to do with the world except by duty; and then, the sensations losing their empire, the soul rises of itself, or by a grace which is its own, towards its source. It is no longer the plaything of a thousand illusions which seduce or torment it, so long as it is under the empire of the senses and the imagination. But we deceive ourselves greatly, if we think that it is in the power of the soul, by the most energetic display of its activity, to withdraw itself suddenly from the empire of passions, when they have planted their roots at once in the physical organisation and in the imagination, united by a mutual sympathy. A man can then no more cure himself than he could of

an organic disease or of madness. In order to save himself from the abyss, he must have an external point of support. Religion comes to his help; but the religious sentiment comes only by the practice of actions which are in our power, whatever may be our interior conditions." "There is absolute harmony between psychology and religion. The one leads to the other."

"The sensitive or animal life has its sustenance from without the feeling and organised being, which has need of air, warmth, and food in order to exist. Why should it be otherwise with the life of the spirit? . . . . The communication of the Spirit of God with our spirit, when we know how to call upon Him and prepare Him a dwelling, is a veritable psychological fact, and not merely a point of faith."

It is with regret that we are compelled to conclude these extracts; but we trust that we have given enough to send many of our readers to this delightful little volume.

ART. IX. THE PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC REVOLT FROM THE MIDDLE-SCHEME OF HENRY VIII.

History of England, from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Vols. V. and VÍ. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1860.

THE publication of Mr. Froude's valuable history in successive instalments of volumes, if prejudicial to the formation of a fair and broad estimate of the soundness of his conclusions, has at least this advantage, that it enables his critics to distinguish more clearly the various aspects which the story of the Tudor period may assume when scrutinised from different points of view, and suspends the ultimate judgment on the whole until the criticism has been exhaustive and complete. Although the satisfactory treatment of any peculiar aspect of the history must necessarily carry us, more or less, over the whole area of the work, yet each successive epoch has its own preeminently striking feature, which seems to claim with justice an especial and more immediate attention, and allots to the critic, by a natural law, the shape which his examination should assume. The domestic relations and private character of Henry, with the cognate subjects of the royal succession and the papal supremacy, are thus necessarily pointed out as the centre-pieces of the first stage of Mr. Froude's history; and, nearly as distinctly, the attainders and popular disturbances of the succeeding period point to the characteristics of the

civil government of the Tudors as the subject-matter of a second investigation. The ecclesiastical policy of Henry can hardly be estimated properly until we have before us the results of the Protestant and Catholic movements, in advance and retrogression, in the reigns of his two successors; while the period of Elizabeth would seem to give us the practical solution of the problem which Henry set before him in his attempt to combine a religious compromise with a religious penal test. We have yet to wait for the new materials which Mr. Froude may bring us towards a satisfactory judgment on this last point; but we are enabled by his present volumes, taken in connection with much of his former, to anticipate with some confidence what our decision is likely to be, even though it may be somewhat different from that which Mr. Froude intimates to be the result of his own more extended labours.

We should probably start from a serious difference in our estimate of the qualifications of the Tudor princes for becoming the national interpreters and guides in ecclesiastical matters. That the Tudors-taking as their representatives Henry VIII. and Elizabeth-were great civil rulers, we are prepared to admit and maintain; that they were equally wise heads of the Church, we are quite as much disposed to question. In the one case, their mental and physical characteristics harmonised in a remarkable manner with the demands of the crisis and the national sentiment. In the other, the peculiarities of the problem which was forced upon them by the course of events were exactly such as to convert the strongest points of their character into serious disqualifications.

That the English ecclesiastical system was in the reign of Henry in a very different condition from the political, will be admitted by every one. True it is, that the transitional character of the age applied to both systems alike; Church and State had both outlived their actual external garb, and required equally to be refashioned in accordance with the requirements and feelings of the times. In both cases the popular mind had passed beyond the confines of earlier formularies, which it found inadequate to give utterance to its unspoken aspirations. But the manner in which this feeling operated in the two cases differed, just as the past history of the one contrasted with that of the other. Questions of constitutional rights had ceased to occupy the foreground in public attention, because, in the increasing distance from the epoch of their agitation, they had quietly fallen into their natural and unconspicuous position in the harmonious retrospect of the landscape. The ecclesiastical horizon, on the other hand, was obscured, and the recognised landmarks of religious belief and clerical authority