8. Rome, its Temper and its Teachings. Six Lectures. By George Henry Davis. London: Houlston and Stoneman.

1851.

9. Romanism and Congregationalism contrasted; or, the relative Aspect of their Polity, Teachings, and Tendencies. By R. G. Milne, M.A. London: J. Snow. 1851.

10. The Inquisition: its History, Influences, and Effects. Fourth Thousand. The Genius of Popery opposed to the Principles of Civil and Religious Liberty. Dublin: P. Dixon; Hardy and Sons. 11. The Idolatry of the Church of Rome Proved from Cardinal Wiseman's Third Lecture on the Catholic Hierarchy. By George Barrow Kidd. London: Snow. 1851.

12. The Bishop's Wife: a Tale of the Papacy. Translated from the German of Leopold Schefer; with Historical Notice of the Life and Times of Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.), to which it relates. By Mrs. J. R. Stodart. London: John Chapman. 1851.

13. The Female Jesuit; or, the Spy in the Family. London: Partridge and Oakey. 1851.

14. Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. By John Ruskin, M.Á., Author of the Seven Lamps of Architecture,' &c. London : Smith, Elder and Co. 1851.

WHATEVER may be the character or the workings of British legislation with regard to the Papacy, it is well understood in Europe generally that a great theological conflict has commenced between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The political excitement of last winter was only one manifestation of the strong Protestant feeling of our countrymen. The elements of that excitement remain; and we doubt not that the deeply-rooted antipathies of Englishmen to Popery in all its aspects, whether theological, ecclesiastical, or political, will be found to have been strengthened, beyond all calculation, by the discussions which some affect to deride as ludicrous, or to dread as fraught with peril. The literature of the question is rife and vigorous. Works of almost every description-historical, imaginative, argumentative, legal, poetical, hortatory-are teeming from the press and widely circulated. We have not been able to keep pace with such publications consistently with the Eclectic character of our Review; therefore we now address ourselves to such an examination as will enable us to do justice at once to the several writers, and to the large and vital principles with which we regard ourselves as identified.

The name of Mazzini has long been familiar to English readers

as the real strength of that Roman revolution which stood out so prominently amid the crowding marvels of 1848, and which, for the present, has been put down by the arms of Republican France. The pamphlet mentioned at the head of the above list is a reprint from his recent volume on Royalty and Republicanism in Italy,' containing the 'thoughts' which he addressed to the priests of Italy at sundry intervals since the year 1832. The party of which Mazzini is the chief ornament, has been stigmatized with the brand of infidelity and atheism, as well as accused of anarchy and political crimes. This is not a new device: it is as old as tyranny, as hoary as superstition-the normal description of the love of freedom from the lips of those who hate it. To repel so odious a charge, yet with the higher aim of expounding his religious convictions in his own words, the great Roman patriot again sends forth his printed Thoughts.' An examination of the dates will show that the late popular struggle in Italy has been, to a large extent, a great religious question. Its leaders did not wait for foreign sympathy to give utterance to the thought which is now subterraneously fomenting in the Italian masses.' They have, all along, proclaimed their Christian faith while contending for their national independence. We are glad that, in these pages, this truly magnificent writer should speak on this subject for himself.

When young Italy raised her banner, now nearly twenty years ago, two elements predominated in Italy-superstition and materialism. Superstition was the habit of a part of the population, to which all light, all education was forbidden; which was led astray by a traditional religious sentiment, conceived in the narrowest spirit, and which. deprived of every motive of action, of all consciousness of the true life of citizens, clung with a kind of despair to a heaven little understood. Materialism was the natural reaction of those who had been able to emancipate themselves from the abject spectacle which religion offered, from the brutal yoke that it was wished to impose upon their intelligence. It was said to them, " Believe all that we affirm;" they replied by denying all. Luther compared the human mind to a drunken peasant upon horseback, leaning over on one side, and who falls on the other when you seek to set him upright. Many people have passed through a similar experience. Young Italy rejected at once, and equally, materialism and superstition. It declared, that in order to acquire the strength necessary to become a nation, Italy must emancipate herself at the same time from the old Catholic belief, and from the materialism of the eighteenth century. The first gave a pretended divine sanction to immobility; the second, dried up the sources of faith, and must necessarily end in destroying the idea of duty, and in leaving nothing for the object of human worship, but right and enjoyment. We wished to march with the world, as is the will of God, the life eternal. We did not wish to combat in order to conquer

