We understand ourselves to be risking no new assertion, but simply reporting what is already the conviction of the greatest in our age, when we say, that cheerfully recognising, gratefully appropriating whatever Voltaire has proved, or any other man has proved, or shall prove, the Christian Religion, once here, cannot again pass away; that, in one or the other form, it will endure through all time; that, as in Scripture, so also in the heart of man, is written, "the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." Were the memory of this Faith never so obscured, as, indeed, in all times, the coarse passions and perceptions of the world do all but obliterate it in the hearts of most; yet in every pure soul, in every Poet and Wise Man, it finds a new Missionary, a new Martyr, till the great volume of Universal History is finally closed, and man's destinies are fulfilled in this earth. "It is a height to which the human species were fated and enabled to attain; and from which, having once attained it, they can never retrograde."

one point; what Theologians have called the | in sacred, silent, anfathomable depths, if we plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures." This investigate its interior meanings; which meanis the single wall, against which, through longings, indeed, it may be, every new age will years, and with innumerable battering-rams and develop to itself in a new manner, and with catapults and pop-guns, he unweariedly batters. new degrees of light; for the whole truth may Concede him this, and his ram swings freely, to be called infinite, and to man's eye discernible and fro, through space; there is nothing further only in parts: but the question itself is nowise it can even aim at. That the Sacred Books the ultimate one in this matter. could be aught else than a Bank-of-Faith Bill, for such and such quantities of Enjoyment, payable at sight in the other world, value received; which bill becomes waste paper, the stamp being questioned:—that the Christian Religion could have any deeper foundation than Books, could possibly be written in the purest nature of man, in mysterious, ineffaceable characters, to which Books, and all Revelations, and authentic traditions, were but a subsidiary matter, were but as the light whereby that divine writing was to be read;-nothing of this seems to have, even in the faintest manner, occurred to him. Yet herein, as we believe that the whole world has now begun to discover, lies the real essence of the question; by the negative or affirmative decision of which the Christian Religion, any thing that is worth calling by that name, must fall, or endure for ever. We believe, also, that the wiser minds of our age have already come to agreement on this question; or rather never were divided regarding it. Christianity, the Worship of Sorrow," has been recognised as divine, on far other grounds than "Essays on Miracles," and by considerations infinitely deeper than would avail in any mere "trial by jury." He who argues against it or for it, in this manner, may be regarded as mistaking its nature: the Ithuriel, though to our eyes he wears a body, and the fashion of armour, cannot be wounded with material steel. Our fathers were wiser than we, when they said in deepest earnestness, what we often hear in shallow mockery, that Religion is "not of Sense, but of Faith;" not of Understanding, but of Reason. He who finds himself without this latter, who by all his studying has failed to unfold it in himself, may have studied to great or to small purpose, we say not which; but of the Christian Religion, as of many other things, he has and can have no knowledge.

The Christian Doctrine we often hear likened to the Greek Philosophy, and found, on all hands, some measurable way superior to it but this also seems a mistake. The Christian Doctrine, that doctrine of Humility, in all senses, godlike, and the parent of all godlike virtues, is not superior, or inferior, or equal, to any doctrine of Socrates or Thales; being of a totally different nature; differing from these, as a perfect Ideal Poem does from a Correct Computation in Arithmetic. He who compares it with such standards may lament that, beyond the mere letter, the purport of this divine Humility has never been disclosed to him; that the loftiest feeling hitherto vouchsafed to mankind is as yet hidden from

These things, which it were far out of our place to attempt adequately elucidating here, must not be left out of sight, in appreciating Voltaire's polemical worth. We find no trace of these, or of any the like essential considerations having been present with him, in examining the Christian Religion; nor indeed was it consistent with his general habits that they should be so. Totally destitute of religious Reverence, even of common practical seriousness; by nature or habit, undevout both in heart and head; not only without any Belief, in other than a material sense, but without the possibility of acquiring any, he can be no safe or permanently useful guide in this investigation. We may consider him as having opened the way to future inquirers of a truer spirit; but for his own part, as having engaged in an enterprise, the real nature of which was wellnigh unknown to him; and engaged in it with the issue to be anticipated in such a case; producing chiefly confusion, dislocation, destruction, on all hands; so that the good he achieved is still, in these times, found mixed with an alarming proportion of evil, from which, indeed, men rationally doubt whether much of it will in any time be separable.

