wrapped up in swaddling clothes, and suckled by a mad or idiotic woman. At length he lifted up his voice: rambling about the streets, calling the people to repentance, announcing that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand; begging his bread for Christ's sake. He disdained to lay up provisions for the morrow, but ate what was given him, on the very spot, scrupulously sharing it with the humblest passer-by. sist exclusively in internal worship, with utter contempt of rites and ceremonies, with utter disregard of formal discipline. They held that, by rigid mortification by intense contemplation, the soul could be so lifted up, so absorbed, as to become identified with God, in which state it would be inaccessible to sin, proof against temptation. All perfection, for them, lay in the utter emancipation of the spirit from the flesh. The promulgation of principles such as these, having so little affinity with those in vogue at the Papal Court, naturally excited against him the enmity of Clement V., the reigning Pope, which enmity was tenfold increased by Dolcino's re-iterated prediction, that, at a specified and not distant time, the whole system of Papal corruption would be overthrown, and apostolical purity established in its place. A resolution was therefore taken to give him his quietus at once, and a Bull fulminated for that purpose; phet. Retiring among the wild gorges of the but Dolcino was a warrior as well as a provoted followers of both sexes, he maintained Piedmontese Alps, with upwards of 3000 debe brought against him, for a year and a half. himself, in the face of all the forces that could During this long struggle, marked by sanguinary cruelty on both sides, Dolcino shewed himself an able strategist, frequently extricating from situations of severest privation and distress, his people, by dexterous military manœuvres, and inflicting serious losses on the opposite party. In this war, strange to say, he was efficiently seconded by Margaret of Trent, his adopted sister, who displayed indomitable heroism throughout the contest. The eccentricities of Sagarelli, and the Reformers generally of those times, are more than retrieved, in the estimation of every candid mind, by the sublime earnestness with which, wholly setting aside all personal and interested considerations, they devoted themselves, body and soul, to what they deemed the cause of truth and primitive purity, and sought to enforce upon those in high places the rules they prescribed to themselves. Hence their persecution. Had they kept their asceticism to themselves they might have enjoyed that, as well as their religious fantasies, in quiet. Such was the case with the Franciscans and Dominicans, who, by implicit submission to the Holy See, secured themselves against molestation, and against violent deaths, with the exception of that unfortunate Franciscan, who, having been elected Pope under the name of Celestine V., was driven from the Papal throne by Boniface VIII., after occupying it for five months, and shortly afterwards ended his life in a dungeon. If the reproach conveyed to his clerical brethren, by the endeavour to restore its true character to the Church of Christ, could not be tolerated even in a Pope, but necessitated his In reference to the immediate removal, no inferior agents in the work had any chance of escaping the vengeance opening of the campaign a passage from Dante decreed against such temerity. Thus, after the is cited in the title-page. The great poet, who condemnation of Sagarelli to the stake by Bo- 28th canto of the "Inferno," which he was was more than half an Apostle himself, in the niface VIII., in 1330, Dolcino, one of his most then writing, represents Mahomet charging him ardent adherents, and who shewed himself resolved to carry out the apostolical principle to with a warning message to Dolcino, to supply its fullest extent, was quickly marked for himself amply with provisions in his camp, as persecution in his turn. A sketch of the tenets the best security against falling into the power of the apostolical sect, as organized by Dolof his enemies, and paying a premature visit to cino, is thus given by the author:the region of shades. This, as we have seen, he contrived, by his skill and courage, and the valour of his followers, to delay for eighteen months. By that time famine and the sword had reduced them to half their original number; and in the last desperate conflict, at the pass of Stavello, fought on Holy Thursday 1307, about 150 only of the Apostles fell alive into the hands of the Bishop of Novara, upwards of 1300 perishing on the field of battle. Among the captured were Dolcino and Margaret of Trent, the details of whose execution are recorded with painful minuteness. The sympathies of the author, as must be those of every Christian, are entirely with the sufferers; and his reflections upon the history he lays before his readers are, for the most