fitted for its execution than a woman's can naturally be. But her Legends are an agreeable substitute for it, and very much better than an indifferent history. This lady has reading enough to embrace the general extent of her subject, and she has realized her book learning by visits to many of the places she has to speak of, and by actual inspection of many of the pictures and religious houses she has to describe. She possesses practical phi-losophy sufficient to appreciate fully the substantial benefits the monks have bestowed upon the world in the useful arts, and in advancing personal if not civil freedom. It is her direct business to describe their merits as artists and as patrons of art. Her feminine feelings enable her to enter into the devout or the mystic devotion that thousands of the professed have really felt, and to put the best construction on the warmth of spiritual love. If she passes over the foul and filthy in asceticism, and touches very gently on the cruelty of fanaticism, or the false in the legendary, the omission may be regarded as a merit in a book intended for the drawingroom as well as for the library. The sacrifice to critical truth in making the virtues so much more prominent than the errors or the crimes, may raise a similar set-off; but the true justification is to be found in the professed end of the writer, which was to make monastic legends as exhibited in art the main feature of her book. In strictness, the leading orders of Benedictines, Augustines, Dominicans, and Franciscans, with their numerous divisions and subdivisions, or the lives and characters of their founders and most distinguished members, should figure in Legends of the Monastic Orders as represented in the Fine Arts," not according to their importance in ecclesiastical or religious history, but their frequency and prominency in religious pictures. That this rule has not been rigidly observed by Mrs. Jameson, and that the reader has a general view of the various Orders, with biographical sketches of their founders and of eminent saints, is a gain despite any critical. objection founded on the professed plan. A PHILOSOPHICAL account of the lives of the Saints, or a history of the Monastic Orders, has yet to be written, and probably will long remain unwritten. The extensive learning, a knowledge of the various arts that the historian must possess agriculture, floriculture, architecture, painting, iliumination, caligraphy, and many others which the monks improved, or restored-may be acquired by laborious will. The varied genius, the opposite qualities of mind necessary to appreciate justly and display successfully the opposite characteristics of different men in different ages, is among the rarest gifts of nature. The utilitarian, who can best admire the hardy reclaimers of fen, moor, mountain or forest, piously granted to the church because they were not worth secular keeping, will look coldly on the sometimes misguided zeal of men who labored, as he will think, to substitute one form of superstition for another, and did not always limit themselves to pious frauds. The scholar, who remembers how much learning is indebted to the religious orders for their preservation of the classics, will also remember how much they have destroyed, and how often “Livy's pictured page" and others of equal value have been erased to make way for some" lying legend." The mind which can best sympathize with the devout feeling and catholic Christianity of many monks, even in the darkest times, will be the most deeply shocked at the priestly pride, the personal ambition, the secular objects, the reckless disregard of truth, and, too often, the gross immorality, which have upon the whole distinguished the Romish clergy. Those who feel grateful for what the monks, did for original learning, will be inclined most severely to judge their interested opposition to literature when it got beyond their leading-strings, and the manner in which they would have strangled science and philosophy for church purposes, and kept the mind of man in cloistered darkness. The vivacious The volume forms part of a series, the first of genius that could most effectively bring out the which was devoted to legends of Angels, Apostles, follies, the absurdities, the carnal grossnesses, of Fathers, Martyrs, Patron Saints, Bishops, Hersaintly wrestlings and saintly miracles, would less mits, Warrior Saints, and the Magdalen; the second clearly recognize the resolute will and daring self- is occupied with the Monastic Orders; a third will struggles of many recluses; it could not apprehend contain the Madonna. After an introduction on the ardent devotion and spiritual love of the mystics, the scope and philosophy of the subject, the plan even if it did not altogether pervert the unctuous of the present work is to give a sketch of the orders passion. Shakspeare, in his perfect combination of with their sub-orders, and the biography of the the intellectual and imaginative faculties, seems founders, followed by that of the principal memalone to have been equal to the task. The next bers; the intrinsic interest of the life being as approach that we know of is the varied genius much as anything else a determining element of which produced the Dunciad, the Letter to Abelard, the scale. Interwoven with or affixed to each life the Moral Epistles, and