V*" 
 
 
 
 ,^ '^ 
 
 •^ ^ 
 
 
 
 ^ V*' 
 
 oo 1 
 
 
 <*4 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 
 
 ^> v 
 
 
 -f J 
 
 
 
 v 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 >^ 
 
 
 '0 N 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ./ '% 
 
 
 
 *«< 
 
 
 *;- 9 
 
 
 o o' 
 
 
 
 $< 
 
 A 'O 
 
 
 
 o s 
 

 
 
 
 
 .■H -r, 
 
 x 00 ^. 
 
REMARKS 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PAST AND ITS LEGACIES 
 
 TO 
 
 AMERICAN SOCIETY. 
 
 WESTWARD THE STAR OF EMPIRE TAKES ITS WAV. 
 
 By J. D. NOURSE. 
 
 LOUISVILLE, KY: 
 
 MORTON & GRISWOLD 
 
 1847. 
 

 THE LIBRARY! 
 
 OF CONGRESS ! 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 
 
 J. D. NOURSE, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District of Kentucky. 
 
 Morton & Griswold's Power Press. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 I venture with great diffidence to lay before the 
 public the results of the thought and reading of 
 some years, compressed by repeated revision into 
 the smallest possible compass. It may seem pre- 
 sumptuous for a young backwoodsman, who has 
 written nothing to prepare the way for the present 
 work, except a little romance, founded on the tra- 
 ditions of his native State, to enter the lists with 
 Schlegel, Guizot, and Macaulay ; but I trust my 
 countrymen will give me a fair hearing. I am in- 
 debted not only to the writers mentioned but to a 
 host of others, as the auctioneers say, "too tedious 
 to mention." 
 
 Bardstown, Ky., ) 
 
 Dec. 26th, 1846. > 
 
PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 DESIGNED TO BE READ. 
 
 In the prosecution of my favorite study of history, 
 I have thought that I discerned two great events, 
 towards which the movements of society and the 
 arrangements of Providence have converged, in the 
 ancient and modern worlds respectively: — the intro- 
 duction of Christianity and the birth of the Amer- 
 ican Democracy. In regard to the former, I have 
 not the slightest claim to originality, and merely as- 
 pire to present, in a somewhat striking and popular 
 form, views long entertained by the profoundest of 
 the continental philosophers ; but if I am right in the 
 belief that American society is not only the last, but 
 the noblest birth of Time, an American thinker, 
 especially if he be a Protestant, is more favorably 
 situated for taking just views of the philosophy of 
 modern history, than one, however able and learned 
 who has grown up in the shadow of those ancient 
 institutions which have outlived their original uses. 
 
 In the following pages I have attempted to trace 
 the progress of society down to that remarkable 
 epoch, when the best products of the Christian civil- 
 ization were transplanted to the virgin soil of Amer- 
 ica. I have reserved that stirring and productive 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 period, extending from the commencement of our 
 struggle with England to the end of Napoleon's em- 
 pire, for a subsequent work, if the success of the 
 present should warrant another and similar under- 
 taking. 
 
 The reader will soon discover that the nature of 
 this work precludes the necessity of frequent refer- 
 ence to historical details. Whenever I have made 
 a statement in illustration of a principle, I have been 
 careful to satisfy myself of its accuracy by consult- 
 ing the best authorities. 
 
 In a few of the first pages following, which were 
 written some years ago, the reader may find some 
 resemblance to the peculiar style and topics of Mr. 
 Carlyle. I confess that I love him so much, that 
 were I to meet him knowingly in the streets of the 
 great Babel, I would certainly astound the Cock- 
 neys, by giving him the hearty salutation of a back- 
 woodsman, without waiting for an introduction. 
 
THE CROSS 
 
THE CROSS 
 
 History is the first of sciences. In its widest sense k 
 may be said to include every other science, — all that has 
 been preserved of what has been said, done and written 
 by man since the foundation of the world. 
 
 There are two great revelations of God, and of the high- 
 est truth, the revelation of nature and the revelation of history. 
 
 The Bible is a part of the historic revelation, but by far 
 the most important part, for it gives us the key of the zvhole. 
 The records of Christianity furnish us with a central and 
 lofty point of view, from which we may marshall around us 
 the leading facts of universal history in such order, that we 
 may hope to deduce a consistent and intelligible theory of 
 the existence of man upon earth, and humbly trace the 
 majestic footsteps of Eternal Providence. 
 
 Indeed our opinions respecting the Christian records will 
 determine our views of history at large. They will deter- 
 mine whether we shall regard the movements of society, 
 and the revolutions of empires, as a mere aimless tragicom- 
 edy, played off for the amusement of the higher Powers, or 
 as a solemn and mysterious evolution of a mighty purpose 
 and a lofty destiny. 
 
 A melancholy thought strikes us at the threshold. Of all 
 the vast materials of history, of all the sayings and doings, 
 manners and institutions, the moral and intellectual manifes- 
 tations, in short, of the generations that have gone before us, 
 what an infinitely small part has been preserved. Even 
 since mankind emerged from the cloud of mythical tradition 
 
10 THE CROSS. 
 
 into the clear light of authentic history, their annals have 
 done little more than mark the bubbles that have floated upon 
 that fathomless stream of life, which, issuing from the great 
 deep of eternity past, is lost in the darkness of eternity to 
 come. 
 
 If we would trace to their sources the mightiest manifes- 
 tations of spiritual life, language, religion, philosophy, 
 government and the arts, we are carried beyond the feeble 
 illumination of profane history into the twilight of an almost 
 impenetrable antiquity. A few chapters in Genesis comprise 
 all that is known to us of those mighty ages, the time-defying 
 relics of whose unparallelled civilization startle the travel- 
 ler in the silent deserts of Upper Egypt, in the "marble 
 wilderness" of Syria, the jungles of India, and the cyclopean 
 ruins of Greece and Italy. "What is known of the spiritual 
 manifestations of the past, bears but a small proportion to 
 what has forever perished from the memory of man and the 
 records of history. 
 
 Forever, did we say, and is all that has been buried under 
 the "wrecks of time " irretrievably lost 1 ? No! Not thus, 
 we are persuaded, does God deal with his rational creatures. 
 There is a volume and a recording angel before His throne, 
 and in the light of that ineffable Presence, the bulletin of the 
 battle between Heaven and Hell, of which earth is the field 
 and Eternity the prize, will one day be published to the 
 Universe. No conquest ever made from the empire of ig- 
 norance, sin and misery, however small, — no victory ever 
 gained over evil passions, however obscure, — no dark and 
 fearful struggle with the temptations of the world and the 
 despotism of Nature, shall go unchronicled. No tear of 
 compassion or sorrow has ever fallen unheeded by the Father 
 of us all. No great and heroic deed, — no winged words of 
 light or hope or consolation, though forgotten on earth, shall 
 ever be lost from the memories of Eternity. 
 
THE CROSS. 11 
 
 Yet the comparatively small part of universal history which 
 is known to us now, is an unfathomable mine, and rich in the 
 ore of thought. A glory breaks out from the tombs of de- 
 parted generations, and amid the chaos of facts and the 
 ruins of empires, are many bright points of light in the past, 
 that may serve to illumine the present and the future. We 
 will endeavor to collect some of these scattered rays, and if 
 we should discover nothing absolutely new, we may at least 
 refresh and deepen the impression of those old, but not the 
 less glorious truths, which are the wholesome food of spirit- 
 ual life. 
 
 And here I beg leave to enter my protest against what 
 may be called the zm-historical or awta-historical philosophy 
 so fashionable at the present day, especially among the culti- 
 vators of the physical sciences, a philosophy which is at once 
 the offspring and parent of a shallow scepticism. This 
 school of illuminati and radical reformers, looking too exclu- 
 sively at the errors and imperfections that have incrusted the 
 organized forms, in which the great principles of moral life 
 and social progress have from time to time taken up their 
 residence, have brought themselves to regard the Past, as an 
 inextricable maze of weak self-delusion, or wholesale jug- 
 glery. 
 
 If deep and life-giving realities, which have given birth to 
 the poetry, chivalry, and religion of the "fervent days of 
 old," have been mixed up with error and superstition, our 
 philosophers conclude that all these things have been founded 
 in delusion or imposture. To save themselves the trouble of 
 separating the pure bullion of truth from the alloy with 
 which it has passed current among masses of men, they has- 
 tily consign the whole to the limb of exploded chimeras. 
 According to this philosophy nature is a machine, life is the 
 the motion of particles, history is a tissue of folly, selfishness 
 and priestcraft. 
 
12 THE CROSS. 
 
 The favorite themes of these lights of the world, at least 
 of the most thorough-going and consistent among them, are 
 the folly and ignorance of believing ages, the "march of 
 intellect," and the progress of the physical sciences, which 
 are to regenerate the species, revolutionize our views of 
 man and his destiny, and disenchant life of all those beauti- 
 ful delusions of our benighted fathers, which have inspired 
 self-devotion, moral heroism and hopes that grasp at infinity. 
 
 This spirit is manifestly incompatible with any definite re- 
 ligious belief, which must be founded upon historical 
 evidence, corroborated by moral intuitions. Some of our 
 philosophers, it is true, may preserve a prudent and worldly 
 acquiescence in the religion of their country or their neigh- 
 bors, which is far less worthy of respect than earnest inquir- 
 ing scepticism. Others may regard religion as an useful 
 humbug, which wise men should tolerate until society is 
 prepared to do without it, but this capitulation with error is 
 scouted by the higher class of sceptics, who hold that truth 
 alone is good, and that no system radically false can be 
 productive of any real or lasting benefit to mankind. 
 
 The same spirit, brought to bear directly upon historical 
 inquiry, has given birth to what may be called the " humbug" 
 philosophy of history, of which Hume is perhaps the great- 
 est representative, and which, by making a great show of 
 wisdom and impartiality, has been the source of more fallacy 
 and injustice, than all the most passionate disquisitions of the 
 most enthusiastic partizans. In this school of history, every 
 great, but irregular nature, full of fiery earnestness about 
 matters with which the writer happens to have no sympathy, 
 is a hypocrite, an impostor or a fanatic; every half enlight- 
 ened but still glorious manifestation of the divinest part of 
 man's nature is sneered at, as an outburst of silly enthusiasm, 
 or a trick of selfish ambition. 
 
 Contempt for the past is moral desolation. It excludes 
 
THE CROSS. 13 
 
 God and His Providence from history, saps the foundation 
 of religion and tends to bring into doubt almost everything 
 which exalts and embellishes society. It is a dreary, soul- 
 chilling, practical Atheism. 
 
 Take the following illustration of our views upon this 
 subject: 
 
 Nowhere else in the annals of mankind are the traces of 
 a beneficent Providence so clearly to be seen as in the histo- 
 ry of the Christian religion. All the vast movements and 
 revolutions of the ancient nations converge to one mighty 
 purpose, the introduction of Christianity. It has been the 
 soul of modern society, the most efficient agent in civilizing 
 mankind, the main life-bearing stem upon which has been 
 engrafted every thing beautiful and glorious in the vigorous, 
 progressive and ever expanding civilization of the Christian 
 nations. According to the "humbug" philosophy, either 
 the Divinity concerns himself not with the affairs of his 
 creatures, or he has chosen as the means of conferring his 
 greatest blessings upon them, a boundless scheme of elabo- 
 rate imposture. 
 
 Contempt for the past, especially in relation to civil con- 
 cerns, is an error to which, from obvious causes, American 
 society is peculiarly exposed, and which it therefore becomes 
 the duty of the American writer to combat. We are in little 
 danger of falling into that opposite extreme, which in Europe 
 takes the form of high conservatism, and with desperate 
 perversity throws itself into direct opposition to the resist- 
 less tendencies of modern society. From the nature of the 
 case, toryism can never take deep root in American soil, and 
 it is idle to aim our blows at an imaginary foe, while a real 
 and portentous tendency threatens the extinction of all rev- 
 erence for the Past, and with it all of that ennobling class of 
 emotions, which are allied to such reverence as their parent 
 £tock. This tendency is fostered by the grovelling dema- 
 
14 THE CROSS. 
 
 goguism that curses our country : a moral pestilence more to 
 be dreaded by a people than the greatest physical calamities. 
 
 Popular sycophants would fain make us believe that polit- 
 ical wisdom and the great principles of liberty, like potatoes 
 and tobacco, are indigenous to American soil; and some are 
 absurd enough to contend for what they call an American 
 education, which shall cut us off from the past and cancel 
 all our obligations to the old world. But no nation ever 
 became great by this process, nor ever will. We must re- 
 collect that, if we can see a little farther than those who have 
 gone before us, we stand upon a mental pyramid piled up by 
 the labors of countless generations; that it is our business to 
 carry it still farther towards heaven, not to look down with 
 scorn upon the great works of our predecessors, or become 
 little in the contemplation of our own greatness. Other na- 
 tions may still have the remnants of old abuses to demolish, 
 our task is not to destroy but to preserve and build up. We 
 have nothing to spare of the legacies of the past. 
 
 The shallow unhistorical illuminism of radical destructives 
 and materialist philosophers is an evil which with many com- 
 pensating benefits has been bequeathed to mankind by that 
 tremendous collision between the new and the old, the 
 French Revolution. Or to speak with more precision, it is 
 the offspring of that powerful and pervading tendency of 
 modern society, of which the French revolution was the 
 mightiest and most destructive outburst. In the warfare 
 which freedom of inquiry, and civil equality on the one 
 hand, have waged against venerable authority, and arbitrary 
 privilege on the other, the tremendous assaults, which have 
 been made upon ancient institutions that have outlived their 
 original uses, have not always spared the truth and good 
 which those institutions were designed to perpetuate. 
 
 The human mind can entertain but one passion at a time, 
 sufficiently overruling and intense to effect great changes in 
 
THE CROSS. 15 
 
 society, and revolutionary ardor has been so busy with the work 
 of demolition, that it is not wonderful that many should turn 
 their backs upon the pasty forgetful of its greatness, and their 
 own obligations to it, and look forward to the future with 
 boundless hopes, and chimerical schemes for the radical re- 
 generation of society. Yet there is nothing more certain, 
 than that no moral or political organization wholly severed 
 from the past can live. We may repair dilapidated institutions 
 from time to time, and adapt them to the new exigencies of 
 society ; but we must preserve the old foundations, the great 
 principles, or our structures will not stand the test of time 
 and experience. It is the order of Providence, that the new 
 should be evolved from the old in such a manner, that the 
 life and soul of the one should be gradually transfused into 
 the other. Great revolutions may seem to interrupt this order 
 for a time, but after the earthquake has rolled away, the 
 stream resumes its former channel, only clearer, broader, freer 
 from obstructions than before. "We may borrow an image 
 from Scandinavian Poetry, and compare the progressive de- 
 velopment of man's destinies upon earth to a mighty tree. 
 We may prune it and lop the sapless branches, but we must 
 not forget that the most beautiful flowers of modern civiliza- 
 tion, the most noblest fruits which have ripened in the blaze 
 of modern science, have drawn their vital sap from broad 
 roots buried in the remotest antiquity, through a mighty trunk 
 whose growths are eras, and boughs that have battled with 
 the storms of revolutions. 
 
 We need not hope to understand any important portion of 
 history thoroughly, without attaining some elevated point 
 which will give us a view of the whole. It is not a line but 
 a web, and each part is intertangled with every other part in 
 the vast and intricate texture of Providential arrangements. 
 Yet by collating facts far separated in time and space, and 
 discerning their relations to each other, and to the evolution 
 
16 THE CROSS. 
 
 of the vast plans of Eternal Providence, we may hope to 
 frame a general theory of historical philosophy, which will 
 collect the scattered rays that break out in distant ages and 
 different quarters of the globe, and reflect the concentrated 
 light thus gathered from the whole upon each successive 
 portion, as it passes in review before us. I am far from sup- 
 posing myself equal to so vast and difficult an undertaking. 
 I only hope to throw out a few suggestions which may facili- 
 tate the solution of this greatest of philosophical problems. 
 
 Without such generalization, we should be unable to catch 
 the true spirit and import of any of the great movements of 
 society, from those meagre delineations of public transactions, 
 which make up the greater part of our histories, and exhibit 
 only proximate or occasional causes. We mark the move- 
 ments of armies, the doings of politicians and the intrigues 
 of courts, things which float upon the surface of society, while 
 the real fountains of moral and intellectual life are hidden far 
 below in its quiet and silent depths. 
 
 Every one knows, that, in the natural world, the mightiest 
 results are brought about by the steady operations of quiet 
 and unobtrusive agencies. The sudden storm at sea may 
 mingle their spray of billows with the clouds of heaven ; but 
 in a few hours all traces of the tempest's rage have vanished, 
 while, in the blue ocean above, the stars in quiet beauty wheel 
 in their everlasting courses, impelled by a power unseen, un- 
 heard and only known by its stupendous effects. 
 
 The same is true of the moral world. But this is a trite 
 theme and I will not dwell upon it. I cannot, however, refrain 
 from noticing a beautiful illustration of the thought in the 
 Hebrew scriptures, notwithstanding it has often been refer- 
 red to by other writers. It is one of the most brilliant gems 
 in that exhaustless mine of divine philosophy and inspired 
 poetry. 
 
 The Prophet sat upon Mount Horeb, waiting for a visita- 
 
THE CROSS 17 
 
 tion from on High. A storm-wind swept through the moun- 
 tain passes, but the Lord was not in the wind; an earthquake 
 rent the rocks, but the Lord was not in the earthquake ; a 
 fire darted through the clefts, and roared among the moun- 
 tain pines, but the Lord was not in the fire; but there came 
 a still small voice, like soft music from afar, and the thrilling 
 frame and kindling soul of the Prophet acknowledged the 
 presence and power of the Eternal Spirit. 
 
 When the natural philosopher discerns in a multitude of 
 facts phenomena essentially the same, though to a greater 
 or less degree modified by peculiar circumstances, he intui- 
 tively refers them to certain invariable laws or intrinsic pro- 
 perties of matter, and goes to work to find out the causes 
 that have varied the results in particular instances. We see 
 no reason why the same procedure should not be adopted 
 in historical investigations ; for in like manner, while wed is- 
 cern marked peculiarites in the spiritual developments of 
 different nations, there are certain great features of life and 
 principles of action which run through all ages and all tribes 
 and kindreds of the earth, that have attained to any consider- 
 able height of knowledge and refinement, or played any im- 
 portant part in history. 
 
 Nations have left their original seats and wandered to 
 distant portions of the globe ; empires have fallen and their 
 treasures of art and knowledge have been buried beneath 
 their ruins ; the world has been a scene where the demons 
 of lust, ambition and revenge have rioted in crime and 
 bloodshed ; yet amid all these mighty changes, and world- 
 wide confusions, certain phenomena have been manifested 
 by every age and nation of which any monuments have been 
 preserved. 
 
 Among these universal facts, are the belief of a First 
 Cause, and a recognition of his right to prescribe the laws 
 of our being; an ideal more or less distinct of the specific 
 
18 THE CROSS. 
 
 perfection of man and society, and a sense of actual short- 
 coming and moral debasement; attempts by self-immolation 
 and sacrifices of other victims to avert the penalties of the 
 Divine law,, not only in the present but a future life, and 
 finally a perpetual struggle between the animal and selfish 
 passions and that higher part of our strange nature which 
 links us to God and Eternity. Nowhere has the human 
 soul been so completely darkened, — at no time have its finer 
 chords been so entirely unstrung, but that through the up- 
 roar of strife, the curses of rage and the shrieks of despair, 
 some gushes of heavenly music have been heard from time 
 to time, which have brought solace from above to the pil- 
 grim and stranger upon earth. 
 
 In the great tree of moral life there are the main stem of 
 the primitive revelation, growing up through the Hebrew 
 theocracy to its glorious maturity in Christianity ; the almost 
 sapless branches of Chinese philosophy, and Mahommedan 
 deism ; the rich foliage and flowers of Indian and Grecian 
 mythology ; the mossy, storm-riven boughs of Scandinavian 
 poetry and Celtic druidism ; but withal its roots are far down 
 in Eternity and its top reaches to Heaven. 
 
 The materialist, the despiser of the Past, regards these 
 great moral facts, which have lived through all the vicissi- 
 tudes of savage and cultivated society, as mere chimeras or 
 the fever-dreams of a long night of ignorance and supersti- 
 tion, which the light of modern science is to put to flight 
 forever. According to him this modern science must be a 
 melancholy business. It disrobes the world of the beauties 
 which Poetry has stolen from the gardens of Paradise, and 
 represents nature not as a kind, though sometimes stern 
 mother, rearing the sons and daughters of immortality, but 
 as a blind monster sitting on a pile of skulls and devour- 
 ing her own children. 
 
 That profoundest philosophy which recognizes the Divine 
 
THE CROSS. 19 
 
 and imperishable in man, always appears first in the forms 
 of poetry and music, twin sisters and the hand-maids of reli- 
 gion. It is a remarkable fact, that in the earliest periods of 
 civilization, in the robust and fervid youth of great nations, 
 Poetry, that divine melody of thought and words, is always 
 the first language of the newly awakened intellect. Moral 
 reproof and instruction and even the laws of the heroic ages 
 were embodied in the forms, and vitalized by the spirit of 
 Poetry. 
 
 As civilization advances, and the cold abstractions of sci- 
 ence take the place of the life-like creations of the imagina- 
 tion, Poetry withdraws herself more and more from the 
 domain of the understanding. But though a high state of 
 intellectual cultivation more clearly defines the respective 
 boundaries of science and poetry, it is by no means neces- 
 sarily unfavorable to the latter, as many have supposed. 
 
 It is true that rude ages allow greater freedom to the ex- 
 cursions of the imagination. But what is lost in one respect, 
 is gained in another. Poetry more and more hemmed in 
 by reality, finds in reality new and inexhaustable resources. 
 
 The vulgar and trivial details of actual life are apt to 
 blunt our perceptions of its greatness. Yet man, whatever 
 the materialists may think about the matter, is not merely a 
 beast but also a god, and this world is not altogether a sty 
 but also a temple of the Divinity, paved with the bones of 
 the dead, but roofed by the starry dome, and peopled by 
 beautiful and awful mysteries. The bright dreams of youth, 
 and the thoughtful sadness of maturer years; the deep com- 
 munings of the soul with nature and with God ; the fond 
 loyalty which cherishes the memories of heroes and great 
 benefactors of mankind; self-sacrificing patriotism which 
 attaches to the idea of country an infinite import, and sacred 
 obligations ; rapt devotion, whether it recognize the Divine 
 Presence in the Gothic Cathedral, amid the forest aisles, or 
 
20 THE CROSS. 
 
 cn the sounding sea-shore, — what are all these things but the 
 rising undulations of that deepest part of our mysterious na- 
 ture, in which are the fountains of poetry and religion. 
 
 If we imagine a rational creature upon a level with the 
 highest of our species to reach the maturity of his powers in 
 another state of being, and then to have all his perceptions 
 and sensibilities suddenly opened upon this world in any of 
 its brightest or most fearful aspects, what deep thoughts, 
 what childish wonder, love, or awe, would fill his whole 
 soul ! The poetical temperament preserves in a greater or 
 less degree this childlike freshness, which custom withers in 
 other men, and by mysterious affinities draws to itself the 
 poetry of life and nature from the alloy of common place 
 ingredients. 
 
 It is unquestionably the greatest triumph of art to idealize 
 the present ; for distance either in time or space renders the 
 materials of poetry more pliant. Through the same mists 
 which conceal from us the vulgar and trivial details, the 
 grander features of the scene loom up into shapes of beauty 
 or terror. Campbell's illustration of this thought will occur 
 to every reader. If "distance" "robes the mountain in its 
 azure hue," it also leaves the imagination free to rove 
 through shadowy and sequestered dells or fairy regions, be- 
 yond the blue summits that seem to prop the heavens. 
 
 This fact discloses the true secret of the highest poetical 
 effect, and throws much light on the nature of poetry in gen- 
 eral. If we wish to exalt the actual into the ideal, we must 
 take care not to fetter the imagination by such clear and 
 sharp outlines as leave no room for vague associations and 
 undefined but powerful emotions, which transcend the limits 
 of the partial present and grasp at the infinite whole. Fan- 
 tasy must be set free from the chains of the actual. 
 
 But what, it may be asked, has all this to do with the phi- 
 losophy of history ] Much, as I hope will be seen hereafter, 
 
THE CROSS. 21 
 
 if the reader has patience to follow the train of thought 
 which has led me to the views that I entertain upon that 
 subject. There are strong affinities between our opinions 
 upon such subjects, that at first sight seem to have no direct 
 connection. Our views of history must depend in a great 
 measure upon our notions of the nature of man and the pur- 
 poses of his manifestations. 
 
 If man be a machine, and all the purposes of his existence 
 be limited to the present world, then poetry is simply an 
 illusion, and a pernicious one, for those bodying forth of the 
 ideal which fill the soul with an infinite love, or grief, or ter- 
 ror, are the dreams of a distempered imagination, and blind 
 men to their present and real good by fostering vague but 
 glorious anticipations which must be finally disappointed. 
 For, consciously or unconsciously, the poetical temperament 
 links everything finite and perishable with the infinite and 
 imperishable, and our little life here with the boundless and 
 everlasting existence that awaits us. Whatever form poetry 
 may take, and whatever may be the nature of the materials 
 which it draws from the actual world, its essential inspira- 
 tion is the ineradicable desire of the human soul for a wider, 
 a more beautiful, a more powerful existence than the present. 
 
 When the Poet is destitute of religious faith, the mighty 
 cravings of his soul, and a vivid sense of the frightful dis- 
 crepancy between the aspirations and the supposed destiny 
 of man, may eat into his own heart, tear asunder his whole 
 natuie, and fever into despair, madness or suicide. A hap- 
 pier creed may overarch life with the rainbow of hope, and 
 pour over nature the light of eternity. In either case, the 
 poet filled with the ideal and that infinite love and awe which 
 only the ideal can inspire, becomes the unconcious prophet 
 of a deeper and mightier truths than the boasted deductions of 
 science. Even in science no great thing was ever done by 
 a man who had not a spice of poetry in him. 
 
22 THE CROSS. 
 
 As will appear more fully in the progress of our inquiry, 
 those branches of art and literature, which strive to embody 
 the aspirations of man in forms of ideal beauty or power, 
 have performed a very important part in human culture. It 
 is therefore perfectly consistent for our philosophers, who 
 look upon history as little better than a tissue of delusion, 
 selfishness and imposture, to regard poetry as a pleasant 
 cheat, which may serve to amuse a vacant hour. 
 
 Religion is the union of the highest philosophy with the 
 highest poetry. Philosophy has to do with substances, quali- 
 ties, relations, all which are objects of pure intellect, not of 
 passion ; but when those substances and qualities are em- 
 bodied or manifested in sensible forms, such as may excite 
 love, terror or admiration, they come within the province of 
 Poetry. Religion is the recognition of God, the central sun 
 of all truth, in two modes ; first, philosophically as an absolute 
 essence, with certain qualities and relations ; secondly, poetical- 
 ly, as manifested in the various forms of life and beauty around 
 us, which call forth our love, admiration or reverence, which 
 is the union of the other two feelings, in proportion as they 
 rise in the scale of being towards the Infinite. In idolatry 
 the poetical element of religion predominates, almost to the 
 exclusion of the philosophical. In cold, absolute theism the 
 exact reverse takes place. Christianity alone has effected in 
 the God-man, our Saviour, a happy and perfect union of 
 philosophy and poetry. 
 
 It will not be out of place to remark just here, that all the 
 poetry, which has made any considerable contributions to 
 the progress of society in christian ages and nations, has had 
 a vital connection with the christian religion. This will ap- 
 pear more fully hereafter. Indeed the history of Christianity 
 itself, including the life and death of its Divine Founder, the 
 moral heroism of its martyrs and apostles, and the long war- 
 fare which it has waged against ignorance, sin and misery, is 
 
THE CROSS. 23 
 
 a mighty epic, of which God is the author ; and the refine- 
 ments of chivalry, the triumphs of art and the glories of sci- 
 ence are the episodes. Religion has directly or indirectly 
 been the source of that poetry of action, which has shed a 
 never-dying glory over the great and stirring periods of mod- 
 ern history. 
 
 It is obvious that we use the term Poetry in its general 
 sense of passionate recognition of all beautiful, glorious and 
 sublime things, manifested, not only in verse, painting, sculp- 
 ture, architecture, but any thing which ennobles man, embel- 
 lishes life, or refines society, provided it can be embodied in 
 sensible forms, or associated with images more or less distinct. 
 Not only the greatest works of art, but the finest traits and 
 noblest triumphs of civilization, are manifestation of that 
 divine and perennial spirit of Poetry, without which, life 
 would be a poor despicable round of sordid cares and ani- 
 mal gratifications. 
 
 In this connection I will venture a few thoughts on the 
 origin and philosophy of civilization in general. 
 
 Civilization originallv meant the condition of civil society, 
 which in the Latin mind was indissolubly associated with 
 cities. The term as used by modern writers is more com- 
 prehensive. I will define civilization to be that state of so- 
 ciety, which surrounds the individual members thereof with 
 circumstances positively propitious to the development of 
 the higher and finer qualities of human nature, — the moral 
 and intellectual faculties, the social sympathies and the poet- 
 ical sentiments. 
 
 There are various modes of awakening the dormant capa- 
 bilities of a barbarous people. All those high properties 
 that raise man above other animals, and the manifestations of 
 which distinguish refinement from barbarism, and the culti- 
 vated from the coarse, are so closely linked together in " the 
 electric chain with which we are darkly bound," that the liv- 
 
24 THE CROSS. 
 
 ing fire from heaven applied to any part of the concatenation, 
 will soon vibrate through the whole. There is a deep mean- 
 ing in that old legend, that cities were built by the lyre of 
 Amphion. 
 
 There is an internal and an external civilization ; and the 
 latter is the natural and necessary product of the former. 
 To illustrate my meaning, suppose the most cultivated people 
 in Paris to be transported into the depths of an American 
 forest, and their parlors and libraries, and places in the sci- 
 entific institutes and galleries, and churches and courts of 
 justice and legislative assemblies of the metropolis of Euro- 
 pean civilization, to be filled by a band of Blackfeet Indians. 
 The Parisians would soon create around them the external 
 circumstances of civilized life, while the Blackfeet, unless im- 
 proved by the example of their remaining neighbors, would 
 suffer the monuments of a refinement which they could not 
 appreciate to fall into decay and ruin. We are to distinguish 
 then between the state of mind — what I have called the inter- 
 nal civilization, — of the individuals who compose a society, 
 and those institutions and other external circumstances, in 
 which the poetical sentiments, the moral and intellectual 
 powers and the social tendencies manifest their supremacy 
 over the mere animal and selfish propensities. 
 
 When, by any means, the barbarian, to whom we may 
 apply Plato's definition of man, "a two legged animal with- 
 out feathers, " has been thoroughly aroused from his moral 
 stupidity, and rendered sensible of the advantages of civiliza- 
 tion, the internal change soon manifests itself in a thousand 
 forms of external improvement ; he begins to rise above 
 mere animalism, and seeks to embellish his existence by a 
 variety of beautiful and graceful things, which shall incessant- 
 ly speak to him of a higher destiny than he ever dreamed of 
 in his former state cf brutal degradation. He, who once 
 regarded woman as the mere slave of appetite and devour- 
 
THE CROSS. 25 
 
 ed, like a wolf, the flesh which he has just snatched from the 
 reeking flank of an ox, to disguise the grossness of sen- 
 sual gratifications with the flowers of sentiment and the 
 effusions of cultivated intellect. The scanty covering of 
 skins is exchanged for decent or elegant attire, and the bark 
 wigwam gives place to the stately edifice. Everywhere a 
 sense not of utility alone, but of beauty, harmony, magnifi- 
 cence, is manifesting itself. 
 
 The social sympathies, strengthened and expanded by 
 more enlightened views of reciprocal wants and advantages, 
 extend to larger and larger masses of men, and become the 
 bond of cohesion in great communities. All men are social 
 or gregarious, but a very small society and a very slight 
 bond of connection will suffice for the purposes of savage 
 life. The progress of refinement creates new wants, widens 
 the circle of mutual interests, and renders men more and 
 more sensible of the necessity and advantages of association. 
 It is incessantly adding to the number and strength of the 
 ties which bind men together. 
 
 The social tendency may be so strong as to prevent a free 
 development of individuality. Such a state of society may 
 be vigorous for a time, while external pressure calls forth 
 its energies, but it will eventually dwarf the mind and bring 
 about a state of spiritual torpor or death. Where the mor- 
 al element is feeble, and the poetical sentiments rather 
 disguise than restrain the animal propensities, we have that 
 state of civilization described by Burke, in which " vice loses 
 half its guilt by losing all its grossness," and which nothing 
 but an extraordinary interposition of Providence can save 
 from utter destruction. For habitual immorality gradually 
 clouds the intellect and blunts the finer sensibilities, so that 
 at length even the thin disguise of decency is thrown off, 
 and man descends to the level of the brute. This must be 
 3 
 
26 THE CROSS. 
 
 the case wherever there is not moral life enough in some 
 portion of the society to resist the progress of corruption. 
 
 If, when the animal and selfish passions have been subju- 
 gated by the poetical and social tendencies, these last in their 
 turn are subordinated to the moral faculties, nourished into 
 vigorous life by the wholesome food of everlasting truth, and 
 individuality, in other words the spontaneous energy of free 
 minds, is not cramped by despotism or social unity, we may 
 look for an onward and upward progress to which no limits 
 can be assigned. No civilization can be vigorous or pro- 
 gressive, in which the whole complex nature of man does 
 not have fair play, in which every faculty does not find its 
 appropriate objects. 
 
 It is thought by some that man was originally savage, and 
 gradually rose by his own unaided exertions into civilization 
 and intellectual refinement. This theory, besides its intrinsic 
 improbability, is unsupported by a single fact in history. — 
 On the contrary, all the facts go to show that savages never 
 could have the least desire or conception of a higher condi- 
 tion than their own, until by some means they have been 
 brought into contact with civilized people, and subjugated 
 by their religion, their arts or their arms. Commerce is an 
 important agent in diffusing a civilization already in existence, 
 but the intercourse of savage tribes is not one of mutual im- 
 provement, but of mutual destruction. 
 
 There is not a solitary example in all history, of the spon- 
 taneous growth of that knowledge and refinement which 
 distinguish the civilized from the savage state. We may 
 indeed assume without the shadow of proof, that in those 
 few cases in which impenetrable darkness rests upon the 
 origin of a very imperfect civilization, which looks very much 
 like the remnant of something better, as in Mexico and Peru, 
 it must have sprung up among themselves. If this assump- 
 tion were well founded, we would surely have had some 
 
THE CROSS. 27 
 
 examples of spontaneous development within the range of 
 authentic history, embracing, as it does, a period of nearly 
 six thousand years, and many savage nations of the highest 
 capabilities. 
 
 Those very tribes that have shown the greatest susceptibility 
 of improvement, when brought in contact with civilization, 
 have existed for ages on ages in barbarism, undisturbed by 
 the least desire or conception of an higher condition. Wher- 
 ever we can trace the arts and knowledge of civilized life to 
 their beginnings, we find them uniformly exotics, transplant- 
 ed from some more favored clime, and usually passing 
 through a long period of feeble and doubtful growth, exposed 
 to the rudest blasts, before they have taken lasting root in the 
 new soil. 
 
 The truth is, that barbarism is unmitigated animalism, a 
 sort of spiritual slumber from which the latent capabilities 
 will never awaken, until some external stimulus be applied. 
 Man seems to be subject to a moral gravitation that weighs 
 him down to the " vile dust from which he sprang." Every 
 thing which ennobles and exalts him, is an up-hill business. 
 He has eagle wings, yet he would contentedly fold them at 
 his side and feed upon the garbage of earth, did not external 
 or Divine culture raise his eyes towards Heaven, and imp 
 his lazy pinions for the upper skies and the free mountain top. 
 
 There are instances of nations losing, in a great measure, 
 their social superiority by moral corruption, by the deadening 
 grasp of despotism or the storms of intestine strife and for- 
 eign invasion, but not a solitary example of spontaneous 
 civilization. 
 
 Our modern refinement is nothing more than a reconsolid- 
 ation, with additions and improvements, of those remnants of 
 the magnificent civilization of Rome, which were sheltered 
 by the Church, from those northern tempests that over- 
 whelmed the Empire. From Rome, we may trace the 
 
28 THE CROSS. 
 
 streams of art and knowledge, through Greece, Asia Minor 
 and Phoenicia, to the valley of the Nile and the plains of 
 Chaldea. Here the lights of profane history desert us, and 
 without the Hebrew Scriptures, we should be left in utter 
 darkness. 
 
 At the very earliest period of which any authentic memo- 
 rials have survived, navigation seems to have been more 
 extensive and adventurous, than it ever was afterwards down 
 to the time of Vasco de Gama and Columbus. Egypt was 
 the seat of a refined and intellectual people, whose monu- 
 ments still strike the traveller with astonishment. Babylon 
 sat upon the Euphrates, the queen of nations, with her hun- 
 dred gates of brass, her temjDles, towers and palaces, and the 
 Chaldean sages had already numbered every star that sparkled 
 in the oriental heavens. 
 
 Through the mysterious veil of antiquity, we obtain some 
 glimpses of a glorious and wondrous scene in the mighty 
 youth of our world. We catch some rays from a mysterious 
 temple and dwelling of demi-gods, and through the loopholes 
 of time can even see giant shadows flitting along its arches, 
 but are forbidden to enter and look upon its glories. The 
 head-springs of the River of light, as the ancients said of the 
 fountains of the Nile, no mortal eye can ever behold. 
 
 It is well known that there are affinities between all the 
 
 known languages of the earth, which leave but little room 
 
 for doubt that they are all dialects of one original tongue. 
 
 Amongf the countless theories of the human origin of lan- 
 es o 
 
 guage, which philosophical ingenuity has fabricated, it is diffi- 
 cult to decide, not which is most plausible, but which is most 
 sublimely absurd. 
 
 The few brief hints of the Mosaic records are worth more 
 than all modern theories. It is easy to believe that he who 
 gave Noah, whether by internal inspiration or external com- 
 munication, minute directions for the construction of the ark, 
 
THE CROSS. 29 
 
 likewise imparted to his helpless creatures the rudiments at 
 least of the arts and knowledge of civilization. It is very 
 hard to believe that they had any other origin. 
 
 To the same mighty ages, which conceal the sources of 
 language and art and refinement, must be referred the origin 
 of those fundamental principles of religion, which, with more 
 or less defacement, have survived the ravages of time and 
 the revolutions of society, and have ever been sensibly or in- 
 sensibly the inmost life of all that raises man above other ani- 
 mals. Admitting their divine origin, there is still a question 
 as to the mode of communication. While some have con- 
 tended for the spontaneous development of innate ideas, 
 others have unjustly depreciated the human mind in their 
 excessive dread of the inroads of reason upon the province 
 of revelation. 
 
 It is one of that multitude of disputes, in which one half of 
 the truth has been striving on each side to take to itself the 
 whole ground. 
 
 There is mutual adaptation in all the works of God ; and all 
 great and beautiful things both in the natural and moral 
 world, are the compound results of reciprocal affinities. 
 The soil is full of the germs of beauty, but without sunshine 
 and rain they would slumber forever. In like manner the 
 moral nature of man requires external culture, yet that cul- 
 ture is worth little unless it conforms to the inmost structure 
 of the mind itself. 
 
 Every one knows that there are many truths which he 
 would never have thought of until announced by some one 
 else but, which when so announced he instantly lays hold of, 
 assimilates and forever incorporates with his own intellectual 
 being. For the acquisition of Divine Knowledge a suitable 
 structure of the mind and preternatural communication were 
 both requisite. The characters written upon the soul by the 
 finger of God could be distinctly read only when shone 
 
30 THE CROSS. 
 
 upon by light from Heaven, as the statue of Memnon was 
 dumb till stricken by the rays of the rising sun. The finest 
 chords of the human soul instantly respond to the touch of a 
 skilful hand, and continue to vibrate after that hand has been 
 withdrawn, though discordant notes soon mingle with, and 
 sometimes almost overpower the moral melody. 
 
 To explain myself more fully, I remark that our passions, 
 sensibilities, faculties, our spiritual properties in short are 
 stimulated by the presence of their appropriate objects; 
 either their actual presence within reach of our perceptions, 
 or their virtual presence by means of memory and imagina- 
 tion. Now it is clear from the very nature of the objects of 
 the moral faculties, that the communication necessary to a 
 vivid apprehension of those objects, could have been at first 
 effected only by some extraordinary process which I call pre- 
 ternatural, because it forms no part of the present known 
 course of nature. All the objects of all the other properties of 
 the first man could have reached his consciousness without 
 transcending the present order of things ; but God, his law and 
 its sanctions in a future life must have been revealed by some 
 process which has not been perpetuated. 
 
 We have therefore good reason to believe that all which was 
 good in the moral philosophy and religious observances of 
 the ancient nations, consisted of traditionary fragments of a 
 primitive revelation which had floated down on the stream of 
 ages from a remote antiquity. From the original fountain of 
 divine knowledge, the purest stream flowed through the 
 Hebrews, who thus became the link between the patriarchal 
 ages and the modern world, and all their institutions were 
 studiously contrived to preserve the truth from the contam- 
 ination of surrounding idolatry. Next to the Hebrews, the 
 Persians preserved the truth better than any other people, 
 from causes which will be mentioned hereafter. The streams 
 which flowed through other channels, as the Indians and the 
 
THE CROSS 31 
 
 Oreeks, though verdure and flowers sprang up along their 
 margins, were almost lost in a deadly jungle of popular sup- 
 erstitions. In these two nations, especially, the poetry of 
 religion got the better of its philosophy, and richly clothed 
 the mysterious realities of the universe with those beautiful 
 mythologies which were no doubt at first profoundly symbol- 
 ical. 
 
 Idolatry, like every other error in practice, is only wo. ex- 
 cess of what is good in itself. The tendency to embody in 
 living or life-like forms (eidolaj the Supreme Power and 
 -all subordinate powers, is an essential part of our nature, and 
 must have been implanted in us for some good purpose. 
 We will see hereafter what use Christianity has made of it, 
 This brings us to the chief subject of the present discourse. 
 
 A scheme of historical philosophy which should leave out 
 Christianity, would be like that unlucky playbill, which an- 
 nounced that, in the performance of Hamlet, the part of 
 Hamlet would be omitted, by particular request. The 
 Christian revelation furnishes the only solution of the most 
 difficult problems of history, and throws a strong light upon 
 the most striking and mysterious facts in the existence of 
 roan upon earth. In that light, history becomes the develop- 
 ment of a scheme for raising man from that absolute domin- 
 ion of nature, under which his destinies could have been 
 little higher than those of any other animal, by a stupendous 
 series of moral providences and supernatural impulses, in 
 which a thousand years are as one day. 
 
 Of the progressive evolution of the divine plan for the ed- 
 ucation of mankind, the introduction of Christianity forms as 
 it were the culminating point, the summit level of the line of 
 communication opened between earth and heaven. Reflected 
 upon the past, it gave meaning and import to many striking 
 facts in the history, not only of the people amongst whom it 
 originated, but of other great nations of antiquity, which 
 
32 THE CROSS. 
 
 would otherwise have remained inexplicable enigmas ; reach- 
 ing forward into the boundless future, it became a fresh 
 starting point in the moral providence of God, and has poured 
 its healing streams through the desolate wastes of humanity, 
 causing the moral desert to "rejoice and blossom as the 
 rose." 
 
 We make it a postulate, without which any intelligible 
 theory of historical philosophy is unattainable, that man is a 
 fallen being, or in other words, that his moral state has some- 
 how suffered an insurrection, and now lies in ruins. We 
 may speculate as we please as to how moral evil entered the 
 world, that it is here is not a matter of speculation. What- 
 ever is is right may be true in this sense, that no rebellious 
 activity of subordinate powers can effectually thwart the pur- 
 poses of the Infinite mind, but, on the contrary, will appear 
 to have subserved them in a comprehensive survey of His 
 universal government. Yet every one who would not do 
 violence to his own nature, must admit that the moral world 
 is " out of joint," and that the actual condition of our race, 
 even of the highest among them, falls short of that ideal 
 which exists in all minds, with more or less distinctness, of the 
 specific perfection of humanity. For even in his ruined con- 
 dition, enough of the divine original survives to show the 
 height from which he has fallen ; — just as amidst the ruins of 
 a Grecian temple, we stumble upon broken columns and ex- 
 quisitely wrought capitals, which attest the matchless beauty 
 of the ancient structure. 
 
 Reason confirms the scriptural account, that man came from 
 the hands of his Maker with a physical and moral structure, 
 perfectly sound and healthy, that is to say with an unbroken 
 harmony of faculties and impulses, and provided with the 
 means of preserving his innocence and happiness. It is ob- 
 vious that had this original equilibrium of his nature been 
 preserved ; had no propensity ever transcended its legitimate 
 
THE CROSS. 33 
 
 function, he would have remained a creature of mere im- 
 pulse, and could never have had any knowledge of good or 
 evil. For a moral quality supposes a certain conflict between 
 motives, which are summoned to the bar of the judgment by 
 passion, conscience and reason. 
 
