northern nations to unite against the French autocrat. The Prussians were the first to fall away from Napoleon, and rose against him as one man, under the command of general Blücher; and though Napoleon, having reinforced himself with fresh troops, gained the battles of Lützen and Bautzen, in May, 1813, yet he had the disadvantage in other encounters. When Austria likewise declared against him, and had proposed the general emancipation of Germany, he was so totally defeated in the great national battle of Leipsic, on the 18th of October, 1813, that he fled with the utmost speed to France. But the three sovereigns, Frederic William III. of Prussia, the emperor Francis II. of Austria, and the emperor Alexander of Russia, gave God the glory, and publicly offered thanks for this wonderful help and deliverance. His brother Joseph had already been driven from Spain, by the utter defeat of the French army at Vittoria.

After the battle of Leipsic, the allied armies advanced across the Rhine, and, after Napoleon had thrown many a serious obstacle in their way, and occasioned them many a loss, they took possession of Paris, on the 31st of March, 1814. Immediately thereupon, Napoleon, who by his despotic government had also given dissatisfaction to a considerable part of the French nation, was dethroned, and banished to the isle of Elba. The Bourbon family was now restored, with Lewis XVIII., the brother of the murdered Lewis XVI., to the throne of France; and this nation was obliged to give up all the territory which,

since the year 1792, it had taken from other countries.

A congress of the allied sovereigns met at Vienna, on the 1st of November, 1814, to deliberate on a settlement of the present affairs of Europe. But as yet all was not suffered to be quiet. Most unexpectedly, on the 1st of March, 1815, Napoleon again appeared in France, was received by the French with great demonstrations of joy, and had, by the time he reached Paris, again mustered an army around him. The Bourbons were obliged to flee, and the European powers had to renew the war. In the great battles of Ligny, Quartre Bras, and Waterloo, which began on the 16th, and terminated on the 18th of June, the destinies of Europe were again decided, by the firmness with which the English troops were enabled to maintain their ground, under Wellington, against Napoleon at the head of his chosen troops. Thus Napoleon was defeated by the English and Prussian armies, the former commanded by the duke of Wellington, and the latter by marshal Blücher, and soon after abdicated the crown. And now the English, to whom he surrendered, when he found he could not hope to escape by sea to America, placed him in the island of St. Helena, where he was allowed personal liberty, but closely guarded, and cut off from all further intercourse with Europe. By the time that the news of his death, of an hereditary disease, arrived, in 1821, a new period, and a new order of things had already commenced.

France, though compelled to indemnify the

allies to a very considerable amount in the expences of the war, yet was, upon the whole, very gently handled, as if the entire blame had been suffered to rest on the head of her banished chief. She was again restricted within her boundaries of the year 1790, had to give up to Prussia a portion of the left bank of the Rhine, to restore Upper Italy to Austria, and to surrender several of her colonial possessions to England. Russia now obtained the greatest part of Poland; another part of that country, with the province of Saxony, was allotted to Prussia. Belgium and Holland were united into one kingdom of the Netherlands, and assigned to the house of Orange. Hanover, Savoy, Naples, Spain, and Portugal, were restored to their rightful sovereigns. In Germany there was formed, by articles agreed to on the 8th of June, 1815, the alliance of the German states, at their meeting for that purpose in Frankfort; and to this belong thirtyeight greater and lesser sovereign states.

XX.-CHANGE TO THE PRESENT STATE OF THINGS IN EUROPE, A.D. 1839.

On the 26th of September, 1815, Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed what is called "the holy alliance;" to which nearly all the European powers, except England and the pope, acceded. State policy, as grounded hitherto upon a mere physical equilibrium, had now proved its own nothingness; and these powers professed hence

:

forth to make religion the groundwork of all policy, and to subject national affairs, both foreign and domestic, to the principles of the gospel. But the question must be asked, What did these powers mean by religion? We much fear not that of the New Testament. Yet open and avowed infidelity was thus brought more and more into contempt: some desire for the support of spiritual food was evinced; this appeared by the jubilee of the Reformation in 1817, and supplies to satisfy this hunger were sought after through the Bible Societies, and the increasing number of living witnesses to the truth in the pulpits neither was it any longer regarded as a mark of polite education to despise or slight the gospel. But, as has been the case hitherto in every age of the Christian church, the number of real disciples has still continued to be vastly the minority, and the multitude at large have looked for their welfare in the improvement of their temporal condition, not in a spiritual life and conversation, and in serious and entire conversion to God and to his word. The gospel had now indeed gained in general estimation; but the nations of Europe, notwithstanding that some of their eminent princes have nobly come forward with the acknowledgment, have not gone so far as to admit the principles of the gospel as their rule in all mutual relations. It has been too generally thought, that sufficient respect is paid it, by giving it a place collaterally with other sources of knowledge and rules of life, instead of exalting it above all others. The attention of men in general has been chiefly turned to

the reforming of political constitutions, and has been expecting all kinds of good from the restoration of a representative system; a thing which indeed has been effected in several German states, but has proved no radical cure for national evil; and why? because such a cure requires that Christ, before all things, should be formed in those representative bodies themselves, from whom the amendments and improvements have been looked for. But the distrust which this sort of constitution implies, with respect to princes as such, could not fail to increase, by reason of those disappointed expectations in the people which had been raised: and with such a distrust we find intimately connected that lawless revolutionary spirit, which has never entirely been got rid of; and this is a spirit of anti-christianity, which works in opposition to all order and subordination.

This spirit of individual self-will has received a manifest increase from another quarter, namely, from the papacy; which, ever since its restoration, has boldly grasped on every side, as with the arms of a polypus, in order to avail itself as profitably as possible of the new state of things. Pius vii. having, in 1814, regained his liberty and ecclesiastical patrimony, set about at once reviving the old principles of Popery. For this purpose he, in 1814, reinstated the order of the Jesuits in their former privileges and efficiency, and laboured to the utmost to recover his influence over Germany itself, where the ecclesiastical princes had now lost all their spiritual power. His successor also, Leo XII., 1823-1829, la