We should err widely, too, if in estimating what quantity, altogether overlooking what quality, of intellect Voltaire may have manifested on this occasion, we took the result produced as any measure of the force applied. His task was not one of Affirmation, but of Denial; not a task of erecting and rearing up, which is slow and laborious; but of destroying and overturning, which in most cases is rapid and far easier. The force necessary for him was nowise a great and noble one; but a small, in some respects a mean one, to be nimbly and seasonably put in use.

The

Ephesian Temple, which it had employed compared with which the often-commemorated many wise heads and strong arms, for a life-"horrors of the French Revolution," and all time, to build, could be un-built by one mad- Napoleon's wars, were but the gay jousting of man, in a single hour.

a tournament to the sack of stormed cities. Our European community has escaped the like dire consummation; and by causes, which, as may be hoped, will always secure it from such. Nay, were there no other cause, it may be asserted, that in a commonwealth where the Christian religion exists, where it once has existed, public and private Virtue, the basis of all Strength, never can become ex tinct; but in every new age, and even from the deepest decline, there is a chance, and in the course of ages, a certainty of renovation. That the Christian Religion, or any Religion, continued to exist; that some martyr heroism still lived in the heart of Europe to rise against mailed Tyranny when it rode triumphant,— was indeed no merit in the age of Louis XV., but a happy accident which it could not altogether get rid of. For that age too is to be regarded as an experiment, on the great scale, to decide the question, not yet, it would appear, settled to universal satisfaction: With what degree of vigour a political system, grounded on pure Self-interest, never so enlightened, but without a God, or any recognition of the godlike in man, can be expected to flourish; or whether, in such circumstances, a political system can be expected to flourish, or even to subsist at all? It is contended by many that our mere love of personal Pleasure, or Happiness as it is called, acting on every In fact, Voltaire's chief merits belong to individual, with such clearness as he may Nature and himself; his chief faults are of easily have, will of itself lead him to respect his time and country. In that famous era of the rights of others, and wisely employ his the Pompadours and Encyclopédies, he forms the own to fulfil, on a mere principle of ecomain figure; and was such, we have seen, nomy, all the duties of a good patriot; so that, more by resembling the multitude, than by in what respects the State, or the merely sodiffering from them. It was a strange age cial existence of mankind, Belief, beyond the that of Louis XV.; in several points, a novel testimony of the senses, and Virtue, beyond one in the history of mankind. In regard to the very common Virtue of loving what is its luxury and depravity, to the high culture pleasant, and hating what is painful, are to be of all merely practical and material faculties, considered as supererogatory qualifications, and the entire torpor of all the purely contem- as ornamental, not essential. Many there are, plative and spiritual, this era considerably re- on the other hand, who pause over this docsembles that of the Roman Emperors. There, trine; cannot discover, in such a universe of too, was external splendour and internal conflicting atoms, any principle by which the squalour; the highest completeness in all sen- whole shall cohere: for, if every man's selfsual arts, including among these not cookeryishness, infinitely expansive, is to be hemmed and its adjuncts alone, but even "effect-paint-in only by the infinitely-expansive selfishness ing" and "effect-writing;" only the art of virtuous living was a lost one. Instead of Love for Poetry, there was "Taste" for it; refinement in manners, with utmost coarseness in morals: in a word, the strange spectacle of a social system, embracing large, cultivated portions of the human species, and founded only on Atheism. With the Romans, things went what we should call their natural course: Liberty, public spirit, quietly declined into a caput-mortuum; Self-love, Materialism, Baseness even to the disbelief in all possibility of Virtue, stalked more and more imperi- a whole world, for purposes of science; usly abroad; till the body-politic, long since deprived of its vital circulating fluids, had now become a putrid carcass, and fell in pieces to be the prey of ravenous wolves. Then was there, under those Attilas and Alarics, a world's spectacle of destruction and despair,

