fit to be a pioneer, that when he saw the resurrection of a thousand conflicting spirits and society rending into cracks and chasms in every direction, the results of his own labours, his heart fainted within him and he shrunk from the outburst. He hung back, saying, "It is dangerous to speak, and dangerous to be silent." Erasmus occupied the place designed for him. Luther could not be Erasmus, any more than Erasmus could be Luther. Erasmus, under the power of a spell he could neither resist nor remove, worked till corruption came to be recognised as such; and slavery, despotism, uncleanness, and monkish frauds, to be appreciated in their just character as well as designated by their proper names. prepared men's minds to listen to Luther. He awoke their suspicions. There needed then a trumpet-tongued hero-priest to speak ; and truth, like an electric current, would find conductors every where.

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We must refer to another illustrious literary pioneer of the Reformation before we watch it in its cradle, and follow its footsteps to manhood. This was Ulric de Hütten. satirical reflections on the popes were cutting. In one of his works he represents St. Peter keeping his successors out of heaven in consequence of their corruption and degeneracy; and one of the popes, Julius II., he describes with exquisite naïveté, as thus addressing the apostle :-“ If within a few months you do not admit me into heaven, I will attack you with 60,000 men, and drive you and all the other inhabitants out." In another work he gives us his reason for quitting Rome:-" Every thing there is for sale,-God, the sacraments, the kingdom of heaven, and every thing is there allowed except poverty and truth, which are regarded as the only two mortal sins.”

Soon after this he composed what he rather loosely called The Roman Trinity. In this document one of the speakers is made to say,—

"There are three things which we commonly bring away with us from Rome, -a bad conscience, a vitiated stomach, and an empty purse. There are three things which Rome does not believe in, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and hell. There are three things which Rome trades

in, the grace of Christ, the dignities of the church, and women."

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But, perhaps, the most effective exposure with which the corruptions of the papacy were visited prior to the Reformation was the pungent satire known by the title, Letters of Obscure Men. "No work," says D'Aubigné, ever struck a more terrible blow at the pillars of Popery." Luther, however, did not approve this sort of attack. The great reformer's severest invective was always on the side of truth and of holiness. He said biting things, not to make his readers laugh at the expense of the Franciscans and Dominicans, but to vindicate the injured cause of heaven, and to stir men's sanctified energies against a system so unhallowed as that which originated the greatest dishonour to God, and betrayed in the temple of truth at once her founder and her followers. Hütten, nevertheless, like Erasmus, did his work :

"If Truth cannot acknowledge him as one of her children, for she ever walks in company with holiness of life and charity of heart, she will at least accord to him an honourable mention as one of the most formidable enemies of error."

One striking lesson is to be gathered from all that preceded the Reformation. It is the utter impotence of all intellectual, imperial, or military effort to achieve the triumphs destined to follow in the footsteps of a monk. The sword of the Cæsars was shivered as soon as it struck the tiara. Genius, when it arrayed itself against the popedom and shot forth its burning shafts, no sooner touched the hierarch than it was transformed from an aggressor into an ally. It was neither in the camp nor in the academy that the Reformation was to be accomplished. It was in the closet and in the pulpit-it was by weapons “not carnal, but mighty"-the holy revolution had to be wrought out. And the instruments set apart for the high function of wielding these with success were not princes, nor captains, nor prelates, nor always learned men. A contagious and mighty element, composed of thirst for truth and hatred of error, began to upheave great masses of the humblest of the population; and the spirits that shot up at intervals gave proof of the

speed and power of the process from which they emanated.

"One of these," says D'Aubigné, "was the son of a tailor, named Hans Sachs; and was born at Nuremberg, 5th November, 1494. He was named Hans after his father, and made some progress in his studies, when a severe illness obliging him to abandon them, he applied himself to the trade of a shoemaker. Young Hans took advantage of the liberty this humble profession afforded to his mind to search into higher subjects better suited to his inclination. Since music had been banished from the castles of the nobles, it seemed to have sought and found an asylum amongst the lower orders of the merry cities of Germany. A school for singing was held in the church of Nuremberg.

