reaction took place in the minds of men, and they were naturally led to investigate the claims of a church which appeared so utterly corrupt.

The attempt to divest education of a religious character struck down Rome in the height of her power. She perceived her fault, and set about remedying it with that calculating policy which has always distinguished her: but one half of the Roman world was lost to her, we trust for ever!

The means which she employed to recover her sovereignty are examined by Ranke with much attention. The organization of the Society of Jesus, and the remodelling of the other monastic orders, were amongst the most efficient. To the zeal and activity of the Jesuits in particular too much influence can hardly be ascribed. They always appear in the advance of the Papal forces. To them was assigned the assault upon the outworks of Protestantism. Their aim was to establish schools, and to obtain the monopoly of instruction. They succeeded in their object to a great extent. The Protestant fathers passed away; and their children, whom they had sent to the schools of the Jesuits, where a liberal education might be obtained gratuitously, relapsed into Popery, and became its most zealous defenders. Then followed the re-establishment of the bishops and priests in the cathedrals and churches which had been taken from them: persecution came in their train, and the Jesuits passed on to some new scene of operation; and gathering there, like birds of evil omen, seemed by their presence to announce the coming storm.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the religious character of Popery had been completely restored. The supreme Pontiff felt that he must adapt himself to the altered spirit of the times. With Paul the Third this change was probably the result of policy. In Paul the Fourth the monastic feelings of an earlier age seemed to live and breathe afresh. It was he who re-established the Inquisition; and this fearful engine of despotic power acting in conformity with the decrees of the Council of Trent, which had done much for Popery by defining its principles and doctrines, was urged forward to the attack upon Protestantism with cold, calculating, relentless determination.

But there are two features in the struggle on which Ranke has dwelt at great length, and which seem especially deserving of notice. Rome succeeded in recovering a large part of her lost dominion, not so much through her own reviving energy, as through the divisions of Protestantism. On the one hand there was a perfect consistency of purpose, on the other jealousy and distrust. Each Protestant sect laid claim to truth as its own

exclusive domain, and denounced those who differed from its own communion. Whither should the cautious and hesitating fly but to the only church which presented a semblance of unity? It is a painful thing to doubt; and men took refuge from their own misgivings, or escaped from the labour of protracted inquiry, to the shelter of the one fold which appeared free from the prevailing distractions. The leading feature of this reaction was a blind submission to authority. With the Jesuits, for instance, obedience was the highest duty. It took precedence of the investigation of truth, and, as a necessary result, arrested it.

The ruin of the Huguenot party in France may be mainly traced to want of organization-to the absence of a system radiating from a common centre. An episcopal constitution would have supplied this deficiency: but how in its absence should independent and insulated congregations maintain a successful struggle against the power, the system, the policy of Rome? There existed too on the continent of Europe a general suspicion that Protestantism was hostile to the existing forms of civil government, which seemed to derive confirmation from the events which took place in Scotland, Bohemia, the Netherlands, and England successively. This suspicion the Popes industriously fostered, and made abundant use of it in France, Bavaria, and Austria, where the civil power cooperated with them, influenced, as Ranke considers, by a feeling that its own security was endangered by the principles of the Reformation.

But as Rome recovered much of her lost ground through the dissensions and errors of Protestantism, so is it to Rome herself that the cessation of the conflict must be mainly ascribed. She feared lest she should find a master in the power which she had invoked to her aid. There was something alarming in the very name of an Emperor of Germany, and in the recollections which it still called up. She trembled for her Italian dominions; hesitated for a moment; and then, with a deliberate preference of her secular to her spiritual interests, paused in the midst of her triumphant career, and made common cause with the Protestants against the leading power of her own communion.

The policy of Rome has since this period been mainly directed to the security of her own states. We find her, in her jealousy of French influence beyond the Alps, even countenancing the attempt of William of Orange upon England. Her exhausted treasury paralyzed her efforts, while the misery and distress prevailing amongst the inhabitants of the Campagna seemed to invite revolt, and tempt invasion. Her spirit had again become wholly secular; and a new nobility, composed of the families which had furnished

the popes and cardinals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had once more transformed her into the capital of literature and art, rather than of religion. Ranke guides us through this process of degeneracy, and traces it to its primary causes. The stream of light which he has thrown upon the darker pages of ecclesiastical history enables us to see our way plainly, instead of groping in the obscurity of twilight. May it never be the province of some future historian to detail the fresh exertions of Rome, and to tell how the nineteenth century witnessed her renewed attempts at universal dominion! Her objects need be no longer secular. The balance of power in Europe, and the mutual jealousy of European cabinets protect her in the peaceable possession of her own states; and the first act of Pius the Seventh on his restoration to those states by the allied powers-the re-establishment of the order of Jesuits, seems sufficiently to indicate the policy which the Papal court may henceforward be expected to adopt.

TALES OF THE VILLAGE. By FRANCIS E. PAGET, M.A., Rector of Elford, and Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Oxford. Burns. Englishman's Library,' No. LIX.

NOTWITHSTANDING the humble designation of this work, it is written by no less a personage than one of the Chaplains of the Lord Bishop of Oxford; and occupies a place in the series of the Englishman's Library,' immediately preceding that most talented but most perplexing work, at which the arrows of criticism can only take effect when sped from a bow like that of Ulysses— the "Christian Morals of Professor Sewell." And Tales of the Village' is a work not unworthy of such association, being indicative of very considerable, and perhaps in its way almost equal ability. It is a mixture of divinity, and history, and novel, and tragedy, and the confessions of the professed author,' very ingeniously compounded, and blending into a kind of mental aliment for not very profound readers-that is, for ninety-nine out of every hundred-containing some few deleterious ingredients, but on the whole, if taken with proper precaution and under suitable regimen, simple, sweet, and salutary. We shall accordingly endeavour thus to present it to our readers, first pointing out Mr. Paget's object, which will of itself operate as an antidote to the questionable infusion, without impairing the zest and savour of that which is essentially and intrinsically good.