Of such errors, deficiencies, and positive misdeeds, it appears to us, a just criticism must accuse Voltaire: at the same time, we can nowise join in the condemnatory clamour which so many worthy persons, not without the best intentions, to this day keep up against him. His whole character seems to be plain enough, common enough, had not extraneous influences so perverted our views regarding it: nor, morally speaking, is it a worse character, but considerably a better one, than belongs to the mass of men. Voltaire's aims in opposing the Christian Religion were unhappily of a mixed nature: yet, after all, very nearly such aims as we have often seen directed against it, and often seen directed in its favour: a little love of finding Truth, with a great love of making Proselytes; which last is in itself a natural, universal feeling; and if honest, is, even in the worst cases, a subject for pity, ra- | ther than for hatred. As a light, careless, courteous Man of the World, he offers no hateful aspect; on the contrary, a kindly, gay, rather amiable one: hundreds of men, with half his worth of disposition, die daily, and their little world laments them. It is time that he too should be judged of by his intrinsic, not by his accidental qualities; that justice should be done to him also; for injustice can profit no man and no cause.

of every other man, it seems as if we should have a world of mutually-repulsive bodies with no centripetal force to bind them together; in which case, it is well known they would, by and by, diffuse themselves over space, and constitute a remarkable Chaos, but no habitable Solar or Stellar System.

If the age of Louis XV. was not made an experimentum crucis in regard to this question, one reason may be that such experiments are too expensive. Nature cannot afford, above once or twice in the thousand years, to destroy

but must content herself with destroying one or two kingdoms. The age of Louis XV., so far as it went, seems a highly illustrative experiment. We are to remark, also, that its operation was clogged by a very considerable disturbing force; by a large remnant, namely,

