ments of the house, embraces her, she "felt a gentle unearthly breathing upon her brow, she looked up in search of the motion, but she had vanished from her embrace, she did not see her die." The moral of this pretty and engaging tale is, we suppose, the folly and wickedness of repining at the decrees of our Creator, and the order of nature established by Him. But on behalf of the poor White Lady, it must be remembered that her wish had been, not for bodily life with the appearance of a spectre, which made her the terror of all she loved, but for life as she had always known and enjoyed it.

One remark more. How comes it to pass that no part of the agony of the White Lady at the approach of death proceeds from sorrow for mortal sins and infirmities, and the dread of their punishment? Surely, it is not altogether uncharacteristic of the state of religious feeling in Germany, that in this as in other works of a similarly pure and high tone, no question seems to be raised as to the necessity of repentance, and the certainty of everlasting happiness seems universally assumed. We could not suppress this remark, but it is not made in any spirit of hostility to the work before us.

We have said so much, and given such large extracts from the first of these two tales, because it is far less generally known and appreciated than the last. Almost all our readers are acquainted with Undine, the most beautiful, graceful, and original of fairy tales, or rather of those tales of that twilight time, when the legends of an order of supernatural beings, holding a sort of middle station between angels and mortals, are blended with the romance of Christian chivalry. The classical reader will remember Virgil's enchanting description of the nymphs who listened "vitreis sedilibus" to the lament of Aristæus; and the song of "Sabrina fair" under "the glassy cool translucent wave," reminds us that all countries have turned a willing ear to the pleasing fiction, that "millions of spiritual creatures walk" the water as well as "the earth unseen." Undine was the darling work of its gifted author, whose luxuriant imagination has been more fruitful than that of any other writer, living or dead, in works of this description. Burton in his book of rich, curious, and varied learning, The Anatomy of Melancholy, devotes one chapter to a "Digression of Spirits," as a cause of melancholy, and having observed that they are confined, until the day of judgment, to this sublunary world, and can work no further than the four elements, and as God permits them, he says, "Wherefore, of these sublunary devils, though others divide them otherwise, according to their several places and offices, Psellus makes six kinds, fiery, aërial, terrestrial, watery, and subterranean devils,

besides these, fairies, satyrs, nymphs, &c." He goes on to say, that "water-devils are those naiades or water-nymphs, which have been heretofore conversant about waters or rivers. The water (as Paracelsus thinks) is their chaos, wherein they live. Some call them fairies, and say that Habundia is their queen. These cause inundations, many times shipwrecks, and deceive men divers ways, as Succubæ, or otherwise, appearing most part (saith Trithemus) in women's shapes. Paracelsus hath several stories of them that have lived and been married to mortal men, and so continued for certain years with them, and after, upon some dislike, have forsaken them. Such a one as Egeria, with whom Numa was so familiar, Diana, Ceres, &c. Olaus Magnus hath a long narration of one Hotherus, a king of Sweden, that, having lost his company as he was hunting one day, met with these water nymphs, or fairies, and was feasted by them; and Hector Boëthius, of Macbeth and Banco, two Scottish lords, that, as they were wandering in woods, had their fortunes told them by three strange women. To these heretofore they used to sacrifice by that voooμavreía, or divination by waters."

The Germans delight in all legends of these water fairies (as it seems more civil to call them). Everybody knows Goethe's beautiful ballad of "The Fisherman;" but not every one is aware that it has a peculiar music for German ears.

Le Motte Fouqué sprung, as his name indicates, from a French family; one of those whom the edict of Nantes scattered over Germany. This gentleman has combined, no uncommon event in Germany, the laurels of a distinguished military career during the last war, with those of a no less distinguished literary reputation since the peace.

Of his many writings, dramas as well as tales, his own favourite production ("diese Lieblingsgabe meiner Muse '") has also been, by the general suffrage of Europe, contrary to the usual fate of authors, proclaimed his best work. Undine has been translated into almost every modern language, but we are disposed to think into none so successfully as that which is now before us. The vivid picturesqueness of description of the opening scene of the fisherman's hut,-the strange, yet attractive, picture of the giddy, naughty, wayward, capricious, self-loving Undine, without a soul, contrasted with the calm, pious, consistent, constant, self-denying Undine with a soul,-the malicious malignity of her unearthly kinsman, and the sufferings which her love for her unworthy husband bring upon her, from the period of their

1 See twelfth volume of Fouqué's works, small 8vo edition. His own criticism on Undine.

departure from the enchanted forest to the period of her forced abandonment of him, when she plunges into the Danube, where her sister water-sprites

"Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in 2,❞—

the exquisite pathos of the scene in which she is obliged to deprive her faithless husband of life, and, finally, dissolves into a stream that encircles his grave,-all this is so admirably preserved in the translation, that the reader of both languages, who had first read the English, would feel but little addition to his pleasure in a subsequent perusal of the German Undine. Nor must we forget to say, that the drawings which illustrate the translations, though few in number, are well conceived and happily executed.

