is an expression of essential being, a manifestation of the divine reality. Brahmanism has avoided the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy, by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena. This impersonal Being pervades the whole world of matter and man; the whole world is indeed a manifestation of this impersonal power. This cuts away for ever every root of polytheism and of anthropomorphism. The God made in the image of man with power to create and destroy by a personal will is for ever lost, and men gain a positive, scientific basis for the brotherhood of man and for the unity of human interests. This result, however, which Hartmann reaches by labored philosophic processes, is the same which has existed in Christ and others as feeling. The crude philosophy of Judaism and Christianity has given birth to a most exalted emotional experience. It is nearly certain that Christ did not think of the brotherhood of humanity as in himself in the usual interpretation, but that he dreamed of the diffusion among men of the fervent consciousness of love, good will, and aspiration which he felt.

Religions have a psychological and a material expression. Their psychological phase is the bundle of intellectual convictions (existing as thought and coined into language), together with the emotions which spring from them. Emotion grows out of thought as plants out of the soil; and emotions founded on intuition are the most intense. In families in which successive generations have been impregnated with moral enthusiasm, morality becomes automatic and conscious effort ceases. Morality is then thoroughly artistic and admirable. The material expressions of religion are the external objects and practices used for perpetuating it, as temples, services, missions, and literatures.

Geographically this philosophical scheme is made to cover the whole earth; but Hartmann draws no chronological lines. Monotheistic pantheism may come soon or in the far future, but it is sure to come. In him it is already fulfilled in the form of a lofty intellectual life, and if dignity, kindliness, and candor of voice and manner are true indices of character, it is also fulfilled in his affectional and spiritual life. But has he not conveyed his ardent subjective life into the objective world more fully than he ought? We long

for the invention of those delicate scales which shall weigh for us all psychological and historic forces with scientific nicety. But where are we to look for this discovery if not to inductive philosophy? But the brain which shall find out this new metric system must itself be of the finest. At present, the widest possible survey of facts authorizes no positively unalterable conclusion. "Protestantism," says Hartmann, "is the grave-digger of Christianity." But Christianity stoutly refuses to be buried alive, and countless data show that it is vigorously active: its blood circulates; its pulse is beating; its historic force is not spent; it has still a long lease of life. Science and modern culture may take possession of all the finer minds, but the fine minds are in a minority. Nature perpetuates her coarse forms as surely as her complex ones, and in greater multiplicity. It will take a long time to wear out the strength of modern spiritualism. Judaism can not disappear for many a century yet. Are there any reasons for concluding that Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism will be less tenacious of life? The trees of the forest stand together-pines, oaks, and hemlocks-in democratic fraternity. Diversity is the necessity of organic life. May it not be equally the necessity of intellect and soul? We are not wise enough with all our data to foresee a universal religion; we are not wise enough to deny the possibility of such a universal religion; but we are wise enough to see that the present diversity of faith must continue for many centuries, and generous enough to believe that such continuance will not be an unmitigated evil.

M. A. HARDAKER.

IX.

RECENT MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

1. Weisse's Origin, Progress, and Destiny of the English Language and Lite

rature.

2. Holmes's John Lothrop Motley.

3. Conway's Demonology and Devil-Lore. 4. Mrs. Kemble's Record of a Girlhood.

5. Tyler's History of American Literature.

If Mr. Weisse's book were what it professes to be only, it would be accepted as a close and learned analysis of parts of its subject, laboriously written and rather laborious to read. A great part of it, however, is positively, it might almost seem purposely, à propos des bottes. It distinguishes nicely the component parts of English speech, and traces carefully their mode of introduction into the rude primal tongue of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. And in doing this the author explains that he "alludes throughout the work to thoughts, ideas, languages, literatures, and events that acted and reacted on the English language and literature." The explanation is hardly broad enough to cover nine pages in praise of women, from Eve down, ending with an argument for woman-suffrage. This is no more pertinent to the subject treated than is an elaborate laudation of the press or an outburst against the Turks.

This fullness may come from the author's purpose to illustrate actions and reactions on the English language. It is no doubt possible to show how governments can impress on the speech of their subjects marks of freedom of spirit or servility. Or it may be proved that a nation's chief pursuit, as commerce or war, gives a turn and character to many expressions of its language. But a course of reasoning and comparison would be needed for this. The accumulation of facts does not prove such a process unless they are brought to bear upon it.

