them as folly. Who denies that the most senseless enthusiasm (schwärmerei) may arise out of this? But who will likewise deny that men, whose shoe's latchet I could not venture to loosen, have held this faith with unshaken assurance; and that the light of their spirit shines in their writings and in their actions?'

The rest of the letter is equally curious: though this mysticism or faith is capable of many forms, he considers that, although it may grow up beyond the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, it finds more nourishment within it than without :-

"We cannot disguise to ourselves that the Catholic Church speaks to the heart in many things, in which ours-[he means the Protestantism then prevalent in Germany]-is dumb; that we must judge of its doctrines (its tyrannical hierarchy is another thing) not as they have degenerated into senseless, spiritless, dead formalities; that a genuine Mystic, like Fenelon, can live in it, in its highest fervour, without danger of spiritual pride, or of becoming enthusiastic in a bad sense, to which our Protestant Mystics are always exposed.'

He goes on to show that even Confession and Absolution may be less objectionable than his correspondent is inclined to suppose; while at the same time all these forms may and do subsist, when the spirit has altogether departed :

If, then, the pious and doubting Protestant, in his yearnings for something better, and in his distress at the death of the Protestant Church, and the waxen image, which passes under its name, casts a feeble and furtive look of love towards the Roman Catholic Church; if he is so easy under the illusion, as if he had never seen the priestly power (pfaffenthum) in its degradation, we ought not, in my opinion, to treat him with bitterness. But of all things we must say to this wellmeaning person, Invest not in your idealism that of which you can test the reality. See how the spirit, from the love of which alone you can attach yourself to this otherwise fearful form, never entirely pervaded it, and show us whether it is now in it, and necessarily subsists in this form. See how even this ideal tendency, which has formed many of its peculiarities, as is often the case, when and as soon as they have disappeared, leave something far worse behind them: see how hypocrisy and verbal captiousness grow out of asceticism; priestly tyranny out of Church discipline; the wildest sensuality out of the mortification of the flesh..... I often ask myself [he writes this in 1812] what will ensue. In the Catholic countries the priesthood is dying out; men neither can nor will take orders. Among us we have the name and the form: with a general dull consciousness that all is not right; every one is uncom fortable; we feel like ghosts by a living body. I speak now only of the continent; for in England Christianity stands firm as a rock, notwithstanding the countless sects which are constantly springing up, and show the fertility of the soil. I am perfectly tranquil as to the result. We shall be more sound and true when everything severs itself away which does not from the heart belong to one of the many communities which will then form themselves. Offences must come; but woe unto

him through whom they come. I would not tear up the dead Church; but if it should fall, it would not disturb me. Let us be confident that a Comforter will come, a new Light, when we least expect it. All the sorrows of the present time will lead us, if we will be led, to truth.'

There can be no doubt that the fearful circumstances in which he lived, and his own personal distresses and afflictions deepened that strong sense of the providential government of the world, which was the groundwork of Niebuhr's earnest and conscientious moral character. His trust in the Divine justice and goodness lay at the bottom of all his stern and impassioned hatred of baseness and of evil, of his ardent and noble sympathies with the lofty and the good. He recognised and adored the Divine power and wisdom in the conduct of human affairs; he appealed in his sorrows, he submitted in his privations, to the decrees of an AllWise Being, We have seen his extreme anxiety that those profounder religious feelings, and that early faith of which he himself felt the want, should be implanted in the hearts of his children; we have seen him establishing a Protestant service in his house at Rome. In one of his later letters we have the following passage:

He is not to me a Protestant Christian who does not consider the history of Christ's earthly life, according to its genuine literal sense, with all its miracles, as clearly historical as any other event in the course of history, and is not as calmly and firmly convinced of it; who has not the strongest conviction of all points in the Apostles' Creed in their literal sense; who does not treat every doctrine and every commandment of the New Testament as unquestionably of Divine revelation; in the sense of the first century, which knew nothing of (a verbal qu.?) inspiration (Theopneustie). A Christianity after the manner of our modern philosophers and pantheists is to me no Christianity; without a personal God, without immortality, without the individuality of man, without historical belief, it is no Christianity; though it may be a very intellectual, a very ingenious philosophy. I have often said that I will not begin with a metaphysical God. I will have no other than that of the Bible, who is heart to heart (der herz zu herz ist).’—vol. ii. p. 344.

In this letter he proceeds to protest against a rigorous, systematic scheme of religion. This, he conceives, was first completely established by the school philosophy in the interests of the dominant hierarchy. This was what Luther protested against. It was only after Luther that these rigid systems were re-established:

In the symbolical books are doctrines about inspiration (verbal inspiration) about the connexion of the Old and New Testament, which will never again resume their power; and how much more is there of which the primitive Church knew nothing! Let it be con

sidered

sidered whether my rule is narrow or large and let no man falsely ascribe to me the intention of explaining religion as mere human teaching, and its history according to the rules of every-day life. My design is directly the reverse of this.'

Such seem to have been the opinions of Niebuhr on this subject, on which, it is evident, he had thought deeply and seriously. How far they may be thought satisfactory or unobjectionable among ourselves, is not the question: it is clear that in him these were consistent with much of the higher blessings, with the moral control, the aspirations, and consolations of religion; and his own regretful allusions to certain circumstances of his education require no comment from us. There are many other passages in his letters with regard to the state of Christianity in Rome and in Germany well worthy of consideration. The aversion to Popery, which he felt so profoundly in Rome, was not weakened by the darkening bigotry and restless ambition of the Vatican, which threatened, and still threatens, to disturb the peace and prosperity of the Rhenish provinces of Prussia.

