POETRY.-The Palimpsest, 194. Defence, not Defiance, 194. Sabbath Bells, 208. The Advent, 208. Twin Mutes, 237. The Flower of Night, 238. The Prayer of the Poor for the Poor, 238. A Christmas Carol, 238.

SHORT ARTICLES. — Dr. Warren and Louis Napoleon, 233. Letters from Italy, 233. River Banks, 233. Christmas in Germany, 240. Love and Friendship, 240. New Book by John Stuart Mill, 244. The Heart of the Andes, 248. Pilgrimages to Mecca, 255. Libraries in the United States, 255.

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From Fraser's Magazine.

cance and ubject ofd its lessons. An inteltect singulari temperate and dispassionate was estimating with judicial calmness and generous sympathy the motives and fruits of a stormy struggle. There was no strained pathos, no artificial rhetoric; but the words were weighty and condensed, and colored throughout by the vivid light of a vigorous and glowing imagination.

LEADERS OF THE REFORMATION. THEOLOGY, fortunately, is fast becoming one of the lighter relaxations of a literary leisure, and not being "serious" readers we devote this windy morning to theological study. There are few more entertaining books than Mr. Mansel's Lectures "on the Absolute." Were he describing a Parisian fête or a petitsouper in a Viennese boudoir, he could not Dr. Tulloch is an eloquent writer, and his write in a pleasanter or more epigrammatic estimate of the causes and effects of the sixvein. He destroys time and space, and anni- teenth-century struggle is at once luminous hilates the Absolute with infinite smartness and profound. But to the reflective reader and bonhomie. Surely, to crush this adroit (if any specimen of that extinct species yet performer in the trenchant way Mr. Maurice survives) the most interesting trait in the does is a little too unfeeling. We don't re-book is the temper of mind it discloses. sent a conjuror's tricks; and Mr. Mansel's Scotland was the land where the narrow and manipulation of the Infinite is managed with the skill and airiness of a finished artiste.

But mortals quickly weary of these escapades into "dreamless space."

"The chargers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder clothed, and long resounding pace,"

frigid Puritanism of the most narrow and frigid of the Reformers attained maturity; the land where any freedom of independent conviction or any diversity of religious life was rigorously crushed out. Not in Geneva itself was the Civitas Dei associated more closely with the police office. The bonds, no

are hard to hold, and the fate of Phaeton doubt, are being loosed; the nation is free

warns us.

"For what, alas! is it to us

Whether, i' th' moon, men thus or thus Do eat their porridge, cut their corns, Or whether they have tails or horns?" We want life, warmth, color; the vivid interests and the sharp contests of flesh and blood. So we turn to the noble drama of the Reformation as outlined in Principal Tulloch's masterly sketches, and mingle once more with the great men who animated and swayed the spiritual revolt against Rome.

ing itself from an inquisitorial authority as subtle in its ramifications, as complete in its machinery, and as arrogant in its pretensions as that of Rome. Yet the spirit which infected the fierce, dogmatic, unscrupulous Calvinism of the Covenanting assemblies is not dead; and at the present day Scotland strikingly illustrates the unhappy truth, that the most extreme liberalism in political sentiment may be allied with spiritual intolerance and social tyranny. It was therefore no doubt a pleasant surprise to many readers to find, A lecture is nearly as dismal a business as within the very citadel of the system, a man a sermon; and to endure it with composure like the writer of this book. To say that Dr. is the test of modern heroism, as the search Tulloch is fair, candid, and dispassionate, is to for the San Greal was of the antique. But say little. His sagacious moderation, his rare these lectures on the Reformers were well temperance, his thorough impartiality, would worth hearing; and the great interest they be notable anywhere; within the sanctuary of excited when originally deliverea in Edin- a stiff-necked sect the presence of these virburgh, was no mean tribute to the cultivated tues is, in Mr. Mansel's phraseology, "a moral intelligence of a Scottish audience. Principal miracle." Moderation no doubt sometimes Tulloch no doubt possesses many of the natural cloaks indifference, and impartiality is progifts of the orator; he speaks with energy, verbially associated with the nil admirari. decision, feeling, and admirable directness. But it is not so here. Dr. Tulloch is perBut it was the thinker, even more than the orator, who captivated the attention of the listeners. A great theme was being worthily treated by one who appreciated its signifiLeaders of the Reformation. By John Tulloch, D.D. Edinburgh: Blackwood. 1859.

