The justification of the massacre was not easier in Germany. The ambassador, Schomberg, did what he could to accredit the fable of a plot by Coligny, but he found none to believe it. Any communication with him even, except in writing, was refused; so suspected was an envoy of Charles IX.,-the word, the honour, the name of France were then so degraded!

When the Duke of Anjou travelled in Germany, in 1573, the Elector Palatine took him into his study, and showing him Coligny's portrait, said, "You know that man, sir? You put to death the greatest captain of Christendom, and you ought not to have done it; for he had rendered great service to you and the king." The Duke of Anjou replied, that the admiral wished to make them all die. "We know the history, sir," said the elector, coldly.

If we weigh all the circumstances of the St. Bartholomew massacre, the premeditation, the interference of the king's court and council, the snares laid for the feet of Calvinists, the solemn oaths which allured them to Paris, a royal marriagefeast stained with blood, the dagger put into the hands of the populace by the rulers of the state, hecatombs of human victims slaughtered in time of peace, the carnage kept up for two months in the provinces, the priests and high ecclesiastics, with their feet in blood, lifting the band to heaven to bless God,-if we reflect on all these circumstances, we shall be satisfied that the St. Bartholomew is the greatest crime of the Christian era, since the invasion of the Northern barbarians. The Sicilian Vespers, the extermination of the Albigenses, the punishments of the Inquisition, the murders committed by the Spaniards in the New World, odious as they were, did not to the same degree violate all laws, Divine and human. So, too, from this monstrous crime resulted frightful calamities. Individuals may commit crimes which remain unpunished in this world; not so dynasties, classes, and nations.

The race of Valois was extirpated by the dagger, and almost all the actors in the St. Bartholomew massacre perished by a violent death.

At home, France was afflicted with the detestable reign of Henry III.; with mean and ferocious manners; despicable laws; the cruelties of the league, formed under pretence of defending the Roman Catholic religion against the Huguenots; and twenty-five years of new civil wars.

Abroad, all her old natural alliances were broken; Protestant Switzerland, Germany, England turned against her, or maintained a distrustful neutrality. France was reduced to a disgraceful submission to Spanish tutelage, and obliged to go to Madrid to beg an army. The great genius of Henry IV. and Richelieu hardly restored her to the place in Europe which she had lost, and they only restored her by adopting a policy the opposite to that of the St Bartholomew.

What compensation, then, for so much shame and so many evils? There is one, if a person can be found willing to offer it. Without the St. Bartholomew, the French Reformation, despite the losses which it had suffered, would still have formed an imposing minority. Half of the nobles of the kingdom would have remained in the new communion. It is doubtful if Henry IV. would have abjured. In any case, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes would have been, impossible, and there would have been perhaps in our days, with the progress of the population, five to six millions of Protestants in France. The St. Bartholomew, by its murders, emigrations, and abjurations, has inflicted a wound upon French Protestants, from which they have never recovered. Is this a justification of the crime?

But not even this resource is left to those who would avail themselves of it. "The execrable day of St. Bartholomew," says M. de Chateaubriand, "not only made martyrs; it gave to infidel philosophy an advantage which it has not lost over religious opinions." So then, some millions of Protestants less, and several millions of infidels more: such is the balance of the St. Bartholomew. What, then, have the priests gained by diminishing the number of Luther's and Calvin's disciples, and increasing that of the followers of Montaigne and Voltaire? They have gained the Anti-catholic reaction of the eighteenth century, the hostility of the Constituent Assembly, the massacres of Abbaye, the proscriptions of 1793; and what more?-the spirit of our age. This spirit which has passed from France into Italy, has not yet spoken its last word, or given its last blow to Popery.

The praise of this rapid and masterly narrative is due to Dr. DE FELICE, whose gifted pen has so often adorned the pages of the British Banner.

TO THE UNSATISFIED. BY MISS HARRIET WINSLOW.

WHY thus longing, thus for ever sighing.
For the far off, unattain'd and dim;
While the beautiful, all round thee lying,
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?
Wouldst thou listen to its gentle teaching,
All thy restless yearnings it would still;
Leaf and flower and laden bee are preaching,
Thine own sphere, though humble, first to fill.
Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee

Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw;
If no silken cord of love hath bound thee
To some little world through weal and woe.
If no dear eyes thy fond love can brighten,-
No fond voices answer to thine own;
If no brother's sorrow thou canst lighten,
By daily sympathy and gentle tone.