On Niebuhr's great work we are not now called upon to pass judgment. We are persuaded that the time is not yet come (we find M. Savigny expresses the same opinion) at which the worth of his discoveries will be appreciated according to their real value. Posterity must decide how much of his bold and original views will become integral parts of Roman History, and, having endured the sober and patient investigations of competent scholarship and historical criticism, receive the homage and command the faith of the inquiring and educated part of mankind. For on the one hand his admirers are dazzled by the wonderful powers of the writer, his boundless knowledge, his inexhaustible memory, his power of combination, the divining skill with which he scizes the clue of some brief or careless hint in a scholiast or a writer of slight reputation, and follows it to remote but probable conclusions; the felicity with which his theory accounts for his facts, and his facts support his theory; the happy analogies with the forms and usages and constitutions of other states. We must acknowledge that when we study Niebuhr, we ourselves are under the spell, and for the time apt to become his blind disciples. When we get again beyond the magic circle, though we cannot return to the servile belief of the few adherents of the ancient creed-(in fact, the demolition of the old edifice by Perizonius and Beaufort was almost complete before Niebuhr: it is the reconstruction, the new Roman history, which is alone worthy of investigation)-a suspicion and mistrust cannot but haunt us of the improbability that it should be reserved to modern times to discover such important facts, such vital principles, as it

were,

were, of the history, of which the best writers of Rome, with the command of all the ancient annals and documents which have perished, seem either to have had no conception, or at least no clear or distinct knowledge. The axiom which is laid down by his more ardent partisans, that he who has long looked at one object with the steadiness and intensity with which Niebuhr has studied the history of Rome, must obtain a clearer and more profound insight into it, than those who have surveyed it with a more rapid and less concentrated attention, is in some degree balanced by the unquestionable fact, that the intellectual as well as the corporeal vision, when unremittingly fixed on one object, is apt to make that object assume a form and a colouring, as it were, from the sight itself. We see what we wish to see-not what is really before us. The imagination blends with the reality till we lose the clear and cloudless distinctness in which at first we saw the object. On the other hand, when we consider, that among the most fervent disciples of Niebuhr in England are those who have made the Roman history their peculiar study, we cannot but acknowledge that if there be any delusion it must be a very powerful one which has carried away so many and such distinguished proselytes.

We would, however, consider the history at present solely as illustrative of the character of the man; for to that character we are persuaded it owes, to some extent at least, its influence and authority.

We know no writer more rigidly conscientious than Niebuhr. In a curious letter in the second volume, written for the instruction of a youth who intended to devote himself to philology, he insists that no quotation should be made at second-hand, even if scrupulously verified, without naming the intermediate source from which it was derived. No writer was more firmly convinced of the truth of his own conclusions. We have given examples of this in his bold appeal to an ancient Roman rising from the grave. We could multiply such passages. He writes in these words to Savigny

-

'In its doctrines it now stands fixed, and not to be shaken throughout all ages-(jetzt in seinen Lehrsätzen unershütterlich für alle Zeiten fest steht). I scruple not to say that no discovery of any ancient historian can teach so much as my labours; and that whatever may come to light, which is ancient and genuine, will only afford confirmation and development of my views.'-vol. iii. p. 187.

It is this grave earnestness, this entire assurance of the solidity of his views, which not merely commands respect and deference, but blending as it does with our admiration of the sagacity, penetration, erudition, and concentrating powers of the writer, imposes

upon

upon us with the authority of a master, at times wrests our critical fasces from our hands, and makes us lay them humbly down before the feet of the dictator, in whose right to his office and authority we cannot but acquiesce.

It may appear a paradox to say so-but of all original writers Niebuhr seems to us the most superior to the love of paradox. Contrast him, for instance, with Warburton. The latter is an intellectual gladiator who has engaged himself to put forth all his courage and skill in a certain cause. In his own powers he has the utmost confidence-in his cause, little or none. We are almost satisfied that he would change sides like a practised advocate, and confute himself with but little scruple. But of Niebuhr's boldest and most hazardous conjectures we feel that he is himself profoundly, intimately convinced; and hence there is an absolute charm in his positiveness, in his peremptory dogmatism, which in a less sincere and honest writer provokes a stubborn opposition. In all his most startling propositions, his most daring innovations, he is seeking truth, not labouring to convince; still less condescending to the paltry ambition of astonishing and enforcing the admiration of his reader. This impression is greatly strengthened by the severe and uncompromising fearlessness with which he constantly refers all actions and events to his high moral standard. We may differ from Niebuhr as to his moral as well as his historical judgments: according to our tenets and views, we may refuse our ardent admiration to one party in the Roman constitution, and consider that justice is not done to the other; but we shall differ, not on the lofty principles to which Niebuhr perpetually appeals, but on the application of these principles to the particular cases. In no writer is the sincere attachment to law and order more intimately blended with the assertion of freedom; no man more cordially abhors that state of violence and disorganisation, in which the wicked, the reckless, and the desperate prosper; no work more strongly expresses the eternal moral lesson, that public prosperity, happiness, and dignity can alone rise out of private virtue.

ART. VIII.-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, written by himself, with a selection of his Correspondence. Edited by his Sons. In 2 vols. 2nd edit. 8vo. London. 1840.

WE

E have on former occasions stated our strong opinion that near relatives are the very most unfit editors of any man's biography. It is, in fact, a task which never should be undertaken by those whose natural and inevitable partiality to