overture had been met with indifference, States. Probably this is precisely the we can easily understand that the cue sort of unpleasant reflection which‍ Gerwould at once be given to the German many wishes to enforce on the CopenAdministration in the conquered prov- hagen Foreign Office, in the hope of ultiinces to let the Danes know how much mately persuading the King and people they have to lose, even without any open to accept mediatization as the price of a breach, by the unfriendliness of Ger- renewed friendship. Steady centripetal many, and how helpless they are in her tugging is needed to divert an asteroid hands. from its independent orbit, and make it drop into the sun; Germany exerts this steady tugging through the cords of affection which Denmark feels for her old Danish subjects in North Slesvig.

From The Spectator.

on

M. GUIZOT AND THE FAILURE OF FRENCH

PROTESTANTISM.

of the new empire. No one can pretend significance of German ascendancy under that Denmark is to be feared. No one her present statesmen. The cross can pretend that she is the creature of a Denmark is a sign-post to Europe. stronger Power than herself. By the Treaty of Prague, Prussia herself acknowledged that the situation of the Danish population of North Slesvig was very hard, and that it might be modified SO as to render it comparatively easy without any substantial injustice to German Slesvig. The greater Germany has IT would be interesting to hear what grown, the more easy it was to redeem M. Thiers, M. Renan, and M. Taine this pledge, the more impossible it was thought of M. Guizot's fervent Protestto attribute its redemption to any motive antism. His great political rival had the but genuine magnanimity and love of best of grounds for knowing that M. justice, and the more clear it became that Guizot was a man of the first mark as a such a redemption would be regarded by debater and a minister. M. Renan and the whole German Empire, no less than M. Taine would express hearty admiraby external States, as a proof of that pa- tion for the philosophical genius discific temper and distaste for a policy of played in the lectures on the civilization self-aggrandizement, of which Germans of Europe and France. All the greater are accustomed to boast on behalf of must have been their astonishment that a their great empire, without as yet any man so gifted and so cultivated should justification for such a boast. The kind be an ardent believer in the Protestant of pledge which Great Britain gave to the theology of the sixteenth century, and world of a disinterested and unselfish should become a leader of the Protestant policy, when she withdrew her protect- Consistory. They might have wondered orate over the Ionian Islands, Germany less if Guizot had been a Catholic, if he would have given, and she had far less had paid philosophical compliments to excuse for witholding it, if she had vol- his creed in the Revue des Deux Mondes, unteered the execution of the article and if he had vaguely branded the eneaffecting Denmark in the Treaty of mies of the Church as a gang of RepubPrague. But it is apparently no part of lican ruffians; for they would have inPrince Bismarck's statesmanship to ap-ferred that he was only playing a part, pease in this way the anxieties of Europe. Slesvig is the bait by which he hopes apparently to get all Denmark into his trap. Indeed, probably he cannot understand how a small State, so insignificant in power while she stands alone, and which might become so efficient as the naval arm of Germany, can be so dogin-the-mangerish as to refuse her navy to Germany, when she cannot really have the advantage of it for herself. But what Prince Bismarck does not understand, most of the other Powers of Europe, small and great, probably do understand perfectly. And they know that subordination to Germany is not freedom, but one of the most galling of moral and political chains; that no task-master is more oppressive than one who is both intelligent and domineering,- that that which Frederick the Great was to his officers, Germany is fast becoming to her large political family, and would gladly be to all Europe, if Europe would but acquiesce in her martinetish tutorial rule. We do not wonder that the screw put upon Denmark alarms Europe. It is in a double sense a crucial instance of the

and that he was at heart as sceptical as themselves. French Catholicism will draw many unbelievers to its side, so long as it shall remain one of the ways to political and social power. But Protestantism is more disliked and distrusted in France than Dissent is in English society, and any eminent man who professes its dogma and leads its councils gives an undeniable proof that he is sincere. Nor, indeed, could anybody doubt the sincerity of Guizot. His enemies might say that he was a fanatic, but nɔt that he was a hypocrite. His fanaticism was the more puzzling to his countrymen, because there was nothing like it among the rest of their foremost minds.