of the old faith in Religion, in the invisible, a poor era; that any little morality it had was celestial nature of Virtue, which our French chiefly borrowed, and from those very ages Purifiers, by their utmost efforts of lavation, which it accounted so barbarous. For this had not been able to wash away. The men Honour," this "Force of Public Opinion," is did their best, but no man can do more. Their not asserted, on any side, to have much renoworst enemy, we imagine, will not accuse vating, but only a sustaining or preventive them of any undue regard to things unseen power; it cannot create new Virtue, but at best and spiritual far from practising this invisi- may preserve what is already there. Nay, of ble sort of Virtue, they cannot even believe the age of Louis XV., we may say that its very in its possibility. The high exploits and en- Power, its material strength, its knowledge, all durances of old ages were no longer virtues, that it had, was borrowed. It boasted itself to but "passions;" these antique persons had a be an age of illumination; and truly illuminataste for being heroes, a certain fancy to die tion there was of its kind: only, except the for the truth: the more fools they! With our illuminated windows, almost nothing to be seen Philosophers, the only virtue of any civilization thereby. None of those great Doctrines or Inwas that they call "Honour," the sanctioning stitutions that have "made man in all points deity of which is that wonderful "Force of a man;" none even of those Discoveries that Public Opinion." Concerning which virtue have the most subjected external Nature to his of Honour, we must be permitted to say that purposes, were made in that age. What she reveals herself too clearly, as the daughter Plough, or Printing-press, what Chivalry, or and heiress of our old acquaintance Vanity, Christianity; nay, what Steam-engine, or Quawho indeed has been known enough, ever kerism, or Trial by Jury, did these Encyclosince the foundation of the world, at least pedists invent for mankind? They invented since the date of that "Lucifer, son of the simply nothing; not one of man's virtues, not Morning;" but known chiefly in her proper one of man's powers, is due to them: in all character of strolling actress, or cast-clothes these respects, the age of Louis XV. is among Abigail; and never till that new era had seen the most barren of recorded ages. Indeed, the her issue set up as Queen and all-sufficient whole trade of our Philosophes was directly the Dictatress of man's whole soul, prescribing opposite of invention: it was not to produce, with nicest precision what, in all practical that they stood there; but to criticise, to quarrel and all moral emergencies, he was to do and with, to rend in pieces, what had been already to forbear. Again, with regard to this same produced;-a quite inferior trade: sometimes Force of Public Opinion, it is a force well a useful, but on the whole a mean trade; often known to all of us, respected, valued as of in- the fruit, and always the parent, of meanness, dispensable utility, but nowise recognised as in every mind that permanently follows it. a final or divine force. We might ask what Considering the then position of affairs, it is divine, what truly great thing had ever been not singular that the age of Louis XV. should effected by this force? Was it the Force of have been what it was an age without noblePublic Opinion that drove Columbus to Ame-ness, without high virtues, or high manifestarica; John Kepler, not to fare sumptuously tions of talent; an age of shallow clearness, of among Rodolph's Astrologers and Fire-eaters, polish, self-conceit, skepticism, and all forms but to perish of want, discovering the true of Persiflage. As little does it seem surprising, System of the Stars? Still more ineffectual or peculiarly blamable, that Voltaire, the leaddo we find it as a basis of public or private ing man of that age, should have partaken Morals. Nay, taken by itself, it may be called largely of all its qualities. True, his giddy a baseless basis; for without some ulterior activity took serious effect, the light firebrands, sanction, common to all minds; without some which he so carelessly scattered abroad, kinbelief in the necessary, eternal, or which is dled fearful conflagrations: but in these there the same, in the supramundane, divine nature has been good as well as evil; nor is it just of Virtue, existing in each individual, what that, even for the latter, he, a limited mortal, could the moral judgment of a thousand or a should be charged with more than mortal's thousand thousand individuals avail us responsibility. After all, that parched, blighted Without some such celestial guidance, whence- period, and the period of earthquakes and soever derived, or howsoever named, it ap- tornadoes which followed it, have now wellpears to us the Force of Public Opinion would, nigh cleared away: they belong to the Past, by and by, become an extremely unprofitable and for us and those that come after us, are one. 'Enlighten Self-interest!" cries the not without their benefits, and calm historical Philosophe; "Do but sufficiently enlighten it! meaning. We ourselves have seen enlightened Self-interests, ere now; and truly, for most part, their light was only as that of a horn-lantern, sufficient to guide the bearer himself out of various puddles: but to us and the world of comparatively small advantage. And figure the human species, like an endless host, seeking its way onwards through undiscovered Time, in black darkness, save that each had his hornlantern, and the vanguard some few of glass! However, we will not dwell on controversial niceties. What we had to remark was that this era, called of Philosophy, was in itself but

The thinking heads of all nations," says a deep observer, "had in secret come to majority; and, in a mistaken feeling of their vocation, rose the more fiercely against antiquated constraint. The Man of Letters is, by instinct, opposed to a Priesthood of old standing: the literary class and the clerical must wage a war of extermination, when they are divided; for both strive after one place. Such division. became more and more perceptible, the nearer we approached the period of European manhood, the epoch of triumphant Learning; and Knowledge and Faith came into more decided

visited that land which was the most modernized, and had the longest lain in an asthenic state, from the want of freedom. * * *

"At the present epoch, however, we stand high enough to look back with a friendly smile on those bygone days; and even in those marvellous follies to discern curious crystallizations of historical matter. Thankfully will we stretch out our hands to those Men of Letters and Philosophes: for this delusion too required to be exhausted; and the scientific side of things to have full value given it. More beauteous and many-coloured stands Poesy, like a leafy India, when contrasted with the cold, dead Spitzbergen of that closet-logic That in the middle of the globe, an India, sc warm and lordly, might exist, must also a cold motionless sea, dead cliffs, mist instead of the starry sky, and a long night, make both Poles uninhabitable. The deep meaning of the laws of Mechanism lay heavy on those anchorites in the deserts of Understanding: the charm of the first glimpse into it overpowered them : the Old avenged itself on them; to the first feel