 Why the Omnipotent has permitted the original perfection 
 of his workmanship to be overthrown, and what is the nature 
 of that disturbing force which has brought discord and with 
 it death and sorrow into the world, are questions which must 
 return upon the thinking minds of each successive generation, 
 in all their original perplexity, because they admit of no sat- 
 isfactory answer in the present state of being. In regard to 
 all such matters, we must " wait the great teacher Death and 
 God adore," not doubting that he will finally vindicate to all 
 his intelligent creatures the wisdom of his plans and the jus- 
 tice of his administration. 
 
 So far as the Divine counsels can be deciphered from the 
 facts of history, nothing is clearer than that man was not 
 designed for the tame and regular manifestation of a few 
 genial impulses held in perfect equilibrium by the limiting 
 properties of his nature, but rather for a vast, tempestuous 
 existence, resulting from the polarity of powerful passions 
 and antagonist tendencies. 
 
 Every where indeed, in the physical and moral world, we 
 find strife, antagonism, inordinate activity of forces followed 
 by the re-action of others which had been for a time repress- 
 ed. Why these things are so we cannot tell, though we may 
 indulge in endless conjectures, which may serve as exercises 
 of philosophical ingenuity. Perhaps we are passing from a 
 lower to a higher standard of perfection, and the first putting 
 forth of power towards the construction of the new building, 
 may have destroyed forever the proportions of the original 
 edifice. We may imagine these alternatives to have pre- 
 sented themselves to the Supreme Mind; on the one hand 
 
34 THE CROSS. 
 
 the complete realization at once of His own Divine idea of 
 the world, secured, forever with the iron circle of necessity ; 
 on the other a progressive evolution of that idea, which must 
 have involved the existence of evil, for without relative im- 
 perfection progress is inconceivable. That which is perfect 
 cannot be made better. Perhaps out of the apparent anar- 
 chy of riotous forces is to arise a more glorious order than 
 would have been attainable without it. 
 
 But aside from all speculations, one of these two things 
 must betrue : either God made man imperfect, or he has per- 
 mitted some one or more of his spiritual properties to be so 
 potentiated, if I may be allowed the expression, as to trans- 
 cend their proper functions, and thus overthrow the original 
 harmony of human nature. For as disorder, or what we call 
 moral evil, is unquestionably here, it is plain that it must 
 either have formed a part of the original constitution, or have 
 been introduced at a subsequent period. It would be useless 
 to reason with any one who can entertain the former suppo- 
 sition. 
 
 Assuming then that man is a fallen, in other words, a dis- 
 ordered creature, that the original harmony of his nature has 
 been broken, and that the Eternal Father imparted to his 
 helpless child the rudiments at least of that knowledge which 
 was necessary to guide and sustain him in his mortal struggle 
 with the foes that assailed him, and were lying in wait on 
 every side, we will attempt to point out the chief stages of 
 that great conflict with ignorance, sin and misery, which 
 makes up the history of the race. We will endeavor to trace 
 the progressive evolution of that stupendous plan, by which 
 Providence has made provision for educating the whole com- 
 plex nature of man, and thereby raising him from the ruins 
 of the fall to that condition most favorable to his well-being 
 here and hereafter. 
 
 In my brief survey of the ancient nations, I shall cnofine 
 
THE CROSS. 35 
 
 myself strictly to the share which each had in preparing the 
 materials and laying the foundation of the Christian civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The streams of population, wherever we can trace them 
 for any distance towards their sources, invariably lead us 
 towards the banks of the Euphrates, or the country lying 
 immediately to the east of that river. Modern researches 
 have only served to confirm the opinion, that the country 
 lying between the Euphrates and the Indus, was the primi- 
 tive seat of the human race. The Ark, in all probability, 
 rested upon one of the lofty summits of the Indian Caucasus, 
 now called the Hindoo Coo and Elborz, parts of that stupen- 
 dous chain extending from the frontiers of China to the Black 
 Sea. It contains the highest mountains on the globe, and in 
 its western valleys and fastnesses, are still to be found the 
 finest specimens, in form and feature, of the Caucasian race. 
 It forms the northern boundary of the region which was the 
 cradle of Art, Religion, Science and Civilization ; of the zone 
 of light, which, shooting westward across Europe and Amer- 
 ica, will have encircled the globe, when the Anglo-Americans 
 shall have peopled Oregon and California, and the English 
 shall have infused new life and vigor into the ancient civili- 
 zation of India. The light so vivid in the ancient world, 
 along successive portions of this great belt, died away 
 towards the north in the steppes of Tartary, and towards the 
 south in the sands of Africa. 
 
 I have already remarked that modern researches leave but 
 little room for doubt, that all the languages of the earth are 
 corruptions of one original tongue. But so strong are the 
 affinities all alono- the belt I have described, that scholars 
 
 o 
 
 have grouped the dialects of the nations within it, including 
 at one extreme, the Sanscrit, the sacred language of India ; at 
 the other, the English and Spanish, which have reached the 
 western coasts of America, in one class, called the Indo- 
 
36 THE CROSS. 
 
 Germanic race of languages. The northern limit of the zone 
 of light is a waving line rising in Western Europe to a high 
 latitude, and it is a little remarkable that the northern boun- 
 dary of temperate climate, from causes not yet satisfactorily 
 explained, in like manner rises as it approaches the western 
 coasts of Europe, until it almost reaches the sixtieth degree 
 of latitude. It is as temperate at Edinburgh as in the north- 
 ern part of Persia. The same phenomenon is observable 
 en the western coasts of America. 
 
 Along this great belt, with which the Caucasian race has 
 girdled the earth, we trace the illuminated path of the histori- 
 cal Providence of God. That Providence, in his majestic march 
 to the westward, lingered long upon the lovely shores of the 
 Mediterranean, but all along, the light of his radiant footsteps 
 has grown fainter and fainter towards the north and south, 
 where the nomades of Tartary and the dusky tribes of Afri- 
 ca seem to have been left to the dominion of nature. 
 
 The Persians were, in all probability, the primitive nation ; 
 but inhabiting a rugged and mountainous country, they were 
 outstripped in civilization by their neighbors who had settled 
 on the rich plains of Chaldea. Yet both countries seem to 
 have been in possession, from the first, of the arts and knowl- 
 edge and manners of a civilized and intellectual people. The 
 difference was something like that which now exists between 
 the free and hardy mountaineers of the Alps, and the inhab- 
 itants of the rich plains of Lombardy. 
 
 Nothing that we know of the primitive seats of the human 
 race, gives the least countenance to the theory of a gradual 
 rise from the stupidity of barbarism into civilization and 
 refinement ; a theory almost as absurd as the notion that men 
 were originally monkeys, and have gradually ascended in 
 the scale of being. 
 
 There is not the least reason to suppose that the Persians, 
 the Chaldeans, the Indians or the Egyptians, ever were barba- 
 
THE CROSS. 37 
 
 rians. Very simple modes of living were by no means incon- 
 sistent with that refinement and elevation of soul, which mani- 
 fest themselves in the institutions that bless, and the arts which 
 adorn society. The life and manners, of which we have so 
 beautiful a picture in Genesis, may have been universal in 
 the patriarchal ages, when men lived in the presence of God, 
 and the recollections of a miraculous era were still fresh 
 and vivid in the minds of all. Those venerable fathers of the 
 human race ruled their immense families, the germs of great 
 nations, according to laws revealed to them from Heaven, 
 with the aid of councils composed of the elders of the tribe 
 or chiefs distinguished for wisdom and courage. But the 
 Patriarch was not only a ruler, he was also a Priest ; and the 
 first care of those progenitors of mankind, was the worship of 
 God, which, with its altars, its temples and its sacred music, 
 was itself the nucleus of a splendid civilization. An enter- 
 prising member of the family might remove with his children, 
 herdsmen and cattle, and pitch his tent under the shade of 
 palm trees beside some fountain in the wilderness. He 
 might remain near enough to the primitive model of patri- 
 archal government, and the primitive seat of Divine worship, 
 to form another little focus of light which would gradually 
 blend with the spreading illumination. Another member of 
 the family might imprudently extend his wanderings so far 
 as to place mountains, seas and deserts, between himself and 
 the centre of the patriarchal civilization, and the unhappy 
 vicissitudes of an inhospitable region, exhaling pestilential 
 miasm, or tenanted by formidable beasts of prey, might 
 gradually efface all ennobling recollections from the minds of 
 his descendants, who would thus degenerate into barbarians. 
 But there were other causes of degeneracy, besides re- 
 moteness from the original seat of civilization. In the 
 ancient world there was no expansive Christianity to form a 
 bond of union and sympathy among civilized nations, to pre- 
 
38 THE CROSS. 
 
 serve a moral life sufficiently vigorous to resist the progress 
 of corruption, and to mitigate the desolating ferocity of war. 
 Its place was imperfectly supplied by a succession of great 
 Umpires. 
 
 While tribes, that had wandered too far from the centre of 
 illumination into inhospitable regions, degenerated into animal- 
 ism, the Chaldeans, the Indians, and the Egyptians, possessed 
 of the dangerous advantages of an exuberant soil and volup- 
 tuous climate, likewise fell from the simple virtue and pure 
 Theism of their Persian ancestors into idolatry and an incon- 
 ceivable corruption of morals. Such a state of things would 
 probably have been fatal to civilization, had not the mountains 
 of Persia remained a citadel of truth and a home of robust 
 virtues, from which a conquering energy went forth to drive 
 back encroaching barbarism. 
 
 There was singular stability in the laws and religion of 
 the Persians. Their country was poor, their manners simple 
 and austere, and they were remarkable for the care which they 
 bestowed upon the education of their children. From these 
 causes the primitive revelation was better preserved among 
 them, than any other people except the Hebrews. Every one 
 knows or ought to know something of that famous philoso- 
 phy, which has filled so large a space m the history of the 
 human mind. Somewhat corrupted, as it doubtless was, in 
 the time of Zoroaster, it still retained a strong likeness to 
 the true religion. The conflict of the two principles, subor- 
 dinate to the supreme mind, is in fact substantially recogniz- 
 ed by Christianity. The Persian philosophy probably pass- 
 ed into Greece through Asia Miner and Egypt, which latter 
 country became, by means of its extensive commerce, the 
 grand reservoir of the doctrines and science of the eastern 
 nations. 
 
 But the custody and propagation of Divine truth was by no 
 means the mission of the Persians. That great work was 
 
THE CROSS. 39 
 
 allotted to other nations. When civilization was in danger 
 of perishing by the poison of licentiousness, the destructive 
 rage of incessant wars and the inroads of barbarians, the 
 Persian empire brought to its aid a regular administration of 
 comparatively wise and just laws, a venerable priesthood, a 
 chivalrous nobility, and a central power sufficiently strong to 
 form a bond of union, and a common defence to the most 
 civilized portions of the earth. 
 
 But if Christianity and liberty be wanting, all other ad- 
 vantages cannot preserve an empire from decay and final 
 dissolution. I have already remarked that no social superi- 
 ority can last, in which the whole complex nature of man is 
 not fully provided for. Christianity, which alone fully supplies 
 his moral wants, and liberty, which gives fair play to all his 
 powers and propensities, was obviously incompatible with the 
 very qualities which enabled the Persian, the Greek and 
 the Roman empires in succession to protect and extend the 
 ancient civilization. 
 
 While the Persian empire was at the height of its glory 
 though vice and slavery were secretly undermining it, a few 
 small tribes around the Mediterranean, either unknown or 
 despised by the " great King " and his magnificent satraps, 
 were slowly but surely laying the foundations of the modern 
 world. These were the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans 
 and the Germanic nations. 
 
 The Germans belong more especially to modern history, 
 and will be treated of in the next discourse. The great 
 work of preparing the materials of that edifice which now 
 overshadows the world, was parcelled out to the other three 
 nations we have mentioned. To the Hebrews was allotted 
 the custody of moral and religious truth, to the Greeks the 
 empire of reason and imagination, to the iron Romans the 
 power of arms, by which, with their own civil institutions, 
 and the arts, literature and religion of the other two nations, 
 
40 THE CROSS. 
 
 they were to lay a deep and broad foundation for the Chris- 
 tian civilization. Upon that foundation the free Germans 
 were to build the modern world. 
 
 Let us first turn our attention to that wonderful people, 
 who were the bulwark of Europe against Asiatic despotism, 
 and the teachers of mankind in art and literature and philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 The heroic ages of great nations are very much alike in 
 their leading characteristics. In the fervid youth of an intel- 
 lectual people, such as the Greeks, music and poetry supply 
 the place of science ; the glow and vivid coloring of feeling 
 and imagination precede the cold and sharp outlines of ac- 
 curate narrative, and the forms of heroes and great benefac- 
 tors of mankind tower aloft into more than mortal grandeur, 
 through the misty but glory-tinted medium of mythical tra- 
 dition. 
 
 The Pelasgi, or aboriginal Greeks, remote from the centre 
 of civilization on the Euphrates, fell into barbarism. After 
 some sparks had been brought from Phoenicia, Lydia, and 
 Egypt, and the lights of knowledge had been rekindled on 
 the shores of Greece, a long period of fermentation and 
 struggle of conflicting elements, preceded the final triumph 
 of intellect over physical force. Wild beasts were numerous 
 and formidable, the seas were infested with pirates, and rob- 
 bers descended from their strongholds among the mountains 
 to ravage the coasts, where the germs of the new civilization 
 had been planted. Heroes, like Hercules and Theseus, 
 whom we picture to ourselves in all the glory of youthful 
 beauty, matchless strength, and unconquerable fortitude, or 
 great kings, like Minos, generously undertook to subdue 
 those enemies of society. Their achievements were cele- 
 brated by the bards, who recited their verses beside the 
 watch-fires of predatory bands, in the cottages of peasants, 
 and the palaces of kings. These heroic poems were the 
 
THE CROSS. 41 
 
 original sources of that literature which has entered so large- 
 ly into our modern culture. 
 
 The early poetry of Greece, as of every other nation was 
 vitally connected with religion, and from the union of the 
 two, sprang that beautiful mythology which has not yet lost 
 its charm for cultivated minds. The affinities between poe- 
 try and religion are so strong, that even false taste and false 
 philosophy can effect only a temporary separation. Relig- 
 ious ideas may not indeed show themselves on the surface, 
 but religious or devotional feeling must in a greater or less 
 degree vitalize all true poetry, like the mysterious soul of 
 nature, which, itself unseen, makes its presence known by a 
 thousand glowing forms of life and beauty. 
 
 There is no doubt that the aboriginal Greeks acknowledg- 
 ed but one God. This simple and universal faith of the 
 primitive ages was corrupted by the imagination and sensi- 
 bility, in other words, by poetry encroaching upon, and 
 finally dethroning the understanding. A.s all men are more 
 or less idolatrous from their very structure, the philosophy 
 of religion might have been wholly banished from the world, 
 had it not been providentially preserved by the peculiar 
 economy of the Hebrews, — a very important, perhaps the 
 most important part of which was the prohibition to make 
 any image or likeness of any thing in heaven above, or the 
 earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. 
 
 We have said that all men are idolators. This is only say- 
 ing, that for every man there is some being that affects his 
 perception, or his imagination, or both, in such a manner as 
 to call forth that intense love which may be termed adoration. 
 Every man of feeling makes an idol of something at some 
 period of his life. The lover idolizes his mistress, the artist 
 worships the creations of his own imagination, the christian 
 adores the divinity in the person of the divine founder of his 
 religion; Every where we see the poetical tendency idoliz- 
 4 
 
42 THE CROSS. 
 
 ing the beautiful and divine, that is to say, striving to embody 
 them in living or lifelike forms, which may affect the senses, 
 the feelings and the imagination. No one need be startled 
 by the assertion, that idolatry has been one of the chief 
 sources of our modern culture. 
 
 The lively Greek of the heroic ages did not look upon 
 Nature like a modern philosopher of the mechanical school. 
 For him the earth, the air and the waters were peopled by 
 mysterious beings, to whom poetry gave a " local habitation 
 and a name." In a creed which was the offspring, not of 
 cold reason, but of imagination and sensibility, the subordi- 
 nate powers of nature, clothed in living forms, gradually 
 supplanted the one supreme but incomprehensible source of 
 life and beauty. 
 
 We observe further, that heroes and great benefactors of 
 mankind, were supposed to preside after death over the des- 
 tinies of those whom they had saved by their valor, or en- 
 lightened by their wisdom. 
 
 From these two sources sprang that wonderful mythology, 
 which was at first merely the aggregate of the modes, in 
 which the mysterious powers of the living world, and the 
 great men of the heroic ages, affected a lively and poetical 
 people, and so far had much truth and beauty in it. Indeed 
 it was the richest, the most glowing, the most suggestive of 
 all the mythical forms which religion has ever taken, and 
 therefore the best fitted to enter largely into intellectual cul- 
 ture, for the readiest mode of access to the dormant powers 
 of the mind lies through the poetical sentiments. The cul- 
 ture of all great nations, as already remarked, has begun 
 with poetry. 
 
 The feelings and ideas of the heroic ages of Greece found 
 in Homer, a genius that could give them immortality. The 
 literary controversy, respecting the Homeric poems, which 
 is not yet, and I suppose never can be settled, is not import- 
 
THE CROSS. 43 
 
 ant to the student of history. For him it is enough to know, 
 that in the time of Pisistratus, these poems were reduced 
 to their present form, and from that period, became the foun- 
 tains of national enthusiasm, intellectual development and 
 artistic inspiration. By the impulse which they gave to the 
 mind of Greece, they have filled a larger space in the history 
 of human improvement than any other writings except the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 That impulse was widened and perpetuated by a variety of 
 concurrent causes. The glorious issue of the struggle in 
 which the little states of Greece defied and overthrew the 
 colossal power of Persia ; the subsequent career of Pericles, 
 who, with true Greek versatility, united in his own person the 
 wise statesman, the accomplished orator, the able comman- 
 der and discriminating patron of letters and the arts ; the 
 teachings of Socrates, and above all perhaps the flexibility 
 of that matchless language, which seems to have been made 
 especially for the most intellectual and versatile people on 
 earth, all conspired to bring forth that astonishing array of 
 poets, philosophers, historians and rhetoricians, who con- 
 quered the conquerors of the world, and made the Greek 
 literature one of the chief sources of modern culture. 
 
 Homer and Eschylus were not more truly the fathers of 
 Epic and Dramatic poetry, than were Aristotle and Plato 
 the masters of all subsequent Philosophers who have been 
 worthy of the name. While the former was chiefly remark- 
 able for that rigorous and scientific method, which gave him 
 the absolute dominion of the human mind in the infancy of 
 modern philosophy, Plato is the great representative of that 
 other extensive class of minds, in which reason, imagination 
 and feeling do not act separately, but in concert, and so 
 mingle in all the processes of thought, that none of its pro- 
 ducts are the cold syllogistic results of the logical understand- 
 ing, but assume the imperative form of intuitive belief, and 
 
44 THE CROSS. 
 
 somewhat of the warm, yet ethereal glow of poetry and 
 passion. As the only faith that is worth anything, is the 
 joint product of reason, hope and love, it is not wonderful 
 that Plato has always been a favorite with Christian philoso- 
 phers, especially as in parts of his system, his notions of the 
 Trinity, for example, he so remarkably anticipated some of 
 the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. 
 
 Yet the Gospel, when first promulged, found no foothold 
 in the opinions of philosophers. The Platonic system 
 was too pure and lofty to retain any hold upon the licentious 
 and unbelieving ape which followed the downfall of the 
 Roman Republic, and the deep decay of public and private 
 virtue under the profligate despotism of the Caesars. It was 
 supplanted by the graceful but shallow materialism of Epi- 
 curus, whose reign was scarcely disturbed by the few phil- 
 osophers, who, from the barren elevation of stoicism, looked 
 down with contempt upon the common feelings of human 
 nature, and the tenderest impulses of the heart. 
 
 It is hardly possible to overrate the influence of the Greek 
 language and literature upon the destinies of mankind. They 
 followed the Roman arms to the ends of the earth. Wher- 
 ever the eagles perched, the masterpieces of Grecian 
 genius soon found an entrance to awaken the powers of the 
 mind, or stimulate a generous emulation. 
 
 The Greeks, though politically the subjects, were intellec- 
 tually the masters of the Romans. That austere and martial 
 people had but little which deserved the name of poetry, 
 philosophy or eloquence, till the Greek models excited a 
 spirit of emulation among them. From that period, Latin 
 litei ature made rapid advances, and though it never reached 
 the perfection of its prototype, it ranks next to Christianity 
 itself, as an element of modern civilization. But it was not 
 alone through the intermediate agency of its offspring, the 
 Latin, that the Greek literature has helped to form the pres- 
 
THE CROSS. 45 
 
 ent state of society. We shall find that the revival of the 
 parent literature itself in the latter part of the middle ages, 
 gave an additional and most powerful impulse to modern 
 improvement. 
 
 How wonderful are the ways of Providence. Ages on 
 ages of wars, and heroes, and demi-gods, and inferior bards 
 were required to produce a Homer, for the greatest genius 
 can do nothing without fitting materials. That strong stem 
 of heroic poetry, which the genius of the blind beggar first 
 lifted into perennial sunshine, became a great tree and blos- 
 somed in the skies, so that the Roman eagles came and rested 
 among its branches, then winging their flight over a prostrate 
 world, sowed the seeds of intellectual culture in the blood 
 and ashes of conquered nations. 
 
 This brings us to another set of actors in the mighty drama 
 of history. We have given a brief sketch of the glorious 
 share of the Greeks in developing the divine plan for the 
 education of mankind. Let us turn a little farther to the 
 west, and evoke a dread array of stern and martial figures 
 from the shadowy deep of the past eternity. Their austere 
 countenances, iron mould and haughty tread, under which 
 earth trembles, announce the conquerors of the world. 
 
 Rome had her mythic age, and the learned Niebuhr has 
 analyzed her early traditions with that profound and exhaus- 
 tive research which is characteristic of German inquirers. — 
 But for our present purpose, we are concerned only with her 
 military power and her civil institutions. 
 
 He who sees no Divinity in the affairs of men, w r ho recog- 
 nizes no Providential guidance of nations, will refer the 
 peculiar manifestations of a people to organization, to insti- 
 tutions, to mere external and mechanical causes. But among 
 a people who enjoy any considerable share of freedom, 
 institutions and other external circumstances are rather the 
 effects than the causes of national peculiarities. The truth 
 
46 THE CROSS. 
 
 lies in the middle, between the opposite extremes of the 
 mechanical and dynamical theories, or rather is made up of 
 both. Individual and national peculiarities are the com- 
 pound results of inscrutable impulses arising in the mysteri- 
 ous depths of spiritual being, and of external circumstances, 
 acting and reacting in such a manner, that it is impossible to 
 assign to each class of causes their respective shares in the 
 product. 
 
 It is stated that, judging from casts, medals and skulls which 
 have been found in particular localities, the Romans must 
 have generally differed from the Greeks in the shape of the 
 head, and it is somewhat remarkable, that the difference is 
 precisely such that, according to the phrenologists, the Roman 
 would have fewer ideas and less sensibility, but far greater 
 intensity of will, than the versatile Greeks. Be this as it may, 
 (it is certainly worthy of investigation) we know that from 
 the first, the Romans were remarkable for their austere, 
 haughty and inflexible temper, their voluntary poverty and 
 contempt of wealth and luxury, and the decisive, remorseless 
 energy with which they crushed and trampled upon all who 
 obstructed their march to universal dominion. 
 
 They were men of an idea, and that idea was embedded in 
 an iron-bound will, undisturbed by the variety of motives 
 which would have alternately reigned in broader and more 
 versatile minds. Nowhere was the man ever so completely 
 merged in the citizen as at Rome. IN owhere has individual- 
 ity ever been so utterly annihilated by the one overmastering 
 idea of the State. Sparta may be thought an exception. 
 Bat the Spartans can scarcely be said to have had any ideas of 
 their own. They were stupified and degraded into semi- 
 barbarians by the most absurd and unnatural institutions that 
 ever enslaved the human mind. They were mere human 
 machines, drilled into a soulless uniformity. 
 
 In Rome similar but far greater results were obtained by 
 
THE CROSS. 47 
 
 the concurrence of free minds. The Roman was the most 
 intensely patriotic of all patriots ; he was scarcely conscious of 
 any interest, duty or destiny apart from the great political 
 body of which he was a member. Virtue, among this austere 
 people, was but another name for unconquerable energy and 
 unshaken fortitude, and those qualities were most valued 
 which ministered not to social and domestic happiness, but 
 to the greatness and glory of the Republic. 
 
 Of the external sources of the military power of the Romans, 
 perhaps the most important, were slavery and aristocracy. 
 Slaveholders are fiery and overbearing and fond of military 
 life. Accustomed to brook no opposition to their will, and 
 to cany everything by storm, they bring to the management 
 of public affairs the feelings and habits of domestic life. Every 
 free Roman was a privileged person, who considered himself 
 entrusted with the honor and glory of the Republic. Above 
 this class were the haughty patricians, whose leading traits 
 Shakspeare has grouped with such exquisite skill, in the 
 character of Coriolanus, whose unbending pride, disdaining 
 to concede anything to the turbulent rabble he despised, 
 sought refuge from vulgar annoyance in the camp and the 
 field. 
 
 Imagine a high-spirited and turbulent democracy of slave- 
 holders guided by a haughty aristocracy, who can keep their 
 places at the head of society only by perpetually diverting 
 the minds of the commons from domestic dissensions to great 
 national enterprises, and it is easy to see that the exuberant 
 activity of such a people must make them the terror and 
 scourge of mankind. Such circumstances infallibly engender 
 a military spirit, and render the foreign policy bold, decisive 
 and overbearing. 
 
 Yet as already intimated, all that can be said about exter- 
 nal circumstances leaves much in the Roman history unac- 
 counted for, and to be referred to unknown and inscrutable 
 
48 THE CROSS. 
 
 causes. To the activity and encroaching spirit of a slave- 
 holding democracy, and the fore-sight and prudence of an 
 aristocracy, the Roman government united under Kings and 
 decemvirs, under dictators and consuls, in short, through all 
 the changes of her constitution, a unity of purpose, an in- 
 flexible adherence to the same general maxims of policy, 
 and a steady, unconquerable energy, which are absolutely 
 unparalleled, even by those nations where the whole execu- 
 tive authority is lodged in a single hereditary magistrate. 
 
 The steady progress of the Roman power during a period 
 of eight hundred years is indeed marvellous, and cannot be 
 accounted for on any ordinary principles. The fierce dis- 
 sensions, which tore the vitals of the republic, never for a 
 moment interrupted the career of foreign conquest. The 
 very men who, as partizans of Sylla or Marius, drenched the 
 streets of Rome with blood, bore the eagles in triumph over 
 prostrate Asia and Europe. At home they were factious 
 partisans, abroad they were Romans, the masters of the 
 world, and filled with the one idea of the greatness of the 
 republic. The fires which raged in the " Demon city," and 
 seemed to threaten her destruction, only quickened her pro- 
 gress to universal empire. 
 
 In spite of anarchy and civil war, — in spite of dreadful 
 defeats like that of Cannae, which would have reduced any 
 other people to despair, consul after consul, generation after 
 generation pursued the same blood-stained jDath to universal 
 dominion. The ferocity of the Gauls, the genius of Hanni- 
 bal rolled back the tide, but it only gathered strength for a 
 still more terrible eruption. Victory and defeat were alike 
 in their ultimate results; the tread of the legions was the 
 march of destiny, and every Roman seemed armed with 
 more than mortal might by a consciousness of the stupendous 
 mission of his country. 
 
 At the height of her glory, when the spoils of nations 
 
THE CROSS. 49 
 
 were poured into her lap, and captive monarchs were led in 
 triumphal processions through the streets of the " eternal 
 city," the rage of factions and corruption of manners were 
 preparing the way for that fearful despotism, which finally 
 trampled down all parties into one common abyss of undis- 
 tinguished slavery. And here the hand of Providence was 
 not less conspicuous than in every other part of that "strange 
 eventful history;" for though the republic could conquer, it 
 required a single despotic arm to consolidate, and hold to- 
 gether that vast and unwieldy dominion. 
 
 Before we proceed further with the mission of Rome, let 
 us turn back and trace the history of the primitive revelation, 
 the provision for the moral part of our nature. More or less 
 corrupted in all other nations, it was committed to the guar- 
 dianship of an obscure tribe, of which this precious deposit 
 was, in fact, almost the sole distinction. 
 
 Among the monuments of the Hebrews, the book of Job 
 is entitled to especial notice on account of its distinct and pe- 
 culiar character. There is a breadth, a freedom, a philo- 
 sophic tone about it, which mark it as a relic of that primitive 
 age before the knowledge of God had passed from the wide 
 field of eastern tradition into the exclusive custody of the 
 Hebrews. The nations had not then fallen into idolatry, nor 
 made it necessary as yet to wall in with the jealous provisions 
 of the Hebrew Theocracy a narrow channel by which the 
 streams of everlasting truth might flow down to Christian 
 ages through the moral wilderness of ancient superstitions. 
 It is probably the oldest book in the world. In the desert 
 tracts of time, which preceded all other extant memorials 
 the drear expanse is broken by this one pure and sparkling 
 fount of philosophic truth, with its clustering palms of ori- 
 ental poetry. Whether regarded as a narrative of actual 
 facts, or as a sort of moral drama, it beautifully illustrates the 
 manners and belief of the early ages, and abounds with pro- 
 5 
 
50 THE CROSS. 
 
 found thought and sublime imagery, as well as prophetic 
 anticipations of the glorious developments of after times. 
 
 The principal scope of this work seems to be the illustra- 
 tion of the important truth, that the misery of the righteous 
 and the prosperity of the wicked in this world, should not for 
 a moment unsettle our moral convictions or our confidence in 
 the wisdom and justice of God. 
 
 The best men are sometimes the most unhappy, and the 
 sublimest virtues often inhabit the most desolate hearts. In- 
 deed if we consider how often the greatest benefactors of 
 mankind have been rewarded with poverty and contempt, 
 with a life of torture and a shameful death ; how often in the 
 noblest natures, constitutional defects of bodily structure, or 
 the nervous diseases induced by the " malady of thought," 
 poison the well-springs of existence ; how the very process 
 of exalting and purifying sharpens the moral sensibilities, so 
 that the better a man becomes, the more intensely conscious 
 he is of his remaining imperfections, we may justly conclude 
 that the highest of our race have oft times good reason to 
 exclaim with the apostle of the Gentiles, " if in this life only 
 we have hope, we are of all men most miserable." 
 
 The book of Job is manifestly designed to teach this im-* 
 portant lesson, the very foundation of all religion, that the 
 mysterious facts to which I have referred should not shake 
 our conviction that a just God presides over the destinies of 
 mankind, and that virtue and well-being, vice and ill-being, 
 are connected by the inexorable laws of the universe, but 
 should inspire humility in view of the present limited state of 
 our knowledge, as well as a lively expectation of a future 
 life in which all these anomalies of the present, will be satis- 
 factorily explained. The wisest man on earth finding fault 
 with the Divine government, is like a fly on the surface of a 
 cartoon of Raphael, pronouncing judgment on the whole 
 
THE CROSS. 51 
 
 matchless performance, from the inequalities within the little 
 circle of his own microscopic vision. 
 
 The patriarchal ages of the Hebrews, from the calling of 
 Abraham to the Egyptian bondage, were the period of tran- 
 sition from that primitive and highly civilized era, of which 
 tfre book of Job is the only surviving literary memorial, to 
 that singular economy, which fenced in with the most tre- 
 mendous sanction a peculiar people from the contagion of 
 error, that was overspreading the earth, and committed to 
 their jealous custody the light from Heaven, which was al- 
 lowed to be more or less obscured in all other nations, until 
 the way was prepared for its glorious culmination in the 
 Christian dispensation. 
 
 Proceeding further, we behold a shepherd of Midian, the 
 refugee of a tribe of slaves, confront a haughty monarch of 
 that magnificent dynasty which built the pyramids; demand 
 in the name of God the liberty of his brethren ; finally res- 
 cue them from bondage under the most powerful nation of 
 the time ; give them a law that yet lives in the moral code 
 and municipal institutions of all enlightened nations, and then 
 ascend a mountain to die alone with his God, and look with 
 his closing eyes upon the splendid inheritance of his people. 
 
 The history of the subsequent conquest of the Promised 
 Land must be a great stumbling block in the way of those 
 who pretend to find in the Bible the sickly moral sentimen- 
 talism of peace societies and anti-slavery philanthropists. 
 We cannot disguise the fact that the Hebrew dispensation 
 was bloody and terrible, just like all the other mighty evolu- 
 tions of Divine Providence. The light of Divine knowledge 
 became, as it always does, a consuming fire, and a flaming 
 sword turned every way before the ark of eternal truth. 
 This fact has furnished a favorite cavil to scepticism, but it is 
 strange that any one who believes that there is a God who 
 made and governs the world, should object to the Hebrew 
 
52 THE CROSS. 
 
 economy for corresponding precisely with a multitude of 
 facts, which, however mysterious they may appear, actually 
 do happen in the dominions of a just, all- wise, and all-pow- 
 erful Being. 
 
 There is a fearful as well as a smiling aspect of the Divine 
 government both in nature and history, and it is fit that rev- 
 elation should exhibit each in its turn. The destroying hosts 
 of Attila and Tamerlane were the " scourges of God, who 
 turned them whithersoever he would as the rivers of water." 
 The storm of war sweeps through a happy and beautiful 
 country. The morning looked out upon green fields, and 
 smiling villages ; the evening sheds its "farewell sweet," as if 
 in mockery, upon the dead and dying, and lingers upon the 
 blackened or blazing cottages from which the wretched in- 
 habitants have been driven into the howling waste. Love 
 and terror, life and death, joy and wo strangely jostle each 
 other in this incomprehensible world. 
 
 Ye sentimental sceptics, who are shocked by the severity 
 of the God of the Hebrews, what think you of some of the 
 doings of your favorite nature. If many are crushed by the 
 wheels of Providence, how many more are ground to pow- 
 der by the fearful machinery of the physical world. The 
 earthquake moves on his fiery couch, and the crash of fall- 
 ing cities is mingled with the shrieks of the helpless, and the 
 groans of the dying. The cheerful fruits of industry are 
 suddenly blasted, and famine and misery are the lot of na- 
 tions. Over broad oceans and lofty mountains the pestilence 
 flies on unseen pinions from city to city, and the deathcart 
 rumbles through grass-grown streets, bearing the remains of 
 vigorous manhood and blooming youth to their long home. 
 The spectres of wo and horror have been guests at every fire- 
 side, inmates of every dwelling, and companions of every 
 bosom. Even the beauty of the earth is a fearful beauty, 
 as of the vines and flowers that wreathe a sepulchre. 
 
THE CROSS. 53 
 
 All great and glorious things the world has had to pay for, 
 and fearful has been the price of heaven's best gifts to man. 
 The fairest plants of human culture have been watered with 
 tears and blood. Under the same Providence from which the 
 Hebrew economy proceeded, modern civilization was ushered 
 in amidst storms ; ancient corruptions of society were washed 
 away by the blood-bath of the French revolution, and then 
 we are told that " the new heavens and earth wherein dwell- 
 eth righteousness" shall be born from the fiery agonies of an 
 expiring world. 
 
 Such are the conditions of our present being, cant and 
 cavils to the contrary notwithstanding. The facts are im- 
 moveable as the everlasting hills, and so desperately intract- 
 able that they will not bend to our philosophers' notions of 
 the Divine government. 
 
 The Hebrews often went astray and worshipped the gods 
 of other nations, but prophets were raised up from time to 
 time, whose warnings and entreaties brought them back to 
 the right path. The stream of prophetic inspiration seems 
 to have flowed most freely just before the Babylonish captiv- 
 ity, and to have been afterwards withdrawn when it was no 
 longer needed. The religious institutions of the Hebrews 
 derived fresh vigor from the destruction of their national 
 independence. 
 
 At the height of her power and glory, under the succes- 
 sors of David, Israel often fell into the idolatry of surround- 
 ing and inferior tribes. But after she had sunk into an 
 insignificant dependency of the Persian, the Greek and the 
 Roman empires in succession, her political degradation made 
 her cling more closely to her religious superiority, as the last 
 resource of nationality, and stubbornly resist any intrusion 
 of the philosophy or religion of her conquerors ; — spiritual 
 pride thus absorbing and deriving new vigor from love of 
 
54 THE CROSS. 
 
 country, degenerated into bigotry and fanatical hatred of 
 other nations, unparalleled in history. 
 
 There is a striking contrast between the mission and the 
 character of the Hebrews. The most precious jewel was 
 deposited in the most ungainly casket. The institutions of 
 other nations are more or less the reflection of the national 
 character. Those of the Hebrews are foreign to them, — as if 
 they had been made the unwilling or unconscious guardians 
 of a treasure, of the nature and value of which they had very 
 erroneous or inadequate notions. How strange that the most 
 narrow-minded and barbarous tribe which could be ranked 
 at all among the civilized nations of antiquity, had the only 
 pure system of religion, the only rational code of morals ! 
 In these respects they were as far superior to the Greeks, as 
 the Greeks were superior to them in everything else. While 
 the moral systems of the wisest people of antiquity have long 
 since perished, or been preserved only as examples of philo- 
 sophical ingenuity, that of the Hebrews still lives in the 
 hearts and daily business of men in all civilized nations. 
 
 The Hebrews had the custody, not only of the great truth 
 of the unity of God, but also of that moral law which raises 
 man from the dominion of nature into a higher dignity, in- 
 volving a mightier destiny for good or evil, than the other 
 animals. But man feels that he has violated, or fallen short 
 of the requirements of that higher law. The Hebrew dis- 
 pensation foreshadowed, by a multitude of significant sym- 
 bols, the means appointed by God for healing the breach 
 between the fallen creature and the inexorable law of that 
 moral government, of which he had been made the subject by 
 the superiority of Ids endowments. What reasons in the con- 
 stitution of the universe made it necessary that a Divine vic- 
 tim should quench in his own blood the flaming sword of 
 Eternal Justice, we cannot tell, but certain it is that the no- 
 tion of propitiation by sacrifice is as old as any authentic 
 
THE CROSS. 55 
 
 traditions of mankind, and as universal as the belief of a God 
 or a future life. This brings us to the last and greatest scene 
 in the drama of ancient history. 
 
 The mission of Rome, as I have already intimated, was to 
 lay a broad and deep foundation for the Christian civiliza- 
 tion. This she was to do by her own municipal institutions, 
 which I shall have occasion to notice more particularly, when 
 I come to the history of the middle ages ; by her civil laws, 
 which were gradually matured into that unrivalled code, to 
 which we may trace most of the improvements of modern 
 jurisprudence, and by carrying the Greek and Latin litera- 
 ture and all the arts and refinements of civilized life, over all 
 the baibarous and semi-barbarous countries which were con- 
 quered by her arms. 
 
 It was that very remarkable period, when the empire had 
 fairly begun to reduce to order and consolidate into a firm 
 foundation for the modern world all the vast materials which 
 the conquering republic had brought together, which was 
 chosen for the introduction of Christianity. The civilized 
 world, from the Tweed to the Euphrates, reposed under the 
 wings of the imperial eagle. All factions and provincial 
 quarrels had been crushed by a single despotic authority, 
 and one might travel, without internrption by hostile armies 
 or national boundaries, from one end of the earth to the other. 
 
 The moral and intellectual condition of mankind was very 
 remarkable. The Greek philosophy was bringing into con- 
 tempt among enlightened men, the gods and goddesses of the 
 old mythologies, and that deep decay of the popular supersti- 
 tions had commenced, which in the next age progressed so far, 
 that a Lucian could with impunity set the world to laughing at 
 the beggarly condition of their dethroned majesties of Olym- 
 pus. This was partly owing to the liberality of the Roman 
 government, which, by permitting the incongruous supersti- 
 tions of the many nations subject to her sway to be placed 
 
56 THE CROSS. 
 
 side by side, brought the whole Pantheon into contempt, by 
 filling it with squabbling regiments of national divinities. 
 
 As usual in such cases, the old forms of religion had given 
 space to an earthly and sensual philosophy, which might be 
 compressed into the maxim, " eat, drink and be merry, for 
 to-morrow ye die." This philosophy might suit the thought, 
 less and the profligate, yet there were doubtless many deep 
 and earnest natures, to whom this was indeed an hour of 
 darkness and moral desolation. 
 
 The temple of Janus was closed, for the sounds of civil 
 war had died away along the shores of Epirus, and the awful 
 majesty of the all-conquering Republic still hovered over the 
 wall of steel, which fenced the civilized world from the deserts 
 of Parthia and the forests of Germany. The Roman power 
 had nearly reached its zenith, and the iron virtues of the 
 Republic began to soften under the influence of Greek liter- 
 ature, eastern luxury and universal peace. The municipal insti- 
 tutions and laws of Rome, and the literature of the Greek and 
 Latin languages, were beginning to mould all the subject na- 
 tions into one homogeneous civilization, and thus build up all 
 around the glorious Mediterranean (the middle of the earth) 
 a magnificent theatre for new and mightier evolutions of the 
 purposes of God and the destinies of man. 
 
 Such was the juncture which had been chosen in the coun- 
 sels of Infinite Wisdom for the appearance of the Divine 
 Deliverer. 
 
 Christianity in its origin was quiet and unobtrusive, like 
 all other great and lasting revolutions. Their beginnings 
 are in obscure and silent recesses, and not until their pro- 
 gress brings them in contact with that upper crust of custom, 
 prejudices and old institutions, which time has hardened into 
 stone, do they begin to shake the world. 
 
 An obscure person, whose former life was little known 
 even by his first disciples, issued from an insignificant city of 
 
THE CROSS. 57 
 
 an insignificant province of the vast Empire of Rome. He 
 walked up and down in Judea healing the sick, consoling the 
 distressed, enduring hunger, poverty and reproach. He was 
 never known to laugh, but he was seen to weep, and he chose 
 the darkness of night and the solitude of rocks and deserts, 
 to pray to his Father. Gathering upon the mountain side 
 or the barren sea-shore, the humble multitude, whom the 
 sanctimonious shepherds of Israel had forgotten in their ser- 
 vility to rank and wealth and power, he taught them a lofty 
 morality at war with the strongest propensities of man, in 
 concise, pregnant, comprehensive maxims, which have never 
 been paralleled. Lifted upon the Cross to suffer a death of 
 shame and agony, when he knew that his work was done, 
 his soul rushed forth in that cry of doom, "It is finished" 
 which shook the frame of nature, and in the darkness that 
 followed, an old era took its flight forever. 
 
 1 say nothing of the doctrines of Christianity. It is not 
 my province. But the Divinity of Christ, his life, his death, 
 and the purport of both are not mere dogmas ; they are facts 
 or they are fables. If it be true that the Divine Word has 
 descended from heaven, clothed himself in human nature, 
 become the second representative of the human family, and 
 quenched in his own blood the flaming sword of inexorable 
 Law ; if he has gone before us as our elder brother through 
 shame and poverty and sorrow and death, to be crowned the 
 conqueror of our last enemy, and ascend on high leading captiv- 
 ity captive, it is plain that here are facts, in comparison with 
 which all other facts are insignificant. In comparison with 
 this glorious embodiment of the poetry of religion, what are 
 all the speculations of philosophy, what are all the cold cal- 
 culations of prudential morality ! 
 
 On these facts, as an eloquent writer has observed, the world 
 may be said to have had its foundation for nearly two thousand 
 years, and in them we must look for the chief sources of the 
 
58 THE CROSS. 
 
 peculiar glories and advantages of the Christian civilization. 
 Surely it is worth while for every man to give these facts an 
 earnest and impartial examination. If the gospel history is 
 even substantially true, it is infinitely the most important 
 part of history ; properly, the central and loftiest point, from 
 which all history should be looked at. 
 
 Here we must look for the fountain-head of that only true 
 Democracy, the essence of which is love, and which teaches 
 us to respect the rights of all men, without regard to any dis- 
 tinctions whatever, either natural, artificial or conventional. 
 If, in the distribution of spiritual favors, the mightiest mon- 
 arch is nothing more than the humblest of his subjects, nei- 
 ther is the sage who measures the stars anything more than 
 the clown who "walks and wots not what they are." All 
 other dignities are lost in the one great dignity of rational, 
 responsible man. A Chimborazo would seem no greater 
 than a mole-hill to an observer in the sun, and to pursue the 
 figure, as the same sunbeam that gilds the tall cedar upon 
 the mountain cliff, kisses the dew-drop from the harebell in 
 the lowest valley, so the light of the Gospel visits alike the 
 palace and the hovel, and its blessings descend alike upon 
 every age and rank and condition of society. 
 
