Peter was carried away captive by the unbelievers. He died a prisoner in their hands; and even the honours of sepulture were long withheld from his remains.

society, had, through great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable Church was still there.

Some future historian, as able and It is not strange that, in the year temperate as Professor Ranke, will, we 1799, even sagacious observers should hope, trace the progress of the Catholic have thought that, at length, the hour revival of the nineteenth century. We of the Church of Rome was come. An feel that we are drawing too near our infidel power ascendant, the Pope own time, and that, if we go on, we dying in captivity, the most illustrious shall be in danger of saying much prelates of France living in a foreign which may be supposed to indicate, country on Protestant alms, the noblest and which will certainly excite, angry edifices which the munificence of for- feelings. We will, therefore, make only mer ages had consecrated to the wor-one more observation, which, in our ship of God turned into temples of opinion, is deserving of serious attenVictory, or into banqueting-houses for tion. political societies, or into Theophilanthropic chapels, such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination.

During the eighteenth century, the influence of the Church of Rome was constantly on the decline. Unbelief made extensive conquests in all the But the end was not yet. Again Catholic countries of Europe, and in doomed to death, the milk-white hind some countries obtained a complete was still fated not to die. Even be- ascendency. The Papacy was at length fore the funeral rites had been per- brought so low as to be an object of formed over the ashes of Pius the derision to infidels, and of pity rather Sixth, a great reaction had commenced, than of hatred to Protestants. During which, after the lapse of more than the nineteenth century, this fallen forty years, appears to be still in pro- Church has been gradually rising from gress. Anarchy had had its day. A her depressed state and reconquering new order of things rose out of the her old dominion. No person who confusion, new dynasties, new laws, calmly reflects on what, within the new titles; and amidst them emerged last few years, has passed in Spain, in the ancient religion. The Arabs have Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in a fable that the Great Pyramid was the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in built by antediluvian kings, and alone, France, can doubt that the power of of all the works of men, bore the this Church over the hearts and minds weight of the flood. Such as this was of men, is now greater far than it was the fate of the Papacy. It had been when the Encyclopædia and the Phiburied under the great inundation; losophical Dictionary appeared. It is but its deep foundations had remained surely remarkable, that neither the unshaken; and, when the waters abated, moral revolution of the eighteenth cenit appeared alone amidst the ruins of tury, nor the moral counter-revolution a world which had passed away. The of the nineteenth, should, in any perrepublic of Holland was gone, and ceptible degree, have added to the dothe empire of Germany, and the great main of Protestantism. During the Council of Venice, and the old Heive- former period, whatever was lost to tian League, and the House of Bour-Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; bon, and the parliaments and aristo- during the latter, whatever was recracy of France. Europe was full of gained by Christianity in Catholic young creations, a French empire, a countries was regained also by Cathokingdom of Italy, a Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only territorial limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and spirit of

licism. We should naturally have expected that many minds, on the way from superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to superstition, would have stopped at an in

termediate point. Between the doc-
trines taught in the schools of the
Jesuits, and those which were main-
tained at the little supper parties of the
Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval,
in which the human mind, it should
seem, might find for itself some resting-
place more satisfactory than either of
the two extremes. And at the time of
the Reformation, millions found such
a resting-place. Whole nations then
renounced Popery without ceasing to
believe in a first cause, in a future
life, or in the Divine mission of Jesus.
In the last century, on the other hand,
when a Catholic renounced his belief
in the real presence, it was a thousand
to one that he renounced his belief in
the Gospel too; and, when the reaction
took place, with belief in the Gospel
came back belief in the real presence.
We by no means venture to deduce
from these phænomena any general
law; but we think it a most remark-
able fact, that no Christian nation,
which did not adopt the principles of
the Reformation before the end of the
sixteenth century, should ever have
adopted them. Catholic communities
have, since that time, become infidel
and become Catholic again; but none
has become Protestant.

LEIGH HUNT. (JANUary, 1841.) The Dramatic Works of WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, and FARQUHAR, with Biographical and Critical Notices. By LEIGH HUNT. 8vo. London: 1840. WE have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judgment of him, indeed, only from events of universal notoriety, from his own works, and from the works of other writers, who have generally abused him in the most rancorous manner. But, unless we are greatly mistaken, he is a very clever, a very honest, and a very good-natured man. We can clearly discern, together with many merits, many faults both in his writings and in his conduct. But we really think that there is hardly a man living whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been so cruelly expiated.