Not by deeds that win the crowd's applauses,
Not by works that give thee world-renown,
Not by martyrdom, or vaunted crosses,

Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown!
Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely,
Every day a rich reward will give;
Thou wilt find, by hearty striving only,
And truly loving, thou canst truly live.
Dost thou revel in the rosy morning,

When all Nature hails the Lord of light, And His smile the mountain tops adorning, Robes yon fragrant fields in radiance bright? Other hands may grasp the field and forest, Proud proprietors in pomp may shine,— But with fervent love if thou adorest,

Thou art wealthier-all the world is thine! Yet if through earth's wide domains thou rovest, Sighing that they are not thine alone, Not those fair fields, but thyself thou lovest, And their beauty and thy worth are gone. Nature wears the colours of the spirit; Sweetly to her worshippers she sings; All the glow, the grace she doth inherit, Round her trusting child she fondly flings.

DEFERRED ANSWERS. "Wait on the Lord."-PSA. xxvi. 14. A disciple kneels, Meekly, as oft before, at Jesus' feet, Repeating, "Lord, what wilt thou have me do?" Employment fits a spiritual health, And had, perchance, well filled obedient hands. But memory wakes.

Prayer, guarded life, and plea For truth may constantly have been His "salt of earth." But promises delay Which faith once seized and cannot yield again. "Other things entering" may have dimmed the view

Caught in remembered scenes of agony
Blest to prevail. And those sweet promises
Strangely renew themselves when memory calls
Beloved names. Shall this content? Shall souls
Live on, unsafe, unholy? Is it well

That years flee, fruitless; and a hoard of guilt,
A treasury of disobedience swell,

Even in defiance of the patient Lamb?
-Years do flee, have fled; and the service due
To God is still, not passively, withheld;
But, with the zeal of hearty enmity,
Spent in rebellion; not one lesson learned
For heaven; not one act done for Jesus' sake.
Where are the many, who, when others turned,
Still kept their own way? Gone, O bitter truth!
Gone to account, unready; or, far gone

In sin's firm customs, hardened and more blind
Than even in that choice season, when "almost
Persuaded," yet they proudly sought the dark.
Hope breathes of mercy. Blessed fact that One
Knoweth their destiny and will receive
Humble petition!

'Mid the dazzled crowd, Beings for whom the prayer of faith received Assurance long ago, remain. At rest?— But what if troubled? Though less terrible Than fatal sleep, 'tis not eternal life. "What wilt thou have me do?" The Master points

To work undone, neglected.

Priceless Time!

Will it wait longer? Indolence would prove
Trust but presumption. Until prayer receive
Apparent token in regenerate life,
It can but plead.

What penitent thus waits
To learn the will of Jesus? One by one,
Methinks a band is gathering. O thy look,
Saviour, reproving sloth, yet full of love
To aid disciples, let me feel its power!

A GUINEA A YEAR.

L. M.

SUBSCRIBE ?-I have long a contributor been;
I'm a man of the world, and I hate to be mean;
My thousands I squander in fashion's career-
I bestow on Church Missions a guinea a year.

I am lord of broad acres of upland and lea!
I've a mansion in London, a yacht on the sea;
My profits from railroads are ample and clear:
I contribute to Missions a guinea a year!
I've contested the county at terrible cost;
All the lawyers I pay, that my seat be not lost;
I humour the voters lest foemen appear-
But I spare for Church Missions a guinea a year.
I grudge not high prices for hunters unique;
I make emulous fêtes, my proud neighbours to
pique;

It is high satisfaction to vie with a peer:

I subscribe to Church Missions a guinea a year!

I revolve in an orbit distingué ;-my wife
Would fain be a leader of fashion for life;
My pictures and bijoux win plaudits, I hear:
The Church I assist with a guinea a year!
Quite an income I lose in preserving my game;
My girls are instructed by artists of fame;
Continental professors charge wondrously dear;
Still, I yield to Church Missions a guinea a year!

On my boys and their hobbies a fortune I spend,
For through them must the family honours de-

scend;

A name of renown their vast talents may rear Church Missions I aid with a guinea a year!

equal in the eye of the law, and exemptions and privileges abounded; while the administration of justice was entangled, slow, costly, and uncertain.

The public debt was between 37,000,000 and 38,000,000 of crowns: there was an annual deficit of about haif a million of crowns; no audits, and no accounts rendered by the financial administration.

Instruction and education were inadequate in everything, religion included: it was all husk, no substance. To the intelligent youth the career of arms was closed, because it was without honour or enterprise, and was contaminated by foreign mercenaries. So was that of diplomacy, as it was the monopoly of the Clergy: the same with politics, the administrative

offices, and the magistracy, because clergymen alone could touch the goal of the highest ranks and honours.

The Censorship of the Press, and of foreign books and journals, was harsh and bigoted to a strange degree.

