1850] The Doctrines of Romanism. 359 account for some conversions among us to Romanism,→ much noticed on account of their singularity, for we are inclined to believe that conversions the other way are quite as numerous. They are indeed sufficiently remarkable; but they would be far more so, if it were not the fact, that in many cases they are the offspring of sentiment and imagination, or of conservative alarm, and that clear apprehension and sober reasoning have very little to do with them. We have sometimes said to a person just upon the verge of such a conversion, "Do you know what it is that you are about to embrace? Do you know, for instance, what the mass is?" Well, what is it? was the reply. "It is that what you know to be bread and wine becomes, on the utterance of certain words by the priest, blood and flesh, the very body and blood of the living Christ." O, we can never believe that! Then you cannot be a Catholic. Your feelings, your imagination, may be touched by this religion." We very well understand all that; we may have wished, as you do, that we could embrace it; but before the incred ible miracle of the mass we have stopped, and could go no farther. And, furthermore, do you know what the doctrine of infallibility is, to wit, that there is in this Church a perpetual and miraculous power of judging, such that it is liable to no chance of error, not infallible intuition, which dwells in all minds, but infallible judg ment, about dogmas, about books, about much-debated and perplexed cases of political or moral conduct? Did you ever read the history of this Church? Did you ever read the history of the Popes? Infallibility in this body! Was there ever a greater mockery than such á pretension? Was there ever a lineage of kings, in which could be found more pride, passion, ambition, nepotism, luxury, and licentiousness than can be found in the history of the Popes? Were there ever assemblies of men that had upon them clearer marks of human passion and policy, than the Ecumenical Councils? Read the history and decisions of those councils, and see if you can accept them as infallible oracles!* And once more, have you fully considered what submissions you are to See Canons of the Church, in a small volume, containing the Decrees of the Six Ecumenical Councils, translated by the Rev. William A. Hammond. make of your reason and conscience to that Church? that you are to yield yourself up, bound hand and foot, to whatsoever it may please that Church authority to ordain, -dogmas, penances, canonization of saints, celibacy of the clergy, Inquisition, auto da fe, to every edict and ordinance of that power, without qualification and without question?" And now, to pass from the difficulties in the individual, to the state of the general mind, we ask, Is it possible that such claims as those of the Papacy should prevail in an age like this? Is it possible that the Papal power should regain its dominion over these our Protestant coun tries? Every school-house is a barrier against it. Every printing-press is a battlement. Every steam-car is a bat tering-ram, to break it in pieces. Light, and light in a state of free diffusion, we will believe that the day of the world is to go down for ever, before we can believe that this shadow of spiritual darkness is again to come over us. There are those among us who fear the success of Roman propagandism in this country. We cannot con jure up in our minds one sympathy with that fear. We believe that Romanism has more to fear from this country, than this country has to fear from Romanism. Romanism wholly in the ranks of the democracy! Romanism contending for the largest liberty!-it is self-destruction. We do not forget that still the priest has extraordinary power; but it is not here what it is found in Italy, and never can be. It will melt from his grasp here, in the solvent power of universal opinion. Yes, opinion, free opinion, universal opinion, every man's opinion;-that is a power which has come up into the modern world, conducted by education and supported by the press; and it is a power of which the Roman Church, when she laid her foundations, never calculated the force. It is a power which the old Roman Empire, in all her majesty and strength, never knew and never equalled. Men are no longer obedient masses, but thinking individuals. Yes, thinking, a little thinking, it is the mightiest power in the world. It has produced all the great revolutions in modern times; the Reformation, the French Revolution, the English Constitution, the Amer ican Republic. Let us not mistake it because it is an invisible thing. On nothing can we lay our hand, of 1850.] Browning's Poems, 361 nothing can we calculate the results, with such security, of no force have we such assurance as of that. Whoever would frame any enterprise or calculation upon these modern times, must take this into the account. This is the great, central, seminal innovation of this latter age, the new thing under the sun; it is not radically a free constitution, it is a free thought. Thought at last has got leave to be, and to be uttered. Long ages it slept in the mass beneath the leaden pall of ignorance, in the iron-bound vault which despotism had built and barred around