may become a new creature; and in the gospel of Christ there are elements of power by which that wild man's higher nature may be so quickened that he shall become conscious of his responsibility to God, convicted of sin, assured of forgiveness, and inspired with the hope of full redemption. When that change has been wrought, though imperfectly, in his religious nature, he is no longer a mere savage; he has begun to think; his affectionate instincts are beginning to be more human; he is entering on a new existence; behold, he is "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind." Our "Puritan missionaries" among the Zulus tell us that when one of those black savages comes for a shirt, and after one or two experiments succeeds in putting it on, they know that the gospel is beginning to take effect upon him. Conversion from barbarism to Christ is conversion from barbarism to civilization.

The Christianity which works this change is a spiritual force, not form, but power-a gospel addressing itself to the simplest religious intuitions and changing the man by changing his mind. The dry formulas of theology cannot do this, for theology, be it ever so orthodox, is not "the power of God to salvation" as the gospel is. What has been called Churchianity cannot do it, though, doubtless the gospel enveloped in the forms of ecclesiastical pretension may sometimes work effectually notwithstanding the envelopment. Not vestments, and processions, and embroidery, and holy millinery, and priestly manipulations-not "the pomp that charms the eye and rites adorned with gold "—can change the savage into a Christian and initiate him into Christian civilization; but that old and all-subduing story of how God loved the world-that simple testimony, worthy of all acceptation, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

ARTICLE VI-TAINE'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

History of English Literature. By H. A. TAINE. Translated by H. VAN LAUN, one of the Masters at the Edinburgh Academy. With a preface prepared expressly for this translation by the author. New York: Holt & Williams. Two volumes. 1871. 8vo, pp. x, 531, 550.

The Critical Theory and Writings of H. A. Taine. The Westminster Review. Article III. July, 1861.

THERE is a story somewhere of a Frenchman who set himself to work to master the English language, that he might be able to prove to his countrymen the inferiority of Shakespeare to the great Corneille. We do not remember to have met with any account of the result. Probably no very important contribution was made to the literature either of France or England under the inspiration of this Quixotic spirit.

The mentioning so trivial a story in connection with a work like the one whose title we have placed at the head of this Article, may seem to require an apology. The "History of English Literature" has undoubted merits. We think that we appreciate them sufficiently; and certainly have no intention of treating the book in any other than a respectful manner. Still, we have been reminded again and again, in spite of ourselves, as we have turned over its pages, of that vivacious countryman of M. Taine who showed, in so original and striking a way, his admiration for the illustrious author of the Cid. For whatever the excellencies that may be found here, and different persons will estimate them differently-it is very evident that the author, like the enthusiast of the story, has not been moved to undertake this great literary work by any special love of English literature. He has not written as one who has found a pearl of great price, which he feels constrained, caressingly and lovingly, to put in some fitting setting that all the world may be brought to share in the admiration which he

feels. Compare him in this respect with the great masters of English criticism. Look at De Quincey. He approaches his themes as it were on bended knee, as a worshiper at the shrine of some divinity. He remembers, to use his own words, that "he has the honor" to speak the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Newton. He speaks of the "obligation of his allegiance" to the language of his country as something "awful." In its behalf, if necessary, he says, one who would aspire to make any worthy contribution to it "should be willing to pluck out a right eye," "to circumnavigate the globe.' He declares: "It is the one thing in this world, next after the flag of his country and its spotless honor," that such a man should have "wholly in his eyes." But the brilliant French essayist approaches the thesaurus of the immortal productions of English genius with none of these feelings. He has a theory -an exceedingly ingenious theory- a wide embracing theory -one which can be applied to the illustration of anything and everything which has ever been accomplished by the human intellect. He has in fact already applied it himself to the history of painting as he has studied it in one and another of the cities of Italy and in the Netherlands. He has applied it to the history of sculpture as he has traced it in the works which have been rescued from the ruins of Greece. But this theory, as we have intimated, is one which can be applied equally well to literature; and looking around for a suitable body of literature on which to exercise his skill, he fixes, for reasons which we shall hereafter state, upon the literature of England; and forthwith proceeds to treat it according to the methods which he has marked out. Hence these fifteen hundred pages, which a few years ago delighted France, and now, in an admirable English translation, are read with avidity in England and in this country.

