and philosophical authority. He must have been the ideal of a boon companion. We can imagine him, with a select coterie of friends like minded, in some obscure apartment of his convent, escaped from the eye of the superior, and the observation of those who would have been scandalized by such conduct, engaged in a merry drinking-bout, and giving loose rein to his astonishing powers of wit and raillery. Such a picture and dissertation as the following has in it the very spirit of the bottle:

"Then did they fall upon the chat of victuals, and some belly furniture to be snatched at in the same place, which purpose was no sooner mentioned but forthwith began flagons to go, gammons to trot, goblets to fly, great bowls to ting, glasses to ring. You have catched a

cold, gammer? Yea, forsooth, sir. By the belly of Saint Buff, let us talk of our drink. I never drink but at my hours, like the pope's mule. And I never drink but in my breviary, like a fair father guardian. Which was first, thirst or drinking? Thirst, for who in the time of innocence would have drunk without being athirst? Nay, sir, it was drinking; for privatio presupponit habitum. I am learned, you see. Foecundi calices quem non fecere disertum? We poor innocents drink but too much without thirst. Not I, truly, who am a sinner, for I never drink without thirst either present or future. To prevent it, as you know, I drink for the thirst to come; I drink eternally. There is to me an eternity of drinking, and a drinking of eternity. Let us sing; let us drink; and tune up our roundelays. Drink everlastingly, and you will never die. If I do not drink I am a dry thing; you see me a dead man. My soul flies off into some marsh. In a dry place the soul cannot dwell."*

He is a jolly companion. A richer vein of unrestrained,

letters as a fool. Perhaps they are right-at least they are true to the light within them, which is only the glitter of gold. Something like the catholic convents of the middle ages, giving opportunities for culture, and protecting the retiring student and thinker from the turbulent and degrading selfishness of the universal scramble for money, would be a blessing which would react to the benefit of all classes.

* Puis entrarent en propos de reciner on propre lien. Lor flaccous d'aller, jambous de trotter, goubeletz de voler, breusses de tintes. Vous estes morfondue m'amye? Voyre, Ventre sainct Quenct, parlons de boyre. Je ne boy que a mes heures, comme la mule du pape. Je ne boy qu'en mon breviaire, comme ung beau pere guardian. Qui feut premier, soif ou beuvage? Soif: car qui est beuve sans soif durant le temps d'innocence? Beuvage; car privatio presupponit habitum. Je suys clerc: Foecundi calices quem non fecere disertum ?

frolicsome humor, and deviltry the world has never seen. Then, it is a satisfaction to perceive that there is a stratum of serious meaning beneath it all. One loves to believe in his matchless boon-companion as a philanthropic reformer. That gives a point to his questionable jokes, which conscience is fain to approve. He is rough and uncouth, but all he says has moral depth. Is he really pious at heart? We hope so, and will charitably suppose that he is. We wish that he were not so nasty. Well, it is only his way, and he is surely honest. Let us yield ourselves for the time to his magnetism, for we are confident he does not mean to harm us. He only wishes to convince us what snobbish fools we are in admiring what is contemptible. We should try to be charitable with Rabelais, for his grossièretés. We are assured that he was a true man, and that he would be refined if he could. We, therefore, not only pardon; we heartily commisserate him. Looking more closely, we cordially admire him. The man who, in such circumstances, could incline the scale of propensity in favor of integrity and justice deserves our approval. Rabelais did more, and merits our reverence. He had a lofty scorn of vice and hypocrisy, and dealt them blows from which they will never recover while the world endures. If he was ever unjust, he erred on the side of excessive honesty.

Rabelais has had numberless imitators, some of whom have acquired fame, as Swift, Sterne, Butler, and Jean Paul. None of the pupils, however, have nearly approached the great master. Would that our age and country might produce a Rabelais! Our politics, our manners, our social customs-shall we say also our religion?-furnish abundant material for such a master of ridicule. He would be to us a teacher, a pleasing reformer, a leader-up of an age of refinement and truth. He who helps the world to perceive its falsities, to get rid of its shams, deserves the blessing of all ages.

ART. II.-1. Social Statics.

By ROBERT SPENCER. London, 1851. 2. Future Civil Policy of America. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL. D. New York, 1865.

WHETHER it can be properly said that nations have a course of existence like that of an individual man, comprising the successive periods of human life and ending in death, cannot be answered without greater precision of ideas than we commonly find in the discussion of the proposition. If it be meant that there is a development from an embryonic state-a growth according to an inherent germinal power, that, by its very nature, has a pre-determined result, and from maturity, by a like definite law, a decline to final extinction, it is obvious that such terms have no literal application to ethnical life-nor, in fact, is there sufficient analogy to furnish the basis of any substantial argument in respect to the growth and decline of nations.

