-a supernatural gift, infused at Baptism, and nourished by the Sacraments, but capable of co-existing with any and every condition of affection and conscience: like the vision of the sunshine and the face of nature, open to the senses of the evil and the good, and fitted, by use or by abuse, to kindle the glow of a holy inspiration, or to light the pathway of mortal guilt. Protestantism, on the other hand, expels the unfaithful; will not consort with the habitually and impenitently wicked; treats the pretence of religion in those who are not even morally respectable as an odious hypocrisy, to be spurned from the altar as a vain oblation. She therefore lets slip entirely all who descend below a certain level of character; making indeed spasmodic efforts at their conversion; but, failing in this, turning away again, and shaking off at them the very dust of her feet; and furnished with no mid-refuge between salvation and perdition, within which they may be held on at some distance from utter ruin, and the last cords of hope remain unbroken and ready, in some happy moment, to be drawn in and bring them home. Thus it is undeniably true, that, in Protestant lands, the profligate and criminal population escape all Christian control, and become wholly irreligious; that even the simply poor, however worthy, are with difficulty retained in union with religious institutions: and that a certain grade of habit, a certain style of house, a particular type of culture, are almost indispensable conditions of Protestant discipleship. The Christianity of England ranges, accordingly, only over certain classes of society, while others lie in all the heartless neglect of heathenism.

Now we are far from denying the charge advanced against the modern civilization, that it neglects and crushes the weak, and, in the pride of material grandeur, loses the tenderness due to the human beings by whom the imposing structure is raised. We freely admit that cheap production of commodities is not the main end of civil society; and that if, in quest of this end, we have sacrificed any portion of human well-being which might have been preserved, have embittered the lot, increased the temptations, degraded the children of any class, we are guilty, in our Mammon-worship, of apostacy from God. We fully believe that the theory of individual independence

has been carried to a vicious extreme, and that the authority of the State must be extended over a wider range than the severity of economic doctrine has been willing to allow; concerning itself again with the houses, the hours, the education, the amusements of the people. But when the invectives against our type of civilization issue in praises of the Catholic populations, and in holding up their condition as the alternative, it is impossible not to feel a violent recoil. Granted that the lowest and most criminal classes of Italy are so far retained in the faith, as to swear by the saints, and invoke the virgin, and buy masses for the soul of a thief in purgatory: granted that they doff their caps at a crucifix, make farces at fairs out of Scripture incidents, and finish off their carnivals with a grand representation of the general judgment; the question arises, whether such a faith,-a faith without any root in thought or any blossom of good,-is of slightest benefit; -whether it is even truer than the indignant unbelief which, by re-action, it provokes. What more shocking spectacle is there, than a people held fast by a religion, yet restrained by it from no debasement and excess; perfectly at home in it, yet contentedly abiding in deepest moral degradation; not living the better for it, but only brought by it to make a hollow and guilty peace with heaven, before they die. More just and reverential by far appears to us the Protestant feeling, that religion can in no form co-exist with habitual insult to laws human and divine; that unfaithfulness to conscience constitutes banishment from God; that the sinner's remnant of faith is turned from a blessing to a curse; and that to enlist under Satan, with God yet before the eye, is an apostacy impossible to even the extremity of guilt. What clearer testimony can there be to the sanctity of the reformed religion than this, that it must be got rid of before men can surrender themselves to their temptations; that it is a clog on the career of evil, and while it remains, acts only as a terror and restraint; that no one is qualified to enter the ranks of villany and license till he has unlearned its creed and scoffed at its authority? For our own part, we desire in our people no faith but one that comes and goes with the life of Conscience. Never let us be tempted to say, Since

there must be wicked people in the world, it is as well to keep them on the Protestant side.