the Rape of the Lock. there is much symbolic and artistical matter. The The object of Mrs. Jameson would have pre-reader is instructed as to the proper dress and vented her from writing a complete history of the Monastic Orders, even had her faculties been more accompanying signs that should and generally do discriminate one person from another; a critical account is given of the most remarkable pictures in which the saint appears; and when a series of life Legends of the Monastic Orders, as represented in the Fine Arts. Forming the Second Series of Sacred and Legendary Art. By Mrs. Jameson. Published by Long-pictures has been painted, exhibiting the leading man and Co. incidents of his career, the most complete is se CCCXXXIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVII. 2 lected for description. By this means, the book | women (donne convertite.) All these institutions accomplishes several purposes. It furnishes a good were adorned with pictures, and in the oratories introduction for those who wish to pursue the study and chapels appended to them the altar-piece generally set forth some beneficent saint-St. Roch, of monastic history or monastic art; it provides a or St. Charles Borromeo, the patrons of the plagueclear, rapid, and elegantly-written account of both stricken; or St. Cosmo and St. Damian, the saintly subjects, for readers to whom a popular compen-apothecaries; or St. Leonard, the protector of dium is sufficient; and it will form a superior artistical guide-book to those who are about to make an intelligent tour, pointing out as it does some of the highest or most curious pictures in the churches or collections of France, Italy, and Spain. captives and debtors; or that friend of the wretched, St. Juan de Dios, or the benign St. Elizabeth; either standing before us as objects of devout reverence, or kneeling at the feet of the Madonna and her Son, and commending to the divine mercy "all such as are any ways afflicted in mind, body, or estate." There is perhaps somewhat too much of bright coloring, or an absence of shade, in the following resumé of the history of the Benedictines; but it furnishes a good idea of Mrs. Jameson's style, and of her toleration. The effigies of the Benedictines are interesting and suggestive under three points of view. "How can we reason but from what we know?" and as many of us know very little, our notions of anything beyond our experience are generally erroneous, false, or at best abstract. In forming an opinion of contemporary circumstances, which are placed beyond the range of our personal knowledge, our ideas are frequently altogether exaggerated or absurd-as the "radical at a white heat" touching the aristocracy, or the antiFirst, as the early missionaries of the north of slavery people with regard to the virtues and capabilities of the blacks. Of remote ages, the Europe, who carried the light of the gospel into those wilds of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, Belgium, mass cannot form any idea at all; and philoso- where heathenism still solemnized impure and inphy-as the cold philosophy of the last century-human rites; who, with the gospel, carried also is sometimes mistaken. It requires both knowl- peace and civilization, and became the refuge of edge and imagination to judge justly of a state of the people, of the serfs, the slaves, the poor, the things so widely differing from our own. Hence oppressed, against the feudal tyrants and military the necessity for caution in forming an opinion, spoilers of those barbarous times. and the utility of critical remark in the midst of narrative to guide the reader to a right conclusion. Few things have subjected the monks to more censure from the utilitarian school, than the lavish almsgiving of the monasteries; yet it was a blessing to the darkest times, and a choice of evils to a much later date. and the arts through several centuries of ignorance; Secondly, as the sole depositaries of learning as the collectors and transcribers of books, when a copy of the Bible was worth a king's ransom. Before the invention of printing, every Benedictine abbey had its library and its scriptorium, or writing-chamber, where silent monks were employed from day to day, from month to month, in making transcripts of valuable works, particularly of the Scriptures. These were either sold for the benefit of the convent, or bestowed as precious gifts, which brought a blessing equally to those who gave and those who received. Not only do we owe to them the multiplication and diffusion of copies of the Holy Scriptures-we are indebted to them for the preservation of many classical remains of inestimable value; for instance, of the whole or the greater portion of the works of Pliny, Sallust, and Cicero. They were the fathers of Gothic architecture; they were the earliest illuminators and limners; and, to crown their deservings under this head, the inventor of the gamut, and the first who instituted a school of music, was a Benedictine monk, Guido d'Arezzo. To understand and to sympathize with the importance attached to almsgiving, and the prominence given to this particular aspect of charity in the old pictures, we must recall a social condition very different from our own; a period when there were no poor-laws; when the laws for the protection of the lower classes were imperfect, and