The exercises in which young Hans joined opened his heart to religious impressions, and helped to excite in him a taste for poetry and music. However, the young man's genius could not long be confined within the walls of a workshop. He I wished to see that world of which he had read so much in books, of which his companions had told him so much, and which his youthful imagination peopled with wonders. In 1511 he took his bundle on his shoulder and set out, directing his course toward the south. The young traveller, who met with merry companions on his road,-students, who were passing through the country, and many dangerous attractions,-soon felt within himself a fearful struggle. The lusts of life and his holy resolutions contended for the mastery. Trembling for the issue, he fled and sought refuge in the little town of Wels in Austria, where he lived in retirement and in the cultivation of the fine arts. The Emperor Maximilian happened to pass through the town with a brilliant retinue. The young poet was carried away by the splendour of bis court. The prince received him into his hunting establishment, and Hans again forgot his better resolutions in the joyous chambers of the palace of Insbrück. But again his conscience loudly reproached him. The young huntsman laid aside his glittering uniform, set out, repaired to Schwartz, and afterwards to Munich. It was there, at the age of twenty, he sung his first hymn to the honour of God,' to a well-known chant. He was loaded with applause. Every where in his travels he had occasion to notice numerous and melancholy proofs of the abuses under which religion was labouring. On his return to Nuremberg, Hans married and became the father of a family. When the Reformation burst forth he lent an attentive ear. He seized on that holy book which had already become dear to

him as a poet, and which he now no longer searched for pictures and music, but for the light of truth. To this sacred truth he soon dedicated his lyre. From an humble workshop, situated at one of the gates of the imperial city of Nurem. berg, proceeded sounds that resounded through all Germany, preparing the minds of men for a new era, and every where endearing to the people the great revolution which was then in progress. The spiritual songs of Hans Sachs, his Bible in verse, powerfully assisted this work. It would be difficult to say to which it was most indebted - the Prince Elector of Saxony, Administrator of the Empire, or the shoemaker of Nuremberg."

Circumstance after circumstance in succession converged to a point. A crisis was universally felt to be at hand. New quarters of the world were then for the first time unfolded; the art of printing, transmitting opinions mightier than armies, was discovered; the papacy was unveiled; and men's minds became alive to a sense of the wrongs heaven and earth had suffered from a colossal conspiracy against the glories of the one and the rights of the other. Popes preaching the worst chicanery of courts and churches, notorious as the chanceries in which sin obtained license and the sinner a shelter, all needed a thorough purification, and all announced as at hand a tremendous upshot. The good wept, the timid shrunk, the cautious kept neutral. "Whence was the stroke to come that should throw down the ancient edifice and call up a new structure from the ruins ?" No one could answer this question. Who had more wisdom than Frederic? Who had more learning than Reuchlin ? Who had more talent than Erasmus ? Who had

more wit and energy than Hütten? Who had more courage than Sickengen? Who had more virtue than Cronberg? And yet it was neither Frederic, nor Reuchlin, nor Erasmus, nor Hütten, nor Sickengen, nor Cronberg. Learned men, princes, warriors, the church itself, all had undermined some of the old foundations, but there they had stopped, and nowhere was seen the hand of power that was to be God's instrument. However all felt that it would soon be seen. Some pretended to have discovered in the stars sure indications of its appearing. Some,

seeing the miserable state of religion, foretold the near approach of antichrist; others presaged some reformation at hand-the world was in expectation. Luther appeared!

The history of this event, and of him who is its most conspicuous figure, is eminently fitted to shew the futility of attempting to meet that thirst after something-which men begin more extensively at this moment than for a century past-by form, or ceremony, or any of those other things by which Christendom, was smothered in the fifteenth century. We agree with Mr. Newman most heartily, that there is a stretching toward something in all men's minds, a dissatisfaction with the present, and a panting toward something which seems to be embosomed in the future. That something is not in the Church of Rome, nor have the Oxford tracts touched its very skirts. The something comes. It is the rushing from afar of His chariot-wheels that awakens the souls of men and constitutes one of the awful signs of the times. The "something" admitted by Mr. Newman after which earth groans and thirstswhich he tries to lull and deadenwe say it deliberately and solemnly -is "the All and in All." It has struck us forcibly that there is much of parallel between the time that immediately preceded the Reformation and the days in which we now live - much common much in the one that seems to type out the other. Let us endeavour to trace these signs of the times. Let us, after our review of the processes that prepared the earth for its reformation in the sixteenth century, look briefly into those intermingling elements and startling facts that powerfully distinguish the times in which we live.