 Christianity, as embodied in the precepts and example of 
 its founder, is peculiarly the antagonist of social injustice, 
 and fixes our attention more strongly upon the equality than 
 the inequality of men. What were the trappings of rank 
 and wealth and power to Him who knew the hearts of all men. 
 He chose his Apostles not from the Sanhedrim, but from 
 the humblest of the multitude, and the weak and despised 
 things of the earth were made to confound the mighty. He 
 was the friend of publicans and sinners, and shared with the 
 wretched the shame and miseries of poverty and contempt. 
 He threw a light from Heaven into the lowest abysses of guilt 
 and misery, and brought his message of hope and salvation 
 
THE CROSS. 59 
 
 to the vilest of earth's outcasts. Enumerating the miracles 
 by which he proved his Divine mission, he mentions as the 
 last and crowning wonder, " that the poor have the Gospel 
 preached to them." 
 
 I do not mean that the Christian religion is in itself more 
 favorable to one form of government than another. It cer- 
 tainly does not, as has been absurdly claimed for it, give any 
 direct sanction to democratic institutions. But so far as its 
 true spirit prevails, it tends to diminish the burdens and in- 
 crease the benefits of all government. Genuine liberty im- 
 plies that justice is secm*ed to all and each, that no man 
 however humble is subjected to any restraints, which are not 
 demanded by the equal rights of others. I say nothing about 
 the general good, which is altogether too vague, and has too 
 often been the plea for oppressing individuals and minorities. 
 
 Now the entire theory of equal rights is compressed into 
 that maxim; "Do to others as ye would that they should do 
 to you;" or that second of the two great commandments of 
 the law; "Love your neighbor as yourself." As already 
 remarked, the character of Christ was a living embodiment 
 of these two precepts, and whoever loves him will cultivate 
 the same dispositions. It is obvious that just in proportion 
 as men voluntarily yield that respect to the rights of others, 
 which is the object of law to enforce, do they diminish the 
 necessity for strong government, and weaken the apologies 
 for despotism. 
 
 I will briefly notice a part of the historical evidence of 
 Christianity which has been the theme of much controversy, 
 arising, as it seems to me, from a want of precision in the 
 use of terms — the source of so many famous disputes. It has 
 been said that a miracle is a violation of those laws of nature 
 which have been ascertained by an unalterable experience. 
 Now the argument, that those books which tell us that mira- 
 cles have been a part of the experience of mankind, are false, 
 
60 THE CROSS. 
 
 because they contradict the universal experience of mankind, 
 is so obviously a begging of the question, and its fallacy has 
 been so often exposed, that it would be folly to notice it fur- 
 ther. But I think there is some confusion of ideas in the 
 assertion that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. 
 By this expression, " the laws of nature," I understand those 
 relations between antecedents and consequents, established 
 by the will of the Supreme Lawgiver, relations which in gen- 
 eral produce uniform results, that His creatures may know 
 how to regulate their own conduct, and to estimate the forces 
 around them. But an interruption of the usual uniformity of 
 nature, the exact definition of a miracle, is not necessarily a 
 violation of those laws. It merely requires an extraordinary 
 disposition of the same substances and forces which have 
 covered the earth and garnished the heavens with wonders, 
 that do not confound us, simply because they are common. 
 When Christ turned the water into wine, he was under no 
 necessity to create a single new force or set aside any of the 
 relations of cause and effect, but simply to dispose the mate- 
 rials, all of which were at hand, in a much shorter time than 
 usual, for nature is doing in a few months, all over the vine- 
 clad hills of France and Germany, precisely what the Divine 
 Chemist effected in a moment. 
 
 The resuscitation of a dead man is no greater miracle than 
 the entire renewal of the living body, which physiologists 
 tell us is effected every few years. We are, every now and 
 then, startled by some surprising discovery of the hitherto 
 unknown capabilities of nature, and all the occult properties 
 and laws required for bringing about that most stupendous 
 of miracles — the resurrection, not of an individual only, but 
 of the entire population of the grave — may be now in exist- 
 ence, and only waiting for Divine power to make the neces- 
 sary arrangements to bring them into play. 
 
 But the truth is, that much more importance has been 
 
THE CROSS. 61 
 
 attached to the argument from miracles than it deserves. 
 The miracles ascribed to Christ and his apostles, however 
 conclusive to those who witnessed them, are no evidence to 
 us, until by other means, we have established the truth of the 
 writings which record them, — that is to say, until we have 
 proved all that we wish to prove. They cannot weigh a fea- 
 ther with any clear-headed inquirer, who does not find in 
 Christianity a supply of his own moral wants, the proper and 
 wholesome food of his own spiritual nature and the source of 
 countless blessings to society. A syllogism may suffice for a 
 single barren proposition ; a vast system of life-giving truth 
 like Christianity draws to its support a variety of independ- 
 ent, but mutually corroborating testimonies. Combining the 
 early monuments of Christianity and the evidence which 
 may be drawn from the history of the Christian civilization, 
 with those convictions that spring up in every healthy soul, 
 when its higher faculties are aroused into activity, we have 
 an edifice which may defy the assaults of sceptical philoso- 
 phy- 
 
 One mind will attach greater weight to one portion of this 
 converging evidence ; another to another, according to men- 
 tal constitution or early habits of thinking. It is probable 
 that for the majority of enlightened believers at the present 
 day, the key-stone of the arch which spans the gulf between 
 earth and heaven, is that sort of persuasion in which deep 
 feeling has a much larger share than cold logic. Light alone 
 without heat may play upon its surface, but will never reach 
 the deepest truths. The cold glitter of the logical under- 
 standing discloses a desert of rock and ice, where the moral 
 nature would starve, but the warmth of love pierces to the 
 germs of life and beauty that are hidden below, and covers 
 the earth with the bowers of poetry and the fruits of Para- 
 dise. 
 
 Mark how the warm faith of a loving soul melts the ice 
 
62 THE CROSS. 
 
 with which the wintry philosophy of scepticism wraps the 
 dwellings of the departed. He who has stood by the grave 
 of a dear wife or child, and while the hot tears have fallen 
 upon the clay which wrapped the form of one who had been 
 to him the life of life, — has recollected that the Son of God 
 himself died and rose again, as the first fruits of them that 
 sleep in the dust, and has looked across the dark valley and 
 beheld a glorious morning break over the dreary earth, and 
 that loved one arise and stand upon a renovated world, in the 
 radiant glow of immortal youth and beauty, — has a witness 
 within himself of the truth of religion, to which all miracles 
 and other historical evidences whatsoever are merely subsid- 
 iary. 
 
 The most indubitable miracle of early Christianity was the 
 heroic self-devotion of its first propagators. The Apostle of 
 the Gentiles, of all mere men the sublimest example of moral 
 heroism, travelled from j)lace, supporting himself and his 
 companions by the labor of his own hands, and preaching the 
 the truth without fee or reward ; well assured, that in what- 
 soever city he entered, bonds and afflictions awaited him. 
 He fought with wild beasts at Ephesus ; he braved the cru- 
 elty of the pagans and the hatred of his own countrymen ; 
 he stood undazzled amid the classic glories of Athens and 
 the wonders of Grecian art, and proclaimed the new doctrine, 
 unmoved by the sneers of the gayest, the most refined, the 
 most intellectual people on earth. Dragged in chains before 
 the proconsuls of Asia, he made them tremble on their 
 judgment seats ; he planted the cross upon the seven hills, at 
 the very gates of the vast palaces of those terrible Caesars, 
 who made the world tremble from the borders of Ethiopia to 
 the shores of the German Ocean ; and crowned his glorious 
 life by a cruel death, amidst the ferocious sports of the am- 
 phitheatre. 
 
 I need not dwell upon the history of the new religion, which 
 
THE CROSS. 63 
 
 steadily gained ground, overthrowing temples and altars, 
 until the eagle of imperial Rome veiled his eye of fire before 
 the Cross ; and reverently taking in his talons that ensign of 
 a spiritual conqueror, bore it in triumph to the ends of the 
 earth. 
 
 We now, I trust, have a general view of the laws, the 
 institutions, the literature and religion which were brought 
 together by Rome, and consolidated into a broad foundation 
 for the Christian civilization. One more element was want- 
 ing. — It was necessary that the principle of unity which had 
 heretofore confined the human faculties within narrow limits 
 to a few well defined objects, and had merged the man in 
 the citizen or subject, should give place to liberty, to a wider 
 range of individual and national development, — a develop- 
 ment which has been tumultuous and disorderly enough, as 
 will appear from the next discourse. 
 
II 
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 In our hasty progress through the wilderness of history, 
 we will be guided by great landmarks, and fly from one 
 mountain-top to another, whence views may be obtained of 
 boundless regions sunlit by Divine philosophy ; leaving it to 
 inquirers of greater leisure, learning and ability, to explore 
 the intermediate valleys. 
 
 The last discourse brought us to the time when Christian- 
 ity became the religion of Rome — a period which has been 
 fixed upon as the dividing line between ancient and modern 
 history. 
 
 The adventurer in Central America, after climbing over 
 range after range of volcanic hills, rising one above another, 
 at length stood upon the dividing summit from which he 
 could see both oceans at once. Turning from the blue At- 
 lantic, its storms and its islands of tropical beauty, before 
 him lay the dark-heaving Pacific, rolling away under the cloud 
 of immensity to those glorious climes, where the dreams of 
 the west had located the paradise of earth. So, at the pres- 
 ent stage of our inquiry, we stand upon the stone, that Dan- 
 iel saw cut out of the mountain without hands, now grown 
 into a sky-piercing pinnacle, overlooking the ancient and the 
 modern world. Behind us are the fairy isles of the ancient 
 civilization ; before us another part of the ocean of eternity, 
 where we may trace the courses of richly freighted argosies, 
 some of which have sunk under the waves of time, while 
 others are still ploughing their way into the boundless future, 
 towards what final destiny is known only to Him whose eye 
 
68 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 can pierce the clouds and darkness which rest upon that un- 
 known deep. 
 
 The political triumph of Christianity, under Constantine 
 and his successors, was fatal to its purity. The alliance of 
 Church and State has always engendered moral corruption 
 and ecclesiastical tyranny. Even before the conversion cf 
 Constantine, the love and humility which distinguished the 
 founders of religion, were giving place to intolerant zeal and 
 fierce disputes about dogmas that no mortal ever could un- 
 derstand. 
 
 The first Christians had been content to worship Christ as 
 divine, without clearly defining the inscrutable relations be- 
 tween the Father and the Son. The warm glow of love and 
 devotion could dispense with a rigorous metaphysical accu- 
 racy, which in truth, from the very nature of the subject, was 
 unattainable. The attempts of philosophic theologians, from 
 time to time, to give more scientific precision to the Christ- 
 ian doctrine upon this subject, paved the way to the quarrel 
 between Arius and Athanasius, which was finally decided in 
 favor of the latter by the sword of the civil authority. Pro- 
 fane wits have made it matter of jest, that two Greek words, 
 differing only in a single letter, by which the tw r o parties 
 vainly endeavored to designate something beyond the reach 
 of the human faculties, divided the church and convulsed the 
 empire. 
 
 As human language is not flexible enough for distinctions 
 too subtle to be grasped by the human understanding, it is 
 not surprising that the best writers, and even the same 
 writer, could be quoted on both sides of the Arian contro- 
 versy. In attempting to fix a fluctuating abstraction, which 
 would not bear the chains of a definition, the language of 
 men might incline to the one side or the other, according to 
 the point cf view from which they endeavored to form to 
 themselves a distinct notion of what was in itself inconceiv- 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 69 
 
 able. There is, in fact, no substantial distinction, such at 
 least as the human mind is capable of apprehending, between 
 the doctrine of Arius and that of the Nicene council. 
 
 Meanwhile, that free and etherial essence, which had 
 hitherto bound Christian societies together, warming each 
 heart with fire from Heaven, began to crystalize, if I may 
 be allowed the expression, into a Church, with an organiza- 
 tion strong enough to withstand the storms that were about 
 to burst upon the empire, and shelter from their fury some 
 remnants of the ancient civilization. 
 
 The primitive equality of the humble presbyters gave 
 place to a regular graduation of episcopal rank, which, cor- 
 responding with the distribution of the civil authority, was 
 crowned by the patriarchal sees of Rome and Constantino- 
 ple. Under the later emperors the episcopal authority in the 
 corporate cities was not confined to spiritual matters. This 
 is a fact to which I wish to call the especial attention of the 
 reader. I have already remarked, that one of the great ele- 
 ments of civilization which the Roman empire bequeathed to 
 the modern world, was her municipal institutions, in other 
 words, cities engaged in various branches of industry, with a 
 regular, and to some extent an independent police. In the 
 latter years of the empire, the chief power in many of the 
 towns fortunately fell into the hands of the bishops, who by 
 their moral power over the barbarians, w T ere enabled in a 
 great measure to protect the capitals of their dioceses from 
 the ravages of the northern invaders. Thus, under the shel- 
 tering wing of the Christian church, the municipal institu- 
 tions of Rome survived the wreck of the empire, to become, 
 as we shall see hereafter, the germs of the modern Democracy. 
 Thus, the church, at first supported by the state, was finally 
 enabled to repay the debt, by protecting civil society from 
 utter disorganization. 
 
 The simplicity of the early worship was supplanted by a 
 
70 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 splendid ritual, adapted to strike the imaginations of our bar- 
 barous ancestors, part of which was borrowed from the pagan 
 temples, but was none the worse for that — any more than 
 the classic architecture of the buildings themselves, many of 
 which were converted into Christian churches. Music, 
 painting, sculpture, architecture, ceremonies — what are all 
 these things but modes in which men strive to give expres- 
 sion to the deep sense of beauty and sublimity, which often 
 swells their souls with emotions too vast and too indefinite for 
 articulate utterance. 
 
 It need not surprise us that even Christianity could not 
 regenerate the Roman people, from whom all freedom and 
 energy departed under the ruthless tyranny of the Caesars. 
 Every corrupt society and every absolute despotism may 
 reach a stage of disease, in which no remedy can be effectual 
 without an infusion of new life and energy from some exter- 
 nal source. Moral and intellectual culture, which gradually 
 softens and regulates the robust energies of barbarous free- 
 dom, only adds to the weakness of enervate and spiritless 
 slavery. 
 
 I have before remarked that, as the preservation of the 
 natural body requires that fair play be given to all its func- 
 tions, so the health and durability of society of the body 
 politic, requires a free development of all its capabilities. In 
 the rear of the moral and intellectual chambers of the brain, 
 are the equally God-created organs of the passioiis and pro- 
 pensities, and without a proportionate energy of these pro- 
 pelling forces of humanity, which give fixedness and intensity 
 to the will, the former make but a feeble character. The 
 moral part of our nature finds its most wholesome food in 
 the Christian religion, the intellectual and semi-intellectual 
 faculties feed upon science and literature, the passions and 
 propensities grow strong in the eager pursuit and acquisition 
 of wealth, fame, power, domestic pleasures, and the endless 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 71 
 
 variety of objects that minister to worldly enjoyment. Now 
 the element which was wanting in the Roman empire, and 
 the progressive evolution of which is the key of modern 
 history, was liberty, which is nothing more nor less than a 
 free and harmonious development of the wlwle man, as an 
 individual and as a member of society. The glorious facts 
 of modern history, the soul-stirring grandeur and mighty 
 progress of the Christian civilization, have been produced by 
 great energy of the various properties of our nature, involv- 
 ing perpetual antagonism ; inasmuch as power of every sort 
 is infinitely expansive, and incessantly strives for absolute 
 mastery. 
 
 It is true that the ideal perfection of man and society, in 
 short, of every organization, consists in the unbroken harmo- 
 ny of all the forces acting in it ; but then there are all sorts 
 of harmony, from the jingling of a jews-harp to the music 
 of the spheres ; and unless all the chords of the spiritual harp, 
 from which a Divine hand extracts the music of humanity, 
 were at once miraculously replaced, by which the idea of 
 progress would be excluded, discord must intervene between 
 the lower and the higher harmony. That moral music of 
 humanity was destined to rise through the trumpet-blasts of 
 war, the thunder-drum of revolution, the crash of falling 
 empires, and even the death-song of dissolving worlds, to that 
 lofty anthem, which shall roll forever through the star-fretted 
 arches of the " palace of eternity." 
 
 The Roman empire had done its allotted work, in laying a 
 deep and broad foundation for the Christian civilization, and 
 now the deadening unity of an absolute despotism was to 
 give place to tumultuous life, to spontaneity, to Liberty. 
 Let us turn to those regions, whence the infusion of barbar- 
 ous freedom and energy was to be poured into the flaccid 
 veins of the Roman body. 
 
 The people who, from time immemorial, had inhabited all 
 
72 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 the northern and western parts of Europe, may be distin- 
 guished into the Celtic and German nations. The Celts, 
 who inhabited the British isles, Spain and the greater part of 
 France, seem to have had more fire and vivacity than the 
 Germans; yet so great was the similarity, that a picture of 
 the manners of any one of the numerous tribes included un- 
 der these two general appellations, would answer with little 
 variation for the whole. The Gauls, a Celtic tribe, three 
 centuries before Christ, carried their arms into Greece and 
 Italy, and even took the city of Rome, but as they were im- 
 pelled, rather by a restless love of war and plunder, than by 
 the desire of making permanent conquests, they were easily 
 bought off, and the republic was saved from irretrievable 
 ruin. Their mode of fighting was mailed by the extreme 
 of savage ferocity, and they rushed upon their enemies, less 
 with the courage of soldiers, than with the fury of madmsn. 
 They formed the main strength of the army of Hannibal, 
 and it tasked to the utmost the unrivalled skill and resources 
 of Julius Coesar to subdue these fierce barbarians. But they 
 were subdued — Spain, Gaul and Britain became Roman 
 provinces, made great advances in civilization, and adopted 
 to a great extent the Latin tongue, which, more or less cor- 
 rupted by provincialisms and admixture of native idioms, 
 gave rise to what are called the Romance languages. 
 
 Far other and mightier destinies were reserved for the 
 German tribes. Under this general name I include the 
 Gothic and Vandalic nations, who, emigrating at an early 
 period from Scandinavia, took possession of the country 
 lying between the Baltic and the Black seas. Here they 
 mixed to such an extent with their neighbors of the Sclavonic 
 family, that the northern limits of ancient Germany are some- 
 what indefinite. 
 
 While the Celts, as already remarked, were subdued by 
 the arms and civilized by the laws and municipal institutions 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING, 73 
 
 and the literature of Rome, the Germans maintained their 
 rude independence. Though often defeated by the legions, 
 it sometimes came to their turn to exact a terrible revenge, 
 and national pride still dwells upon the name of Herman or 
 Arminius, as it has been Latinized, who decoyed a Roman 
 army into the depths of his native forests, and destroyed it 
 utterly. 
 
 As our American liberty had its origin in the German 
 forests, we may dwell with some detail upon the manners of 
 our ferocious ancestors. Imagine a village of wooden huts 
 upon the margin of a river, surrounding a building of great- 
 er size but equally rude construction, in which the councils 
 and wild revels of the tribe are held. A body of men of 
 tall stature and noble forms, some on foot, some on horse- 
 back, their flaxen locks falling upon their shoulders, their 
 sanguine complexions glowing with health, their clear blue 
 eyes lighted up with the animation of the chase, and armed 
 with long spears and bows and arrows, leave the small patch 
 of cultivated ground, and plunge into the trackless forest in 
 pursuit of the deer and wild boar. In the evening they re- 
 turn loaded with game, the women prepare a mighty feast, 
 and the warriors take their seats around the rude table on 
 which it is spread. Beside them are their swords, and their 
 drinking cups made of the skulls of enemies they have slain in 
 battle. Having satisfied their savage appetites, they fill their 
 ghastly goblets with home-brewed beer, or with the fiery 
 wines which they have brought away from their last foray 
 into Gaul or Italy. Then ensue fierce quarrels in which 
 swords clash and blood flows, and the drowsy ear of night is 
 vexed with a hideous uproar of revelry and rage. 
 
 Take another scene. The chiefs have recommended some 
 warlike enterprise, and the great council of the tribe, in 
 which all the warriors who have reached the age of maturi- 
 ty, have an equal voice, has met to deliberate upon the mea- 
 7 
 
74 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 sure. An orator rises, and sets forth with rude but power- 
 ful eloquence the wrongs of other times, or the glory and 
 booty to be gathered in the Roman provinces. He is an- 
 swered by a fierce clashing of swords and shields, and the 
 shouts of his approving audience. Then to inflame the ar- 
 dor of the warriors, the bards sing the exploits of Odin 
 and the ancient heroes, and promise to all who fall in battle, 
 an immediate entrance into the star-paved dwelling of the 
 Gods. In a storm of frenzied enthusiasm, the crowd rushes 
 into the dark forests and in the awful twilight of that natural 
 temple a mighty fire is kindled, on which the priests offer 
 human sacrifices to the God of war. The whole tribe then 
 prepare to remove, taking with them their families and as 
 much of their property, as they can find means of transport- 
 ing. 
 
 When they were about to meet the enemy, the Germans 
 were in the habit of placing their women and children within 
 a circle formed of their carts and wagons. If their husbands 
 and brothers were cut to pieces, the women sometimes main- 
 tained the fight with masculine courage, and when all hope 
 was at an end, saved their freedom and honor by putting an 
 end to their own lives. 
 
 The German chiefs were freely chosen by the people, and 
 though birth was not entirely disregarded, the principal 
 grounds of preference were superior courage and ability. 
 Their power seems to have been limited to leading the war- 
 riors to battle, and presiding in the popular assemblies, to 
 which all important measures were submitted. 
 
 It forms no part of the plan of these essays to follow in 
 detail the frequent inroads of the German tribes upon the 
 declining empire, nor that final inundation which well nigh 
 swept away the humanity and civilization of the ancient 
 world. The struggles of the expiring empire were tremen- 
 dous, and sometimes, as on the plains of Chalons for example, 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 75 
 
 revived the recollection of her former glory. When she 
 finally sunk under the repeated blows of her inexorable as- 
 sailants, Europe presented a scene of wo and conflagration 
 and bloodshed and ruffian violence, such as no pen can de- 
 scribe, nor any imagination conceive. The world resounded 
 with the shouts of licentious and blood-thirsty savages, and 
 the shrieks of their helpless victims. Art, learning, refine- 
 ment seemed to have perished forever in that deluge of bar- 
 barism. 
 
 A considerable period after the fall of the western empire 
 is almost a blank in history. The dim gigantic forms of men 
 and things flit shadowy through the night, for a time un- 
 touched even by that golden aurora of mythical poetry which 
 always heralds the dawn of authentic history. But happily 
 for mankind, religion survived the general ruin, and when 
 the smoke and dust-clouds that hovered over the wrecks of a 
 demolished world began to disperse, the first glimmer of 
 returning light discloses the dove of Christianity winging 
 her flight over that wild, weltering chaos, with the olive- 
 branch in her mouth, and shaking from her heavenly plumage 
 the seeds of a new and mightier civilization. As of old, 
 when the spirit of God moved upon the great deep, green 
 islets, emerging from the dreary waste, spring up in myr- 
 tle bowers of poetry and art, and then the broad, firm earth, 
 begins to appear, teeming with the germs of that vigorous 
 growth, which in after ages was to yield the peaceable 
 fruits of order and liberty, of productive industry and na- 
 tional prosperity. Let us rapidly trace the progress of these 
 changes before entering upon the great revolutions of modern 
 society. 
 
 As the literature of Greece conquered the Romans, so the 
 religion of Rome triumphed over the barbarians. Even in 
 that enfeebled and corrupt society, which was overrun by the 
 northern invaders, enough of moral and intellectual power 
 
76 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 remained to assert the rightful supremacy of mind over phy- 
 sical force. Some of the German tribes had been converted 
 to Christianity in their native forests by Arian missionaries. 
 Nevertheless, had the empire been overthrown at once by 
 the first great irruption from the northern hive, the triumph 
 of the barbarians might have been fatal to civilization. But 
 the struggle was fortunately protracted; many of the barbar- 
 ians even enlisted in the legions, and each successive swarm 
 that poured down upon the empire found multitudes of their 
 own countrymen who had adopted the manners and religion 
 of the conquered provinces. Mixing among a Christian peo- 
 ple and intermarrying with the subject provincials, or those of 
 their own countrymen who had been converted to Christian- 
 ity; witnessing the monastic austerities, which to their sensual 
 and superstitious souls appeared miraculous ; admiring the 
 imposing ritual of the churches, the dignity and unity of the 
 hierarchy, the zeal, piety and learning of many of the clergy, 
 the German tribes who established themselves in the con- 
 quered provinces, were all, by one means or other, brought 
 under the influence of religion. Satisfied with their undis- 
 puted martial superiority, they the more willingly acknowl- 
 edged the moral and mental advantages of the conquered, 
 and knowing that they would always be masters of their 
 teachers, they would be less reluctant to learn from them 
 than from rivals in military prowess. 
 
 Many of the chiefs may have professed religion from mo- 
 tives of policy, hoping to find in the attachment of the sub- 
 ject provincials — who, notwithstanding the wanton destruction 
 of life and property, were still, in many parts of Europe, 
 superior in wealth and numbers to their conquerors, — the 
 means of curbing the pride and turbulence of their own 
 refractory clansmen. Others were persuaded by their Christ- 
 ian wives to lend a willing ear to the teachers of religion. 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 77 
 
 Whatever might be the motives of the chief, his example was 
 followed by all his warriors. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate how much the modern world is 
 indebted to female influence, exerted at this critical period in 
 favor of a religion which finds its most congenial soil in the 
 heart of woman. The history of the world might have been 
 totally different from what it has been, but for Clotilda, the 
 christian wife of the terrible Clovis, chief of the Salian 
 Franks. By the conversion of her husband from heathenism, 
 she was chiefly instrumental in bringing over to the side of 
 the true religion the whole of that warlike tribe, who were 
 afterwards the victorious defenders of the Christian civiliza- 
 tion against the pagan Saxons and the Mohammedan Arabs. 
 It will be recollected that to female influence must also be 
 attributed the introduction of Christianity among the Anglo- 
 Saxons. 
 
 It required ages for the Christian religion, already ob- 
 scured by superstition, to effect any appreciable change in 
 the moral character of the barbarians. But the regard which 
 they paid to the inviolable sanctity of religious institutions, of 
 the churches, the monasteries and the persons of the ecclesi- 
 astics, was productive of very important results. 
 
 We shall have frequent occasion to observe how even the 
 errors and excesses of men are laid under contribution by 
 Providence for the promotion of beneficent purposes. To 
 speak with greater precision, profound principles of human 
 nature to meet particular exigencies of society, are developed 
 with a power which is sure to run into excesses, and are em- 
 bodied in institutions, which in a long course of time, espe- 
 cially after they have done serving the purposes for which 
 they were intended by Providence, become incrusted with 
 manifold perversions and abuses, — the inevitable results of 
 the imperfection of human nature. There is no better illus- 
 tration of these remarks than the history of monasteries. 
 
7S NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Asceticism, the soul of monastic institutions, is deeply found- 
 ed in nature and truth. In some form or other, it has 
 appeared among the devotees of every religious system, from 
 the Hindoo fakir, who stands motionless for years until his 
 body is enclosed in a matted mass of vegetation, to the Cal- 
 vinistic puritan, who proscribes all those delights of the 
 senses and imagination which may divert the mind from the 
 contemplation of divine things. This self-immolation, if con- 
 fined to a sincere desire and constant effort, with Divine 
 assistance, to bring our senses and our passions into subord- 
 ination to the law of cur highest well-being, is right and pro- 
 per. Transcending these limits, it may degenerate into that 
 strange kind of spiritual ambition, which supported Simon 
 Stylites on his pillar for so many years, exposed to the heat 
 and storms of the Syrian deserts. 
 
 Notwithstanding the absurd excesses of a few, I am not 
 sure that we ought to censure the mode, in which asceticism 
 generally manifested itself in the early church. Many per- 
 sons of warm devotional feelings, disgusted with the vices 
 then prevalent, and desirous to devote themselves wholly to 
 the service of God, retired to the deserts of Upper Egypt 
 and Syria, and spent their lives in prayer, mortification and 
 hard work. Perhaps we take a little too much upon our- 
 selves, when we pronounce these men misguided enthusiasts. 
 Men's ideas of duty may in different conditions of society 
 manifest themselves in different modes. If St. Anthony 
 chose to live upon roots which he raised with his own hands, 
 while furnishing an asylum to many poor creatures who were 
 driven into the deserts by oppression and want, I do not 
 know that any one had a right to complain. On the other 
 hand, if it should appear that monastic institutions were ex- 
 tremely useful in the sixth century, it by no means follows 
 that they should be revived in the nineteenth. 
 
 The ascetic spirit, first strongly developed in the east, 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 79 
 
 spread rapidly over the Christian world ; and the dreadful 
 disorders, which followed the downfall of the western em- 
 pire, drove into the monasteries many men of high moral 
 feelings and cultivated minds, who could have no peace or 
 self-respect in a state of society, where brute force was the 
 law, and physical qualities alone were regarded. The reli- 
 gious houses became the secure repositories of the ancient 
 learning ; and one of the principal occupations of the monks 
 was copying manuscripts. In this way were preserved the 
 Bible, and the literary remains of antiquity, which, after so- 
 cial order had been at least partially reestablished, were 
 brought forth from their hiding places, and awakened the 
 intellect of the Germanic nations. The monasteries were 
 useful in other respects. — Schools and hospitals were often 
 connected with them. The vast property which they ac- 
 quired by the donations of superstition and remorse, was, at 
 least in the earlier ages, chiefly devoted to charitable uses, 
 and at a later period, their lands furnished places of refuge 
 from the tyranny of the feudal barons. 
 
 Meanwhile the " eternal city" became the centre of a new 
 spiritual dominion, which pervaded and gradually subdued 
 the empire of physical force. Though many of the secular 
 clergy were corrupt and ignorant enough, the ecclesiastical 
 State, with the pope at its head, was undoubtedly the strong- 
 hold of intellect and morals in their long warfare with ignor- 
 ant and ferocious animalism. The little learning of the time 
 was almost monopolized by the ecclesiastics, who alone had 
 sufficient power over the minds of the barbarians to restrain 
 their passions, and vindicate the supremacy of intellect over 
 physical force. 
 
 In this connection we must not overlook the important 
 fact, that the Latin continued to be everywhere the language 
 of the Church service, and of all ecclesiastical proceedings. 
 Those walls of partition, which the rude dialects of the 
 
80 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 German tribes erected between the nations of Western 
 Europe, might have been for ages impervious barriers to the' 
 diffusion of knowledge, had not the necessities of the ehurcrj 
 preserved a common medium of intercourse between the 
 members of that great spiritual commonwealth, which per- 
 vaded the entire Christian world. The liturgy, the script- 
 ures, the writings of eminent theologians, the decrees of 
 provincial synods and general councils were all in Latin, 
 and thus the clergy, the most influential body of men in all 
 the Christian countries, were obliged to know something of 
 that language, and became, to that extent at least, identified 
 with the protection and encouragement of learning. One 
 of the best, perhaps the very best, means of mental discipline 
 is the study of a language ©f very scientific structure and 
 great compass of inflection. 
 
 As already intimated, many of the cities, under the protec- 
 tion of their bishops, survived the ruin of the empire, and 
 though their importance was very much diminished, they 
 preserved till happier times, some vestiges of their former 
 prosperity and refinement. They were small points of light, 
 scarcely visible for ages through the darkness that surround- 
 ed them, but destined, at a subsequent period, to become the 
 centres of a glorious radiation of intelligence and liberty. 
 
 Here we have the rudiments of a robust, progressive and 
 diversified civilization. The fierce independence and undis- 
 ciplined energies of the German masters, the remnants of 
 ancient institutions and maimers, preserved by the subject 
 provincials, and the moral power of the church, restraining 
 violence, protecting the weak, gradually taming the fierce 
 passions of the conquerors, and in general asserting the su- 
 premacy of mind over physical force. In that seething mass 
 of blood and ashes, in which the ancient civilization had been 
 trodden out, were sown broadcast the seeds of a new and 
 better order of things. Those seeds had scarcely begun to 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 81 
 
 germinate, when a new and terrible power arose in the east r 
 which poured over Asia and Africa a resistless torrent of 
 fiery valor, swept away the Gothic kingdom of Spain, and 
 descending like an avalanche from the summits of the Pyre- 
 nees, was stayed in its course by Karl the Hammer and his 
 warlike Franks, who snatched Europe and civilization from 
 the paralyzing grasp of the Moslem domination. 
 
 The Arabs, to whom we are indebted for much of our 
 knowledge, were undoubtedly a noble and intellectual people. 
 Even the robbers of the desert have always been remarka- 
 ble for hospitality, a free, magnanimous spirit, and a digni- 
 fied simplicity of manners, that reminds the traveller of those 
 beautiful pictures of patriarchal life which we find in the 
 Bible. In the Arabian peninsula, the peculiar spirit and 
 striking features of oriental society have always been more 
 fully developed, and more strongly marked than in any- 
 other eastern country. In those primitive seats of the hu- 
 man race, a burning sun, a brilliant sky, the strong contrasts 
 of beauty and barrenness, the awful solitudes of black rocks- 
 and limitless sands, the sparkling fountains shaded by palm 
 trees, the pastoral valleys and tropical bowers, that load the 
 gales with fragrance, the frequent revolutions and romantic 
 vicissitudes of individuals, the vestiges and recollections of 
 a glorious antiquity and a splendid civilization, all combined 
 to produce a character unknown in the west, at the period of 
 which we have been speaking, in any of its most beautiful 
 and striking qualities. These qualities were least diluted by 
 foreign admixtures among the Arabs, for the simple reason, 
 that they alone, of all the eastern nations, had been able at 
 all times, to maintain their independence. 
 
 The foundation, or rather the vital principle, of those 
 beautiful traits of eastern life, which were destined, by means 
 of the Mohammedan conquests, to be embroidered, as it 
 were, upon the stronger but coarser ground of western 
 
82 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 character, was an excessive poetical enthusiasm, which trans- 
 ported the mind into a land of dreams more beautiful than 
 the gardens of the Hesperides, and peopled with all the wild 
 creations of oriental imagination. It was this noble idealism 
 which inspired the disdain of vulgar engrossments, the love of 
 literature and science, the romantic generosity, the delicate 
 courtesy and refinement of sentiment which distinguished the 
 Arab conquerors of Spain, from whom was borrowed much 
 of the spirit of western chivalry, and of the inspiration of 
 Provencal poetry. 
 
 Like most great men of action, Mohammed was an em- 
 bodiment of the peculiarities of his own people in the highest 
 degree of intensity. Born and brought up in poverty and 
 obscurity, he scarcely acquired even the rudiments of knowl- 
 edge. But he possessed an independent and penetrating 
 mind, a powerful though undisciplined imagination, and 
 much generous enthusiasm for the great and the beautiful. 
 The underlying principle of his nature, which imparted an 
 overpowering energy to the whole mass of his moral and 
 intellectual qualities, was a fiery and unquenchable ambition 
 to place himself at the head of a great movement of society. 
 He was no doubt unconscious of the extent to which this 
 love of power mixed up with his more generous impulses, 
 for self-deception is the most common of all delusions. 
 
 I do not believe that a mere imposture ever obtained a 
 lasting hold upon the human mind. No one will meet with 
 deep and lasting sympathy who is not in earnest himself. 
 He may indeed, upon the principle that the end justifies the 
 means, employ claptrap and dissimulation for the accomplish- 
 ment of what appears to him a great and good purpose. 
 Something of the Charlatan may appear upon the surface of 
 such characters as Mohammed and Cromwell and Napoleon, 
 and even a Luther may not be free from selfishness and dis- 
 simulation and vulgar truculence, yet there lies at the bottom 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 83 
 
 of all such great natures a generous and heart-felt conviction 
 that they have a mission from God, and a great work to do 
 in the world, and they are straitened until it be accomplished. 
 The mighty heart of a great people will not heave in obedi- 
 ence to anything but enthusiastic earnestness. A purely 
 selfish man, a mere impostor, never did and never can gain a 
 lasting hold upon the loyalty of large masses of his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 To comprehend the motives of Mohammed, one should 
 take a view of that moral chaos of follies and abuses, which, 
 in his time, had overspread not only Arabia, but all the eas- 
 tern countries. Many of his own countrymen were given 
 up to a gross and despicable idolatry; the minds of the 
 remainder were over-clouded by the ridiculous fables of the 
 Jewish Talmud, or the equally absurd perversions of a bastard 
 Christianity. It is easy to conceive that such a state of 
 things would be extremely unsatisfactory to an earnest and 
 inquiring mind, and the knowledge which Mohammed gained 
 by his trading journeys into Syria, of the vain wranglings 
 that tore to pieces the eastern churches, as well as the world- 
 liness and corruption of most of the ecclesiastics, was not 
 calculated to diminish his perplexity. Under these circum- 
 stances we are told that he often retired to a cave in the 
 neighborhood of Mecca, where he brooded over the moral 
 condition of the world, and conceived his enthusiastic pur- 
 pose of restoring the worship of the one true and invisible 
 God. Every physiologist will readily understand how such 
 contemplations in such a seclusion would be likely to affect 
 an ardent and imaginative mind. 
 
 He first opened his enterprise to his wife and a few friends, 
 who warmly seconded his views. Had he met with the same 
 kind reception from the rest of his countrymen, he would 
 probably have contented himself with recalling their minds 
 in an impressive manner to those great truths, one of which 
 
84 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 they had almost entirely lost sight of — the unity of God and 
 future retribution. But the relentless persecutions of his 
 enemies roused all his fiery energies and vindictive passions. 
 It was easy to persuade himself (for the passions are great 
 sophists) that the illusions of a heated imagination were rev- 
 elations from Heaven. Yet when he described that paradise 
 of sensual delights, which is assuredly the worst feature of 
 his system, the calculations of policy may have mingled with 
 his enthusiasm, for he doubtless well knew that nothing in- 
 spires such unconquerable heroism as the rewards and pun- 
 ishments of a future life, when brought home to the passions 
 by corporeal images. 
 
 The Christian revelation but partially lifts the mysterious 
 veil which hides the retributions of eternity, and usually 
 employs material imagery in a manner so vague and general, 
 that grave theologians may as well content themselves with 
 the abstract truth that love, humility and faith will be condu- 
 cive to our highest well-being in that future state, while the 
 opposite qualities must have the opposite effects, abandoning 
 to poetic license the scenery and other corporeal details of 
 the realms of light, and the kingdom of darkness. Moham- 
 med, on the contrary, allotted to the faithful champion of 
 Islam a voluptuous harem amid the bowers of Paradise. 
 Let us imagine the slight, but active and sinewy Arab, 
 mounted upon a horse of matchless speed and power, and 
 fully persuaded that if he died in battle, he should be imme- 
 diately carried by angels to the arms of the black-eyed 
 nymphs of Paradise ; let us imagine, I say, a body of such 
 men, sweeping down upon an enemy, like the whirlwind of 
 their own deserts, and we shall have little difficulty in ac- 
 counting for the fact, that in less than ninety years, the empire 
 of the caliphs stretched from the frontiers of China to the 
 straits of Gibraltar. 
 
 The Arab conquests brought the eastern poetry, born and 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 85 
 
 nurtured under bright suns and cloudless skies, amid the 
 roses of Cashmere and the voluptuous bowers of Yemen, in 
 contact with the more gigantic but gloomy conceptions of the 
 western nations. If we further take into the account the 
 moral ideas derived from the Christian religion, we shall have 
 before us the sources of that noble though extravagant en- 
 thusiasm which manifested itself in the romance and chivalry 
 of the middle ages, and through them contributed largely to 
 the progress of society in Christendom. 
 
 The Mohammedan civilization was splended but epheme- 
 ral. Everything that was beautiful about it concealed the 
 fatal canker of sensuality. Mohammed borrowed largely 
 from the records of Christianity, but he left behind its spirit. 
 The life warfare against the world, the flesh and the senses, 
 which Christ proclaimed, found no place in that system of 
 pride, ambition and voluptuousness. The Moslem ascen- 
 dancy had no strong principle of moral life, yet it was follow- 
 ed by a brilliant epoch of learning and refinement. Without 
 any deep root in everlasting truth, but springing up rapidly 
 from the warm and quick soil of eastern life, it was covered 
 with foliage and flowers, while the mighty tree of the Chris- 
 tian civilization was still battling with the storm and slowly 
 climbing into the heavens. 
 
 The contrast of their subsequent history and present con- 
 dition, is a triumphant vindication of Christianity, written by 
 the hand of Providence upon the moral chart of the globe. 
 Both have extended over the noblest tribes of the Caucasian 
 race. All the Mohammedan nations, however diverse in 
 physical circumstances, show a wonderful similarity of lead- 
 ing characteristics. The fatal apathy, engendered by soulless 
 despotism, uninquiring faith and emasculating sensuality, 
 has for centuries been broken only by bloody paroxysms of 
 ferocious bigotry. Even this last species of energy seems 
 now to be extinct, and in contemplating the inevitable divis- 
 
86 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 ion of this effete body among the Christian powers, the only- 
 difficulty is to determine which shall get the lion's share. 
 
 Great disasters and destructive revolutions, under which 
 the Mohammedan nations have sunk lower and lower into a 
 bottomless abyss of hopeless degradation, have only developed 
 the dormant energies and exhaustless resources of the Chris- 
 tian family, who like Anteus have arisen with fresh vigor from 
 every temporary overthrow. While the litanic carcase of Mo- 
 hammedanism is rotting off from the earth which it polluted, 
 the giant of Christian civilization after a turbulent childhood of 
 a thousand years, is even now in the full vigor of youth, ex- 
 tending his arms to encircle the globe. 
 
 Even a long continuance of civil and spiritual despotism 
 has failed to produce its usual effects in Christendom. Men 
 now living have seen a great nation throw off a profligate 
 tyranny of centuries' standing, with a convulsive effort that 
 shook the whole world. They have seen her bleeding at 
 every pore, and sheeted in a storm of fire by the despots of 
 Europe leagued to restore the ancient dynasty. And when 
 the smoke of her thousand battles had finally rolled away, 
 they have seen her not grasping in the agonies of death, but, 
 with renovated life, preparing for a new and more glorious 
 career. Let us now search in the chaos of the middle ages 
 for the elements of this astonishing vitality of the Christian 
 civilization. 
 
 The fierce tribes of Germany, as already stated, followed 
 to battle and conquest chieftains freely chosen by themselves, 
 and allowed them a portion of the spoils and conquered ter- 
 ritory, sufficient to support their dignity, but all substantial 
 power was lodged in the assemblies of the people, and each 
 warrior claimed for himself privileges incompatible with the 
 necessary restraints of government. The original inhabit- 
 ants of the conquered provinces were left in possession of a 
 large proportion of the land, the remainder of which was 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 87 
 
 divided among the barbarians, who held it at first allodially, 
 that is to say without any obligation of fealty or service to 
 superiors. 
 
 The large tracts allotted to the chiefs in the original parti- 
 tion of the conquered territory, were intended not only to 
 support their dignity, but to serve as a fund for the reward 
 of civil and military service. As the new establishments of 
 the German tribes assumed something of the regularity of 
 civil government, the chief, to whom we may now give the 
 appellation of King, made large grants of the reserved lands 
 to his favorites or to officers who had rendered eminent ser- 
 vices to the State, to be held of him on certain conditions. — 
 These grants became the germs of that singular system of 
 feuds, which has been the source of mamy of the peculiarities 
 of modern civilization. 
 
 In the absence of a regular constitution, the practical 
 power of the King depended entirely upon his personal 
 qualities. Unless he happened to possess extraordinary en- 
 ergy and sagacity, his turbulent officers and clansmen left 
 him little more than the shadow of royal authority. Out of 
 the disorders of weak reigns grew the feudal system. It 
 does not make its appearance in history until the sceptre of 
 the Franks had passed from the iron hands of Charlemagne 
 to those of his imbecile posterity. That great monarch, busy 
 as he was with the reorganization of society and the defence 
 and propagation of Christianity, kept in his own hands the 
 chief control of the royal domains, and permitted no interme- 
 diate power to grow up between himself and his warriors. 
 But after his death his empire was broken in pieces, and 
 amid the disorders that followed, the Counts of provinces 
 and other great chieftains granted the landed property of the 
 state on conditions of fealty and service not to the sovereign 
 but to themselves. Thus the states of western Europe 
 became little more than bundles of feudal barons, scarcely 
 
88 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 held together by a formal acknowledgment of the central 
 authority. This was especially true of France when the 
 feudal system attained its fullest development. 
 
 The haughty barons claimed the right among others of re- 
 dressing their own real or imaginary grievances by private 
 war, and descended from their strong castles, perched like 
 eagles nests among crags and forests, followed by bands of 
 blood-thirsty retainers, to ravage the lands and slaughter the 
 vassals of their enemies. In the perpetual quarrels of the 
 rival chieftains, the most wanton outrages were frequently 
 perpetrated upon the allodial proprietors, who were thus 
 reduced to the necessity of purchasing the protection of some 
 neighboring lord by giving up their land to him and taking 
 it back on the feudal conditions. Thus the feudal tenures, 
 which were at first very limited, gradually supplanted the 
 allodial independence. 
 