contradiction. In the prevailing Faith, as was thought, lay the reason of the universal degradation; and by a more and more searching Knowledge men hoped to remove it. On all hands, the Religious feeling suffered, under manifold attacks against its actual manner of existence, against the Forms in which hitherto it had imbodied itself. The result of that modern way of thought was named Philosophy; and in this all was included that opposed itself to the ancient way of thought, especially, therefore, all that opposed itself to Religion. The original personal hatred against the Catholic faith passed, by degrees, into hatred against the Bible; against the Christian Religion and at last against Religion altogether. Nay, more, this hatred of Religion naturally extended itself over all objects of enthusiasm in genera, proscribed Fancy_and_Feeling, Morality and love of Art, the Future and the Antique; placed man, with an effort, foremost in the series of natural productions; and changed the infinite, creative music of the Universe into the monotonous clatter of a boundless Mill, which, turned by the streaming of self-consciousness, they sacrificed, with of Chance, and swimming thereon, was a Mill of itself, without Architect and Miller, properly, a genuine perpetuum mobile, a real, self-grinding

Mill.

wondrous devotedness, what was holiest and fairest in the world! and were the first that, in practice, again recognised and preached forth the sacredness of Nature, the infinitude of Art, the independence of Knowledge, the worth of the Practical, and the all-presence of the Spirit of History; and so doing, put an end to a Spectre-dynasty, more poien, universal, and terrific than perhaps they themselves were aware of."*

"One enthusiasm was generously left to poor mankind, and rendered indispensable as a touchstone of the highest culture, for all jobbers in the same: Enthusiasm for this magnanimous Philosophy, and above all, for these its priests and mystagogues. France was so happy as to be the birthplace and dwelling of How far our readers will accompany Novalis this new Faith, which had thus, from patches in such high-soaring speculation is not for us of pure knowledge, been pasted together. Low to say. Meanwhile, that the better part of as Poetry ranked in this new Church, there them have already, in their own dialect, united were some poets among them, who for effect's with him, and with us, in candid tolerance, in sake made use of the old ornaments and old clear acknowledgment, towards French Philights; but, in so doing, ran a risk of kindling ||losophy, towards this Voltaire and the spiritual the new world-system by ancient fire. More period which bears his name, we do not hesicunning brethren, however, were at hand to tate to believe. Intolerance, animosity, can help; and always in season poured cold water forward no cause; and least of all beseems the on the warming audience. The members of cause of moral and religious truth. A wise this Church were restlessly employed in clear- man has well reminded us, that “in any coning Nature, the Earth, the Souls of men, the troversy, the instant we feel anger, we have Sciences, from all Poetry; obliterating every already ceased striving for Truth, and begun vestige of the Holy: disturbing, by sarcasms, striving for Ourselves." Let no man doubt that the memory of all lofty occurrences, and lofty Voltaire and his disciples, like all men and men; disrobing the world of all its variegated all things that live and act in God's world, Pity that Nature con- will one day be found to have "worked totinued so wondrous and incomprehensible, so gether for good." Nay that with all his evil, poetical and infinite, all efforts to modernize he has already accomplished good, must be her notwithstanding! However, if any admitted in the soberest calculation. How where an old superstition, of a higher world much do we include in this one little word: and the like, came to light, instantly, on all He gave the death-stab to modern Superstition. hands, was a springing of rattles; that, if pos- That horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, sible, the dangerous spark might be extin- shunning the light, is passing away; with all guished, by appliances of philosophy and wit: its racks, and poison-chalices, and foul sleepyet Tolerance was the watchword of the culti-ing-draughts, is passing away without return. vated; and in France, above all, synonymous with Philosophy. Highly remarkable is this history of modern Unbelief; the key to all the vast phenomena of recent times. Not till last century, till the latter half of it, does the novelty begin; and in a little while, it expands to an immeasurable bulk and variety: a second Reformation, a more comprehensive, and more specific, was unavoidable: and naturally it first

vesture.

