Arnold, the historian of Rome; come and drink, and let the eternal truths of political philosophy, wrought out of the experience and miseries of ages that are past, be the medicine and healing of the ages that are to come!

"It has been well said that long periods of general suffering make far less impression on our minds, than the short sharp struggle in which a few distinguished individuals perish; not that we over estimate the horror and guilt of times of open bloodshedding, but we are much too patient of the greater misery and greater sin of periods of quiet legalised oppression ; of that most deadly of all evils, when law, and even religion herself, are false to their divine origin and purpose, and their voice is no longer the voice of God, but of his enemy. In such cases the evil derives advantage, in a manner, from the very amount of its own enormity. No pen can record, no volume can contain, the details of the daily and hourly sufferings of a whole people, endured without intermission, through the whole life of man, from the cradle to the grave. The mind itself can scarcely comprehend the wide range of the mischief: how constant poverty and insult, long endured as the natural portion of a degraded caste, bear with them to the sufferers something yet worse than pain, whether of the body or the feelings; how ignorance and ill-treatment combined are the parents of universal suspicion; how from oppression is produced habitual cowardice, breaking out when occasion offers into merciless cruelty; how slaves become naturally liars; how they, whose condition denies them all noble enjoyments, and to whom looking forward is only despair, plunge themselves with a brute's recklessness, into the lowest sensual pleasures; how the domestic circle itself, the last sanctuary of human virtue, becomes at length corrupted, and in the place of natural affection and parental care, there is to be seen only selfishness and unkindness, and no other anxiety on the part of the parents for their children, than that they may, by fraud or by violence, prey in their turn upon that society which they have found their bitterest enemy. Evils like these, long working in the heart of a nation, render their own cure impossible: a revolution may execute judgment on one generation, and that perhaps the very one which was beginning to see and to repent of its inherited sins; but it cannot restore life to the morally dead; and its ill success, as if in this line of evils no curse should be wanting, is pleaded by other oppressors as a defence of their own iniquity, and a reason for perpetuating it for ever."-Vol. ii. P. 19.

ART. VII.-THE CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF THEODORE PARKER, Minister of the Second Church in Roxbury. Boston: Monroe. London: John Green. 1843.

THE charm of this book is its perfect freedom. Mr. Parker writes without a single manacle of any kind-even the manacle of prudence. Let people say what they will about the slavery in which Public opinion holds Private opinion in the United States, there are no freer, or more honest books published in the English Language, than those which reach us from America. The whole atmosphere of educated Society in England is conservative. It is only the ignorant who are bold among us. When a man has acquired a little knowledge and experience, can number a few more years, and perhaps a few more acres, he begins to hesitate about flinging firebrands around him so bountifully as of yore, and does not deem his being in earnest (still less his being in sport) a sufficient reason for so doing. But Mr. Parker has no such hesitation. He looks upon his fire-brands as mere lucifer-matches, which he hopes will kindle a more enduring light in many a bosom. And indeed we ourselves have a perfect faith, that though they may scorch a little in some quarters where they will fall, the warmth and radiance which they bring with them will do more good, than their small amount of destructive qualities will do evil.

The Book before us consists of twelve articles, all of which, with one exception, have been published before, chiefly in the Dial, and in the Christian Examiner. They are most of them worthy of the less evanescent form which they have now received: and the enumeration of some of the Titles will show that the themes which they handle are not without significance-The permanent and transient in Religion-Education of the labouring Class-German Literature-How to move the World-Primitive Christianity, and Strauss's Life of Jesus. From the article on German Literature we extract the witty exordium, intended no doubt to have the effect, as it ought to have, of a grave remonstrance.

Opinions are divided respecting German Literature. If we are to believe what is currently reported, and generally credited, there is, somewhere in New England, a faction of discontented men and maidens, who have conspired to love everything Teutonic, from Dutch skates to German infidelity, It is supposed, at least asserted, that these misguided persons would fain banish all other literature clean out of space;

or at the very least, would give it precedence of all other letters, ancient or modern. Whatever is German, they admire; philosophy, dramas, theology, novels, old ballads, and modern sonnets; histories and dissertations and sermons; but above all, the immoral and irreligious writings, which it is supposed the Germans are chiefly engaged in writing, with the generous intention of corrupting the youth of the world, restoring the worship of or Pan or the Pope-it is not decided which is to receive the honour of universal homage, and thus gradually preparing for the kingdom of Misrule, and the dominion of Chaos, and 'most ancient Night.' It is often charitably taken for granted, that the lovers of German works on Philosophy and Art amongst us are moved thereto, either by a disinterested love of whatever is German, or else, which is the more likely, by a disinterested love of evil, and the instigation of the devil, who, it is gravely said, has actually inspired several of the most esteemed writers of that nation. The German epidemic, we are told, extends very wide. It has entered the boarding-schools for young misses, of either sex, and committed the most frightful ravages therein. We have been apprized that it has sometimes seized upon a College, nay, on Universities, and both the Faculty and the Corporation, have exhibited symptoms of the fatal disease. Colleges, did we say?

"No place is sacred, not the Church is free.'