It is, nevertheless, true, that there is individuality of nations, and, as to the greater number that have existed, that there has been a period of growth and decline. But when we speak of extinction it becomes necessary to fix definitely what is meant by nation, in order to have a consistent idea of what constitutes its extinction. A people may continue to exist when its government has been subverted and foreign domination imposed. In private life old usages may still prevail. Vices incident to a subject condition must, however, be developed. The interior, or political constituency, by which it has been known to the world, may be destroyed, but a people may be under foreign rule a considerable time without losing altogether their intrinsic national spirit, and while that remains there is a possibility of restoration-or, at least, of melioration of the dominant power ultimating in the fusion of the foreign and native races.

The Athenian nationality, it is common to say, was extinguished by the successive Macedonian and Roman conquests. The people, however, still remained-intermingled, it is true, with aliens. The descendants of those who lived in the

heroic period of the republic were still there, but degenerated to the level of an ignoble commonalty, composed largely of a foreign and a servile element.* Even under the third conquest by the Turks a people occupied Athens, which were descended from this mixed ancestry, and, therefore, in part, from the citizens of an ancient period, yet this people were not ethnically the same; the individualism, or corporate personality, called a nation, was no longer extant; nor did there remain any intrinsic power of restoration to its former condition. Though in physical contour and private manners there is some resemblance to the ancient Athenians, it is impossible that with the environment of the modern kingdom of Greece there can be a reproduction of the nationality that once existed.

On the other hand, we have the Anglo-Saxons, a precedent of a partial restoration after a long subjection. In the reign of Edward III. of England, more than two hundred years after the Norman conquest, the language and usages of the conquered people, which had been rigorously proscribed by the dominant power, had acquired ascendancy, and thenceforth may be considered national, and the subject race, with considerable intermixture and improvement, became the English nation.

It is rare, indeed, if not unprecedented, that a people, after losing their distinctive government by usurpation or by conquest, have been resuscitated to their former state. The record of history is decisive against such resuscitation in the same form of government and national character. Generally there has been an antecedent transition or initiative change of condition which has prepared the way for the final breaking up, and this finality is but the culmination or result of causes that had been long operating, though, perhaps, not observed. The usurpation by Julius Cæsar was

Tacitus designates the people of Athens as an intermixture from all nations : "Non Athenienses tot cladibus extinctos, sed colluviem omnium nationum." (Ann., 2, 55.) Merivale supposes that after the taking of the city by Sylla it was wholly re-peopled, (His., v. 4, 355), but there certainly was not an entire extinction of the inhabitants. Women and children must have remained in considerable proportion, and some part of the adult population, though small. It is a remarkable fact that through all these and subsequent changes the language has been maintained so near to what it was in the classic age.

the sequence of a changed character of the people. At no subsequent time was there a possibility of reinstating the ancient form of government. The despotism then commenced became thereafter more and more oppressive, but the final relief came only by the entire dissolution of the imperial regime-the abandonment of old forms of civil life, and even of the language in which the laws had been expressed, and the abrogation of new usages and languages derived from foreign tribes, at first conquerors, and then gradually intermingled with the indigenous population. From such disintegration of the old and germination of new social and political relations came the nationalities now existing in Europe.

Asiatic nations have generally exhibited little inherent principle of reorganization. They have been many times conquered, but, with one remarkable exception in modern history, it has been a mere change of dynasties. The Arabian conquest introduced a new religion and new ideas. The Arabic language was largely disseminated, because the vernacular in some of the subject countries, as Syria, Egypt, and the Barbary states, and in all was, and is now, the language of religion. As it is forbidden to translate the Koran, wherever Mohammedanism has been introduced, the Arabic must be the language of religious services, and this applies to China and Hindostan as well as to those regions which were once ruled by the Caliphs.* Military enterprise was maintained a considerable time after the establishment of the Arabian empire; useful science (was cultivated; but the government was substantially like what had before

The large extension of the Arabic language is getting to be recognized as a fact of momentous consequence as bearing upon the future destiny of Asiatic nations. When christianity was first promulgated the general use of the Greek language was a providential facility to the preaching of the gospel through the whole empire; so now christian missionaries find it an incalculable aid that, by the use of the Arabic, they can impart the knowledge of the scriptures to a considerable population in every country from China to Morocco. Hence it has become a great object not only to publish the scriptures in that language, but to prepare native teachers and preachers conversant therewith. The seminary at Mount Lebanon, where translations are being made-not only of the bible, but of other religious writings, and where natives of Syria are educated, is, therefore, deemed the most important of the missionary stations, and the agency second only to the office of the church at Antioch in the days of the apostles.