In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by reason of its mannerism, is well suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary judgments; but we find in him what is very rare in our time, the power of justly appreciating and heartily enjoying good things of very different kinds. He can adore Shakspeare and Spenser without denying poetical genius to the author of Alexander's Feast, or fine observation, rich fancy, and exquisite humour to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular attention to the history of the English drama, from the age of Elizabeth down to our own time, and has every right to be heard with respect on that subject.

Here we close this hasty sketch of one of the most important portions of the history of mankind. Our readers will have great reason to feel obliged to us if we have interested them sufficiently to induce them to peruse Professor Ranke's book. We will only caution them against the French translation, a performance which, in our opinion, is just as discreditable to the moral character of the person from whom it proceeds as a false affidavit or a forged bill of exchange would have been, and advise them to study The plays to which he now acts as either the original, or the English ver-introducer are, with few exceptions, sion, in which the sense and spirit of such as, in the opinion of many very the original are admirably preserved. respectable people, ought not to be re

printed. In this opinion we can by no means concur. We cannot wish that any work or class of works which has exercised a great influence on the human mind, and which illustrates the character of an important epoch in letters, politics, and morals, should dis

society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of exposing himself to the influences of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the felon who begged the sheriff's to let him have an umbrella held over his head from the door of Newgate to the gallows, because it was a drizzling morning, and he was apt to take cold.

The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. It would be indeed absurd to attempt to keep men from acquiring those qualifications which fit them to play their part in life with honour to themselves and advantage to their country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy which cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a walk from Westminster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy.

appear from the world. If we err in this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men in the empire, and especially with the Church of England, and with the great schools of learning which are connected with her. The whole liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the principle, that no book which is valuable, either by reason of the excellence of its style, or by reason of the light which it throws on the history, polity, and manners of nations, should be withheld from the student on account of its impurity. The Athenian Comedies, in which there are scarcely a hundred lines together without some passage of which Rochester would have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the Pitt Press, and the Clarendon Press, under the direction of Syndics and delegates appointed by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by reverend, very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined by bishops But we should be justly chargeable and professors of divinity in such works with gross inconsistency if, while we as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes and defend the policy which invites the the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is youth of our country to study such certainly something a little ludicrous in writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we the idea of a conclave of venerable were to set up a cry against a new fathers of the church praising and re-edition of the Country Wife or the Way warding a lad on account of his intimate of the World. The immoral English acquaintance with writings compared writers of the seventeenth century are with which the loosest tale in Prior is indeed much less excusable than those modest. But, for our own part, we of Greece and Rome. But the worst have no doubt that the greatest societies English writings of the seventeenth which direct the education of the Eng-century are decent, compared with lish gentry have herein judged wisely. much that has been bequeathed to us It is unquestionable that an extensive by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have acquaintance with ancient literature enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more useful to the state and to the church than one who is unskilled, or little skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all the influences of such a state of

little doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. Buckhurst and Sedley, even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which they were pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King's Bench, would never have dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phædrus on that fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the fountain warbled at their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we think it is, desirable that an English gentle

and humane," but with the iron eye
and cruel sneer of Mephistophiles.
We find ourselves in a world, in which
the ladies are like very profligate, im-
pudent and unfeeling men, and in
which the men are too bad for any
place but Pandemonium or Norfolk
Island. We are surrounded by fore-
heads of bronze, hearts like the nether
millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell.

man should be well informed touching words, "carthly, sensual, devilish."
the government and the manners of Its indecency, though perpetually such
little commonwealths which both in as is condemned not less by the rules
place and time are far removed from of good taste than by those of morality,
us, whose independence has been more is not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a
than two thousand years extinguished, fault as its singularly inhuman spirit.
whose language has not been spoken We have here Belial, not as when he
for ages, and whose ancient magnifi-inspired Ovid and Ariosto, “graceful
cence is attested only by a few broken
columns and friezes, much more must
it be desirable that he should be inti-
mately acquainted with the history of
the public mind of his own country,
and with the causes, the nature, and
the extent of those revolutions of
opinion and feeling which, during the
last two centuries, have alternately
raised and depressed the standard of
our national morality. And know-
ledge of this sort is to be very sparingly
gleaned from Parliamentary debates,
from state papers, and from the works
of grave historians. It must either not
be acquired at all, or it must be ac-
quired by the perusal of the light lite-gether differ from this opinion. The
rature which has at various periods crime charged is not mere coarseness
been fashionable. We are therefore
by no means disposed to condemn this
publication, though we certainly can-
not recommend the handsome volume
before us as an appropriate Christmas
present for young ladies.

Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English dramatists; and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is force in the plea. We alto

of expression. The terms which are
delicate in one age become gross in
the next. The diction of the English
version of the Pentateuch is sometimes
such as Addison would not have ven-
tured to imitate; and Addison, the
standard of moral purity in his own
age, used many phrases which are now
proscribed. Whether a thing shall be
designated by a plain noun substantive
or by a circumlocution is mere matter
of fashion. Morality is not at all in-
terested in the question. But morality
is deeply interested in this, that what is
immoral shall not be presented to the
imagination of the young and sus-
ceptible in constant connection with
what is attractive. For every person
who has observed the operation of the
law of association in his own mind and
in the minds of others knows that

We have said that we think the present publication perfectly justifiable. But we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who seems to hold that there is little or no ground for the charge of immorality so often brought against the literature of the Restoration. We do not blame him for not bringing to the judgment-seat the merciless rigour of Lord Angelo; but we really think that such flagitious and impudent offenders as those who are now at the bar deserved at least the gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole matter a little too much in the easy style of Lucio; whatever is constantly presented to and perhaps his exceeding lenity dis-the imagination in connection with poses us to be somewhat too severe.

And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character. It is clever, indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the most emphatic sense of the

what is attractive will itself become
attractive. There is undoubtedly a
great deal of indelicate writing in
Fletcher and Massinger, and more
than might be wished even in Ben
Jonson and Shakspeare, who are com-
paratively pure.
But it is impossible
* 0 0 3

to trace in their plays any systematic French, or that he should have a sword attempt to associate vice with those at his side. In all this there is no pasthings which men value most and de- sion, and scarcely any thing that can sire most, and virtue with every thing be called preference. The hero inridiculous and degrading. And such trigues just as he wears a wig; because, a systematic attempt we find in the if he did not, he would be a queer felwhole dramatic literature of the gene- low, a city prig, perhaps a Puritan. ration which followed the return of All the agreeable qualities are always Charles the Second. We will take, as given to the gallant. All the contempt an instance of what we mean, a single and aversion are the portion of the subject of the highest importance to unfortunate husband. Take Dryden the happiness of mankind, conjugal for example; and compare Woodall fidelity. We can at present hardly with Brainsick, or Lorenzo with Gocall to mind a single English play, mez. Take Wycherley; and compare written before the civil war, in which Horner with Pinchwife. Take Vanthe character of a seducer of married brugh; and compare Constant with women is represented in a favourable Sir John Brute. Take Farquhar; and light. We remember many plays in compare Archer with Squire Sullen. which such persons are baffled, ex- Take Congreve; and compare Bellposed, covered with derision, and in-mour with Fondlewife, Careless with sulted by triumphant husbands. Such Sir Paul Plyant, or Scandal with is the fate of Falstaff, with all his wit Foresight. In all these cases, and in and knowledge of the world. Such is many more which might be named, the fate of Brisac in Fletcher's Elder the dramatist evidently does his best Brother, and of Ricardo and Ubaldo to make the person who commits the in Massinger's Picture. Sometimes, injury graceful, sensible, and spirited, as in the Fatal Dowry and Love's and the person who suffers it a fool, Cruelty, the outraged honour of or a tyrant, or both. families is repaired by a bloody revenge. If now and then the lover is represented as an accomplished man, and the husband as a person of weak or odious character, this only makes the triumph of female virtue the more signal, as in Jonson's Celia and Mrs. Fitzdottrel, and in Fletcher's Maria. In general we will venture to say that the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth and James the First either treat the breach of the marriage-vow as a serious crime, or, if they treat it as matter for laughter, turn the laugh against the gallant.

On the contrary, during the forty years which followed the Restoration, the whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as a peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of passion may excuse, but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace without which his character would be imperfect. It is as essential to his breeding and to his place in society that he should make love to the wives of his neighbours as that he should know

Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defence for this way of writing. The dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century are not, according to him, to be tried by the standard of morality which exists, and ought to exist in real life. Their world is a conventional world. Their heroes and heroines belong, not to England, not to Christendom, but to an Utopia of gallantry, to a Fairyland, where the Bible and Burn's Justice are unknown, where a prank which on this earth would be rewarded with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish laughter. A real Horner, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be exceedingly bad men. But to predi cate morality or immorality of the Horner of Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it would be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams. "They belong to the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. When we are among them we are among a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by