evoked. But nevertheless, after so many pages of exaggeration and abuse, it becomes difficult to establish any positive propositions which shall content the sincere and dispassionate inquirer. And thus we find the supposed Conversion' not more reasonable than the Perversion.' For as it must have been a base religion which would not have been shocked by such odious forms of Christianity, so it must be a weak infidelity that could be satisfied by such arguments as these. The chief objections of the sceptic are here stated to be the want of positive intellectual proof of the truth of Christianity, the incredibility of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, and the universal discrepancy between Christian principle and practice-grave matters, no doubt, which have demanded and received the consideration of thousands of serious men. But what can be the worth of the mental history of a man who waits till the end of the third volume of his experience to be told, that the Christian religion is of the heart and not of the head alone-that the Bible may be a divine revelation, even though its writers were not infallible on all subjects of secular knowledge-and that, as long as mankind is full of contradictions about everything else, we have no right to expect it to be consistent on religion? Is it decently probable that such solutions would have been so novel to a well-educated, truth-seeking, Englishman of our time, that, when supported and illustrated by the example of two or three zealous individuals, they would at once have dispelled all the clouds of unbelief, and sent him to die at Scutari in the holy work of nursing the sick British soldier? The characters, indeed, of these exemplary ministers of the Gospel prove how effectively this author can describe what he admires, when for a short time he suspends his theological acerbity and trusts to his better imagination. Charles Bampton expresses his deep regret that he did not know them sooner, and so do we.

We resume our objections to this book. It is both intolerant and irreverent-two faults which go together oftener than is supposed. True veneration respects the consciences of other men and is tender for their troubles as for its own. Intolerance belongs to a hard temper and a proud stomach and a wilful mind, utterly inconsistent with the spirit of reverence, which is humble, unselfish, and forgiving. How can a man who thinks of, and treats, the creeds and the doubts of others, as this writer does, expect that the sarcasm and the slander shall stop just short of his own proportion of faith and of his own allowance of dogma. If he can jeer, as he does, at things serious to High or Low Churchmen, will not others be found who will jest at his share of credulity, and pronounce him too, in his measure,

superstitious and absurd? If he can regard with scorn the difficulties and scruples of all honest men who do not quite attain his quantum of belief, and can represent Unitarians as being ashamed of the name of Christians,' why should not those who are discontented with his Christianity, either from a historical or spiritual point of view, declare him to be a secret conspirator against the truth, plausibly veiling his infidelity under the colour of a moderate rationalism? Such words have been spoken against far deeper theologians, against far wiser and more temperate controversialists than he is; and it will, and ought to be, in vain for those who are at once the satirists of all shapes of piety that do not happen to please them and the maligners of all religious ideas more comprehensive than their own, to appeal to the moderation and good sense of their own scheme of theology to save them from opprobrium and misrepresentation. It is a wretched game, played by all parties at a loss, and to the satisfaction only of the spectator who sympathises with none of these things and finds a diversion in the fray. We sincerely lament that so well-furnished a combatant as the author of Perversion' should have descended into this arena, and we trust we may never see him there again.

The Causes and Consequences of Infidelity' in this age and country lie far other-where than in these three volumes postoctavo; we shall not commit the similar error of attempting to state them in a review. We would rather direct attention to what is being done to remedy or mitigate the evil. The British are no irreligious people. There may be formalism in church and chapel-building, but the enormous impulse given to those enterprises of late years proves the existence of a large demand and supply of the external signs of Christian communion: the internal reality may or may not be there, but at any rate there is the ample framework for the breath of man and the grace of God to animate. We can compare with satisfaction the Establishment of our day with that of fifty years ago. Give to each section of opinion its due, and we shall find that none has been without its effect, in stimulating energy, in exposing abuses, in awakening the sense of responsibility. A Bishop may not resign his see exactly after the Apostolic method, but fifty years ago an incompetent Bishop would never have thought at all of surrendering half his income for the good of his diocese. The Evangelical clergy may preach a narrow and partial theology, but Mr. Close welcomes the British Association to Cheltenham in a speech full of appreciation of the just relations between science and religion. Dr. Hook may dangerously elevate the sacerdotal office above the claims and rights of free

thought, but he builds a cathedral at Leeds by voluntary zeal, animates that great town with generous and charitable feelings, and advocates the most liberal and least ecclesiastical plan of popular education. Mr. Maurice may have incurred the wrath of Dr. Jelf, and lost a sphere of usefulness in consequence of having maintained a doctrine that Jeremy Taylor avowed, but that has not prevented him from winning the affectionate devotion of a large mass of the working-men of England, whom he is leading on in a safe and sound path of spiritual and intellectual enlightenment, and, by the establishment of People's-colleges, endowing with a system of training, which bids fair to realise all the advantages that Dr. Birkbeck's excellent project of Mechanics' Institutes has hitherto failed to secure. Such, and, if we can get them, yet broader means and yet better instruments, are all that we know of that are compatible with the liberty of prophesying' and the divergences of opinion which are the essential condition of our moral and political life. The burning diatribes and tormenting sarcasms of such writings as those we have censured are autos de fe of quite another order, and not likely to be even as effective as their practical predecessors in the same line. For the baneful machinery of persecution, when implacably and unremittingly exercised by principalities and powers, may in a great measure attain its end, but personal bigotry rarely affects in any degree the cause it assails, while it induces the individual to commit acts of injustice from which, in the ordinary transactions of daily life, he would shrink as from crime-inclines him to overlook in himself tempers which he would severely chastise in his children- and, if he be one with whose name the literature of his time is familiar, destroys the worth and character of the Writer, as it damages and diminishes the Man.

