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council absolves themselves and the emperor, is a curious monument of the political and religious morality of the times.

filled up with the excess of merits, gathered among the faithful, through christendom. The dispensation of its contents was entrusted to the pope, who distributed them in the shape of indulgences. This doctrine, maintained by the very ingenious and powerful logic of St. Thomas and St. Buonaventura, was in woven in the bull which Clement the Sixth promulgated for the jubi lee of the fourteenth century. The indulgences were drafts on this sinking fund of good works:-redeemable in heaven, and discounted on earth for ready cash; they formed no inconsiderable portion of the revenue of the church. This system, by which, he said, the last became the first; while, by the true treasure of the

It must, at first, seem extraordinary that the remission of sin could have been bought at the price of gold. But a theory had been started to explain and justify the The period which followed the sessions of the coun-practice. The scholastic doctors, assuming that the cil of Constance, brought no change in the disposition penances and merits of one individual might be transof minds. The clergy did not amend, and the popes | ferred to another, admitted the existence of a treasury, continued to be ambitious princes, stained with as glaring vices as the earthly rulers, their cotemporaries. The accession of Alexander the Sixth to the pontifical throne-his sacrilegious loves with his daughter, Lucrezia, in whose incestuous affections and favors he was rivalled by his sons, the duke of Gandia and Cæsar Borgia-his course of murders, exactions and simony-were not in any degree likely to bring men back to respect and cherish the ancient and hallowed catholicism of the Roman church. And in those days, the German peasantry, among whom the reformation was destined to enlist so many proselytes, indulged in this significant proverb: Je näher Rom, je böser der Christ; the nearer to Rome, the worse the christian. | gospel, the first became the last; Luther vigorously asLuther's doctrines, therefore, found a loud and long sailed in his opening thesis. Harping upon the same echo in minds thus prepared; and yet these were, at antithesis, he adds "the treasury of the scriptures is the first, but mild remonstrances against the sale of indul-net with which the apostles fished for men of wealth; gences. Urged, as much by the solicitations of Stau- but the treasury of indulgences is the net with which pitz as by the promptings of his vanity, he deemed him- we fish for the wealth of men." self bound to controvert propositions and denounce a While opposing the theological principle and the actraffic, which seemed to him to be unchristian and tual sale of indulgences, Luther had no foresight of scandalous; and, whatever danger was pointed out to the effect which he was about to produce both on others him in the attempt, he determined to publish the pro-and on himself. He was astonished-even alarmed, at gramme of a thesis, subdivided into various proposi- his success. But when it became necessary to maintions, in which he condemned the practice of indulgen-tain the conflict which he had solicited-when he began ces. Such is the origin of a theological wrangle, which to judge what he had, at first, merely believed-when induced a revolution, at once fatal to papal authority and friendly to intellectual freedom.

his mind, partially shaking off its misgivings, proceeded from daring to daring, to investigate pontifical power and church government;-he then embraced the full extent of the work of reform, and clearly defined the aim which he intended to reach. The conflict grew out of the gratification of scholastic vanity, and ended in the subversion of tradition and authority. But he soon found himself launched on a sea of varying opinions, where he needed the guidings of a compass. That was found in the scriptures-a compass less unerring than he had at first imagined; for a book, writ

Viewing the question as one of a purely historical character, it may not be inappropriate to trace the rise of this singular traffic. The practice seems to have originated under Urbanus the Second, who, in the eleventh century, granted a plenary indulgence, or remission of sins, to such as should engage in the wars of the holy land. This example, followed by many of the popes, was also practised by Leo the Tenth, who had exhausted the resources of the church, by a gorgeous liberality extended to kinsmen, courtiers, men of let-ten by human hands-sufficient as may be the divine ters and artists. In the year 1516, he published throughout christendom, an indulgence to such as would contribute moneys. Its benefits were extended to the dead; whose spirits were delivered from the bonds of purgatory, in consideration of the soul-tax paid in their behalf:-to this was added leave to use eggs and milk on days of abstinence-to choose one's own confessorand other such spiritual facilities. Leo, having promulgated his bull of indulgence, disposed of a portion of its proceeds before they were actually received. To different persons he assigned the revenue of different provinces; reserving that of the most lucrative ones for the use of the apostolic chamber. In this division, he conferred all that was to accrue from Saxony, and the part of Germany extending thence to the sea, to his sister Madelena, the wife of Cibo-a spurious son of Innocent the Eighth, who, in favor of this marriage, elevated Leo to the cardinalate, at the early age of fourteen, and, by this act of spiritual despotism, gave the Medici family access to the high dignities and temporal honors of the church.