The real leaders of French thought either formally adhere to the Catholic Church and smile at her teaching, or they hold scornfully aloof from all Churches whatever. Guizot was the only real exception. One-half of his nature seemed to belong to the nineteenth century, and the other half to the sixteenth. Nothing could be more philosophical than the temper in which he handles the roots of European civilization. Not

GUIZOT AND THE FAILURE OF FRENCH PROTESTANTISM.

243

only are his lectures models of dignified slaughtered on the eve of St. Bartholmew, impartiality, but they everywhere show a and that half a million of them left their masterly comprehension of those general country forever, or went to the living causes which shape institutions and be- death of the galleys, or were butchered in liefs, and which seem to work with such dragonnades? If so, then indeed has a fatalistic power that the theological the Protestantism of France been a failspirit is prone to explain them away. ure." Yes, it has been a failure, and the Guizot, however, displayed the temper of causes of that failure form one of the a Calvin when face to face with those saddest chapters in the history of Chrisheretics who sought to soften the hard tianity. edges of the Huguenot creed. Nay, The Protestants of France still, it is although he censured Calvin for al- true, form a large body, and they are prolowing Servetus to be burned, we sus- foundly respectable. They hold a good pect that Guizot himself would not have share of the national wealth, and they lifted a hand to save Servetus, if he bear a high repute for intelligence and had stood in Calvin's place. His was moral worth. Those Frenchmen, and just the kind of temper out of which especially those Frenchwomen, who hapstormy days and repellent fanaticism pen to be Protestants, are presumably make martyrs and persecutors. He was better than the mass of their neighbours. a Reformer of the sixteenth century, The old Huguenot beauty of family life is born out of due time; and all the culture not entirely lost. The culture of the averof a scientific age could not crush his age Protestant ministry is also high when theological instincts. compared with that of the average Catholic priesthood. Some of the most respected members of the National Assembly are Protestants. But none the less does French Protestantism seem to have no future. It displays none of that aggressive power which is the surest sign of life, and little collective activity. It makes few pretensions, and it appears almost content to be let alone. It scarcely dares to answer the attacks of the Catholic controversialists with claims as haughty as their own, and nothing could be more unlike the old fierce pride of the Huguenots than the meekness of their descendants.

Guizot gloried in his Protestantism. "Je suis Protestant," he said, in a tone which denoted that he was proud of his theological loneliness. And yet he had no delusions as to the future of his Church. "France," he said, "will not become Protestant. Protestantism," he added, "will not perish in France." He seemed to think that the two creeds would continue to divide between them the devout part of the French people, Catholicism drawing to itself those who feared inquiry or who pined for rest, while Protestantism would attract those more robust souls to whom freedom was a necessity; but both, he anticipated, would join hands to fight infidelity and impiety, their common foe. Hence, he would never engage in polemical warfare against Catholicism, and he grieved some of his best friends by denouncing the destruction of the Pope's temporal power. He was perhaps the only Frenchman of first-rate ability who believed that the two Churches could sign a truce; that each could live peacfully in its own conquered territory; and that they would divide the future between them. Catholic controversialists disdainfully refused even to discuss a proposition which their instincts told them to be a piece of theological moonshine; and the chiefs of the Huguenots might have risen from the grave to denounce such an alliance with the Antichrist that was drunk with the blood of the Saints. "Was it," they might have asked, "for so mild a gain as good-fellowship with our idolatrous and sanguinary foe that our people were

The usual explanation of this failure is that Protestantism does not suit the genius of the French people; but that theory is as shallow as it is commonplace. Protestantism did suit the genius of the French people at the time of the Reformation. Before the Reformation, France was the chief seed-field of heresies in which lay the germs of Protestant theology. Calvin was a typical Frenchman, and no book is more French than his

