beams will soon illuminate the slopes on their | sures of Hope. Coleridge and Wordsworth sides, and the valleys at their feet. passed for little better than imaginative illuThere is, however, a considerable variety minati with the great bulk of their contempoin the rapidity with which the novel and ori-raries. ginal ideas of different great men are communicated to their contemporaries; and hence the extraordinary difference between the early celebrity which some works, destined for future immortality, have obtained in comparison of others. This has long been matter of familiar observation to all persons at all acquainted with literary history.. The works of some great men have at once stepped into that celebrity which was their destined meed through every subsequent age of the world, while the productions of others have languished on through a long period of obscurity, unnoticed by all save a few elevated minds, till the period arrived when the world became capable of understanding their truth, or feeling their beauty. The tomb of Euripides, at Athens, bore that all Greece mourned at his obsequies. We learn from Pliny's Epistles, that even in his own lifetime, immortality was anticipated not only for Tacitus, but all who were noticed in his annals. Shakspeare, though not yet arrived at the full maturity of his fame, was yet well known to, and enthusiastically admired by his contemporaries. Lope de Vega amassed a hundred thousand crowns in the sixteenth century, by the sale of his eighteen hundred plays. Gibbon's early volumes obtained a celebrity in the outset nearly as great as his elaborate and fascinating work has since attained. In the next generation after Adam Smith, his principles were generally embraced, and largely acted upon by the legislature. The first edition of Robertson's Scotland sold off in a month; and Sir Walter Scott, by the sale of his novels and poems, was able, in twenty years, besides entertaining all the literary society of Europe, to purchase the large estate, and rear the princely fabric, library, and armory of Abbotsford..

Instances, on the other hand, exist in equal number, and perhaps of a still more striking character, in which the greatest and most profound works which the human mind has ever produced have remained, often for a long time, unnoticed, till the progress of social affairs brought the views of others generally to a level with that of their authors. Bacon bequeathed his reputation in his last testament to the generation after the next; so clearly did he perceive that more than one race of men must expire before the opinions of others attained the level of his own far-seeing sagacity. Burke advanced principles in his French Revolution of which we are now, only now, beginning, after the lapse of half a century, to feel the full truth and importance. Hume met with so little encouragement in the earlier volumes of his history, that but for the animating assurances of a few enlightened friends, he has himself told us, he would have resigned his task in despair. Milton sold the Paradise Lost for five pounds, and that immortal work languished on with a very limited sale till, fifty years afterwards, it was brought into light by the criticisms of Addison. Campbell for years could not find a bookseller who would buy the Plea

The principle which seems to regulate this remarkable difference is this: Where a work of genius either describes manners, characters, or scenes with which the great bulk of mankind are familiar, or concerning which they are generally desirous of obtaining information; or if it advance principles which, based on the doctrines popular with the multitude, lead them to new and agreeable results, or deduces from them conclusions slightly in advance of the opinions of the age, but lying in the same direction, it is almost sure of meeting with immediate popularity. Where, on the other hand, it is founded on principles which are adverse to the prevailing current of public opinion-where it sternly asserts the great principles of religion and morality, in opposition to the prejudices or passions of a corrupted age-when it advocates the necessity of a rational and conservative government, in the midst of the fervor of innovation or the passion of revolution-when it stigmatizes present vices, or reprobates present follies, or portrays the consequences of present iniquity-when it appeals to feelings and virtues which have passed from the breasts of the present generation-the chances are that it will meet with present admiration only from a few enlightened or virtuous men, and that a different generation must arise, possibly a new race of mankind become dominant, before it attains that general popularity which is its destined and certain reward. On this account the chances are much against the survivance, for any considerable period, of any work, either on religion, politics, or morals, which has early attained to a very great celebrity, because the fact of its having done so is, in general, evidence of its having fallen in, to an extent inconsistent with truth, with the prevailing opinions and prejudices of the age. In such opinions there is almost always a consideráble foundation of truth, but as commonly a large intermixture of error. Principles are, by the irreflecting mass, in general pushed too far; due weight is not given to the considerations on the other side; the concurring influence of other causes is either overlooked or disregarded. This is more particularly the case with periods of general excitement, whether on religious or political subjects, insomuch that there is hardly an instance of works which attained an early and extraordinary celebrity at, such eras having survived the fervour which gave them birth, and the general concurrence of opinion in which they were cradled. Where are now the innumerable polemical writings which issued both from the Catholic and Protestant divines during the fervour of the Reformation? Where the forty thousand tracts which convulsed the nation in the course of the great Rebellion? Where the deluge of enthusiasm and infidelity which overspread the world at the commencement of the French Revolution? On the other hand, the works which have survived such periods of general fervour are those whose