inspiration under which it was composed--is ever liable to human interpretation. And this, the more likely, when a portion of that book, the old testament, was drawn out in an ancient and lost language, with an imperfect system of orthography, in which the vowels are far from being accurately marked. From the moment that the reformer declared that he constantly appealed to the scriptures as a rule of faith, and rejected the sanction of tradition, the interpretations of the fathers, and the decisions of the councils of the church; from that moment, the essentials of christian belief were brought in discrimine; it became necessary for Luther to supply the proofs of his argument, and consequently to publish a German translation of the Bible itself. But other innovators had, long before him, sought, by like translations, means of disseminating their peculiar doctrines. Gerson, the chancellor of the university of Paris, that tremendous engine of mental despotism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Gerson, who was the master spirit of the council of Constance, censuring, in his treatise against communion under both species,

tion of brutiates-brutes-prided themselves, like the
beggars of Flanders, in a name which they hallowed
by successful resistance against the power of despotism.
But the servile wars of antiquity generally terminated
fatally to the serfs. The peasantry of Cisalpine Gaul,
known in history under the name of Baganda, who
revolted at the period of the dismemberment of the
Roman empire, were hewn into subjection;
and the
Jacqueries of the fourteenth century were massacred
by the nobles, who banded from one extremity of
Europe to the other, in a war of extermination.

the literal interpretation of the scriptures, adds: "from | Fifth had excited against the holy empire. Germany, this venomous stock sprung the errors of the Begards, thenceforth, became the theatre of bloody and relent the mendicants of Lyons, and their like. There be many less wars. If history affords frequent instances of laymen among them, who hold copies of the Bible in the what it is fashionable to call the inferior classes—the lavulgar tongue, to the great detriment and scandal of borers, the peasantry and the mechanics-rising against Catholic truth." that social order, which oppresses them; the issue of The ultimate action of these elements of opposition, their insurgency is, nevertheless, rarely of a successful was to strip the church of Rome of the support of tra- character. And for this we can easily account. They dition and authority, and to transfer the latter to the generally want all the necessary elements of success— scriptural text,-saving the freedom of interpretation, skilful organization, proper leaders, and adequate which the innovators reserved to themselves. In this means: they bring but stout hearts and willing hands we may clearly trace the march of all opinions, which to the contest. Yet there are examples of triumph in suddenly modify the state of society; as well as the the case of the corporations of mechanics, who freed transitions through which they necessarily pass. It themselves in some of the cities of Europe, during the would seem, considering things in the abstract, that middle ages; and wrung charters of rights from the human reason, unshackled in its operations, and free reluctant grasp of barons, bishops and kings. In anspontaneously to combine the data of the intellect, cient history we find a solitary fact of this kind on might overleap time, space and circumstance, and indis-record :-that of the inhabitants of Brutium-slaves, criminately attain this or that extremity at will. But who shook off the yoke of the Lucanians, their masthe award of experience stands to the contrary :--al- | ters; and who, branded with the contemptuous appellathough the limits of the intellectual domain are neither visible to the eye nor tangible to the hand, they are not, therefore, the less accurately defined. An additional proof-though in a different order of observation, that intellect is dependant on and bound to the laws of a continuous development, the progress of which is in harmony with the development of the rest of earthly things. Luther contested and annihilated the infallibility of the pope and of the church; but he referred the principle of authority to the Bible. Though seemingly a retroaction, this was virtually an achievement-and, considering the period, the only achievement which the human mind could have made. To go from the authority of the holy see to the authority of the holy book ;-to seek for a rule of faith, not in the teachings of the church, who decided for the faithful; but in a revealed text, whence each was free to draw forth his inspirations and his proofs ;--to pass from the rule of submission to that of inquiry, though an inquiry hemmed within certain bounds; such were the labors and achievements of the reformers--and such the terms, beyond which they were forbidden to go by the nature of things. But this term once attained, the authority of the scriptures themselves was in turn examined--questioned-denied :—revelation was contested, and christianity shaken to its centre. This was the work of the reformers of the eighteenth century, who ceased to limit investigation to the texts of a book, which they no longer deemed divinely inspired. The religious revolution, started by Luther's doc-gious levellers of the reformation and the democrats trines, induced great changes both in the order of politics and the distribution of wealth. It secularised many a church feoff; sequestrated the property of con- When we consult the records of those days of reli vents and monasteries, and enlarged the authority of gious controversy, we marvel at the violence of lanthe temporal magistracy at the expense of the ecclesi- guage which condemns and the rigor of punishment astical tribunals. But this political movement pro- which visits mere opinions on points of theology, gressed still farther; and the commotion threatened the the most incomprehensible and abstruse. There is no very basis of the fabric of social order in Germany. expression sufficiently strong to characterise the flagThe peasantry swarmed from their hovels and beset the tiousness of the man who does not know whether strong holds of the barons. The anabaptists enlisted Christ have two natures or two wills: no amercement the interests of earth under the banner of heaven; and is adequately severe-none too atrocious for the mis declared war against all existing powers:-this state giving heretic. Rome burns the Calvinist, who de of intestine feuds was powerfully assisted by the ex-clines belief in the intercession of saints; the Calvinist ternal enmities which the ambition of Charles the condemns the Unitarian to fire and oil. The Gomarist,

