true-what I had so long praised or wished to praise, presented to me in so connected and noble a manner. I read them the first time as a contemplative man, and found in them much-I may almost say the most entire agreement with my own way of thinking, and then took them up in a practical sense, to see whether they contained any thing that could lead me from the right path in action. Even here I found myself strengthened and encouraged." The remarks with which Schiller introduced these letters when they were first published in the Horen, may serve equally well to point out their applicability to the wants of our own time.

He considers that the spirit of the age does not appear favourable to investigations relating to the beautiful and to art, in a high sense,-for the world is governed by material utility, and the interest of the great political questions of the day leaves room for no other.

"It may happen, however, that these subjects are less foreign to the necessities than to the taste of the age. A passage is to be sought from the dominion of mere force, to that of the laws of reason, by bringing the impulses the feelings--the living strength of the character to harmonise with them. Such a harmonious culture was seen among the Greeks; but for us moderns, in place of this totality of genuine humane cultivation, has entered an antagonism of spiritual powers. The peculiar character of modern civilisation, and the artificial splitting up of our faculties into different occupations and professions, has promoted their irregular and inharmonious growth, and even brought them into collision,——a course by which the species has indeed gained; but the individual lost. To reconcile these contradictions-to restore this totality, there is but one way. Our living impulses must be ennobled by beautyour sensibilities cultivated by art.

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"When the mechanist wishes to improve the action of a clock, he allows the wheels to run down, but the living clock-work of the state must be amended while it strikes, and the rolling wheel changed even during its revolutions. Some support must, therefore, be sought that may ensure the continuance of society when we wish to withdraw that of the natural state.

"This support cannot be found in the merely natural character of the human race, which, violent and selfish, tends rather to the destruction than to the maintenance of society; nor can it be found in the moral character; which, according to the proposition, is still to be formed, and on which precisely, because it is free, the legislator can never reckon.

"In the establishment of the rational state, we must count on the moral law as on working power; and the free will must be taken into the great chain of cause and effect, in which every link depends

by the strictest necessity on the other. If, however, we are to count on the moral sense as on a natural cause, it must have first become nature, and we must be led by impulse into such a line of conduct as can only result in a moral character.

The will of man, however, stands perfectly free between duty and inclination, and with this prerogative can and ought no physical obligation to interfere. Shall he then retain this free power of choice, and shall we yet be able confidently to reckon on his moral sense as on an efficient cause? This can only be when the operation of both these springs of action shall perfectly coincide.”—Briefe über die esthetische Erziehung.

That Schiller has counted too much on art as a means to the high end here proposed, will appear evident to most of our readers; as well as that it would attain this end only by a union with the greater light of faith, so strangely invisible to poor Schiller, lying, as he did, under the shadow of the great moral eclipse that darkened over the past century. That it would have passed away, had his life been extended to any considerable length, is more than probable. As the voice of his earliest youth had prophetically forewarned of the evil time to come that of his age would have heralded the dawn of a better day. The loftiest summits are the first to be enveloped in clouds and tempests, but they are also the first to reflect the beams of the morning light.

ART. VIII-A History of the Italian Republics. By J. C. L. de Sismondi. London: 1832.

N the unceasing revolution of time, it is not surprising that persons and events that have been rudely crushed beneath its wheel, should after a while return to light and honour. And it may afford some consolation to observe, that those names which have been subject to this depression and obscuration, when once restored to their proper place, do not incur much danger of losing it again. In no matter or part of history is this more true, than in the history of the Roman Pontiffs. The sense of justice which characterises the present age will be proved to later times by its decisions regarding them, better than by any other historical judgments which it has pronounced and recorded. It is not many years 'since the condemnation of the entire line of apostolical succession in the Roman See, was a matter of course in every

Protestant work, theological, historical, philosophical, or moral, which directly or indirectly could bring it within its scope. There were no exceptions. The whole series was condensed into a single individuality, which under the name of "the papacy," was stigmatised with everything that was infamous, and anathematised with everything that was execrable. Like to the tyrant's wish, that the Roman people had only one neck, that so he might enjoy the concentrated zest of cruelty in smiting it, was the purpose of Protestant assailants, who truly gave unity to the idea of the headship of the Church, that so they might strike it at a single blow. At length the dark mass of error and calumny, accumulated through ages, broke, and admitted the light. First, partial exceptions began to be made, certain popes were culled out from the number involved in wholesale condemnation: one was praised as an encourager of learning; another as an advocate of ecclesiastical liberty; and so by degrees, till a long succession of pontiffs received the tardy justice of an historical vindication. The progress from Roscoe's Life of Leo the Tenth, through Voight, Hurter, and Hock, to Ranke, is a literary fact too recent and too often described in these pages, to need more than a passing allusion.