We have said that M. Taine has a theory. According to him, the mind of man, in all its activities, is ruled by forces, as material objects are. He claims that "there is a cause for ambition, for courage, for truth, as there is for digestion, for muscular movement, for animal heat." "Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar; and every complex pheno

menon has its springs from other more simple phenomena on which it hangs." In fact, he says, in so many words of the methods in which the mind manifests itself-the problem is a "mechanical" one, and the total effect is a result "depending on the magnitude and direction of the producing causes." The only difference which separates moral from physical problems is that the magnitude and direction of the producing causes cannot be valued or computed in the first as in the second. They cannot be measured like pressure or weight. His language is: "We cannot define them in an exact or approximative formula. We cannot have more, or give more, in respect of them, than a literary impression. We are limited to marking and quoting the salient points by which they are manifested, and which indicate approximately and roughly the part of the scale which is their position." But though the means of notation are not the same in the moral and physical sciences, he says: "In both the matter is the same, equally made up of forces, magnitudes, and directions, and in both the final result is produced after the same method. It is great or small, as the fundamental forces are great or small."

The theory of M. Taine, then, as we understand it, is that the actions of men being all the necessary result of law, the historian who would treat of the various manifestations of individual genius in art and literature, as they have been displayed in the successive epochs of human society, can and should proceed in the same way, and by the same methods, that the astronomer, the geologist, and the naturalist proceed in their several departments; and he will thus arrive at equally sure results. Following these methods, the historian, he says, "if his critical education suffice, can lay bare, under every detail of architecture, every stroke in a picture, every phrase in a writing, the special sensation whence detail, stroke, or phrase had issue. He is present at the drama which was enacted in the soul of artist or writer. The choice of a word, the brevity or length of a sentence, the nature of a metaphor, the accent of a verse, the development of an argument-everything is a symbol to him. While his eyes read the text, his soul and mind pursue the continuous development and the ever changing succession of the emotions and conceptions out of which the text has sprung. In short, he unveils a psychology."

As an illustration of what he means, and to show how the same methods are to be followed in accounting for moral qualities as in accounting for physical qualities, he takes "the religious music of a Protestant church." We transfer the whole paragraph, though it is somewhat long, to our pages.

"There is an inner cause which has turned the spirit of the faithful toward these grave and monotonous melodies, a cause broader than its effect; I mean the general idea of the true, external worship which man owes to God. It is this which has modeled the architecture of the temple, thrown down the statues, removed the pictures, destroyed the ornaments, curtailed the ceremonies, shut up the worshipers in high pews which prevent them from seeing anything, and regulated the thousand details of decoration, posture, and the general surroundings. This itself comes from another more general cause, the idea of human conduct in all its comprehensiveness, internal and external, prayers, actions, dispositions of every kind by which man is kept face to face with God; it is this which has enthroned doctrine and grace, lowered the clergy, transformed the sacraments, suppressed various practices, and changed religion from a discipline to a morality. This second idea in its turn depends upon a third still more general, that of moral perfection; such as is met with in the perfect God, the unerring judge, the stern watcher of souls, before whom every soul is sinful, worthy of punishment, incapable of virtue or salvation, except by the crisis of conscience which He provokes, and the renewal of heart which He produces. That is the master idea, which consists in erecting duty into an absolute king of human life, and in prostrating all ideal models before a moral model. Here we track the root of man for to explain this conception it is necessary to consider race itself, that is, the German, the Northman, the structure of his character and intelligence, his general processes of thought and feeling, the sluggishness and coldness of sensation which prevent his falling easily and headlong under the sway of pleasure, the bluntness of his taste, the irregularity and revolutions of his conceptions, which arrest in him the birth of fair dispositions and harmonious forms, the disdain of appearances, the desire of truth, the attachment to bare and abstract ideas,