"Institutes." His theology commended itself to the French people by the simplicity and the remorseless rigour of its logic. And before it had been composed, less precise and more mystic declarations of the Gospel had been spread broadcast among the people and the nobility. The new doctrines made way in France faster than they did in England. In the time of Catherine de Medici, the Huguenots had almost an equality of power with their rivals. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew was a con

66

fession that the Court party felt treach-" She felt herself," as Robert Hall said, ery to be safer than open war. And the at liberty to become as ignorant, as Huguenots were then incomparably the secular, as irreligious as she pleased; finest part of the French people. They and amid the silence and darkness she included the best of the nobles, the schol- had created around her, she drew the ars, the men of letters, crowds of those curtains and retired to rest." The Cathburghers who were the backbone of indus-olic Church of France has never recovtry, and of those artisans who afterwards ered from the deadly blow which was incarried the arts of France to other lands. flicted on her rival. And still less has The earnestness. the morality, and the the nation recovered from that destrucculture of the nation were on their side. tion of all that was best in its manhood. There are few more beautiful episodes in When the Revolution let loose the blind religious story than the pictures of Hu- fury of pent-up passion, the supreme guenot homes. They were free from that need was an intelligent, conservative, forbidding austerity which marred the religious middle class, to act as a breakmoral fairness of our own Puritan house- water against that flood. Then, indeed, holds. It is an interesting and suggest- might the most sceptical of statesmen and ive fact, that the Protestants were the the most fervent of Catholic devotees have first of the French people to give choral turned a wistful eye to those great sectasong and congregational melody their ries who had attested the richness of fitting place in the public worship of their their manhood by sacrificing home, and country. They composed psalms which comfort, and life for the sake of an are still sung; and the hostile population austere faith. But it was too late for repaof Paris were often charmed by the ration. Persecution can kill Churches, strains of melody that came from the if only it be pitiless and prolonged meeting-places of sectaries against whom enough; and the piety of Louis XIV. the pulpit and the confessional thun-left nothing to be desired on the side of dered sanguinary anathemas that have cool and persistent fury. Many of the not escaped the record of history. Nor Huguenots, it is true, escaped, and either can it be said that the Huguenots were hid their faith under a superficial connot faithful even nnto death; for they formity to the will of the king, or conbore such persecutions as we can parallel tinued to meet for worship amid the solionly in the slaughter of the Albigenses tudes of their country. Those Churches and Alva's oppression of the Dutch. The of the Desert, as they are called, have left Massacre of St. Bartholomew, it is true, beautiful and heroic records. Perhaps was a deed of vengeance which they could they still dreamed of a day when the not escape; but their choice was free Gospel should triumph. And they might after the Revocation of the Edict which have again recovered their lost ground they owed to a great king, and they then when the blast of persecution had passed made sacrifices for their faith that seem by, if it had not been for a potentate almost incredible in these days of softer greater than the great King, and that was moral fibre. We English often speak as Voltaire. That moral desert which the if we could have defied persecution. But Church called peace was the best of all we were never tried like the Huguenots. seed-fields for him, and the deadly satire All the agonies of our Protestantism of his criticism killed the piety of France seem but trivial annoyances when set be- even more successfully than the Court side the vengeance which Louis XIV. had smitten her Protestantism. He, and took on the heretics. All that we have such as he, alone profited by the desuffered for our Protestantism seems struction of Huguenot society. When scarcely worthy of a record when com- Protestantism was again free to speak, pared with the pathetic and awful an- the manhood of the nation was unfit to guish of the Huguenots. The infatua- understand its Gospel, and it has ever tion of bigotry took away the very life-since been addressed to deaf ears. The blood of French manhood, and left the secular spirit has given itself into the country a moral desert. The Catholic Church of France was at last victorious, after a struggle of a century and a half; but she bought her triumph at a deadly cost to herself, as well as to her country. Henceforth she had no need to put forth anything like her ancient energies. Henceforth she could take her ease.