Be it known, therefore, to all who may be disposed to admit into the domestic or parochial library the Tales of the Village,' that the author undertakes to represent two extremes of error, and a middle way of truth. The two extremes are Roman Catholicism, or rather Romanism, and ultra-Protestantism; the middle way is what we suppose he would denominate Anglo-Catholicisma term however which involves just as much of a contradiction as the other, and therefore we may be permitted to designate it Anglo-Churchism. The representative of Romanism is Magdalen Fernley, a very amiable, candid, and rational young person, but one who does not, according to the statute in this case made and provided, concentrate in herself, though the heroine of the novel portion, all the attractions under the sun; for though her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman,' she had no pretensions to beauty, and belonged only to the subordinate class of countenances which are pleasing, and with an expression full of gentleness and humility. The representative of ultraProtestantism is a Mrs. Hopkins, who is of course a direct contrast to the demure and pensive Magdalen: she has a countenance like other people, but nothing is said about its expression, which, in a married woman or widow is a thing of very little moment of unpleasant manners,' a kind of theological pendulum, vibrating alternately between the parish church and the dissenting chapel, and ticking with an incessant and unwearied volubility quite odious to ears polite. This worthy personage attempts to intermeddle with the divinity portion of the narrative; but what should be great she turns to farce,' and shines therefore, if she shines at all, in the comedy. Her first introduction to her opposite (we must not say her contradictory, (for Magdalen, with the characteristic meekness and forbearance of her tolerant and long-suffering church, is too mild to offer contradiction) is described in language which really proves that Mr. Paget has a considerable turn for the ludicrous, and reminds one not a little of the quaint and broad drollery which distinguishes the chronicler of Parson Dolittle and Doctor Dronish, though we doubt whether the author of the Village Tales' will thank us for suggesting a comparison with the writer of the 'Village Dialogues.' We think however even the latter could hardly furnish us with a Rowland for our Oliver in a comic sketch to equal the following:

(

"Mrs. Sutton at home, young woman? Oh, gone to Yateshull, is she? Perhaps her niece-(ah, granddaughter is she?)-perhaps her granddaughter, Miss Furnival-(Fernley?-yes, true)-Miss Fernley is in the house? Very well, young woman- -(by the way, what's your own name? Susan Bennet. Bennets of Dilbury?—thought so)-then Susan Bennet, I'll trouble you to tell Miss Fernley that Mrs. Hopkins will be happy to wait on

her, and rest till Mrs. Sutton comes home, for I'm just tired to death. Or stay, I'll tell her that myself. Clogs ?-thank you; but I can take them off. And you may hang this cloak to the fire,-not too near, you know, or you'll scorch it, Susan. This way, to the right, up one step? Oh! what, in the blind gentleman's apartment? poor old creature!- Ah, my good friend, Mr. Lee,' as soon as she was within the door, 'happy to see you looking so well, sir.-Beg your pardon, ma'am, take it for granted you are Miss Fernley. Great pleasure in making your acquaintance-very sincere regard for your grandmother-should have waited on you sooner, but I caught a terrible cold on Tuesday at Chatterton-annual meeting of the Reformation Society, you know-sad wet evening, but I make a point of attending: think it a duty in these times. Great crowd on the platform-very hot-didn't get home till midnight-rained all the way. Mr. Warlingham too? quite in luck to find so many of my friends,really quite a congregation,-a vicar, and a curate, and the black cat for clerk-ha, ha, ha! and you, Miss Fernley, no doubt a very attentive listener. Puss, puss, puss,-come pussy.' "—(p. 93.)

But we have nothing to say of the 'retreating quadruped,' who performed the office of clerk,' and must do as Mrs. Hopkins did, fall back upon the bipeds, the Vicar and the Curate, of whom the latter, a blind man, advanced in years, and rejoicing in the somewhat incongruous name of Cyprian Lee, is intended to embody Mr. Paget's beau-ideal of a Church of England saint. And, to speak the honest truth, his portrait is sketched, in the earlier part of the work, with so much beauty, delicacy, and skill-we find so much that is attractive in his picty, and so little that is repellant in his asceticism, that the juxta-position of Mrs. Hopkins reminds us of that whimsical arrangement in our picture galleries which, perhaps for the sake of contrast, suspends a broad scene of Flemish humours, a carousal, a quarrel, or a fair, or some sportive creation of Wilkie, beside the sublime and awful representation of Scriptural miracles; or that still more capricious extravagance of Gothic architecture, which carves a grinning demon between cherubs with expanded wings, and seems to anticipate the vagaries of modern symbolism by interspersing throughout our sacred places

Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire."

Mrs. Hopkins would have been like the hydra, had her shoulders supported more than one head; and like the Gorgon, if talking nonsense would petrify the unwilling listener; while as the representative of ultra-Protestantism we hope she is a chimera too. We pity Mr. Paget most sincerely, if in real life he has ever stumbled upon her parallel.

Seriously speaking, however, we doubt whether it is candid-we are sure it is not charitable-to attack opinions, however erroneous and even heretical, in the judgment of the writer, they may be, by drawing a caricature, and taking it as the representative of a class. The Vicar above-mentioned, who professes himself the