"It has attacked clergymen in silk and lawn. The Doctors of Divinity fall before it. It is thought that,

are all nothing to the German epidemic. We meet men with umbrellas and over-shoes, men shawled to the teeth,' and suppose they are prudent persons, who have put on armour against this subtle foe. Histories of this plague, as of the cholera, have been written; the public has often been called to defend itself from the enemy, and quarantine regulations are put in force against all suspected of the infection. In short the prudent men of the land, men wise to foresee and curious to prevent evil, have not failed to advise the public from time to time of the danger that is imminent, and to recommend certain talismans as effectual safeguards. We think a copy of the Westminster Catechism'-or the 'Athanasian Creed,' perhaps if hung about the neck," &c.

"But a more important specific has occurred to us, which we have never known to fail, and it has been tried in a great many cases, in both hemispheres. The remedy is simple; it is a strong infusion of Dul-p. 27.

ness.

To this well-sustained vein of irony succeeds a high and just eulogy on the labours of the German scholars, sometimes indeed stretching the chord a little too tight we think, or to use our

author's expression, "" going too far,' which means, in plain English, farther than their critic."

An example. "Take Kant alone, and in the whole compass of thought, we scarce know his superior. From Aristotle to Leibnitz, we do not find his equal. No, nor since Leibnitz. Need we say it? Was there not many a Lord Bacon in Immanuel Kant?" Here, we confess, our author touches us. The force of tension can no further go. We know something of Bacon (whom elsewhere Mr. Parker directly depreciates), and we know but little of Kant. Therefore we measure no swords with Mr. Parker. But, should we live a quarter of a century longer, we will certainly during the interim, work thoroughly at Kant, if it were only on Mr. Parker's recommendation, and to make the thing complete, do so in the midst of some Hercynian Forest, to boot.

Here is a clever remark on the danger of excess in any direction:

"No doubt there is danger in studying these writings," (those of the German scholars,) "just as there is danger in reading Copernicus, or Locke, Aristotle or Lord Brougham, or Isaiah and St. John. As a jocose friend says, 'it is always dangerous for a young man to think, for he may think wrong, you know.' It were sad to see men run mad after German Philosophy; but it is equally sad to see them go to the same excess in English Philosophy. If Transcendentalism' is bad, so is Paleyism, and Materalism. Truth is possessed entire by no sect, Ger. man or English. It requires all schools to get at all Truth, as the whole Church is needed to preach the whole Gospel."

We are glad to see from an admirer something like a frank allowance of Goethe's great defects of character-for this in our experience has been rare. "That Goethe, as a man, was selfish to a very high degree, a debauchee and well-bred epicurean, who had little sympathy with what was highest in man, so long as he could crown himself with rosebuds, we are willing to admit. But let him have justice, nevertheless." Much as we admire the extraordinary genius of Goethe, we cannot but think that such an admission as the above when made (and how can it be withheld?) proves the erroneousness of an estimate of him by an accomplished German scholar, and well-known writer of this country which we remember to have heard: "He is a colossal Intellect, that overlooks everything."

In the Paper on " Pharisees" there is a great deal of wellplaced severity. Our author deals his blows all round, but è contrario to the usual mode of pugilists, you had need to stand very near him indeed to escape a hit, only a very trifling devia

tion from the circle of the Parkerian standard is safe. The poor man who believes in the plenary Inspiration of David, Peter, and Paul, Matthew and Luke, John and Mark, Mr. Parker classes under the head of Pharisees of the Pulpit. Both Pharisee and Infidel are ugly names, and we should be careful how we use either of them merely for a difference of opinion.

Any one who is not already aware in how fine and reasonable a dress Trinitarianism can be decked out, and who would like to see an outline of the philosophical history of the notions which have prevailed on the person of Christ, will be much instructed by a reference to the article on Dorner's Christology. The Review of Strauss is very able, and as far as our knowledge of the original work carries us, very faithful. The remarks of Mr. Parker on his general Theory strike us also as very sound, and extremely cogent. The article was prepared for the Christian Examiner, and is constructive. For the destructive articles the reader must look among those prepared for the Dial. We have only room for one passage of successful banter on the mythical principle, by which the learned author of the Leben Jesu has been betrayed into his singular interpretations of the Gospel Narrative.

"Mr. Strauss takes the idea, which forms the subject, as he thinks, of a Christian myth, out of the air, and then tells us how the myth itself grew out of that idea. But he does not always prove from history or the nature of things, that the idea existed before the story or the fact was invented. He finds certain opinions, prophecies, and expectations in the Old Testament, and affirms at once, these were both the occasion and cause of the later stories, in which they reappear. This method of treatment requires very little ingenuity, on the part of the Critic we could resolve half of Luther's life into a series of myths, formed after the model of Paul's History; indeed this has already been done. Nay, we could dissolve any given historical event in a mythical solution, and then precipitate the seminal ideas' in their primitive form. We also can change an historical character into a symbol of 'universal humanity.' The whole history of the United States of America, for example, we might call a tissue of mythical stories, borrowed in part from the Old Testament, in part from the Apocalypse, and in part from the fancy. The British Government oppressing the Puritans, is the 'great red Dragon' of the Revelation, as it is shown by the national arms, and by the British legend of St. George and the Dragon. The splendid career of the new people, is borrowed from the persecuted woman's poetical history; her dress-'clothed with the sun,' &c., &c. "The story of the Declaration of Independence, is liable to many objections, if we examine it a la mode Strauss. The Congress was held at a mythical town, whose very name is suspicious, -Philadelphia, Brotherly Love. The date is suspicious; it was the