part, just and impressive. We cannot participate in all his "Young Italy" The Apostles were mystical; they rejected, or at least deemed unimportant, all forms of external worship. They conceived and expressed their views in a language unnecessarily strong and coarse, that a consecrated church is of no greater worth, as a place of worship, than a horse-stable or a pig-stye; and that Christ could be worshipped in the woods fully as well as in churches; that a life of holiness, of chastity, and self-denial, is all the more meritorious if it be observed without the restraint of an irrevocable vow. Finally, they professed to live under no bond of external discipline, merely in obedience to an inward instinct of subordination to superior grace. The Apostles were, besides, ascetical. Theirs was a life of privation and penitence, of squalor and gloom: they practised severe fasts, and doomed themselves to the strictest celibacy. These few articles constituted all the ground of their real and imaginary offence. Like all other mystics of ancient and modern times, they made religion to con aspirations, but, upon the whole, his views are moderate and rational, and his earnestness of purpose always commands our respect. He thus sums up the character of his hero, and of the mission he undertook: His That love of power, the prospect of an autocracy somewhat analogous to that of the Old Man of the Mountain, may have had charms for a lofty and solitary mind like Dolcino's, is indeed more credible. followers, we are told, bowed to his transcendent genius: they kissed his feet, and regarded him as the noblest and the holiest of human beings. Similar homages, as we have seen, were paid to Tanquelin, in Brabant, in the twelfth century; and that man and his sect, were their history better known, would be found to bear the strongest analogy to the Italian fraternity. We have seen, in many instances, how that devotion was put to the test, and how ready Dolcino's disciples were to lay down life at his bidding without a murmur. At no period, however, was the arch-heretic's ascendancy attended by state or grandeur, at no period did it give any promise of success. It was for several years a pre-eminence of privation and misery: at the close, merely a precedence in martyrdom. Mere worldly ambition is apt to weary of disappointment and reverse. Could the mere lust of command, the boast of leading a few hundred fanatics in his suite, uphold Dolcino in the midst of such dreadful extremities? could it bear him up in his last fearful agony ? and it must be remembered, from those extremities it was in repeated instances in his power to escape by flight; and the cup of misery would have passed away from him at the supreme moment, by a single word of recantation. Must there not have been some nobler aim? a deep, however blind, instinct of the holiness of his cause? an inextinguishable, even though faint and evanescent, hope that God would be with him at the final issue? a strong, unshaken faith in the eventual fulfilment of his prophecies, in the approaching hour of redemption ? or, what would have answered the same purpose, a stubborn conviction that even his utter disappointment, his downfal and martyrdom, were ordained for the best ? that Providence was maturing his design even by breaking the humble instrument which He seemed to have appointed to work it out ? That is what is called enthusiasm; than which no other mover exercises so great a sway upon the heart of mankind, especially amongst the single-minded and pure men of the lower classes, especially among the inhabitants of remote, unvisited regions. That was the secret of Dolcino's success: it was, be it said with all reverence, the success of those carpenters and fishermen whom the Holy Ghost inspired, whom the meek-souled Sagarelli and his disciples would fain have taken for their models. But the great error of Dolcino-one might feel tempted to judge on a first glance-lay in his calculation of means and ends. It is everywhere success that hallows a cause; and there is indeed guilt in the attempt of evident impossibilities. At the head of a few illarmed, unwarlike adventurers, Dolcino undertook a reformation, a work of redemption, which could only be achieved by the previous conquest of the world. Even defence, because hopeless, was unjustifiable. Those few if we acquit him of any intentional attack, the very deluded fanatics were by him launched into a contest of which it seemed impossible to anticipate any but a disastrous issue. They were, therefore, wantonly immolated, and their blood must rest on the head of their leader. Yet-yet-was Dolcino's case really so hopeless? Was he truly standing up single-handed against the whole world? Was that ill-assembled apostolical band all the physical force he could rely upon ? He then shews that, could all who sympathized with Dolcino have combined with him, the result would have been different; and adds