Thousands upon thousands of citizens were what is called under warning: these were interdicted from all offices of honour or emolument, whether under the Government or in the Municipalities.

The number of families who, after 1831, were persecuted for political causes, by the Government or the Sanfedists, was very great. The exiles, with those proscribed and under sentence, amounted perhaps to two thousand.

The Military Commissions were permanent. Aids and amendments of civilisation were disliked or neglected.

The higher nobility of Rome, its Dukes and Princes, revered the Papacy, as an institution to which they owed their fortune, rank, and ancient privileges; but they were not friendly to the absolute sway of the sacerdotal caste, distinguished neither for diligence, learning, or virtue. The provincial nobility were either disinclined or positively hostile to the Papal Government, or else indifferent about it. the provinces not a few nobles had joined in plots.

In

The burgher class, independent in fortune and circumstances, was limited at Rome, and not attached to the Government: the clients and retainers of Cardinals and Prelates were numerous; so were the traffickers in abuses. There were plenty of court-followers, censorious and double-faced; an effeminate crowd, voluptuous and effete, servile to its masters, but without heart, without honour, without spirit.

The artisans and lower class in Rome were perhaps attached to the Pontiff, but little to the Prince, and to the Government not at all; they were proud of the Roman name, uncivilised, and quarrelsome. In the provincial towns, the populace had mingled in the sects, and were daring partisans. The country people were everywhere peaceful, devoted to the Head of their religion, reverent to the priesthood, only discontented at paying too much.

The minor Clergy, whether of the capital or of the provinces, was single-minded, little instructed, given to complain of the abuses at Rome, and of the badness of the Government, and, with few exceptions, neither turbulent nor immoral; but that portion of it, more foreign

than Roman, which lives and fattens, or hopes to live and fatten, upon abuses and on power and honours, was false, hypocritical, sectarian, and factious too as occasion served.

Is this, then, all that Popery can do for a State? Is it all that Popery can do under the most favourable circumstances possible or imaginable, forasmuch as in Rome, at least, it has had fair play, without the counteracting influence of any liberal element whatever. But we are told that the Romans had ceased to be men-that they hated the Republicans, and rejoiced in the day which brought among them French bayonets, to replace their fetters. Was it even so? On the contrary, let us hear the Pope's own friend, as he records the effect of the Pope's first liberal manifestation. Notwithstanding the limited and mitigated character of his Reforms, yet a people steeped, soaked in the most abject slavery, became absolutely intoxicated. The Historian testifies thus:

The streets were illuminated; the multitude repaired to the palace of the Sardinian mission with acclamations for the King of Sardinia ; and his minister Pareto, in return, made them a speech replete with thankfulness, and with national sentiments. Those days were among the brightest that the seasons can bring round; the last blaze of her sun was shining upon Italy. The stranger poet could no more have called her the land of the dead; nor could the overbearing inhabitants of the northward countries and speakers of the guttural tongues any longer have confined their eulogies to blue skies, soft melodies, and miracles of art. Those who were then coming into Italy from beyond Alps and beyond seas did not alone admire those paintings and statues, which are her wealth and too much her pride. They saw freemen in arms flinging themselves upon the track of the stranger, to drive him back within the confines which God appointed for him, and from which, in despite of God and naturè, he had come down to contaminate for ages the loveliest portion of the earth. And he would have seen our towns converted into families, whom one common affection soothes and warms; those able to bear arms exercising upon parade, women inspiriting their husbands and their sons, priests blessing the banners, and citizens bringing gifts to the altar of their country many, too, are the examples of generosity and of self-sacrifice, which he would have had to commend. The Pope and the religious Congregations matle rich contributions; the Princes of Rome vied in liberality with the citizens; every one joyfully and spontaneously paid the tribute of free bounty to their country; the people emulated them, if not in the magnificence yet in the multitude of their gifts, and in the fervour of their feelings; the very mendicant, stretching out his hand to passengers, begged of them for Italy; the ladies deprived themselves of their most precious ornaments, and women of the lower class gave up those pledges of love and faith which record the happiest

moments of life for those that on earth have no other happiness. In Bologna, a girl of that class, having no valuables, presented the treasure of her beautiful head of hair. Cardinals and Princes presented horses for the artillery ; and Princes, Dukes, nobles, citizens, commons, set out for the camp, all as brethren: among them were two nephews of the Pope; within a few days there were at least twelve thousand volunteers from the Papal States. The Pope gave his benediction, letting it be understood that it descended upon warriors, who were on their way to defend the confines of the States of the Church; the cities were all in jubilee; even the country folks greeted merrily the Papal legions. The Pontifical ensigns were blended with the colours of the nation; the Cross surmounted the Italian flag. Italy had no longer any enemies among her sons; even the hearts which did not throb for her freedom, throbbed for the grandeur of the Popedom.