Rapid changes take place in every department of human life, and society at large appears to heave with earnest and ceaseless activity. The lethargy in which our forefathers spent their existence has been rolled away; and in its place we behold a restlessness, as if all humanity were convulsed by some universal and great paralysis.

Institutions are explored with inquisitorial research. Opinions stereotyped to a former generation are broken up and tested by a new analysis, or measured on a maturer experience; and mighty systems that reached our age accompanied by countless testimonies prophetic of their immortality, have been broken up and reconstructed or cast away. There is an insatiable and not unfrequently a morbid thirst every where. A feverish uneasiness is wide spread, and on the increase where ever we meet the elements of society, or trace the operations of man. We confess we are not disposed to augur evil results from this striking fact; rather we prognosticate the greatest good. We see in the breaking up of all ancient things, and in the disorganisation of the most hoary monuments of earthly grandeur, the process necessarily preliminary to the erection of that temple, constructed of precious and living stones, whereof the many mansions shall be ever vocal with songs of undying sweetness. We see already in the stirring of the waters of the world the shadow of the descending angel, who is to impregnate them with healing. We dare not approve the course or propose for imitation the conduct of those who identify destruction with amelioration, and believe that the pathway of the Goth is that alone on which monuments of immortality can be raised. This were to lend the sanction of sacred precept to practices that need restraint rather than incentive. Without being guilty of this, we may trace the analogies of history, the ordinary procedure of God, and the coincidences of the day we live with those records, we can plainly decipher on the page of ancient prophecy. Or if we abstain by a wise and wary decision from fixing dates and pronouncing certain present events to be fulfilments of prophecies wrapt in the mysteriousness of 2000 years, there is no reason to abstain from gathering together the signs and characteristics of the age, and rendering these fixed and visible to all,

VOL. XXIV. NO. CXLII.

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Or all the various definitions given of "international law," we are inclined to think that of Montesquieu the most humane, as well as the best. He defined it, if we remember aright, to be the law which obliged nations to do one another most good in time of peace and the least injury in time of war, consistent with their true interests. This we maintain to be the definition of international law, and one which, if exactly observed, would do more towards civilising the human race than any partial code however learnedly complicated. We have long been of opinion, that with the progress of international law we may trace also a corresponding amelioration in mankind, and when that law shall be perfect, and some bond of union established amongst all nations, rendering its observance imperative, we shall see fewer wars, nor have to deplore the civilisation of our race retarded by all their attendant demoralising horrors. Great steps have been made within the last century towards the establishment of some such code, which all independent states shall be bound to obey; and we do not think ourselves too sanguine in deeming that science as yet merely in its infancy, and therefore always witness with concern any retrograde march in the perfection of such law, as we see in such a catastrophe a retrograde movement likewise in the improvement of mankind.

Yet, whilst we may regret, we cannot wonder at, the imperfect state of international law, even in the nineteenth century; for when we consider how difficult it is to frame a constitution for a single state, need we wonder at the slow progress heretofore made in framing that which is in a manner a constitution for the whole world? Separate independent states are to one another originally but what individuals, who have surrendered nothing of their natural liberty to establish a government among themselves, are to one another when living in a state of nature. Each individual in such condition represents a separate independent state, bound to recognise no rules affecting itself which may be laid