good government-of them it may truly be said, Vox populi, vox Dei. Such is the language which the democratic flatterers of these times incessantly address to the popular rulers of the eminence is to be won-to the Government by whom patronage and power is distributed. From such degrading specimens of general servility and business, let us refresh our eyes, and redeem the honour of human nature, by Bossuet and Fénélon impressed upon their courtly auditory and despotic ruler, the eternal doctrines of judgment to come, and the stern manner in which they traced to the vices or follies of princes the greater part of the evils which disturb the world.

authors boldly and firmly, resting on the in- | interests: their interests are on the side of ternal conviction of truth, set themselves to oppose the prevailing vices or follies of their age, and whose works, in consequence little esteemed by their contemporaries, have now risen into the purer regions of the moral at-state-to the masses by whom popularity and mosphere, and now shine, far above the changes of mortality, as fixed stars in the highest heavens. Of this character is Bacon, whose sublime intellect, bursting the fetters of a narrow-minded age, outstripped by two centuries the progress of the human mind-turning to the thundering strains in which Jeremy Taylor, whose ardent soul, loathing the vices of his corrupted contemporaries, clothed the lessons of religion in the burning words of genius-and Burke, whose earlier career, chained in the fetters of party, has now been forgotten in the lustre of the original and independent thoughts, adverse to the spirit of the age, which burst forth in his works on the French Revolution.

It is thus that Fénélon, in the name of Mentor, addresses his royal pupil, the heir of the French monarchy:

"A king is much less acquainted than private individuals with those by whom he is surrounded; every one around him has a mask on his visage; every species of artifice is exhausted to deceive him-alas! Telemaque! you will soon experience this too bitterly. The more extensive the kingdom is which you have to govern, the more do you stand in need of ministers to assist you in

to the chances of misrepresentation. The obscurity of private life throws a veil over our faults, and magnifies the idea of the powers of men; but supreme authority puts the virtues to the test, and unveils even the most incon

which magnify all the objects seen through them. The whole world is occupied by observing a single man, flattering his virtues, applauding his vices in his presence, execrating them in his absence. Meanwhile, the king is but a man; beset by all the humours, passions, and weaknesses of mortality; surrounded by artful flatterers, who have all their objects to gain in leading him into vices. Hardly has he redeemed one fault, when he falls into another; such is the situation even of the most enlightened and virtuous kings; what then must be the destiny of those who are depraved?

In comparing, on subjects of political thought or social amelioration, the writings of the school of Louis XIV. with that of the Revolution, the progress of the human mind appears prodigious-and so it will speedily appear from the quotations which we shall lay before our readers. But, in the general comparison of the two, there is one thing very remarkable, and which is exactly the reverse of what might à priori have been expected, and what the ig-your labours, and the more are you exposed norant vulgar or party writers still suppose to be the case-this is the superior independence of thought, and bold declamation against the vices of the ruling power in the state, which the divines and moralists of the Grande Monarque exhibit, when compared with the cring-siderable failing;-grandeur is like the glasses ing servility and oriental flattery which the writers of the Revolutionary school, whether in France or England, have never ceased to address to their democratic patrons and rulers invested with supreme authority. We need not remind our readers what is the language, even of able writers and profound thinkers of the modern democratic school, in regard to the sources of all abuse in government, and the quarter from whence alone any social improvement can be expected. It is kings and aristocrats who are the origin of all oppression and unhappiness; it is their abuses and misgovernment which have ever been the real causes of public suffering; it is their insatiable avarice, rapacity, and selfishness which have in every age brought misery and desolation upon the humbler and more virtuous members of society. Where, then, is amelioration to be looked for? and in what class of society is an antidote to be found to the inherent vices and abuses of power? In the middle and lower ranks;-it is their virtue, intelligence, and patriotism which is the real spring of all public prosperity-it is their unceasing labour and industry which is the source of all public wealth-their unshaken constancy and courage which is at once the only durable foundation of national safety, and the prolific fountain of national glory. Princes may err, ministers may commit injustice; but the people, when once enlightened by education, and intrusted with power, are never wrong the masses never mistake their real

