be naturalized and propagate itself in the soil of this world; if only the tree, once grafted, would continue to produce the heavenly fruit. But no; every ratable stem in the garden of humanity every tree which the Lord accepts is an exotic, a stranger on exhibition, whose very roots, if you examine them, are set in a tub of foreign mould. Every instance of goodness which the Augustinian can allow to be such is an apple of Paradise hung by a thread of grace on a tree of Sodom, and hung there, not to fructify and bless to future generations the surrounding waste, but to make it by contrast more accursed. Grant man as depraved as you will, short of absolute incapacity for good, inherent in his nature and vitiating and transmuting the fundamental constitution of him, so that humanity in its constitutive, radical type, has come to be congenerous with hell; but grant at least a germ, a capacity, of good. Leave us, at least, the idea of man as a kind distinct from that of devil. Place the action of the Spirit within the plant, and not without it. Make the act of grace to consist in fertilizing the soil, in tilling, showering, grafting (if you please) the tree; not in eradicating, not in supplanting, not in transferring an abnormal fruit of grace to a graceless stem. If goodness and man belong to each other by destination and design, there must be some normal relation, some

natural affinity, between them. Then the natural man and the spiritual are not distinct in kind, but different epochs of one being, different stages of one life. All which is spiritual in man is natu ral in its root, and all which is truly natural in man is capable of spiritual fruit.

It is easy to interpret, from his own experience, the views of a man in whom so vast a change had been wrought by grace, and who might seem to himself contrasting the present with the pastto have become, in his new career, the medium of a spirit not his own. But let us confess that, with all his eminent graces and gifts, there was not in Augustine that calm intuition, that patient deliberation and cautious judgment, which alone can give weight to authority, or certify soundness of opinion in matters of faith. The value of a man's conclusions on one point is rightly estimated by the practical judgment, or want of judgment, which he manifests on others; and who, at this day, can receive with implicit reliance, or receive without grave deductions, the opinions of one who solemnly testifies to numerous miracles, and among them three resurrections from the dead, performed within his knowledge by contact with the tomb of a saint?

If I have seemed in these strictures less than just to the honored Father whose portraiture I have essayed, it is not, I trust, from want of

ability or will to discern and acknowledge his quality and claims; it is not from any want of reverence for the saint or delight in the man. Precious to me, as to any, that great memory. I admire

the mighty energy which bore the earthly accidents and name of Augustine. I honor the laborious and unwearied devotion to Christ and the Church which knew no pause and asked no reward but the rest that remaineth for the people of God. I revere the steadfast virtue which, by grace abounding, could trample at once on lusts long indulged, and walk unswerving, in the teeth of such passions,. the elected path of ascetic abnegation. To me, as to all Christendom forevermore, the name of Augustine stands for a spiritual fact of holiest import. Had nothing survived of him but the story of his life, that alone would be a heritage of price to the world. The real import of the man, stripped of all accidents, lies in his conversion. A conversion more satisfactory and complete, with such antecedents, on such a level of intellectual life, the annals of religion do not record. Here is a man who was dead and lived again; who, past the bloom and pliancy of life, but still in the heat of its passions and fiercest carnal demands, having lived for thirty years to the flesh, a selfish voluptuary, on a day, in an hour, turned right about in the path he was treading; and ever after, with

his back to the world and his face toward God, for forty long years, made every day of his life the round of a ladder by which he climbed into glory.

The life which contains that fact, is it not a benediction to all generations? The Church which inscribes that life on her annals, shall she not record it with the prefix of saint? But what then? Because of the saint shall we not see the limitations of the man? Or worse, because of the limitations of the man shall we refuse to acknowledge the saint? A saint he was, if ever mortal deserved that name; but, for all that, a very imperfect man. Humanity is more than any saint, than all saints. It includes them all, it transcends them all. Humanity's calendar is never full; and the holiest in it serve us best when they point to something higher than themselves.

GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ.

[From the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1858.]

THE philosophic import of this illustrious name,

after suffering temporary eclipse from the Critical Philosophy, with its swift succession of transcendental dynasties, has within the last half century emerged into clear and respectful recognition, if not into broad and effulgent repute. In divers quarters the attention of scholars has reverted to the splendid optimist whose adventurous intellect left nothing unexplored, and almost nothing unexplained.

Voltaire pronounced him "le savant le plus universel de l'Europe;" but characterized his metaphysical labors with the somewhat equivocal compliment of "métaphysicien assez délié pour vouloir réconcilier la théologie avec la métaphysique."

1

Germany, with all her wealth of erudite celebrities, has produced no other who fulfils so completely the type of the GELEHRTE, — a type which differs from that of the savant and from that of the

1 "On sait que Voltaire n'aimait pas Leibniz. J'imagine que c'est le chrétien qu'il détestait en lui."-CH. WADDINGTON.