The insurgent peasantry of Germany shared a similar fate. They and the anabaptists were incited, in this temporary revolution, by the twofold motive of politics and religion. This religious democracy of the sixteenth century widely differs from the democracy which prepared the great revolution of the eighteenth. In the blindness of their mysticism, they assailed the sciences, which, in the course of history, constitute the main safety of democracies. The ceaseless tendency of science is, as far as practicable, to equalise the bodily and mental faculties of man; and knowledge is the only armory from which the masses can draw trusty weapons of defence against the aggressions of the privileged orders :-the plebeian of Rome did not bulwark himself behind the limits of the Mons Sacer, until he had looked into the pious frauds of the augurs, and caught a glimpse of the mysteries of Panda. This brutal hostility to the arts and sciences establishes a well defined distinction between the politico-reli

of the American revolution, as well as those who inherited their principles and doctrines.

mailed in hopeless predestination, gives up to popular | Luther's reforms were, in some respects, highly imfrenzy the Arminian, who maintains the doctrine of portant. The authority of the popes was curtailed, free will. It must be confessed, that behind these seem- and confession abolished. Convents were suppressed, ingly religious opinions, whether assailing or assailed, and celibacy ceased to be binding on the priesthood. were screened questions of high political interests, The priests and monks who left their monasterieswhich also acted on the offensive or defensive ground. the nuns who were restored to the world--availed Hence, if in our own country, we lately saw a tribunal themselves of the privilege of marriage. Luther himpassing sentence on an union of trades, and proscribing self, an unhooded monk of the order of the Augustines, an enunciation of opinions, it is because both the married a nun, Catharine à Bohran; and Erasmus, the union and their opinions threaten the growing aristo- elegant railer, who, though no Protestant, was but a cratic privileges of the country; and these privileges- sorry Catholic, writes thus :-"People may contend as did the religious dogmas of other days-defend that Lutheranism is a tragical affair;—for my part, I themselves behind a rampart of laws and punishments, am convinced that nothing can be more comical;-for not enacted in our land, not provided by our own sta- the upshot is always of a merry cast, and the catastutes, but drawn from the dust of a foreign soil, the trophe turns into a wedding!" muniments of feudalism, originally intended to check Saxon serfs and Norman vassals.

Lutheranism is not at issue with catholicism on the great question of the eucharist ;-the former, as well as the latter, maintains that the bread and wine are converted into the very body and blood of Christ, by the power of the sacramental words. Some of the reformers went beyond the Lutherans:-they sacrificed the mystery of transubstantiation, and saw, in the last supper, but a memorial and a type. Other protestant sects have still further trenched upon the interpretation of the mysteries, and, at the extremity of this school, are the Socinians, who deny the divinity of Christ, and hold him as a man blessed with peculiar gifts from the hand of God. We should not confound Socinianism, which rests its belief on the scriptures, with pure deism, which holds the Bible to be a book "like one another"-a mere monument of the human intellect.