 There was but little servility in the feudal relations. The 
 obligations were reciprocal, and either party by the neglect 
 or infraction of them, lost all claims upon the other. The 
 tenant, scrupulous in complying with the conditions of the 
 compact on his part, would on that very account be the more 
 tenacious of his rights. If they were violated by his lord he 
 might transfer his allegiance to some other chief, who would 
 always be glad to strengthen himself against his rival by the 
 acquisition of new retainers upon liberal conditions. 
 
 In France, the native soil of feuds, the great barons claim- 
 ed the most enormous privileges and left to the crown the mere 
 shadow of royal authority. The history of that country for 
 ages is the history of a perpetual struggle between the kings 
 and their haughty and turbulent vassals. But in England, 
 where the system was hardly ever completely naturalized, 
 the barons were compelled to court popularity, and there 
 they became powerful guardians of popular rights. In both 
 countries they were the chief, if not the only counterpoise 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING, 39 
 
 to the central power, until the cities acquired sufficient con- 
 sequence to act an important part in European politics. 
 
 As the harmony of the natural world is the balance of pow- 
 ers, either of which being infinitely expansive, would, if unre- 
 strained, hurry the whole system into chaos, or consolidate it 
 into one mass of lifeless matter, so the only kind of political 
 order, which is compatible with the freedom and dignity of 
 man, results from the antagonism of classes, interests or ten- 
 dencies. In a society, like these of Europe in the middle 
 ages, full of energy and turbulent individuality and clashing 
 interests, each of the social forces will rule in its turn, as the 
 re-action of those which, though repressed, are not subdued, 
 brings them in succession to the head of society. They 
 never can subside into an organization so perfect, that some 
 one of them at a time will not be clearly in the ascendant. 
 But wo to that people who suffer any one of the social pow- 
 ers to gain absolute mastery. When all antagonism ceases, 
 justice and liberty are at an end. Even the most furious 
 strife in church or state is better than the unity and repose of 
 absolute despotism. 
 
 If we would find the sources of our American liberty, of 
 the extraordinary vigor and expansiveness of European civ- 
 ilization, we must look for them in the apparent anarchy of 
 the middle ages, the riotous and energetic individuality, the 
 great diversity of interests and the tierce struggles of classes 
 and tendencies. In my next discourse I shall have occasion 
 to apply these remarks to the reformation, and the unques- 
 tionable superiority of Protestant over Catholic countries. 
 At present I shall confine myself to their political bearings. 
 
 The germs of a noble and vigorous freedom can be clear- 
 ly discerned in the feudal constitutions. It is true that the 
 rude condition of the laws, and the weakness of the civil 
 magistrates gave impunity to much violence and outrage. 
 The true principles of social order were little understood, 
 S 
 
90 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 and perhaps no one had the least conception of that ideal of 
 political society, which is the goal of modern progress, in 
 which the wisest and best are placed at the head of affairs by 
 the free voice of the people, where the limits of authority 
 are clearly defined, and where the powers of the state are 
 distributed among those who, by the tenure of their offices, 
 have not only the disposition but the ability to preserve their 
 respective shares from the encroachments of the other de- 
 partments. Is it national pride which whispers, that to my 
 own country is reserved the glorious destiny of showing to 
 the world the nearest approach to the ideal of society, which 
 the frailty of man will permit] 
 
 The similar circumstances of the western nations gave rise 
 to similar institutions. We may select the constitution of 
 Aragon as the most perfect example of feudal liberty. Here 
 the king could do nothing without the sanction of the legis- 
 lative assembly, and both were held in check by a great 
 officer, the justiciary, who was charged with the defence of 
 the constitution, and the guardianship of the rights and priv- 
 ileges of all classes. 
 
 It will be recollected that among the German tribes, the 
 great council, to which all important measures were submit- 
 ted, consisted of all the warriors who had reached maturity. 
 After their establishments in the Roman provinces had ac- 
 quired something of the regularity of civil states, it was found 
 necessary to reduce the vast and tumultuous assemblies cf 
 the people to smaller bodies, composed of the feudal nobility, 
 the clergy, and the representatives of inferior land-holders, 
 to whom were added at a subsequent period, the delegates of 
 chartered towns. In France, besides the states-general, as 
 the national legislature was called, there were provincial as- 
 semblies in each of the great baronies, composed in the same 
 manner, and possessed of the same powers. The great 
 principle which, as we shall find hereafter, has played so 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 91 
 
 important a part in English history, that no taxes can be lev- 
 ied without the consent of all the orders of the legislative 
 body, seems to have been more or less clearly recognized in 
 all the constitutions of the feudal ages. 
 
 While the barons were fighting among themselves and 
 disputing with the crown the prerogatives of sovereignty, 
 and the clergy were representing that moral power of reli- 
 gion, which gradually tamed the ferocious passions of those 
 rude ages, and silently permeated society with juster notions 
 of the rights and duties of men, another element of social 
 organization was slowly gaining ground, which was destined 
 to fill a very important place in the history, not only of con- 
 stitutional order and liberty, but of art, literature and scien- 
 tific discovery. 
 
 As we have already remarked, one of the great bequests 
 of the expiring empire of Rome to modern civilization, was 
 municipal institutions, in other words, cities with a regular 
 internal police. After her highly civilized provinces had 
 come under the sway of ignorant barbarians, the craftsmen 
 and traders of the towns may have found safety in the con- 
 tempt of a martial people, who in their native forests had 
 lived in wooden huts and clothed themselves with skins. 
 But the most powerful defenders of municipal institutions 
 were the bishops, into whose hands the government of their 
 diocesan capitals had fallen in the latter years of the empire. 
 
 Amid the darkness and storms of the early ages, the cities 
 disappear from history for a time and were doubtless very 
 much reduced in population and importance. But the Ger- 
 man tribes, mingling with a more refined though subject 
 people, were not long in acquiring a taste for luxury and 
 splendor, especially in arms and military equipments, and the 
 manufacturing industry of the cities began to revive. It is 
 interesting to think of the thousands of humble and forgotten 
 artizans, who toiled from day to day in the dust and heat of 
 
92 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 their forges, making swords and chain armour and other arti- 
 cles of still greater value, utterly unconscious of the mighty- 
 revolutions which lurked in their strong arms and patient 
 hearts. Little did they dream that every blow which fell 
 upon their anvils, was striking off a link from the chain that 
 fettered the intellect and social progress of the western world. 
 Little did the haughty barons, who were beginning to adorn 
 the halls of their strong castles with the fabrics of the cities, 
 imagine that the shuttle of the despised weaver was making 
 a mighty network which would one day envelope their own 
 descendants in its fatal meshes, and drag them down from 
 their high places. No effort of honest industry ever was nor 
 ever can be lost. Everlasting honor to the dukes and vis- 
 counts and marquises of the nobility of labor. 
 
 Trade and manufactures slowly revived and the cities in- 
 creased their population by affording shelter to the wretched 
 provincials, who were driven from their blazing cottages and 
 devastated fields by the bloody feuds of ferocious chieftains. 
 The princes and barons were often in want of money to carry 
 on their perpetual contests with rivals or turbulent vassals, 
 which they obtained from the cities within their domains, on 
 condition of granting to them by charter certain privileges 
 and immunities, which were from time to time extended 
 and fortified by additional guaranties. The people of the 
 towns thus acquired the right of electing their own magis- 
 trates, whose jurisdiction usually extended over a considera- 
 ble part of the adjacent country. The cities of Italy, which 
 enjoyed the advantage of being under the more especial 
 protection of the church, became so powerful at a very early 
 period, as to defy the utmost efforts of the German emperors 
 to break down their independence. There the nobility, in- 
 stead of secluding themselves in their castles, resided in the 
 towns and acquired great wealth by commerce, which began 
 to be carried on with the East. A taste for intellectual pur- 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 93 
 
 suits gradually sprang up ; the study of the Latin literature 
 was revived ; the treasures of antiquity were brought forth 
 from the monasteries, and hundreds of men made their living 
 by copying manuscripts ; universities were founded and stu- 
 dents nocked to them from every part of Europe, eager to 
 drink of the streams of knowledge which had been sealed up 
 for ages. In other parts of Europe, the representatives of 
 the cities were early admitted as a constituent part of the 
 legislative assemblies, and their franchises were similar, 
 though inferior in extent, to those of the Italian republics. 
 
 The internal police and social organization of the char- 
 tered towns were very much alike in all parts of Europe. 
 Their ancient customs were reduced to certainty, and usual- 
 ly embodied in the charters of incorporation, but the com- 
 mon councils had the right to make bye-laws not inconsis- 
 tent with those settled rules. The administration of jus- 
 tice and the entire internal regulation were lodged in the 
 hands of magistrates, freely chosen by the people. Here the 
 ballot-box, the symbol of representative democracy, first 
 makes its appearance in modern history. 
 
 The citizens were divided into classes or guilds according 
 to their respective trades, each of which had its appropriate 
 banner, and was trained to the use of arms, and accustomed 
 to military exercises. These artizans often defended their 
 towns against the feudal tyrants, with a heroism uncon- 
 querable even by the extremity of famine. In the chartered 
 cities we must look for the chief sources of that democratic 
 tendency of modern times, which has shaken nearly all the 
 thrones of Europe. They were the nurseries of that intel- 
 ligent, and orderly, but high spirited middle class, which has 
 taken so large a share in all those great struggles for free- 
 dom, that have made the last three centuries the most stirring 
 period of history. One of these cities, fenced by the Alps 
 from the storms of the middle ages and the tyranny of the 
 
94 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 dukes of Savoy, was destined, as we shall see hereafter, to 
 become the nursery of that mighty Calvimstic republican- 
 ism, which, after striking in England the first effectual blows 
 in the modern warfare of liberty against power, has reached 
 its greatest expansion in the forests of the new world. 
 
 We have now taken a rapid view of those great elements 
 of political organization, whose conflicting interests and mu- 
 tual jealousies prevented any one of them from gaining an 
 ascendency so absolute, as to crush those vigorous germs of 
 freedom which, though trampled by tyranny and cankered 
 by corruption, have never ceased to live in European society, 
 whence they have been transplanted to the virgin soil of 
 America. We may now turn to other causes of social im- 
 provement, less obtrusive but perhaps more efficient than po- 
 litical institutions. 
 
 First of these was chivalry, — that poetry of arms, which 
 mitigated the barbarity of war and embellished the military 
 profession with the graces of courtesy and gallantry, — of hu- 
 manity to a fallen foe, of generous self-devotion in the cause 
 of the weak and oppressed. It was the martial enthusiasm of 
 the terrible warriors of Germany, refined by the poetry of 
 the Arabs, and exalted by the great moral ideas derived 
 from Christianity . To estimate its influence upon society, 
 we need but reflect upon the vast interval between the bru- 
 tal followers of Clovis and Hengist, and their descendants, 
 the Black Prince, Chevalier Bayard, and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 The solemn ceremony by which the youthful warrior of 
 Germany, burning for distinction, was invested with arms, 
 was the mere form into which poetry and religion afterwards 
 breathed the soul of chivalry. For what but ideality and relig- 
 ion combined could have substituted for the impulses of rev- 
 enge, of rapacity, of ambition, of mere instinctive ferocity, — 
 the romantic enthusiasm of love and devotion ; — could have 
 divested war of animosity and preserved, amid the fury of 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 95 
 
 combat and the exultation of victory, a delicate courtesy, 
 scrupulous honor and romantic generosity to a vanquished 
 enemy. It was the business of every true knight to surpass 
 his predecessors and rivals in his approaches to that lofty 
 ideal, which he found in the poems and romances of the age, 
 as well as in those works which treated expressly of the du- 
 ties and virtues of chivalry. He must be loyal and true; 
 he must be pious modest and self-denying, — redressing the 
 wrongs that come to his knowledge, and ever ready to sig- 
 nalize his devotion to God and the ladies. 
 
 War and religion may seem to some a strange combina- 
 tion ; but, if Christianity cannot remove social evils, is it 
 nothing to mitigate them 1 If it does not eradicate the fierce 
 passions of men, is it nothing to restrain, to soothe, to divest 
 strife of its atrocities ] 
 
 If the institution of chivalry has perished, it has, like every 
 thing else that springs from the profoundest depths of human 
 nature, left its traces deep and broad in some peculiar char- 
 acteristics that distinguish the Christian nations from the most 
 polished states of antiquity. The Greeks and Romans re- 
 duced captives to slavery, a conduct which, it is easy to see, 
 must have greatly aggravated the ferocity and destructiveness 
 of wars. The rules of chivalry made it infamous to insult or 
 injure a vanquished enemy, while on the other hand no valor 
 or renown could wipe out the stain which a violation of his 
 word of honor brought upon the escutcheon of a Knight. 
 Here we have the origin of that humane system of warfare 
 peculiar to the Christian nations, which prohibits wanton 
 destruction of life and property, enjoins kind treatment of 
 prisoners, and sends them back to their own country upon 
 their simple parol of honor. 
 
 The chief glory of chivalry was that romantic devotion to 
 the softer sex, which, though it did not prevent licentiousness, 
 contributed greatly to secure to woman that position which 
 
96 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 she holds in modern society. This brings us by a natural 
 transition to one of the most interesting topics in the philo- 
 sophy of social progress. 
 
 It is obvious that woman can exert her due influence only 
 in that state of society in which, instead of being the slave of 
 man's passions, she is respected and beloved — the sharer of 
 his inmost thoughts — the equal companion of his joys and his 
 sorrows. Such a state of society has existed only in con- 
 nection with Christianity. No where else has she occupied 
 a social position suited to develop the beautiful properties of 
 her nature, and at the same time preserve that moral purity 
 which can alone enable those properties to exert a salutary 
 influence over the other sex. Nowhere else has opinion 
 girded her with invisible armor more potent than steel, more 
 impervious than adamant. 
 
 The Spartans and Romans respected their women, but it 
 was the kind of respect that a tiger has for his mate. The 
 Spartan mother could buckle on the armor of her son, and 
 bid him return with his shield or upon it, for she, when young, 
 had been compelled by the laws of Lycurgus to wrestle 
 naked in the presence of the young men. She was exclud- 
 ed from the tables and social meetings of the other sex, and 
 even separated from her own children, who at an early age 
 were placed under the care of persons employed by the state. 
 The respect of the martial Romans for the sex was perfect- 
 ly consistent with an almost total neglect of their society, for 
 these terrible warriors, whose home was the camp or the 
 field, had very little relish for the soft endearments of domes- 
 tic life, or the refined pleasures of cultivated society. Cato's 
 singular condescension to his friend Hortensius must consid- 
 erably qualify our admiration of Roman manners in this 
 respect. The Germans in their forests respected their wo- 
 men, but the nature of that regard may be judged of by the 
 fact, that in their warlike expeditions they were accompanied 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 97 
 
 by their wives and sisters, who sometimes fought by their 
 sides and emulated the hardihood and ferocity of their hus- 
 bands and brothers. It must be further remarked that what 
 Tacitus tells us of German manners, is inconsistent with the 
 known licentiousness of the Saxon invaders of England. I 
 need scarcely allude to the slavery of women among the Mo- 
 hammedans. It is true that the Arab poetry was full of love, 
 but the sentiment, though often tender, was exaggerated and 
 sensual. The beauty immured in the harem was, as M. Sis- 
 mondi remarks, a deity as well as a slave, but she was never 
 a woman, the virtuous helpmate of man. 
 
 It is worth while to inquire into the causes of the superior- 
 ity of the Christian nations in this respect. M. Guizot has 
 endeavored to account for it by the peculiar circumstances 
 of the feudal family. The baron living remote from cities 
 in his lonely castle among rocks and forests, surrounded 
 by humbl® retainers with whom he could have but little in- 
 tercourse, gave those hours not spent in war and the chase 
 to the society of his wife and children. Moreover, he thinks 
 that the only persons to whom the baron could confide his 
 secrets, or whom he would permit to counsel with him, were 
 his wife and the parish priest, and that the chieftain of course 
 set great value upon those two indispensable personages. 
 This may go for pi^ecisely what it is worth ; very little more 
 I apprehend, than M. Guizot's notions of a balance of power 
 in America. 
 
 On the other hand, M. Sismondi is of opinion that the ex- 
 alted position of woman in western society should be ascrib- 
 ed to the oriental poetry introduced into Spain by the 
 Mohammedan conquests. Doubtless we may trace to that 
 source much of the refined voluptuousness of the troubadours 
 and the romantic extravagance of Spanish chivalry. But if 
 a kindred poetical enthusiasm, which has contributed to make 
 woman in all Christian nations the cherished companion of 
 9 
 
98 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 man and the ornament of the social circle, has in all Moham- 
 medan countries, made her the secluded slave of the most 
 heartless sensuality, surely some potent and universal agency 
 must have been at work to produce so wide a divergence. — 
 That agency was the unobtrusive influence of the Christian 
 religion, partly direct, partly through the medium of chivalry. 
 
 Woman has ever been the ally of Christianity, and her 
 services in its cause have been richly repaid by religion, 
 which proposes to tame the fierce passions of men, by incul- 
 cating precisely those virtues that find their most congenial 
 soil in the female heart. Christianity has enjoined humility, 
 patience, gentleness, sensibility to the joys and sorrows of 
 our fellow creatures, as constituting the very ideal of moral 
 beauty. It gives its divine sanction to qualities which were 
 held in contempt by the most cultivated nations of antiquity, 
 who respected only the sterner virtues of justice, temperance, 
 fortitude and patriotism. It is obvious that a religion, which 
 exalts those virtues most congenial with the nature and con- 
 dition of woman to the first rank of moral attainments, must 
 elevate her in the social scale. While Christianity by 
 adorning woman with its own peculiar graces, rendered her 
 more truly worthy of the love and homage of the other sex, 
 it also taught the fierce warriors of those times to respect 
 qualities the most opposite to their own. Indeed what was 
 chivalry itself but a constant effort to mitigate the horrors of 
 war, and embellish the profession of arms by as large an 
 admixture of those very qualities as was compatible with the 
 requisite courage and energy. We need not therefore be sur- 
 prised, that haughty valor himself came and bowed at the 
 feet of beauty, and sought in the smile of gentle loveliness 
 the chief reward of his perils and the inspiration of his ro- 
 mantic heroism. 
 
 The remarks in our former discourse in relation to the 
 unqbtrusiveness of the greatest and most durable power ? 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 99 
 
 apply with peculiar force to the contributions of woman to 
 the progress of society. Even philosophic historians have 
 been far from doing justice to female influence, because from 
 the nature of the case, their attention is chiefly directed to 
 the intrigues of courts, the movements of armies, the doings 
 of politicians, the bubbles and commotions of the surface of 
 society. But kings, heroes, statesmen, were all children 
 once, and no one need be told that in the quiet shades of 
 domestic life we must look for the springs of that mighty 
 stream, which bears upon its troubled surface warriors and 
 statesmen, courts and armies, republics and dynasties, and all 
 the multiform institutions and transactions of civil society. 
 
 What latest improvement of Algebra will enable us to 
 compute how much the tears of beloved wives and sisters, 
 the counsels and entreaties of Christian mothers have done 
 for mankind ! During the earlier part of the middle ages, 
 domestic education was doubtless the most powerful auxiliary 
 to the moral influence of the clergy, and often the antidote 
 to their corruptions and superstitions. Woman was gener- 
 ally on the side of religion and virtue, if we may judge from 
 most of the instances in which female influence rises to the 
 surface of that turbulent society. The love-poetry of the 
 period affords us additional evidence that the relations of the 
 sexes were not only refining, but purifying in their tendency. 
 The love passages which soften the stern grandeur of Dante, 
 and in a still higher degree the sonnets of Petrarch, which 
 fell upon the awakening mind of Europe, like sparks of 
 heavenly fire, breathe a respectful tenderness and elevation 
 of sentiment unknown to the amatory poetry of the ancients, 
 and never dreamed of by the fiery voluptuousness of the 
 Mohammedans. The Christian mistress, the Christian wife, 
 the Christian mother! what a vast segment of modern civili- 
 zation and social progress is defined by those words ! 
 
 The noblest civilization tends to bring the two sexes nearer 
 
100 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 together in regard to their moral and intellectual character. 
 The highest order of genius has been justly said to combine 
 the peculiarities of both sexes ; the rigorous understanding, 
 the force of imagination, the energy of will that distinguishes 
 the one, with the quick perception, the intuitive tact, the ten- 
 derness and sensibility of the other. There is no reason to 
 hope that what is now only true of remarkable individuals 
 will ever be universal or even general, yet the degree, to 
 which the difference between man and woman is lessened by 
 a reciprocal interchange of those qualities which we regard 
 as most worthy of love and admiration in each respectively 
 may be as good a measure as any other of the real progress 
 of society. 
 
 Aside from speculation, the peculiar properties of woman's 
 moral and intellectual structure are precisely such as are 
 adapted, whenever her social position commands respect and 
 favors the development of her powers, to smoothe the asper- 
 ities of man, to refine and elevate his sentiments, to entwine 
 his rugged strength with the foliage and flowers of tenderness 
 and fancy. There is nothing which so calls into action the 
 finest feelings of his nature, as the sense of being leaned 
 upon, of being looked up to as a guardian by a being so 
 graceful in her timidity, so beautiful in her helplessness, pro- 
 vided her virtue commands his respect ; for if she be not pure, 
 if she revere not herself, she may have the protection, but 
 never the sincere homage of chivalry, and the elegance which 
 she diffuses over society only renders vice more attractive by 
 divesting it of its grossness. 
 
 Chivalry reached its perfection when it added to the poetry 
 of love that poetry of devotion which gave origin to the cru- 
 sades. Upon the subject of these holy wars, about as much 
 nonsense has been written and spoken as on almost any other 
 subject, whatever. What avail the endless tirades upon the 
 folly and absurdity of the crusades'? Are the worship of 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 101 
 
 gold, the enterprises of commercial extension, the lust of ter- 
 ritorial aggrandizement, which now embroil nations, a whit 
 more respectable that the poetical devotion which carried the 
 chivalry of Europe to the sepulchre of Christ % Why suffer 
 the enterprises of sordid and earth-born selfishness to pass 
 with perhaps a gentle expression of disapprobation, and ex- 
 haust the vocabulary of contempt upon the offspring of great 
 and generous emotions. No doubt that inundation of fiery 
 valor, which Europe poured upon Asia, was turbid enough 
 with profligacy, seeking to expiate a life of guilt by a martial 
 pilgrimage to the cradle of religion, and vague hopes of reck- 
 less adventurers to repair their fortunes and gratify their 
 passions in the opulent and voluptuous East. "What of all 
 that ] Similar facts may be predicated of every large body 
 of men that ever assembled on earth. The solemn homilies 
 of conscientious and respectable persons upon the folly and 
 wickedness of other people, are to the last degree wearisome 
 and unprofitable. It is not in this manner that the historical 
 philosopher contemplates the great movements of society. 
 The crusaders were not so foolish ; the idea of founding a 
 great Christian power in the East was not so chimerical; 
 nor have those wars been so barren of beneficial results as 
 some short-sighted persons imagine. 
 
 The men of our age, which doubtless has follies and ab- 
 surdities enough of its own, ought not to sit in judgment 
 upon those of another, unless they are able to enter into 
 their spirit and understand their motives. It is difficult to 
 obtain a clear insight into the thoughts and feelings of those 
 "fervent days of old," when religious faith, instead of being 
 a moral probability floating in a medium of metaphysical ab- 
 straction and patronized by politicians as an useful auxiliary 
 to law in preserving social order, was a warm and life-like 
 reality, glowing in the hearts and living in the daily business 
 of men and affording the most powerful incentives to action. 
 
102 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 In modern times the poetry of devotion has been so much 
 sobered by motives belonging to the present state of being, 
 that it is hard to tell whether the chief sources of our pru- 
 dential morality are in earth or heaven. I am aware that 
 this is a necessary stage in the progress of mankind from 
 ages of noble and heroic, but superstitious and persecuting 
 fervor, to those of equally poetical but far more clear and tol- 
 erant belief. Yet there is no reason why the self-complacent 
 shrewdness of this rather barren and prosaic age of transition, 
 should be particularly lavish of pity or contempt upon half- 
 enlightened, but still glorious manifestations of those high 
 properties of our nature, which distinguish us from the beasts 
 that perish. 
 
 The chivalric, like the heroic ages, exhibit striking contrasts 
 of strong lights and deep shadows. The conduct of men 
 who are guided by cool calculations of profit and loss, will 
 in general have an even tenor, seldom sinking into crime, 
 seldom rising into heroic virtue. But ages of faith, which 
 are also ages of fervent and overmastering impulses, are pro- 
 ductive of splendid virtues and dreadful crimes, and show 
 many examples of those powerful but irregular natures which 
 are great alike in their evil and their good. In partially civil- 
 ized societies, like those of the middle ages, where the restraints 
 of law and public opinion are feeble, and the elements of a vast 
 and glorious national existence are yet lying, as it were, in 
 chaos, it need not surprise us that characters in general 
 marked by piety, generosity and heroism, are sometimes dark- 
 ened by fearful outbursts of an opposite character, followed 
 by a depth of remorse to which more disciplined minds are 
 utter strangers. In such times the mixture of good and evil 
 in human nature; the polarity of powerful passions, is much 
 more freely and strikingly manifested, than in a state of soci- 
 ety, where each man's path is marked out and hedged in for 
 him by education, custom and public opinion. 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 103 
 
 The crusades were a universal sifting and shaking up of 
 the chaotic elements of society. To contemporaries they 
 may have appeared as the French revolution did to persons 
 now living, an aimless tempest of human passions. In such 
 cases we observe nothing at first but the eddying of hosts, the 
 shock of arms, the clouds of dust and garments rolled in 
 blood. But when the uproar has ceased and the clouds have 
 rolled away, a new world is disclosed, and we find that many 
 time-honored abuses, old institutions and inveterate prejudices 
 have passed away forever. 
 
 Thus the Europe, which saw with indifference the kingdom 
 of Jerusalem, watered with so much blood, return under the 
 yoke of the Moslems, was very different from that Europe, 
 which had burst into a flame at the preaching of Peter the 
 Hermit. Brought in contact with Asiatic civilization — with 
 strange and striking manners — with the remnant of Roman 
 majesty that still lingered on the shores of the Bosphorus, 
 a sad memento of ancient glory — with more refined and lux- 
 urious modes of living than those to which they had been 
 accustomed, the ideas of the rude warriors of the west were 
 enlarged. A profitable commerce began to diffuse the com- 
 modities and the arts of the east over the western world. Social 
 order had gained by the passing away of many turbulent and 
 reckless spirits. The barons had sold their estates to raise 
 money for those romantic expeditions, and by that means as 
 well by their prolonged absence, the royal authority gained 
 ground at the expense of the feudal system. The loose 
 confederacies of petty principalities, which had little more 
 of national existence than the name, began to consolidate 
 into compact and powerful states. The monarchs with aug- 
 menting authority and revenues increasing with the increase 
 of commercial wealth, began to employ mercenary troops 
 and dispense with the short and precarious services of their 
 
104 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 turbulent vassals. Modern Europe, in short, emerged from 
 a chaos of conflicting elements. 
 
 As we have intimated above, the crusades gave the feudal 
 system a blow from which it never recovered. From the 
 termination of those wars, we find the central authority in 
 France, the peculiar soil of feuds, steadily gaining ground. 
 Yet the struggle between monarchy and feudalism was every 
 where sufficiently protracted to keep alive, till more enlight- 
 ened times, some sparks of the spirit of liberty. The idea 
 of absolute power was never permitted to lay hold of and 
 completely subjugate the minds of the people. During that 
 struggle, each party had sought to strengthen itself by liberal 
 concessions to the commons. The precious guarantees of 
 freedom thus created, were too often, it is true, neglected or 
 forgotten in ages of ignorance and servitude, but they were 
 preserved to confound the minions of despotic power, and 
 strengthen the advocates of liberty, when new life had been 
 infused into them by the bold and searching spirit of modern 
 inquiry. As we shall see hereafter, the popular branch of 
 the English parliament owes its existence to a great baron at 
 war with his king. 
 
 Feudalism, having done its work, rapidly declined. "When 
 the arm of the law became strong enough to afford protection 
 to life and property, the advantages of the feudal relation 
 ceased, and only its burdens remained. The old Roman 
 law was incorporated with the jurisprudence of most parts of 
 Europe, and though betraying its despotic origin by many 
 slavish features, which were in a great measure corrected 
 by the independent spirit of those who adopted it, this code 
 was admirably adapted to the regulation of the domestic and 
 social relations as well as to the speedy and equitable redress 
 of injuries. 
 
 But feudalism did not perish utterly, even after it had ac- 
 complished the great purposes of its existence. This is true 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 105 
 
 of all old institutions, — the body lingers long among men 
 after the soul has departed. They become so closely inter- 
 woven with the social system, that they cannot be suddenly 
 torn away without destruction to the whole fabric. It re- 
 quired the French Revolution to give the finishing blow to 
 feudalism. In the latter part of the middle ages, after the 
 increasing vigor of monarchy had crushed the independence 
 of the feudal nobility, the latter ceased to be the champions 
 of liberty and the guardians of popular rights. They be- 
 came the allies of power, and sharers in the plunder and 
 oppression of the industrious masses ; they began to bask in 
 the sunshine of courts, and waste in debauchery and osten- 
 tation the substance of the trampled multitude. But at the 
 same time they became the patrons of art and letters, while 
 their luxury and magnificence gave encouragement to com- 
 merce and manufactures. Thus they were unwittingly rais- 
 ing up two classes of men, the men of letters and the men of 
 trade, who were destined at a subsequent period to over- 
 throw the throne and the church, as well as the aristocracy 
 which had fostered them. 
 
 Let us now rapidly trace the improvements in commerce, 
 art, literature and general knowledge. Though Italy suffer- 
 ed greatly from the fury of the barbarians, she was the first to 
 rise from the ruins of the empire. She had been more popul- 
 ous and more thoroughly civilized than the western provinces, 
 and of course reacted with more power upon her conquerors, 
 whose manners soon softened in that glorious climate amid 
 the astonishing remains of ancient magificence. The majesty 
 of Rome still lingered about the cradle of her power and the 
 scene of her glory. The eastern emperors re-asserted their 
 claims from time to time, and kept the barbarians in check, 
 until the new civilization had taken root under the fostering 
 care of the spiritual supremacy of Rome. For the sceptre 
 had not yet departed from the " eternal city." She still pre- 
 
106 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 sided over the destinies of mankind. The empire of force 
 had given place to a moral power still more wonderful, 
 which extended its guardianship of order, religion and learn- 
 ing over the entire Christian world, though Italy, of course, 
 being under the very shadow of the Roman tiara, enjoyed 
 the largest share of its protection. 
 
 The principal cities of Italy became the seats of a flourish- 
 ing commerce, which gradually extended to every part of 
 Europe within reach of their ships. They began to rival 
 each other in every species of productive industry. They 
 established free and democratic governments, which however 
 soon fell a prey to domestic faction and foreign intrigue — 
 the usual fate of those petty republics confined to a single 
 city or a small district of country. A single explosion in so 
 confined a space may shatter the constitution, and the weak- 
 ness of such communities lays them open to foreign ambition . 
 Their fate furnishes no argument against democratic institu- 
 tions in a great country which can stand alone, and embrace 
 such an extent of territory and variety of interests, that no 
 local disease is likely to endanger its political integrity. 
 
 The cities on the Mediterranean coasts of Spain and 
 France soon rivalled those of Italy in commercial enterprise. 
 To facilitate its operations, banks were established, — first, it 
 seems, at Barcelona ; for the monied corporations of Italy 
 did not for some time after their creation perform the ordin- 
 ary functions of banking institutions, being limited to aiding 
 the fiscal department of government. All banks were at 
 first confined to deposit and exchange, — the functions of dis- 
 count and circulation having been added in comparatively 
 recent times. 
 
 Commercial prosperity was the pioneer of art, literature 
 and scientific discovery. Before proceeding further I will 
 remark, though it is scarcely necessary to do so, that we may 
 speak of the same thing as being at once an effect and a cause 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 107 
 
 of the progress of society, without confusion of ideas or terms. 
 The arrangements of the All-Wise have established a system 
 of mutual action and re-action, so that when a product has 
 been evolved from the fermentation of elements, it immedi- 
 ately becomes a constituent of new combinations. 
 
 In the infancy of modern civilization, poetry was as usual 
 the first voice of awakening mind. Poetry precedes science, 
 because the natural course of intellectual culture is from the 
 particular to the general — from the concrete to the abstract. 
 All the various forms of poetry spring from the same proper- 
 ties of our intellectual structure. Its essence is a passionate 
 recognition of the sublime and beautiful, arising from an in- 
 tuitive perception of the correspondence between ideas and 
 qualities and their outward manifestations in form, color and 
 proportion. That even a building may embody an idea 
 which will shadow forth the moral feelings of men, must be 
 evident, if we compare the voluptuous gracefulness of an ori- 
 ental mosque with the religious twilight, the massive propor- 
 tions, the gorgeous yet gloomy magnificence of a Gothic 
 cathedral. The aspiring spirit of the Papacy, which, in the 
 name of Heaven, acquired and maintained an absolute do- 
 minion over the minds of men, stands forever embodied in 
 the marble of St. Peter's, — in those arches springing up to 
 the clouds, — in those gigantic columns, fit to prop the dome 
 which the stupendous audacity of a Michael Angelo suspend- 
 ed in mid-heaven. The spirit of the middle ages stands 
 more legibly written in the cathedrals, abbeys and castles, 
 which have survived the ravages of time, than in any of the 
 confused chronicles of that period. 
 
 Science is analytic — Poetry, synthetic. Science takes to 
 pieces to examine in detail. Poetry puts together the var- 
 ious parts of a beautiful and harmonious whole. Science 
 imitates the destructive — poetry the constructive processes 
 of nature ; but in so doing she surpasses nature. It is true 
 
108 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 that all the parts of artistic creations are found in the actual 
 world ; yet the painter, the sculptor or the literary artist bodies 
 forth forms or characters superior to anything which Nature 
 can show. No human form ever equalled the master-pieces 
 of sculpture ; no such combination of profound intellect, fear- 
 ful energy of will, and consistent depravity, as Milton's Satan, 
 ever was known on earth ; and no human pair could have 
 furnished the same poet with an exact likeness of our first 
 parents in Paradise. It is manifest that the type of the spe- 
 cific beauty or grandeur of the object must exist in the mind 
 of the artist, and this type I call the idea of the object. The 
 same idea must exist in the mind of the beholder or the 
 reader, though dim and perhaps invisible to his conscious- 
 ness, until genius makes him acquainted with his own 
 thoughts. 
 
 Essentially connected with the strange sense of keeping, 
 or correspondence, between ideas and qualities, which I have 
 alluded to above, is the tendency to comprehend the whole at 
 once, in other words, to consider the parts in their just and 
 proportionate adaptation to the purposes of each combina- 
 tion, which I regard as a chief characteristic of poetry. And 
 if poetry often stirs the depths of our being by bold relief or 
 vivid colors, that seem to mar the harmony of her creations, 
 we must recollect that every specific whole with which we 
 are acquainted, is a part of a still larger whole, its relations 
 with which cannot be all exhibited at once. Thus the indi- 
 vidual man, though complete in himself, is a part of a politi- 
 cal organization, and has, to whatever represents the unity of 
 the state, relations which may give rise to powerful emotions, 
 such as patriotism and loyalty. But further, he is part of a uni- 
 verse, and has relations to God and Eternity. If he be destined 
 to a boundless and everlasting existence hereafter, the poeti- 
 cal tendency towards the whole may mar the harmony of his 
 being viewed solely in relation to the purposes of the present 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 109 
 
 world ; for those mighty emotions, in which poetry revels, 
 seem to cold philosophy a strange waste of spiritual power, 
 as they are utterly disproportioned in their depth and intens- 
 ity to the real magnitude of the objects which call them 
 forth. Every deep feeling, every great idea claims kindred 
 with infinity. Love passes beyond the grave and asks an 
 eternal life for its object. If the poetry of a young soul 
 once clusters around the form of some maiden, not a whit 
 more beautiful or charming than thousands of her sex whom 
 he passes with indifference, the sunshine of heaven beams in 
 her smile, while her frown is the shadow of that cloud which 
 hovers over the bottomless Tophet. It is no objection, but 
 rather a confirmation of this theory, that the dreamy despond- 
 ency of scepticism sometimes takes a highly poetical form ; 
 for without that dim unconscious struggling towards infinity, 
 to which no human heart is an utter stranger, such despond- 
 ency could not possibly exist. 
 
 It is not therefore surprising that the poetry of the chival- 
 ric, like that of the heroic ages, was vitally connected with 
 religion. I speak not alone of such works as that of Dante, 
 in which religious ideas are clearly predominant. The Chris- 
 tian religion breathed its own immortal life into all the art 
 and literature of the middle ages, which has left any deep traces 
 in the history of the human mind. The forms may have 
 been classic, but the spirit was derived from Christianity. 
 
 Language, though not the only medium of spiritual inter- 
 course, is by far the most important one. In general the 
 progress of language and that of intellect are so nearly con- 
 current, that the one may be taken as the measure of the 
 other. Lan^uao'e nas been called the vesture of thouGfht; it 
 might more properly be called the body, of which thought is 
 the soul. They grow together and exercise a reciprocal in- 
 fluence. If we closely watch the processes of our own minds, 
 we shall find that we think in words; indeed we cannot car- 
 
110 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 ry on a train of thought without them. We often hear it 
 said that such a man has good ideas, but has not words to ex- 
 press them. May we not reverse the statement, and say that 
 man does not think clearly on any given subject, because he 
 has not words to fix the fugitive thought in the memory until 
 the whole matter has passed under review. Poverty of lan- 
 guage is usually connected with poverty of intellect, and the 
 connection is such that it is difficult to say, in any given case, 
 which is the cause, and which the effect. To enrich the lan- 
 guage of men is to enlarge their range of ideas. 
 
 Very few words will suffice for the desires and conceptions 
 of ignorant barbarians. But as men advance in knowledge 
 and refinement, new terms must be found for philosophical 
 abstractions, for nice shades of discrimination, for the end- 
 less variety of new objects and principles, which are perpet- 
 ually disclosed by a widening range of intellectual excur- 
 sions. It is obvious that if men are compelled to invent the 
 terms necessary for these purposes, it must be long before 
 the first of those arbitrary signs of ideas would be sanction- 
 ed by usage so as to convey a generally recognized mean- 
 ing. The progress of knowledge under such circumstances 
 must be extremely slow. The difficulty of grafting the ex- 
 pressions of new ideas upon the meagre dialect of barbar- 
 ians, would of course diminish with the progress of the lan- 
 guage, as every word agreed upon, and brought into gen- 
 eral use would facilitate the adoption of new coinages, yet it 
 would greatly retard, if it did not prove an insurmountable 
 obstacle to intellectual improvement. 
 
 Happily modern literature was under no necessity of in- 
 venting a language. The Romans had imposed not only 
 their laws, but their language upon the conquered provinces. 
 Every where the Latin became the language of civil and 
 ecclesiastical proceedings, of learned men, and of the most 
 cultivated classes of society. The vernacular of Italy, in 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. Ill 
 
 those parts of Gaul nearest to Italy, it almost entirely sup- 
 planted the native dialects. After the ancient writings had 
 found shelter in the monasteries from the ravages of the north- 
 ern invaders, there was no longer at hand the means of preserv- 
 ing the purity of the language, by correcting the errors of pro- 
 vincial pronunciation. From the absence of a common stan- 
 dard, the words came at length to be written as they were 
 pronounced in each country respectively, and thus the Latin 
 was more or less corrupted even in Italy. But with all its 
 corruptions, here was a language fit for the purposes of liter- 
 ature and philosophy, ready to be engrafted upon the rude 
 dialects of the German and Gothic conquerors. From these 
 two sources have sprung the most copious and beautiful of 
 the modern languages. Of these, the Italian and the Lange 
 D'Oc spoken in those parts of France nearest to Italy, had 
 the least admixture of German idioms. They rapidly im- 
 proved; for being originally best suited to the purposes of 
 awakening mind, they received the first contributions from the 
 reviving literature of modern Europe, — a literature which 
 combined the spirit of classic antiquity and the refined sen- 
 sualism of oriental poetry, borrowed from the Arabian con- 
 querors of Spain, with the mighty passions and gigantic but 
 gloomy conceptions nurtured in the mysterious depths of 
 the German forests, the moral ideas of Christianity and the 
 romantic enthusiasm of chivalry. 
 
 In accordance with what I have said above of the mutual 
 relations and concurrent progress of language and intellect, 
 we find that Italy, and those parts of France in which the 
 Lange D' Oc was spoken, became the seats of the first great 
 revival of letters. England, Germany and the north of 
 France had scarcely begun to emerge from the long night of 
 ignorance, when Dante embodied in his great poem the su- 
 perstitions, the moral feelings and the poetical passions of 
 his age and country ; when the Troubadours were singing 
 
112 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 in bower and hall their lays of love ; when Petrarch, the 
 morning star of modern literature, made his triumphal pro- 
 gress through Italy, to be crowned on the Capitoline hill with 
 a chaplet more glorious than had ever decorated the brow 
 of any of those mighty warriors, who had climbed the same 
 steep followed by captive monarchs and the spoils of nations. 
 
 The English, which, though largely indebted to the Latin, 
 has never, I believe, been classed among the Romance lan- 
 guages, was, during the middle ages, with the single excep- 
 tion of the native German, the rudest of all the dialects of 
 the western nations. Yet for it has been reserved a destiny 
 far more glorious than for any of the others. It is the lan- 
 guage of the greatest dramatist, the greatest epic poet, the 
 greatest philosopher, the greatest mathematician, the great- 
 est constitutional monarchy and the greatest republic that 
 the world ever saw. It is rapidly spreading over the globe, 
 and seems destined to redeem, in a great measure, the con- 
 fusion of Babel. In less than a century the literature of the 
 English language may reach without translation nearly one- 
 half of the human family. What an immense rent does this 
 fact make in the mysterious veil of futurity! 
 
 After the revival of literature had thoroughly awakened 
 the intellect of the modern world, and stimulated every spe- 
 cies of inquiry, the first draughts from the unsealed fountains 
 of knowledge seemed to produce a kind of intoxication. In 
 all ages the love of knowledge is an unquenchable passion 
 of the human soul, destined perhaps to survive all other pas- 
 sions. But nothing in recent times can help us to form a 
 conception of the ardent spirit of discipleship, the enthusias- 
 tic reverence for wisdom and learning, which, after the revi- 
 val of letters and the establishment of the universities, drew 
 around the celebrated teachers throngs of eager and devoted 
 students. Thousands nocked from every part of Europe in 
 the thirteenth century to hear the new lectures on the Roman 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 113 
 
 law in the university of Bologna, and the knowledge acquir- 
 ed there contributed greatly to the improvement of jurispru- 
 dence in their respective countries. When Abelard, who is 
 regarded by some, and perhaps justly, as the first in point of 
 time, of the great original thinkers of modern Europe, retired 
 from the university of Paris to a remote solitude, thousands 
 would not be hindered from following him, and the savage 
 wilderness that surrounded the monastery of the Paraclete, 
 became an academic grove. In the fourteenth century there 
 were no less than thirty thousand students at the university 
 of Oxford. 
 
 Some modern lights of the world have thought proper to 
 sneer at the literary enthusiasm of those times, because, in 
 'their opinion, the pursuits of this multitude of students were 
 unprofitable. Of the scholastic philosophy especially, which, 
 in the absence of a correct knowledge of the limits of scien- 
 tific research, furnished the chief occupation of the newly 
 awakened intellect of the modern world, much has been 
 written, as it seems to me, with very little judgment or dis- 
 crimination. It is the natural order of things, that the era of 
 'enlightened inductions should have been preceded by endless 
 discussions of those deep questions, which regard the nature 
 of man and the purposes of his being, his relations to the 
 supernal powers, the freedom of the will and the origin of 
 'evil, which, as they admit of no satisfactory solution in the 
 present state of being, must return upon each successive 
 generation in all their original perplexity. An undying in- 
 terest in those deep matters, chastened by an experimental 
 acquaintance with the limits of human knowledge in the 
 present state of being, lies at the bottom of every philosophic 
 mind. If some of the questions of the schoolmen appear to 
 us very puerile, we must recollect that the human mind had 
 but fairly waked up from the slumber of ages. 
 
