are set forth. Nor is this all. The calls of the householder are addressed to us during the six periods of human life, and this is made the basis of an earnest appeal to diligence in Christ's vineyard.

It is evident, however, that Huss indulges in these curious and sometimes fanciful interpretations, less to gratify his own taste or excite surprise in his readers, than to present the truth in such a manner as to leave an abiding impression. From first to last, he is intensely practical. The speculative element is kept almost entirely in the background. The reformer feels that he is dealing with actual sin and deadly errors. His own personal wrongs and dangers, to which he not unfrequently refers, lend to his words a tone of deepest earnestness. AntiChrist in all his forms, is the real antagonist, and every word the reformer utters is a blow. He explains, he argues, he exhorts, he inveighs against prevalent iniquity; but we seem to see the foe ever confronting him, and leaving him no leisure for mere curious theories or fanciful conceits. He speaks, as a general thing, with the simplicity, directness, and solemnity of one who feels that vast, yea, eternal interests are staked upon his words. He is training heroes for a conflict near at hand, or rather already actually begun. He is instructing them in his own views, and infusing into them his own spirit. He feels that he has gone too far to retreat, even if retreat was possible. He has thrown down his challenge. He has registered his charge. He has impeached the great criminal. He feels that he has done it, like the old Athenian, under the penalty of becoming himself the victim, if he fails to make good

his cause.

With this issue of the strife, his own fate is identified. He is fully aware of it, yet he feels that the personal result to himself is of small account, except as indicative of the triumph or defeat of the cause in which he is engaged. Still we cannot peruse his sermons without feeling our sympathies warmly enlisted in his behalf. There is so much of biographical incident, so much of noble resolve and generous enthusiasm for the truth, such manly vindication of his course, such a frank avowal of motives, that our hearts are carried captive before

we are aware, and yet we do not regret this surrender of our sympathies.

He confesses that once he had himself thought that the Pope could do no wrong; but it was before he had read and studied the word of God He sets before us the methods which his enemies had pursued to silence him, the violence they proposed and in part executed, the injustice of his excommunication, and the impious nature of the interdict, till the malignity of his persecutors becomes transparent. He gives us the reason for his withdrawal from Prague, and he justifies himself by the example and directions of Christ himself, as well as of the Fathers of the Church. That he did not comply with the citation to Rome was in no spirit of insubordination, but only from a just sense of its danger and its fatality. Yet no pretended excommunication can exclude him from the love and communion of Christ. His allegiance to the Master forbids him to yield to the usurpation of a fellow servant. He is still resolved to preach. If driven from the city, like Christ, he will take his stand in the market place, in the streets, on the hillside, or in the wilderness, and speak forth the words of eternal life. His work must be done. His duty must be discharged, and no consideration of ease and comfort will allow him to violate the dictates of his conscience.

And yet we meet with nothing indicative of spiritual pride. There is no assumption of merit, no claim to superiority for what he has done and suffered. It is even touching to hear his own confessions, so deeply do they sometimes allow us to look into the motives and purposes of his own heart. He professes that he had never prayed "our Father" (unser Vater) as he ought, and we seem to have brought to view his lofty ideal of spiritual perfection. He declares himself ready to be instructed by the very humblest disciple of Christ, and we are made to feel that in his love for the simple truth, and in his ready submission to the divine will, however apprehended, he has already won a noble victory over himself.

While these discourses give us no new facts in the life of Huss, and while they set forth no doctrinal views with which, from other sources, we were not already familiar, they admit