Luther, who had introduced freedom of inquiry in religious matters, in his system of theology, sacrificed the freedom of man to the power of grace. He stoutly maintained that God does everything in man, sin as well as virtue; and that free will is incompatible with human corruption and divine prescience. This problem of man's freedom, as well as that of the existence and cause of evil necessarily connected with it, has been vexed both by the philosopher and the theologian. Baronius, in his Philosophia Theologia Ancellans, has said that the former was a Hagar near a Sarah, and ought to be expelled with her Ishmael, whenever he attempted to play the rebel. But the time is gone by for the admission of such doctrines. Theology has clearly proved inadequate to solve the problem; and the proof lies in this-that the different christian sects have drawn That which would be a serious obstacle to any sudfrom the same sources, which they hold sacred, the den religious revolution in our day, is founded on the most conflicting interpretations-free will and servile fact, that the nineteenth century is not marked by any will. Philosophy also came to the assay; but bound excessive propensity to believe:-that which stamped to restrict its pretensions to a subordinate sphere, it the reformation with a peculiar character of arduouscan only point to acknowledged facts, nor attempt to ness, was that Luther's age was credulous even unto offer an evidently impossible solution. Man feels him- gross superstition. The fact is learned from Luther self morally free. This feeling is derived from his con- himself. He was long checked in his course by the science; but it is hemmed within narrow limits, and idea of the responsibility which he was about to asvaries according to the individual. To admit that free-sume; and of the perdition into which so many would dom, under its restrictions-to point out its inequalities be whelmed, should he be deceived. The thought according to the differences of organization, of climate tortures him-and frequently recurs to his mind :-to and education-differences which do not depend on have witnessed the delinquencies of Rome is an indirect individual will, and which, under another form, repro-justification of his course. "For," says he, "had I not duce the differences of theological grace ;--to receive the seen this city of abominations, I would have remained existence of evil as a fact, without attempting to recon- in the dread of doing injustice to the pope." Luther cile it with divine omnipotence and divine foreknow-constituted himself the head of the new heresy ;—and, ledge, which are not known to us ;-to compass the in so doing, he had to make use of his own rudely means of circumscribing evil, and of substituting, as picturesque language, Sisyphus-like, an enormous rock much as possible, human freedom and intelligence to to roll. The doubts which distracted his mind, are the fatality of nature ;--such, the true scope of philoso- readily conceived; and the agony which racked him, phy and science-the actual state of the question of free when his jaded spirits flagged in their almost brutal will, and the relation which it bears to the existence energies, can be as easily realised. He battled, but of evil through the world. To go beyond this, man with unequalled vigor and success, the so much resmust make up his mind to launch into gratuitous hy-pected authority of tradition, and the deeply dreaded potheses and speculations, or yield, at once, to the power of the Roman church, which, up to his times, suggestions of faith, which speaks differently to differ- had been sanctioned into right by the consentient opient capacities, and equally justifies the Protestant and nions of mankind. With the force of habit, that overthe Catholic, the Mussulman and the Brahmin. We mastering element in the nature of man; and with the must accept, without weakness, as without pride, both obstinacy of faith, of its own nature opposed to reathe mysterious darkness which overhangs the primi-soning, he manfully grappled. But before laying a tive facts of nature, and the faint, vacillating, but only desecrating hand on a tabernacle which men had light which our reason affords. deemed holy with sheer antiquity, long and frequent

VOL. IV.-76

were his self-communings:-and even after the deal ng of the blow, he questioned himself, at different intervals, to satisfy his conscience of the uprightness of his deed. Indeed we cannot, at any time, advance a grave proposition, in politics, religion, philosophy, or even science, without feeling some of the misgivings, which Luther experienced :-from a deep and thorough conviction of the necessity of peace, Hobbes was led to a radically false conclusion-the necessity of strict bond. age and political inequality.

The reformer of Germany has left voluminous works to posterity. His correspondence, tracts, and minutest sayings, have been collected by his friends and disciples, and handed down to us with religious care. Melancthon, especially, has exhibited every phasis of his full-toned existence; yet no one, I think, has judged Luther better than Luther himself. The following letter, to a friend of his, is a choice morceau; and may be considered as a correct judgment, passed by Luther upon himself:

ground down the people into a bitterer bondage than Rome had ever imposed. To admit, therefore, the unconditional and paramount influence of the reformation in spreading freedom abroad, is not only to reject the sounder teachings of subsequent experience-but it is to assume, as a fact, that which is controverted by every page of history. The reformation has been tested by the ordeal of more than three centuries. And it is a debatable question whether Germany, the cradle of its birth, is at the present day politically freer than either Italy or Spain.* If we turn even to England, which has systematised Protestantism into a form of government; we find that the safeguards of her liberties had been established by the Catholic barons, long before the lust of her royal headsman had suggested the idea of his becoming the founder of a church.