the satisfaction of certain appetites, panem et circenses, but for something more elevated, the dignity, the sacred liberty of the human soul, its development in love, a mission upon earth for our own and for our brethren's good.

It is not for me to give here an exposition of the complete doctrines of young Italy; but I hold it important to prove that our language to-day is the same as that of twenty years ago. We have never deviated from it. Now, as then, my predominating idea, and the vital thought of all our labours is this, a fatal separation has been established between religious and political belief, between heaven and earth; this is why we wander groping from one crisis to another, from convulsive movement to convulsive movement, without succeeding, without finding peace. It is necessary to unite earth to heaven, politics to the eternal principles which should direct them; nothing great or durable can be done without that Gon, religion; the PEOPLE, Liberty in Love; these two words, which, as individuals, we inscribed on our banner in 1831, and which afterwards-significant phenomenon -became the formula of all the decrees of Venice and of Rome, sum up all for which we have combated, all for which we will combat unto victory. The people of Italy instinctively comprehended this idea. Young Italy became rapidly powerful. A gradual transformation was effected in a portion of its enlightened youth, which became, I will not say the most devoted, but the most constant in devotion, to their country. Two or three years of struggle and suffering suffice to exhaust the strength when the inspiring sentiment is only one of reaction, of indignation against oppression; a whole life is not too much for the realization of a thought which seeks to reunite earth to heaven.'

We recommend this singularly earnest pamphlet to all who would form an accurate estimate of the views of the Papacy which prevail among the most enlightened, virtuous, and patriotic of the Italians. It is refreshing to witness the honest energy of a believing man tearing to tatters the flimsy pretensions of the 'Moderates' in that unhappy country. The blush of shame tingles on our cheek as we read his lamentation over the reception given to Italian refugees in England. Such of our countrymen as are alive to the perils now menacing our English liberties and our Protestant institutions, yet hear unmoved the shout of the great European battle of which Rome is the centre, would do well to ponder deeply the following sagacious and pregnant

sentences :

There exists great agitation at the present moment in Protestant England, on account of the attempted encroachments of Catholicism. Think you that these attempts would have taken place if the people's banner were still floating at Rome? Think you that the Pope would have sent his Catholic hierarchy from Gaeta? Papacy excluded from Rome is, it is well known, Papacy excluded from Italy. Papacy excluded from Italy, is Papacy excluded from Europe. Place the Pope

at Lyons or Seville-he will no longer be Pope; he will only be a dethroned king.

• Protestantism has not understood this; there is so little remaining of the deep conviction, so little of the enthusiasm, which produced the Reformation, that before the great question in dispute at Rome, it assumed a sceptical position; it contented itself by asking whether such or such a man governing in that city belonged to one political school or another, whether he was a partizan of a system of terror or of justice; it entered into a polemic with respect to individuals; the work, the providential work, which was being accomplished there by instruments destined, whatever might be their character, to disappear the day after, completely escaped its notice. And when Austrians, Neapolitans, and Frenchmen, marched against Rome, it could not summon up sufficient courage to say, Stop, a question of religious faith is there at issue, and we will not allow it to be decided by brute force. And yet we gave it sufficient time to pronounce this prohibition.

