their own by stopping to analyse and dispute about the nature of the sun's light till all were blinded by it-mstead of thankfully using its aid to show them the true path onward.'.ti This melancholy feeling, as has been often truly observed, is best relieved when we look at individual instances of the power of Christian faith and love in the lives and deaths of good men. But it is relieved also in proportion as the view opened before us is wide-in proportion as we are able, kindly and calmly* as from a summit, to regard' the rise and progress of churches and sects 'Despicere, unde queas, alios, passimque videre, What seemed, near at hand, to be mere deformities, from a more distant point are lost in the sense of the vast prospect, to which each feature contributes its peculiar part. A philo sophical view of ecclesiastical history is not necessarily a cold or a contemptuous view; it may be, if it is truly philosophical, full of far more genuine sympathy, inspired by a far deeper sense of humility, than a description written by one who has plunged into the thick of the fray, or made himself master of every corner of the labyrinthine maze. And thus when, as in the present case, we look at Greek, and Latin, and Teutonic Christianity-not apart from each other, but in their mutual relations-not in the details of any particular controversy which divides each from each, but in relation to the general causes from which those controversies have sprung conclusions force themselves upon us, as consoling as they are tranquillising ༔ ་་་ We may, if we choose, look on the Greek Church as the dead trunk of Christendom, from which all 'sap and life has departed, fit only to be cut down, because it cumbers the ground. But we may also see in it the aged tree, under whose shade the rest of Christendom has sprung up; we may ask whether its roots have not struck too widely and too deeply in its native soil to allow of any other permanent form of religious life in those regions which does not in some degree engraft itself on that ancient stem; we may remember with gratitude, that to the Councils of Nicara and Constantinople we owe the venerable Creeds, which, even if they bear the marks of their Byzantine origin, yet probably are the most comprehensive forms that such an age could have devised, and have given a stability and breadth to a theology which might else have been dissolved in its own endless subdivisions. We may * We quote from a remarkable work which has hardly attracted the attention it deserves; al work disfigured by obvious faults, but containing many striking passages and noble thoughts,-Wilson's Bampton Lectures, on the Communion of Saints. regard regard, at least with antiquarian interest, the memorials of the older Churches, fossilised within its ancient and unchangeable ritual we may thankfully accept even the sluggish barbarism and stagnation which has, humanly speaking, saved so large and so venerable a portion of Christendom from the consolidation of the decrees of Trent we may remember with satisfaction that, if the hour should ever come for the reawakening of the Churches of the East, there is no infallible pontiff at Constantinople, no hierarchy separated from all the domestic charities of life, to prevent the religious and social elements of those vast regions from amalgamating into one harmonious whole. Or, if we fix our view on that colossal figure which has chiefly occupied our attention, it is consolatory to reflect that Latin Christendom-the Christendom in which our fathers were born and bred, and in which were laid the foundations of all our institutions civil and religious-was not always the Babylonian monster which no doubt it has in some points and at particular periods strongly resembled, and with which some of our friends would believe it to be absolutely identical. When so good a Protestant as the Dean of St. Paul's is fain to ask, as he looks impartially on the seven first centuries of European history, 'Where, without this vast uniform hierarchical influence-where, in those ages of anarchy and ignorance, of brute force-had been Christianity itself?* we need not fear to acknowledge— nay rather, we ought thankfully to welcome-the fact that the Papacy was the most important outward instrument then existing in the world for the propagation and preservation of the Gospel. Its earlier crimes, its present decrepitude, the enormous vices of its sixth Alexander, the benevolent weaknesses of its ninth Pius, must not blind us to the blessings which it bestowed upon us whilst it stood in the vanguard of civilization, whilst it represented the unborn Protestantism of Europe. And now when we find that there is yet a third element of Christian life, younger than the other two-less defined, indeed, in its outlines, less vast in its proportions, but, like those older systems, springing out of the heart of a mighty race, under the pressure of a great historical crisis-can we fail to hope that the Christianity which first appeared on the stage of the world's history, in the bosom of the German nations, at the Reformation, is not less surely a step in God's Providence-an instrument in the ultimate formation of Christendom-than the forms of ecclesiastical and religious life which rose out of the Greek race under the sway of Constantine, and out of the ruins of Rome under the auspices of Leo and Gregory? We will not anticipate the future volumes of *Vol. iii. p. 97. the the History of Latin Christianity by dwelling on the distinctive features of this its noblest, and, we will not hesitate to add, its most genuine, offspring. But the advocates and the opponents of the Reformation would both do well to remember the lineage from which it sprang; the analogy which its origin presents to what, when viewed under their more favourable aspects, may be called, without offence, the two previous dispensations of Christianity; the hope that, as it is unquestionably the development of some of the best tendencies of those two older bodies, so it may, in the end, be the destined instrument of purifying, of reconciling, and of absorbing them both in some higher and deeper unity than has yet been vouchsafed to the mind of man. So to view the progress of events, so to trace the influence of races and institutions and political convulsions on the history of Christianity, is assuredly not to diminish, but to exalt, its importance to men and to nations; not to underrate, but to represent in its full grandeur the divine and universal origin to which it lays claim. Of ordinary institutions it may truly be said, as of the ordinary instincts of humanity,— "Heaven lies about us in our infancy. Shades of