But to resume the subject of the reformation itself, we must rank, among its principal causes, the antagonism of German and Italian nature--the opposition "To J. Brentius :-I do not wish to flatter thee. Nei- of the northern and the southern man—an opposition ther do I deceive thee or myself, when I say that I which has existed in all countries and through all prefer thy writings to mine. Not Brentius do I praise; times-and which, in this instance, availed itself of the but the holy spirit, that is gentler in thee than in me :- slightest pretext of separation, and ended in the defeat thy words flow on more purely and mildly. My style, and oppression of the south by the north. We should unskilful and untutored, pours along, a flood, a chaos also keep in view the political state of Germany in of words, turbulent as an impetuous athlet, ever the sixteenth century-its oligarchy of princes and struggling with a thousand succeeding monsters; and, dukes, margraves and counts, bishops and abbots, conif I dared to compare small things with great ones, it vents and free towns, whose desire of independence would seem that something of the fourfold spirit of and thirst of lucre were marvellously subserved by Elias has been granted unto me-something rapid as Luther's doctrines; and who were among the first to the wind, and devouring as fire, which uproots the adopt and defend the reformation. In Holland, Swit mountain and consumes the rock. Thine, on the con-zerland, Sweden and England, reasons purely political, trary, are the gentle murmur-the soft and cooling contributed to its success :-the same powers that breeze. One thing comforts me: the divine father of subdued the hosts of anabaptists, and the two hundred the human race needs, in this, his immense family, thousand followers of Thomas Muntzer, might have the rude for the rude--the harsh for the harsh crushed the reformation, had not the reformation essen. like a sturdy wedge for sturdy knots. To purify the air and fertilize the soil, the watering rain is not sufficient;-the flashings of the lightning are also required."

This letter sums up the whole of Luther's individuality; his bluntness and impetuosity-his incoherence and vanity are unwittingly defined, by his own pen, in a few hasty and graphic lines. So much for Luther as a man. But as to the moving causes, which favored the development of the reformation, there are many, independent of both its spirit and its doctrines, which exclusively belong to the province of history. The Protestant christian, in order to throw a relief upon his peculiar creed, in contradistinction with that of the Catholic christian, assimilates it with freedom, and vindicates it as a progress of the human mind and a triumph of human liberty. For our part, we are at a loss to say how it advanced the cause of freedom, while the iron hand of Charles V, and the exactions of his petty barons, continued to weigh upon the people of Germany. They, in fact, lost by the change in many instances; for while it served the interest of Rome, the bull of excommunication was at hand; and the veriest serf might sometimes thank the tyranny of the spiritual master for a respite from the tyranny of the temporal lord. But the thunder of the Vatican being once quenched, and the bull of the pope stripped of its terrors; the baron, unawed and unchecked,

of

tially befriended their temporal interests. Protestant ism-once a political, though now a religious distinetion-Protestantism necessarily incurred the penalty of a close alliance between religion and politics. For if the religious interest was originally the primary motive action-that which aroused kings and nations and drew them together, it was soon mastered and absorbed by the political interest; and the world witnessed an adulterous union between church and state, more hideous than the semi-temporal authority of Rome; and which, under any circumstances, has ever been a cause of vi tuperation and impotence in religion. She basely cast her holy attributes at the footstool of power; and, in the witheringly vigorous line of Dante Alighieri, was seen putaneggiar có regi, shamelessly wantonning with kings. Such was the fate which Luther marked out for his religion, from the moment that he placed himself at the mercy of the elector of Saxony, and wilfully pandered to the debaucheries of the Landgrave of Hesse.

Δ.

the mother of deep and unrivalled scholarship. Her sarant *We do not speak this disparagingly of Germany: she is have largely paid their tribute to the cause of freedom, science and humanity. But their usefulness and influence are restricted to the university walls:-the light passes not from them to cheet shackles, which their Teutonic ancestry knew not in their the masses, whose limbs, in this our boastful century, bear rudest days of barbaric ignorance.

FRANCIS ARMINE.

A ROMANCE.

BY A NOVICE.

-

CHAPTER V.

the winds were hushed, and not a cloud was driven
Along the fair face of the sleeping heaven:
And stillest night, the beautiful, the bland,

Walked like a spirit o'er the lovely land.

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Oh! from the outward scene that we could win
Some spell to sooth the restless world within!

Hopes, that like rainbows melt in shade,
And pass away.