"The longest and best reigns are frequently too short to repair the mischief done, and often without intending it at their commencement. Royalty is born the heir to all these miseries; human weakness often sinks under the load by which it is oppressed. Men are to be pitied for being placed under the government of one as weak and fallible as themselves; the gods alone would be adequate to the due regulation of human affairs. Nor are kings less to be pitied, being but men; that is to say, imperfect and fallible beings, and charged with the government of an innumerable multitude of corrupted and deceitful men.

"The countries in which the authority of the sovereign is most absolute, are precisely those in which they enjoy least real power. They take, they raise every thing; they alone possess the state; but meanwhile every class of society languishes, the fields are deserted, cities

not summon up sufficient courage to meet, in their strongholds of power, the equally depraved and selfish masses of the people. Aristotle has said that the courtier and the demagogue are not only nearly allied to each other, but are in fact the same men, varying not in their object, but in the quarter to which, according to the frame of government, they address their flattery; but this remarkable fact would seem to demonstrate that the latter is a more thorough and servile courtier than the former; and that truth will more rarely be found in the assemblies of the multitude than in the halls of princes.

decline, commerce disappears. The king, who | terly banished from the precincts of the manycannot engross in his own person the whole headed despots; and religion, which loudly state, and who cannot increase in grandeur, proclaimed the universal corruption and weakbut with the prosperity of his people, annihi-ness of humanity in the ears of monarchs, canlates himself by degrees by the decay of riches and power in his subjects. His dominions become bereaved both of wealth and men ; the last decline is irreparable. His absolute power indeed gives him as many slaves as he has subjects; he is flattered, adored, and his slightest wish is a law; every one around him trembles; but wait till the slightest revolution arrives, and that monstrous power, pushed to an extravagant excess, cannot endure; it has no foundation in the affections of the people; it has irritated all the members of the state, and constrained them all to sigh after a change. At the first stroke which it receives, the idol is overturned, broken, and trampled under foot. Contempt, hatred, fear, resentment, distrust, in a word, all the passions conspire against so odious an authority. The king who, in his vain prosperity, never found a single man sufficiently bold to tell him the truth, will not find in his misfortune a single person either to extenuate his faults or defend him against his enemies."-Telemaque, liv. xii. ad fin.