 Of what use, it may be asked, are inquiries that can yield 
 10 
 
114 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 no certain results 1 The question betrays very narrow views 
 of the objects of intellectual culture. Science has made 
 many contributions to wealth, comfort and luxury, but after 
 all, the utility of knowledge, using the term in the sense of 
 conduciveness to the physical well-being of man, should not 
 cause us to lose sight of the development of the mental and 
 moral faculties themselves. An expansive mind will despise 
 no species of research, which lifts the soul above the paltry 
 concerns and debasing perturbations of earth-born selfish- 
 ness, and sends it abroad into wide and lofty regions, where, 
 notwithstanding it may gather no fruits that can be either 
 counted or weighed, its powers are exercised in wrestling 
 with those mysteries of being, which people the shadowy 
 realms of metaphysical speculation. The scholastic philoso- 
 phy was a sort of intellectual gymnastics, which, in the child- 
 hood of science, might accustom the mind to the exercise of 
 its own powers, and thus prepare the way for the inductive 
 system of Bacon, who, with all his broad candor, was proba- 
 bly not fully aware of the extent of his obligations to those 
 very men whose authority he demolished forever. The half- 
 enlightened labors of one age become b. part of the culture 
 of the next ; the thoughts of each sect or party unconsciously 
 blend with the mental processes of their opponents. Were 
 disputants aware how much they owe their antagonists, dis- 
 cussion, instead of paying mutual debts with mutual abuse, 
 would be a friendly and sympathetic emulation in the search 
 after truth. 
 
 I have said that the labors of the schoolmen prepared the 
 way for the inductive philosophy. The young mind, in the 
 first overflowing activity of its new-found faculties, questions 
 everything in heaven and earth, but soon finds that he is per- 
 plexing himself with inquiries, that lie without the limit3 of 
 human knowledge in the present state of being, and finally 
 sits down to the humble but more productive business of in- 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 115 
 
 duction. But in the meantime he has prepared himself for 
 this task by close thinking and keen discrimination. 
 
 A mind, not already accustomed to subtle analysis, to deal- 
 ing with general principles, is not likely to institute a series 
 of observations, or to conduct them in such a manner as to 
 make any important discoveries. Phenomena pass unheeded 
 before the eyes of the uncultivated, which afford to the phi- 
 losopher ample scope for his disciplined powers of research. 
 We often hear it said that most discoveries have been due to 
 accident, but the same accident may have happened a thou- 
 sand times without producing any such result, because the 
 right sort of mind was not present to improve it. Millions 
 of apples had fallen, before that trivial circumstance became 
 to the disciplined mind of a Newton, the first link of a chain 
 which encircled the universe. The labors of a forgotten 
 multitude of assiduous inquirers had contributed to form that 
 stupendous intellect, which could deduce, from the common- 
 est facts, the general laws of Nature. The ever-rising surges 
 of the mysterious tide of spiritual force, of which the scholas- 
 tic philosophy had been one of the greatest tributaries, had 
 borne him to a point, from which his eye could sweep the 
 empire of the Almighty. 
 
 We must not suppose that intellectual activity during the 
 latter portion of the middle ages, was restricted to metaphyseal 
 speculation and the classic study of antiquity. When once the 
 human mind has been thoroughly awakened to a conscious- 
 ness of its own powers, it cannot be confined to any prescrib- 
 ed channel. While the schoolmen were discussing their 
 nominalism and realism, and the new study of the Greek 
 literature was dividing the universities into Greeks and Tro- 
 jans, who fought their wordy battles with almost as much 
 animosity, as the heroes of the Iliad had shown in more dead- 
 ly encounters, there were not wanting bold original thinkers, 
 who turned their attention to more productive investigations. 
 
116 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 The fifteenth century was signalized by many great discove- 
 ries and inventions. There were men of genius who prac- 
 tised those principles of induction, which Lord Bacon, who 
 may be called the Blackstone of the laws of research, after- 
 wards digested into a beautiful system. 
 
 The scholastic philosophy prepared the way for the refor- 
 mation. It is true that even the boldest of the schoolmen, 
 by a dexterous use of terms, contrived to keep within the pale 
 of orthodoxy, yet anything which sets men to thinking is 
 dangerous to established abuses. He who puts the minds of 
 others upon a new track, must not expect them to stop pre- 
 cisely where he does. He has applied a spark to an infinitely 
 expansive power, and he cannot confine it within the same 
 limits that he choses to impose upon himself. Nor was the 
 church by any means so hostile to investigation as many have 
 supposed. It was not until the success of the great revolt had 
 shown the Pope and his clergy how the spirit of inquiry endan- 
 gered their own power, that they began to discourage it. In the 
 careless confidence of undisputed supremacy, they connived 
 at a freedom and boldness, which they afterwards learned to 
 dread as their most formidable foes. 
 
 The lono: twilight of intellect had melted into morn, and 
 the glorious sun of modern illumination was gilding the 
 mountain tops, when Luther sounded his bugle in the forests 
 of Germany, to give notice of a grand bishop hunt, and from 
 hill and valley, from city and hamlet, a stalwart army sprang 
 up at the inspiring summons, for which they had long been 
 waiting, and the champions of the church woke up from the 
 lethargy that had well nigh been fatal, and marshalled their 
 Jesuit host, and that world-battle commenced, which must go 
 on until authority and freedom shall have fixed their respec- 
 tive limits and once more embraced each other. This mighty 
 struggle demands a separate discourse altogether to itself. 
 
 In this brief sketch of the progress of society during the 
 
NIGHT AND MORNING. 117 
 
 middle ages, I have nowhere attempted to fix the era of the 
 beginning of improvement, for the best of all reasons, that it 
 is utterly impossible to do so. As well might we attempt to 
 define the boundary between light and darkness. We may 
 say here is light and there is darkness, but between the two 
 points which we select, there is a neutral ground, where they 
 contend for existence. The principles of moral life at work 
 in the heart of society, require long periods to show any 
 distinct results upon the surface, and though, if we compare 
 two ages widely separated, we perceive that immense changes 
 have taken place, the intermediate points of transition 
 may be absolutely imperceptible. 
 
 The student of history cannot fail to observe upon what a 
 sublime scale, both as to time and the number of agents em- 
 ployed, the plans of Providence are conducted. In that 
 mighty warfare with ignorance, sin and misery, which makes 
 up the history of our race, a thousand years are as one day. 
 Ages on ages roll away, and millions on millions fall in the 
 breach to achieve a single conquest from the dark domains of 
 the enemy of mankind. The net product of the labors of 
 many of the greatest intellects of the race, toiling in poverty, 
 neglect and misery, may be mastered by a child in a few 
 hours. 
 
 It is true of society as well as of the individual, that man 
 is ever in pursuit of an ideal which is ever flying before him. 
 His lot upon earth is an unceasing warfare with those strange 
 elements of physical and moral evil, which not only lie in 
 ambush on every side, but have taken up their quarters in 
 his own mortal frame ; or a weary chase of the coy goddess 
 Truth, whose celestial beauty shines into the heart of her 
 votary, and gives him, amid the general gloom and restless- 
 ness of his mortal pilgrimage, some moments of deep joy 
 and transporting anticipation, but whose form forever eludes 
 his eager embrace. The whole progress of society is the 
 
118 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 perpetual pursuit of what perhaps can never be reached in 
 the present state of being. 
 
 The tender germ, which in summer is to expand into a 
 beautiful flower, and in autumn mature into a wholesome 
 fruit, is at first wrapped up in fold after fold, the outermost of 
 which is roughest and most capable of withstanding the 
 storms of early spring. As the germ and its inner coats ex- 
 pand, one wrappage after another bursts open and falls off 
 when its purposes have been completed. 
 
 This process of nature may furnish us with an illustration 
 of the progress of modern society. The world-shadowing 
 tree of Roman civilization was rudely torn and riven by the 
 northern tempest. But its roots deeply interlaced the soil, 
 and ere long, cherished by the genial warmth of religion, they 
 began to sprout again and grow up into strong and hardy 
 plants, and the germs of the new refinement were protected 
 from the storms of those early ages, by a variety of institu- 
 tions evolved by the successive stages of social development. 
 The rough outer rind of the feudal system and the inner 
 coats of monarchy, chartered franchises and papal supremacy 
 grew together, and through them all protruded the hardy but 
 beautiful flower of chivalry, which, when it decayed, was 
 found to have enclosed the delicate bloom of honor, courtesy 
 and social refinement. When their purposes had been ac- 
 complished, so far as we can see, feudality, hereditary mon- 
 archy and the papal power not only clung to the parent stem, 
 but grown rigid by time, began to bruise and check the growth 
 of that, which they were designed to protect, until they were 
 burst open by the great revolutions to which we must now 
 turn our attention. The first breach was made in the papal 
 authority which pressed most directly upon expanding mind. 
 
III. 
 
 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM 
 
 AND THE 
 
 REFORMATION. 
 
SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM 
 
 AND THE 
 
 REFORMATION. 
 
 It may be thought by some that I have ascribed to Christ- 
 ianity too large a share in modern civilization. So far from 
 this being true, I doubt whether we can do more than ap- 
 proach a just conception of the stupendous importance of 
 that agency. The intangible nature of its moral power must 
 forever cause the actual sphere of its operations to elude the 
 grasp of our faculties. It works silently in the great deep 
 of spiritual being, and only by its effects can its power be 
 known. And those effects may sometimes be so modified by 
 other causes, as to give some show of reason for excluding 
 Christianity altogether. Yet I am satisfied, that if we knew 
 all, which the hopes and fears of religion have done to origin- 
 ate or strengthen good resolutions, to confirm the wavering, 
 to tame the ferocity and restrain the passions of men ; could 
 we unveil the secrets of the millions of hearts, which have 
 been exalted and purified by the moral ideal delineated in the 
 gospel history ; could we, in short, follow the impalpable 
 power of religion through all the generations that have 
 lived and died since the first promulgation of Christianity, 
 our minds would be overwhelmed by the import and majesty 
 of an historical fact, in comparison with which all other facts 
 are insignificant. 
 
 It would help us to form a just conception of the import- 
 ance of religion as an element of social organization, if we 
 could find in all history a single example of a society, in 
 11 
 
122 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 which all ideas of God and of future retribution had been 
 thoroughly eradicated from the minds of men. A theory 
 of morality, founded exclusively on considerations drawn 
 from the present state of existence, has never been fairly 
 tested, and we are therefore reduced to the necessity of in- 
 quiring not what have been, but what would probably be its 
 effects. 
 
 This fact of itself would seem to be a sufficient proof of 
 the necessity of religion. Societies, as well as individuals, 
 have a strange instinct of self-preservation, and know pretty 
 well what is necessary for that purpose. The common sense 
 of mankind, after all, is a much surer guide than eccentric 
 philosophers are willing to admit. The fate of all systems 
 that have warred with that common sense, from the follies of 
 the Anabaptists to the socialism of Owen, shows the impo- 
 tence of the human mind, when, not content with guiding or 
 regulating the social tendencies, it strikes at the vital princi- 
 ples of the social organization. 
 
 Though we may rest contented with the irreversible ver- 
 dict, which history and the common sense of mankind have 
 pronounced in favor of religion, the philosophical grounds of 
 that verdict are an interesting subject of inquiry. An import- 
 ant part of the business of philosophy is to find reason for 
 believing what the mass believe without reason. The popu- 
 lar opinions, narrow and disjointed as they are in the com- 
 mon mind, appear to the philosopher under new aspects, 
 lead him into wide provinces of thought, and by means of 
 the relations which he alone can discern, coalesce into a 
 beautiful and harmonious system, worthy of the Author of 
 all truth. 
 
 Let us first take a purely practical view of this subject, 
 Tell a man of strong passions, and without strong passions 
 no individual and no people can be good for much, that if he 
 denies himself some present gratification, the sum of his hap- 
 
THE REFORMATION. 123 
 
 piness may be ultimately greater, having regard to the 
 present existence alone. He has a very short and we think 
 a conclusive answer to all such reasoning. He looks round 
 him and sees men who have taken the moralist's advice, suf- 
 fering from all the ills that flesh is heir to, and sinking per- 
 haps into an untimely grave, while the sensualist, who econ- 
 omises his resources of vicious enjoyment with any degree 
 of prudence, lives in a perpetual sunshine of sound digestion 
 and buoyant animal spirits. He sees that what is called hap- 
 piness, if there be no hereafter, depends much less upon the 
 state of the conscience than the state of the stomach, and that 
 justice and goodness have much less to do with success in 
 this world than energy and sagacity, much less than even 
 vulgar skill in driving bargains. It is useless to disguise the 
 fact that the worldly prosperity of men is not in proportion 
 to their virtue, but is chiefly to be ascribed to shrewdness 
 and good fortune. Under these circumstances, your hopeful 
 pupil concludes that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, 
 and declines to forego present enjoyment for the sake of 
 some future and doubtful advantage. 
 
 As to virtue being its own reward, we should reflect that 
 the better a man becomes, the worse he seems to himself, 
 because the very process of purification sharpens the moral 
 sensibilities. Whenever one feels particularly complacent in 
 the contemplation of his own goodness, he may be very sure 
 that he is not only making no progress in virtue, but is very 
 decidedly on the downward road. It was the greatest moral 
 hero that ever lived who exclaimed in the bitterness of his 
 soul, "Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death]" 
 
 The moralist may next appeal to his pupil's generous sen- 
 timents, and exhort him to sacrifice his own gratification to 
 the general good. But no one who knows human nature, 
 would expect in this way to produce any effect upon the 
 
124 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 mass of mankind. They are selfish beings, and their own 
 interest must be made to coincide with that of society. — 
 Your argument that the observance of those laws which con- 
 duce to the general welfare, may increase the share of each 
 in the aggregate of social happiness, is altogether too circu- 
 itous to afford a motive strong enough to resist the impulse 
 of a present passion. Besides, your argument moves in too 
 elevated a region for the creature of a day, a mere compound 
 of albumen, lime, phosphorus, and other material ele- 
 ments, whose existence must terminate with the dissolution 
 of those elements. Talk of heroic virtue, of self-denial to a 
 creature, who has nothing to hope or fear after his Utile life 
 on earth has been snuffed out ! He would laugh at your 
 fine spun casuistry and endless speculations about the 
 general good, and seek his own good by wringing fvom his 
 fleeting and worthless existence every drop of nectar which 
 it could afford. His fierce passions are craving the delicious 
 fruit that is almost within his grasp, when the moralist comes 
 and tells him to deny himself and pursue his real good through 
 a narrow, stony and circuitous path, which, for all he knows, 
 may lead him into swamps and deserts, instead of those gar- 
 dens of pleasure which were promised him. Why should a 
 creature who must perish like the beast, care about society 
 and posterity, or forego a present gratification at the bidding 
 of justice, truth or principle % No human institutions could 
 preserve society from utter extinction, unless fortified by a 
 sense of duty founded upon the law of God, and enforced by 
 the sanctions of a future life. 
 
 There is another view of the subject which we may notice. 
 One's aspirations and attainments are usually on a level with 
 his views of his own nature and destiny. He who is thor- 
 oughly persuaded that he is a mere compound of material 
 elements, destined to return in a short time to its original 
 nothingness, is not likely to strive after any higher objects, 
 
THE REFORMATION. 125 
 
 than those which minister to the wants of his animal nature. 
 All great thoughts and lofty aspirations claim kindred with 
 infinity. 
 
 A Newton could be happy in picking up shells on the 
 shore of the ocean of truth, because he believed that one day 
 he should launch into the great deep itself, and spend an eter- 
 nity in exploring its mighty secrets. The sage who spends 
 a lifetime in the pursuit of knowledge, can only hope to pass 
 the threshold of the star paved temple of immensity, where 
 the mysteries of being dwell in the shadowy recesses of 
 boundless halls and endless corridors. Convince him that 
 when his eyes should close in death, they would open no 
 more upon this wondrous universe, and the ghastly thought 
 would quench forever his lofty aspirations, for who would 
 give the sap of his existence to feed those lights of mind 
 which mus tgo out in everlasting night ] If it be said that some 
 who have professed this dismal creed have been ardent in the 
 pursuit of knowledge, I answer that so deeply is the common 
 belief implanted in the human soul, that some fibres of it will 
 survive the most assiduous weeding of sceptical philosophy. 
 Men often unconsciously act upon principles, which in theory 
 they discard. How much of their zeal is due to the love of 
 truth, and how much to selfish motives, it is impossible to deter- 
 mine. It must not be forgotten that the Atheist philosophers 
 lived in times, when knowledge had become reputable, and a 
 source of wealth and rank in society. The martyrs of 
 science, who, in poverty and neglect or persecution, conquer- 
 ed from the realms of darkness those fair provinces where a 
 Diderot and D'Alembert dwelt in gentlemanly ease and 
 safety, were all Christians or at least believers. 
 
 Take away the hope of immortality, and this life is indeed, 
 in comparison with the capacities of man, a poor and paltry 
 concern, only worthy of that light mockery, which is so fatal 
 to all great and generous emotions. While the coarse would 
 
126 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 plunge into gross sensuality, the more refined voluptuary 
 would seek to disguise the littleness of his worthless existence 
 with graceful and elegant pleasures ; but it would be vain to 
 expect of him any noble enthusiasm for truth and virtue, not 
 to speak of those lofty exhibitions of moral heroism, which 
 have sometimes saved a nation or the race, and shed a never- 
 dying glory over ages of belief. Like Voltaire, believing 
 himself to have been created in sport, he makes up his mind 
 to carry on the joke and join in the laughter, that the super- 
 nal powers may not have all the fun to themselves, while he 
 admits none of those emotions which can only disturb his 
 epicurean serenity. 
 
 Let us suppose that in some great moment, there flashes 
 ujdoii him with resistless force the soul-stirring thought that 
 there is a spark of Deity within him, which, instead of per- 
 ishing with the dissolution of matter, may draw from it the 
 sustenance of an eternal growth ; that he is an object of in- 
 terest to higher intelligences, even to the Father of the 
 Universe himself ; that every thought, word or deed, is a seed 
 borne down by the stream of time to fructify for weal or woe 
 to all eternity ; what a vast revolution must take place in his 
 feelings and purposes ! The Divine voice reverberates 
 through every recess of his mysterious nature, calling up 
 deep thoughts and infinite emotions. 
 
 It may be said that natural religion is sufficient for all the 
 purposes which I have endeavored to point out. How hap- 
 pened it then, that in the most cultivated nations of antiquity, 
 a pure system of natural religion was confined to the schools 
 of the philosophers, and was absolutely powerless to correct 
 the absurd superstitions and abominable vices of the multi- 
 tude 1 How happened it that the empire of spiritual dark- 
 ness, which had defied the assaults of philosophy, gave way 
 before the humble men who planted the Cross upon the ruins 
 of the Pantheon, and transferred the sovereignty of the moral 
 
THE REFORMATION. 127 
 
 world from the cloudy Olympus to the bloodstained Calvary ] 
 How happens it, that the most ignorant man in a Christian 
 land is familiar, from childhood, with the subjects of the 
 secret and profound speculations of a Thales and a Plato, 
 and has a warm and vivid apprehension of their living reality, 
 which those philosophers never knew 1 Why is it, in short 
 that philosophy never has, and never will, supply the place 
 of the Christian religion among the mass of mankind] 
 
 The abstract essence of the Supreme Intelligence, is too 
 remote, too indefinite, to affect us strongly. A substance 
 which is invisible, intangible, and beyond the reach of our 
 senses and our imaginations, may be recognized by the mind, 
 but cannot touch the heart, except by embodying itself in mate- 
 rial forms. No one can feel either love or reverence for the 
 Supreme Being, without associating him with some one or 
 more of his material manifestations. But if nature is the 
 body of God, and the sun, the stars and all the beautiful or 
 the sublime objects of the physical world, are, as it wei*e, the 
 organs, by means of which he places himself in communica- 
 tion with the human soul, they give us no definite informa- 
 tion as to his relations to us in particular. There is a 
 tendency implanted in human nature for high purposes, to 
 form a still closer bond of connection with the Divinity, to 
 bring Him still nearer home to our own conceptions and our 
 sympathies, to seek a divine brotherhood and supernatural 
 embodiment of our own existence and destinies. As good 
 and evil originate in precisely the same properties of our 
 nature, according to the relative degree or objects of their 
 activity, Christianity laid hold of the very principle, which, 
 misguided, had been the source of idolatry, and solved that 
 problem which had been always too hard for philosophy, of 
 reconciling the accuracy of metaphysical abstraction with the 
 warm glow of human sympathy. And herein lies its power ; 
 the God-man living, sorrowing, bleeding, dying, and rising 
 
128 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 from the dead, as the second Adam of a spiritual posterity. 
 Christianity is Philosojrfiy turned into Poetry. Hence the 
 Divinity of our Saviour holds the first place among the 
 Christian doctrines, for without it, Christianity is not a reli- 
 gion, but a philosophy just as inefficient, on a large scale, as 
 any of the systems that preceded it, or have endeavored to 
 supplant it. 
 
 The enlightened sceptic will acknowledge that the striking 
 and stupendous facts in the history of Christianity demand 
 the profoundest consideration of the philosophic mind. It 
 cannot be denied with any shadow of plausibility, that for 
 good or for evil it has been the soul of modern society. It 
 is the electric chain descending from above, which has con- 
 nected and given efficiency to most of the secondary causes 
 of social improvement. What branch of physical science 
 can compare in interest and importance with the phenomena 
 of this spiritual electricity as manifested in history. Even if 
 we should never attain to happy freedom from doubt as to 
 the Divine authority of the Christian religion, or from per- 
 plexity as to some of its characteristics in its state of original 
 purity, the very inquiry itself, if conducted in a proper spirit, 
 cannot fail to have good effects, for earnest meditation upon 
 such subjects expands and elevates the soul. This indirect 
 influence of inquiry in countries where freedom of thought 
 is encouraged, has been too much overlooked. It makes 
 the great difference between Protestant and Catholic nations, 
 and the incontestable superiority of the former. The linger- 
 ing scepticism of deep and earnest natures, the dark struggle 
 which goes on in many souls between cold reason and the 
 faith of love, and keeps the subject perpetually before the 
 mind, is better than the stolid certainty of uninquiring bigots, 
 or the thoughtless acquiescence of worldly men, who, adopting 
 the creed which they have been taught, never trouble them- 
 selves about the matter, until frightened by the approach ol 
 death. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 129 
 
 The great point is the preservation in the soul of a deep 
 and undying interest in the great facts of the Gospel history, 
 A recognition of those facts as the foundation of hope and 
 the inspiration of love, seems to have constituted the simple" 
 creed of the first Christians. There is no doubt that greater 
 freedom of opinion, upon speculative points, was allowed in* 
 the primitive church than is now permitted by any powerful 
 sect in Christendom. An increase of the spirit of dogmatism 
 always marks the decay of the religion of love, and those who 
 are most zealous for the symbolism, are often most careless 
 about the substance of Christianity. 
 
 I have already had occasion to intimate, that even before 
 Christianity had become the state religion of Rome, the suc- 
 cinct yet comprehensive creed of the first believers had been 
 expanded by councils and philosophic theologians into a 
 system of dogmas, while the simple form of church govern- 
 ment, in which the college of presbyters was presided over 
 by one of their own number, who, without any superiority 
 of rank to his brethren, exercised a general supervision, 
 became the nucleus of an hierarchical condition, which was 
 gradually brought to correspond almost exactly with the 
 order of the civil state. The bishops of the smaller cities 
 gradually extended their jurisdiction over the neighboring 
 districts ; over these provincial bishops rose, in like manner, 
 the great sees of Alexandria and Antioch ; and finally to crown 
 the regular ascent of ecclesiastical dignity, which correspond- 
 ed with that of the civil authority to the bishop of Rome, 
 the capital of the empire was conceded a preeminence of 
 rank, rather than of real power. Thus the civil superiority 
 of Rome in a church, united with the state, and modeled by 
 it, became the foundation of that extraordinary power which 
 made the " eternal city" the seat of a new empire, mightier 
 and more enduring than that which had been overthrown by 
 the northern invaders ; resting not upon force, but opinion, 
 
130 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 and propagated by weapons more potent than steel, though 
 drawn from an invisible armory. 
 
 It is a difficult task to trace with candor and discernment 
 the steps by which the bishops of Rome ascended to that 
 height of power, from which, without any military force that 
 deserved the name, they controlled not only the affairs of the 
 church, but the policy of nations, trampled upon the necks 
 of kings, united hostile armies under the banner of the Cross, 
 and turned the rage which they were about to vent upon 
 each other, against the enemies of religion and the Holy See. 
 It is one of the most signal triumphs of mind over physical 
 force, perhaps the most remarkable, that is to be found in 
 the history of mankind. 
 
 The northern barbarians easily became accustomed to the 
 pi'eeminence of the Roman See, for most of them were con- 
 verted, while the departing majesty of the empire still linger- 
 ed upon the temples and palaces of the "eternal city." 
 While the Greeks, in a great measure, transferred their spir- 
 itual as well as temporal allegiance to the new- capitol, which 
 Constantine had founded upon the Bosphorus, Rome contin- 
 ued to be the centre of the western church, and her pontiff, 
 throned upon the venerable remains of ancient grandeur, 
 strengthened their hold upon the reverence of an ignorant and 
 superstitious people, exercised a general supervision in spir- 
 itual matters, sounded the alarm at the approach of heresy or 
 schism, and perhaps had a right to preside, in person or by 
 proxy, over the councils which were held from time to time to 
 settle disputed points of faith or discipline. To this extent the 
 papal supremacy is just as well founded as either the metro- 
 politan or diocesan episcopacy. Neither formed any part of 
 the original constitution of the apostolic age, which, as I have 
 said, was a model of democratic equality, and if changes 
 might be lawfully made in that constitution to meet the exi- 
 gencies of the times, as many and as strong arguments might 
 
THE REFORMATION. 131 
 
 have been urged in favor of the supremacy of Rome, as in 
 favor of any lower degrees of episcopal jurisdiction. In a 
 very advanced state of society, both are equally useless; but 
 it is only among an enlightened people that a very large 
 share of political or religious liberty is compatible with civil 
 order and moral government. If, in rude and ignorant ages, 
 a very strong ecclesiastical organization was necessary to 
 preserve the moral power of religion, that organization would 
 have been very defective without a central authority to form 
 a bond of union as well as a salutary check upon the spiritual 
 despots, who lorded it over God's heritage. 
 
 The bishops of Rome, not content with the moral weight 
 which they derived from their superior dignity and the vene- 
 ration of the Christian world, aspired to the absolute sov- 
 ereignty in church and state. Before noticing the steps by 
 which the Roman pontiffs partially succeeded in converting 
 the western world into a vast theocracy, in which they were 
 the vicegerents of God, I will remark, that the historical facts, 
 connected with the great schism between the eastern and 
 western churches, are fatal to the exclusive pretensions of the 
 Latin church and its head, to apostolic succession and spirit- 
 ual authority. That separation grew out of the conflicting 
 claims of Rome and Constantinople. The Greeks well 
 knew, that the preeminence of the Roman bishops was owing 
 solely to the political preeminence of Rome during the form- 
 ation of the hierarchical constitution, and they plausibly 
 argued that, in a church united with the state, the spiritual 
 supremacy ought to follow the political sovereignty. At the 
 time of the schism, the great river of apostolic succession and 
 authority just parted into two equal streams, and by what 
 right the Latin branch has ever since claimed to be the whole 
 river, we are at a loss to know. The western nations adher- 
 ed to the patriarch of the old capitol, partly from habit and 
 because it was in their midst, partly from hostility to the 
 
132 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 eastern empire ; and yet the Latin church to this clay claims 
 the right to dictate the faith of mankind and anathematize 
 the Greek church as heretical and schismatical. With equal 
 justice the latter retorts the anathema, while the liberal prot- 
 estant looks on with a smile. 
 
 Let us return to the means by which the papal court par- 
 tially succeeded in establishing a theocracy in the western 
 nations. The first step was to break down the national and 
 provincial independence of the clergy. In their efforts to do 
 this, the Roman pontiffs encountered a spirited resistance. 
 The struggle was similar to that between the crown and the 
 feudal barons, and in both cases the central authority tri- 
 umphed, partly by the unity of its counsels and the concentra- 
 tion of its energies, partly by a concurrence of fortunate circum- 
 stances. In the fermentation of conflicting elements that mark- 
 ed the incipient stage of civil and ecclesiastical organization, 
 the limits of power were undefined and fluctuating; encroach- 
 ments were easily converted into precedents. From such 
 struggles the power which is lodged in a single person is al- 
 most sure to come out victorious. 
 
 It became a custom with such of the clergy as had either 
 real or imaginary grievances to complain of from their imme- 
 diate superiors or from the national synods, to call in the aid 
 of the Pope, which at first, given only in the way of advice 
 or counsel, gradually ripened into the appellate jurisdiction 
 of the Roman See. 
 
 While the national clergy were resisting the usurpations 
 of the Pope, they were also engaged in disputes with the 
 civil power in their respective states. While civil rulers in 
 all parts of Europe claimed and exercised the rights of con- 
 voking councils and nominating bishops, on the other hand 
 the clergy, almost monopolizing the learning of those rude 
 ages, thought that their superior qualifications, and the inter- 
 ests both of church and state, authorized them to take a large 
 
THE REFORMATION. 133 
 
 share of political authority, and the love of power; so natural 
 to the human heart, induced them to take advantage of weak 
 reigns or the dissensions of a superstitious people, to arrogate 
 to themselves the absolute control of civil affairs, even to the 
 extent of deposing and electing kings. Thus warring at 
 once with the secular authority, and with the spiritual supre- 
 macy of Rome, they soon found it necessary to make peace 
 with one or the other, and they preferred subjection to a 
 chief of their own order, to an humiliating acknowledgment 
 of the superiority of laymen. No one who has read with 
 attention the history of the famous contest between Thomas 
 a Becket and Henry the Second, can be at a loss to under- 
 stand the motives, which brought the clergy to acknowledge 
 the supremacy of Rome. With a strong leaning towards 
 the papacy, because it was their best ally against the secular 
 authority, they were not very rigid in their scrutiny of that 
 body of pretended canon law, commonly known as the false 
 decretals, in which forged precedents for all the encroach- 
 ments of Rome were dated back into the earliest ages of the 
 church. It is a singular but incontestable fact, that the vast 
 fabric of papal power rests in part upon one of the most au- 
 dacious and clumsy impostures in the history of mankind. 
 
 I desire to do no injustice. If the greater part of the 
 documentary evidence, which the Popes of the dark ages re- 
 lied upon to support their pretensions, were the forgeries of 
 Isidore; and the desire of aggrandizing their own order was 
 one of the motives which induced the clergy to make com- 
 mon cause with Rome against the civil rulers of their re- 
 spective countries; on the other hand, it should not be for- 
 gotten that they held the moral and intellectual power of 
 those barbarous times ; that they had the custody of the 
 higher elements of social improvement ; that they were the 
 allies of learning, morals and peaceful industry ; that it re- 
 quired no very great sagacity to perceive, that in order to 
 
134 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 preserve their salutary influence over the minds of licentious 
 barbarians, it was necessary to present an undivided front 
 under a single chief. In their long warfare with ferocious 
 animalism, the spiritual army needed a commander-in-chief, 
 and who would be so readily thought of for that high office, 
 as the bishop of Rome, already enthroned in the veneration 
 of Christendom. 
 
 I have already remarked that the clergy, before they be- 
 came dependent upon the Holy See, had disputed not only the 
 ecclesiastical but temporal authority of civil rulers, and even 
 claimed the right of deposing princes, who had invaded the 
 privileges or violated the laws of the church. It was not to 
 be expected that the Pope, now placed at the head of a dis- 
 ciplined army of spiritual warriors, who filled not only the 
 churches and monasteries, but the schools and courts and 
 cabinets of Christendom, and wielded those arms most terri- 
 ble to a superstitious people, would forego any prerogative, 
 which had been claimed and exercised by his subalterns. 
 Accordingly, age after age, we find a succession of Pontiffs, 
 differing widely in mental and moral qualities, systematically 
 pursuing one great object, the subjection of the civil to the 
 spiritual power. Were they animated by mere selfish ambi- 
 tion, or did a nobler motive lie at the bottom of this undevi- 
 ating policy 1 
 
 This question would occasion little difficulty to those per- 
 sons, who value themselves upon that sort of worldly shrewd- 
 ness which never imagines a good motive, where a mean and 
 despicable one can possibly be made to account for the fact. 
 But that indiscriminating severity of judgment which is 
 founded upon a partial knowledge of human nature, that is 
 to say, of its weakness and depravity, though it sometimes 
 assumes a philosophic air of indulgent pity for that simplicity 
 which thinks no evil, is a source of quite as much fallacy and 
 injustice. It is the product of cold hearts and shallow brains. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 135 
 
 Such men, notwithstanding their knowing air and decisive 
 tone, seldom see far into anything, and they are especially 
 shallow in their judgments of men or ages, which, in spirits 
 and modes of thought, differ materially from those with which 
 they are familiar. 
 
 As the soul of man preserves the identity of his organiza- 
 tion through all the material changes which it undergoes, so 
 every social institution has a vital principle, which preserves, 
 in the succession of individuals, a chain of organic connection. 
 Whenever that principle is lost, the institution must perish, 
 though its carcass may long encumber the earth, and clog the 
 movements of society. 
 
 The vital principle of the papal power, in the early period 
 of its history, was a great and generous idea, debased, no 
 doubt, in the minds of particular pontiffs, by a mixture of 
 selfish ambition — so strangely compounded of good and evil 
 are all the powerful impulses of human nature. It is incon- 
 ceivable that a succession of Italian priests could have ac- 
 quired and preserved a moral power over the independent 
 and high-spirited people of England, France and Germany, 
 sufficient to shake the thrones of the haughtiest monarchs, 
 unless some higher purpose than merely selfish aggrandize- 
 ment could be discerned in the papal policy. What was that 
 purpose ] 
 
 I will recall the mind of the reader to the condition of 
 society, when the Popes, as the acknowledged head of the 
 ecclesiastical state, undertook to impose upon kings and no- 
 bles, the restraints of the spiritual authority. Ignorant and 
 ferocious animalism contemned art, learning and refinement. 
 Law, justice, humanity, were trampled under foot by the 
 fierce chieftains of rapacious and blood-thirsty savages, who 
 spurned all restraints but those of superstition. Peaceful in- 
 dustry was constantly exposed to wanton outrage, and bands 
 of plunderers purchased impunity by sharing their spoils 
 
136 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 with princes and nobles. Female honor and the sanctity of 
 domestic relations were violated even by their legal guardi- 
 ans. Private wars filled Europe with bloodshed and confla- 
 gration. In such a state of things, when the very magistrates 
 set the example of crimes, which it was their duty to punish, 
 it is obvious that the only hope of mankind lay in the moral 
 power of the ecclesiastics, who, though not untainted by the 
 vices of the times, were far in advance of the ruling classes 
 of the laity, both in knowledge and in regard for moral obli- 
 gations. They were the only champions of intellect and 
 morals in their warfare with physical force, who could com- 
 mand the respect and restrain the passions of the barbarians. 
 It is plain that the freedom of opinion which protestantism 
 tolerates, would have been fatal to the infancy of modern 
 civilization, for divisions in the church would have destroyed 
 her influence. It was necessary that some strong bond should 
 unite the spiritual soldiery of Christendom into an unbroken 
 phalanx, in order to resist and subdue the inundation of ig- 
 norant brutality, which had overwhelmed the ancient civiliz- 
 ation. That bond was the central authority of Rome. 
 
 If we would make any progress in the philosophy of his- 
 tory, we must be able to transport ourselves into the midst of 
 men and ages, whose spirit and modes of thought are very dif- 
 ferent from our own, and if possible view their transactions 
 in the same light, in which they appeared to open-minded 
 contemporaries. We should be guilty of gross injustice to 
 view the contest of bishops and kings in the eleventh cen- 
 tury with the eyes of Protestants and Americans. In review- 
 ing the struggle between the papal power, the chief represen- 
 tative of intellect and morals, and the secular tyrants, who 
 trampled upon justice, humanity and industry, I can see no 
 sufficient reason for taking sides with the latter, as most 
 European writers have done. We owe much it is true to 
 Alfred and Charlemagne and some of their successors, who 
 
THE REFORMATION. 137 
 
 Like them were exceptions among the princes of their time, 
 arid acted usually in concert with the church. We are liable 
 to be misled by the vague denunciations of the tyranny and 
 usurpations of the popes, that are to be found in the writ- 
 ings of men who were either in the employment, or wished 
 to obtain the favor of those princes who quarrelled with the 
 Holy See. But here and there a fact stands out from their 
 general declamation, which speaks volumes as to the true 
 nature of the conflict between the spiritual and secular pow- 
 ers. For example, it is stated, that the great Gregory the 
 Seventh, who has always been regarded as the founder of the 
 temporal dominion of the popes, as well as the most arrogant 
 and ambitious among them, with the exception perhaps of 
 Innocent III., launched his spiritual thunders at the head of 
 Philip I. of France, because that monarch had screened from 
 punishment a band of ruffians who had robbed a company of 
 merchants; the said Philip sharing no doubt the plunder of 
 his proteges. To mitigate the evils of those private wars, 
 which desolated Europe and retarded the progress of civiliza- 
 tion, the church proclaimed what was called the truce of God, 
 by which hostilities were everywhere to cease from Thursday 
 evening until Monday morning in each week, including the 
 interval between the death and resurrection of our Saviour; 
 but so strong was the appetite for blood, that the clergy were 
 only partially successful in enforcing this salutary regulation. 
 In short, I think that whosoever will candidly examine the his- 
 tory of the first half of the middle ages in reference to this 
 matter, will find that the spiritual power was generally wield- 
 ed for the preservation of order, the restraint of oppression, 
 the defence of the weak, the protection and encouragement 
 of learning and industry. 
 
 The preservation of religion itself required in ages of ig- 
 norance and licence, ecclesiastical organization, which deriv- 
 ed strength from union. Divisions would have been fatal at 
 12 
 
138 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 a time when the mass of the people were under the necessity 
 of receiving their faith from the church, for it is idle to sup- 
 pose that the scriptures could have been the rule of faith to 
 any considerable number, when, before the invention of 
 printing, a single copy of the bible was worth a small for- 
 tune, and few, besides the clergy, knew how to read. 
 
 I therefore look upon these two facts as the chief sources 
 of spiritual power, in the earlier portion of the middle ages ; 
 first, that the church was generally on the side of the people 
 against their oppressors; second, that to the mass of mankind 
 she was the only accessible repository of religious knowledge, 
 the only source upon which they could rely for guidance 
 through life, and consolation in death. The secondary means, 
 which were employed to extend and perpetuate that power, 
 are well known to all readers of history. I shall dwell upon 
 only one of them, the celibacy of the clergy. 
 
 The moral beauty of man's nature implies the subordina- 
 tion of his selfish and sensual passions to his reason and moral 
 faculties. This unquestionable truth has been perverted into a 
 notion very common among the enthusiasts of almost all relig- 
 ions, as well as some sects of philosophers, that any sensual in- 
 dulgence is so far a derogation from the true dignity of cur 
 spiritual nature. Among the early Christians, celibacy, though 
 not enjoined as a positive obligation on any class of persons, 
 was regarded as a lofty attainment of spiritual perfection, 
 and as a glorious triumph over the lower propensities. This 
 opinion gave rise to the monastic orders, whose self-denial 
 was regarded by licentious barbarians as a miraculous victory 
 over the strongest impulses of human nature. 
 
 When the austerities of the cloister were displayed before 
 the public by the mendicant friars, the churches of the par- 
 ochial clergy were deserted by the people, who flocked to 
 hear the preaching of those barefooted militia of the Holy 
 See. Their success excited the envy of the secular clergy, 
 
THE REFORMATION. 139 
 
 who were thus induced to acquiesce in a regulation, which 
 however painful and absurd, might restore to them the ven- 
 eration of their flocks. For a while it had the desired effect, 
 yet the pope and the bishops found it a difficult task to en- 
 force the universal observance of the law of clerical celibacy. 
 When finally established, for a time it produced the effects 
 which had been desired and expected ; for the superstitious 
 people beheld the marvellous austerity of the cloister dis- 
 played by the whole body of the clergy, who seemed to 
 rise above all the weakness of humanity. It also placed at 
 the disposal of the Holy See a body of men, who in the ab- 
 sence of all the cares and pleasures of domestic life, conse- 
 crated all the energies of their souls to the service of the 
 church. In the latter part of the middle ages, the practice 
 of concubinage and the dreadful corruption of morals caused 
 by the rule of celibacy, contributed greatly, by weakening 
 the hold of the ecclesiastics on the veneration of the people, 
 to prepare the way for the reformation. And here we may 
 remark, in passing, that the germs of the worst peculiarities 
 of Catholicism may be found, if not in the apostolic age 
 itself, at least in that which immediately succeeded ; and so 
 gradual has been their expansion into that full-blown luxur- 
 iance, to which the sharp pruning knives of the reformers 
 were applied, that the attempts which have been made to fix 
 their origin at certain particular times are perfectly idle. All 
 errors that have taken any lasting hold of the human mind, 
 have been formed by gradual accretions. All the abuses, as 
 well as all the blessings of social systems, have their fibres 
 running far back, until they are lost in the depths of the past. 
 I have said that the spirit of the papal policy was originally 
 great and magnanimous. That intentionally or unintention- 
 ally it did much in those early ages for the cause of civiliza- 
 tion, will not be denied. But the possessors of absolute power 
 are apt to forget the purposes for which it was acquired. We 
 
140 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 may illustrate the progress of degeneracy by the history of 
 an individual, who engages in the pursuit of gain with the 
 hope of acquiring an honest independence, and the means of 
 doing good ; but as he progresses, his nobler feelings are 
 gradually supplanted by the mere love of accumulation ; he 
 becomes more and more eager in the pursuit of wealth, long 
 after his original purposes have been accomplished ; then he 
 waxes fat and proud, forgets or tramples on the poor, whom 
 he begins to look upon as inferior beings, and seeks to out- 
 shine all his neighbors in luxury and splendor ; and finally, 
 perhaps loses all for which he had sacrificed his original sim- 
 plicity. In like manner the progress of the spiritual domin- 
 ion of Rome may be divided into several stages, which can- 
 not of course be distinguished with perfect accuracy, as well 
 on account of the fluctuations attending - a succession of men 
 
 o 
 
 of various mental and moral qualities, as because all social 
 and moral changes are so gradual that the points of transition 
 cannot be marked with precision. We may find in the first 
 period pontiffs who anticipated the degeneracy of the last, 
 while the last may show remains of the spirit and policy 
 which, in my general distribution, I have assigned to the first. 
 The general course of a stream is easily distinguished from 
 its particular windings. 
 
 I have sufficiently indicated what I believe to have been 
 the true spirit and policy of the court of Rome during the 
 first period. After the time of Innocent the Third, 
 whose extraordinary talents and energy almost realized 
 the vast and daring scheme of Hildebrand for bringing the 
 western nations under a theocratic dominion, the popes, 
 intoxicated with power, began to lose sight of the purposes 
 for which it had been originally conceded. Not only were 
 the last sparks of independence extinguished in the national 
 churches, but the kings of the earth might be said to hold 
 their crowns at the will of the arrogant successors of the 
 
THE REFORMATION. 141 
 
 fishermen of Gallilee. The popes began to levy more sub- 
 stantial tribute than the homage and submission of the west- 
 ern nations. Various expedients were devised by which 
 vast sums of money, from every quarter of Europe, were 
 drawn into the papal treasury. 
 
 In the third period, power almost absolute, and pecuniary 
 resources well-nigh inexhaustible, produced their usual ef- 
 fects. The popes began to forfeit the veneration of the peo- 
 ple by rapacity, ostentation and corruption of manners not 
 surpassed, if equalled by the most profligate courts of Eu- 
 rope. The state of moral feeling must have been low indeed, 
 when such a monster as Alexander VI. dared to pollute the 
 pontifical palace with crimes that cannot be named to ears 
 polite. The corruption of the head of the church gradually 
 spread through the whole body. The simple Germans and 
 English, far away from the chief scene of debauchery, might 
 still love the religion of their fathers, and venerate the spirit- 
 ual chief of Christendom. But even among them, the higher 
 orders of the clergy were as much distinguished for rapacity 
 and ostentation as the monks were for idleness and supersti- 
 tion. 
 
 The people of Italy, who witnessed the disgusting specta- 
 cle of ecclesiastical degradation, lost all respect for a relig- 
 ion that was disgraced in the persons of its highest function- 
 aries. The outward respect to the gorgeous ceremonial of 
 the church, which the intelligent found it prudent to pay, 
 concealed a general infidelity ; and many of the clergy them- 
 selves, like the augurs of ancient Rome, could not look in 
 each other's faces without laughing. In other countries, the 
 chief source of disaffection was the enormous exactions by 
 which the court of Rome plundered all Europe. This was 
 especially the case in Germany, the simple-hearted people of 
 which were the peculiar prey of Romish rapacity. 
 
 Meanwhile, the way was gradually preparing for that great 
 
142 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 revolution which was to shake the fabric of ecclesiastical 
 power to its deepest foundations, and separate completely 
 those elements of national and individual freedom, which in 
 the church of the middle ages were bound up with the prin- 
 ciple of Catholic unity ; for there was far greater freedom in 
 matters of opinion, far more protestant individuality in the 
 church before the reformation, than many have supposed. 
 Indeed the reformation, like all other great revolutions, was 
 merely an elimination of principles, which had been lurking 
 in the ancient order of things. It decomposed the church, if 
 I may be allowed the expression, separating the elements 
 first of national, then of individual freedom, which had been 
 lying side by side with catholicity and authority, usually in 
 imperfect combination, or rather subordination to them, some- 
 times in temporary and partial revolt, but never till then 
 in clear and decided hostility ; and leaving the residuum of 
 spiritual despotism, which the council of Trent for the first 
 time consolidated into an inflexible system of dogmatic theo- 
 logy. The present Romish system is little more than the 
 slag of that furnace of inquiry, which had been throwing out 
 occasional sparks, before the breath of Luther blew it into 
 a devouring flame. Let us glance at those transient and 
 partial conflicts in the bosom of the church between protest- 
 ant freedom and catholic unity. 
 