fectly moderate, but perfectly in earnest. He is tolerant because his own convictions are honest and deeply rooted. He is impartial because he has a generous sympathy with the true and noble, wherever he finds them. The influence which an intellect of this kind

is fitted to exert over the mer ha and nation | movement are sketched with vivid effect and to which it belongs cannot easily be overrated. graphic life. The genial heart and broad A devout and tolerant ecclesiastic across the border at least, is a rara avis, and the calm and candid criticism of such a man must be listened to with peculiar attention.

forces of the Reformation into a compact and symmetrical mould; the caustic irony and benevolent piety of Latimer; the humor, the narrowness, the bitterness, and the "harsh sense" of Knox-are all portrayed with remarkable truth and skill. Dr. Tulloch could not fail to make an accomplished critic, for he brings to the work a rich and felicitous style, a keen and searching insight, a temperate and unprejudiced judgment, and the capacity for analysis which men whose sympathies are broad and active generally possess. The sketch of Calvin and of the Calvinistic system is of special interest, being, as it is, the first honest attempt that has been made to appre ciate the true position of the man and the precise value of his work. The Genevese reformer has been hitherto written about in hysterics and heroics; he has been ignorantly worshipped and ignorantly defamed; Dr. Tulloch has at length supplied a fair, intelligent, and exhaustive estimate.

sympathies of Luther, his manliness, his simple affectionateness, the bluntness and heartiness of his temper, the rude strength and hilarious riot of his humor; the wrapt, ausThe Reformation has not yet been ade- tere, and passionless Calvin, his logical directquately illustrated, nor gauged with any fine-ness and naked simplicity of intellect, his legness of critical apprehension. The forces islative capacity and the great practical and which produced it were everywhere indeed administrative genius which cast the stormy very much alike. It was a protest against the practice as well as against the doctrine of the papacy. The reviving spiritual life was alienated by the doctrinal materialism of Rome: the reviving moral life was shocked by its practical licentiousness. The two motives were everywhere combined, though not always in the same proportions. In Germany the insurrection may be said to have been in great measure the fruit of a profound spiritual excitement; in England it was chiefly due to the political indignation which the corruptions of the monastic system had roused; in Scotland both forces worked with nearly equal activity. But these subordinate national peculiarities do not affect the vital unity of the movement. The ideas and feelings which the Reformation gave voice to were everywhere substantially the same: the form of expression alone varied. To throw the imagination back into that troubled age; to watch the manifestations of the strange new spirit" that fire of Almighty God"which was moving with an irresistible impulse all the northern peoples, the rude " Prussen amber-fisher on the Baltic Sea, and the polished courtiers and sharp logicians of Paris, and Rotterdam, and Geneva; to discriminate the modifications which national habit, idiosyncrasy, and temperament impressed upon it; to estimate the social changes in the life of Europe which it effected; to track its progress, in one nation dying out after a brief volcanic life, in another quenched in martyr blood, in another clinging to the cliffs and keeping a pure flame alight in rough mountain hearts, in another wisely appropriated by prince and prelate, permitted to work out its work unmolested, and to mould in calmness and beneficence the policy of governments and the history of an empire-this is a task which has not yet been adequately performed, and which Dr. Tulloch is admirably qualified

to undertake.

In this present volume the leaders of the

We have spoken more strongly than is our wont of the merit of this book; but we are sure that such of our readers as have perused it will feel that our estimate is not exaggerated. For the sake of those who are yet unacquainted with it, we subjoin a few extracts, taken almost at random from its pages. Luther and Erasmus :

"While Luther was thus standing in the breach, in favor of social order, against the peasants, and feeling, in the odium he thereby incurred, that he was no longer the popular chieftain he had been a few years before, he was made, at the same time, somewhat painwith the mere literary or humanistic party in fully to feel that he was no longer in unison the Reformation. Erasmus, the recognized head of this party, had long been showing signs of impatience at what he considered to be Luther's rudeness and violence. He could not sympathize in the intense earnestness zeal, the depths of persuasion, and especially of the Wittenberg reformer: the religious the polemical shape which the latter's convictions had assumed in his doctrine of grace,

LEADERS OF THE REFORMATION.