perpetually violated; when for the wretched there was absolutely no resource but in private beneficence. In those days a man began his religious vocation by a literal and practical application of the text in Scripture-" Sell all thou hast and distribute to the poor." The laws against debtors were then very severe; and the proximity of the Moors on one side, and the Turks on the other, rendered slavery a familiar thing. In all the maritime and Thirdly, as the first agriculturists who brought commercial cities of Italy and Spain, brotherhoods intellectual resources, calculation, and science to existed for the manumission of slaves and debtors. bear on the cultivation of the soil; to whom we Charitable confraternities performed then, and in owe experimental farming and gardening, and the Italy perform now, many duties left to our police, introduction of a variety of new vegetables, fruits, or which we think we fulfil in paying our poor- &c. M. Guizot styles the Benedictines "les défrirates. These duties of charity shine in the monas- cheurs de l'Europe;" wherever they carried the tic pictures, and were conspicuous on the walls cross they carried also the plough. It is true that of churches, I am persuaded to good purpose. there were among them many who preferred study Among the most interesting of the canonized saints to manual labor; neither can it be denied that the whose stories I have related in reference to art, are" sheltering leisure" and "sober plenty" of the the founders of the charitable brotherhoods; and Benedictine monasteries sometimes administered to among the most beautiful and celebrated pictures indolence and subordination, and that the cultivation were those painted for these communities; for of their domains was often abandoned to their farinstance, for the Misericordia in Italy, the various mers and vassals. Scuole at Venice, the Merced and the Caritad in Spain, and for the numerous hospitals for the sick, the houseless travellers, the poor, and the penitent The annalists of the Benedictine order proudly reckon up the worthies it has produced since its first foundation in 529; viz., 40 popes, 200 car was on the point of rushing from his solitude to seek that face and form which haunted his morbid fancy and disturbed his dreams. He felt, however, or he believed, for such was the persuasion of the time, that this assault upon his constancy could only come from the enemy of mankind. In a crisis of these distracted desires, he rushed from his cave and flung himself into a thicket of briars and nettles, in which he rolled himself until the blood flowed. Thereupon the fiends left him, and he was never again assailed by the same temptation. They show, in the garden of the monastery at Subiaco, the rosebushes which have been propagated from the very briars consecrated by this poetical legend. dinals 50 patriarchs, 1,600 archbishops, 4,600 | the recollection of a beautiful woman whom he had bishops, and 3,600 canonized saints. It is a more seen at Rome took such possession of his imaginalegitimate source of pride that " by their order were tion as almost to overpower his virtue, so that he either laid or preserved the foundations of all the eminent schools of learning of modern Europe." Thus, then, the Benedictines may be regarded as in fact the thinkers and writers, the artists, the farmers, and the schoolmasters of medieval Europe: and this brief and imperfect sketch of their enlightened and enlightening influence is given here merely as an introduction to the artistic treatment of characters and subjects connected with them. All the Benedictine worthies who figure in art are more or less interesting. As for the legendary stories and wonders by which their real history has been perplexed and disfigured, even these are not without value as illustrative of the morals and manners of the times in which they were published and represented; while the vast area of civilization over which these representations extend, and the curious traits of national and individual character exemplified in the variety of treatment, open to us as we proceed many sources of thoughtful sympathy with the past, and of speculation on the possible future. The critically descriptive parts of the book, and the accounts of the different dresses and various signs of the saints, are curious and interesting, but are less effective for quotation than biographical matter. For a specimen of Mrs. Jameson as a biographer, we select a portion of the Life of St. Benedict. The fame of the young saint now extended through all the country around; the shepherds and the poor villagers brought their sick to his cavern to be healed; others begged his prayers; they contended with each other who should supply the humble portion of food which he required; and a neighboring society of hermits sent to request that he would thing of the morals and manners of this community, place himself at their head. He, knowing somerefused at first, and only yielded upon great persuasion, and in the hope that he might be able to reform the abuses which had been introduced into this monastery. But when there, the strictness of his life filled these perverted men with envy and alarm; and one of them attempted to poison him in a cup of wine. Benedict, on the cup being St. Benedict was born of a noble family, in the presented to him, blessed