In these Volumes one important fact is exhibited, relative to a matter which was much misrepresented in Englandthe Mission of Lord Minto. Having fairly stated the commission of his Lordship, the Historian adds the following admirable observations:

This was the commission of Lord Minto; and with this both his words and his acts agreed. Let, then, those whom the Revolutionary storm has smitten, let the fallen who have risen again, and the fallen who have not, cease to lay the blame on Lord Minto, or on England, or on any other imaginary cause of the reverses they have suffered, and of the agonies of their country. Let each man place it upon his own want of high-mindedness and courage, his own mistakes, his own faults, for each man has abundant cause. The strongest proof of the incorrigible nature of a person, or of a party, not to say of its irreparable ruin, is its showing an understanding and a conscience so hardened as not to feel its faults-not to see its mistakes-to persist in the former and in the latter-and to complain of everything and everybody, except itself!

It may be doubted if the true character of Pope Pius has ever been so fairly estimated as by Farîni. The statement is so remarkable that we cannot withhold it :

Pius IX. had applied himself to political reform, not so much for the reason that his conscience as an honourable man and a most pious Sovereign enjoined it, as because his high view of the Papal office prompted him to employ the temporal power for the benefit of his spiritual authority. A meek man and a benevolent Prince, Pius IX. was, as a Pontiff, lofty even to sternness. With a soul not only devout, but mystical, he referred everything to God, and respected and venerated his own person as standing in God's place. He thought it his duty to guard with jealousy the temporal Sovereignty of the Church, because he thought it essential to the safe keeping and the apostleship of the Faith. Aware of the numerous vices of that temporal Government, and hostile to all vice and all its agents, he had sought, on mount

ing the throne, to effect those reforms which justice, public opinion, and the times required. He hoped to give lustre to the Papacy by their means, and so to extend and to consolidate the Faith. He hoped to acquire for the clergy that credit, which is a great part of the decorum of religion, and an efficient cause of reverence and devotion in the people. His first efforts were successful in such a degree, that no Pontiff ever got greater praise. By this he was greatly stimulated and encouraged, and perhaps he gave in to the seduction of applause and the temptations of popularity, more than is fitting for a man of decision, or for a prudent Prince. But when, after a little, Europe was shaken by universal revolution, the work he had commenced was in his view marred; he then retired within himself, and took alarm. In his heart the Pontiff always came before the Prince, the Priest before the citizen: in the secret struggles of his mind, the Pontifical and priestly conscience always outweighed the conscience of the Prince and citizen. And as his conscience was a very timid one, it followed that his inward conflicts were frequent, that hesitation was a matter of course, and that he often took resolutions even about temporal affairs more from religious intuition or impulse, than from his judgment as a man. Add that his health was weak and susceptible of nervous excitement, the dregs of his old complaint. From this he suffered most, when his mind was most troubled and uneasy; another cause of wavering and changefulness. When the frenzy of the revolution of Paris, in the Days of February, bowed the knee before the sacred image of Christ, and amidst its triumph respected the altars and their ministers, Pius IX. anticipated more favour to the Church from the new political order, than it had had from the indevout monarchy of Orleans. Then he took pleasure in the religious language of M. Forbin Janson, Envoy of the infant Republic, and in his fervent reverence for the Papal person; and he rejoiced to learn, and to tell others, that he was the nephew of a pious French Bishop. the news of the violence suffered by the Jesuits in Naples, and threatened in his own States, he was troubled, and his heart conceived resentment against the innovators. Afterwards he was cheered, by learning that one of the rulers of the new Republic of Venice was Tommaseo, whom he valued as a zealous Catholic. He had a tenderness towards the dynasty of Savoy, illustrious for its saints, and towards Charles Albert, who was himself most devout. He learned with exultation, that Venice and Milan had emancipated their Bishops from the censorship and scrutiny of the Government in their correspondence with Rome. It seemed as if God were using the Revolution to free the Church from the vexations entailed by the laws of Joseph II., which Pius IX. ever remembered with horror, and considered to be a curse weighing down the Empire. Where he did not foresee or suspect injury to Religion, he was in accordance with the friends of change. But everything disturbed his mind and soul, which impugned or gave any token of impugning it, or imported disparagement to spiritual discipline or persons. And if from his vacillating nature, and his inborn mildness, he did not adopt strong resolutions, which would have given proof of his uneasy thoughts and feelings, yet they wrought on him in secret, and he had no peace till he

At