Let it be remembered also at what cost the ancient Church keeps hold of the ignorant and degraded. Is it not by losing the intellectual, the generous, the noble, in corresponding proportion? We own, indeed, the frequent alliance of genius and saintly virtues with the Catholic faith and, did we not, the names of innumerable worthies would start from the calendar to rebuke us. But still it is undeniable, that in Italy itself, beneath the very shadow of the Vatican, all the interests of freedom, of morality, of patriotism, of knowledge, are arrayed against the religion there enthroned; that the educated class in all catholic countries are largely infected with utter unbelief; that for the extremest " rationalism,"-not the rationalism which has found another truth, but that which questions all truth,-we must look, not to sectaries of England, not to the Universities of Germany, but to students, the gentry, the politicians, possibly even to the priests, of Italy and Spain. No portent can be more alarming than this. It will not be permanently possible to hold the populace, while alienating the classes who must rule and teach them. Divorced from the higher intellect and nobler aspirations of a people, no religion can long sustain its power; having its chief refuge among the pagani, it must pass into a Paganism. No, whatever form our future Christianity may assume, to recover the outcast and the perishing who throng its altars no more, it cannot be that of a spurious Catholicism, of which Science is ashamed, and from which Purity recoils; but of some church truly universal in which, while misery shall find an asylum and penitence a hope, Genius shall not be left without its inspiration, or any noble virtue without its work.

In spite therefore of our author's skilful use of every semblance of fault and failure in the development of society under the reformed faith, we feel an unshaken assurance that the current of civilization will not change the direction in which it has set for the last three centuries. We believe that priestly Christianity is smitten with inevitable decay. Its decline may have left some human wants un

supplied: and as time brings these into distinct consciousness, and intellectual panic gives them wider extension, some re-action in favour of the old system of authority is not unnatural. But it will take up only the weaker elements of society,-the minds that have never truly received the modern spirit, but, whatever the name of their worship, have always been dependent and sequacious, without much susceptibility of enthusiasm. The classes of persons, the types of character, the social interests distinctively created by the Reformation, constitute the living forces of the age; and these are quite outside the reactionary sphere. They will continue to command events, and to fix the conditions on which Popery shall remain a tenant on the world. In dynasties, in confederacies, in parties, there may be Restorations; but in Religions, none. In their higher spiritual relations, human affairs do not go back to the last thing, but take up the next; and new powers perish, only on the accession of newer. It is with a view to impart a firmer reliance on this truth, and to check, so far as in us lies, the unworthy consternation into which the Protestantism of England has recently been thrown, that we have endeavoured to fix our readers' attention on the balance of moral power in the world since the sixteenth century. We call the consternation" unworthy," because its apparent impulse is to seize in self-defence the stained and discarded weapons of Law. Even if the battle of the Reformation had to be fought over again, surely we might find something better than the old barbarisms of such a warfare, some strategic skill made wiser by the lessons of experience. If there be danger, it is not by fettering Romanism, but by freeing Protestantism, that the evil can be met. We do not intend to argue the question of the new Catholic hierarchy,—a question so strangely created and run into exhaustion within three months. But, in closing this notice of a kindred topic, we desire to record our conviction, that while the present attitude of the Romish Church calls for the private counteraction of an opposing zeal and fidelity, no case has appeared for restrictive legislation; and that if something must be allowed to the offended dignity of the country, the concession should be strictly limited to a moral and declaratory, and by no means include any penal, retort.

ART. V.-WORDSWORTH: THE PRELUDE.

The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind: an Autobiographical Poem. By William Wordsworth. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street.

1850.

Or all great men, great Poets have least need to turn autobiographers. Poetry, as far as it is the harmonious expression of feeling and passion, is so mainly a revelation of the poet's own life, is so essentially autobiographical, as very effectually to save him the trouble of formally telling his tale. Nor does he merely feel under the necessity of giving the history of his heart and mind; he not unfrequently contrives to relate the external events of his existence in his poems,-to reveal his outer, no less than his inner life. Dramatic and Lyric Poets would seem secure against the domination of this autobiographical spirit; and the greatest in each of these realms of Song, Homer and Shakspeare, have escaped it. But not even the regions of the Epos and Drama have been free from the invasion of this intense personality. Many a great Dramatist, and more than one mighty master of Epic Song, have proclaimed their favourite ideas through the mouth of their leading character, and in the adventures of their heroes rehearsed passages of their own career. A Poet's autobiography then would seem in general a dainty superfluity which we had no reason to expect, an exquisite luxury which we could well dispense with. The purely mental nature of the autobiography in the present instances adds to the rarity of the luxury, and enhances the singularity of the gift. But when the autobiography of a Poet assumes, as in the case of the "Prelude," the poetic form-when the Poet turns the history of his mental growth into a Poem-when "the vision and the faculty divine" are employed to make known how that very vision and faculty divine were trained and taught and fed, we can hardly help thinking them somewhat misemployed. Humbler faculties would appear quite equal to such a history. A less magnificent implement seems more suited to the execution of such a task-a less splendid vehicle ap