Were we called on to assign a cause for this change in the feelings and direction of historians, we should be inclined to attribute much to the noble character of several recent pontiffs, whose lives broke down much prejudice against their order; not because they were better or wiser than their predecessors, but because the guidance of divine Providence brought forward their characters more prominently before the face of Europe, than theirs who had preceded them. Benedict XIV was a man of higher attainments, and of no less virtue than the sixth or seventh Pius. There is no doubt that had he, or any other pope of the last century, been placed in their trying circumstances, he would have exhibited equal firmness, resignation, and Christian heroism. Oppor tunity was not allowed to him, as it was to them, and he therefore remains known by his works rather than by his deeds; the delight of the theologian, the oracle of the bishop, the admiration of the learned; but comparatively without a place or name in history. The noble-hearted Braschi, and the meek Chiaramonti were cast into ruder times; the fate of older pontiff's was allotted them. The former had to renew the ancient contest between the supremacy and the empire; not, as formerly, with the open and avowed hostility of feudal rivalship, but in the field, more slippery and less glorious, of

diplomatic contention. That legislative tyrant Joseph II, knew how to injure the Church and its liberties better than Henry II. But it only afforded an opportunity for the display of a new class of virtues, in that see which had ever been fruitful in their production. The same pope found himself involved in a contest with a republic, unlike indeed the republics of ancient Italy, in which a rooted attachment to the Catholic religion was never destroyed by temporary hostility, but with one which assailed him in rampant infidelity; which aimed at the desecration of what was holy, through hatred of holiness. Every new aggression of this destructive power, justly deemed the public enemy, was matter of interest to Europe; and the wanton treatment of a venerable pontiff, whose unsullied life, amiable manners and grey hairs claimed universal esteem and reverence, could not fail to conciliate sympathy towards the sufferer, mingled with execration of his oppressors. Pius VI died, like Gregory VII, in exile. His successor had to continue the struggle, under a more violent but not less crafty form; he was at times almost circumvented by the wiles of his imperial enemy, at times almost beaten down by hardships and insult; but the spirit of his race triumphed equally over both; the meek courage of the pontiff was a full match for the power of the modern Attila; his upright humility baffled the policy of his oppressors. It was the captive dove, keeping at bay, and foiling, at once the falcon and the serpent.

*

We think that we may truly repeat, that down to this time, a majority of Protestants had never attached any idea of individuality to the name of Pope. Their notion seemed to be that of an entity perpetuated under a variety of indefinite names, through generation after generation, (Clements, Innocents, and Benedicts succeeding each other, no one knew how), living in almost inaccessible grandeur in a terrible place called the Vatican, round which perpetual thunders growled to keep off all intruders; approached only with genuflexions, prostrations, and almost worship; ever enthroned, and with a triple crown upon its head, occupied all day in mysterious conclave with scarlet wide-hatted cardinals, upon bulls, indulgences and excommunications. We will not add the grosser fictions of popular bigotry,-but we believe, that

It was a common and often-repeated question of his late majesty William IV, to such Catholics as approached him, "Pray what is the name of the present pope?"

many well-informed persons did a few years ago entertain, and that perhaps some very respectable ones do as yet entertain, an idea as definite, as sensible, and as liberal of the Pope,

be he who he may-as we have described. But when Pius MH, stripped of all outward ornaments, torn from his own dominions, an exile and a prisoner, became known to Europe, his personal character, so pure, so holy, yet so noble and magnanimous; so unbending yet so forgiving; so lofty yet so mild,* softened the hearts of many, if it did not turn them, and made them begin to distinguish in their minds, the man from the dignity which he adorned, and to know that popes have characters and virtues, and Christian perfection,' even beyond most other men.

We do not think that we are wrong in this speculation,! that an interest was excited in the public mind, a power of individualizing generated, regarding the papal authority and its possessors, of a different character from what before was common, by the events to which we have cursorily alluded. ' We believe that many were led to compare the certain virtues of these later pontiffs with the conduct of their predecessors under similar circumstances, and that the selection made of Gregory VII, Sylvester II, and Innocent III, as subjects of special biography and high commendation by Pro testant historians, may be attributed, at least in part, to the renewal in later times of the contest between imperial and papal power, the regale et pontificale, and to the attention thus directed towards similar struggles in a former period." Catholics have been grateful, obsequiously grateful, for this slow-footed, lagging justice towards their ancient ecclesiastical heroes. Nay, it has been but a lame justice after all, and yet has it been humbly acknowledged. The loftiest, truest view of the character and conduct of the popes has often been overlooked; the divine instinct which animated them, the immortal destiny allotted to them, the heavenly cause confided to them, the superhuman aid which strengthened them, could not be appreciated but by a Catholic mind,' and are too generally excluded from Protestant historians, or are transformed into corresponding human capacities, or poli cies, or energies, or virtues. Then, there are few of the vin dicators of these ancient popes who do not contrive to give a

When Pius VII was in prison, a nobleman was once sent by the emperor to ask him if there was anything he wanted: "Nothing," replied the pontiff, "except a needle to darn my cassock with."