*

He who sees even a little way into the signs of the times, sees well that both the Smithfield fires and the Edinburgh thumbscrews (for these too must be held in remembrance) are things which have long, very long, lain behind us; divided from us by a wall of centuries, transparent indeed, but more impassable

* Novalis Schriften, i., s. 198.

more.

than adamant. For, as we said, Superstition | commiseration. If he seek Truth, is he not is in its death-lair; the last agonies may endure our brother, and to be pitied? If he do not for decades, or for centuries; but it carries the seek truth, is he not still our brother, and to iron in its heart, and will not vex the earth any be pitied still more? Old Ludovicus Vives has a story of a clown that killed his ass because it had drunk up the moon, and he thought the world could ill spare that luminary. So he killed his ass, ut lunam redderet. The clown was well-intentioned, but unwise. Let us not imitate him; let us not slay a faithful servant who has carried us far. He has not drunk the moon; but only the reflection of the moon, in his own poor water-pail, where, too, it may be, he was drinking with purposes the most harmless.

That, with Superstition, Religion is also passing away, seems to us a still more ungrounded fear. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there, and will re-appear. On the whole, we must repeat the often-repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly

NOVALIS.*

[FORHIGN REVIEW, 1829.]

A NUMBER of years ago, Jean Paul's copy | we would contend that such soap-bubble guild of Novalis led him to infer that the German reading world was of a quick disposition; inasmuch as with regard to books that required more than one perusal, it declined perusing them at all. Paul's Novalis, we suppose, was of the first Edition, uncut, dusty, and lent him from the Public Library with willingness, nay, with joy; but times, it would appear, must be considerably changed since then; indeed, were we to judge of German reading habits from these volumes of ours, we should draw quite an opposite conclusion of Paul's; for they are of the fourth Edition, perhaps therefore the ten-thousandth copy, and that of a Book demanding, whether deserving or not, to be oftener read than almost any other it has ever been our lot to examine.

Without at all entering into the merits of Novalis, we may observe that we should reckon it a happy sign of Literature, were so solid a fashion of study here and there established in all countries; for directly in the teeth of most "intellectual tea-circles," it may be asserted that no good Book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first; nay, that the commonest quality in a true work of Art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment; perhaps even, mingled with its undeniable beauty, a certain feeling of aversion. Not as if we meant, by this remark, to cast a stone at the old guild of literary Improvisators, or any of that diligent brotherhood whose trade it is to blow soap-bubbles for their fellow-creatures; which bubbles, of course, if they are not seen and admired this moment, will be altogether lost to men's eyes the next. Considering the use of these blowers, in civilized communities, we rather wish them strong lungs, and all manner of prosperity: but simply

* Novalis Schriften. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich Schlegel. (Novalis' Writings. Edited by Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel.) Fourth Edition. 2 vols. Berlin, 1826.

should not become the sole one in Literature; that being indisputably the strongest, it should content itself with this pre-eminence, and not tyrannically annihilate its less prosperous neighbours. For it should be recollected that Literature positively has other aims than this of amusement from hour to hour; nay, perhaps, that this, glorious as it may be, is not its highest or true aim. We do say, therefore, that the Improvisator corporation should be kept within limits; and readers, at least a certain small class of readers, should understand that some few departments of human inquiry have still their depths and difficulties; that the abstruse is not precisely synonymous with the absurd; nay, that light itself may be darkness, in a certain state of the eyesight; that, in short, cases may occur when a little patience and some attempt at thought would not be altogether superfluous in reading. Let the mob of gentlemen keep their own ground, and be happy and applauded there: if they overstep that ground, they indeed may flourish the better for it, but the reader will suffer damage. For in this way, a reader, accustomed to see through every thing in one second of time, comes to forget that his wisdom and critical penetration are finite and not infinite; and so commits more than one mistake in his conclusions. The Reviewer, too, who indeed is only a preparatory reader, as it were, a sort of sieve and drainer for the use of more luxur ous readers, soon follows his example: these two react still further on the mob of gentlemen; and so among them all, with this action and reaction, matters grow worse and worse.

It rather seems to us as if, in this respect of faithfulness in reading, the Germans were somewhat ahead of us English; at least we have no such proof to show of it as that fourth Edition of Novalis. Our Coleridge's Friend, for example, and Biographia Literaria, are but a slight business compared with these Schriften; little more than the Alphabet, and that in