ART. IX. 1. L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution. Par ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. Paris: 1856.

2. On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789, and on the Causes which led to that Event. By ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. Translated by HENRY REEVE. London: 1856.

IT is always with some anxiety as well as with great expectations that we open the second work of an author who has achieved a wide and lasting reputation by his first. There are many chances against its enhancing or even maintaining

his well-earned fame. On his earliest production a man usually lavishes his utmost efforts and his utmost care; it is the child of the fresh vigour of his youthful powers; it is the depository of all the wisdom he has hived till then; it is enriched and adorned with all the imagery which his fancy or his reading may have gathered round him; it is the manifestation of whatever may be original and striking in his genius; and, in addition to this, he will have bestowed upon its preparation for the world a degree of sedulous and unsparing elaboration which those who have once won an assured position do not always devote to a second work. Subsequent productions may be the result of wider observation and maturer thought, but the warm and vivid life which is distinctive of the first-fruits of the intellect is seldom there.

In the case of the author of Democracy in America' there was the more reason for such anxiety, inasmuch as the work by which he won his spurs in the field of Political Philosophy twenty years ago, was remarkable for qualities which usually belong to the later manhood of the mind-a wide and cautious range of induction, deep speculative insight, and patient reflection unusually profound in its spirit and sober in its tone. A maturer treatise could scarcely have been produced by a recluse who had grown far-seeing and passionless in solitude, or by a statesman who had grown grey and sad in the experience of administrative life; and it was not easy to conjecture what would be the character of a book composed in the more advanced years of a life which was already ripe with the wisdom and soberness of age at eight and twenty. This volume is, however, in every way worthy of the high fame which M. de Tocqueville has so long enjoyed; it is strikingly similar in character to his early production, and indicates that his mind has been enriched and mellowed, rather than changed, with time and trial; there is the same originality of view, the same care and independence of research, the same habit of proving everything and assuming nothing, the same fascinating and genial but consummate wisdom. What strikes and delights us still more, -for it is lamentably rare in even the ablest writings of the day, is that the materials are all thoroughly digested and assimilated; there is no rude ore, requiring us to forgive its rudeness in consideration of its value; the jewel is polished, cut, and set as such precious stones deserve to be; the workmanship is as perfect and as conscientious as that of an ancient statue. It is evident that no labour has been spared, either in investigating facts, in evolving conclusions, or in marshalling these facts and conclusions in an order and a dress calculated to dis

play them with the most pleasing and convincing effect before the public eye. The style-including in this word the thoughts as well as the mere language-is in our view faultless; uniting the tranquil depth of the mountain tarn with the crystal clearness of the mountain stream.

It is not easy to review a book of which we admire every paragraph and agree with every sentiment; especially when, as is the case here, the writer is treating of a period which he has so profoundly studied, and of a science which he has made so peculiarly his own. We can do little but sit at the feet of Gamaliel to listen and to learn-a novel and somewhat anomalous position for a critic, but, as a variety, not an unpleasing or unwholesome one. It may seem strange that a subject so thoroughly worn and trampled as the antecedents and causes of the great French Revolution, should yet not have been exhausted; and that M. de Tocqueville should have been able to throw upon it so much new light, and to treat it in a manner so entirely original. Yet so it is; we feel after reading the volume before us as if for the first time we had obtained a real insight into the meaning and significance, the sources and the issues, of that vast convulsion -the greatest event by far of the last three centuries — one of the three great events of modern history.

He thus explains both his present aim and the ultimate design of a more comprehensive work on the Revolution, to which this volume is the prelude.

"The peculiar object of the work I now submit to the public is to explain why this great Revolution, which was in preparation at the same time over almost the whole continent of Europe, broke out in France sooner than elsewhere; why it sprang spontaneously from the society it was about to destroy; and lastly, how the old French Monarchy came to fall so completely and so abruptly.

'It is not my intention that the work I have commenced should stop short at this point. I hope, if time and my own powers permit it, to follow, through the vicissitudes of this long Revolution, these same Frenchmen with whom I have lived so familiarly under the old monarchy, and whom that state of society had formed, to see them modified and transformed by the course of events, but without changing their nature, and constantly appearing before us with features somewhat different, but ever to be recognised.

when

"With them I shall proceed to review that first epoch of 1789, when the love of equality and that of freedom shared their hearts they sought to found not only the institutions of democracy, but the institutions of freedom-not only to destroy privileges, but to acknowledge and to sanction rights: a time of youth, of enthusiasm, of pride, of generous and sincere passion, which, in spite of its errors,