2 Comus.

ART. IV.-Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts aller christlichen Confessionen, von FERDINAND WALTER. Bonn, 1836.

Jus Ecclesiasticum Anglicanum; or, the Government of the Church of England exemplified, by NATHANIEL HIGHMORE. London, 1810. IN the good old days, when tutors played at cards with their pupils, while heads of houses looked to the security of the government candidate; before charges of Tractarianism disturbed the one, or imputations of Erastianism disconcerted the other; while Benedictine Fathers might still be had for the asking in Paternoster Row, and prebends and deaneries in Downing Street; there lived, in an ancient quadrangle of one of our Universities, a certain antiquated fellow, whose great delight was in showing strangers the wonders of his college. "This is our library, gentlemen," was his ordinary commencement; "here you will find our divinity-all about tithes." The age, it will be said, has learnt to look with a more discriminating eye upon the shelves of our libraries. We rejoice to believe it. But we open a work for the instruction of the young, tolerably well done, though unhappily edited by a low dissenter-Mangnall's Questions; and in a pretty fair account of the English Constitution, we find a misconception to match that of our ancient fellow. "What is a Consistory Court? One held by the bishop of any diocese, in his cathedral, to examine wills and intestate estates." True, the pupil is afterwards informed that other subjects are submitted to this tribunal, but the purpose of its establishment, the end posed by the Church of England, is asserted to have been the regulation of pecuniary bequests. The care and vigilance which was bestowed in other days on the construction of these celebrated tribunals, the precautions as to the character of those who should practise or preside in them, had no spiritual object; the "lame and impotent conclusion" was but

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

pro

Now, we affirm, that to look on tithes as the whole purpose of theology, was not a more monstrous proof of the perverted judgment of the age, than that the institution of courts Christian should have been esteemed to have reference to an end so worldly and ignominious.

We would fain induce men to form a more worthy notion of their purpose. The existence of courts Christian is, in truth, the

natural result of the establishment of the Christian kingdom. In this kingdom, the bishops of the Church bear rule. To decide who are and who are not Christians; what charges brought against individuals interfere with their title to the blessings of the Gospel; who shall teach, and in what manner;-all this belongs to their authority as princes in the Church of God. For it must, of course, be decided by some one--these points cannot be left to chance-will not decide themselves; to refuse them arbitrariment were to deny that there is any Christian polity and kingdom established among men. No doubt this is denied by many in the present day; religion is asserted to be only an individual concern, and to have no reference to our collective duties. But such an error will pass away in time, like other heresies, because those who adopt it cannot agree among themselves what to substitute for the truth. At present, indeed, they obey the Record newspaper; but other Records will in time arise, as talent and virulence multiply, and will put forward their concurrent claims to the Papacy. For those who despise the divine testimony of the Church, appear to be compelled, by some inscrutable law of God's providence, to submit to the traditionary dicta of some selfconstituted impostor; while in all bodies which have an actual existence, a tangible being, some kind of Church power is professedly exercised: it is administered by Lutheran superintendents and Presbyterian elders, as well as by the successors of the apostles. We vindicate only for the bishops a power, which must be vested somewhere, if there be such a thing as ecclesiastical polity.

Now the necessary accompaniment of spiritual power is a spiritual court. What we assert for the bishop is a lawful, and not an arbitrary power. He is not entrusted, like Tamerlane or Nadir Shah, with an irresponsible dominion. His authority is to be exercised according to certain prescriptive rules. Quæ præcepta patrum, quæ leges, juraque servant. There are ancient and modern canons, above all, there is the standard of God's word, from which he may not digress. And the security against such error is the authorized course in which he is compelled to proceed. This is what distinguishes the juridical system of modern Europe, from such despotic power as was wielded in former times by the old man of the mountain. Let a man be ever so plainly guilty of a crime, he cannot be summoned by Queen Victoria into her royal presence, and then and there receive punishment from such hands as she chooses to call to her help. Punishment admits not of a royal road. The culprit must pass through the usual course. Lord Denman, or some judge learned in the law, must pronounce the sentence. The sheriff must see to its execution.