The author justly regards the close of the sixth century, when the Christian doctrines, together with the Roman alphabet, numerals,

and calendar were brought into England, as the beginning of AngloSaxon progress. It is shown how much Alfred contributed to form his country's language and found her literature, and how greatly the decay of both was hastened by William's invasion. Within a century after that event, Anglo-Saxon ceased to be a written language. Its substitute, formed by mingling its relics gradually with Græco-Latin words, was polished and enriched in the fourteenth century by Chaucer, who deserves to be styled the father of the English tongue, as well as the father of English poetry.

So from century to century the author follows the development of the English language, pointing out the accretions to it from foreign sources. Each century-chapter is summed up by a table analyzing the proportion, in the works of the chief writers of the period, of Anglo-Saxon words and of Græco-Latin ones. In the sixth century, the proportion in a hundred words is ninety-four of the former to six of the latter. In the sixteenth, the strangers have usurped forty-eight places, leaving fifty to the natives. The proportion of the elements in English as now written is fixed, through a similar analysis, at sixty-eight Græco-Latin words to thirty Anglo-Saxon and two Celtic.

Mr. Weisse is by no means an Anglo-Saxon purist. He admits that three fourths of its original idioms have been replaced by foreign ones. The substituted and added words have increased its vigor and refined its aptitudes for the utterance of thought and the promotion of action. Its progress inspires the author with faith that it will at last rise to be the ruling speech of the world, and modulate itself into a perfect instrument for the use of the race.

A man unconsciously describes himself better than any one else can describe him. Delicate and firm as are the touches Dr. Holmes gives to the portrait of his friend Motley, they express his character less than do the extracts from his letters, which fill too few of the pages of this memoir. It is not their vivid descriptions, their subtile art criticism, or their story of patient toil, that holds the reader's attention in these letters. It is their passion of love for country and jealousy of her honor. His temperament made Motley just the man to represent our country in Europe at the crisis of her fate. He was no civil formalist, no cold phrase-maker. The equal of any among the diplomatic body in accomplishment and graciousness, he met them with a noble frankness, an intense zeal for right, which must have impressed on his associates his own conviction that our civil war could end only in one way. This effect is reflected in

the prescience of events, the just estimate of probabilities, with which he writes.

Motley portrayed himself in some of his works more consciously than in his letters. His growth out of an indifferent novelist into a consummate historian is something curious in the annals of literature. Scott, it is true, wrote a history later than his novels, but the novels were admirable and the history very poor. Voltaire was an historian after being a story-teller, but his works are only two kinds of fiction. Schiller wrote his "Thirty Years' War" after his "Geisterseher" (attributed in this memoir to Goethe), but his fame rests on his works of neither class. Motley soon learned, partly by failure, where his strength lay. His genius gave the historian's philosophic insight-his peculiar powers supplied the historian's method and style. If his individuality impressed the latter with too much warmth and fullness, the fault was an excess of richness, not a defect. His patient, conscientious toil in gathering and analyzing materials was admirable. Dr. Holmes does a service to the cause of letters in holding up this noble standard-commending the old classic improbus labor to those who rush impatient and unfurnished into what they are pleased to call a literary career.

The limits of this memoir forbid any detailed criticism of Motley's great histories. The author describes the pride without surprise with which the writer's friends received them, and the delight of multitudes of readers which welcomed them. The opinions of acknowledged censors in the literary world, too, are quoted-the notices of the great foreign reviews, and approving letters from famous men. But the highest tribute to his genius is yielded by the enthusiasm it roused in the phlegmatic bosoms of Dutch scholars.

An unwelcome task remains to the author, who must vindicate Motley from the aspersions and misrepresentations that attended his diplomatic career. The motives and the details of such persecution as befell Motley are usually shrouded in state secrecy. In this instance they come out in full light, revealing human infirmity among those highest in place, and striking upon the ugly features of personal spite and irritation. If vehemence is shown in the justification, it is that of ardent friendship, quickened by sympathy of nature. The Vienna history is simply that of a high-spirited, sensitive man, resenting the unworthy thrusting upon him by officials of a contemptible slander that should never have been noticed. The statement of Motley's retirement from the English mission is more involved. The author analyzes the case at great length, and,