mittees, no doubt exist; but they find the poor more jealous of interference than our own are, and the ground is already occupied by the priests, and by those regular fraternities. The prejudice against educated women, which is still far from extinct in England, is infinitely stronger in France, except in a few of the highest circles of the capital. This is no doubt chiefly the result of habit; the ideal of woman has been formed from those who are trained in convents and under the priests; and the worthy directresses of schools shrink very naturally from any approach to la femme émancipée, and view secular studies beyond the common bent with extreme suspicion. It is something of the same feeling which regards the cultivation of the physique as indelicate, and shrinks from "the rude unfeeling health" which English ladies derive from riding and long country walks. The native quickness and unrivalled conversational talent of French women enables them to talk, and even to think, well on less knowledge than would sustain any other race. If they marry early, they scarcely feel the want of high intellectual training; or if they come in contact with superior men, they easily seize the ideas that circulate around them. But the want of thought tells none the less, and avenges itself naturally; it leads to a brilliant hollowness in the intercourse of the salons, where trifles, scandals, and little narrow views of faith or politics take the place of serious ideas: it is the source of vice, or at least of indiscretion, among the more impulsive and worse trained, who take refuge from vacuity in passion; and in nobler natures, like that of Mdlle. de Guérin, it wears away life itself, by the ceaseless tension of the soul. Her position did not often bring her into mixed society. When she saw the world in her visits to Paris, she was able to remain outside it, enjoying it but selfsphered. The relief from solitude and the glitter of new ideas did not attract her so much as the insincerity disgusted her. The judgment she passes is the more remarkable in one who, we are told, made a great success by her character and originality, in spite of her provincial training. "Tant d'habileté, de finesse, de chatterie, de souplesse ne s'obtiennent pas sans préjudice, sans leur sacrifier point de grâces. Et néanmoins je les aime, j'aime tout ce qui est élégance, bon goût, belles et nobles manières. Je m'enchante aux conversations distinguées et sérieuses des hommes, comme aux causeries perles fines des femmes, à ce jeu si joli, si délicat de leurs lèvres dont je n'avais pas idée. C'est charmant, oui, c'est charmant en vérité (chanson), pour qui se prend aux apparences, mais je ne m'en contente pas. Le moyen de s'en contenter, quand on tient à la valeur morale des choses? Ceci dit dans le sens de faire vie dans le monde, d'en tirer du bonheur, d'y fonder des espérances sérieuses, d'y croire à quelque chose. Mmes. de ** sont venues, je les ai crues longtemps amies, à entendre leurs paroles expansives, leur mutuel témoignage d'interêt, et ce délicieux ma chère de Paris: oui, c'est à les croire amies, et c'est vrai tant qu'elles sont en présence, mais au départ on dirait que chacune a laissé sa caricature à l'autre. Plaisantes liaisons! mais il en existe d'autres heureusement pour moi." How exalted her notion of friendship was, we learn from another passage, which is in itself sufficiently remarkable. It will serve to complete the hasty sketch, to which our space limits us, of a life that deserves to be studied in its entirety. "J'ai toujours cherché une amitié forte et telle que la mort seule la pût renverser, bonheur et malheur que j'ai en, hélas ! dans Maurice. Nulle femme n'a pu ni ne le pourra remplacer; nulle même la plus distinguée n'a pu m'offrir cette liaison d'intelligence et de goûts, cette relation large, unie et de tenue. Rien de fixe, de durée, de vital dans les sentiments des femmes; leurs attachements entr'elles ne sont que de jolis nœuds de rubans. Je les remarque ces légères tendresses dans toutes les amies. Ne pouvons-nous donc pas nous aimer autrement? Je ne sais ni n'en connais d'exemple au présent, pas même dans l'histoire. Oreste et Pylade n'ont pas de soeurs. Cela m'impatiente quand j'y pense, et que vous autres ayez au cœur une chose qui nous y manque. En revanche, nous avons le dévouement." ART. VII.-OLD CREEDS AND NEW BELIEFS. Essays and Reviews. London: J. W. Parker & Son, 1860. London: Gespräche von Ulrich von Hutten übersetzt und erläutert von David Die Tübinger Schule und ihre Stellung zur Gegenwart. Von Dr. F. The Faith of the Liturgy and the Doctrine of the Thirty-nine ON all sides, it must be confessed, at home and abroad, the The two first publications that we have placed at the head of this article exhibit the Dissenters and the Establishment of our own country in a strange and anomalous position towards each other. With Nonconformity, in all its old historical forms, we had been accustomed to associate the traditions of a long and noble struggle for mental freedom and religious equality. Trusting to its hereditary professions, we had always supposed that it was prepared to resist to the death every invasion of the sanctuary of conscience. We have naturally looked to it for hearty sympathy in all earnest and religious efforts to find out the truth, to diffuse knowledge, and to accelerate the moral and spiritual progress of the human race. On the other hand, we had been taught to regard the Establishment and her two associated Universities, especially the elder sister of Oxford, as the stronghold of a dogged and unimpressible conservatism, rich indeed in learning, and mighty in disciplined intellect, but guarding its accumulated treasures with griffin-like jealousy in unsunned and useless heaps, instead of bringing them forth to the light of day, and freely circulating them as a fructifying capital in unrestricted commerce with mankind. At the close of the first decennium of the second half of the nineteenth century, what do we actually behold? What is the startling contrast that presents itself? A man of great acquirements and unimpeachable character, whose services to biblical literature have won for him honourable notice from distinguished scholars in his own country and on the Continent, is ejected from his professorship in one of the principal colleges of a Nonconformist body which traces its descent from the earliest assertors of religious liberty in England, and is proud of the names of a Milton and a Vane, a Watts and a Doddridge, not for any abandonment of doctrines regarded by the mass of Protestants as essentially evangelical, but for the simple adoption of certain principles of critical and historical investigation, which ignorant men, wholly unqualified to judge, have been pleased to charge with dangerous consequences, though they are now all but universally accepted by men of competent learning throughout Europe. A pupil of Dr. Davidson's, not prepared to embrace all his views, but loving justice and fair play, appealed to the public on behalf of an honoured teacher, in whose person he felt-and justly—that the rights of the individual conscience, and the interests of free Christian learning, had been wantonly assailed. Singularly * Among his countrymen we may mention Dr. Cureton; among the Germans, Rödiger of Halle, Bleek of Bonn, and Lücke of Göttingen-the two last now removed from the scene of their earthly labours. Lücke recommended the translation of Dr. Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament into German (Einleit. in die Offenbar. des Johannes, § 85, p. 1067 note). This is a distinction not often conferred on an Englishman at the present day by the theologians of Germany. enough, almost at the same moment with the appearance of this seasonable pamphlet by Mr. Nicholas, there was published a volume of Essays and Reviews by members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, taking up nearly every great theological question of the day, and discussing it without reserve, from the most advanced point of view, in a spirit of mingled reverence and fearlessness; neither blinking, after the fashion of most theologians, real difficulties, nor hesitating to suggest their most rational solution. The issue of such a book at such a juncture should have been taken as a rebuke by those who noisily assert their claim to be considered the only true friends of religious liberty, and would fain live on the credit of an ancestry braver and nobler than themselves. To do the Independents justice, this intolerant treatment of Dr. Davidson did not meet with universal approval. Some of their most eminent ministers, especially of the younger generation, openly withheld their sanction from this wretched exhibition of ignorant bigotry. Nor, again, can it be averred that the remarkable volume of Essays and Reviews which has just appeared, furnishes any adequate measure of the state of opinion, and the tendencies of religious thought, prevalent in the great body of the clergy, and among the learned men collected at the Universities. On both sides, therefore, it may be thought that the two cases are exceptional, and referrible to accidental causes, which have forced for the moment Nonconformity and the Establishment out of their natural relations and normal action. We are inclined to believe, however, that the different temper of the two bodies, so conspicuous on this occasion, is not altogether casual, but springs from a deeper root. Religious communities which have divorced themselves for some conscientious scruple from a national church, while ever sensitively jealous of their sectional independence of the State, and mostly imbued with a fervid zeal for political liberty, will often be found hostile to free thought within their own limits; cramping the individual intellect almost in the same degree that they contend for the unfettered action of the sect. Their vital principle is essentially sectarian. Whereas established hierarchies, wrought by innumerable fibres into the whole social fabric, and striking their roots wide and deep into the great traditions of the past, rejoice in the lustre shed on them by the rich and varied learning of their members, and leave speculation and inquiry to take their own course in the minds of scholars, so long as they do not threaten to disturb foundations or excite political commotion. Their tendency is catholic and cosmopolitan. Smaller religious associations, held together by strong attachment to some one and limited object, and deriving all their social weight from unbroken unity of aim and action, are naturally very impatient of any movement among themselves which tends to weaken or destroy this unity, and to annihilate their political importance by resolving them once more into the general mass of their fellowcitizens. As the peculiar organisation of religious sects grows out of some specific want which the spiritual economy of their country, as historically constituted, does not meet, they do not in general attach much value to mental accomplishments. Their demands are almost exclusively spiritual; and their numbers being recruited for the most part from the lower classes of society, they are unsusceptible of any strong interest in objects beyond their own sphere. Nevertheless, this confinement of their attention to practical matters, and their disposition to act in concert as one man, give them immense political power, so long as they have any positive end to gain or any grievance and disability to remove. In great national struggles, too, such bodies will generally be found on the side of liberty and progress. But scholars and philosophers, as such, have little to expect from them. The patronage of letters and science flows more freely from the conservative heights of society. It was Hildebrand, the most sacerdotal pontiff that ever wore the triple crown, who protected Berengarius because he was a scholar, in spite of his eucharistic heresy. It was Laud who promoted the learned and accomplished Hales, notwithstanding the general suspicion of his Socinianising tendencies. Chillingworth perished in the Royalist camp, and was abused in his grave by Puritan bigotry. The Puritans were a noble band not devoid of a learning of their own, and our obligations to them are immeasurable; but their great service to the country was religious and political. The grand erudition of the age was with the Latitudinarians, who were conservative and distrusted by the multitude. It is remarkable that the Huguenots produced far greater scholars than the Puritans. What Puritan name, if we except that of Milton, perhaps that of Owen, can be placed in this respect beside those of Scaliger and Bochart and Casaubon and Petit and Saumaise? Possibly they owed this distinction to their close connection during the period of their greatest influence with the high aristocracy of France, then more deeply imbued than they have ever been since with the spirit of the litera humaniores, which had spread among them from the contagious example of Italy. The citizens of Paris and other great towns, unlike those of London and Hull in the Puritan controversy of England, were vehemently opposed to all ecclesiastical reform. Unfortunately the same relation which fostered the learned tendencies of the Huguenots involved them in desperate political conflict which ultimately |