My Lord Kate,'' My Emwere all unintelligible or positively displeasing | derstood subject of banter between them, and to him. No two men could be more opposed nothing more. at once in intellectual aspiration and in moral peror Kate,' are some of his titles; and again, 111 a more circumlocutory humor, for the temper;-Luther aiming at dogmatic certainty in all matters of faith, and filled with hands of the rich dame of Zuhlsdorf, Docan overmastering feeling as to the importance toress Catherine Luther: sometimes simply of this certainty to the whole religious life, and familiarly Kate my rib.' Nowhere does with the most vivid sense of the invisible his genial nature overflow more than in these world touching him at every point, and excit- letters, running riot in all sorts of freakish ing him now with superstitious fear, and now extravagance, yet everywhere touched with the with the most hilarious confidence;-Eras- deep, mellow light of a healthy and happy mus-latitudinarian and philosophical in re- affection. What a pleasant glimpse and sly ligious opinion, with a strong perception of humor in the following:-In the first year both sides of any question, indifferent or at of our marriage my Catherine was wont to least hopeless as to exact truth, and with a seat herself beside me whilst I was studying; consequently keen dislike of all dogmatic ex- and once not having what else to say, she aggerations, orthodox or otherwise-well in- asked me, "Sir Doctor! in Russia is not the formed in theology, but without any very liv- maître d'hôtel the brother of the Margrave ?" ing and powerful faith, cool, cautious, subtle, And again, in the last year of his life, and and refined, more anxious to expose a sophism, when he is on that journey of friendliness or point a barb at some folly, than to fight and benevolence from which he is never to manfully against error and sin. It was im- return to his dear household, the old spirit of possible that any hearty harmony could long wild fun and tender affection survives. He subsist between two men of such a different writes to his heart-loved housewife Catherine spirit, and having such different aims. To do Lutherinn, Doctress Zulsdorferess, Sow MarErasmus justice, it must be remembered that ketress, and whatever more she may be, grace his opposition to the papacy had never been and peace in Christ, and my old poor love in dogmatic, but merely critical; he desired lit- the first place.' erary freedom and a certain measure of relig"The birth of his eldest son was an event ious freedom; he hated monkery; but he had no new opinions or truths' for which to con- of immense interest to the reformer. I have tend earnestly, as for life or death. He was received,' he writes to Spalatin, from my content to accept the Catholic tradition if it most excellent and dearest wife a little Luwould not disturb him; and the Catholic sys-ther, by God's wonderful mercy. Pray for tem, with its historic memories and proud associations, was dear to his cultivated imagination and taste. It is needless to blame Erasmus for his moderation; we might as well blame him for not being Luther. He did his own work just as Luther did his; and although we can never compare his character, in depth, and power, and reality of moral greatness, with that of the reformer, neither do we see in it the same exaggerations and intolerance that offend many in Luther." Here is a delightful glimpse into the do

mestic circle of the German reformer :

6

me that Christ will preserve my child from Satan, who, I know, will try all that he can to harm me in him.' And then again, in answer to Spalatin's good wishes, and in reference to his own hopes of the same character, John, my fawn, together with my doe, return their warm thanks for your kind benediction; and may your doe present you with just such another fawn, on whom I may ask God's blessing in turn.

Amen. As the little fellow grows and is about a year old, he writes to and a voracious, bibacious little fellow.' Agricola, My Johnny is lively and strong,

6

"It was to this son that he wrote, when "It is impossible to conceive a more simple stationed at Coburg during the Diet of AugsMercy and beautiful picture of domestic life than in burg, that most beautiful and touching of all the letters and table-talk of Luther hence- child-letters that ever was written. forth. There is a richer charm and tender- and peace in Christ, my dear little son. Ĭ ness and pathos in his whole existence, am glad to hear that you learn your lessons rather enhanced than otherwise by the slight well and pray diligently. Go on doing so, glimpses we get of the fact that Catherine my child. When I come home I will bring had a spirit and will of her own, and that you a pretty fairing. I know a very pretty, while she greatly loved and reverenced the pleasant garden, and in it there are a great doctor, she nevertheless took her own way in many children, all dressed in little golden such things as seemed good to her. Some of coats, picking up nice apples and pears and the names under which he delights to address cherries and plums under the trees. And her seem to point to this little element of they sing and jump about and are very merry; imperiousness, though in such a frank and and besides, they have got beautiful little merry way as to show that it was a well un-horses with golden bridles and silver saddles.