down by any other. Every treaty, every convention between themselves, every law which long usage and custom has sanctioned, are so many surrenders of portions of their natural liberty for the purpose of the better securing the remainder, as well as procuring many advantages which they could not otherwise have obtained. All such treaties, or cus toms, are consequently so many steps towards a sort of government amongst nations, as in a single state all such surrenders of the license of its component individuals are advances towards public freedom. The impossibility of any permanent happiness or security being enjoyed by individuals when merely living in a state of nature led quickly to the formation of regular governments; whilst, on the other hand, when separate nations were once thus formed, it required a more enlarged and abstract view to perceive that the happiness of nations, as well as of individuals, would be advanced by forming a sort of government for them also. Motives of ambition and policy, variety of climate and habits, distance and want of similarity of interests, as well as no pressing imme diate necessity, have been the chief causes which have prevented independent states from ever uniting to establish a code by which they might agree to be governed in their relations with one another. The vast extension of commerce, the commingling of interests, and the gradual annihilation of space and distance by newly discovered powers, which have now become to man what wings are to birds, an ornament, a necessity, and a use, are gradually bringing nations nearer, as it were, to one another, and thus creating an urgent occasion for the establishment of some law which shall be superior to all. The hunter who roams in freedom the boundless prairie, or the solitary tenant of a desert island, need no law but that which nature gives. Place a family, however, on that island, and immediately the parental authority is felt and acknowledged. Let several families congregate, or be thrown by accident together, and the necessity for a chief is

felt. The families of the far west obey their chief, and those of the desert their scheik. Add yet more to their numbers, and we find them forced to form themselves into monarchies (mixed or absolute), aristocracies, or democracies, as chance or design originally ordains. Bring these several states into yet closer contact, and you have a family of states, as you before had of individuals, and the necessity immediately arises for a chief amongst them. That chief is the law of nations. Every day that contact is becoming yet closer and closer, and consequently the necessity for enlarging and perfecting that law which is to govern them all increases in proportion. It is, therefore, we find that in the last century more progress has been made in establishing some general code paramount to that of any one separate state, than in any three preceding, precisely because in that century the relations of the various states have drawn them nearer to one another, and the inventions of philosophy have infinitely extended the facilities of intercourse. There can be no longer such an anomaly as an isolated individual in the great family of the world. But though much has been done, more remains to be done. Useful laws with regard to navigation, war, neutrality, and treaties, are now adopted by the leading powers of both hemispheres, as binding on all. Yet another great step remains to be taken-means to be provided for giving those laws a sanction by a union so powerful, that no single state dare infringe what it in common with all has agreed to observe, without experiencing the futility of such an attempt, and suffering whatever penalty may be attached to such conduct. In a wellgoverned individual state no subject can say when he pleases, "I abjure

alike the benefit and the restraint of the laws, and, retracting that portion of my natural liberty which I had surrendered to the commonwealth, return to the state of nature." Such language would have little weight, for, as it has been well said,

so weak an executive to enforce its sanction, that we frequently see different countries, as their interests vary, voting most opposite rules as the guide to all, and enforcing its own law of nations so far as it may have power to do so. Need we remind our readers of the conflicting decisions of Russia, America, France, and England, on the great question of the right of search in the last war. We repeat that the great desideratum for the perfection of an international code is to give to it an executive sufficiently strong to enforce its decrees, and that can only. be accomplished by a union of the majority of the strength of the world for the benefit of all. No war can then arise on any international question, if that union be sufficiently powerful, for there would then be a fixed code, by a reference to which all quarrels on such points would be necessarily decided. When we re

flect that no war can well arise except from some nation infringing a clear right of another, we may imagine of what benefit such a tribunal would be to the whole human race. We have not sufficient vanity to lead us to propose any plan by which a scheme so extensive could be completed; but firmly believing as we do that no greater benefit could be conferred on mankind, and feeling that the increasing necessity for some such system must at last originate it, we regard with great concern any misunderstanding likely to confuse the clear principles of international law, or afford a faulty precedent, which may hereafter be perverted to the dangerous service of designing ambition. Interested in the subject as we are, we would as soon see an erroneous decision on the roll at Westminster, as a foul precedent in the great code of nations. It is therefore that we feel a peculiar interest in M'Leod's case, because it has been argued chiefly on principles of international law; and by the length of time it has been pending, as well as the great interests it involves, has attracted universal attention. A false step, therefore, taken in it, or a wrong principle established, would consequently retard more or less-though we are confident, if the world lasts sufficiently long, nothing can prevent finally-that consumma