In truth, the boldness and indignation of language conspicuous in the great ornaments of the French Church would be altogether inexplicable on merely worldly considerations; and accordingly it will never be found among the irreligious and selfish flatterers of democracy. It is religion alone, which, inspiring men with objects and a sense of duty above this world, can lead to that contempt of prePassages similar to this abound in all the sent danger, and that fearless assertion of great ecclesiastical writers of the age of Louis eternal truth, in the presence of power, which XIV. and Louis XV. They are to be found has formed in every age the noblest attribute profusely scattered through the works of Bos- of the Christian Church. In the temporal suet, Massilon, Fénélon, and Bourdaloue. We courtiers of no age or country has there ever have many similar passages marked, but the been found an example of the same couragepressure of other matters more immediately ous maintenance of principle and castigation connected with the object of this paper pre- of crime in defiance of the frowns of authority; cludes their insertion. Now this independence these worldly aspirants have ever been as and boldness of thought and expression, in servile and submissive to kings as the sycocourtly churchmen, and addressed to a courtly phantish flatterers of a democratic multitude auditory, is extremely remarkable. It was to have been lavish in the praise of their inthe Grande Monarque and his numerous train tellectual wisdom. And the principle which of princes, dukes, peeresses, ladies, and cour- rendered Bossuet and Fénélon the courageous tiers, that these eternal, but unpalatable truths assertors of eternal truth in the chapels and were addressed; it was the holders of all the court of the Grand Monarque, was the same church patronage of France, that were thus as that which inspired Latimer, the martyr of reminded of the inevitable result of misgo- the English Church, with such heroic firmvernment on the part of the ruling power. We ness in resisting the tyrannic injustice of speak much about the increasing intelligence, Henry VIII. In the midst of the passions and spirit, and independence of the age; neverthe- cruelty of that blood-stained tyrant, the upless we should like to see the same masculine right prelate preached a sermon in his precast of thought, the same caustic severity of sence at the Chapel-Royal, condemning, in the expression applied to the vices and follies of strongest terms, the very crimes to which the present holders of power by the expectants every one knew the monarch was peculiarly of their bounty, as. was thus fearlessly rung addicted. Enraged beyond measure at the reinto the ears of the despotic rulers of France buke thus openly administered to his "pleaby the titled hierarchy who had been raised to sant vices," Henry sent for Latimer, and greatness by their support. We should like threatened him with instant death if he did to see a candidate for popular suffrage on the not on the next occasion retract all his cenhustings condemn, in equally unmeasured sures as openly as he had made them. The terms, the vices, follies, and passions of the reproof got wind, and on the next Sunday the people; or a leading orator on the liberal side, Royal Chapel was crowded with the courtiers, portray in as vivid colours, from the Ministe- eager to hear the terms in which the inflexirial benches in the House of Commons, the ble prelate was to recant his censures on the inevitable consequences of democratic selfish-voluptuous tyrant. But Latimer ascended the ness and injustice; or a favourite preacher on the Voluntary system, thunder, in no less forcible language, in the ears of his astonished audience, the natural results of fervour and intrigue among popular constituencies. Alas! we see none of these things; truth, which did venture to make itself heard, when sanctified by the Church, in the halls of princes, is ut

pulpit, and after a long pause, fixing his eyes steadily on Henry, exclaimed, in the quaint language of the time, to which its inherent dignity has communicated eloquence-" Bethink thee, Hugh Latimer! that thou art in the presence of thy worldly sovereign, who hath power to terminate thy earthly life, and cast all thy worldly goods into the flames: But

bethink thee also, Hugh Latimer! that thou | human affairs, and that the consequences of art in the presence of thy Heavenly Father, public actions are subjected to permanent whose right hand is mighty to destroy as to laws, the tendency of which in national, as in save, and who can cast thy soul into hell fire;" private life, is to make the virtues or vices of and immediately began, in terms even severer men as instruments of their own reward or and more cutting than before, to castigate the punishment, is obvious upon the most cursory favourite vices and crimes of his indignant survey of history, as well as private life; and sovereign. The issue of the tale was different though it cannot be affirmed that the sequence from what the cruel character of the tyrant is invariable, yet it is sufficiently frequent to might have led us to expect. Henry, who, warrant certain inferences as to the general with all his atrocity, was not on some occa- character of the laws. We cannot affirm that sions destitute of generous sentiments, was every day in summer is to be warm, and every penetrated by the heroic constancy of the day in winter cold; but nevertheless, the genvenerable prelate, and instead of loading him eral character of those periods is such as to with chains, and sending him, as every one warrant the conclusion that the rotation of the expected, to the scaffold, openly expressed his season was intended, and in general does proadmiration of his courage, and took him more duce that variation on temperature, and the into favour than ever. consequent checking and development of the fruits of the earth. But, as far as we can discern, the intentions of the Supreme Being are here, as elsewhere, manifested by general laws; the agents employed are the virtues, vices, and passions of men; and the general plan of divine administration is to be gathered rather from an attentive consideration of the experienced consequences of human actions, than any occasional interposition to check or suspend the natural course of events.