the prison-house begin to close 'The youth who daily farther from the East Still by the vision splendid Is on his way attended: At length the man perceives it die away, But the course of the Christian religion, in spite of all the impediments it has encountered, in spite of the darkness which from time to time has clouded the Fate of Christendom,' has always moved onwards, and from that onward movement derived its main strength. Christianity has not drooped,—it has lived, it has flourished, it has expanded, it has grown more and more like to its ancient, Hebrew, divine original,-not in proportion as it has remained within the influences of its first home, but (so far at least as European history is concerned) in proportion as it has receded further and further from them. Westward the Star of Empire has held its course;' and westward has the Sun of Christendom moved also, shedding its light not only on Arabian deserts and Judæan palms, but on the endless varieties of Western life and scenery, on the cities and homes, on the empires and the families, of the Grecian, the Roman, and the Teutonic world; the Omega no less than the Alpha, the end no less than the beginning, of the history of civilised man. ART. IT ART. III.-Dramatic Register for 1853. 12mo. London. T must be owned that the drama labours under many disadvantages at the present moment. We shall not dwell upon their more obvious causes- -the habits of social life, the inroads made upon the attractions of the theatre by the counter-attractions of literature, or the ebb of fashion from the stage doors. These disadvantages are on the surface, and a sudden turn in the world's tide would repel and obliterate them. Their sources lie much. deeper, and must be sought in the character and tendencies of the age itself. It is perhaps an inevitable result of advancing civilisation that it levels in great measure the external and salient points of individual character, and thus deprives the drama of one of its principal aliments and attractions. Evil passions and evil natures are unhappily, indeed, the accompaniments of every age, but they do not therefore always exhibit themselves under dramatic forms. The crimes and woes of 'old great houses' seldom affect in our days either the annals of the world or the passions of individuals. Wars have lost their chivalric character; politics are no longer tissues of dark intrigues, revealed only by their results, but hidden during their process in impenetrable darkness. Society has ceased to be divided into castes, or distinguished by outward and visible tokens of grandeur or debasement. Our manners and habits have grown similar and unpicturesque. A justice on the bench is no longer worshipful; a squire, except in the eyes of some poaching varlet, is no more the petty tyrant of his fields;' we take the wall of an alderman, and feel no awe in the presence of a mayor; lords ride in cabs; the coach, with six Flemish horses, with its running footmen and linkbearers, has vanished into infinite space; a knight of the shire may be the son of a scrivener; our men on 'Change have doffed their flat caps and shining shoes; there are no bullies in Paul's Walk, and hardly a Toledan blade within the liberties of London. The toe of the peasant comes near the heel of the courtier.' Our very inns have dropped their pictorial emblems: we write, instead of paint, our tavern-heraldry. Town and country are nearly one. Clarendon says of a certain Earl of Arundel, that 'he went rarely to London, because there only he found a greater man than himself, and because at home he was allowed to forget that there was such a man.' Lord Arundel's policy would be unavailing now. Our humours and distinctions are well nigh abolished, and the drama, so far as it depends upon them, deprived of its daily bread. The stage-poet cannot find his Bobadil in any lodging in Lambeth, nor his Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, tershire, nor Ancient Pistol in Eastcheap. The portrait of a gentleman or lady' at the Exhibition may represent four-fifths of our similar generation, 1 Farther a-field then must our dramatists seek, if they draw from life, for their models of passion and humour. For the most part they suffer no especial inconvenience from the stoppage of supplies, inasmuch as they import them ready-made from the banks of the Seine. We shall advert presently to the number and character of these importations. For the present it suffices to remark that this assimilation of the external forms of life operates unfavourably upon the drama in two or three directions. It deprives the author of his fund of characters. It renders the audience less apprehensive of individual properties, and more eager for startling effects upon the scene. The spectator comes to witness in representation something different from what he 'sees daily in the streets and markets, in the law-courts, or the drawing-room, and is discontented if the plot have in it no dash of extravagance, or the costume and scenery do not blaze with splendour. The scarcity of healthier food renders him the more eager for high and artificial condiments. His palate too has been previously vitiated by the circulating library. Macbeth is flat after Jack Sheppard; Sir Anthony Absolute is dull beside Mr. Pickwick. Our earnestness and our sport, have travelled at railway speed during the present century; and the drama, like panting Time,' in Johnson's prologue, either toils after them in vain,' or outstrips them by dint of surpassing extravagances of story or decoration! When Sir Roger de Coverley made known his intention of going to the play, the Spectator and Captain Sentry had no difficulty in discovering at what theatre that very legitimate drama "The Distrest Mother' would be enacted. But a country gentleman of the present day, unacquainted with town if indeed such a 'rara avis' survive in this age of locomotion and recurring to his early recollections of Elliston at Drury Lane, or Kemble at Covent Garden, would be sorely puzzled at first in his search for either regular tragedy or comedy. At Covent Garden he would find Italian Opera installed; at Drury he might indeed light upon Mr. G. V. Brooke, cleaving the general ear; but he would quite as likely read in the bills of the evening that a gentleman would walk across the ceiling, or that Franconi's stud would exhibit, or that a second Italian Opera awaited him. At the Haymarket he would witness indeed an excellent comedy of Mr. Planche's, but none of his old favourites, Moreton's, or the younger Colman's, or Reynolds's once popular plays. He would discover that the English Opera House had foregone, its name and |