Grecanica hodierna, Allatio opposita ab Elia Veielio.' But whatever such attempts meant, or whether they meant anything at all, they were manifestly useless after the Council of Bethlehem had, in 1673, anathematised the doctrines of Lutheranism and Calvinism. From this brief account of the attempts, in the seventeenth century, to bring about a reconciliation between the various communities of professing Christians, two things may, perhaps, chiefly be learnt. The one is that, at the commencement of the Reformation, and for many years after, the most bigoted Protestant felt, equally with the staunchest Roman Catholic, that such a state of schism could not continue without sin. The three parties had each of course its own view as to the means by which a pacification was to be effected. But among none of them did there prevail the view now generally adopted by Protestant theologians, that such a state of things is not unpleasing to God, and may be beneficial to Christianity. This appears very strikingly if one contrasts the efforts of Dury, or Calixtus, or Grotius, or, in earlier times, Cassander, with those of such a body as the Evangelical Alliance in our own days. The latter actually seems to regard division in non-essentials as a component part of the general scheme of Christianity; which non-essentials embrace about nine-tenths of the dogmas which all sects, from the time of the Reformation downwards, have considered it necessary to believe or to reject. -or But the more important consideration is this;-the utter impossibility of carrying out, and the utter folly of forming, any plan of reconciliation which begins with unity, and ends with truth; which, again to refer to Bishop Andrewes's words, sets Pax in terris before Gloria in excelsis. Whether such attempts were made, as at first, by endeavouring to hit on a form of words which might mean two opposite things, in fact, to approach Almighty God with a string of devotional puns, whether they were to be promoted by persuading all sects that, except what they already held in common, nothing at all was worth holding in common, both miserably and egregiously failed. Every one can now see how vain was the attempt of the early pacificators to unite those who disputed about the Holy Eucharist, by persuading them to receive our Lord's words, each in their own meaning. You,' they said to the Roman Catholics, may take This is My Body, in its natural signification. You,' to the Lutheran, may explain it to mean, My Body is present with this Bread, by way of consub'stantiation. You,' to the Zuinglian, may interpret it, This ' is not My Body in any sense whatever. You,' to the Carol 6 stadtian, may teach that our Lord, raising the bread in His hands, said, Take, eat; and then, pointing to Himself, added, This is My Body. Interpret the words, all of you, in your own ways; only join in receiving them as words; and in this manner we shall obtain the union which we all desire.' And yet, this is the kind of pacification which men now-a-days seem anxious to bring about. That it failed under the Tenisons, and Burnets, and Patricks of 1689, is, we trust, a sufficient omen of its fortunes in our own day, when it is recommended by their successors, equal in station but inferior in every other character. 50 ART. II. 1. Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay. London: 2. More Worlds than One. By SIR DAVID BREWSTER. London: By M. 3. A Week's Conversation on the Purality of Worlds. FONTENELLE. London: Printed for E Curll, in the Strand. 1728. [2d Edit.] 4. Conjectures concerning the Worlds in the Planets. Latin by Christianus Huygens. London: Timothy Childe, at the White Hart. 1698. Written in 5. A Discovery of a New World, or a Discourse that 'tis probable there may be another Habitable World in the Moon. By JoHN WILKINS, Bishop of Chester. London: Printed for John Gillibrand, at the Golden Ball. 1684. [4th Edit.] THIS is Ulysses! and indeed, also, it is surprisingly like him!' So, if we remember right, is the hero of the epic recognised. With scarce less certainty, and not less of amused and pleasant marvel, do we penetrate the thin disguise (it has a wonderfully Coan texture, even if it conceal no graceful form) under which the author of the Plurality of Worlds' affects to veil himself. There is something inexpressibly strange in the idiosyncrasies which unmistakeably mark an author. Perhaps it ought not to seem marvellous that a man should preserve his personal identity; but it is curious to observe how, with some men (and particularly with great men,) character-a xaрakтýp-is stamped on all they do, or say, or think, or write. So is it pre-eminently with our essayist. Whether he writes Of Induction,' or 'Of the Plurality of Worlds,' he is ever non impar sibi-‘as like as my fingers is to my fingers; though, with Protean versatility of genius, and inexhaustible resources of information, nihil ferè est quod non tetigit. Would that we could add, nihil quod tetigit, non ornarit! Ever solid, he is not less seldom cumbrous. Ever weighty, he is rarely original or profound. When he condescends to the playful, we are more reminded of that grotesque fancy of