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freedom and enlightenment of mind and body and soul. They thought he would be cheered by sounds of encouragement from this land of liberty, -bating its three million slaves. Letters were written to distinguished men, who did not attend, but whose answers are made to appear as parts of the proceedings of the meetings. Addresses and resolutions were drawn up and engrossed, and transmitted to the Pope, with great apparent unanimity, and some few men, with their exaggerated and enthusiastic views of things, speaking or writing from the excitement of the moment, are made to represent at Rome the general and prevailing sentiment through the United States. We regretted the occurrence of those meetings, nor did we accord with much of their proceedings. We must object, likewise, to the unqualified and one-sided views advanced in the addresses. The meetings and the documents are likely to be much misunderstood in Rome. They do not say what the voice of this nation would say to the Pope, had it an opportunity to speak. They do not deal with that kind, and form, and tenure of liberty which we estimate more highly than any which the Pope is likely to bestow upon his subjects. Those documents may perhaps strengthen the Pope against his own subjects. They are good for him to use in two ways. Then, again, they may put us, as a people, in a false position. We wish to know more about Pius IX. before we strike hands with him or indorse him. Any one who has read the life of Cardinal Cheverus, and has noted what silly tales are told therein of the devotion, and maudlin affection, and cringing veneration with which he was regarded by the men and women of Boston, while he was a Roman Catholic bishop here, will perhaps participate in our feelings. One would suppose, from the idle stories in that book, that a good and kind Christian had never been seen in Boston before him, and that the ladies followed him to the ship at parting, and dashed into the bay in sorrow when he was gone. So exaggerated was Protestant regard!

But if the Pope neither intends any ecclesiastical reform, nor will be likely to be led or driven to it by his own course of policy, the alternative is still possible, that his spiritual subjects may be moved, by the force of their own larger liberty near the throne of the Pontiff, to ask for, to demand, and to secure some modifications either of the doctrine or the discipline of the Church. So broad a discussion would

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this consideration involve, that we cannot enter upon it here. The Roman Church has never yet made a concession. Let this fact be well remembered. It is by no means impossible that the liberal policy of the Pope may strengthen the Church, and win back the faith and love of many of her merely nominal disciples. It is generally understood that infidelity and indifference prevail more extensively, in high places and in low places, in Italy than in any other part of Christendom. This is said to be the state of mind of many Italians who have some knowledge of Protestantism, with its large liberty of thought and its means of relieving a disturbed mind. But the most prominent features which Protestantism presents to Catholics, so called, are its diversities, its variations, its dissensions, its innumerable pamphlet controversies, its limitless range of debate, and its incompleteness. This makes Protestantism unattractive and repulsive, even to unbelieving Romanists. They cling to the idea of unity. Unbelief and general skepticism are far less abhorrent to them than lawless variety. A large amount of prevailing indifference and infidelity has ever attended the Roman faith; but still the idea of unity has been retained as a fond conceit, while a reckless license has made free with the whole substance and all the forms of religion.

That the temporal policy of a Pope can work any extraordinary change in the influences which affect the minds of thousands for or against religion, is hardly to be supposed. Our highest expectations of all that Pius IX. proposes to accomplish, or can accomplish, will be fulfilled, if he adds the weight. of one noble and devoted laborer, in an exalted sphere of action, to the side of human happiness and progress. We hope that he may be able to repeat, with a cheerful construction of the sentence, the desponding exclamation of Adrian VI., — "Let a man be never so good, how much depends upon the times in which he is born!" With good times for a good man, we may look for some good results. A Pope's reign is generally too short to allow him to stamp the impress of his character permanently even upon one age. The Roman Pontiffs have been elected, for the most part, when they have been advanced in years, and have not had time to work any long effect. The list of the Popes, taking it on the authority of the Church itself, though, of course, we regard parts of it as fabulous, embraces two hundred and fifty-nine names, including St. Peter and Pius IX. Thus seven years has been

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the average period for the reign of each. Great revolutions have taken place in shorter periods, but reforms require more extended spaces of time, to be thorough and secure, and to bear the risk of a change in the individual who stands at the head of a government.

We will still hope for much from the reign of Pius IX., much for the happiness of his own subjects, the good of the Christian Church, and the advancement of every cause of righteousness and progress. There are some matters which lie between temporal and spiritual interests, and partake of the relations of each, over which his power extends, and where he may exert it. But, as we judge, true reform can triumph in the Roman States only when it is no longer in the power of a Pope to say that it shall or shall not triumph.