keeping of Voltairianism, and it now wonders why men who can reject the miracles of Catholicity should not be consistent enough to reject the remaining miracles of Christianity. Shocked by the scoffing impiety of such criticism, the more devout and mystic souls fear to trust themselves in a Church

which does not altogether disdain the weapons of rationalism and they rush to the protection of Rome. And the Protestant Church has shown that the dread is not ill-founded. Disdain for the suFerstitions of Rome has made many of the Reformed theologians destructive critics; contact with scepticism has begotten a wish to abridge the region of the supernatural; and hence, in spite of the sturdy resistance made by Guizot and the orthodox party, there has been a strenuous attempt in the Consistory to secure toleration for teaching which denies the divinity of Christ. Louis Veuillot and his party jeeringly say that Protestantism is thus fulfilling the law of its being by becoming splinters of Rationalism; and Guizot often warned his fellows that although those fragments might produce a philosophy, they could never form a religion.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

THE DRAINAGE OF THE LAGO FUCINO. EUROPE has had so much to think of during the last four years that it is no wonder the completion of a peaceful work like the drainage of the Lago Fucino should have passed unnoticed. Even the completion of the Italian kingdom, with Rome for its capital, it may be remembered, excited but little attention. In less stirring times, no doubt, people would have watched with interest the progress of a work which, if nothing else, was one of the boldest engineering enterprises of the day, and as such might compare with the Suez Canal. But the drainage of the Fucino is something more than an engineering triumph, or the effacement of a great geographical feature. It is the successful accomplishment of a task which was undertaken 1,800 years ago, and which again and again baffled all the resources and skill of the Roman Empire.

On the other hand, most of the men in France hate the Catholic Church with a fury which is scarcely comprehensible The Lago Fucino, is, or it would be even to those Englishmen who are smit- more correct to say was, a mysterious ten with the fever of "No Popery." The piece of water. Lying high among the uneducated artisans regard her with a Apennines of the Abruzzi, walled in on ferocity which, in a time of disturbance, every side by mountains, the lowest of ever leads them to the brink of violence; which rises 1,000 feet above the lake, it while the cultivated classes, when they had no visible outlet for the waters of the do not find it convenient to put on the several streams it received, and rose and robes of devotees, treat the priesthood fell in an uncertain way that inflicted sewith mingled anger and disdain. It is vere loss and suffering on the numerous the rich, trading middle class that gives villages upon its shores. The first serious the Church her new strength. At the attempt to abate the nuisance was that same time, the supreme need of France, made in the reign of Claudius, when the for temporal as well as for eternal rea- works were inaugurated with the ceresons, is a religious faith which she can mony and display described by Tacitus. really respect and believe. Even if a They consisted mainly of a canal and a great religious reformation were to add tunnel driven through the Monte Salviano, to her troubles for a time, it would ulti- the thinnest part of the mountain wall, by mately give society a rest and a serious- which it was hoped the waters of the ness which it has not known for centu- lake would be induced to flow steadily ries. But that is one of those aspirations into the valley of the Liris, some three which are satires on what we see. There or four miles to the west. The flow, is no sign of a great religious transforma- however, proved to be intermittent, and, tion on all the dark horizon of France. in spite of the labours of later reigns, the In vain do we look alike to Catholicism lake showed an invincible tendency to and Protestantism for a creed that can soften the hard, atheistic secularism of her life; and meanwhile, the earnestness which other peoples throw into religion France throws into politics. She debates the practical problems of daily life with a theological fury; the rival parties pursue each other with exterminating passion; and thus is she tossed from revolution to revolution.

relapse. In the middle ages it seems to have been as bad as ever; and from the thirteenth century up to the eighteenth various attempts were made to keep it within bounds by restoring the Roman works, but all to no purpose.

The excavations made in the course of the recent works explained the causes of the failure. The engineering of the Romans was defective, the calibre of the tunnel was insufficient, and varied considerably in different parts, and the level was very irregular. It would seem that