Dolcino was, then, not so far from success as one might judge from the actual event. Had, for instance, his own trumpeted hero, Frederic of Sicily, been as enterprising as he was able and daring, or had Dante's champion, Henry VII., been more fortunate; had he been on his guard against the consecrated host that poisoned him at Buonconvento-for the fate of nations too often hangs on the thread of a man's life-the dream of those two far-sighted patriots, the prophet and the poet, might have been fully realized. Had a strong hand seized the Imperial power, forced the fretting Italian cities to as much obedience as would save them from self-destruction, the Popes who quitted Rome, in 1305, might never have revisted it. They would either have abided at Avignon, soon to be limited to the petty dignity of French primates, or, if they had come to terms with the emperors, it would only have been by bowing to their authority, by being stripped of that Sovereignty which, according to Arnold of Brescia and Frederic II., no less than to Dolcino and Dante, made them false to their apostolic mission. But why should we lose ourselves in unprofitable conjectures? It was otherwise decreed. But if Dolcino and his followers really believed that their cause was a holy cause, did they not well to disregard mere human calculations of odds. If the first apostles had reasoned as our author reasons, where now had been our Christianity? Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States' Army. 2 Vols. London: Hurst and Blackett. THIS is one of those books which make sober men wonder who buys them, and why they are published. Here are two lightly-printed volumes of diluted twaddle, for which we suppose some persons will pay the guinea that is demanded for them, while really good books, upon which time and talent have been bestowed, can find, perhaps, neither publisher nor purchasers. Our soldier bought himself out of the British army, passed over to America to 1853. make his fortune, and, finding it quite as difficult to earn a living in New York as in London, enlisted into the United States' army, and took part in the invasion of Mexico. As there is no preface nor introduction to the book, we suspect it to be a reprint, at a high price, of what was probably published for a few cents in some American periodical. So far as we can judge, it contains nothing that would either amuse or instruct an English reader. Eminent Characters of the English Revolutionary Period. By EDWIN Owen Jones. 8vo. London: Saunders and Otley. 1853. MR. JONES Commences his work by informing his readers, that from "the days of the mighty hunter before the Lord' to those of the effeminate Sardanapalus, the metropolis of the world stood where now the Tigris washes the timehonoured mounds of Kalah and Nimroud." Thence it was transferred to "the summit of seven hills by the banks of the Tiber." From imperial Rome we come to modern Europe; and then the worthies of England are sketched, alluded to, or mentioned, from Alfred the Great to Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Rachel Russell, to the diarist, Pepys, and the letter-writer, Horace Walpole. This constitutes the Intro duction. The eminent characters are, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Matthew Hale, Milton, Bunyan, and Defoe. Of each of these men a biography, nearly equal in length, is given-an honest, and sometimes forcible biography; but, we must here hint, occasionally rather too grandiloquent. The author acknowledges that Cromwell's character is not treated so tenderly as has been of late the fashion, but in that matter the reader will be guided by his own judgment. From the history of Cromwell we extract the following passage; the incident narrated has not since been paralleled in England. It is a cold day at the end of January, thirteen years after the beheading of Charles Stuart. The hedges that in summer lined the road (now Oxford-street), gay "with the sweetbriar and the eglantine [generally supposed to be the same shrub], are nothing now but bare and barren brushwood, save where the evergreen holly puts forth its variegated leaves." The road is lined by the lower orders in dingy rank and file, and three sledges, such as then conveyed people to the gallows, were seen advancing from London. CROMWELL'S REMAINS. Stretched upon each sledge is a lifeless human body in an advanced stage of decomposition. The livid appearance of one, yet dark with the plague spot, proves that the spirit had been banished thence by the withering blast of the malignant pestilence. The other two present a ghastly sight; and it is evident that some time must have passed over each in the dark abode of the tomb, ere thus were wantonly revealed the shrouded secrets of the sepulchre. The dreadful procession moves on. Tyburn turnpike is at length reached; and there the mouldering remains of the dreaded general whom the pestilence mowed down in his