G. E. E.

ART. VII. HEDGE'S PROSE-WRITERS OF GERMANY.*

WITHIN the last quarter of a century, the rich world of German literature has been steadily rolling into sight, and a multitude of eyes are now earnestly engaged, with such aids as they can command, in exploring its wide domains. A fashion is setting in, almost amounting to a rage, for the study of the German language. Translations from the German, in prose and poetry, are appearing in all manner of periodicals. While we are thus certainly approaching to a more intelligent appreciation of the German mind and its creations, it is still far from being settled to the general satisfaction, whether this new light which is streaming in upon us, investing things with so many strange colors, comes from a new planet of the first magnitude with a somewhat hazy atmosphere, or from some stray nebula without nucleus or solidity, portentous of most disastrous changes, and threatening to rival the moon in driving men mad.

That the fears of people have been in any degree allayed, that a correct idea of the worth of German literature is beginning to gain ground, is due to Thomas Carlyle. He has introduced Germany to England, thereby discharging a

Prose-Writers of Germany. By FREDERIC H. HEDGE. Illustrated with Portraits. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1848. 8vo. pp. 567.

great office of humanity. To bring two individuals who were strangers to each other, one of whom regarded the other with prejudice and contempt, into relations of mutual respect, is to perform a most Christian act. To displace ignorance by knowledge, an excluding pride by a sincere good-will, is to enlarge the boundaries of the invisible Christendom. To teach a man to pay his neighbour the respect to which that neighbour is entitled, is to confer upon him a new claim to be respected himself. How grand the service rendered, then, when ties of mutual kindness are created between two large communities, and such communities as England and Germany! He who renders the world such a service must be ranked among our greatest benefactors. The heartiest acknowledgments are due to Mr. Carlyle. We are grateful to him for the manifest and inestimable good that he has done.

At the same time, it is not to be overlooked that Mr. Carlyle has impaired the value of his benefaction, not merely by his disloyal desertion of "the pure wells of English undefiled," (with Sir Walter Scott, we like a quotation that is not hackneyed,) but also by an imitation of German modes of thought, altogether too close to be consistent with the intellectual independence which Mr. Carlyle appears to guard with such unsleeping jealousy. We admit, with some abatement, the common objections to the style of this remarkable writer. It is frequently as twisted and fantastic as those Chinese ornaments carved out of the roots of trees. Amidst endless convolutions and contortions there must needs be some accidental graces, and amidst all varieties of sounds some exquisite chords and cadences. Still, if, with no pretensions on this score, we may pass such a judgment, we apprehend that Mr. Carlyle has very little ear for music, and that there are more reasons than lie in his will why, poet as he is, he rarely versifies. To our sense, his style continually offends against all harmony. It is a breathless business to read him aloud. And this, we suppose, is one reason why so many persons are repelled from him. This much, however, may be said in extenuation of his peculiarities, that they have helped to reveal the versatility of which our language is susceptible, and to show that tameness is not a necessary quality of the English tongue. Still, Mr. Carlyle lacks simplicity; a very serious want. He writes in German slightly Anglicized. We should not venture this criti

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cism, if we believed his style to be sincerely his own. In that case, we should accept it as his and be thankful. It is not well to "look a gift horse in the mouth.' But here there is manifest room for doubt. Certain it is, that his present style is not his first style. In his earlier writings, his Life of Schiller, for instance, hardly a trace is visible, as all his readers know, of those characteristics with which his later productions have been successively more and more marked. The change which his manner of writing has undergone, comparing his, earliest works with his latest, is most remarkable. We know of nothing like it in any great writer that we are acquainted with. With all our admiration of Carlyle, we cannot escape the impression, that his style is a borrowed one; especially when we note his close imitation of German models, of Richter in particular. To our apprehension, Carlyle is Richter Redivivus, with the slightest variations, not merely in forms of expression, but in ways of thinking and turns of humor. It is true, the Briton does not shed as many tears as the German. Richter's heroes rival even pius Eneas in the sensibility of their lachrymatory organs. And while Carlyle laughs as much, his mirth is grim, as if it were echoed out of cavernous depths of indignation and suffering. With these differences, the Leibgeber and Siebenkäs of Richter's romances are not more truly copies, one of the other, than Carlyle is of Richter. We cannot read one without being reminded of the other, and not seldom of particular passages in the other. We have no thought of insinuating a charge of plagiarism against Carlyle. His unquestionable originality raises him far above that. But it appears to us as if Richter had so entirely possessed Carlyle, that the latter is at times completely overpowered, and can only speak the thoughts, and in the humor, of his demon. As a mere curiosity, this strong resemblance and occasional identity of two minds of extraordinary power is so striking, that we wonder it has never been noticed. How it is to be explained, to speak with Mr. Carlyle, "were wise who wist."

Nevertheless, we repeat, Mr. Carlyle has rendered us all a service the value of which it is not within our ability to estimate. He it is who has awakened on English soil the interest which is growing wider and deeper every day in German literature. In the chronicles of literary history it