it as usual, making the little town of Norcia, in the duchy of Spoleto, about sign of the cross; the cup instantly fell from the the year 480. He was sent to Rome to study liter- hands of the traitor, was broken, and its contents ature and science, and made so much progress as to spilt on the ground. (This is a scene often repregive great hopes that he was destined to rise to sented in the Benedictine convents.) He thereupon distinction as a pleader; but, while yet a boy, he rose up, and telling the monks that they must proappears to have been deeply disgusted by the prof-vide themselves with another superior, left them and ligate manners of the youths who were his fellow-returned to his solitary cave at Subiaco; where, to students; and the evil example around him, instead of acting as an allurement, threw him into the opposite extreme. At this period the opinions of St. Jerome and St. Augustine, with regard to the efficacy of solitude and penance, were still prevalent throughout the West: young Benedict's horror of the vicious lives of those around him, together with the influence of that religious enthusiasm which was the spirit of the age, drove him into a hermitage at the boyish age of fifteen. On leaving Rome, he was followed by his nurse, who had brought him up from infancy, and loved him with extreme tenderness. This good woman-doubtful, perhaps, whether her young charge was out of his wits or inspired-waited on his steps, tended him with a mother's care, begged for him, and prepared the small portion of food which she could prevail upon him to take. But while thus sustained and comforted, Benedict did not believe his penance entire or effective; he seeretly fled from his nurse, and concealed himself among the rocks of Subiaco, a wilderness about forty miles from Rome. He met there a hermit, whose name was Romano, to whom he confided his pious aspirations; and then took refuge in a cavern, (il sagro Speco,) where he lived for three years unknown to his family and to the world, and supplied with food by the hermit. This food consisted merely of bread and water, which Romano abstracted from his own scanty fare. In this solitary life Benedict underwent many temptations; and he relates that, on one occasion, use the strong expression of St Gregory, he dwelt with himself-meaning thereby, that he did not allow his spirit to go beyond the bounds that he had assigned to it, keeping it always in presence of his conscience and his God. But now Subiaco could no longer be styled a desert, for it was crowded with the huts and cells of those whom the fame of his sanctity, his virtues, and his miracles, had gathered around him. At length, in order to introduce some kind of discipline and order into this community, he directed them to construct twelve monasteries, in each of which he placed twelve disciples with a superior over them. Many had come from Rome and from other cities, and amongst others came two Roman senators, Ancius and Tertullus, men of high rank, bringing to him their sons, Maurus and Placidus, with an earnest request that he would educate them in the way of salvation. Maurus was at this time a boy of about eleven or twelve years old, and Placidus a child not more than five. Benedict took them under his peculiar care, and his community continued for several years to increase in number and celebrity, in brotherly charity, and in holiness of life. But, of course, the enemy of mankind could not long endure a state of things so inimical to his power: he instigated a certain priest, whose name was Florentius, and who was enraged by seeing his disciples and followers attracted by the superior virtue and humility of St. Benedict, to endeavor to blacken his reputation, and even to attempt his life by means of a poisoned loaf; and this not availing, Florentius introduced into one of the monasteries seven young women, in order to corrupt the chastity of his monks. Benedict, whom we have always seen much more inclined to fly from evil than to resist it, departed from Subiaco; but scarcely had he left the place, when his disciple, Maurus, sent a messenger to tell him that his enemy, Florentius, had been crushed by the fall of a gallery of his house. Benedict, far from rejoicing, wept for the fate of his adversary, and imposed a severe penance on Maurus for an expression of triumph at the judgment that had overtaken their enemy. Paganism was not yet so completely banished from Italy but that there existed in some of the solitary places temples and priests and worshippers of the false gods. It happened (and the case is not without parallel in our own times) that while the bishops of Rome were occupied in extending the power of the church, and preaching Christianity in far distant nations, a nest of idolators existed within a few miles of the capital of Christendom. In a consecrated grove, near the summit of Monte Cassino, stood a temple of Apollo, where the god, or, as he was then regarded, the demon, was still worshipped with unholy rites. Benedict had heard of this abomination: he repaired therefore to the neighborhood of Monte Cassino; he preached the kingdom of Christ to these deluded people; converted them by his eloquence and his miracles, and at length persuaded them to break the statue, throw down the altar, and burn up their consecrated grove. And on the spot he built two chapels, in honor of two saints whom he regarded as models, the one of the contemplative, the other of the active religious lifeSt. John the Baptist and St. Martin of Tours. This volume is illustrated by plates drawn and etched by Mrs. Jameson, and sometimes, it may be said, compiled, so far as taking parts of a picture, or bringing together from various pictures two or more figures to illustrate the text. These plates not only prove the varied accomplishments of the fair artist-author, and illustrate the text by an exhibition to the eye, but give a character of dress to the volume, and serve in a small degree as contributions to the history of legendary religious art. There are also woodcuts that answer the same end. From the Examiner. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D. D., LL. D. By his Son-in-law, the Rev. WILLIAM HANNA, LL. D. Edinburgh: Constable. [Reprinted by Harper & Brothers.] THE life of the great Scottish preacher deepens in instructiveness and interest. The first volume closed when Chalmers, in his thirty-fifth year, had left his ministry of Kilmany for that of the Tron Church at Glasgow; and the volume before us, occupying eight years, describes his ministry in Glasgow, the growth of his extraordinary popularity, the first great impression made in London by his preaching, the various public questions into the discussion of which he threw his energetic and hearty nature, and his final departure from Glasgow consequent on his acceptance of the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews. There is an eloquent and elaborate passage towards the close of the volume, in which Doctor Hanna describes what he believes to have been the practical effect of the teaching of Doctor Chalmers in Glasgow. Contrasting the state of the city when he left it, with its condition when he went to reside there, his biographer attributes to those single efforts in the pulpit and through the press nothing less than a revolution in the national opinion and sentiment on matters of morality and a vital energetic faith." Nor will the reader who examines this volume carefully be disposed to There is find exaggeration in the statement. something peculiarly" catching" in the enthusiasm of Chalmers. What Robert Hall was in his chapel, what Arnold was in his school, Chalmers carried into a wider sphere of action with as absolute a success. We do not think he was so profound or philosophical as Doctor Hanna esteems him to have been. 66 He was not so remarkable for what he brought out of a subject from its own truth, as for what he flung into it from his own nature. He dealt with nothing to which he did not communicate a share of his own energetic vigor; and it was in this power of concentrating himself on whatever he took in hand, rather than on his exact discernment of its value in relation to wider truths, that the mental peculiarity of Chalmers consisted. It did not detract from this influence that it tended at times unduly to exalt or intensify the particular objects of his quest or care; for what would limit the power of the philosopher will enlarge that of the preacher or theologian. There was perfect truth and no exaggeration whatever, in Lord Jeffrey's comparison of Chalmers to Demosthenes. They had, in common, a most intense vigor, a resolute and irresistible persistence with the matter in hand, an overbearing and appalling energy. I know not what it is, (said the greatest critic of our age, after hearing Dr. Chalmers upon this occasion,) but there is something altogether remarkable about that man. It reminds me more of what one reads of as the effect of the eloquence of Demosthenes than anything I ever heard. We will not raise the question of the sincerity of the Athenian orator, but that of the Scottish preacher was beyond all doubt or question. If ever mortal man was created with the hero and martyr spirit of belief, that spirit breathed and burned in Chalmers. What I should like to realize is the feeling of being a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth-to shake off that obstinate delusion which binds me to the world as my home-to take up with eternity as my settled habitation-and transfer the wishes and the interests and the hopes which are so apt to grovel among the objects of a perishable scene, to the realities and the glories of Paradise. But these avowals express merely the strong emotion which made religion so devout and vital in him. He was not the man to seek any divorce from the concerns of earth in attending to the concerns of heaven. His uniform object, pursued is the answer to an argument of infidelity derived from the discoveries of the telescope, and from the vast worlds so revealed, to which ours might seem but an atom unworthy of a scheme of redemption. With a happy inspiration it occurred to Dr. Chalmers to show, by the contrast of the microscope, that the glories and wonders of the Infinite were with manly and most affecting zeal through every their humble habitations-that the toil-worn me It was the telescope that, by piercing the obscurity which lies between us and distant worlds put infidelity in possession of the argument against which we are now contending. But about the time of its invention another instrument was formed What I strongly contend for is, that in like manner as the Bible of Christianity should be turned into