career of victory over the Emerald Isle of that stern man of law who pronounced the awful sentence upon Charles the First-and last, but not least, of the powerful dictator who, above all others, was the pleasaunce; and little thought he, when, the dreaded Perhaps, of the five eminent characters, the career of Daniel Defoe, his prosperity and his failure in trade, his politics and religion, are the least known to the "reading public," who in that respect deserve even Coleridge's scoff in his "Lay Sermon." Defoe, who wrote what is now a household book throughout Europewe need hardly say "Robinson Crusoe"-was twice in Newgate, and on each occasion was set at liberty by Queen Anne. Mr. Jones does not allude to Pope's sneer— Earless on high stood unabash'd Defoe; but he has evidently taken great pains with this biography, quoting freely from Defoe's verse and prose. He gives the following account of a punishment inflicted upon this author for writing a work entitled "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters." DEFOE IN THE PILLORY. For some little time this pamphlet was seriously taken, and it consequently obtained the approbation and support of the high-church party. The extreme character of its views, however, speedily undeceived its admirers, who, finding that the whole was a powerful irony upon themselves, prevailed with the government to consign the book the apprehension of the author. Defoe, upon the imto the hangman, and to offer a reward of fifty pounds for prisonment of the bookseller and printer, discovered himself, and surrendered to law, though not to justice. He was sent to Newgate, and after being tried for libel, and found guilty, was sentenced to stand thrice in the pillory. His works, however, and particularly a Hymn to the Pillory," which he published at the time, had produced a powerful moral effect upon the multitude. Not a hand was raised to hurl a missile against him in a mob which so lately had been rampant with high-churchism and loyalty. Even an uncultivated rabble, when it beholds a man thus nobly sustaining persecution for conscience sake, can only admire the firmness of his principles and the decision of his character. 66 One fault of this work certainly is, that there is too free an introduction of the author's personal opinions, especially on religion, needlessly introduced into some of the biographies. Memoir of a Metaphysician. By FRANCIS DRAKE, Esq. Edited by the Author of "Beginnings of a new School of Metaphysics," &c. Longman: London, 1853. We have little difficulty in perceiving that the name above given as that of the author, is assumed, and that the editor (Mr. B. H. Smart) is the real writer; his intention being to promulgate the metaphysical views already put forward by him in former publications. For this purpose, a brief, though extraordinary tale, is concocted, of which one Harold Fremdling is the hero. We are introduced to him at the early age of eight, when his conversation already betokens that he professes all the acquirements of a practised metaphysician! THE METAPHYSIC SCHOOLBOY. For a week or ten days this remarkable youth would join in all the pursuits of his companions, with a relish so exquisite, that every one yielded to him the place of leader; and if poetry, or painting, or music, came in question, he proved at once, by their effect upon him, the delicacy of his feelings and his taste. Mr. Pfeffer, making use of a Greek epithet, which was familiar to German critics at that time, though not yet used, or much used, by our own, was accustomed to say of Harry, while he was in this state of pleasureable excitement, that it was his æsthetic state. But then this state, in proportion to its intensity, gave way, sooner or later, to a day of morbid abstraction; and so surely was this expected, that when Harry was not, as usual, forthcoming in the playground, the expression was-"Oh! Harry is moping to day it is of no use going after him." This was what the German teacher called Harry's metaphysic state. If any one did go after him, he would be found in some comfortable corner, his eyes in that peculiar state which belongs to reverie, as if they had been turned round in their sockets, and were looking in, instead of out, while his whole frame was disposed to quiescence instead of action. A question to him would, in this case, bring a repetition of the old story of Diogenes in his tub. "Harry, ar'nt you well?" "Yes, very well, and very comfortable: leave me alone." "Can we do any thing for you?" of my sunshine,""-or something to like purpose would be his answer, and there the colloquy would end. "Stand out He becomes sincerely attached, and finally engaged, to Sophy, the daughter of his schoolmaster; but as both parties are still in their teens, Harold undertakes a journey upon the Continent. Before doing so, he had passed some months in London, where his practice was to breakfast late, dine at a neighbouring