differs from Grote's in that it demands of the reader a much more implicit confidence in the author, whereas Grote always gives us his evidence for a statement and his reasons for an opinion, and never ventures far without positive authority. We think Curtius fully deserves the confidence he demands, though in a few cases his statements seem more positive than the evidence justifies.

ARTICLE VI.-DR. BACON'S "GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES."

The Genesis of the New England Churches. By LEONARD BACON with illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Franklin square. 1874.

No one would be likely to open a volume from the pen of Dr. Leonard Bacon, bearing the above title, and not anticipate a rich, entertaining, and instructive book. With his general ability as a writer, on whatever subject engages his attention, and with his special love of every thing pertaining to the history of the early New England fathers, one could be sure beforehand that the work would not only repay perusal, but a careful and critical study. Many students in Yale College, over a range of forty years past, will bear free and hearty testimony to the profitable instructions they have received, in this department, from the lips of Dr. Bacon: not as a teacher in the University, but in his larger capacity, as a teacher of the people. They will recall those Sunday nights, in the old Center Church meeting-house, when to full audiences and to attentive listeners he was wont to unfold, from time to time, in varied series of discourses, some section of local or general New England history. Through a life which has now reached a vigorous old age, hardly any man among us has done more to make known unto the children the sacred memorials of the fathers. He has wrought long and patiently, in the spirit of the old Hebrew song: "Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following."

If one were to open the volume before us with no knowledge whatever as to its authorship, he would speedily discover that it was not the work of a young man, rushing into print, with his newly-gathered facts. Even if it were possible for a youthful author to have possessed himself of every historical fact and incident here embodied, his book would be a very different one from this. The richest part of the volume is that

which is between and behind the printed lines. All recently acquired knowledge is, at the best, only partial and half-way knowledge. When one listens, for the first time, to some grand musical overture, he has not really heard it, however much he may have thought himself delighted. Those subtle influences of sound must play about the soul again and again, with long intervals between, before the power to hear is fully awake. And it is much the same in the general action of the mind. When one first traverses a particular field of history, he sees only the dry bones of this history, the skeleton forms, without the grace of life and motion. The delicate interlockings of part with part-the flesh that clothes and the sinews that move, -these belong to a later stage of knowledge. History, in this its more perfected form, becomes almost a transcript of life itself, where not a moment lies idle-where all spaces are filled -where human passions are in perpetual play-where a thousand busy forces are forever working off their results and passing them on to the future.

In the work before us we clearly trace the effects of a longcontinued process of thought, analysis, assimilation. It is the ripe fruit of a long life-a life that yet shows no decay, but has all its functions in full exercise. The field of history here traversed has been held under such close and thoughtful contemplation for so many years, that the agencies at work in it have been comprehended in something like their manifold relations.

And yet many readers, as they notice the title and open the book, may be disappointed at finding it so largely occupied with persons and events on the other side of the water, and in remoter generations. They may have anticipated that the narrative would begin with the settlements on our own shores, and cover the early periods of our own colonial history, perhaps for a century. But it must be remembered that this is the "Genesis" of our Churches. We hear of another volume, to be called the "Exodus," which we trust may be completed, and which will doubtless cover the essential ground above indicated. Indeed, the present volume brings the Pilgrims to their abode at Plymouth, and follows them on through ten years of their settlement at that place. It then pauses to take

a hasty glance at the first planters in the Massachusetts Bay, and the founding of the Church at Salem, and there the narrative stops. But the author is true to his title. His aim was, first of all, to search out the causes and courses of events in the old world, by which these New England churches were brought into being.

As to the facts of the book, Dr. Bacon lays no claim to be a discoverer. The materials which he has used lie open to all. His own statement, in the preface, on this point is frank and modest. He says of the volume, "It makes no profession of bringing to light new facts from documents heretofore unedited, or from black-letter books heretofore overlooked. It simply tells an old story, giving perhaps here and there a new interpretation or a new emphasis to some undisputed fact. My purpose has been to tell this story clearly and fairly, not for the instruction or delight of antiquarians, nor merely for those with whom church history is a professional study, but for all sorts of intelligent and thoughtful readers. He who writes only for scholars, or for the men of some learned profession, can say, 'Fit audience let me find, though few;' but my labor has been thrown away if the story which I have written is not so told as to invite the attention and to stir the sympathies of the many. The story which I tell is the story of an idea slowly making its way against prejudices, interests, and passions -a story of faith and martyrdom, of heroic endeavor and heroic constancy. It includes only so much of secular history as is involved in the history of the idea, and of the men whom it possessed, and who labored and suffered to make it a reality in the world of fact."

The first and second chapters of the book are occupied with the elemental facts of New Testament history, and with the corrupting changes and departures from the simple apostolic idea of doctrine and polity. The third chapter opens to us the age of Luther and the Reformation, with its protest against false and corrupt doctrines-with its reconstruction of theology, but with little regard to the forms of ecclesiastical polity. It points out distinctly the political and secular elements which mingled with the religions in the years following the Reformation, and which led to the construction of the great national

Churches of Protestant Europe. It then passes, in the fourth chapter, to the English reformation, and the gradual growth, from generation to generation, of the Puritan idea and the Puritan party in the kingdom. Here the narrative reaches the chief field of its action and becomes more slow and careful in its movement, unfolding, step by step, the progress of thought and incident. It notes the spiritual reformation, that silently began in England, under Wycliffe and the Lollards, a hundred and fifty years before Luther opened his fierce and daring controversy. It shows how this pure stream of spiritual thought and holy feeling, flowing downward from Wycliffe, met and mingled with the turbid waters of political strife and ambition, when king and nobles, not for Christ's sake, but their own, broke away from the galling yoke of papal supremacy. This last was a reformation not worthy of the name--a thing of outward form, without spiritual reality--a compound of earthly aims and wicked passions, where the sovereign was merely put in the place of the Pope, and one tyrant was exchanged for another. And so began that long and heroic struggle for religious truth and purity, in which individual men, here and there over all England, still keeping themselves within the pale of the English Church, dared in many things to refuse obedience to the ruling powers, and patiently suffered the cruel consequences.

In the reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603, we discover the germs of a new idea. In secret places, good men had been saying to themselves and to each other, "How long, O Lord, how long!" There began to be a sense of profitless, unrewarded toil, in the attempt to infuse a true spiritual life into the corrupt body of the English Church. Here and there was a man, who seemed to hear a voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." The origin and growth of this idea begins to be traced in the fifth chapter, which bears the suggestive title, taken from the language of the more advanced minds of that day, "Reformation without tarrying for any." In this, and in several chapters following, covering the reign of Elizabeth, the progress of this thought, and what it cost to those who held it, are graphically depicted. We have the story,