The philosophical work of Bossuet, which has attained to most general celebrity, is his "Histoire Universelle," and Chateaubriand has repeatedly, in his later writings, held it up as an unequalled model of religious generalization. We cannot concur in these eulogiums; and in nothing perhaps does the vast progress of the human mind, during the last hundred and fifty years, appear more conspicuous than in comparing this celebrated treatise with the works on similar subjects of many men of inferior intellects in later times. The design of the work was grand and imposing; nothing less than a sketch of the divine government of the world in past ages, and an elucidation of the hidden designs of Providence in all the past revolutions of mankind. In this magnificent attempt he has exhibited a surprising extent of erudition, and cast over the complicated thread of human affairs the eagle glance of genius and piety; but he has not, in our humble apprehension, caught the spirit, or traced the real thread of divine administration. He was too deeply read in the Old Testament, too strongly imbued with the Fathers of the Church, to apprehend the manner in which Supreme Wisdom, without any special or miraculous interposition, works out the moral government of the world, and develops the objects of eternal foresight by the agency of human passions, virtues, and vices. His Historic Theology is all tinged with the character of the Old Testament; it is the God of Battles whom he ever sees giving the victory to His chosen; it is His Almighty Arm which he discerns operating directly in the rise and the fall of nations. Voltaire said with truth that his "Universal History" is little more than the History of the Jews. It was reserved for a future age to discern, in the complicated thread of human affairs, the operation not less certain, but more impartial, of general laws; to see in human passions the moving springs of social improvement, and the hidden instruments of human punishment; to discern, in the rise and fall of nations, the operation, not so much of the active interposition, as of the general tendency of Divine power; and in the efforts which the wicked make for their own aggrandizement, or the scope which they afford to their own passions, the certain causes of approaching retribution. That Providence exercises an unceasing superintendence of

As a specimen of the mode in which Bossuet regards the course of events, we subjoin the concluding passage of his Universal History: "This long chain of causes and effects, on which the fate of empires depends, springs at once from the secrets of Divine Providence. God holds on high the balance of all kingdoms —all hearts are in his hands; sometimes he lets loose the passions-sometimes he restrains them; by these means he moves the whole human race. Does he wish to raise up a conqueror-he spreads terror before his arms, and inspires his soldiers with invincible courage. Does he wish to raise up legislators -he pours into their minds the spirit of foresight and wisdom. He causes them to foresee the evils which menace the state, and lay deep in wisdom the foundations of public tranquillity. He knows that human intellect is ever contracted in some particulars. He then draws the film from its eyes, extends its views, and afterwards abandons it to itself—blinds it, precipitates it to destruction. Its precautions become the snare which entraps; its foresight the subtlety which destroys it. It is in this way that God exercises his redoubtable judgments according to the immutable laws of eternal justice. It is his invisible hand which prepares effects in their most remote causes, and strikes the fatal blows, the very rebound of which involves nations in destruction. When he wishes to pour out the vials of his wrath, and overturn empires, all becomes weak and vacillating in their conduct. Egypt, once so wise, became intoxicated, and faltered at every step, because the Most High had poured the spirit of madness into its counsels. It no longer knew what step to take; it faltered, it perished. But let us not deceive ourselves; God can restore when he pleases the blinded vision; and he who insulted the blindness of others, himself falls into the most profound darkness, without any other cause being

carried into operation to overthrow the longest course of prosperity.