E. L. Bulwer.

L. E. Landon.

The stars were glittering, without a cloud to obscure their light; but the full moon was slowly sinking beneath the western waters. Sweetly, calmly, like a good man gliding in peace to the land of sleepers, did it throw its mellowing light upon the city, and along the shores of the Seine, ere it sank to its wavy couch. Who that has once gazed upon that beautiful sight, has ever forgotten it? Who has not, as he gazed, felt its hallowing influences, and lifted up his heart to the golden pavilions of the sky in silent worship? And who that has gazed, has not felt their feebleness, and longed to flee upon the pinions of the dove to their far home in the heavens?

leaning over his table with depressed spirits. Alas! that the summer sunshine flees before the chill of the wintry wind. Alas! that the summer flowers wither at the touch of autumn's frost. Alas! that the heart's deep fountain knows no second springtime, save when it gushes forth near the pavilions of the first and last! Armine's life had been a long and somewhat saddened dream-a dream of broken hopes and disappointed desires-a dream of unsolved mystery and phantom, because unlooked events. Oh! in the deep bitterness of his soul, how he longed for the happy and innocent days of his infancy-the free step, the buoyant spirit, the light heart, the gladdened mind, and the sweet, profound sleep-the mother's tender affectionthe father's kind attention-and the sister's treasured love. Often had he stood above the voiceless resting places of the departed, and watched them in their unbroken sleep--a sleep that was not the companion of the boyish couch, the watchful burdensome rest of manhood, nor the fearful and restless pall that comes upon the eyelids of the aged; but the dark, the awful, the eternal sleep of death! And her who watched there with him, whither had she departed? Hope plants her tread on the shore, but sorrow washes out its trace with tears.

The swift winged hopes, the gentle thoughts, the ardent aspirings, the pure and beautiful dreams of our early years!-when gone, they never-never return. The heart's scarce budded flower, when withered, never opens again the mind's secret chambers, when dimmed, never brighten again. They rise and fall like the summer wave, which when it sweeps away, leaves no mark of its existence on the wide waste of waters!

Even as I write, she is slowly sinking beneath the distant horizon, which rests on the deep, blue expanse, like a long silken lash on the brow of the beautiful, She has thus set through months, and years, and cen- The past, whether bright or shadowy, still mirrors turies. She has thus shone over that bright water since itself in the future. How sweet is it, then, as we apcreation dawned, and will thus shine until the records of proach the dim twilight of our present life, to bear time shall be rolled together, and the earth and the hea-with us no harrowing reflection from its ample stores— vens sink into chaos. She has risen upon free and happy states, and has glittered upon their monuments. Imperial Rome, rich in empire, was beheld by her who now casts her mystic and undimmed light upon its rotting ruins. Unchanged and unchangeable, she has looked from her silent home upon forgotten Thebes, sceptreless Larissa, and unremembered Philippi, as she did when the world trembled at their frown, or perished beneath their tread.

to know that the heart's sanctuary is pure and uncontaminated-that the incense of the soul is as fragrant and unquenched as when the priest first entered its aisles. Awful, thrice awful, is the knowledge of an ill-spent youth! Awful, fearfully awful, is the recollection of its faults, and errors, and sins, and crimes. They will forever haunt us like dim ghosts. They will turn the pleasures of an old age to bitterest gall upon the lip. They will gnaw, as with viper fangs, about the heart, and change its hopes and dreams to dust and ashes. Oh! then, in life's "morning march," let us wander through the flowery path unmindful of the vice and crime that lure to cheat and disappoint, and our existence, flowing from so clear a fount, will pass on to its far home in the heavens, without shadow and without coloring.

Her course through the heavens is now the same as the one on which she trod generations since. Like the dew, they have gone, and her path is on and still on. Cities have changed and passed away. Nations have arisen and decayed. The hills have mouldered, and the eternal mountains have bowed their cloud-capt palaces to dust. Oceans, hoarse with telling the flight of centuries, have moved from their unfathomed beds; Armine thus could look back to the past without and empires, big with conquest, swept like sparks from fear, for it was not of crime, but disappointment and the fire. Towering pyramids have crumbled, and they mystery that haunted him. Notwithstanding the latewho reposed beneath their shadow, passed to nothing-ness of the hour, he resolved to wander forth. Again ness. Calmly has she thus looked from her far cham- upon his horse, which he had taken noiselessly from its bers, all glorious and undimmed, upon these, as we stable, he gave it the reins, and went he knew not would upon wave chasing wave, on the bosom of the whither. great deep, and yet her course is onward and still onward.

The thread of my tale carries the reader, for a short time, again with Francis Armine. From a disturbed slumber he had awaked and dressed, and was now

The soft moonlight streamed upon Paris, as it was sinking away, and, with the light of the many stars, rendered it one of those bright nights which are so well calculated to wean us from the smoke and stir of day, to a dreamy forgetfulness of its troubles and trials, and

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