it. Long ages of its waking, it stammered with inarticulate utterance. But now it is a clarion, a trumpet voice upon all the winds of heaven. Bid that voice be still; remand to the grave the thought that breathes in it; and then may you have a religion like that which Romanism has been represented to be; "a religion lying in state and surrounded with the silent pomp of death." This is no declamation. This is the issue to be made up. It is between free opinion and the Catholic restriction. We state the issue in no unfriendly spirit towards Catholics. We understand them to avow that they hold free opinion to be unsafe, and the restriction which they propose to lay upon it, to be necessary. This, then, is the issue. And thus do we state the inevitable result as it appears to us. If Romanism is greater than reason, if the Catholic Church is stronger than public opinion, it may regain its lost ascendency. But on the contrary, if the freed mind of the world is stronger than the Roman Church, it will hold its ground, it will advance, and that Church will never prevail against it. O. D. ART. II.-BROWNING'S POEMS.* MR. BROWNING's earliest productions were so obscure, involved, and egotistical in their character, as rather to repel than to excite the admiration of ordinary readers. Nor are his later poems entirely free from these vices. * Poems. By ROBERT BROWNING. In Two Volumes. A new Edition. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields. 1850. 16mo. pp. 384, 416. But in his revised edition those pieces which most severely exercised his readers have been quietly dropped, Few persons will regret their omission; and we think our poet has acted wisely in rejecting them, as they must have tended greatly to circumscribe his popularity if printed in connection with his other works. We do not suppose, however, that he will ever become a general favorite, or attain to the same degree of popular regard which is now enjoyed by Mr. Tennyson, the only English poet of the day who approaches him in excellence. He discloses a pride of self-conceit in his manner of treating a subject, which is somewhat repulsive to those who are accustomed to the current forms of poetry. In other words, he exhibits an ungracious superiority to his audience, and commands rather than invites their attention. Hence his works are poems for the thoughtful few rather than for the thoughtless many, dramas for the closet rather than the stage. They must be studied rather than be glanced over in a few leisure moments, or be indistinctly caught from the lips of mouthing actors amidst the glare of gas-lights, the tinsel of a theatre, and the impertinent gossip of idlers. The cold, calm, passionless student may well spend the midnight oil over them; and with each new perusal he will discover new beauties and new food for thought. There is hardly another English poet now living, in the full exercise of all his faculties, who is so suggestive of new ideas, who shows so keen an insight into the mys teries of character, or whose works are so strongly im pressed with the marks of genius. Mr. Tennyson alone, as we have intimated, can dispute the preeminence with him; but the works of that deservedly popular poet are too often disfigured by a feebleness and effeminacy which we nowhere find in Mr. Browning's poems. And although Mr. Browning has little or none of that airy fancy and musical harmony which delight us in Mr. Tennyson, he possesses a much stronger imagination and a more manly style. There is a masculine energy in his poetry which we fail to discover in Mr. Tennyson's pieces, and which reminds us of the great dramatists of the age of Elizabeth, those intellectual giants of the sixteenth century. We might cite, in proof of this, many instances of that happy boldness of imagery which is a prominent characteristic of their works; but we shall 1850.] The Author's Power. 363 content ourselves with giving one or two illustrations only. The following, from the dying words of Paracelsus to his friend Festus, is a striking picture of a restless life: "Well! Well 't is a strange thing. I am dying, Festus, A partner of its motion, and mixed up With its career. The hurricane is spent, And the good boat speeds through the brightening weather; For the gulf rolls like a meadow, overstrewn With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore ; And now some islet, loosed from the land,.. Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean; Vol. 1. pp. 137, 138. A still finer illustration occurs in the guilty conversation between Sebald and Ottima, in Pippa Passes: V "Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; Swift ran the searching tempest overhead; And ever and anon some bright white shaft 1 1 Burnt thro' the pine-tree roof, here burnt and there, – Vol. 1, pp. 180, 181. In his less lofty flights of imagination, Mr. Browning exhibits the same richness of imagery. Indeed, all his poems are thickly set with these verbal gems, which flash and sparkle with true poetic beauty. We can give only two examples, taken almost at random. Thus, when Festus, listening at the death-bed of Paracelsus, perceives a faint gleam of reason through his friend's incoherent and feverish murmurings, he exclaims: |