 I have already noticed the scholastic philosophy, which by 
 the boldness of its inquiries sometimes alarmed the sentinels 
 of orthodoxy. Before the reformation, however, the method 
 of Aristotle had sunk into a mere logical legerdemain, with 
 which the monks amused their stupid indolence. 
 
 The first storm which assailed the church was the famous 
 heresy of the Albigenses, which, originally imported from 
 the east, spread over Languedoc and Provence — at that time 
 the best governed, the most refined and intellectual part of 
 Christian Europe. Their doctrines were Manichean, a com- 
 
THE REFORMATION. 143 
 
 pound of Christianity and the oriental philosophy. Their 
 wandering minstrels, the troubadours, so prominent in the 
 history of modern literature, were welcomed with delight in 
 castle-halls and ladies' boudoirs, and mingled the poison of 
 their subtle heresies with the voluptuous poetry which they 
 had borrowed from the Arab conquerors of Spain. The 
 northern nobility of France, instigated partly by bigotry, 
 chiefly perhaps by political motives, promptly obeyed the 
 summons of the pope to exterminate those dangerous sectar- 
 ies, who happened to be the subjects of the count of Thou- 
 louse, whose increasing power and opulence had excited the 
 jealousy of the other feudal chieftains. A fanatic monk bore 
 the cross before those fierce champions of the church, who 
 spared neither age nor sex of a peaceful, industrious and pol- 
 ished people, and turned the garden of Europe into a desert. 
 
 John Wickliffe was one of those men who seem to have 
 been born an age too soon. He was a man of ability and 
 learning, and apparently well qualified to have been the 
 leader of the great movement which was reserved for a sub- 
 sequent period. There is some reason, however, to believe 
 that he was inferior to Luther in the spirit and firmness 
 necessary for such an undertaking. The doctrines of Wick- 
 liffe were suppressed in England by the secular arm, but 
 they took deep root in Germany, and were so widely diffus- 
 ed, that the Hussites, after their apostle, who was a disciple 
 of Wickliffe, had been put to death at Constance in contempt 
 of every principle of justice and good faith, were able for a 
 long time to resist the whole power of the empire. 
 
 From time immemorial the peasants of Switzerland and 
 Savoy, fenced in by precipices and avalanches from the cor- 
 ruptions of the world, preserved the purity and simplicity 
 of their manners, and from time to time sent forth from their 
 mountains a voice of warning and rebuke. It is not known 
 with certainty what were their peculiar doctrines. 
 
144 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 The church was able to suppress without difficulty the 
 partial insurrections which preceded the reformation, nor 
 was she very scrupulous as to the means which she employed 
 for that purpose. But the fires which seemed to have been 
 quenched in blood, still burned under cover, ready to burst 
 forthwith greater fury at a favorable juncture. Meanwhile 
 the papal power was much weakened by the great schism 
 growing out of the conflicting claims of the pontiffs of Rome 
 and Avignon, which distracted the Christian world for nearly 
 forty years. Towards the end of this period, the devout 
 were scandalized by the extraordinary spectacle of three sev- 
 eral popes, launching their spiritual thunders at each others' 
 heads, and filling the world with uproar and confusion. As it 
 was utterly impossible to determine the validity of their respec- 
 tive claims, the council of Constance, where the national ele- 
 ment of protestantism for the last time took an imposing part 
 in regulating the affairs of the church, to which it was shortly 
 to be arrayed in open hostility, having prevailed upon two of 
 the claimants of the pontifical chair to resign, deposed the 
 other, and elected a new pope, who made Rome once more 
 the spiritual capitol of Christendom. 
 
 The anxiety of the popes to extend their territorial domin- 
 ion in Italy, hastened the decline of their power. They lost 
 much of the veneration of the people, when they descended 
 from their lofty position as the fathers of the church, the 
 chiefs of the spiritual commonwealth of Europe, to mingle in 
 the squabbles of local politics. There was something expan- 
 sive and imposing in the moral guardianship of the great 
 family of Christian nations, which threw even over the tyran- 
 ny and rapacity of the Holy See, a spell, which was broken 
 by the narrow and undisguised worldliness of territorial 
 aggrandizement. 
 
 The latter part of the fifteenth century was signalized by 
 great advances in knowledge, to which the invention of 
 
THE REFORMATION. 145 
 
 printing gave a powerful impulse. Old habits of thinking 
 were broken up by the marvellous discoveries, which aston- 
 ished Europe from time to time, and the increasing light 
 showed more vividly the contrast between the arrogance, 
 rapacity and worldliness of the popes and the clergy, and the 
 humility, self-devotion and simplicity of manners, which 
 distinguished the founders of religion. From what source, 
 it may be asked, could any just notions be derived of the 
 purity and simplicity of primitive Christianity 1 The ques- 
 tion would only show our liability to be deceived by those 
 general pictures of society that we find in history, in which a 
 few prominent features in the foreground throw into the shade 
 all the smaller but more numerous details. When we read 
 of the vices and ignorance of the clergy, and the superstition 
 of the people, in what are called the dark ages, we are ready 
 to imagine that truth and faithfulness and genuine piety had 
 been banished from the world. But however difficult it may 
 be for some to realize the fact, men were actually thinking 
 and? feeling in those dark ages, in which we find the rudi- 
 ments of all that is most glorious in modern civilization. 
 Notwithstanding the general corruption, net only society 
 at large, but the monasteries, the parish churches, even the 
 higher ranks of the clergy could show many living examples 
 of healthy natures, which could separate and assimilate the 
 truth that was mixed up with error and moral perversions 
 in the spiritual food of the children of the church. We 
 must not forget that the enthusiastic study of the Greek lan- 
 guage and literature [had turned the attention of the learned 
 to the earliest and purest monuments of Christianity. The 
 Scriptures, or at least portions of them, had been translated 
 into several of the living languages of Europe, yet it is prob- 
 able that they were little read by the common people before 
 the time of Luther. 
 
 That great reformer did not exclusively originate a single 
 13 
 
146 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 great thought, a single deep feeling. Had he done so, he 
 would have been one of the martyrs of premature move- 
 ments, not one of the leaders of revolutions. Like all other 
 men of the latter class, his boldness, his earnestness, his 
 power of infusing a fiery and enduring life into everything 
 which he touched, rendered him the medium, through which 
 the thinking men around him came to understand and sym- 
 pathize with each other. His capacious mind brought to- 
 gether, in one incarnate word, the thoughts and feelings 
 which had been silently working in the great deep of the 
 popular mind. What were the most potent of those ele- 
 ments of revolution] 
 
 Those who ascribe the reformation to selfish passions, 
 excited by the hope of emancipation from salutary restraints, 
 or of sharing in the plunder of the church on the one hand, 
 and those who suppose it to have originated in opposition to 
 any peculiar theological doctrines on the other, seem to be 
 equally in error. The former do injustice to the mass of 
 mankind, by leaving out of their calculations, the honest in- 
 dignation of the people at the rapacity, tyranny and profliga- 
 cy of their superiors, especially of those who have the care 
 of religion, while the latter ascribe to the laity of that age, a 
 clearer understanding of the subtleties of dogmatic theology 
 than is even now possessed by a majority of the members of 
 the most enlightened denominations. The real presence and 
 purgatory might have exercised the skill of theological glad- 
 iators, but would never have produced a great popular 
 movement, had they not been accidentally identified with a 
 stupendous system of ecclesiastical corruption and tyranny. 
 This is clear enough from the fact that the real presence, 
 most difficult of the Catholic dogmas to be digested by rea- 
 son, was retained by Luther and his immediate followers, 
 and has found supporters among the most learned of the 
 Anglican divines. One doctrine, it is true, or rather one 
 
THE REFORMATION. 147 
 
 historical fact, the very essence of Christianity, that the Di- 
 vine Man had, by his life and death, produced a full and 
 sufficient remedy for the moral wants and diseases of all who 
 should receive that provision by faith, was relieved of the 
 inventions with which priestly cunning and popular credulity 
 had overloaded and crushed it out of its proper place in the 
 Christian system. But this truth, though obscured, had 
 never been lost sight of, and the reformers merely removed 
 the rust of ages and restored its original lustre. 
 
 It was not the symbolism, but the spirit of the church, her 
 arrogant claims to the absolute sovereignty of the human 
 understanding ; the vices, the rapacity, the tyranny of the 
 popes and the hierarchies ; the ignorance and superstition of 
 the inferior clergy ; such were the chief causes of the reform- 
 ation. Men who neither understood nor regarded the dis- 
 putes of polemic theology, were unwilling any longer to 
 forego the privileges of rational beings by submission to the 
 authority of so called vicegerents of the Almighty, who were 
 chiefly distinguished by avarice, luxury and worldly ambi- 
 tion; who supported their arrogant dominion, and made war 
 upon individual freedom and national independence, by 
 bloody persecutions, enormous pecuniary exactions, and all 
 the cunningly devised machinery of ghostly usurpation. — 
 There was a wide-spread disaffection especially among the 
 Germans, who, on account of the mutual relations of the 
 empire and the court of Rome, were more exposed than 
 others to the rapacity of the latter ; but it is probable that in 
 few minds had it shaped itself into a definite purpose of 
 breaking those meshes which habit, education and venerable 
 antiquity had woven around the awakened intellect of Eu- 
 rope, when Luther arose to make men acquainted with their 
 own thoughts, and give utterance to their silent indignation 
 in a voice which shook the world and awoke the dead ; pierced 
 the sepulchres where moral life had been entombed for ages, 
 
148 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 and raised up an exceeding great army to battle for truth, 
 reason and liberty. We may sum up the causes of the re- 
 formation in very few words. Like most of the great revo- 
 lutions of modern society, it was the revolt of free spirits 
 against profligate despotism. This was everywhere the life 
 of the movement; but in England and some parts of the con- 
 tinent, it was an under-current, concealed at first by the 
 reaction of nationality against catholicity, which even attempt- 
 ed, but in vain, to drive back the individual element when it 
 rose to the surface. 
 
 Both of the moving principles of the reformation, the na- 
 tional and individual, found a representative in Luther, who 
 has shared the fate of all the great leaders of society, of 
 having his character drawn in the brightest or blackest colors, 
 according as the pencil has been in the hand of a friend or an 
 enemy. I shall not aspire to delineate either an angel or a 
 demon, but simply a great-hearted, deep-minded man, whose 
 sagacity laid open the very heart of those momentous subjects, 
 which he grappled with fiery earnestness and unconquerable 
 heroism, while, on the other hand, his nervous irritability and 
 bilious vehemence frequently betrayed him into gross viola- 
 tions of propriety and candor. 
 
 A poor boy of the humblest parentage, when at school, he 
 was obliged to beg from door to door, the means of supplying 
 his little wants. The hardships of his youth and his consti- 
 tional melancholy strengthened his devotional tendencies. 
 He was full of poetry and passion, and his powerful, but 
 somewhat gloomy imagination, probably beheld in the clouds 
 that lowered upon the morning of his existence, the portents 
 of a stormy future. He turned from a bleak and frowning 
 world to where the glories of eternity were gilding the happy 
 mansions of that " city which hath foundations, whose maker 
 and builder is God." Such are the uses of adversity. 
 
 In such a state of mind, the death of a friend, and the bolt 
 
THE REFORMATION. 149 
 
 of lightning, which struck near him during a remarkable 
 storm to which he happened to be exposed, seemed warnings 
 direct from heaven to renounce the uncertain vanities of time. 
 He entered a monastery, where he distinguished himself by 
 his austerities, as well as the deep and bitter agony of soul 
 with which he wrestled, for an assurance of the favor of God. 
 The natural impulses of a fiery and vigorous youth would 
 sometimes assert their claims ; the world might appear fairer 
 when he supposed that he was cut off from it forever; the 
 imperious desires and fierce struggles with which his soul was 
 shaken, were regarded by him as suggestions of the evil one, 
 and evidences of inherent depravity, which almost drove him 
 to madness. He sought relief in still more rigorous austeri- 
 ties, but in vain, for prayer and fasting could not silence the 
 voice of nature which was urging him into those very scenes 
 which he thought he had renounced forever. The agonizing 
 sense of guilt, in part, at least, the result of morbid tender- 
 ness of conscience, or erroneous views of moral obligation, 
 was at length removed by a clearer understanding of that life- 
 giving doctrine, that faith secures to the believer the entire 
 benefits of the all-sufficient work of the Son of God. This 
 doctrine of justification by faith, which, as already observed, 
 had been much obscured by ascetic notions and the devices 
 of the popes and his clergy for raising money, thenceforth 
 occupied the first place in the theological system of the re- 
 former. As Luther suffered so much in his warfare with the 
 flesh, it is not surprising that he afterwards showed some 
 disposition to compromise with that formidable enemy. 
 
 Luther's visit to Rome during the pontificate of the mar- 
 tial and magnificent Julius, was an era in his life. It is easy 
 to imagine the feelings with which the monk, whose deep 
 and strong affections, denied all other outlets, were wholly 
 given to God and his church, approached the spiritual cap- 
 ital of Christendom, — the fountain-head of ecclesiastical au- 
 
150 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 thority, the eternal centre of the moral Providence of God, 
 the holy city in short, associated in his imagination with all 
 that was most sacred and venerable. If his German cloister 
 had ever been penetrated by reports of the corruptions of the 
 magnificent court of the pontiff, such rumors had not made 
 sufficient impression on his mind, deeply occupied as it was 
 with his own depravity, to impair materially his veneration 
 for the holy city and the father of the church. 
 
 What then must have been his astonishment and disgust, 
 when, on arriving in Italy, he found the people neglected by 
 their spiritual guides, the higher ranks ignorant or regardless 
 of religion, the clergy both secular and monastic abandoned 
 to debauchery ] At Rome, which he expected to find a city 
 of saints, his primitive and unworldly notions were matter of 
 derision to the licentious scepticism of the highest ecclesias- 
 tical dignitaries. His poetical temperament could not fail to 
 be impressed by the grandeur of that " marble wilderness," 
 which preserved a lively image of the ancient magnificence 
 of the " eternal city." But neither the glories of art, the 
 recollections of the past, the congregated genius and learning 
 which flourished under the munificent patronage of the papal 
 court, could for one instant bewilder his moral convictions, 
 or induce him to look with the least degree of allowance 
 upon worldliness, licentiousness and hypocrisy. After his 
 return to Germany, he abated nothing of the austerity of his 
 manners, the severity of his doctrines or the fervor of his 
 devotion. It is probable that this journey had the effect of 
 impairing greatly the prestige of those ancient institutions, 
 against which all his powers were soon to be arrayed in open 
 hostility. Though he dreamed not as yet of reforming the 
 church, or revolting from Rome, the boldness of his preach- 
 ing, in which he tore away from theology the scholastic cob- 
 webs in which it had been enveloped by monkish imbecility, 
 showed that he possessed one of those searching, original 
 
THE REFORMATION. 151 
 
 Intellects, which are so dangerous to established abuses. Yet 
 he might have remained an obscure and faithful minister of 
 the church, but for circumstances such as short-sighted mor- 
 tals term accidental. 
 
 Leo X., the successor of Julius, was one of the most bril- 
 liant and accomplished men of his age. A scion of an illus- 
 trious family, he was a favorable example of the spirit and 
 -cultivation of Italian society, — at that time the most refined 
 and intellectual on earth. There is reason to believe that he 
 disguised the careless scepticism of epicurean philosophy, 
 under a decent conformity to the outward observances of 
 religion. His elegant tastes and liberal patronage filled his 
 court with artists, poets and philosophers. His munificent 
 encouragement of the genius and learning, which threw a 
 lustre upon his reign, exhausted the papal treasury; he 
 was desirous to signalize his pontificate by the completion 
 of St. Peter's church, one of the wonders of the world, and 
 for that purpose determined to sell out the large stock of 
 supererogatory merits of the saints which were still on hand. 
 
 The business of indulgences is a remarkable example of 
 the difficulty of discerning the truth of history through the 
 distorting medium of party prejudice. An indulgence seems 
 to have been a remission of the temporal punishment of sin, 
 in other words, of those various penances, which, as they 
 were imposed by the church, could be dispensed with by her. 
 But the sceptical Leo and his servile clergy, in their anxiety 
 to replenish the exhausted coffers of the church, would not 
 be very rigorous with those agents who transcended their 
 authority, and extracted larger sums from the remorse of 
 their customers by promising an exemption from the pains 
 of purgatory and the fires of hell. 
 
 It is strange that writers, who admit the insolence and ex- 
 cesses of Tetzel, should seriously attribute Luther's violent 
 denunciations of what he, in common with all other intelli- 
 
152 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 gent men, must have looked upon as an abominable impost- 
 ure, to the pitiful pique of an Augustinian friar, because the 
 Dominicans were the favored agents of the infamous traffic. 
 This hypothesis is a specimen of that shallow and despicable 
 philosophy of history, in which man is a mere selfish animal, 
 always the deviser, the tool or the victim of imposture. 
 
 Beginning by an attack upon abuses which were generally 
 condemned, the views of Luther expanded so gradually, that 
 he was probably startled himself, when he found that the 
 breach had widened to an irreparable extent, and that the 
 doors of the church were closed against him forever. The 
 dispute might have been adjusted, had his antagonists acted 
 with prudence and moderation. But the pope and his cler- 
 gy, unaccustomed to opposition except from princes, could 
 not brook the free and fearless tone of the eloquent monk, 
 whose constitutional vehemence carried him farther than he 
 had intended to go, and nothing but conciliation was wanting 
 to induce him to retrace his steps far enough to bring him 
 back to his spiritual allegiance. Towards a monarch, secure 
 in the loyalty of a great nation, the pope might have adopted 
 the plan of conciliation ; but that an humble monk could suc- 
 cessfully defy the power which had trampled upon the necks 
 of kings, was not to be thought of. 
 
 Luther was too high-spirited and too well satisfied that he 
 was right in the main, to hesitate long, when the measures 
 of the court of Rome left him no choice but unconditional 
 submission or open defiance. Yet, after he had brought him- 
 self to contemplate a separation from the centre of Catholic 
 unity as inevitable, we need not be surprised that in hours of 
 nervous depression, he showed some distrust of his own pos- 
 ition, and a willingness to accommodate the dispute by larger 
 concessions than his own judgment approved, when he found 
 that they did not satisfy his opponents, and, roused by their 
 unreasonable demands, he was himself again. In relation to 
 
THE REFORMATION. 153 
 
 this part of Luther's conduct, one might think that the partial 
 writers on either side had conspired to drive truth and justice 
 out of the world. As his apparent tergiversations admit of 
 an easy explanation which detracts nothing from his sincerity, 
 and is applicable to other leaders of social movements, who 
 have consciously or unconsciously recognized the great truth, 
 that change and conservation must combine in all real and 
 lasting improvement, and have sometimes been sorely per- 
 plexed to adjust their respective proportions, I hope to be 
 indulged in a good-natured attempt to rescue the memory of 
 the reformer from the folly of his friends and the malice of 
 his enemies. 
 
 There are many persons so thoroughly convinced of their 
 own infallibility, that they never distrust the soundness of 
 their own conclusions, nor have the least respect for the 
 views of those who differ from them. But Luther, with all 
 his self-reliance was far from being blind to the arguments 
 that micrht be urged against him, and some of which had then 
 much plausibility, — of which they have been deprived by the 
 experience of three centuries. His feelings towards the 
 church were very different from those of a modern Protest- 
 ant. He had been nurtured in her bosom ; it was hard to 
 break the spell which her venerable associations had thrown 
 over his imaginative mind ; and during those fits of nervous 
 melancholy to which he was subject, he might feel that he 
 was fearfully alone, and bearing up against the current of ages. 
 His hours of despondency might be haunted by distressing 
 doubts, and at such times he might be ready to sink under the 
 tremendous responsibility of battling with an institution, which 
 had been for ages the only source of religious knowledge 
 and everlasting hope, to millions of the human family. He 
 might fear, as his enemies told him, that he was introducing 
 into the moral world anarchy, which would be dangerous or 
 fatal to the best interests of society ; for facts had not then 
 
154 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 demonstrated the fallacy of such predictions. Let us be 
 generous in our judgments of those great men who have 
 borne our burdens and fought our battles. 
 
 All doubts and hesitation vanished, when he was called 
 upon to confront the powers and principalities of earth. In 
 every critical emergency he was clear, decided and fearless. 
 His deportment at the Diet of Worms is a great historical 
 picture, scarce paralleled in moral sublimity since the ap- 
 pearance of St. Paul at the bar of the pro-consul. It was 
 now to be seen how the monk, who, from the seclusion of his 
 cloister, had made the world ring with the thunders of his 
 indignant eloquence, would bear the actual presence of those 
 mighty ones of the earth, whose corruptions he had denounc- 
 ed and whose authority he had defied. Here was an assem- 
 blage of everything which could overwhelm a secluded and 
 nervous student. Glittering files of those soldiers who 
 shortly afterwards annihilated the chivalry of France, on the 
 field of Pavia ; a multitude, composed of timorous friends 
 and insolent foes, thronging the streets, and covering the 
 house-tops, eager to catch a sight of the reformer, or awaiting 
 with breathless anxiety the result of a meeting, which might 
 decide the fate of the Christian world ; and a dazzling array 
 of all that was most illustrious, by rank, power and dignity, 
 in the empire of the west. At the head of a crowd of spirit- 
 ual and temporal princes, sat a youthful monarch, upon 
 whose dominions the sun never set, who had already shown 
 capacity equal to the support of this weighty diadem, and 
 who was by no means favorably inclined to Luther. And 
 there, in that august presence, stood the charity scholar, the 
 son of the Saxon peasant, arraigned for setting at defiance a 
 power which had been acknowledged through ages by all the 
 western nations. But he stood there, calm, undaunted, the 
 master of his own mind and of the fate of those around him. 
 The congregated majesty of a great empire was nothing to 
 
THE REFORMATION. 155 
 
 him who had wrestled with the principalities and powers of 
 the invisible world. Neither the frown of the monarch, the 
 entreaties of his friends nor the threats of his enemies, when 
 the cruel deaths of John Huss and Jerome were yet fresh in 
 the memories of all, could shake his resolution for an instant. 
 The destiny of millions, the fate of distant ages, hung upon his 
 lips, and his soul was equal to the tremendous importance of 
 the crisis. 
 
 This is the same man, who assailed his adversaries with 
 ferocious invectives, seasoned with the slang of the alehouse, 
 who set up for himself claims quite as arrogant, and still 
 more manifestly absurd than those of the Pope, and told 
 Carstadt, who asked him for the proofs of his divine mission, 
 to go to the devil. To complete the picture of a great but 
 irregular nature, kindness even from his enemies would 
 sometimes move him to tears ; his fiery heart was full of the 
 tenderest affections; he had the liveliest sensibility to the 
 beauties of nature and the peaceful pleasures of domestic 
 life; and he sought relief in music, which he passionately 
 loved, from the demon of melancholy that darkened his exist- 
 ence. He was no flowery Carmel, dimpling a summer sea 
 with the ephemeral fragrance of the eastern clime, nor yet a 
 majestic Chimborazo, reposing in mid-heaven ; but rather a 
 world-shaking volcano, ploughed by the lava flood and torn 
 by the earthquake. But the same fires which blasted his 
 foes, aroused and illuminated mankind ; soft waters welled 
 from the rifted granite, and flowers of paradise bloomed on 
 the very margin of the river of fire. 
 
 The Lutheran reformation has not proved very expan- 
 sive, chiefly perhaps because the national element mingled 
 so largely in it. It was not merely a rising up of the hu- 
 man mind against priestly tyranny, but of Germany against 
 Rome. If we would trace the true life of Protestant liberty 
 to its fountain-head, we must look for it in a little city on 
 
156 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 the shore of Lake Leman, and under the shadow of the 
 Alps, which emerged from the darkness and storms of the 
 middle ages with its republican franchises unimpaired, and 
 a high-spirited people willing and able to defend them. 
 
 Second only and scarcely second to that of Luther in the 
 history of the reformation is the name of John Calvin. In- 
 deed it may be doubted whether, any merely human intel- 
 lect has exercised a more extensive or durable influence 
 over the destinies of mankind. In all countries where Cal- 
 vinism has prevailed, it has manifested similar characteristics, 
 and produced similar moral and political phenomena. The 
 Presbyterians of Scotland and Holland, the Huguenots of 
 France, the Puritans of Old and New England, have all been 
 stamped partly by their dogmas, partly by their institutions, 
 with a family likeness which can be plainly discerned through 
 the peculiarities of national character, and local circumstan- 
 ces. Intense enthusiasm, under the control and guidance of 
 rigorous mental discipline, and concealed by an austere de- 
 portment ; zeal for the diffusion of knowledge ; uncomprom- 
 ising opposition to encroachments by civil rulers upon their 
 own spiritual privileges ; stern resistance to tyranny, and a 
 singular freedom from those illusions of the imagination, which 
 have made other men glory in their servitude ; such are 
 the most striking and universal traits of Calvinists. Every- 
 where they have fought the battles of freedom. It was Cal- 
 vinism that struck the first effectual blows in that great strug- 
 gle of Liberty against Power, which, begun in England, 
 transferred to America, and from thence to France, has been 
 the leading historical fact of the last two centuries, and will 
 continue until the respective boundaries of the belligerents 
 have been adjusted. It cannot be denied, that in the old 
 world and the new, Calvinism has been the rough and mor- 
 ose, but watchful and true-hearted foster-mother of civil and 
 
THE REFORMATION. 157 
 
 religious liberty. The causes of an historical fact of such 
 magnitude deserve an impartial consideration. 
 
 The spirit of the system was embodied in the founder 
 himself, whose mind, austere, vigorous, practical, regulative, 
 was singularly free from visionary tendencies. Destitute of 
 the imagination and impulsiveness of Luther, he was much 
 better fitted for framing a regular and compact system of 
 doctrine and discipline. That system, wherever it has been 
 adopted, has shown a remarkable tendency to bring the 
 imagination and the passions into subjection to the judgment 
 and moral feelings. Calvanistic communities favor the de- 
 velopment of the solid, much more than of the beautiful 
 properties of our nature. No amount of gilding can make 
 base metal current among them. Other men may tolerate 
 oppression for the sake of national glory or the prestige of 
 venerable associations, or generous, though blind loyalty; the 
 genuine Calvinist is never cheated by the poetical sentiments, 
 but resists to the death the least invasion of his rights, by 
 whomsoever, or under whatsoever pretext it may be made. 
 
 We should take into consideration, also, in estimating the 
 causes of its political tendencies, the place of its birth, re- 
 publican Geneva, where men had been accustomed, from 
 time immemorial, to the exercise of democratic franchises. 
 Calvanism was born and brought up in the midst of munici- 
 pal liberty. When Calvin's most illustrious disciple, John 
 Knox, transplanted into the Scottish monarchy the religious 
 system of the Genevan reformer, he gave it a republican or- 
 ganization. Every one knows how durable are impressions 
 made upon the infancy, not only of an individual, but of a 
 society, whether civil or religious. Accordingly, in all Cal- 
 vinistic communities, the people have exercised a large share 
 of ecclesiastical power. Men will carry with them into civil 
 life, the habits formed in the management of their religious 
 affairs. They do not usually act upon one set of principles 
 
158 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 in their spiritual, and a totally different set in their temporal 
 concerns* 
 
 The popular institutions of Calvinism readily suggested 
 the importance of educating the people, who were to exercise 
 powers affecting their temporal and eternal warfare. Ac- 
 cordingly, we find that zeal for the diffusion of knowledge, 
 especially for bringing the minds of youth under such dis- 
 cipline, as tends to form habits of close and rigorous thinking, 
 is a universal trait of Calvinistic societies, and the corner- 
 stone of their superiority in freedom, order and general 
 prosperity. There is another reason why sagacious Calvin- 
 ists should desire that the people should form habits of severe 
 thinking. Calvinistic dogmas are very repulsive, if not en- 
 tirely unintelligible, to undisciplined minds. Nothing but 
 rigorous logic is likely to conduct an inquirer to the system 
 of doctrines, which the Genevese reformer digested from the 
 writings of St. Paul and Augustine. 
 
 The question concerning the freedom of the will is a point 
 of departure in theological philosophy, from which the direc- 
 tion, that the mind takes, must determine, in a great measure, 
 its views of the nature of man and the government of God. 
 The doctrine of contingent free will, allowed even by its 
 advocates, to be an incomprehensible mystery to which reason 
 would never lead us, places man in the centre of the moral 
 world, and fixes our attention upon the capacities and respon- 
 sibilities of a being, who has the astonishing power of de- 
 feating the purposes of the Almighty. The Calvinistic 
 doctrine, on the contrary, humbles man in the dust, and fills 
 the soul with the terrible sovereignty of Him " who doeth 
 his will in the armies of Heaven and amongst the inhabitants 
 of the earth." But while it sinks the race, the greater part 
 of which is left to perish in the ruins of the fall, it raises the 
 few, who are rescued to the ineffable dignity of the peculiar 
 people of God. It is not surprising that men, who regarded 
 
THE REFORMATION. 159 
 
 themselves as a spiritual aristocracy, whose patents were re- 
 corded in Heaven and signed by the Father of Eternity, 
 should resent the insolence and tyranny of the sons of Belial. 
 But I must pause, for I do not wish to invite a comparison 
 with Mr. Macaulay, who, in his magnificent article on Milton, 
 has treated this very subject with his wonted vigor of thought, 
 and epigrammatic terseness of language. 
 
 The surest foundation of civil and religious liberty would 
 be the general prevalence of fairness and tolerance, love of 
 even-handed justice, and respect for the feelings and opin- 
 ions of others. But this is, unfortunately, one of the ideals 
 of society. The spirit of the maxim, " Do to others as ye 
 would that they would do to you," while it is one of the 
 highest, is also one of the rarest qualities of human nature, 
 and Calvinists can claim no larger, and perhaps not so large 
 a share of it, as some other sects. Party ism, from its very 
 nature, is more or less at war with justice. Man, with all his 
 glorious capacities and ages of progress, has still so much of 
 the mule and tiger about him, that the preservation of liberty 
 requires a certain equilibrium of contending parties and in- 
 terests, either of which would be tyrannical enough, if 
 allowed full scope for its intolerance and selfishness. Hence 
 it is literally true, that freedom has grown up under cover of 
 the antagonism of tyrannies. 
 
 It is not surprising, that those who are least patient of 
 oppression, when they happen to be the weaker party, are 
 not unfrequently the most overbearing, when they become 
 strong enough to trample on their enemies. But it has so 
 happened, that Calvinists have generally been thrown into 
 opposition to arbitrary power, for the austerity of their 
 manners, the severity of their doctrines, the republicanism of 
 their church governments are not suited to the atmosphere 
 of courts. Even where Calvinism has been in alliance with 
 the state, not only the people, but many of the clergy have 
 
160 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 been brought into collision with tyrants by their ungracious 
 and inflexible resistance to the encroachments of the civil 
 power upon their spiritual privileges. Morose and bigoted 
 the Calvinist may be, but however great his faults, servility 
 to the rulers of this world never was one of them. 
 
 The reformation, as already intimated, like all other great 
 revolutions, decomposed society, bringing latent elements to 
 the surface, giving them new vigor, and developing, at oppo- 
 site poles, principles that had had before lain in more cr less 
 imperfect combination. It was a fiery furnace, which evolved 
 from the church of the middle ages, the elements of nationality 
 and individuality, and gave a rapid and immense expansion 
 to the latter, while the residuum of Catholicity, after the 
 council of Trent had given it a definite and unchangeable 
 symbol, hardened into that spiritual despotism, which still 
 holds in subjection so large a portion of the civilized world. 
 Luther and his compeers broke off the hollow truce between 
 liberty of thought and ecclesiastical authority, and arrayed 
 them in open hostility. To adjust the respective limits of 
 these antagonists and bring about a lasting treaty of peace 
 between them, is the yet unsolved problem of the reformation. 
 The reformers attempted to solve it, and strove in vain to 
 confine the torrent which they had set in motion, within cer- 
 tain dykes of their own construction. The spring-tide of free 
 inquiry, not yet perhaps at its flood, is sweeping away their 
 barriers, and ages may elapse, before it subsides into its prop- 
 er channel, after cleansing the earth of a thousand follies and 
 abuses. 
 
 The history of the reformation proves the utter futility of 
 those doleful predictions, with which the advocates of estab- 
 lished abuses are accustomed to greet every change in the 
 forms with which they are familiar. When the advocates of 
 Catholic unity beheld a great part of Christendom divided 
 and distracted by the multitude of sects which sprang out of 
 
THE REFORMATION. 161 
 
 the liberty of private judgment asserted by the reformers, it 
 seemed to them, and even to the affrighted fancies of some 
 doubtful protestants, that the moral world was returning to 
 chaos, and that all order, religion, civilization itself, would 
 be swept away by the tempest of innovation. But in the 
 moral as in the natural world, the utmost apparent confusion 
 often conceals, for a time, the most beautiful evidences of the 
 wisdom and goodness of God. Indeed the history of the 
 reformation is analogous to that of the Christian civilization 
 in general — to that of nature in general. Everywhere the 
 most glorious results are evolved from the wildest fermenta- 
 tion of conflicting elements, when the Providence or Spirit 
 of God is moving in the chaos. Everywhere strife and con- 
 cord, diversity and unity, change and stability, are the appar- 
 ently incompatible, but actually indispensable conditions of 
 life, progress, beauty and power. 
 
 Compare those countries, in which the superficial strife and 
 essential harmony of Protestantism have at once stimulated 
 and regulated the intellectual energies of men, — set them to 
 thinking deeply upon the greatest of all subjects, and furnish- 
 ed leading principles to guide them in their investigations, 
 and put each rival sect under the necessity. of vindicating its 
 own claims by superior intelligence and morality, with those, 
 in which Catholicism, taking refuge in the arms of civil des- 
 potism, has trodden out the last sparks of free inquiry, or 
 those in which, as in Mexico and the South American repub- 
 lics, spiritual tyranny has survived the overthrow of monar- 
 chical institutions. 
 
 The tree is known by its fruits, and now, after the lapse of 
 three centuries, we have the data for estimating the exact 
 value of the dismal prognostications of the enemies of reli- 
 gious liberty. The vindication of the reformation has been 
 written out in vast characters by the finger of Providence 
 over all this green earth, wherever protestant enterprise has 
 14 
 
162 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 carried the lights of knowledge and the glories of civilization. 
 In old Germany, the mother of nations, where the boldness 
 of protestant research has thrown a flood of light upon every 
 branch of human learning ; in England, whose mighty and 
 exuberant energies are encircling the earth with her laws, 
 her lanoruas:e and her literature ; in North America, where a 
 great republic, the work almost solely of protestant valor and 
 freedom, is overshadowing the rotten offshoots of Spanish 
 bigotry ; in the coral isles of the South Sea, where nations 
 have been rescued from barbarism and moral death ; in the 
 Asiatic continent, where protestant enterprise, with the lights 
 of science and the blessings of Christianity, has fearlessly 
 followed the British arms, as they battered down the walls, 
 that once fenced the millions of India and China from the 
 inroads of western civilization ; in the Catholics themselves, 
 who are so fortunate as to live in protestant countries, or in 
 such social or political connections with them as to be stimu- 
 lated into generous emulation of their protestant neighbors, 
 we may look for the fruits of the reformation. 
 
 If superstition, with her racks and her fagots, has fled 
 before the light of reason ; if the restless daring of experi- 
 mental science has extorted the secrets of nature and made 
 her the servant of man ; if the conflict of minds has struck 
 out new and juster notions of government, of the rights of 
 men and the limits of power, of the principles that should 
 regulate all social institutions ; if the Bible has become a 
 household companion, and the minds of the humblest have 
 been expanded by its glorious poetry, its divine philosophy, 
 its faithful delineations of human nature, its simple yet sub- 
 lime records of the primitive world and of those momentous 
 transactions which have shaped the destinies of man for time 
 and eternity ; all these things may be traced to that great 
 revolution which broke the chains of ecclesiastical despotism. 
 
 Such results of such a cause are in exact accordance with 
 
THE REFORMATION. 163 
 
 the laws of the human mind. The habits of thinking which 
 men form in relation to religion, the most important, and one 
 of the most frequently recurring of all subjects, they will be 
 apt to carry with them into other departments of intellectual 
 activity. All who dislike the trouble and perplexity of think- 
 ing for themselves ; all who are willing to surrender the pre- 
 rogatives of rationality for the sake of repose, may find it in 
 implicit submission to the authority of the church. But such, 
 I am persuaded, is not the condition most favorable to the 
 highest moral and intellectual attainments in the present 
 state of being. It is by struggle and conflict, by painful and 
 assiduous wrestling with the mysteries that surround us, by 
 fearless, yet reverent investigation of the highest subjects, 
 that our moral and mental powers are developed and discip- 
 lined. 
 
 Why are Catholics in those countries where Protestantism 
 is either in the ascendant, or strong enough to make itself 
 respected, so superior in intelligence and morality to their 
 brethren in regions where the supremacy of the church is 
 undisputed % Because they must think, if it be only to find 
 arguments with which to combat their adversaries. Because 
 they must vindicate the claims of the church by their moral 
 conduct ; for intelligent men will not respect a religion that 
 does not improve the moral character of its votaries. This 
 effect of the reformation has been felt even in those countries 
 which it has never entered, or entered only to be extinguish- 
 ed in blood. Catholics ought to erect monuments to Luther 
 and Calvin as high as the heavens, for to no other men do 
 they owe more in amoral point of view. As Mr. Macauley 
 has shown in his able review of Ranke's History of the Popes, 
 the re-action of Catholicity against the assaults of the reform- 
 ers purified the manners of the clergy, rekindled their devo- 
 tion, revived their zeal and energy and gave rise to that sin- 
 gular body of spiritual soldiery who, while they have rivetted 
 
164 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 the fetters of ecclesiastical despotism, have unquestionably 
 done much for scientific discovery and the extension of civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 Never was institution better contrived to sustain a 
 sinking cause than the Jesuit society. With marvellous 
 sagacity, each member was assigned that species of service 
 for which he was best qualified by natural gifts and education. 
 Not only the offices of the church, but almost every secular 
 employment, was filled with Jesuits, whose duty it was by 
 any and every means, which ingenuity, sharpened by a thor- 
 ough training in all the arts of intrigue, could devise, to 
 confirm the wavering, to gain new converts to the faith, to 
 enlist in behalf of the church the rank and wealth and power 
 of the Christian world. Many of them were universally 
 accomplished men, equally at home in the cottages of peas- 
 ants, in the workshops of artizans, in the halls of universities 
 and the palaces of kings. A profound knowledge of human 
 nature, and a general acquaintance with the arts and literature 
 of their time ; a burning zeal which no hardships could damp, 
 and no difficulties discourage ; a moral heroism which defied 
 alike the dangers of hostile courts, the infection of hospitals, 
 the malaria of pestilential climates, and the ferocity of sava- 
 ges ; a profound dissimulation which baffled the most saga- 
 cious statesmen, and the most wily diplomatists ; a contempt 
 of good faith, against which, neither the sacredness of oaths, 
 the ties of nature and friendship, nor the obligations of 
 humanity could furnish any security ; such was the strange 
 assemblage of sublime and detestable qualities, that met in 
 this extraordinary body of men. 
 
 Their virtues and vices had the same origin. They were 
 the faithful soldiers of the church, assailed on all sides by 
 hosts of implacable adversaries, and they acted upon two 
 maxims : — That the soldier has nothing to do but obey his supe- 
 rior, and that all is fair in war. The cause to which they 
 
THE REFORMATION. 165 
 
 consecrated their lives and undivided energies, seemed to 
 raise them above those obligations which rest upon ordinary 
 men in ordinary transactions. So mighty and glorious an 
 end as the vindication of that faith which involved the eternal 
 destinies of man, sanctified any means which might be useful 
 for that purpose ; an error into which enthusiasts of all sys- 
 tems have fallen. The most wily Jesuit might be not only 
 humane and self-sacrificing, but scrupulously just and honor- 
 able in all personal concerns, and where the interests of the 
 church or of his order did not seem to require an opposite 
 course. 
 
 From the middle of the sixteenth century, the reformation, 
 by becoming entangled with political affairs, almost lost its 
 original character of a great moral revolution. Like every 
 other extensive movement of society, it was soon perverted 
 into a mere covering of political or personal ambition, and 
 the boundary between Catholicism and Protestantism in 
 Europe was fixed, as it has remained with little or no change 
 for two centuries, much less by reason and moral influence, 
 than by wars and treaties and political considerations, grow- 
 ing out of the balance of power. So intricate was the 
 entanglement of religious with political affairs during the 
 thirty years war, which defined the boundary of the two forms 
 of Christianity in Germany, that we have the strange spec- 
 tacle of Cardinal Richelieu, the merciless persecutor of 
 French Calvinism, assisting the protestant hero Gustavus 
 Adolphus to humble the Catholic power of Austria. 
 
 It is in the United States alone, that the reformation has 
 remained wholly detached from political affairs, and it is here, 
 I am persuaded, that one of the great problems of the age is 
 to be solved : Whether Protestantism admits of a conservative 
 form, which can unite moral jpoicer with freedom of opinion. 
 Its general tendency certainly has been more and more 
 towards individualism, or anarchy. Sects have been more 
 
166 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 and more subdivided, and almost every change has carried 
 us a step farther towards the rejection of all authority, and 
 the substitution of private illumination for external organiza- 
 tion and symbolism; in other words, making every man his 
 own judge, in matters of faith, with no bond of union or 
 authoritative guidance. For to tell a man to form his own 
 opinion from the Scriptures, without furnishing him at least 
 with leading principles, is a renunciation of all ecclesiastical 
 authority. 
 
 What form of conservative organization may yet be evolv- 
 ed from Protestantism, we know not. Perhaps the Catholic 
 church itself may, though it is very improbable, gradually 
 lower its pretensions to a point compatible with religious lib- 
 erty — let fall obnoxious portions of its creed, and approxim- 
 ate its adversaries. But power and liberty, in spiritual as well 
 as in civil matters, are still antagonists. The battle of the 
 sixteenth century is still going on — is even hotter than ever. 
 Catholicism is making a tremendous struggle to regain her 
 dominion of the human mind. It is becoming apparent that 
 unless the champions of religious freedom can unite on some 
 generally acknowledged principles, they must be overwhelm- 
 ed by a polity, which, for concentrated energy — for many- 
 sided adaptation to all the varieties of character— for laying 
 hold of and pressing into its service the most powerful prin- 
 ciples of human nature, is without a parallel among human 
 institutions. In the contest no intelligent lover of liberty 
 can be neutral ; for whatever claims the Roman church may 
 have upon the gratitude of mankind — however great her ser- 
 vices in former ages in the cause of civilization, nothing is 
 more certain than that her spirit and internal structure are at 
 war with the best tendencies of modern society. 
 
 In the progressive evolutions of the plans of Providence, 
 institutions admirably adapted to one stage of society become 
 pernicious in another, unless provision is made for such 
 
THE REFORMATION. 167 
 
 changes from time to time as are demanded by the new dev- 
 elopment of social progress. The fundamental dogma of the 
 unchanging church has forbidden her to keep pace with the 
 progress of society, and she perpetuates in the nineteenth 
 century the spirit and maxims of the middle ages, stiffened 
 into tenfold rigor by the storms which have assailed her. In 
 protestant countries, the worst features of the system are, for 
 very obvious reasons, disguised for a time ; but however flex- 
 ible she may be in acquiring power, she will be inflexible in 
 the use of it. Romanism in its hour of weakness is a very 
 different thing from Romanism in its hour of triumph. I do 
 not denounce her for being despotic — for doing her best 
 to enforce implicit submission to her authority. Upon her 
 own principles, she is required to do so by regard for the 
 temporal and eternal welfare of mankind. If she did not 
 strive to suppress freedom of thought upon the highest of all 
 subjects, she would be false to the charge which she believes 
 has been intrusted to her by the Saviour of men. History, 
 philosophy, the condition of those nations in which the sway 
 of Catholicism is undisputed, all proclaim that the system is 
 destructive to religious and unpropitious to civil liberty. 
 During the middle ages, it is true, republics grew up under 
 the shadow of her wings, and the roots of Anglo-Saxon free- 
 dom run far back into the same period ; but the reformation 
 drove her into an alliance with civil despotism, and the great 
 revolutions that have shaken the modern world have only 
 increased her aversion to the riotous liberty which has some- 
 times threatened her destruction. Freedom of inquiry, 
 which she once countenanced, she has learned to dread as 
 her most formidable foe. 
 