• Protestantism has thus given to the world, I repeat it, a striking demonstration of want of power, of decay. It will expiate it bitterly, if it does not hasten to repair the mistake it has committed. Faith begets faith. You cannot expect that men should believe in yours, when they see that it does not furnish you with the consciousness of a right, or the feeling of a duty to fulfil. You have looked on with indifference whilst the liberty of the human soul was being crushed beyond your gates; you will be thought little worthy of defending it within. Faith is also wanting to the Pope; but he has something which replaces it in the eyes of the world: he has the audacity, the obstinacy, and the unscrupulous logic of his false principles. He attacks; you fortify yourselves for defence: he advances ever with the continuous motion of the serpent; you move in fits and starts under the impulse of fear: he says, servitude for all; you say, liberty for us alone. You will not have it, or rather, you already have it not. You are slaves by all the slavery of your brethren. Hence it is that your contracted inspiration no longer fecundates the soul of men. There is no religion without faith in the solidarity of the human race.'

It would have been strange if the hard struggle for religious freedom in Italy had been exempted from the conditions which -by some apparent law of human progress-have ever embarrassed, for a longer or a shorter time, the emancipation of our race from falsehood by truth, and from wrong by right. There has been no such exemption. Men of narrow, weak, or timid mind, are too apt to look at such accompaniments. Souls of nobler temper set them down to their true account. While sore at heart for the temporary dishonour with which such incidents can cloud the most sacred undertakings, they still can fix their regards on the grand principles which not even the basest associations can tempt them to desert. Thus it is with this brave and high-minded Italian.

A mighty question is now being agitated in Europe, between the

principles which have divided the world since its creation; and these two principles are, liberty and authority. The human mind desires to progress according to its own light; not by favour of concession, but by virtue of the law of its own life. Authority says to it, Rest where thou art. I alone strike the hour of the march; when I am silent, everything should rest, for all progress which is accomplished without me, and beyond me, is impious. The human mind interrogates itself; it feels its own right and power; it finds that the germ of progress is in itself; that strength and right come to it from God, and not from an intermediate power coming between itself and God, as if charged to lead it. Hence springs revolt and resistance, and hence the anomalous situation of Europe. The conscience of the human race is struggling with tradition, which desires to enchain it; the future and the past dispute for the collective life of humanity, and for that of the individual. Every man who in these struggles-ever stifled, yet ever re-appearing-in this series of manifestations and violent repressions, which have constituted European history for two-thirds of a century, sees only the action of some turbulent factions, or the result of some accidental or material causes, as a deficit, a famine, a secret conspiracy, or cabinet intrigue— understands nothing of the facts of history, nothing of the laws of which, by these facts, history becomes the expression. And he who, in the great question of the suffrage, of proletarian emancipation, and of nationality, sees nothing but the subjects of political discussion, having no connexion with the religious idea, with the providential development of humanity, understands neither man nor God, and degrades to the proportions of a pigmy intelligence a battle of giants, of which. the stake is a step in advance in the universal education of mankind, or a step backwards towards the world which we had believed to have ended with the middle ages.

'Between the two great armies which sustain the combat, marauders, free-corps, have undoubtedly introduced themselves, and falsified its character; between the two doctrines represented in the two camps, a multitude of exaggerations, of dangerous utopias, of false and immoral philosophies, have come to throw trouble and alarm in men's minds.

It matters little. The real question remains as I have stated it. All these irregular, Cossack-like movements will disappear, as the sharpshooters of an army when the hour arrives for the masses to begin to move. It matters little, also, for what I now desire to say, whether the struggle ought to be, as some imagine, the absolute abolition of the principle of authority, and the pure and simple enthronement of liberty; or whether, as I believe, the future holds in reserve a great collective religious manifestation, in which the two terms, liberty and authority, tradition and individual conscience, will both be recognised as essential elements to the normal development of life; and, harmonizing together in one whole, will be at once the safeguard of belief and progress. What is certain is, that transformation implies death, and that the new authority can never be founded until after the complete overthrow of that which now exists.'

We presume, from many passages in the pamphlet, from the preface of which alone we have extracted the foregoing para