trates chosen, churches gathered, schools projected, and newspapers issued. Merchandise of all kinds glutted the market; and the very winds seemed to carry on fleetest wings to the infant territory all commodities, useful and luxurious, from the older countries. But a "Territory " it remained scarcely long enough to be organized as such. Almost as soon as it was settled, it knocked at the door of the Capitol, claiming and receiving admission into the Union as a free commonwealth, a sovereign State. And now California is a nation in itself, a youthful member of the Republic, fitted up and furnished with all the appliances of civilization, as if it were one of the elder Commonwealths, towed round Cape Horn and moored to the western coast of North America. To visit it is scarcely more than a pleasure-trip; to reside within its borders calls for no sacrifice; and we have already ceased to speak of it as a novelty or to wonder at its magic growth. But when the suddenness of its peopling, coupled with the fulness of its endowments and wealth, is compared and contrasted, as we have suggested, with the painful planting of Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay, the immense stride the world has made in means and methods and the arts of life reveals itself at a glance.

The other illustration of the world's progress shall be drawn from the Crimean war. In a few weeks after the commencement of hostilities between Russia and the Allies, the blaze of artillery disclosed to millions a land scarce known by name, and immediately that land became the centre of interest to the civilized world. In one little month, the inhabitants of cities in the West, created out of the wilderness since Waterloo was Europe's great battle-field, read of Balaklava charges, of the terrible slaughters, the successes and reverses, of the strangely allied and strangely opposed combatants. In one little month this intelligence from a region whose history dates from the age of fable, before the invention of letters, was thrown across continents and oceans, as if from some miraculous, space-defying mortar, to be pondered on far-off prairies, where the Cashmere shawl brushes the coarse blanket of the departing Indian. The daily progress of sieges and skirmishes and pitched battles was almost watched from the

windows of the Tuileries and the steps of the London Exchange. The history of each conflict was written in "The Times," as though its correspondents reported phonographically the roll of the musketry and the thunder of the cannon. Every scene and incident was daguerreotyped so to say as soon as it appeared or occurred, and shown in the truthfulness of fac-similes to all Christendom. Notwithstanding its horrors, its barbarism of hellish passions and murderous deeds, its rivers of blood, its famine and pestilence, notwithstanding all the iniquities and villanies of which that war, like all wars, was the concentration and outbreak, when studied from the point of view we have suggested, it represents the wonderful progress of mankind in material greatness, and gives encouragement and hope of better things to come.

This Crimean war had the peculiarity and pre-eminence of being, on the one hand, unsurpassed in carnage and hardship, in all that makes war atrocious and inhuman; whilst, on the other, it burst out and raged in the midst of the high civilization of the age, as a volcano vomits desolation at the centre of regions of tropical luxuriance. Consequently civilization looked upon it, and learned, we may hope, its awful lesson, by seeing its horrors enacted where they were instantly known in the whole of their condensed agony and wickedness, learned what it means to settle questions of policy and diplomacy by appeal to the sword, to turn cultivated men and ignorant men into fighting men, to employ science and art in wholesale homicide, to sweep off the beautiful prosperity of earth with a deluge of blood from human hearts.

We resist the temptation to go into the domain of literature for further examples of our position, — examples that would tell how every live book in these days, and every live speech, has its words winged for a flight over the entire globe, and that whoever can write or speak to the world's heart or head or conscience can have, as never before, the world's eye and ear. Enough has been said to illustrate the constant growth and improvement of means for the rapid diffusion of intelligence,- enough, to demonstrate a progressive victory of man over time and space. This victory is not without its moral and religious significance.

All knowledge is power, but mere human knowledge, it may be urged, is as likely to be power for evil as for good. This is true, yet in proportion to the advantage gained over time and space will be the progress of wisdom, virtue, and peace. Frequency of intercourse and community of interests lead to interchange of sympathies, and develop the idea of brotherhood; thus tending to make the "human family" a reality, and giving supremacy to the law of love. Do not intimacy, and the felt oneness of condition, duty, and privilege, secure the order and harmony of homes? And will not the example and experience of the wisest and best-ruled countries wisest and best-ruled by reason of their culture and freedom — exert an ever-growing influence to hasten the contentment of the nations?