 Religion is recovering from the blows inflicted by the infi- 
 del philosophy of the eighteenth century, and manifesting the 
 indestructible life that is in her. The philosophers who pro- 
 mised mankind a golden age, under the reign of materialism, 
 
16S SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 
 
 were astounded to see the passions, which they had set free 
 from the restraints of religion, defying also the exorcism of 
 reason, and rioting in a carnival of crime and blood. Since 
 France awoke from the fever-dream of revolutionary frenzy, 
 a powerful re-action has taken place, and enlightened men 
 on the continent agree that religion has its eternal foundation 
 in the nature of man, and is and ever must be the corner- 
 stone of the social fabric. In England, the colossal scepti- 
 cism of a Hume and a Herbert, has dwindled down into that 
 astonishing socialism of Mr. Owen, which, if adopted by a 
 colony of baboons, would doubtless raise the apish commun- 
 ity to the height of prosperity and glory. 
 
 But, while most men agree as to the necessity of religion, 
 there is more perplexity than ever as to where the truth is to 
 bs found. Sects and schisms, and new theories are multi- 
 plying on every side. The Christian world is filled with a 
 hubbub of contradictory voices. Old formulas are disputed, 
 and the ancient records of Christianity themselves are being 
 subjected to a fearless criticism, which, for the time being, 
 shakes their authority. Dark and fearful is the struggle of 
 many earnest souls, who see their old grounds of belief, 
 which they had thought firm as the rock-girt foundations of 
 the world, swept from under them. 
 
 There are times when chilling doubt or perplexity must 
 steal over the mind of the most ardent lover of religion, 
 if he be candid and liberal. If he turns from historical evi- 
 dences, and questions the heavens and the earth as to those 
 high matters which are most deeply interesting to us all, 
 he hears only the echo of his own voice, as it rolls away 
 reverberating through the mystic halls and shadowy corridors 
 of the star-paved temple of immensity, and then all is silent ; 
 — a silence more fearful for the feeling heart than the voice 
 of doom. When we contrast the poetical belief of the "fer- 
 vent days of old, when opinions were things," with the spir- 
 
THE REFORMATION. 169 
 
 itual condition of the present time, it would seem to us in 
 moments of despondency, that the world had waked up from 
 pleasant dreams, but had waked up in the dark. As says 
 Richter, "yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night; the 
 dead walk, the living dream ; Thou Eternal Providence wilt 
 cause the day to dawn" 
 
 15 
 
IV. 
 
 THE ANGLO-NORMANS 
 
 OR 
 
 LA¥ AND LIBERTY 
 
THE ANGLO-NORMANS, 
 
 OR 
 
 LAW AND LIBERTY. 
 
 The reader will bear in mind, that the first vigorous shoots 
 of modern civilization, springing up from the ruins of the 
 Roman empire, were sheltered by the church from the north- 
 ern tempests. They also experienced the fostering care of 
 monarchy, in the persons of Charlemagne and Alfred, and 
 bloomed under the culturing hand of a chivalrous aristocracy. 
 To recur to a figure already used, these institutions were 
 the strong outer coats, which sheltered the germs of modern 
 improvement from the storms of the world's spring. But, 
 hardened by time and inveterate custom, these wrappages, 
 instead of yielding to the expansion of the germs which they 
 had protected, began to bruise them and to check their 
 growth. 
 
 Meanwhile, a subtle but powerful element began to show 
 itself on the surface of society. This was the spirit of liberty 
 residing in those municipal corporations, which, buried appar- 
 ently under the wrecks of the Roman empire, emerged with 
 new and more valuable franchises, in the latter half of the 
 middle ages, and in England especially, in that high-spirited 
 body of landholders intermediate between the nobles and the 
 serfs. This spirit was fostered by the increasing importance 
 of the middle classes, as well as the free discursive intellect, 
 which began to question the authority of men in matters of. 
 faith. The spiritual authority, as we have seen, was first 
 assailed by Luther and his colleagues, and driven into a close 
 
174 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 alliance with the secular power. Religious and civil liberty- 
 then combined for mutual support against the coalition of 
 spiritual and political despotism. It was in England that 
 the two great antagonisms of modern society first fairly con- 
 fronted each other, and the first effective blows were struck 
 in that battle between power and liberty, not yet ended, of 
 which the English, the American and the French revolutions 
 have been the most terrible and bloody encounters. The two 
 last struggles I shall reserve for a subsequent work, it being 
 my present purpose to trace the progress of society down to 
 that remarkable period, when the best products of the Christ- 
 ian civilization were transplanted from Europe, where they 
 have grown but slowly under the shade of hoary institutions, to 
 the forests of the new world, where there are no such unpro- 
 pitious circumstances to check their free expansion. 
 
 It is not alone as the vanguard of the host of freedom, in 
 its war of two centuries with civil and spiritual tyranny, that 
 the Anglo-Normans claim our regard. The greater part of 
 the world would seem to have been partitioned by Provi- 
 dence between the two great branches of that dominant race 
 of men, in the East and West, as a boundless field for the 
 extension of their colonial and commercial system, and the 
 diffusion of the English language and literature, as well as 
 institutions of English origin. The empire of Britain girdles 
 the earth ; her colonizing and commercial enterprise outstrips 
 her arms and negociations, and the outposts of English civil- 
 ization have been pushed forward to the shores of New Zea- 
 land, in the south, and the verge of the polar ice in the north. 
 The off-shoots of this wonderful race, appointed by Provi- 
 dence to be the civilizers and liberators of mankind, which 
 only two centuries ago were planted on the Atlantic coast of 
 North America, have grown into a mighty nation, which, 
 long before it shall have arisen to the full height of its colos- 
 sal power, upon a territorial foundation spreading from ocean 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 175 
 
 to ocean, will be throwing the shadow of its greatness and 
 the moral power of its institutions backward upon Europe — 
 forward upon Asia. 
 
 Everywhere the Anglo-Normans are the torch-bearers of 
 religion— science — liberty ; and from shore to shore, from 
 mountain-top to mountain-top, through all the ancient realms 
 of darkness and habitations of cruelty, new lights are kind- 
 ling ; and anon we shall see them flash on high, and run toge- 
 ther, and encircle the earth with a glorious illumination. It 
 is remarkable that this vast movement has steadily progressed 
 through all the vicissitudes of the last century. Indeed the 
 philosophical history of that period might almost be simpli - 
 fied into two leading facts : the struggle between power and 
 liberty, in which the latter has been constantly gaining 
 ground, and the contest between the French and the Anglo- 
 Saxons for the foremost place in the civilization of mankind, 
 in which the latter have as steadily advanced. Even in the 
 last and most tremendous conflict between the Celts and the 
 Saxons for that post of honor, the genius of Napoleon could 
 strike down, one after another, the coalitions which English 
 gold armed against him, on the continent of Europe; but all 
 his gigantic efforts could not arrest for one hour the march of 
 events which was carrying forward the English race to the 
 dominion of the world. Surely a people to whom has been 
 allotted a part so stupendous in the drama of history, may 
 well claim the attention of the philosophic mind. 
 
 If we take a comprehensive survey of the Christian nations, 
 we shall find that each has had a share in the providential 
 education of mankind, corresponding with the peculiar fea- 
 tures of its national character and local institutions. Thus 
 Italy is the home of the beautiful arts which refine and ele- 
 vate the soul, and not only the works of her great masters, 
 but the melancholy recollections of unequalled though 
 departed glories, which hover over her majestic ruins and 
 
176 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 beautiful scenery, are, to pilgrims from other lands, peren- 
 nial sources of the noblest inspiration. From old simple- 
 hearted Germany, the mother of us all, have emanated the 
 piofoundest speculations in philosophy, and the greatest 
 moral revolutions of modern times. It is remarkable that in 
 relation to all the deepest matters of speculation, any move- 
 ment which stirs the depths of German mind, slowly but 
 surely finds its way into every part of the civilized world. 
 France is the school of everything in which clearness and 
 readiness are more available than depth or ponderous 
 strength, and her great capital was once, and is still perhaps, 
 to some extent, the centre of European civilization, where 
 the raw material of thought, from every part of the world, 
 has been worked up by French vivacity into elegant fabrics, 
 which, like the religion of Italy, have been chiefly for expor- 
 tation. The English have excelled in everything that 
 requires good sense and practical sagacity, but, if I am not 
 mistaken, the great mission of the Anglo-Saxons is to solve 
 this highest problem of political philosophy : the reconciliation 
 of Order and Liberty ; in other words, ascertaining by ex- 
 perience the largest measure of individual freedom which is 
 compatible with justice to all and to each, and what sort of 
 institutions are best adapted to harmonize conservatism and 
 democracy. 
 
 The physical greatness of England and her colonial off- 
 spring, must be chiefly attributed to the fact, that an unusu- 
 ally large share of civil and religious liberty has given scope 
 for a full and free development of the peculiar traits of the 
 national character. These traits are a sturdy practical sense, 
 never carried away by paradox or mysticism, and a steady 
 energy, sometimes degenerating into sullen obstinacy. It is 
 astonishing how long the peculiarities of races are preserved 
 in spite of all the physical and moral causes which have 
 tended to efface them. In France and Ireland, a mercurial 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 177 
 
 temperament, marked by quickness, vivacity and thoughtless 
 enthusiasm, still bears witness to a large infusion of Celtic 
 blood. But in England, the Celtic population was almost en- 
 tirely rooted out by the Saxons, whose temper was slow, pon- 
 derous, yet fierce and overbearing. After the emigration to 
 England, the Saxons who remained behind in Germany, 
 resisted the proselyting arms of Charlemagne for thirty years, 
 and when they could hold out no longer, a large part of them 
 preferred exile to an acknowledgement of the sway and 
 religion of the conqueror. Retiring into Jutland and Scan- 
 dinavia, now Denmark, Sweden and Norway, they, in con- 
 cert with the hardy natives of those countries, whose char- 
 acter and manners were similar to their own, fitted out 
 numbers of small vessels, in which, under the names of Danes 
 and Northmen, or Normans, they became the terror and 
 scourge of all the coasts of Europe. One body of them 
 conquered the southern part of Italy, while another under 
 Rollo, a famous chief, after ravaging England for many years, 
 extorted from the king of France a large cession of territory 
 on the northern coast of that country, where they embraced 
 Christianity and founded the dutchy of Normandy. The 
 pagan superstitions of these " fair-haired sea-kings " were 
 like their minds, rude, gigantic, terrible and well adapted to 
 foster a martial spirit. The warrior believed that if he should 
 fall in battle, he would be carried immediately to the star- 
 paved halls of Valhalla, where, in presence of Odin, the God 
 of war, he should sit down to the feast of heroes and drink 
 oceans of beer from the skulls of his enemies. By their 
 conversion to Christianity, they lost nothing of their martial 
 qualities, for the Norman knights were the flower of Euro- 
 pean chivalry. So much for the original stock of what is 
 commonly called the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 The manners and institutions of the Anglo-Saxons before 
 the Norman conquest, were similar to those of other Ger- 
 
178 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 manic nations. After Christianity had been reestablished in 
 England, it was long before its softening influence became 
 visible. A ferocious freedom, arising from a lofty sense of 
 personal independence, the weakness of the rulers, and the 
 rude condition of the laws, filled the country with licentious- 
 ness and blood-shed. The most wanton murders were pun- 
 ished only by fines proportioned to the rank of the victim. 
 Female honor had no security but superstition. The most 
 absurd modes of deciding civil and criminal causes were 
 prevalent, affording no security for justice, but the means and 
 motives for fresh violence and outrage. 
 
 Yet this turbulent society contained all the original ele- 
 ments of the present government of England, except the 
 feudal system, which was introduced by the Normans, and 
 the chartered towns, which, not until long after the conquest, 
 acquired sufficient importance to take any share in political 
 affairs. It contained monarchy founded on loyalty, with at 
 first only a partial recognition of the principle of hereditary 
 succession ; the power of the clergy, which was unquestion- 
 ably employed in mitigating the ferocity, restraining the 
 passions and cultivating the minds of the people; and finally, 
 a high-spirited body of independent landholders, of whom 
 the higher classes at least, had a share in the deliberations of 
 the wittena-gemote or council of wise men, while the inferior 
 freemen had the privilege of deciding civil and criminal 
 causes in the county courts, in which the greater part of the 
 judicial business of the nation was transacted. 
 
 The proceedings of these courts were at first rude and 
 summary enough, and the ignorant judges saved themselves 
 the trouble of deciding causes of any complexity, by appeal- 
 ing to the judgment of God in a variety of modes, the water 
 ordeal, the fire ordeal and trial by battle, which gradually 
 fell into disuse with the progress of intelligence and the im- 
 provement of the laws. The procedure became more regu- 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 179 
 
 lar, and it was found necessary to select from the increasing 
 a nd tumultuous body of free-holders who had a right to sit 
 on each trial, a smaller and definite number. Here, doubt- 
 less, is the origin of that peculiar feature of the English and 
 Anglo-American constitutions, trial by jury. 
 
 The Norman conquest, by introducing the feudal system, 
 completed the resemblance between English society and the 
 English constitution, and those of all the other nations of 
 Germanic origin. I have adverted in a former discourse, to 
 the freedom of the feudal constitutions. That freedom, the 
 source of the liberty we now enjoy in America, was the 
 result of the conflicts of different classes of antagonist inter- 
 ests and tendencies. A social organization in which a single 
 element completely overmasters the others, must degenerate 
 into hopeless despotism, or experience terrible concussions 
 from the reaction of those forces which, though repressed, 
 are not thoroughly subdued. If the haughty barons and pre- 
 lates and independent landholders, who sat in the legislative 
 assemblies, held each other in check and united against the 
 "oyal authority, it was, in general, more for the sake of their 
 own privileges, than from any abstract sense of justice and 
 equal rights. . Wherever these conflicting tendencies were so 
 nearly balanced that neither could gain a decided or perma- 
 nent ascendancy, all classes who had a share in government, 
 were tolerably secure against the excesses of arbitrary 
 power. 
 
 The first great question that presents itself is this : how 
 happened it that English liberty survived the general wreck 
 of the feudal constitutions, and has gone on steadily expand- 
 ing, fortifying itself by additional guaranties, and defining 
 more and more clearly the limits of prerogative, while the 
 freedom of other countries, similar in its nature and origin, 
 has been overwhelmed by the progress of the royal authority % 
 This question is, at first sight, rendered still more difficult to 
 
ISO THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 answer, by the incontestable fact, that for some time after the 
 Norman conquest, the English government was the most ar- 
 bitrary in Europe. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, the very 
 fact that it was then the most oppressive, will help us to ex- 
 plain why it was afterwards the freest. 
 
 I can best illustrate my views upon this point by a brief 
 comparison of the constitutional history of England, subse- 
 quent to the period I have mentioned, with that of France, 
 of which it was, in all respects, the exact reverse. 
 
 While both the nobles and people of England were crush- 
 ed to earth by the iron tyranny of the Norman kings, the 
 French monarchs possessed little more than the shadow of 
 royal authority. France was rather a loose confederation of 
 great baronies than a consolidated nation, and however the 
 people might suffer from the rapacity of turbulent nobles, 
 they had nothing to fear from the power of the crown. In 
 point of fact, though there was much disorder and violence, 
 there was little positive oppression from any quarter, for the 
 freemen were either bold retainers of chieftains who were 
 bound to them by reciprocal obligations, or citizens of char- 
 tered towns, to whom both kings and barons granted exten- 
 sive and valuable privileges, in order to obtain from them 
 supplies for their everlasting wars. 
 
 So little jealousy was entertained of the royal authority, 
 that the states-general very seldom met, and neither barons, 
 land-holders nor citizens, the classes who, together with the 
 clergy, composed that body, gave themselves much trouble 
 about the central administration. This want of vigilance 
 was fatal to their liberties. In their false security they al- 
 lowed the kings to raise money for foreign wars and other 
 national purposes without the consent of the states-general, 
 and thus establish precedents, which enabled them to dis- 
 pense with the meetings of that body. With the revenue 
 raised by a variety of expedients, or granted by the provin- 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 181 
 
 cial assemblies, which were neither the appropriate nor effi- 
 cient guardians of the liberties of the nation at large, the 
 monarchs gradually formed a mercenary force, which released 
 them from the necessity of calling upon their turbulent vas- 
 sals for the short and precarious services of their equally 
 refractory tenants. Whenever the executive succeeds in mak- 
 ing himself independent of tJie people for his supplies of 
 money, there is an end to liberty. As might have been ex- 
 pected, the royal authority constantly gained ground, by 
 accessions too gradual to occasion alarm ; the great fiefs 
 were, one after another, swallowed up ; the meetings of the 
 states-general fell into disuse, and after the power of the 
 nobility had been broken by a variety of causes, of which the 
 crusades were the most efficient, no counterpoise was left to 
 the central power, and the French monarchy became one of 
 the most despotic that ever existed. 
 
 Far other and more glorious destinies were reserved for 
 the English. As I have intimated, the first Norman kings 
 were practically absolute. Their power, founded on conquest 
 and preserved by their own commanding qualities, derived 
 additional security from the mutual hatred of the Norman 
 nobility and the English people, for each party supported the 
 crown against the other, for the sake of humbling their ene- 
 mies, sharing in their plunder or taking vengeance upon 
 them. If a free people be so unfortunate as to fall under 
 arbitrary power, it is far better that tyranny, instead of 
 making insidious and scarcely perceptible encroachments, 
 should exhibit itself at once in all its undisguised hatefulness, 
 while the spirit of liberty yet lives and burns in the heart of 
 the nation. It is better that the disease should do its worst 
 before the vigor of the constitution is materially impaired. 
 
 Hence, it must be accounted, on the whole, a fortunate 
 circumstance that the Norman kings, sure of the support of 
 the barons against the people, and of the people against the 
 
182 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 barons, were encouraged to such wanton excesses of arbitrary 
 power, that after the distinction between Norman and Saxon 
 had been effaced by time, these, at first, hostile classes found 
 it necessary to unite against the common enemy. The barons, 
 insulted and outraged in their persons, property and families 
 by the dynasty which their ancestors had placed upon the 
 throne of England, fell back upon the people, whose sturdy 
 spirit and attachment to their ancient Saxon liberties, were 
 yet unsubdued, and the result of this combination against the 
 crown was Magna Charta, the earliest declaration extant of 
 the great principles of the English constitution. Before I 
 proceed to trace the progress of English liberty, I will men- 
 tion one or two circumstances, which had a share in its 
 preservation. And first of these is the national character. 
 
 All the nations of Germanic origin were alike remarkable 
 for their free and independent spirit. Yet the Anglo-Saxons 
 have unquestionably been distinguished by their aptitude for 
 free institutions, their unconquerable love of liberty, and the 
 practical sagacity with which they have detected the encroach- 
 ments of arbitrary power, and clung to the most effectual 
 means of resistance. The origin of these peculiar properties 
 of English mind, and the manner in which they have been 
 perpetuated from generation to generation, are and probably 
 will forever remain profound mysteries. 
 
 The light-hearted Frenchman, with a large portion of Cel- 
 tic vivacity, is too happy " with his fiddle and his frisk," to 
 care much about the affairs of state, or he forgets his chains 
 in his enthusiasm for the national glory. A skilful ruler, by 
 taking advantage of this enthusiasm, may induce him to over- 
 look the greatest usurpations. Not so with sturdy John 
 Bull, who would rather be miserable in his own way, than be 
 made happy by arbitrary power. He has a sullen jealousy 
 of his rights, not the least of which is the right of grumbling. 
 He watches the proceedings of those in power with the 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 183 
 
 sleepless vigilance of discontent, and his somewhat coarse, 
 thousfh vigorous sense secures him from the illusions of the 
 imagination, and forms just notions of the nature and value 
 of the practical safe-guards of liberty. 
 
 A great advantage which England has enjoyed in regard 
 to the preservation of her liberty is her insular position, which, 
 with her naval power, has secured her, with one or two ex- 
 ceptions, from actual invasion by a foreign foe. When a 
 generous people behold their executive struggling with an 
 insolent invader, they look with indulgence upon usurpations 
 which may seem necessary to vindicate the national honor, 
 and protect their own fields and firesides from the horrors of 
 war. If such exigencies are frequent, the usurpations, which 
 they induce the people to connive at, ripen into permanent 
 acquisitions of executive power. Had Charles levied his 
 taxes without the consent of the commons, to drive a foreign 
 enemy from the soil of England, even the inflexible Puritans 
 might have submitted to the encroachment. For this reason 
 a powerful navy, or a strong line of frontier defences, are 
 important to a nation that would preserve its freedom. 
 
 With these preliminary considerations, I shall proceed to 
 answer the great question propounded above, by a brief out- 
 line of English constitutional history. 
 
 After two or three generations had effaced the distinction 
 between the Norman barons and the Saxon people, between 
 the conquerors and the conquered, they bes^an to see the 
 necessity of uniting against the intolerable tyranny which 
 had grown up from their mutual animosities. They united 
 upon the basis of the original laws and liberties of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, modified by the feudal relations introduced by the 
 Normans, but never completely naturalized. The feudal 
 system never supplanted the independent allodial tenure in 
 England, to as great an extent as in France and other por- 
 tions of the continent. The Norman feuds were peculiarly 
 
184 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 burdensome, but it happened fortunately for the English peo- 
 ple, that the feudal burdens pressed most heavily upon the 
 barons, who were tenants in capiti, or immediate vassals of 
 the crown. The kings exercised their rights of wardship 
 and marriage in the most rapacious manner. Their female 
 wards of the most illustrious families, were actually sold to 
 the highest bidders. Relief and all other feudal exactions 
 were enforced with merciless vigor. 
 
 Grievances of a more general nature had spread disaffec- 
 tion through the mass of the people. Whole villages, and 
 vast tracts of cultivated country were laid waste and convert- 
 ed into deer parks for the exclusive benefit of the royal hunt- 
 ers and their favorites. Justice was publicly sold. The 
 most exorbitant fines were paid for the redress of injuries, 
 and even for the free exercise of the most ordinary privileges, 
 We are told of one hapless wight who paid a heavy fine for 
 being allowed to eat. Such tyranny must have wrought its 
 own ruin in any country, where the spirit of liberty was not 
 wholly extinct. 
 
 Yet such was the overbearing energy of the Norman bas- 
 tard's iron-handed race, that it was not until the reign of the 
 contemptible John, who surpassed his predecessors in wan- 
 ton tyranny almost as much as he fell below them in vigor 
 and sagacity, that any effectual effort was made to set bounds 
 to arbitrary power. The barons and prelates were now no 
 longer the foreign favorites of a tyrant, but a constituent por- 
 tion of the English nation. In their transactions with John, 
 they seem to have felt that they, as chiefs and leaders of the 
 people, were charged with the vindication of the rights of all 
 classes. 
 
 The establishment of Magna Charta was without doubt 
 one of the most pregnant epochs in the history of mankind. 
 The principles, which then for the first time were reduced to 
 a definite declaration of rights, and received the solemn sane- 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 185 
 
 tion of all powers of the state, had doubtless been obscurely- 
 maturing in English society, fronvthe time of the Saxon em- 
 igration. The coral insect and the hidden fires of earth 
 work silently for ages before a new isle is heaved up from 
 the sea to become the home of men, and a shelter for the mari- 
 ner. The great Charter of Anglo-Norman freedom is an is- 
 land in the ocean of time, where the labors and progress and 
 unquenched and unquenchable fires of forgotten generations 
 reached the surface, and raised aloft upon its mountain ram- 
 parts those landmarks of liberty, which, amidst the clouds 
 and storms of after ages, were never wholly lost sight of. 
 
 It differs from another famous paper more immediately 
 interesting to Americans, in its freedom from the abstraction 
 of political philosophy. There is no declaration of natural 
 rights, no attempt to set forth an ideal of society or govern- 
 ment. Though comprehensive, it is altogether practical. 
 The rights which it asserts are set forth not as the rights of 
 men, but as the rights of Englishmen, and grounded not 
 upon natural law, but immemorial prescription. This some- 
 what narrow and altogether practical character, so different 
 from the absoluteness, the vague generality of French declar- 
 ations of right, runs through all the great monuments of Eng- 
 lish liberty, and corresponds with the character of the Eng- 
 lish people. The Anglo-Americans seem to me to have com- 
 bined the peculiarities of the English and French schools of 
 politics, being broader than the former, more specific and 
 practical than the latter. 
 
 The great charter provided specifically for the security of 
 all classes of the people. Its more comprehensive clauses 
 set forth clearly the great practical guaranties of freedom and 
 equity, that no freeman should be damaged in person or es- 
 tate, except by the judgment of his peers and the law of the 
 land, that justice should be done without sale, denial or delay, 
 that no aids or escuages(the usual and most oppressive forms 
 16 
 
186 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 of taxation ) should be levied without the consent of parlia- 
 ment. There is but one exception to the general equity of 
 this paper. The king was permitted by his own authority to 
 levy certain taxes upon the towns, which in England were 
 then far inferior to the chartered cities upon the continent in 
 wealth, population and franchises. It was not till ages of in- 
 cessant conflict between the king and the legislature had elaps- 
 ed after the execution of Magna-Charta, that the great princi- 
 ple of parliamentary taxation, the most important safeguard, 
 nay the very citadel of liberty, was extended to every mode 
 of raising revenue. 
 
 The discontent of the English with the Norman govern- 
 ment, and their vague desires for the restoration of their old 
 Saxon laws and liberties, now settled down to attachment to 
 this great and solemn declaration of rights, which reduced to 
 precision and certainty their hitherto fluctuating notions of 
 the constitution. Here, at last, was laid a firm foundation for 
 the glorious edifice of constitutional liberty. For many 
 years afterwards, the parliament made it an indespensable 
 condition of granting a subsidy to a new king, that he should 
 solemnly confirm the great charter, and the clergy employed 
 all their spiritual power to enforce its observance. 
 The execution of the great charter was soon followed by an 
 improvement in jurisprudence and the administration of jus- 
 tice. The old customs of the Anglo-Saxons, modified by the 
 feudal principles brought over by the Normans, among whom 
 were found not only the most gallant knights but the sharp- 
 est lawyers in the world, began to acquire consistency and 
 regularity, and to expand into that system of rules and pre- 
 cedents called the common law, — one of the most important 
 bequests of the Anglo-Normans of the old world to their 
 descendants in the new. 
 
 An eminent English judge has said, that as great ob- 
 scurity rests upon the sources of the common law, as upon 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 187 
 
 the fountains of the Nile. Though, theoretically, it consists 
 of immemorial customs or lost statutes, it is in a great mea- 
 sure, as a learned American jurist has remarked, a vast body 
 of judicial legislation. The adherence to precedent has 
 been by no means so close as to prevent the English judges 
 from engrafting upon the common law new, and more liberal 
 principles under cover of ancient forms and usages. 
 
 As might have been expected among a people remarkably 
 tenacious not only of their political privileges, but of their 
 private rights, and who were now, by one of the most im- 
 portant provisions of the great charter, entitled to look for a 
 prompt and impartial administration of justice, free from the 
 former vexatious interferences of arbitrary power with the 
 proper functions of judicial tribunals, decisions rapidly ac- 
 cumulated ; and the increasing extent and complexity of the 
 laws made it necessary to fill the highest judicial offices, not 
 with ecclesiastics, as heretofore, but with professional law- 
 yers. This class of men, on account of their number, ability, 
 and the interest which the people of England and the United 
 States have always taken in the administration of justice, 
 have acquired in those two countries a far more commanding 
 position in society than in any other communities, either an- 
 cient or modern. That influence in general has been un- 
 doubtedly favorable to liberty. 
 
 Demosthenes compared the Athenian orators to watch- 
 dogs guarding the temple of national independence, and 
 giving warning to the people of approaching danger. In 
 like manner, the English and American lawyers, filled with 
 the ideas of established right and venerable precedent, and 
 accustomed to the keenest discriminations, are the beao-les of 
 liberty, who scent encroachments of executive power, abuses 
 of judicial discretion and unconstitutional legislation. Hea- 
 ven knows their bark is sometimes vociferous enough. 
 
 The able and honest lawyer deserves a very high place in 
 
188 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 society. Identified, at least in England and the United 
 States, at once with freedom and conservatism, he mav be 
 not only the champion of private rights, but' the guardian of 
 public liberty. He may be the fearless sentinel at the gate 
 of the inner sanctuary of the temple of Justice, guarding the 
 spotless majesty enthroned within from the rude intrusion of 
 arbitrary power or popular phrenzy. What nobler specta- 
 cle than the moral hero, who, profoundly versed in the laws 
 and constitution of a free country, stands up for right and 
 justice, unawed by the frowns and unseduced by the bland- 
 ishments of power ; defying alike the mandates of despotism, 
 the clamors of faction and the insolence of demagogues. 
 
 The jurisprudence of England and Anglo-America is less 
 indebted to the Roman law than that of any other Christian 
 nation. This circumstance has been favorable to liberty, for 
 the civil law, as I have remarked, though admirably adapted 
 to the regulation of society, as well as the speedy and equit- 
 able redress of injuries, is despotic in its origin and spirit, 
 and for that reason the free Anglo-Saxons have ever looked 
 upon it with jealousy. The evils, growing out of the technical 
 inflexibility of the common law, are part of the price of liberty. 
 While power must be entrusted to very imperfect men, it is 
 necessary that its limits should be clearly defined and rigor- 
 ously maintained ; that the course of public functionaries 
 should be marked out by plain and unbending rules, leaving 
 as little room as possible for the exercise of discretion. A 
 system of polity favorable to public liberty, may be too 
 inflexible for the perfect attainment of the ends of private 
 justice. Hence, we find among the Anglo-Normans a sepa- 
 rate and strictly limited equity jurisdiction, hobbling along 
 after the courts of law, and affording a partial relief from the 
 hardships which they are compelled to inflict. As the chan- 
 cellors were at first ecclesiastics, who were partial to the civil 
 and canon law, it is in the chancery system that we must look 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 189 
 
 for the chief influence of the Roman upon the English juris- 
 prudence. We may hope that the progress of society may 
 weaken and finally remove all good grounds for the unnatural 
 divorce of freedom and equity. 
 
 The equality of all freemen before the law has always been 
 one of the chief glories of the English and Anglo-American 
 constitutions. Even in the middle ages, though the incidents 
 of the feudal tenures were peculiarly oppressive in England, 
 the barons never possessed those enormous privileges, inclu- 
 ding an exemption for their families as well as themselves 
 not only from the public burdens, but from the ordinary 
 criminal jurisdiction, which they enjoyed in other parts of 
 Europe. If the members of the House of Lords could be 
 tried only by their peers, their sons, as far back as we have 
 any knowledge in relation to the matter, were subject to 
 precisely the same civil and criminal jurisdiction, with pre- 
 cisely the same rules cf procedure, as the humblest freeman 
 in the land. With some slight exceptions, it may be said 
 the English law has been no respecter of persons. Even 
 the royal family was not above the law. Every one will 
 recollect the anecdote of Gascoigne sending " Prince Hal " 
 to prison for a contempt of Court. It is easy to see how 
 this legal equality must have contributed to keep alive among 
 the people that self-respect and high spirit, which are among 
 the chief sources and surest safeguards of freedom, without 
 which indeed all constitutional guaranties are little better 
 than so much waste paper. 
 
 In the latter part of the thirteenth century, the constitution 
 and powers of parliament emerge from the cloud which rests 
 upon their earlier history. 
 
 As I have had occasion to remark, among all the nations 
 of Germanic origin, the whole body of freemen had a right 
 to be consulted in all important matters, and no new r taxes 
 could be levied without their consent. After the establish- 
 
190 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 ment of the feudal system, the legislative assemblies in gen- 
 eral, consisted of what were called the three estates, that is to 
 say, of the barons, the clergy and the free-holders. The nat- 
 ural supposition is, that the English constitution was similar 
 in this respect to those of other nations of similar origin and 
 circumstances. When the number of free-holders became 
 very large, representation was a very obvious substitute for 
 the personal attendance of the whole body. 
 
 As the progress of the arts, of manufactures and of com- 
 merce increased the wealth and importance of the cities and 
 boroughs, from which a large proportion of the revenue was 
 raised, it was only carrying out a leading principle of the 
 feudal constitutions, that no taxes can be imposed without the 
 consent of those who are to pay them, to extend to them a 
 share in the national legislation. The student of parliamen- 
 tary antiquities first reaches a firm historical footing in the 
 year twelve hundred and sixty-five, when a great baron, the 
 earl of Leicester, having defeated and taken prisoner Henry 
 the IV., summoned a parliament consisting not only of 
 bishops and barons, but of the representatives of counties, 
 cities and boroughs, for the purpose of giving a color of legality 
 to his own revolt and settling the affairs of the kingdom. 
 Whatever may be thought of preceding ages, there is no 
 doubt that from that time the house of commons has formed 
 a constituent part of the national legislature. 
 
 Such was the constitution of parliament, when Edward 
 I. succeeded his father, Henry IV., on the throne of England. 
 The reign of Edward was a memorable and critical era 
 in the history of constitutional liberty. It was now to be 
 determined whether the principles of the great charter, 
 which had been extorted from a pusillanimous prince and 
 confirmed by his feeble successor, could be maintained 
 against a haughty monarch, equal perhaps to any man that 
 ever lived in courage, decision and sagacity, and who, more- 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 191 
 
 over, was scarcely seated on the throne before he gave the 
 clearest tokens of a determination to make his own will the 
 law of the nation. His high-handed measures soon roused 
 a spirit of resistance. 
 
 The barons were on this, as on many other occasions, the 
 powerful guardians of popular rights. It was a critical 
 period, for the result of a struggle with a ruler of such saga- 
 city and overbearing energy as Edward, is usually decisive. 
 In such cases, unsuccessful resistance only confirms the 
 power which it had striven to shake. The triumph of the 
 king might have been an irretrievable overthrow of liberty. 
 Happily for us, happily for mankind, the parliament came 
 out victorious from the struggle, chiefly by taking advantage 
 of a fortunate accident. The king was engaged in a foreign 
 war, which he could not abandon without disgrace and mor- 
 tification, and his ordinary revenue having been exhausted, 
 he was compelled to apply to parliament for the means of 
 carrying it on. That body refused to supply his wants, ex- 
 cept upon condition of his not only confirming the great 
 charter, but relinquishing his prerogative of raising money 
 from the towns and tenants of the royal domains, without 
 their consent. The king held out for a time, but the parlia- 
 ment being immoveable, he at last yielded, and that great 
 principle was fully recognized and established, that no taxes 
 can be laid upon the people without the consent of their 
 representatives, a principle which has been the bulwark of 
 English liberty, and the immediate cause of the American 
 revolution. 
 
 It seems doubtful whether the legislative powers of the 
 house of commons, at first, extended beyond the single func- 
 tion of laying taxes, though they might certainly petition for 
 redress of grievances. It is easy to understand how their 
 power over the revenue, the life-blood of the state, might be 
 usee! for drawing to themselves the control and supervision 
 
192 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 of the entire administration. With the sound practical sense 
 for which the English are remarkable, the commons perfect- 
 ly understood the force and value of the lever, which their 
 power over the revenue placed in their hands, and never 
 relaxed their grasp upon it for a moment. Before the time 
 of Edward, we have seen the barons and prelates taking the 
 lead in defence of popular rights. From that memorable 
 period they recede into the background, and the commons 
 begin to stand forth as the champions of liberty and the great 
 constitutional counterpoise to the royal authority. 
 
 I have elsewhere remarked that order and liberty imply 
 conflict of different tendencies, and can be perpetuated in 
 union only by the preservation of a certain balance of those 
 antagonisms. If we attain to a ri^ht understanding of the 
 relations between the crown and the parliament of England 
 during the middle ages, we shall not be surprised to find that 
 the reigns of the most violent and extravagant princes were 
 signalized by the greatest advances of constitutional freedom. 
 The reign of Richard the Second was a case in point. He 
 was by no means destitute of ability. On the contrary, in 
 some critical junctures of his life, he showed an intuitive 
 sagacity and prompt, decisive energy, which only rendered 
 his vices and follies more glaring by the contrast. He was 
 tyrannical and extravagant, and wasted the substance of his 
 people upon worthless favorites and frivolous amusements, 
 The patience of the commons was exhausted by his incessant 
 demands for money, and at length they impeached his prime 
 minister, and appointed commissioners to superintend the 
 expenditures of his household, and reform the abuses of the 
 administration. This measure gave rise to a desperate strug- 
 gle between the crown and the parliament, which resulted in 
 the deposition and death of the king. 
 
 In this contest, the commons not only preserved but ex- 
 tended their control over the national treasury, by establishing 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 193 
 
 a right to direct the application of the money which they 
 voted, and hold the king's fiscal officers to a strict accounta- 
 bility. They also confirmed, by new precedents, their power 
 of impeachment, and their right to exercise a general super- 
 vision over the executive administration. 
 
 It must not be supposed that these important powers of 
 the popular branch of the legislature were, when recognized 
 by the monarchs, so thoroughly engrafted in the constitution, 
 that the commons could safely rest upon the ground they had 
 gained, and relax their vigilance in reliance upon the con- 
 cessions of faithless princes, who were sure to seize the first 
 opportunity of resuming those prerogatives which had been 
 wrested from them. Amid the incessant fluctuations of 
 power in those semi-barbarous ages, the principles of liberty 
 could be preserved only by the untiring vigilance and uncon- 
 querable obstinacy of their guardians for many successive 
 generations. The statutes of parliament were drawn up af- 
 ter the close of the session, from rough and unskilful drafts 
 of resolutions and petitions, by persons who often ignorantly 
 or wilfully perverted their meaning. It was not until some 
 time in the fourteenth century, that the legislature adopted 
 the practice of introducing their laws in the shape of bills, 
 which were engrossed under their own inspection, and when 
 signed by the king could not be changed. But even this 
 important change was not found an effectual safe-guard 
 against the devices of arbitrary power. Most of the Planta- 
 genet princes were in the habit of suspending statutes, of 
 dispensing with their application to particular individuals or 
 places, and sometimes, encouraged by a turn of political af- 
 fairs which seemed favorable to their own prerogative, they 
 would retract all their concessions, and bid defiance to the 
 authority of the legislature. 
 
 From these causes it often happened that the commons, 
 after having toiled and battled through a long session for 
 17 
 
194 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 some great principle, would find at their next session that 
 their whole work was to be done over again. When we see 
 these men, drawn from the high spirited middle classes of 
 England, standing up under the greatest discouragements, 
 generation after generation, the stern, sagacious and uncon- 
 querable champions of popular rights ; when we see them 
 battling for ages against arbitrary power, as if the eyes of all 
 their mighty posterity were upon them, we are constrained 
 to say, surely the finger of God is here. 
 
 The civil dissensions of the Roses were rather favorable 
 than otherwise to the progress of liberty. The deposition 
 of princes and frequent changes of dynasty destroy the pres- 
 tige of legitimacy, and place the possessor of a tottering 
 throne under the necessity of finding new foundations and 
 props for his power in the love and confidence of his people. 
 The remark applies, however, only to countries in which 
 the people know something of their rights and are sensible 
 of their value, not to such states as the Roman empire and 
 the oriental nations, in which the masses, sunk in apathy and 
 having no weight in government, are merely passive specta- 
 tors of changes effected by foreign force, or by pretorians 
 and janizaries. In nations where the spirit of liberty is alive 
 among the people, the moral resources of arbitrary power 
 are much impaired, when an imbecile or tyrannical prince 
 is dragged down from a throne, which the superstitious and 
 servile had surrounded with the unapproachable majesty of 
 divine right, and power even for a time falls into the hands 
 of the horn rulers of men, whose talents and virtues are a 
 passport from heaven to the high places of authority. In 
 England, while the general principle of hereditary succession 
 has remained unshaken, it has been regarded, not as confering 
 an indefeasible right, but as the constitutional and most con- 
 venient mode of designating the chief magistrate. The 
 throne has never been held so sacred, except by a few servile 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 195 
 
 minions of power, as to place the person of its occupant be- 
 yond the reach of the parliament and the people. 
 
 At the termination of the wars of the Roses, the powers of 
 the popular branch of the legislature were almost as exten- 
 sive, though not so clearly defined nor so well understood as 
 at present. From the time of Richard the Third, the last of 
 the Plantagenets, no organic change has taken place in the 
 English constitution. The vast progress since that period 
 has consisted of expansion, clearer definition, and the remo- 
 val of anomalies. 
 
 It was clearly established before the accession of the Tu- 
 dors, that all money bills must originate in the house of com- 
 mons ; that members could not be arrested during their atten- 
 dance upon pai'liament except in case of treason or felony ; 
 that the freedom of speech could not be abridged ; that the 
 assent of the commons was necessary to all laws; that the 
 representatives of the people had a right to enquire into the 
 conduct of the administration, to bring the king's officers be- 
 fore them to render an account of their doings, to impeach 
 his ministers, and, finally, in concert with the house of lords 
 to fix the succession of the crown, and exercise a general su- 
 pervision of the affairs of state in peace and. war. 
 
 Here was laid a broad foundation of constitutional liberty, 
 provided the elective franchise were sufficiently extensive to 
 make the house of commons a proper exponent of the pop- 
 ular will. In relation to this point, it appears from a statute 
 of Henry the Fourth, that all freemen without distinction had 
 a right to vote in the elections of county representatives, but 
 long afterwards in the time of Henry the Sixth, the right of 
 suffrage was restricted to freeholders possessed of land, to the 
 value of forty shillings. In cities and boroughs all freemen 
 had a right to vote, but in most of the former the elections 
 were actually made by the corporate authorities. The bor- 
 oughs seem to have regarded their representation in parlia- 
 
196 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 ment as a burden rather than a privilege, and some of them 
 were so remiss that the house of commons was under the ne- 
 cessity of resorting to strong measures to compel them to 
 hold elections and return the members they were entitled to. 
 The care which was taken by the legislature to preserve to 
 them a franchise which they valued so little, could only have 
 arisen from regard to that great fundamental principle that 
 taxation and representation are inseparable. 
 
 While the forms of a free constitution were thus settled 
 upon a foundation unshaken by all subsequent revolutions, 
 strange to say, the life, liberty and property of the subject 
 never were so insecure as under the last Plantagenet prin- 
 ces. The monarchs, the powerful barons, and lawless associ- 
 ations somewhat similar to our Lynch tribunals, took advan- 
 tage of the defective administration of justice and the ano- 
 malies that adhered to the constitution to gratify their rev- 
 enge, ambition and rapacity. The noblest institutions were 
 perverted into engines of the vilest tyranny. The "lion of 
 March" Edward the Fourth, while giving a fresh impulse to 
 the commercial and manufacturing greatness of England, 
 found judges and juries servile enough to make themselves 
 the instruments of his furious passions. Indeed, the judicial 
 system was by far the most defective portion of the constitu- 
 tion. The judges held their offices at the will of the king* 
 One of the anomalies to which I have alluded was the court 
 of Star Chamber, which, though utterly at war in its princi- 
 ples and forms of proceeding with the spirit of the constitu- 
 tion, continued, as we shall see, to exercise its arbitrary jur- 
 isdiction as late as the time of Charles the First. 
 
 At the conclusion of the civil wars, the people were weary 
 of bloodshed and outrage, and even arbitrary power, if it 
 brought peace and security, seemed preferable to the rage of 
 faction and the license of plunderers. Nothing is more cer- 
 tain than that the forms of a free constitution are no security 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 197 
 
 against actual tyranny, if those who are charged with the 
 defence of popular rights relax their vigilance and slumber 
 on their posts. The actual administration of the English 
 government under the Tudor dynasty bore, in some particu- 
 lars, the aspect of an eastern despotism rather than of a con- 
 stitutional monarchy. The parliament, secure in its own 
 powers and privileges, sunk into apathy, and readily granted 
 whatever the executive was pleased to demand. Judges and 
 juries were the pliant tools of arbitrary powei\ The church, 
 which had been fiercely assailed by Wickliffe and his disci- 
 ples, whose doctrines had been suppressed by the royal 
 authority, threw all her weight into the scale of her powerful 
 ally. 
 
 The princes of the house of Tudor had no inducement 
 to invade the powers and privileges of the other departments 
 of the state. They used them as pliant tools, and deluded 
 the people, by disguising the substance of oppression under 
 the forms of liberty. They had no motive to levy taxes 
 without the consent of the commons, when they could obtain 
 from that now pliant body as large supplies of money as they 
 wanted, without being troubled with those demands for re- 
 dress of grievances which, in former times, had always been 
 made the indispensable conditions of subsidies. Juries and 
 courts of justice only registered the edicts of oppression* 
 The clergy, as we have said, were now on the side of des- 
 potism, for they began to feel that their moral power was so 
 much impaired as to stand in need of support from the secu- 
 lar authority ; the mass of the people were still too ignorant 
 and superstitious to have much weight in public affairs ; the 
 gentry and nobility, the only classes from whom any resist- 
 ance to arbitrary power could have been expected, had been 
 almost destroyed daring the bloody contests of the Roses, 
 either on the scaffold or the battle-field. 
 