the imagination, an elephant in love, or of the clumsy evolutions of a bear dancing in accompaniment to Pop goes the weasel,' than of that singularly sweet and facile pleasantry' which we have admired in a string of writers, from Theophrastus down to Dickens. Really the disguise assumed by the anonymous writer of this ་་ essay, to which we have alluded, is either an absurd affectation, or is ridiculously clumsy. If it was designed to be sincere, the essayist should, for once, have foregone such unique spelling as meets us in the fifth line of the preface. Offense" is certainly most offensive. But we believe the authorship of the work in question was never any secret; and then we must say that the fuga ad salices of such a writer is ludicrous in the extreme. So much for the style of this essay, and the guise under which it has been made to see the light. Let us introduce our readers to its subject-matter. It is startling, and not altogether displeasing, to notice that our time and age is not wholly given over to positive science. Despite the contemptuous phraseology of the Auguste Comtes and the Martineaux of the day, people will talk, ay, and think too, about something less certain than tabulated phænomena. All things are double, one against another;' and perhaps the folly of electro-biologists, homœopathists, table-turners, and those who see in Dr. Cumming and Free-trade the end of evil, is the legitimate balance of the wiseacrehood of those who deem the human mind a mere machine for the operation of induction on registered results; and who suppose human interests to begin, and to terminate, in the province of sociology: 'Wisdom of fools, and folly of the wise!' Well, we were remarking that there are symptoms around us, that even the enlightenment of the nineteenth century cannot get on without some speculation. It seems that even those who have most strenuously insisted on the employment of a tardy and patient induction from ascertained facts, cannot wholly avoid the natural tendency in man to overleap his ignorance, and to 'theorize,'-to 'meteōrize,' we might say-touching matters at present, and probably for ever, beyond his ken. Several brochures have made their appearance in the past few years, which have astronomy (or astrology, as it might be more appropriately termed) for their subject-matter, and speculation for their method. Two works of more pretentious aspect have recently made their appearance, and it would seem have found a ready hearing. They profess to treat of a very grand and interesting subject; the question, namely, whether there be other populated globes besides our own in the universe. Considering the very confined compass within which all argumentation on such a thesis must necessarily be comprised, and the absence of nearly all data whereon to reason, we are bound to say, that these works are, in size and appearance, no way unworthy of the subject they profess to handle. Of tolerable bulk-and just tolerable price-they would seem to have 1 This is altered in the later editions. 6 exhausted all that modern science, and one at least all that modern nescience, has to say on the subject. There is at once a curious similarity, and a curious contrast, observable between the two. Some of our readers will remember how remarkable a symmetry pervades that funny little drama, Box and Cox.' If Mr. B. observes, Sir, don't be absurd!' Mr. C. replies,- Don't be ridiculous, Sir!' If Cox says, 'Goodness gracious!' Box recriminates with 'Gracious goodness!' So the volumes before us bear, on the face of them, a very obvious connexion and relationship. Slightly differing in external size, they are clad in the same garb of coerulean azure-like the starry vault of which they treat and gold. Their number of pages is almost precisely identical. Facies non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum. Yet their relationship is scarcely sororal. Compare their title-pages, and you will be inclined to adopt the metaphor so happily applied by Wordsworth to the clock of Trinity College Cambridge, that doubly strikes in male and female voice,'1 The one is, Of the Plurality of Worlds: an Essay. The other, in more gentle and less terse formula, proclaims: More Worlds than one, the creed of the Philosopher, and the hope of the Christian.' The one, in masculine phraseology, condescends to garnish his page with blank verse: 6 "On Nature's Alps I stand, And see a thousand firmaments beneath!- NIGHT THOUGHTS. But she (we beg pardon-the other) pleads in softer strain and milder accents: Bright star of eve, that send'st thy softening ray I hail thy beam like rising of the day, Hast thou a home for me when I shall die? Is there a spot within thy radiant sphere, Where love, and faith, and truth, again may dwell? Where I may seek the rest I find not here, And clasp the cherish'd forms I loved so well?' Really one is involuntarily reminded of the flirtation between Adam and Eve in the Creation of Haydn ! The very title-pages indicate at once a genuine identity, and an individual and specific difference. We might be allowed to push the analogy of sex yet further. Not only in relative size, The Prelude. |