us to a closer intimacy with his deep and soul-absorbing convictions, and they tend to confirm the impression made upon us by his bearing before the Council of Constance and his heroic martyrdom. They explain to us also, in a measure, that strength of deep personal attachment which, after his death, led his countrymen to cherish his memory as a hallowed treasure, and made his name the rallying-word for reform. We see, moreover, how deliberately, and on what a clear scriptural basis he adopted those views which brought him into collision with Rome, and we listen to his words of admonition, reproof, and rebuke, as they are uttered in a tone of fearlessness not inferior to that of Luther himself. The fearful proportions and issues of the great struggle in which he had enlisted for life, rise up more distinctly before us, and we see the Reformer in his exile, suppressing no utterance, "bating no jot of heart or hope," making no concessions, keeping back no unpalatable truth, softening down no expressions to which a cold prudence might object, but placing on record, to be read while he lived, and after he had gone, scriptural truths which were to be the seed of reformation for the harvest of after centuries. But what perhaps is still more remarkable, we discern no traces of personal malice, and we miss that coarseness of expression in which Luther, a century later, seemed almost to revel. We meet here and there outbursts of passionate emotion, but they are kept within the limits of Christian truth, reason, and charity. We can see that the Reformer feels and feels deeply; and he lays hold with a strong grasp on the sympathies as well as the reason of the reader, but he adopts no unbecoming method, nor does he resort to any unworthy or undignified appeal. He stands before us, in the consciousness of an integrity which is above impeachment, asking no personal favor, but only the tribute of respect and obedience due to the authority of that truth which he lives to preach, and for which he is willing to die.

ARTICLE III-A CENTURY OF ENGLISH PARTIES.

The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George Third, 1760-1860. BY THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, C. B. In two volumes. Volume II. Boston: Crosby & Nichols, 1864.

MR. MAY, in publishing his Constitutional History, has conferred a benefit equally upon Europe and America. England has arrived at that stage in which the fruits of her last Revolution, having developed during the intervening period, seem to be arriving at their best maturity. Nothing can be more welcome to her political thinkers than an intelligent survey of the transition state. Nothing can be more opportune to aid in a just appreciation of the changes which are now taking place, than a work showing the process by which the present situation was reached. Such a work cannot fail to encourage those English statesmen who seek to keep pace with the intelligence of successive eras; for it presents a history which compels the inference that progress is as inevitable as it is just. It cannot fail to refute and vanquish, on the other hand, those statesmen, who would render the British system inflexible, who would confine it to ancient limits, who would defy living and growing forces, who would keep obsolete forces in a difficult and compulsory existence. America has come to that point, where the more advanced doctrines of liberty are trembling in a terrible crisis; where the test, accomplished, will make or destroy the hopes of many millions seeking to be free; where the various and momentous changes, which always operate upon an uncertain political state, are applying to republicanism a trial proportionate to each principle of republican theory. It is a period in which to study anxiously the logic of events; to observe how, among a people of similar national traits, liberties have been oppressed, fought for, and achieved; to note the operation of public distress upon the popular mind, and the result which proceeds therefrom; to learn how, by the light of

an experience at once distinct and reasonable, to avoid the dangers which crowd upon a people under the gloom of civil discord. To both countries, therefore,-to England, in her peaceful march toward a broader freedom,—and to America, seeking by more violent means to prove its efficacy,—a book like that which Mr. May has issued comes with especial fitness. His main object-the presenting with clearness the results of a century of political change,-has been ably accomplished. No doubt remains in the mind, after the perusal of the History, that the causes proposed have really achieved the stated results. Every fact is open to the belief of a cautious thinker. The conclusions appeal at once to the reason. The principal events which have led to the present position of England are compre hended, and stated with fairness. Not that Mr. May does not occasionally, even often, show his own political bias; for in many instances distinct preference is given to those versions of facts which have been reiterated by the Whigs, and as frequently denied by the Tories. His view of events throughout is essentially the Whig view. That any party, as parties were during the last century, should be so far beyond the rest in every virtue of patriotism, ability, and honesty, as Mr. May represents the Whigs to have been, does not seem probable to the impartial mind. The Whig party was undoubtedly a powerful medium of good state-craft. It undoubtedly achieved many and important triumphs on the side of progress. It has generally led in measures for securing a liberal system. It is owing to the Whigs that popular representation is reaching, after generations of opposition, its proper importance in the government of the nation. It is owing to the Whigs that commercial interests have become rival to land interests; that commercial power has kept pace with commercial growth. To the Whigs must be laid the credit of adjusting the balance of power between the several estates. But, referring to the time when Mr. May's history opens, far from being the immaculate band of zealous patriots he would have us believe them, there never was more corruption, more lust of power, more greediness for gain, more bitter jealousy, more servility to the crown, more favoritism, more devotion to partisan ends, in any party,