 Yet, it must not be overlooked that the tyranny of the 
 
19S THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 Tudors was of that sort which did not reach the great body 
 of the people. The lightning fell not upon them, but upon 
 the tall heads immediately around the throne. It was of no 
 great concern to the toil-worn peasants and thrifty burgesses, 
 as they gossipped over the news, in the bar-room of the vil- 
 lage ale-house, that Henry had cut off his wife's head, or that 
 Elizabeth had sent Raleigh to the Tower or Essex to the 
 block. It was perhaps the period when our mother-land 
 best deserved the title of " merry England," on account of 
 the comfort and happiness prevalent among the middle and 
 and lower classes. 
 
 It was also a period, the latter part of it at least, of won- 
 derful intellectual development. The abyss of political deg- 
 radation was overarched by an unequalled blaze of literary 
 glories. A Bacon, whose strength and breadth of wing bore 
 him to that lofty and lonely pinnacle, from which, to vary 
 somewhat the figure of an elegant writer, he caught the first 
 rays of the rising sun of knowledge, while damps and dark- 
 ness still covered the world below ; the universal Shakspeare, 
 whose genius was an epitome of the human race, the central 
 and loftiest figure in a group of dramatists, either of whom 
 might have been the first in any other age or clime. But 
 moral and political degradation can be only gilded, not re- 
 deemed, by intellectual glories. When man becomes fully 
 conscious that he has a right to the free exercise of all those 
 high faculties which God has given him, subject only to the 
 eternal obligations of the Divine Law, the most paternal des- 
 potism, though adorned by the wonders of art, and encircled 
 by a blaze of literary genius, is a galling yoke. 
 
 We now approach a mighty era in the history not only of 
 England but of mankind. Though the soul of liberty seemed 
 to have departed at the accession of the Stuarts, the forms of 
 a free constitution were preserved, until the progress of 
 knowledge, the increasing numbers, wealth and influence of 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 199 
 
 tlie middle classes, but especially the stern and daring spirit 
 of Calvinistic dissent, breathed into them new life, and cjave 
 the first decisive impulse to that terrible revolutionary spirit, 
 which in England trampled upon kings and nobles, and af- 
 terwards gave birth to the American democracy ; which has 
 shaken all the thrones of Europe, and swept over the earth in 
 the fiery whirlwind of Napoleon's victories ; has regenerated 
 society by a baptism of fire and blood, and sent pale Fear into 
 the palaces of kings, through triple guards and crowded ante- 
 chambers, to write on the innermost wall the doom of tyrants. 
 
 Though the history of mankind is a web where all events 
 are linked and intertangled to some extent, there are certain 
 critical eras which fix our attention, and when we contem- 
 plate them in all their manifold relations, — all the vast and 
 ever-expanding movements to which they have given rise, 
 we are constrained to believe that if their transactions had 
 fallen out otherwise than they have done, the condition of 
 mankind would have been altogether different from what it 
 is. Perhaps no circumstance in all modern history has told 
 with more powerful effect upon the present condition of the 
 world, than the peculiar direction which was given to the 
 reformation in England. 
 
 The Court of Rome seems never to have possessed as 
 much power in England as in other parts of Europe. Even 
 the national clergy were objects of distrust to the government 
 and the people, on account of their dependence upon the 
 Holy See. From time to time, as far back as the twelfth 
 century, we see this hostility to the usurpations of the church 
 bi-eaking out in various forms ; in Henry's famous contest 
 with Becket; in the indignation of the barons and the people, 
 excited by John's abject submission to the Pope; in the 
 measures by which Edward I., humbled the clergy with the 
 approbation of those very commons who so sturdily resisted 
 all his other high-handed proceedings ; in the statute of pro- 
 
200 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 visors, forbidding all persons to hold ecclesiastical benefices 
 in England by presentation from the court of Rome ; in the 
 suggestion which the commons made to Henry IV., and 
 renewed to his great son, to confiscate the revenues of the 
 clergy to the use of the crown; in many other measures, such 
 as the statutes of mortmain, tending to restrain the rapacity 
 of the ecclesiastics, and put a stop to the perpetual drain by 
 which the papal court impoverished the nation. 
 
 The doctrines of Wickliffe were widely diffused among 
 the middle and lower classes of the people in the times of 
 Henry IV., and his son, the victor of Azincour, and though 
 suppressed, during the reign of the latter, by the secular arm 
 at the instigation of the clergy, they had served to stimulate 
 inquiry and weaken the authority of the church. It is re- 
 markable, that the parliament which passed the severe laws 
 against heresy, under which the disciples of Wickliffe were 
 treated with merciless rigor, was the same that renewed to 
 "Prince Hal," as stated above, the proposition which they 
 had made to his father, to confiscate the enormous revenues 
 of the church. This may seem a strange contradiction, but 
 it throws some light upon the connection between religion 
 and the state in England. Heresy, or dissent from the estab- 
 lished faith, was punished, not so much as a spiritual, but as 
 a civil offence, because the practical English, with their 
 worldly shrewdness, looked much more than any other peo- 
 ple, to the temporal advantages of religion as a support of 
 order and good government. Provided the essentials of 
 Christianity were preserved, theology was a branch of the 
 public service, entrusted to a particular class of men, who 
 were to be moderately paid like other officers of the state, 
 and whose functions ought not to be interfered with, any 
 more than those of other departments. Dissent was, there- 
 fore, an injury to society, which was interested in preserving, 
 not so much the abstract purity, as the unity and vigor of the 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY, 201 
 
 moral power. This fact may serve to explain the facility, 
 so surprising to every attentive reader of the history of the 
 English reformation, with which, not only the government 
 officials, but the great body of the people followed their rulers 
 and the clergy in their religious changes. The thrifty bur- 
 gess, or fox hunting squire, would as soon have thought of 
 questioning the decision of one of the highest judicial tribu- 
 nals, upon a case manifestly within the sphere of its jurisdic- 
 tion, as of dissenting from the action of those who were paid 
 for taking care of religion, upon forms of worship or disputed 
 points of theology. 
 
 In Germany and France, the reformation was chiefly a 
 revolt of the people themselves, headed by their spiritual 
 teachers, and the civil power merely protected or persecuted 
 the new opinions. But in England, it was at first the work 
 of the government itself, and was, in fact, but the substitution 
 of a new form of tyranny over the minds and consciences of 
 men. Every body knows how the lust of Henry VIII., the 
 eagerness of courtiers to share in the plunder of religious 
 houses, the time-serving policy of Cranmer, and the arbitrary 
 power of Elizabeth, founded and built up that strange med- 
 ley of worldly hypocrisy, primitive piety, political prostitu- 
 tion and venerable learning, called the Protestant church of 
 England. 
 
 It was an attempt, and a partially successful one, to build 
 up around the throne, a new spiritual power, more servile 
 and tyrannical than the old. The human mind had just burst 
 the chains which had bound it for ages. It had scarely begun 
 to rejoice in its new found freedom, when a systematic effort 
 was made to rivet them anew. For a time, as I have intima- 
 ted, even the body of the people implicitly followed their 
 spiritual guides. But the English court and the higher ranks 
 of the clergy, after spurning the authority of the ancient 
 church, reckoned without their host, if they imagined that 
 
202 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 their new establishment could long command the respect 
 which had been yielded to that venerable fabric, upon whose 
 hoary battlements the mysterious flight of ages had shed from 
 their " cloudy wings" the mementoes of departed glories. — 
 The proportions of the new structure were marred by rem- 
 nants of the Gothic edifice of popery, which suited their new 
 location, about as well as the drawbridge and donjon keep 
 of an old feudal castle would suit the trimness of a modern 
 country house. To the astonishment of those high dignitaries 
 in church and state, who thought themselves entitled to dic- 
 tate the faith of the nation, and enforce conformity with their 
 own opinions by the most execrable tyranny, there were 
 many thinking men who presumed to doubt the divine com- 
 mission of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. There were some 
 who were bold enough to teach what they believed to be the 
 truth, at the risk, not only of suspension from ecclesiastical 
 functions and the loss of preferment, but of heavy fines, im- 
 prisonment and even death at the stake. 
 
 It was impossible for the court to repress by the most 
 intolerant enactments, that bold spirit of inquiry which their 
 own measures had awakened. They had broken up the 
 fountains of the great deep of popular mind, and then pre- 
 sumed to say to its rising surges, " thus far shalt thou come 
 and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." 
 They soon found that they were usurping the prerogative of 
 Omnipotence. Wider and higher rolled the wave of free 
 thought, until the throne and the church began to rock upon 
 the verge of the frightful abyss into which they finally sunk. 
 
 Even before the death of Elizabeth, a large party had 
 adopted the severe doctrines and republican institutions of 
 Calvin. This party, after the accession of the Stuarts and 
 the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, rapidly 
 gained strength. Their resistance to spiritual tyranny nat- 
 urally drew along with it hostility to that civil despotism, 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 203 
 
 which was the close ally and main prop of a persecuting 
 church. 
 
 In France, the great body of the people continued steadfast 
 to the Catholic church, and the Protestants, after a long and 
 bloody struggle, were finally crushed. Germany was near- 
 ly equally divided between Catholic and Protestant states, 
 which were engaged in furious wars, until the treaty of 
 Westphalia established upon the foundation of mutual toler- 
 ation, the religious peace which has ever since subsisted. 
 Everywhere on the continent, freedom of opinion was either 
 decidedly victorious or utterly prostrate, and when the first 
 rupture took place between Charles and his parliament, 
 England was the only country in which an internal conflict 
 was still vigorously maintained between ecclesiastical author- 
 ity and religious liberty. 
 
 At the accession of the unfortunate house of Stuart, the 
 moral and intellectual activity of the people subject to their 
 rule, began to be clearly enlisted on one side or the other of 
 the two great antagonisms of modern society — arbitrary 
 power, claiming the sanction of divine right, and residing in 
 the crown and its powerful ally, the church, on the one hand ; 
 on the other hand, liberty, developing itself in the kindred 
 forms of free and fearless inquiry on religion, the highest of 
 all subjects, and of sturdy opposition to civil despotism, which 
 was so closely allied to spiritual tyranny, that the enemy of 
 one was also the assailant of the other. The Scottish Pres- 
 byterians, by their rupture with Charles, had the honor of 
 sounding the first war cry in that conflict, which has made up, 
 in a great measure, the history of the Christian world for the 
 last two centuries. 
 
 The history of the Stuart dynasty illustrates the old saw, 
 that "whom the Gods have determined to destroy, they first 
 make mad." The first symptoms of revolt — the first mutter- 
 ings of the approaching storm, were heard in the reign of 
 
204 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 James the First. This monarch, with all his ludicrous and 
 disgusting weaknesses, combined with his useless learning, 
 no small portion of the proverbial shrewdness of his coun- 
 trymen. His political errors had their source in a delusion, 
 very common to arbitrary princes — an exaggerated estimate 
 of his own power. In that favorite maxim of his, " no bish- 
 op, no king," there was a spice of sense, a glimmering of 
 prophetic meaning. Acting upon this maxim, he strove to 
 force conformity with the forms and discipline of the church 
 of England, upon the stern and uncompromising Presbyte- 
 rians of his native country. His failure, and the portentous 
 character of the resistance he encountered, ought to have 
 taught him the folly of bequeathing to his unfortunate son 
 that preposterous enterprise, as one of the first moment to 
 the security of his throne. 
 
 The views of Charles in this respect seem to have coin- 
 cided entirely with those of his father. With a sincere 
 attachment, no doubt, to the English establishment, which 
 retained, so much more than any other form of protestantism, 
 the spirit and forms of that ancient church to which his fam- 
 ily always showed a strong leaning, he had also found it a far 
 more servile and convenient ally of arbitrary power, than 
 the republican Calvinism of Scotland, which, indeed, was the 
 object of his peculiar and unconquerable aversion. While 
 he was attempting to force Episcopacy upon the Presbyter- 
 ians, Laud, with the approbation of the Court, was making it 
 still more distasteful to them and all other dissenters, by a mis- 
 erable pantomine of the pompous ritual and arrogant preten- 
 sions of the Catholic church. Every one will recollect the chief 
 stages of that memorable contest, in which the high-handed 
 measures of the king forced the Presbyterians to draw the 
 sword in defence of their religious liberties. That clash of 
 steel in the North resounded through the British islands. It 
 was the signal for those who had watched, with ill-suppressed 
 
LAW AND LIBERTV. 205 
 
 discontent, the civil usurpations of the crown, to arise and 
 gird themselves for the conflict with arbitrary power. 
 
 Four distinct parties, representing as many different ten- 
 dencies of society, may be seen in the progress of the English 
 revolution, to the successive stages of which, each, in its turn, 
 gave form and pressure. 
 
 First, the high-church, high-tory party, whose sincere, 
 but blind loyalty inculcated a superstitious veneration for the 
 person and prerogatives of the Lord's Anointed, and implicit 
 submission to the authority of the church. This party was 
 the most solid support of the throne, and included nearly all 
 the royalists, who were to be found among the rural gentry 
 and substantial yeomen. 
 
 Then there was the party of aristocratic states?nen, weak 
 in numbers, but strong in talents and experience, and com- 
 prising such men as Strafford and Falkland and Hyde — the 
 representatives in that age of the race of accomplished poli- 
 ticians who, resting upon oligarchical power, and giving it 
 their support in turn, have exercised such vast influence 
 upon the political fortunes of Europe. Admitting, at first, 
 the existence of abuses and the necessity of reform, they 
 finally adhered to the crown, either from love of office or 
 dread of popular license. Had Charles consistently followed 
 the wise, yet energetic counsels of these men, he might have 
 satisfied the great body of the nation, and disappointed the 
 republican enthusiasts. 
 
 On the side of the Parliament, the Presbyterians, who at 
 first took the lead in the struggle with the Court, were in favor 
 of carrying out the idea of the English constitution, by abol- 
 ishing certain anomalies which went far to neutralize its most 
 glorious principles ; by hedging the royal authority within 
 limits, already defined by innumerable charters and prece- 
 dents ; by fortifying with new and more effectual guaranties, 
 the privileges of the commons, and the rights of the people. 
 
206 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 They were also in favor of introducing into the church, a 
 more liberal and popular form of government. The leader 
 of this party was the illustrious Hampden, who, in the bal- 
 anced vigor of his mind, his practical wisdom, and the absolute 
 subordination of his passions and impulses to duty and prin- 
 ciple, bears a most striking likeness to our own Washington. 
 
 In the rear of the Presbyterians, came that stern and ter- 
 rible phalanx, which was destined to overwhelm all the other 
 parties, for when the old social order is once broken up, the 
 most fiery and thorough-going enthusiasm is sure to gain the 
 ascendancy, heaving up with itself the lower strata of society, 
 to the summit of the revolutionary chaos. This party was 
 chiefly composed of Puritans, with a sprinkling of free- 
 thinkers and visionaries, and represented by such men as 
 Vane, Cromwell and Harrington. This party was for estab- 
 lishing on the ruins of the throne and the altar, a purely 
 republican polity, both in church and state. 
 
 As has been remarked in substance, by one of the greatest 
 writers of this or any other age, the Puritans were, in some 
 respects, the most extraordinary body of men that ever ap- 
 peared upon earth. A surface of rock and ice concealed the 
 fires that were to shake the world. The intense ardor of 
 fanaticism was disguised by an austere deportment, — exalted 
 by lofty principle, — disciplined by the coolest judgment, — 
 guided by the profoundest sagacity, — supported by an iron 
 courage and decisive energy, which overwhelmed the proud- 
 est chivalry of the age. 
 
 The great actors in the English contrast favorably with 
 the leaders of the French Revolution, and show the wonder- 
 ful vigor of the Anglo-Saxon character, under the discipline 
 and culture of law, religion and liberty. Indeed, for sound 
 judgment, lofty disinterestedness, heroic constancy, inflexible 
 adherence to principle, just notions of liberty and good gov- 
 ernment, combined with unswerving loyalty to the majesty 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 207 
 
 of law and justice, we know not where to look in continen- 
 tal history for exact parallels to such men as Hampden, 
 Elliot, Marvel, Milton, and other illustrious champions and 
 martyrs of English liberty. They can be matched only on 
 this side of the Atlantic among a kindred people. Even the 
 slandered Cromwell, compared with most of those heroes 
 who have built up their own power upon the ruins of ancient 
 institutions, deserves, at least, a part of the eulogy we have 
 bestowed upon his compatriots. We think that the English 
 and American revolutions fully justify the remark, that to 
 the Anglo-Norman race has been allotted the glorious mission 
 of reconciling order and liberty, and teaching mankind the 
 science of government. 
 
 In stirring periods, the new tendencies of society manifest 
 themselves, not only in action, but in literature, and find their 
 representatives in men of burning words as well as men of 
 heroic deeds. If the two chief stages of the English revo- 
 lution found each its greatest representative among men of 
 action in Hampden and Cromwell respectively, the purest, 
 the least perishable tendencies of the whole mighty movement 
 became an incarnate word in the great Poet, who, rapt by 
 the inspirations of his genius " far above this visible diurnal 
 sphere," drew the sustenance of his own interior life from 
 that fountain of heavenly radiance, where, to use his own 
 glorious imagery, the eagle of liberty feeds his everlasting 
 youth. With prophetic glance, freer, wider, more searching 
 than that of any of his contemporaries, he discerned clearly 
 the eternal principles which linked the transient topics of that 
 day with the highest interests of humanity in all time to come. 
 He knew the value of the outworks of liberty, yet the con- 
 test about ship-money, and most other subjects of dispute 
 between Charles and his parliament, were, to his mind, merely 
 the body of the revolution, of which freedom of conscience, 
 of speech, of the press, was the soul. 
 
208 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 Such were the men, who were the first in the modern 
 world to unfurl the standard of civil and religious liberty, 
 and proclaim in the ears of an awakening people " resistance 
 to tyrants is obedience to God." They had seen their Pro- 
 testant brethren on the continent struggling desperately for 
 freedom of conscience, and in danger of being crushed by 
 the civil authority in alliance with the church. At home, a 
 church nominally reformed, but far more servile and quite as 
 despotic as the papal, was supported by the king in its in- 
 tolerable tyranny. If they turned to the civil administration, 
 they beheld a similar spectacle of arrogant despotism and 
 abject slavery. The king was raising money by his own 
 authority, in utter contempt of a fundamental principle of the 
 constititution, — resorting to forced loans and other illegal 
 expedients for dispensing with the meetings of parliament, 
 — pampering worthless and insolent favorites with the sub- 
 stance of an outraged people, and spurning the most humble 
 petitions for redress of grievances. The judicial business of 
 the country was drawn into two tribunals, the Star Chamber 
 and High Commission courts, whose rules of procedure, ut- 
 terly at war with the free spirit of the common law, gave them 
 absolute control of the life and property of the subject. 
 While the glorious principles of constitutional liberty, which 
 had been extorted by the firmness, and watched over by the 
 vigilance of former parliaments, were lying entombed in the 
 musty repositories of state papers, a profligate court was sit- 
 ting like a vampire upon a prostrate people, sucking its blood 
 and heedless of its sufferings. 
 
 While the terrific elements of revolution were blackening 
 the whole horizon with the portents of the tempest, which 
 was to demolish the throne and desolate the country, Charles 
 and his worthless favorites were disporting themselves in 
 the little spot of sunshine that still surrounded the court. 
 That unfortunate prince had been taught from his cradle to 
 
THE REFORMATION. 209 
 
 entertain the highest notions of the royal prerogative. He 
 was surrounded by men, who either sincerely believed or 
 servilely professed the doctrine of implicit submission, which 
 was inculcated by the clergy of the established church. With 
 such a training and no great original powers of mind to raise 
 him above the narrow prejudices of his education, he was 
 deficient in all those qualities, except personal courage, 
 which were demanded by the crisis it was his destiny to 
 encounter. Nothing could have saved him but a judgment 
 clear of all prepossession, a well-limed mixture of concession 
 and firmness, and, above all, sincerity and good faith in his 
 dealings with his parliament and people. 
 
 His actual character and conduct were almost the exact 
 reverse of all this. His favorite advisers were such persons 
 as the vain, haughty and violent Buckingham, the weak bigot 
 Laud, and his queen, who, educated in the despotic court of 
 France, was utterly ignorant of the spirit and character of 
 the English people. When finally awakened from his dream 
 of absolute power, he knew not when to yield, nor when to 
 resist, nor how to do either. The concessions extorted from 
 him by the parliament which procured his assent to the 
 " Petition of Right," were made so ungracefully, with such 
 reservations, and with so evident an intention to retract them 
 whenever he might be able to do so, that instead of allaying, 
 they only inflamed the popular discontent. By violating, in a 
 short time after the parliament had dispersed, every solitary 
 provision of that great instrument — the second Magna Charta 
 of English liberty, to which, for the purpose of obtaining a 
 supply of his urgent pecuniary wants, he had given his solemn 
 though reluctant sanction, he put it out of his own power 
 ever again to claim the confidence and respect of his people 
 or their representatives. 
 
 The majority of the long parliament, of which Hampden 
 was the leader, assembled evidently with a firm determina- 
 1S 
 
210 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 tion to effect a thorough and permanent reform. The com- 
 mons began this great work by a searching investigation of 
 abuses and grievances, all of which were condemned by res- 
 olutions, to which Charles was obliged to give his assent. — 
 They then proceeded to still bolder measures. They im- 
 peached the king's ministers, condemned the illegal expedients 
 to which he had resorted to raise money without their con- 
 sent, abolished the courts of High Commission and Star 
 Chamber, and provided that the judges should no longer 
 hold their offices at the pleasure of the crown but during 
 good behavior, thus establishing that great principle of judi- 
 cial independence, which, in England and America, has 
 guarded the temples of Justice alike from the seductions of 
 patronage and the passions of the multitude. To all these 
 measures the king was under the necessity of giving his 
 reluctant assent. 
 
 From the fact that the parliament was not contented with 
 these concessions, some writers have inferred that the popular 
 leaders were actuated by selfish or factious motives. But 
 they were men of too much firmness and sagacity to do their 
 work by halves. They had before them the example of the 
 former parliament, who had relied upon the solemn sanction 
 which the king had given to the Petition of Right. They 
 had seen him trample upon every solitary provision of that 
 solemn declaration. After such an instance of perfidy, it 
 would have been madness to trust the liberties of the nation 
 in the hands of a faithless tyrant. They wisely resolved 
 never to disperse until they had disarmed him of the power 
 to render all their labors abortive. 
 
 Between a haughty and perfidious monarch, yielding to the 
 pressure of imperious necessity, but determined to resume 
 his obnoxious prerogatives on a favorable occasion, and a 
 parliamentary majority, sagacious, intrepid and firmly resolv- 
 ed on a durable reform, a rupture was inevitable. It forms 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 211 
 
 no part of my plan to enter into details in relation to the im- 
 mediate causes of that rupture, or the events of the civil wars 
 in which the stern enthusiasm of the Round-heads, guided by 
 the consummate skill and decisive energy of Cromwell, over- 
 whelmed the fiery chivalry that rallied under the royal stan- 
 dard. 
 
 Here for the first time, all Europe, accustomed to the 
 dogma of divine right, was astounded by the spectacle of 
 the monarch of a great people, arraigned at the bar of his 
 subjects, and tried, condemned and executed for violations of 
 the fundamental laws of the nation. If we take into consid- 
 eration the prejudices of the age; the lofty, serious and 
 intrepid character of the judges; the circumstances of the 
 prisoner — the representative of a long line of powerful prin- 
 ces — himself a haughty, fearless and vindictive tyrant; the 
 nature of the charges which were based upon the high and 
 unprecedented ground, that a king is as much bound by the 
 laws of his country, as the humblest of his people ; we must 
 regard the trial of Charles Stuart as one of the most striking 
 and imposing spectacles that the world has ever witnessed. 
 It was the first and most impressive of the lessons, by which 
 power has been taught its limits and its duties in the modern 
 school of revolutions. The trial and execution of Louis the 
 Sixteenth, was but a poor parody of that solemn tragedy, 
 which the French Jacobins aspired to imitate. 
 
 The reign of Charles the First must be looked upon as the 
 most important period in the history of constitutional liberty 
 before the revolt of the American colonies. I will briefly 
 sum up the chief reforms and permanent advances of the 
 cause of freedom, by which it was signalized. 
 
 First, the Petition of Right, the second Magna Charta, 
 reiterates and confirms the most important provisions of that 
 famous instrument, and besides condemns every form of 
 illegal taxation, prohibits the quartering of troops upon the 
 
212 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 people, and carefully provides for the security of personal 
 liberty, by declaring that no freeman, who sues out the writ 
 of habeas corpus, shall be detained in custody by virtue of 
 any special warrant from the king or his council. As this 
 paper received the sanction of Charles, though perfidiously 
 violated by him, it remains one of the great monuments of 
 the English constitution. 
 
 Next, in order of time, are triennial parliaments, bringing 
 popular opinion to bear at shorter intervals, upon the affairs 
 of the state ; the abolition of the courts of High Commission 
 and Star Chamber; and the establishment of the judicial ten- 
 ure of good behavior, which raised the judges from that 
 slavish dependence upon the crown which had often rendered 
 them the servile tools of tyranny. 
 
 Finally, the deposition and execution of the king shivered 
 into fragments that blind idolatry of the person and preroga- 
 tives of the Lord's Anointed, which had been inculcated by a 
 prostituted church. From that moment the moral props of 
 arbitrary power, founded in opinion and prejudice, were 
 sapped, and thinking men, everywhere, began to whisper to 
 themselves and to each other, that power is a trust for the 
 benefit of the governed, who have a right to cashier their 
 rulers for a flagrant abuse of their delegated authority. 
 
 That men might have full leisure to reflect upon all the 
 astounding facts and changes they had witnessed, and an op- 
 portunity of contrasting the imbecile sway of the scions of a 
 corrupt dynasty with the vigorous and enlightened adminis- 
 tration of one of the horn rulers of men, the protectorate of 
 Cromwell arrested, for a time, the tendency of English soci- 
 ety, in accordance with a law of revolutions, to return to its 
 old channel. To do justice to the motives of Cromwell, 
 and of those incorruptible champions of freedom, such as 
 Milton, who were in favor of entrusting the chief executive 
 authority to the iron-handed chieftain, we must take an im- 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 213 
 
 partial view of the state of affairs after the death of the king. 
 A large party of royalists, exasperated by defeat and shocked 
 by the execution of their master, were bent upon restoring 
 the old order of things. It would have been madness for 
 those who had suffered and labored so much in the cause of 
 civil and religious liberty, to place themselves at the mercy 
 of this exasperated and remorseless faction. Those dreadful 
 disorders of society which always follow in the train of civil 
 wars, required a prompt and efficient remedy. Scotland and 
 Ireland were torn to pieces by internal convulsions. The 
 foreign relations were in the worst possible condition, from 
 the want of a representative of the national sovereignty, who 
 could command the respect of the continental powers. 
 
 These circumstances convinced all rational men, who were 
 unwilling to restore the old dynasty, and thus rivet anew the 
 chains which had just been broken, that a clear eye and 
 strong hand were needed at the helm of state. However 
 important it may be in general, to adhere to the regular forms 
 of constitutional government, every nation is subject to vio- 
 lent and critical disorders, which require the prompt applica- 
 tion of extraordinary remedies. Nor is it matter of regret, 
 that such men as Cromwell are at hand, who can rule the 
 storm, and do not shrink from the terrible responsibilities of 
 such emergencies. 
 
 He well knew the peril and obloquy which he incurred. 
 He knew that his station would be no bed of roses, but a 
 pillow of thorns. To no one, perhaps, is mere power so 
 much an object of desire, that he would be willing, for its 
 possession, to sacrifice almost everything else that man holds 
 dear upon earth. Nor is it always a virtue to prefer the 
 peace and security of private life to the perils and responsi- 
 bilities of high office in troublous times. We see no reason 
 why a man, who finds himself surrounded by disorders, 
 which require prompt and energetic measures, if he feels 
 
214 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 that sublime, because well-founded, self-reliance, which has 
 distinguished the master spirits of the world, should not take 
 upon himself the perilous, and often thankless task of re- 
 organizing society. 
 
 The Protector fully vindicated his estimate of his own 
 powers by the results of his sagacious and energetic policy* 
 Arraigned at the bar of European opinion, he pleaded his 
 own cause in a voice which resounded through the civilized 
 world, and drowned the poor treble of his miserable libel- 
 lers. Liberty of conscience was secured, outrage suppress- 
 ed, justice impartially administered, peaceful industry pro- 
 tected, insurrection crushed and the insolence of foreign na- 
 tions effectually humbled. 
 
 How wearisome are those men, who blinded by prejudice 
 can see little else than fanaticism or hypocrisy in the hero, 
 who, after spending the greater part of his life as a plain far- 
 mer or obscure member of the commons, formed an army, and 
 conducted it with a skill which is usually the result of mili- 
 tary education and long experience ; who, after overthrowing 
 in the field the brilliant chivalry of the king, and bringing 
 the head of the tyrant to the block, found himself in a situa- 
 tion of peril and responsibility which would have crushed 
 any ordinary mortal. Having to contend at once with a mu- 
 tinous army, a factious parliament, the unrelenting hatred of 
 a powerful party, and the unbridled insolence of foreign ag- 
 gression, this wonderful man, with a lofty purpose which no 
 discouragements could shake, a prompt and overbearing en- 
 ergy which no opposition could withstand, a sagacity which 
 no intricacy could perplex, and a penetration that no dissim- 
 ulation could baffle, while with one hand he crushed insur- 
 rection at home, with the other swept the Dutch navy from 
 the seas, humbled Spain, made France the unwilling instru- 
 ment of his purpose, and raised England to a height of glory 
 which she had never reached under the greatest of her mon- 
 archs. 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 215 
 
 Yet with all its glories, the commonwealth must be looked 
 upon as a sort of parenthesis in the progressive evolution of 
 the idea of the English constitution. It was a temporary 
 remedy for a desperate disease. It had no root in the past, 
 nor any vital connection with the main stem of prescription 
 and social development. The appearance of life which had 
 been given to it by the genius and energy of the first Crom- 
 well, utterly vanished during the feeble administration of his 
 son. It was an interval of sunshine after the storms of the 
 revolution, which gave time for the principles of liberty, agi- 
 tated in that contest, to take such deep root in the popular 
 mind, that the profligate tyranny of the restored dynasty 
 could not crush them, nor prevent their giving birth to the 
 revolution of sixteen hundred and eighty-eight. 
 
 At this point, the plan of this work requires that I should 
 bring to a close my brief sketch of English constitutional his- 
 tory. I will briefly recapitulate the causes, which have mainly 
 contributed to the preservation and progress of Anglo-Nor- 
 man liberty in the Old world, before it was transplanted to 
 the New. 
 
 Free institutions, upheld by a lofty spirit of personal inde 
 pendence, were common to all the Germanic tribes, and in 
 this respect the Anglo-Normans could claim no decided su- 
 periority over other nations of the same origin. It is not to 
 be overlooked however that in England the population was 
 wholly Germanic, the Celts having been rooted out by the 
 fierce and indomitable Saxons, while in France, Spain and 
 Italy, the German tribes were merely the ruling class in the 
 midst of large Romance populations, in whom the spirit of 
 liberty had long been extinguished by subjection to the Roman 
 empire. The conflict between antagonist elements of polit- 
 ical organization was more vigorous and protracted in Eng- 
 land than on the continent, and as that peculiar sense of 
 equilibrium or aversion to the absolute, which seems to be 
 
216 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 inherent in the Anglo-Norman race, would never permit 
 any of the political forces to gain a permanent ascendancy, 
 their struggles resulted in the compromises of the constitu- 
 tion. This result was favored by the insular position of Eng- 
 land securing her from foreign invasion, which, on the conti- 
 nent, induced the people to connive at illegal taxation and 
 other excesses of arbitrary power, that seemed necessary to 
 defend their own fields and firesides from the rapine and in- 
 solence of a foreign enemy, — still further, by the peculiar 
 turn given to the reformation in England, which, at an early 
 period, arrayed the champions of free inquiry and liberty of 
 conscience against a spiritual tyranny, founded and support- 
 ed by the state, but undisguised by any of those venerable 
 associations which enabled the Catholic church to maintain 
 her grasp upon the moral feelings and imaginations of men ; 
 and, finally, free inquiry and the republican institutions of 
 Calvinism, starting up in opposition to the civil despotism, 
 which was the formidable enemy of both, infused new life 
 and vigor into long settled but almost forgotten principles 
 and gave birth to that terrible revolution which cemented 
 with blood the foundations of constitutional liberty. 
 
 Through all the phases of England's political progress, 
 we discern a singular tenacity of ancient rights and privi- 
 leges, a stubborn resistance to the encroachments of one de- 
 partment of the government upon another, a strong aversion 
 to the speculations of political idealists, and a distrust of all in- 
 novations, which could not be readily engrafted upon the tree 
 of prescription, without either violently lopping any of its 
 branches, or injuring those roots which were buried in the 
 strong soil of Saxon antiquity. The strong practical sense 
 of the English shows itself in aversion to extremes and to the 
 absolute in every form. For this reason no people have suc- 
 ceeded so well in reconciling movement with conservatism, 
 in combining the spirit of improvement with a rational vene- 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 217 
 
 ration for the past. To this fact we must mainly ascribe the 
 remarkably solid, durable and expansive character of her 
 civilization. 
 
 I shall not attempt at present to trace the rise and pro- 
 gress of the commercial and maritime greatness of England, 
 — the main-spring of that mighty movement, which has 
 turned the haunts of savages and wild beasts into abodes of 
 refinement, intelligence and freedom ; kindled the lights of 
 knowledge upon the shores of Australia and the oriental 
 islands ; founded a new empire in India, upon the ruins of 
 the magnificent dynasty of Tamerlane ; battered down the 
 wall of exclusiveness that fenced the millions of China from 
 the inroads of western civilization, and is still, with ever- 
 increasing velocity, diffusing the English language, laws and 
 literature to the farthest bounds of the green earth. That 
 movement is the most stupendous fact of modern history, 
 and might suggest boundless speculations on the future. 
 One is tempted to imagine that the Anglo-Norman race has 
 received from Divine Providence a fee-simple conveyance of 
 this planet, with the appurtenances thereunto belonging. 
 
 Of the streams of life which have issued from that reser- 
 voir of nations, the mightiest has taken its way through the 
 forests and over the prairies of North America, bearing up- 
 on its bosom a political argosy freighted with the hopes and 
 destinies of man. Little more than two centuries after the 
 first feeble colonies were planted upon the Atlantic coast, 
 their descendants are pouring through the defiles of those 
 snow-capped mountains, which throw their morning shadows 
 upon the placid bosom of the South Sea. 
 
 We cannot but regard it as a singularly providential cir- 
 cumstance, that the permanent settlement of Anglo- America 
 was postponed to that remarkable period, when the fetters of 
 the human mind having been broken, a spirit of inquiry had 
 s^one abroad, and th<* great battle between power and liberty 
 19 
 
218 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 had commenced. The American offspring of England may 
 be said to have been born from the first throes of that great 
 revolution which quickened the life-blood of the mother 
 country with the spirit of liberty. To carry out the figure, 
 the robust infant was cast out into the wilderness and left to 
 the care of nature, and it soon found the use of its own limbs, 
 without the aid of its parent. 
 
 The circumstances of the Spanish settlements were precise- 
 ly the reverse. At the time they were made, Spain was the 
 first nation and greatest military power on earth. But her 
 government was an absolute despotism in church and state. 
 Under the gloomy and bigoted Philip the Second, the last 
 sparks of free inquiry were trodden out in blood. From 
 such a society, bands of daring adventurers went forth, thirst- 
 ing for gold, and, carrying the cross before them, conquered 
 the fairest and most populous portions of America. They 
 were supported by the vast military power of the parent 
 country, from which a haughty aristocracy and persecuting 
 church were transplanted to the new world. 
 
 The settlers of Massachusetts and Virginia brought with 
 them the love of freedom which was reviving in England. 
 Some of them, indeed, had the best possible reasons for 
 hating tyranny. From their new homes in the western 
 world, they saw their brethren who had remained in the 
 mother country, struggling for civil and religious liberty. 
 They saw a corrupt hierarchy crushed, a haughty nobility 
 humbled, and the head of a perfidious monarch brought to 
 the block, for trampling upon the rights of the people. Some 
 years afterwards they saw another prince of the same infat- 
 uated dynasty, hurled from the throne, and the great princi- 
 ple at least partially recognized, that all power is a trust for 
 the benefit of the governed, who have a right to take it away 
 from those who flagrantly abuse it, and confer it upon others 
 who are able and willing to perform its duties. 
 
LAW AND LIBERTY. 219 
 
 The English constitution was still encrusted by many un- 
 sightly anomalies, some of which have not, to this day, been 
 removed. But the principles of liberty, which in England 
 were checked and stunted, first by military ascendancy, and 
 then by ancient institutions, encountered no such unpropitious 
 influences in America. There was no necessity for a large 
 military force to protect .the colonists from the few naked 
 savages who roamed through the forests, and if there had 
 been, such a force could not have been spared by either of 
 the contending factions of the mother country. There was 
 nothing to tempt the nobility and prelates to the wilds of 
 America. The settler, familiar with the rude grandeur of 
 nature, could have none of those servile feelings, which, in 
 Europe, were fostered by long established social distinctions, 
 but trod in the wilds which he was subduing, with the free 
 step and erect port of the conscious lord of creation. His 
 mind, developed by the labors and perils of laying the foun- 
 dation of a new empire in the wilderness, was free, original, 
 fearless, self-relying, like the mountain eagle, cradled on the 
 crag and rocked by the tempest. 
 
 Yet he was by no means, cut off from the life-giving past. 
 If he had left behind him the army, the aristocracy and the 
 church, the three props of arbitrary power and ancient 
 abuses, he brought with him all that was adapted to his new 
 circumstances. He brought with him all that glorious legacy 
 of former ages, which the nobility and clergy had helped to 
 preserve and transmit, before the people had become suffi- 
 ciently enlightened to take charge of it themselves. He 
 brought with him the common law, the trial by jury, the 
 habeas corpus, parliamentary legislation, the division of the 
 legislature into two bodies, holding by different tenures and 
 acting as checks upon each other, judicial independence ; 
 and that great principle, the impregnable outwork of liberty, 
 which requires the consent of the representatives of the 
 
220 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 
 
 people to the imposition of taxes, and appropriations of 
 money. Besides all this, he brought with him the intellectual 
 treasures, which, first emerging from the darkness of remote 
 antiquity in the poems of Homer and the literature to which 
 they gave birth, have been constantly accumulating down to 
 the present time. Last, but not least, he brought with him 
 the Christian religion, in the freest and purest form then 
 known. The vast arrangements of Providence, steadily ma- 
 turing through the vicissitudes of ages, have at last brought 
 together a complete provision for the complex nature of man. 
 American society, then, may be regarded as the net product 
 of tlie whole fast, eliminated from those terms which, though 
 useful in working out the problem, must be cancelled to ob- 
 tain the result. The stream of ages, in passing the Atlantic, 
 has deposited the rubbish of dilapidated institutions. The 
 plants, which had drooped under the shade of crumbling 
 fabrics that once sheltered them from the wintry blasts, trans- 
 planted to a rich and unencumbered soil, may spring aloft 
 into the heavens and overshadow the world. 
 
 I may be considered an enthusiast for avowing the belief 
 that the Anglo-Normans, especially the American branch, are 
 destined to be the pioneers and teachers of mankind in the 
 science of civil government. They seem to me singularly 
 qualified for this glorious part in developing the plans of 
 Providence. I have adverted to the moderation and practi- 
 cal sense, the aversion to the extremes of political idealism, 
 which are characteristic of the English and their American 
 descendants. These qualities were exhibited in a striking 
 manner in the organization of the American government. 
 Our constitution was a compromise, not only between slave- 
 holding and non-slaveholding societies, — between centraliza- 
 tion and state rights, — but also between progress and con- 
 servatism. The American statesmen did not, like the French 
 Jacobins, aspire to build a political edifice out of flimsy 
 
LAW AND. LIBERTY. 221 
 
 abstractions of their own spinning. They did not attempt to 
 create, but merely to construct, with material ready to their 
 hands. With principles as old as Magna Charta, institutions 
 to which the people had long been accustomed, and the new 
 equality growing out of the peculiar circumstances of Amer- 
 ican society, they went to work in a spirit of compromise, 
 and constructed a glorious temple of constitutional liberty. 
 
 The moderation and sense of equilibrium, of which we 
 have ascribed a larger measure to the Anglo-Saxons than 
 any other race, were conspicuous in the character of Wash- 
 ington, who, like many other great men, was the highest 
 example of the predominant traits of his countrymen. His 
 mind has been underrated on account of the unparalleled 
 equipoise of its faculties. Nothing stands out in bold relief 
 to arrest attention and strike the imagination. There is even 
 an appearance of tameness in the complete subordination of 
 his passions to his judgment and sense of duty. Yet his 
 soul was colossal, and grows upon us the more it is contem- 
 plated. His character was not the cloud-piercing Gothic 
 spire, but the symmetrical dome, which if lower and less 
 striking, is more solid and enduring. Its key-stone was that 
 steadfast adherence to principle which allowed no selfish pas- 
 sion for a moment to disturb the singleness of his purpose, 
 nor any misfortune to shake his calm resolution. 
 
 But I find myself encroaching upon subjects which I wish 
 to reserve for another work of a less summary character 
 than the present. I hope hereafter to complete my view of 
 the philosophy of history by tracing the progress of society 
 through what may be called the age of revolutions, from the 
 beginning of our own struggle with England down to the 
 year 1815, when the last remnant of Napoleon's gigantic 
 power was annihilated on the field of Waterloo, and noticing 
 the most remarkable men, both of action and speculation, who 
 have been connected with the movements of that stirring 
 period. 19* 
 
222 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OK 
 
 Finally, if to be called a Roman citizen was once an honor 
 greater than royalty itself, what honor, what responsibility 
 must attach to the citizen of the Anglo-American republic ! 
 When we take into consideration the peculiar and interesting 
 character of their political institutions, the restless activity, 
 sound judgment and over-mastering energy with which the 
 Anglo-Normans are pushing the triumphs of their intellect 
 and enterprise in every part of the world, we think we are 
 justified in placing that wonderful race of men in the van of 
 Christian civilization. At no distant period the island moth- 
 er must be overshadowed by the greatness of her offspring, 
 for the power of England is singularly artificial. It has a 
 very narrow territorial foundation in comparison with many 
 of her colonies. It is a pyramid propping the heavens and 
 overshadowing the earth, but resting upon its apex instead 
 of its base, and upheld by the financial skill and far-reaching 
 sagacity which have presided in her councils. The American 
 republic is the mightiest of her progeny, and if its union and 
 liberty are preserved, the sceptre of that stupendous intel- 
 lectual empire, of which the English language will be the 
 bond of spiritual union, must be transferred from England to 
 the United States. 
 
 The westward progress of empire and of the centre of civil- 
 ization has often been the subject of remark. It would 
 seem that in the long day of man's existence upon earth, the 
 point of meridian glory, like that of the solar day, is destined 
 to make the circuit of the globe. From Persia to Greece, 
 from Greece to Italy, from Italy to the Franks in France and 
 Germany, from the Franks to Spain, from Spain to England, 
 and may not the next transfer be from England to America % 
 When passing the Pacific, it once more reaches the primeval 
 seats of the human family may be the appointed time for the 
 Recording Angel to close the volume of this world's history. 
 
 But we have better grounds than fanciful analogies for a 
 
LAW AND LIBERTT. 223 
 
 prospect so pleasing to our national pride. No one of com- 
 prehensive mind can look at the Mississippi valley, with its 
 dependent fringes of territory on the Atlantic and Pacific 
 coasts, without being ready to exclaim with an English tour- 
 ist — " If anywhere on earth the Almighty himself has marked 
 out the seat of empire, surely it is here." In fertility, re- 
 sources and extent of commercial facilities, no other region 
 on earth can compare with it for one moment, except per- 
 haps the basin of the Amazon, and there the minds and 
 bodies of the people must be enfeebled by the incessant heat 
 of an equatorial climate, while here there are no physical caus- 
 es which can tend to deteriorate the most active, sagacious and 
 energetic race of men that the world ever saw. Here, per- 
 haps, human intelligence is to reach its loftiest earthly mani- 
 festations. Here are to be solved many of those great prob- 
 lems which involve the future destiny of mankind. Here 
 civilization may attain its most glorious triumphs, if we give 
 to^genius, wisdom and learning their due regard ; if we place 
 virtue and intelligence above wealth and office ; if we pre- 
 serve that only true liberty which is consistent with a lofty 
 morality, with wholesome laws — with justice to all and each ; 
 if we look back upon the mighty past, not with self-compla- 
 cent contempt, but with that discriminating veneration which 
 may take warning from its errors and emulate its greatness ; 
 if last, though not least, we cling to that most precious of all 
 its legacies, of which the cross is the seal and the Bible is 
 the record, duly attested by the Providence of God. 
 
678 .:*g 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 rP 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o5 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *° 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •> ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 r >. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Treatment Date: App 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 PreservationTechnoIogie 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (724) 779-2111 
 
\> 
 
 ci>~ 
 
 ; & 
 
 ^ «