tavern, seldom coming home till late at night, often not till dawn. THE ROUE. Yet it did not appear that he was led into excesses by strongly-excited spirits: on the contrary, he was always seen to be thoughtful, and rather melancholy. The truth was, as my father found, that Harry, after six or seven months of passionate devotion to æsthetic pursuits,—after mingling with those who stood highest in fashionable, in literary, and scientific society,-had fallen back into one of his constitutional fits of philosophical abstraction, and had deemed no place so fit to indulge it in, as half-deserted London. For, be it remembered, that in these fits, he had his pleasures, but they were not æsthetic pleasures, -they were not pleasures which the imagination gilds and the soul receives: they were wholly unimaginative, -they were what his awakened philosophy deemed real body. It might be said for them, that, in a certain and substantial, and belonged not to the soul but to the worldly sense, they were honest, they were seen as what they were, and not coloured over by the hues of the soul to seem like virtues. His delinquent practice was as far removed as possible from that of the refined voluptuary, the elegant pupil of the Chesterfield school, who makes a merit of hunting with the toils of intrigue and seduction, and turns with contempt from purchasable game. This kind of life formed a suitable preparation for that enervating and dissipated career upon which most Englishmen enter upon their arrival in Italy. From Rome, the brother of his affianced received the following LETTER. "Rome, November 1847. "Long before you receive this, you will have made up your mind, Frank, that I am a man destitute of probity and honour; and though I could perhaps clear myself of this reproach with worldly-thinking people, yet as regards your sister I deserve it. My expectation and wish is, that, by this time, you have formed, for her and yourself, new plans of life, in which I am altogether unconsidered; if not, I call on you to form such plans without delay. I am aware that, in point of property, your sister may not find an alliance equal to that which my prospects opened; but she shall not be an eventual loser: she, or you, or your heirs, will inherit all I possess ; and, mean time, one half of it shall be her marriage settlement the moment the occasion shall arise, or shall now be hers if the occasion has arrived. I expect you will not take these promises in earnest from a man who has already broken his faith; but I am coming to London to give them legal validity. And as to my past breach of faith, without meaning to shield myself from any of the censure that belongs to it, I have simply to say that it has not been premeditated. Even till within the last month, I have entertained the hope of regaining my moral strength, and returning to you, a lapsed and imperfect being indeed, but a being with some remaining powers of improvement. That hope, and all other hope, is gone: I have now neither hope, nor fear, nor love, nor hate. My friendship for you is dead, and my love for your sister is such love as she must not come near. I have only intellect and appetites, with just so much imagination as appetite retains in its service. I know what is right and wrong; of which my present letter may be some evidence; and so far as my appetites interfere not, I can carry my knowledge into act; but beyond such power, I am a hog or a goat. I know the good and evil of life; but I know, at the same time, that the good is beyond my reach, and I wallow in the evil as my only good. My change of person is correspondent: what was said of the French philosopher, is literally true of me: I am so wicked, profligate, and thin, I look like Milton's Devil, Death, and Sin.' "Such is the being you will have to meet on my arrival; for it is necessary, on several accounts, that you should meet me. If you ask what has been the cause of this miserable change in me, all I can say is, that I HAVE TAKEN A PRICE FOR MY SOUL. On the eighteenth of December, when I promised to be with you, the compact was made, and I am now in the full fruition of its consequences;-I am now furnishing a practical illustration of the legend of Faustus. After two years' absence, he returns to England. Sophia's brother calls upon him, and finds him, though only twenty-two, "a greyheaded and grey-bearded anatomy," two years having taken from him more than sixty take from ordinary men, "leaving to him only what in man is bestial." His youth was blasted, though the functions which, usually fail in old age, were in his gaunt, iron-grizzled frame, strong as ever for the purposes of animal existence and of passionless thought." The cause, of what he termed the loss of his soul, was a lady whom he accidentally encountered at Rome, endowed with the most voluptuous beauty and the most diabolical disposition. He first met her at mass, when her apparent ecstacy of devotion