all languages, so the preaching of which laid open a scene no less wonderful, and rewarded the inquisitive spirit of man with a disChristianity should be turned to meet the every style of conception and the every variety of taste covery which serves to neutralize the whole of this or of prejudice which can be found in all the led me to see a system in every star; the other argument. This was the microscope. The one quarters of society. The proudest of her recorded leads me to see a world in every atom. The one distinctions is that she is the religion of the poor taught me that this mighty globe, with the whole that she can light up the hope of immortality in burden of its people and of its countries, is but a chanic can carry her Sabbath lessons away with grain of sand on the high field of immensity; the him, and, enriching his judgment and his memory harbor within it the tribes and the families of a other teaches me that every grain of sand may with them all, can bear them through the week in busy population. The one told me of the insigone full treasury of comfort and improvement-that on the strength of her great and elevating princi- deems it from all its insignificance, for it tells me nificance of the world I tread upon; the other reples a man in rags may become rich in faith, and that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers looking forward through the vista of his earthly of every garden, and in the waters of every rivuanticipations, can see on the other side of all the let, there are worlds teeming with life, and numhardship and of all the suffering with which they berless as are the glories of the firmament. The are associated the reversion of a splendid eternity. Ay, my brethren, such a religion as this should be made to find its way into every cottage and to circulate throughout all the lanes and avenues of a crowded population, and the friend of the species might take it along with him to the tenements of want and of wretchedness, and knocking at every door where there is a human voice to bid him enter, he may rest assured that if charged with the message of the gospel, humanity in its rudest forms may hang upon his lips, and rejoice and be moralized by the utterance which flows from them. But, my brethren, while I would thus have the religion of the New Testament to send her penetrating influ-so small as to elude all the powers of the microences through the great mass of the towns and families of the community, I would not have her to skulk in timid and suspicious distance from the proudest haunts either of wealth or of philosophy. I would have her to carry, as she well might, such one has suggested to me, that beyond and above all that is visible to man, there may lie fields of creathe impress of the Almighty's hand to the remottion which sweep immeasurably along, and carry est scenes of the universe; the other suggests to which the aided eye of man has been able to exme, that within and beneath all that minuteness plore, there may lie a region of invisibles; and that, could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses we might there unfolded, a universe within the compass of a point see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has scope, but where the wonder-working God finds room for the exercise of all his attributes, where he can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidences of his glory. Dr. Hanna thus describes the Tron church in Glasgow on the Thursdays when these sermons were delivered, and the subsequent success attending their publication. a front of reason, and to lift such a voice of eloquence, and to fill her mouth with such a power and variety of argument, as should compel the most enlightened of the land to do her reverence. I would have her-with as firm and assured footstep as Paul ascended the hill of Areopagus, and The spectacle which presented itself in the amid the assembled literature of Athens drew an Trongate upon the day of the delivery of each new argument for the gospel from the poetry and the my- astronomical discourse, was a most singular one. thology of Athens-I would have her even now to Long ere the bell began to toll, a stream of people make her fearless way through the halls and uni- might be seen pouring through the passage which versities of modern Europe, and as she stood con- led into the Tron Church. Across the street, and fronted with the erudition of academic men, I immediately opposite to this passage, was the old would have her to equal and to outvie them. O! reading-room, where all the Glasgow merchants tell me why it should be otherwise! Tell me why met. So soon, however, as the gathering, quickthe majesty of truth should ever want an able ad- ening stream upon the opposite side of the street vocate to assert and proclaim it, or why the record-gave the accustomed warning, out flowed the occued communication from God should ever want a defender of learning to vindicate its evidence and its history! Another noble passage from his sermons quoted by Dr. Hanna we cannot resist quoting here. It pants of the coffee-room; the pages of the "Herald" or the " Courier" were for a while forsaken, and during two of the best business hours of the day the old reading-room wore a strange aspect of desolation. The busiest merchants of the city were wont indeed upon those memorable days to |