Nor is this all. The "knowledge of the Lord," which is to "cover the earth as the waters cover the seas," must be diffused by the same instrumentalities and messengers that serve other interests. Even now the evangelizing task is begun. Even now Christian truth, more or less pure, is borne far and wide by the ever-expanding forces of civilization. Catholic prelates blessing locomotive engines crowned with garlands, need not be regarded as performing an act of superstition. The act may be viewed as symbolical and prophetic. Those engines strain their iron muscles to draw something more precious than merchandise, or travellers for gain and pleasure. Their services will be at the disposal of the apostles of faith and charity, the bearers of the Gospel of love. And what is true of these strong and swift carriers of the age, is equally true of all its machinery of intercommunication.

Such are some of the consequences which will follow or accompany the conquest of time and space. And in these consequences - notwithstanding the myriad evils which may abound, and which will dispute every inch of the ground they now occupy against all the efforts of progress and reformare assurances of an ever-brightening future, revealed as a glorious vision to a rational, and, because rational, confident and patient faith.

ART. IV.

- THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST, THE WORLD'S

JUDGE.

1. Anthologie christlicher Gesänge aus der ältern und mittlern Zeit. Von A. J. RAMBACH. Leipzig. 1817. "Sequentia in die omnium animarum. Gesang vom jüngsten Gerichte."

2. Lateinische Hymnen und Gesänge aus dem Mittelalter. Von DR. G. A. KÖNIGSFELD. Bonn. 1847. "Dies iræ, dies illa."

3. The Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. By JOHN S. HARFORD, Esq. London. 2 vols. 8vo. 1857. 1857. "Description of the Painting of the Last Judgment."

In a former number,* we undertook to investigate the doctrine of Christ, the Creator of the world. We now propose to offer some reflections on the parallel doctrine of Christ, the Judge of mankind. The two subjects are so intimately related, that this second seems to be but a proper sequel to the first. The two beliefs have an interdependence, the one on the other; for who but the Maker of the world should be the Judge of the world? And since the Church conception which we have now come to treat is connected so closely with poetic and pictured representations, we have placed at the head of this article, as properly belonging to it, the famous hymn, which has been the cherished property of devout readers for six hundred years, and the scarcely less famous painting of the Last Judgment, which for a little more than half that time has been exhibited to the wonder of all Christendom. They are two astonishing achievements, inspired by the same idea, depicting the same scene in different but kindred arts of expression. One of them is carried about, over the whole earth, reading its quaint but solemn rhymes, and singing its terrible meaning to the richest of music. The other, fastened to a single wall, will show its figures and tints only to those who go far for the sight, and yet stirs innumerable hearts everywhere by the mere story of its power. few words upon each of these masterpieces will not be out of place, considering the important bearing they have on the doctrine before us.

A

* Christian Examiner, No. CCIII., Article III. In that article, on page 194, seventh line from the top, the word denied should read devised.

Incomparably the noblest and most affecting of the ancient Latin hymns is the "Dies iræ, dies illa." It opens with the burning up of the world, the sound of the last trumpet, and the awakening of all the dead to their final award. Christ is the Judge of men, "sitting on the throne of his glory." "Judex ergo quum sedebit." The rest of the piece is a supplication of the soul for mercy when that day arrives, adjuring him by his pity, and the freedom of his grace, and the remembrances of his earthly life; pleading with him as the compassionate being who was seeking that soul when he sat weary at the well, and redeeming it when he suffered the cross, who absolved the sinful Mary and accepted the penitent thief. The date of this hymn, about 1250, has been more generally agreed in than the name of its author. It has been claimed for Matthew of Aquasparta, a general of the Franciscans, and for Humbert, a general of the Dominicans, for the Cardinal Latinus Frangipani, and for several others. But it is now usually ascribed to Thomas of Celano, a Franciscan friar of the Abruzzi. The researches of Wadding are supposed to have established this fact. The English language is incapable of translating it in its proper rhyme and measure, without which there is no true translation.* But it is made familiar to many who read no Latin by the various references to it in poetry and letters, through the music of Mozart, in the imitation of it by Roscommon, and especially the paraphrase of it by old Crashaw, which is by far the grandest representation of it in our tongue. In Germany it has been translated by various hands. The renowned names of Fichte and Schlegel are among the number. The best that we have seen, beyond all question, is that which accompanies the text of Dr. Königsfeld. He tells us that every year is adding to the numberless versions already made; which he considers sufficient evidence that the full force of the original has not yet been perfectly reproduced.

From the poem we turn to the picture. We have gazed upon it when the Sistine Chapel was thronged with curious strangers, drawn together to witness the pageantry of a Papal Christmas, and we have meditated before it entirely alone;

*The late creditable attempt of Dr. Irons does not change this opinion.