transfixed him with what he conceived to be a feeling of the most reverential regard. AMENDMENT. At that time he had begun, or thought he had begun, an improvement on the life which, on every relapse into himself, he had led while in London. He had commenced by thinking more properly concerning derelictions of personal purity. If he sometimes failed, he did not boast of it among young companions, but felt it as a shameful necessity created by habit, unfit, like other base necessities, for any ears, unless perchance of a medical adviser :-yes, he felt it shameful that he had impeded the growth within his heart of that refined love which burns only for one, excluding all baser flame that, derived like itself from earth, has not, like itself, been purified by fire from heaven. To gain the wholesome sentiment was now difficult; but with a wholesome way of thinking as a commencement, he did not, at that time, believe the achievement impossible. He became a devotee, and meditated on the Saviour's life. His beautiful seducer, fully aware of the impression she had wrought, took care to afford Harold an opportunity for forming her acquaintance; at length THE SNARE. He became an admitted visitor at any hour of the day; and then they learned to extend their subjects of talk: they played and sang every new composition in music; they examined works of art; they read and recited the poets; and, by all the abundant means which lay within their reach, they administered to the sense of ideal beeuty, which in him at least was keen up to the highest degree of enthusiasm. These more private visits and conversa tions were always in the presence of an aged female, who was at the head of her household; nor, for a time, was any means omitted to impress him with the conviction of the strictest manners, and the purest motives. "Is it not exquisite," she would say, "thus to give a loose to imagination, and to know that we restrain it within the bounds of Christian principle? In this communication of soul with soul, you break not your fealty to the bride of your early choice; and, for my part, I am no more conscious of difference of sex in your company, than I shall be among the holy sisters with whom I am soon to be joined."-Harold, with all his metaphysical views and general ability, was a simpleton when he had to deal with cunning. He began, however, soon to feel that platonic affection, like other tonics, is somewhat exciting. The temptress finally obtains possession of both body and soul: by unholy arts, his health is poisoned and his youth for ever snatched away. The desolate Sophia meanwhile, maddened by the unaccountable absence of her lover, has begun to despair. Her brother persuades Harold to visit her, and to reclaim his promise. An interview succeeds, during which Mr. Fremdling conducts himself in so extraordinary a manner, that the lady suddenly quitted his presence. AN INSULT. Her eyes lighted up with as much indignation as it was in her nature to feel, and her cheeks flushed with a deep scarlet. I know not what I said to her as she clung to me for protection; but I remember what she said to me:"Frank, whom have you brought hither? Oh! I did not come to meet a brute! I have been so treated, so insulted!" "Insulted!" I exclaimed, making a step toward a heavy stick that stood almost within my reach. No, Frank, it must not be so," she cried, clinging still more closely to me: "call Thomas, and let him tell -I know not what to name him-let him tell that creature, whoever or whatever he may be, to quit us once and for ever." And Thomas was called, and sent with this message into the room, while I attended to my sister, who was in a dreadful state of agitation. She bade me put my hand to her temple and feel the pulsation, which was throbbing as if it would break through. Again she uttered her complaint of insult, and again the scarlet arose and suffused her whole face. I knew not how to calm her, for I felt the same indignation. So serious were the consequences to the unfortunate Sophia, that she gradually sickened and died. Her lover escaped the brother's vengeance, and for some time disappeared. Not long after, on his death-bed, having recovered his senses, he sends for the brother, and, after expressing the deepest contrition for his past conduct, bequeaths to him his whole fortune as an atonement for the wrongs he had done his family. purposely abstain from entering into any disSuch, briefly, is this strange history. We quisition upon the metaphysical questions introduced, as well as from expressing any opiphilosophy of the German School, on which nion as to the transcendentalism or speculative many comments are made. We leave these interminable topics, together with Platonism, Pantheism, Idealism, Sensationalism, Spiritualism, and Materialism, to those who take delight in the abstruse and almost inexplicable doctrines of Kant, of Fichté, of Schelling, Hegel, and their disciples. |