"It is thus that God reigns over all people. Let us no longer speak of hazard or fortune, or speak of it only as a veil to our weaknessan excuse to our ignorance. That which appears chance to our uncertain vision is the effect of intelligence and design on the part of the Most High-of the deliberations of that Supreme Council which disposes of all human affairs.

backslider in heart should be filled with his own ways. Of all the plans which could be devised for the government of the world, this approves itself to reason as the wisest and most worthy of God; so to frame the constitution of things, that the Divine laws should in a manner execute themselves, and carry their sanctions in their own bosom. When the vices of men require punishment to be inflicted, the Almighty is at no loss for ministers of justice. A thousand instruments of vengeance are at his command; innumerable arrows are always in his quiver. But such is the profound wisdom of his plan, that no peculiar interposals of power are requisite. He has no occasion to step from his throne, and to interrupt the order of nature. With the majesty and solemnity which befits Omnipotence, he pronounces, Ephraim has gone to his idols: let him alone.' He leaves transgressors to their own guilt, and punishment follows of course. Their sins do the work of justice. They lift the scourge; and with every stroke which they inflict on the criminal, they mix this severe admonition, that as he is only reaping the fruit of his own actions, he deserves all that he suffers."-BLAIR, iv. 268, Serm. 14.

"It is for this reason that the rulers of mankind are ever subjected to a superior force which they cannot control. Their actions produce greater or lesser effects than they intended; their counsels have never failed to be attended by unforeseen consequences. Neither could they control the effect which the consequences of former revolutions produced upon their actions, nor foresee the course of events destined to follow the measures in which they themselves were actors. He alone who held the thread of human affairs-who knows what was, and is, and is to come-foresaw and predestined the whole in his immutable council. "Alexander, in his mighty conquests, intended neither to labour for his generals, nor to ruin his royal house by his conquests. When the elder Brutus inspired the Roman The most eloquent and original of Bossuet's people with an unbounded passion for free- writings is his funeral oration on Henrietta, dom, he little thought that he was implanting Queen of England, wife of the unfortunate in their minds the seeds of that unbridled li- Charles I. It was natural that such an occacense, destined one day to induce a tyranny sion should call forth all his powers, promore grievous than that of the Tarquins. nounced as it was on a princess of the bloodWhen the Cæsars flattered the soldiers with a royal of France, who had undergone unpaview to their immediate elevation, they had no ralleled calamities with heroic resignation, the intention of rearing up a militia of tyrants for fruit of the great religious revolution of the their successors and the empire. In a word, age, against which the French prelate had there is no human power which has not con- exerted all the force of his talents. It exhibits tributed, in spite of itself, to other designs than accordingly a splendid specimen of genius its own. God alone is able to reduce all things and capacity; and imbued as we are in this to his own will. Hence it is that every thing Protestant land with the most favourable imappears surprising when we regard only secon- pressions of the consequences of this convuldary causes; and, nevertheless, all things ad- sion, it is perhaps not altogether uninstructive vance with a regulated pace. Innumerable to observe in what light it was regarded by the unforeseen results of human councils eon-greatest intellects of the Catholic world,-that ducted the fortunes of Rome from Romulus to Charlemagne."-Discours sur l'Hist. Univ. ad fin.

between the two we may form some estimate of the light in which it will be viewed by an impartial posterity.

"Christians!" says he, in the exordium of his discourse; "it is not surprising that the memory of a great Queen, the daughter, the wife, the mother of monarchs, should attract you from all quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in her single life the

It is impossible to dispute the grandeur of the glance which the Eagle of Meaux has cast over human affairs in the ancient world. But without contesting many of his propositions, and, in particular, fully conceding the truth of the important observation, that almost all the greater public actions of men have been attended in the end by consequences different from, often the reverse of, those which they intended, we apprehend that the mode of Di-extremes of human things; felicity without vine superintendence and agency will be found to be more correctly portrayed in the following passage from Blair—an author, the elegance and simplicity of whose diction frequently disguises the profoundness of his thoughts, and the correctness of his observations of human affairs:-"The system upon which the Divine Government at present proceeds plainly is, that men's own weakness should be appointed to correct them; that sinners should be snared in the work of their own hand, and sunk in the pit which themselves have digged; that the

bounds, miseries without parallel; a long and peaceable enjoyment of one of the most noble crowns in the universe, all that birth and grandeur could confer that was glorious, all that adversity and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good cause, attended at first with some success, then involved in the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion long restrained-at length reigning triumphant; no curb there to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody hands, usurpation, and tyranny, under the name